Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to react to CNN's apparent effort to be less confrontational politically and consider whether this is something new or are really just more of the same as far as the trajectory of cable news in the US and later on, we're going to take a look at the student loan forgiveness program that Joe Biden recently signed and try to figure out if all of the hand wringing or celebration was really worth it.
Joining me today is a man who, if you listen to him long enough, can tell you where to find all seven Dragon Balls. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde, are you ready to break out your skills as our superhero here today?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Does the Dragon Ball have to have a Z in it?
[00:01:08] Speaker A: That's the old one.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Okay.
I'll just do a podcast and be quiet.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Now we're recording this on August 29, 2022 and a week or so ago, we saw that CNN canceled the show Reliable Sources and fired its hosts, Brian Stelter.
Now, this in itself isn't really the most notable thing in the world because shows and hosts come and go over time, but this one actually was more notable because it may represent CNN's first move in its new management's apparent effort to become less confrontational politically.
Now, this appears to be a significant part about how CNN is seen by Republicans and self professed conservatives, as it's been reported that CNN is not interested in conflict with Fox News and is upset or concerned that its reputation or standing amongst people that either call themselves Republicans or call themselves conservatives has taken a hit and it wants to turn down the temperature of the political viewpoints expressed by its personalities on air.
So Tunde, just to get us started, what are your thoughts on this apparent effort by CNN to be less confrontational politically and you know, which includes, but presumably this is just the first step, the cancellation of the long running show Reliable Sources.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: You know, I think I have the same sentiment you did in your intro here where I'm not really concerned about this show. Like you said, shows come and go, hosts come and go. So I'm not crying over this show being off the air. And it's not necessarily a show that I watched, you know, I sat there and watched every week. But I think, I think the spirit of the idea of this show is something that's, you know, kind of stuck out to me, which is this show was established around 30 years ago by Ted Turner he was one of the founding, you know, I guess, idea men behind this program. And the idea was that they, they wanted to have at least once a week where a journalist could kind of critique journalists and really be there, like, who's holding the press accountable? That was the original intent of reliable sources.
Like the idea that the sources that are getting news to the public were reliable. That's the whole point of the show's name. And so I think whether one likes CNN or not, whether one agrees with CNN or not, you know, the idea that somebody out there said, hey, we need to make sure that we are looking at what the journalism profession is doing, how it's communicating to Americans, how it's reporting information about everything, you know, from the government on the way down, I think that's actually a noble idea. And again, whether people like CNN or not, you know, it's, and it's interesting to me because a lot of the, I think most of the cable news networks now have some version of this. They have something on Fox, a show every Sunday called Media Matters. It's either Saturday or Sunday. I know it's on, it's on the weekend show. Yeah, weekend show. And it's hosted by a man named Howard Kurtz, who actually was the former host of Reliable Sources on CNN before Brian Stelter took over. So this isn't something that's uncommon.
I just think that it probably made the news a little bit more because CNN is the one that started this idea and they're now.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: 30 years ago.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Now they're taking it away so.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, I think the, the kind of thought process of journalism being an art. And I mean, it's interesting you referenced Ted Turner because Ted Turner founded cnn. I mean, like that, that's exactly the person who started this. The whole, this was the idea of cable news. You know, like, this was not something that existed obviously before cable this, you know, 24 hour news, you know, network that's totally devoted to that. And so on my, from my standpoint, yes, the, the kind of, hey, let's see how well we as an industry are adhering to the art of journalism is something of note. That's, I mean, I'm an attorney and we have various organizations that are in place to hold attorneys accountable for their code and their ethics and so forth. And so, you know, it really is, or I should say what stood out to me though most about this was the less confrontational politically angle. Now I can get, and I can actually commend the idea of wanting to turn down the temperature, why people are always yelling at each other all the time. And so that kind of sentiment, I can respect that, like, hey, you know, let's try not to do that. But they're definitely like, I don't know how you can come cover powerful people or you know, it, it, it cover anything. You know, where there's, where there's power, where there's people, where there's power, there's money without being confrontational. Like it seem less confrontational to me means let's try to, let's try less. As far as the accountability standpoint. Let's not try to hold each other accountable. So that was the red flag to me and that you could tell from my intro, that was the thing that it was like, huh, okay, yeah, you cancel the show and everything. But what's this whole thing if you're going to try to be less confrontational? Like, well what, what happens when someone needs to be confronted, you know, is that that's just not what you're going to do anymore. It's just going to be back slapping and so forth. Or if there's something that goes wrong, you just want to mention it because it's like, oh, we don't want to confront anybody. Well, how is anybody going to be held accountable?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. Well, there's a couple of moving pieces here. I mean, one is the nature of, you know, for profit news. I mean let's, let's call it what it is, is you, you know, these guys need to make money. And there's an article from the New York Times from August 2, the headline is Profits slump at CNN as ratings Plummet. And it says the network is on pace to drop below $1 billion in profit for the first time in years.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: What?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: 1 billion in profit? Yeah, they go through it in the article. The point I'm making is there's a new chairman. Look, Jeff Zucker was the former chairman. They were, they. And I think, you know, they were losing money, right?
The board hires a new chairman and he's coming in and shaking things up like they always do. I mean this is regular business. One on one of the new guy comes in, you know, the company's bleeding money in a negative way, right. And they're going to be a turnaround guy and people get fired and things get shuffled around and all that. So that's one of the moving pieces, right?
But I think because that's kind of just normal corporate America stuff, I don't think any of us should be surprised.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: New management comes in, they're there because there was something wrong with the old man doing. And so they're going to change some stuff.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think this brings us back to then the greater conversation of things like. Okay, if one believe because you pointed out something a little bit more nuanced than the way I said it, which is journalism as a profession, as an.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Art, there are standards that you adhere to as far as how you go about what you're going to say.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: You can get a journalism degree at a university is my point. And I think this brings me back to things like all these new mediums of technology which have been used to communicate with the public from all different platforms and sources, all different ideologies. What, what, what has gotten fudged in there was the profession of journalism.
So like you said, there was a time when the only people who had the keys to the gate, you know, the guard gate of, of giving us information about things like politics and even sports. Right word journalists generally. Now we have an ecosystem due to the new, the novel technology that allows anybody, including me and you. Right. People like us with a podcast that sounds professional and well made to appear as if we are on par with professional journalists.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Well, let me add a little bit more to that because you raise a good point. But I want to because it's not that there never has been that this. It's, you know, like now it's totally new. What basically what you're referencing more so is that the, since the printing press, basically that was the dominant form of distributing information until the 1900s, as, you know, pamphlets, whatever, and so forth. And not anyone could do that, but a lot of people could do that. The printing press was kind of like the Internet in terms of opening up who can publish a lot of information, a lot of material and so forth. But in this country, basically once you started having the radio and the television, the government would license people to be able to broadcast over the airwaves. And along with certain licenses, there was a requirement to carry a news bureau and actually report news and information. And that was, and that was governed by certain standards. Even, you know, you had, people have heard about like the Fairness doctrine and so forth in terms of these people who had to operate news organizations and those famously lost money all the time, like that stuff is not interesting enough to make money. And so ABCs of the world and all they had, they used their entertainment and all the other stuff they were doing to make up for the money that they, they had to carry this news stuff. And then they did everything else as far as, okay, yeah, well, this is, this is our for profit stuff. But now, you know, like, so now we're looking at a time period where who needs a broadcast license? Anyone. Like we're back to that kind of wild, wild west where anyone, not anyone, but nearly anyone can start publishing in a mass distribution way now. And so essentially the news media, or the news has to compete on a much broader level. Again, now it's not a set aside saying, okay, well, in exchange for being able to broadcast over public airwaves, you got to do this service as well. It's like anybody can get out there. And so, yeah, it presents different problems. But I just wanted to add that to what you were saying because what you were making is a good point, but just to kind of the context of how we are in that spot.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because some of the things I read specifically about the CNN move by the new, you know, the new leader, the new chairman is to specifically do the opposite of what Jeff Zucker did. What I found interesting, and this is where again, once you peel away from the, the layers of the onion, CNN is, I've heard people, some people in my circle call it the Communist News Network. It's kind of seen as this liberal media bastion and blah, blah, blah. But what's interesting is all these liberal multinational corporations. Right, yeah, exactly.
That promote our wars. But it's all good.
Zucker was routinely criticized by both left and right for his singular role in Trump's rise to power. And they put singular in quotes, you know, they said that in jest, handing astonishing amounts of free airtime to Trump in the 2016 election. And what they're saying is it says the previous CEO Zucker prioritized spectacle and ratings over journalism without any particular political or principled agenda. And they go on to talk about how, you know, he decided to hire Trump's former campaign manager as an on air analyst just to try and get more people to watch. And so what I think it's interesting that a lot of people look at CNN as like a. Not Fox, but reading some stuff about Zucker is basically, Zucker was trying to become Fox, but as a cnn.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Well, I don't even say that he would because Fox is relatively consistent in terms of their slant. They're saying Zucker was just trying to, he was, he wasn't even trying to be consistent with that.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Well, that's what I think the problem is. Well, I think the problem is too is look, and we've said this in different discussions about human psychology, right?
People organize themselves politically based a lot on their psychological makeup, things that generally we can't control. So I think part of the issue was probably that the Fox audience might be more okay with the style of that, whereas the people that are tuning into journalism, sorry, cnn, wanting to see a little bit more journalism, aren't getting it. And that might have been what hurts the ratings there.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: But just to your point, if you're the guy that chases spectacle no matter what, then you don't have any allies. Like, yeah, yeah, Fox's approach does create a core group of allies. Also that it's like, all right, well, when times get tough, we have a base of people that want this kind of information. Whereas cnn, if they're just chasing spectacle, if, like you said, they're getting flack from the left and the right, you know, because it's like, yo, we can see you're not driving our agenda. You know, everybody can see. And now the interesting thing is, is that neither side could see that the, the other side wasn't happy with CNN either. But that's just humans being myop. Yeah, but to me, I, like, I look at this and I'm always, I ask the question, how much credibility if you knew, if you knew someone and you knew that that person would do or say anything for money, how much credibility would you give that person? And the answer is none, you know, and so to me, I almost look at cable news in that way because you raised a good point. And I want to drill down on it even more. Cable news is a for profit institution. It is not about providing information in any way if that conflicts with whatever their chosen lane for making money is. And so in my mind, serious people really can't take cable news seriously because you, you can get some information from cable news, but by and large, it's going to be framed in a, it's going to be cult or excuse me, it's going to be curated in a way and framed in a way not to maximize your understanding of issues, but to, to maximize how much money they can make. And again, there's different ways to do that. Like you said, Zucker, his approach was spectacle. You know, we want to get the car crashes, so to speak, you know, like the, get the rubberneckers. Fox is another approach. They're like, look, we want to cater to a certain thought process or narrative and we want to just bang that narrative all the time. And so because, and that's the observation of Roger Ailes. You go back to that where people don't want to be Informed, they want to feel informed. And so ultimately, journalism is where this could be redeemed. But journalism, as we talked about before, historically, everybody knows journalism doesn't make money. You know, like, if reporting information was, was valuable, C SPAN would be worth a lot of money.
And pbs, npr, they would be doing numbers. And so we know that that's not the case. And so ultimately where you end up is this situation where I'm not saying they need to go away. I'm just saying that if you're a serious person, you have to understand that you're not going to get context and perspective. By and large, that's not what they're there for. Context and perspective doesn't make money, you know, and so. And these things are out here just to make money. That's it. And so they have their different lanes because in the same way that diff, if you have different cars, they mark some cars to these type of people. They got fast cars for certain people, they got big cars for other people. Everybody takes their, their certain segment that they're going to try to get to and they're going to hit that thing really hard. And that's what we have with cable news. And so you got to know that going in, basically. And this is just another signal of that, that CNN is like, oh, okay, well, our spectacle approach didn't work.
So now, you know, in trying to just, you know, ruffle as many feathers as possible. So now we're going to do some other approach. But less confrontational politically is not them. That's not them saying, huh, maybe we should just try to provide more information and try to provide more context and perspective. That's not what they're trying to do. So, you know, it's still. They're moving from one thing to another. It's the same trajectory we're on.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. I mean, look, I, I guess let's see how it shakes out a year from now what their shows and their ratings look like. Because who knows? I mean, the term less confrontational, I'm not sure what that means. When we just observed that they were kind of flailing all over the place, they weren't really confronting one thing or another.
Maybe a better way to put. Is maybe a more organized delivery, like you said, observed. Now, the one thing that I find interesting with all this is like, okay, so what does this mean to all of us as Americans, our society? And I think this is where to me, the idea of reliable resource. Sorry, I almost said reliable resources. The idea of reliable sources the idea of it, not that show itself. I didn't watch it enough to really have an opinion about how good or not I thought they were. But I like the idea of somebody watching the.
The media industry, journalism, because media is important. The reason why media is so important, especially in an open democracy like ours, is because transparency is key.
And they always say sunlight is the best disinfectant. And one reason why we can just assume that this is very important is because the smart guys whose rear end we tend to kiss on this show that founded this country and created this experiment we called the United States, felt it was important enough to add it to the first amendment of our Constitution.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Freedom of the press.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people to assemble peacefully and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That is the First Amendment of the United States. And it seems, and you've said this in a prior show, they packed everything in there.
Those would be the first things that a tyrant, a dictator, a king, someone who did not like democracy would want to get rid of. Right. They'd want to get rid of the idea of people speaking, being able to have free speech, or the people right to peaceably assemble or to be able to petition the government or redress, or.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: They want to control the media or they'd want to establish a state religion. Like those are the ways historically that you consolidate absolute power.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: So the fact that they had the press as one meant that the founding Fathers understood. And remember again, just to go back to history, who are they building a society against? They were building a society against the monarch and the style of rule of King George of England.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Well, and also what they had observed in Europe, generally speaking.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: And so, and so my point is, so they understood that, you know, the freedom of the press, the ability of the press of journalism and journalists to be able to ask tough questions to our leaders and not have a situation like a King George, who he himself is the head of the Anglican Church, to your point. So he's the head of the religion and he's the main guy and he controls all the press in England and he, he decides who gets to be free and who doesn't with what they say.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: This gets to my thought from earlier though, like King, what he would want specifically is the press to be less confrontational.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my point.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah, like, so that's the aim. That's the direction that's the opposite direction of what you want your press, the exercise of press to be going towards. I mean, because even knowing that there is a press out there that will uncover bad deeds, it operates with many people, not with everyone, but with many people as a deterrent against trying to get away with too much, you know, and so without that, if you know that the press isn't going to challenge you, that the press isn't going to ask tough questions, if the press isn't going to call you out when you do things hypocritical, then yeah, it is more of a blank check for operating.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: So.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: So the point being just that, that a news organization would want to lean that direction is kind of just, it's a bizarre way to go.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think what I think in the bigger picture of kind of where we are now in the United States as relates to, let's say, this specific piece of the First Amendment, the freedom of the press, it's interesting because I'm thinking of, remember a few years ago when it was reported that Vladimir Putin wanted to literally create a separate Internet.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: And you know, one of the primary reasons was because again, as an authoritarian, he is intimidated and insecure about the idea that Western media and Western kind of influences would get into Russia. And.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Well, more simply put, though, the ability to control the narrative in his country is vital to his ability to maintain control of the country. Like, I mean, that's, that's the playbook. You got to have control of information to maintain yourself as all of them. I mean, like that's same thing in North Korea. Like there's no open kind of, you know, like all the places where you have this kind of person in place or one party rule type of thing. There is something as far as you have to control the information that people can get.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: So, yeah, what I'm saying is it's, it's, and this is where it's becoming, you know, it's coming into our country. These kind of attitudes are, you know, it's already come in, but, but it's, it's gaining steam. You know, there were people back in the day, like Joe McCarthy, Dorothy of the 50s, Richard Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler. They used to use the tactic of alleging media bias and that's when this whole thing against NBC started, during Watergate. Why? Because NBC was just reporting the fact that the President committed a crime and at that time was considered a really bad crime. I mean, compared to others we've seen since then, probably not as bad, but the idea is that of course, anybody who's in power doing something illegitimate doesn't want people looking at them. So it's understandable that those guys will call it fake news and, or want.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: To delegitimize the, you know, the press. Yeah.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: And so, and that's where I'm getting at is now we're seeing like, you know, I hate to say it, right. I was disappointed to see our governor of our state, Ron DeSantis, basically for this year's, the Republican Party of Florida has banned all what they call legacy media from attending. And you know, his quote was, I'm not going to have a bunch of left wing media people asking our candidates got your questions. And you know, that disappoints me to hear it because realistically, I don't think there's a such thing as a gotcha question if you can answer a question.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: And well, but I mean, beyond the fact that that's about as anti American, you just read the First Amendment, I.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Just read the First Amendment. So he's not giving us freedom of the press. And it's a shame because in reality there's enough press, there's enough media outlets out there that people who want to make sure they find a friendly voice for Governor DeSantis will find it because you've got Fox News, OAN Newsmax, all those. And if people want to find a more critiquing lens, they can go to CNN and all that. But my feeling is by not allowing the CNNs and NBC's in there to see it, he's actually closing himself off from a lot wider audience. And that is, and I think it's on purpose, it's just, it's just sad because that's not the spirit of the system.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Well, I mean it's, it's, yeah, it's complete anti to the spirit of the system, you know, like, and it's, but it's, again, it's about to, it's back to accountability. He's saying the don't want gotcha questions. Well, what about just any question? Again, that is confrontational. Why did you do blank? You know, you know what, that reminds me. Well, let me, let me, let me get into my thought though, because the thing that really stands out to me with this is if new if information, if our information ecosystem, so to speak, is not geared towards providing information, then ultimately we all lose. And it allows, so to speak, someone like a DeSantis now to take a stand against the free press. And so I often try to wonder like, okay, well, what, what's happened that allows, it could allow us to. What's happened that has us going this direction and what could happen to get us out of it Now I think this is kind of the mean, this is the norm. And so when you look at, I referenced the Fairness Doctrine earlier, I mentioned the, the requirement to carry news bureaus that were run in a journalistic fashion on broadcasters previously, I think that created actually an artificial, that's, that's government regulation, so to speak. They created an artificial news environment that we now look back at like, wow, that there was actually an independent big press that was powerful. And I think that didn't exist in the, in the 1790s, you know, it was people pushing pamphlets and stuff like that. I mean, so there hasn't been throughout most of human history a such centralized and kind of standardized approaches to information. And so that's gone. We're not getting that back most likely because like I said, that was something that the government was able to do because of unique circumstances with the radio and then the television and the broadcast over the airwaves. How do you raise the standards now? I think that the answer is with journalism. One of the things that the press and just people have in general in terms of talking like broadcasting information, is the ability to avoid, to say things that aren't true, but to avoid lawsuits. Normally if you get out there and say things that aren't true, if you get out and say things that aren't true about non public figures, you can get sued for defamation, you can loot and you have big time liability. One of the things with the, during the election stuff, a lot of those companies that were making the balloting machine started suing Fox News or suing media people that were saying they were run by Hugo Chavez or like just crazy stuff. But there is protection for news media built into that because you don't want powerful people to just be able to silence the press from getting out there at all with statements or things and that maybe the sourcing is private or something like that. But somehow there has to be a way to tie that to journalistic principles or journalistic approaches. So if anybody can't get out and just start saying stuff and say, oh, I'm a journalist, oh well, you know, this is just how it is. Because if that is allowed to happen, if you can just say anything at any point, then it is a race to the bottom. Because saying anything, particularly if you again, curating it a certain way, framing it a certain way, has, is proven to be the most effective way to get to people because that's what people want. People want their news or, excuse me, they want their information, they want to feel informed. So they want to see it presented to them as if it's informational. But they only want to be told what makes them feel good or makes them happy. And so you got to. There has to be some kind of intervention. From what we've seen over the last 100 years, we can't go back and do what was done then. But there has to be something that requires people to provide at least more truthful information.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Well, that's only if you want transparency, isn't it?
[00:28:30] Speaker A: I want transparency, trustability.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: And so if you want an informed public that's making at least generally rational decisions about their.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: I spoke offline political. Well, look, remember when we spoke offline this week and you reminded me about the legal defense of Tucker Carlson where it's like, hey, no reasonable in court to judge, federal judge, no reasonable person would think that he's telling that this is truthful information. But this is, they wouldn't understand. This is hyperbole and all that stuff. But that's not how it's presented from a product standpoint. It's not presented as if this is just all for, for fun, for giggles. It's presented like this is stuff you need to know.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Well, that's also what happens once you have enough time of non transparency, right? Because once you have an audience that has now been conditioned to only watch certain sides of media and this could be said about all the different sides of the media, right? The kind of more left and liberal progressive stuff, the more right wing and right leaning stuff, meaning people that only occupied those, those ecosystems. Because you said this, you're saying it.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: As, this is a human trait.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because you said this to me a couple weeks ago, you're like, I couldn't imagine what I would think of Republicans if I only watched msnbc only for years. Because you would think every single Republican is an absolute racist that wants to only separate children from their mothers at the border and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you only watch Fox and the right wing stuff, you're gonna think every Democrat is an anti American that likes to see violence in the streets and wants to defund the police or something.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: That's an excellent point. Because the reason why is because so much happens all the time that news organizations, media organizations, I hate to call them news really, but what they're able to do is curate and frame the information so they're able to select the stuff that they want to show you and then frame it in a certain way. They don't have to show you everything, so they'll just show you each time somebody's acting up or when some person says something kind of crazy. And so it become. It's like it's curated and stuff. Like a reality TV show. Like, we. We've all read about how in reality tv, they're able to make people, like, they're able to make this person a villain or make this. This person a hero and whatever. And basically our news ecosystem is the same way where if you have a certain slant you want to provide, you just pick the stories that help that and then frame them in a way. And so, yeah, you would, because that's what. That's the way they're giving you the information.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Well, let me. Let me put it, because you make a good point. As you were talking earlier, I thought about the wwe, right? And remember when we were kids, it was Hulk Hogan and Rowdy, Rowdy Piper and the Iron Sheik and all that. And I remember I was in elementary school, and one of the kids, one of my friends in class really tried to tell me that it was fake. I was so upset. Like, seriously, I was like, no way, it's real. He was like, no, man. My dad showed me this video where they were like, they tossed a coin before and who said who was going to win the fight? And they went out and the guy who won the toy cost won. And then he was trying to explain to me, you really think these big guys are, like, hitting each other like that and they're not getting bleeding and they're not hurt? And the point is, I remember as a kid, I was so upset because he was kind of challenging my value system.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Your perception of reality.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my point.
I was like, no, no, no. Rowdy Rider Piper is real. Like, he really did win that fight. You know, Even though there's no wins.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: The fight, remember that they do the storylines. I mean, that. That's a great analogy.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: No, but that's my point. Like, like, like, there's no way. They're in cahoots behind the scenes, and the guy lost on purpose. Like, I couldn't, like, fathom that, you know? Know. And I was so upset. And I think what's happened is this news media has become the WWE for all of us, for the adults in America. And the problem is, is that because this, the topics that are discussed in the media are important. Like, I'm thinking, imagine if you spent the last 10 to 15 years immersed in the right wing media hearing literally that Democrats are anti American or, or they're pedophiles or there are certain things that, what I'm saying is all these things change how people perceive other people. And now we have a situation where our politicians don't even feel like they can debate because they're gonna be rewarded for obstruction. They're not gonna be rewarded for cause.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: They can't even engage in good faith. I mean, no, I mean, I think that to your point, like we're in a world basically that, And I say this not as an endorsement of Nancy Pelosi, for example, but Nancy Pelosi is akin to like the iron chic at this point. If you go turn on certain channels, like she's like just a bad guy. She, she has. Not only is everything, she's doing stuff you don't like, but her motives to do that stuff is all bad. You know, like, and so, and that's when you look at like yeah, the, the WWE comparison is, is fair. It was called WWF back then, but in the sense that the bad guys, so to speak, the heels don't. Their, their motives are bad as well. Like, and so they're going to frame, frame if everything's framed that their motives are bad. And this stuff affects people. Like, even back then, like people, those, those guys would be getting iron. She would be getting death threats and stuff like that. And on the, on the flip side, the baby faces, you know, like, they're, regardless of what happens, they're, they're, they're pure, their motives are pure. They're trying to do the right thing. And so if that's that though, the reason they do it in the wwe, same reason they do it in the news media is because it is, it creates drama, it's compelling, it makes you want to watch, it makes you keep watching. You have a rooting interest. And so again that gets back to my point of why this stuff isn't what we say it is. So I do want to get to the next topic. Man.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: I was going to say that it's because of what I said earlier that CNN lost a billion dollars in profit. You know, like meaning in the end it is about the money.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: And just one thing I want to finish on this with regards to the idea of the gotcha questions that really made me think of because this is about the quality of our leaders and this is very important. Remember when Sarah Palin was running for the vice presidency of the United States in 2008, this is the first time I saw this when Katie Couric asked her a simple question.
I never thought of this as a gotcha question, which was, well, what publications? What do you read to keep yourself informed? And remember, she couldn't answer the question. She was kind of like, well, you know, I read all the newspapers. And she was like, really? All of them? You know, do you just. Can you name one? You know, Wall Street Journal, you know, blah, blah, blah. And she. She couldn't literally name something. And I thought, so she's just telling us that she's an ignorant person as relates to this type of information, maybe politics, world affairs. I'm not saying she's a bad person. She could be a great.
But what I'm saying is the press was there to ask her a question so that we, as the public could see could this human being who's running for the number two spot in running the United States, does she even read anything? Can she even answer that question? And the answer was no. Well, she was framed as a victim. That's my point.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: But that's the thing with that, is that we deserve. We, the public, deserve to know that we're supposed to be evaluating her to determine whether or not she's qualified to have that role. And if you don't ask questions of. How would you ever determine if the person's qualified? Like, are we just supposed to say, oh, well, she's in the same. She's in the right party, so I'll just vote for her? Like, that's not the way to run a country.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Sarah Palin was painted on the right as a victim of the liberal media for the. For not being able to answer a simple question. And then here we are, years later. It's now fake news if anybody says anything bad or ask tough questions. So, you know, I don't know, what do Americans want? Do Americans want to not have their leaders scrutinized at all? Because that appears what's happening. And, you know, if we go down that road, then we're gonna get what we deserve as a country.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, clearly, Hulk Hogan should not be scrutinized, and Iron Chic should.
That's the point.
So I guess so. Exactly.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: You know who I like, though? What was it? The Bush. Bush.
[00:36:34] Speaker A: Bushwick.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Bushwick boys. Bushwhack boys. Bushwack, yeah. Bushwhack. Yeah. They ate all the tuna can tun. They were Australian. Yeah. That was cool.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: So they get no scrutiny, right?
[00:36:44] Speaker B: They didn't junkyard dog either, with his little thing with his legs. Remember, that was cool.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: He had his chin.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So they get no scrutiny. But the Iron Sheik, because the Iron Sheik was from Iran. So now we gotta give him scrutiny.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Of course, that was the point of his character, is to be Usher. Exactly.
But no, I think we can move from there. Cause I wanted to get to this second topic to talk about the student loan.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Hopefully they hung in there for the second topic that we didn't get canceled for. My comments in that first, too confrontational politically.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: But I wanted to ask you and get your thoughts on the. Well, first, let's talk about the actual announced student loan forgiveness plan. Like the plan that we see. Like, nobody's gone through and read all the. Well, not nobody, but most people haven't read through the details. I know you've read a lot on it, but what'd you think about what we've learned so far about the. What they're doing as far as up to $20,000? 10,000 for most people, but up to 20,000 for some. And, you know, it's forgiveness. It's.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Hey, you know, I'm upset, bro, because I just learned. I was talking to my wife on the weekend, trying to figure my stuff out, and I'm like, I've been paying $150 a month for 22 years.
I think my original student loan was like 18 grand. I probably paid 30, you know, this time, you know, how much is left in my freaking balance?
[00:38:04] Speaker A: How much?
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Like 1300 bucks, dude. I was like.
Because I don't keep track, you know, she's the one been paying. We've been married. Because I know it's there. I was like, so how much is left? I'm like, man, I can write a check and I'm not going to benefit from this thing. So I was contemplating, do I try and get that 1300 forgiven by the government or do I just write the check? We'll see which one I decide, you know. But now look, it's interesting.
So where do I start? Obviously, this was a campaign promise by a guy who was elected president, so I'm not surprised, let's put it that way. And this is kind of even to get back without kind of overlapping back to part one. I'm surprised that there's so much pushback on it when discussing.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: We don't get to that yet, though.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Don't.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: We'll do that.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: I'm just saying.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Let me tell you this.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Democratic president who ran on. I'm going to help you with student loans.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: I'll tell you this, though.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Big Deal.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: On the flip side, it was a campaign promise. Anyone? I'm still surprised that he did it because campaign promises get thrown around like nothing these days.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: I know, but.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Nah, but go ahead. But yeah, seriously though, what are your thoughts on. No, but my point is they're doing the effort or the execution, whatever.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: I'm not surprised because generally this is something you'd expect from a Democratic administration. And that's neither a good or bad thing I'm saying, and I'm not knocking Republican, I'm just saying that this isn't a surprise. Then when I first looked at it, honestly, my thoughts have evolved, if I can put it that way, because a lot of it for me was anecdotal at first. I've got a wealth management practice, so I'm dealing with people that probably are not the average student loan borrower. So that the few cases I have of young professionals that have student loans in my client roster are like medical Doctors that have $550,000 of loans or I got a chiropractor client who has 300 plus thousand.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Well, generally though, I would say for you, you're dealing with people who have higher loan amounts and higher income. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: So long story short, at first I was looking at it like what's 10 grand gonna do for people like this? You know, because I'm skewed with my anecdotal seeing of, you know, everybody except that I know except me with my thirteen hundred dollar balance has a pretty serious balance. But then when I did some more reading actually in preparation for today, I learned, and that's why I said I evolved on it, that actually 75% of the loans out there now are between around 25 to 30,000 in total balance. So that's when I thought, okay, so 10 to 20,000 in forgiveness is actually material. This is real. And then I found out because the extra 10,000 is those who had Pell Grants because they can get up to 20,000 total, which is more need.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Need based.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Yep. And that's what I was going to say is 60 cent, 66% of Pell Grant recipients came from households that made under 30,000 a year. So what I realized in thinking about this was, okay, this is not the same. I'm going to say a statement here, and I recognize what I'm saying. I'm not making full equivalence here, but more of in the spirit of, is the GI Bill. This is an example of maybe the government saying, hey look, we gotta continue to help American families that are trying to have kids go to school and not burden them with debt. Because the GI Bill showed as an example that if you send millions of people to school and help them subsidize it, they're going to create a better life for themselves and for their future generations. And I would love for anyone to try and argue with me against the GI Bill from the late 40s through the early 60s, subsidizing 10 million former GIs going to university, that's how that hurt America or how that did not help the middle class going Forward in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: It's an investment.
It's pretty clearly an investment in your society. And so to me, I was mixed on it. I thought the plan and, you know, the rollout seems like it's, like it's going to be something that's going to be effective in terms of being able to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. So I, I like that they're trying to invest in Americans. I think that's important for our government to do that. That's one of the functions of our government is to try to build our country infrastructure. We talked about this a year ago or whatever. Infrastructure is not just roads and bridges. You know, your people are part of your infrastructure because you're not getting anything accomplished if your people aren't capable. And going to school is something that can help make your people more capable. As we discussed last week, you know, education being such an important part of building a society that can grow and that can really achieve. The reason I was mixed though, is because I think it was in part a missed opportunity. Because I think more should have been made initially and on a sustained basis to give us a why this has happened. And there are plenty of whys that there could be, you know, but I think they need to emphasize why this is necessary. Because this isn't just, oh, we got money sitting around, let's just throw money somewhere in terms of we're doing it after the fact, okay? So that's why the why isn't self apparent. They're not saying, hey, from now on we're going to every, every dollar that someone borrows, we're gonna match this or that or we're gonna do. We're gonna pass some legislation to try to bring the cost down. It's not something that's happening prospectively where it's obvious why we're doing it. We're looking back and saying, okay, everybody who owes some money, let's try to do you a solid. Not something you expected, not really something you're entitled to. And so I think the society owed an explanation as to. Okay, well, we think that cost for college over the last 30 years has gotten out of control. And so therefore, we think it is something that's important to try to lessen this burden on the people who were on the front end of going through this. We people. The people, honestly, the people that are dealing with it now kind of know in advance what they're going. What they're going into. Whereas you go back 20, 30 years, 10 years, whatever. The, the, the, the way it was sold was that, oh, well, you got to do this, and then you'll make so much money on the back end, you know, the way that the college graduates and everything, that it's all good. So not that they were deceived, but the economics of it changed in real time. And so I think whether that's the explanation, whether there's some other explanation. I thought that society was owed an explanation, a rational explanation. And like I said, there's plenty of things you could cite the reason why you do it. And so that's where I thought it fell short. And I mean, that's still kind of just being, I guess, being a little confrontational in a way.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: No, I'm laughing and thinking, well, if the media was doing their job, they'd force the government to be more trans or like, you know, to explain themselves more.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I thought the government should have done that anyway.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: No, media is doing their job. Right, right.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: They needed somebody to be more confrontational.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: No, yeah, you're right.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: But confrontational in a, in a constructive way, though. That's the thing we saw.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: And we'll get into this. We saw a lot of people being confrontational, but it wasn't constructive. It was just. It was just a tantrum.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: Well, it's the greatest hits. I mean, that's what I was. Actually, I was going to segue to that, which is the pushback. Because before we finish, I do want to share some of my personal gripes with it, actually, with how this is rolled out and some of the nuances there.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Well, let's do that, and then we'll go to the pushback.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Okay, so my personal gripe, number one, is this cutoff at income, you know, that 125,000 or 250 for married couples. If you make more than that, you're ineligible for this forgiveness. I'm thinking like, okay, so even though my clients. It would be a drop in a bucket, 10 grand, you know, because they make More than the stated numbers. It's still, you know, to me it still would be in the spirit of the gesture. Right. Number one. Number two is I think this is where Democrats hurt themselves. Whether intentionally or unintentionally is not my call with more upper class people because again, I can see how someone could feel like, yeah, see this is the. They're pandering to the lower income folks and not including people in the upper income ranks. I just realized as I'm talking here, I can't ask for my 1300 forgive because I make too much money. So there you go. Now I can have beef with it. But the problem, but so that's my point is just why have this arbitrary number? Because think about it. Let's say you literally did make 130,000, but you live in now in Manhattan or in downtown Miami where the rent just went up 30% over last year, or in San Francisco, meaning to you, 10, 20 grand is a lot of money because you might be paying five grand a month rent somewhere. You don't got a lot of disposable income. And I think just to assume that, you know, hey, everybody over this number is just going to be fine is not fair. So that's number one.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Well, I mean, especially when you consider like the vast differences in cost of living. And so that's what I'm saying.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Like you're talking New York City and.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: San Francisco, but like if you're making 124,000 in Nebraska, you're doing much better than somebody, you know, making, you know, in Manhattan, you know.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah, so, so that's, so it's actually.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Biased against the coasts, so to speak.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: It's biased against their bases, actually. Yeah. Against the urban areas. Yeah.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Which is funny because ran America.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's a Democrat president. Right. He's not gonna get rewarded by actually the people that are not in the urban areas. But anyway, none of that matters. My point is this is again where I think they should have just said, Look, 10 grand for every student borrow. We don't care what you make. Like that's just the number. The second is again, and I pointed this out to you in a personal conversation, you know, one of their main bullet points. So they have several points that, you know, providing targeted debt relief, cutting monthly payments in half, fixing the broken public service loan forgiveness program, providing relief to 43 million borrowers, targeted this and that. Help borrowers of all ages. Oh, and the last one, advance racial equity tie, you know, and it goes into black students are more likely to have to borrow for school and all. And what I don't like about that is, again, is singling out black students. So there's a swath of this country will say, see, they're always the problem. Right. Then it also is acting like, like I said, blacks are 14% of this country. The majority of student loan borrowers are not black at all. So my point is, why even bring up race in that way? Because it's only going to have a negative effect for people that already feel like there's too much of this dividing Americans into these groups.
Why not just leave that stuff out of it and just do the good deed and be done with it? And that's where, again, I criticize some of those messaging because I'm getting tired of hearing some of this racial stuff too. You know, it always makes.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: It's targeted for a particular audience, you know, I know. And that audience is in their base. And the audience that's going to be upset by it is not. And so from a political standpoint, I'm not sure that. I'm not saying. Well, but hold on, I'm not saying they, they should do it that way, but I'm saying that it makes perfect sense to me why they did.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Well, not to me. What I'm saying is I think it's a miscalculation because I think a lot of the people that they think are the audience in their base who would want to hear this are tired of hearing it too. That's what I'm saying. I think a lot of that's a.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: Bigger point though, than just.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying. But it's a point I don't like. So I just like. So now we can go to the other stuff.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: So, so, okay, so the reaction, what surprised or bothered you? You know, about what? The way you saw people reacting to this.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: Look, I mean, it neither surprised and bothered me the regular way all of this hypocrisy and politics bothers me. So that's my point is, you know, the typical pushback from obviously at this point, I'll say the Republican Party because they're the detractors of Biden and the Democrats in this fight is because this is where I feel like the boring stuff has become the big political outrages now. Not even like, I get it when it's big stuff that is culturally sensitive and all this kind of stuff, but stuff like this or funding the IRS or, you know, things like that they are paying off the debt ceiling and voting for that. Those are things that 10 plus years ago never even made the news because they were just considered like par for the course, boring. And this is not exciting stuff. And I guess to the points we made in the first segment of today's show is now everything is fantastical and has to be some outrage machine to get ratings.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: So my point is everything compelling.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's this idea and like that nobody on the Republican side could just say yeah, this is good because it helps students and it helps people in debt. And this could be because the way I look at this is especially as a finance guy, this is another version of a stimulus. People that were making 3, 4, $500 payments somewhere and this $1.6 trillion of debt that's sucking in all these payments to a few financial institutions, that money is now going to be dispersed in other parts of our economy. People can now have car payments, they can go buy homes and do other things with the money. So the term that I use, velocity of money. This will help money go into different pockets of the economy and not into big banks. Which is what I think people on the right would like, right? That it's not this financial institutions like BlackRock and JP Morgan and all them making all this money off students backs. So that's number one. Number two, well let me, let me.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: Get one in as well because to me, and it's a similar point but to me was it was the reflexiveness like this is loan forgiveness, it's not a huge amount of money. And these are people that by definition tried, you know, tried to go to college, tried to better themselves, tried to become more productive, more you know, knowledgeable citizens or whatever. And so this isn't like some type of welfare thing where you say oh well, people are worried about free riders like viscerally whether or not it's, it's you know, other motivations or whatever. But viscerally you worry, oh well, what about the free rider issues or whatever that any society has to deal with. But this isn't welfare, this isn't, this isn't corporate welfare. If students who are going and trying to better themselves Americans and if we can't even do them a solid, then without it just being reflexive, we got to figure out some way to be mad about this. And some of that of course is the whole like this is the iron sheet trying to help people out. So it has to be bad type of thing. And that's to your point I guess even these kind of things that we would consider to be relatively mundane, they don't really hit any of the. The known stress points. But it's still like, this has to be made a huge deal, I guess, because Biden did it because he did it in an election year and everybody's like, oh, we got to make sure people aren't happy with Biden, or something like that.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the other thing, there's a lot of hypocrisy around this kind of topic because everybody takes the subsidy when it's, when it's offered, whether it's a tax subsidy again, all the depreciation that these small business owners take on their businesses, on their vehicles, on their buildings, all that kind of stuff.
If they're upset about the government forgiving certain things, then they should just tell their CPA on their next time they do their taxes. Look, I don't want to take any deductions. I'd like to give the government everything they deserve. And because I know that's not going to happen. That is the type of hypocrisy that bothered me, but I'm not really bothered because I'm used to it.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: Well, I mean, the. Yeah, so that's. You got my demonizing forgiveness demonizing for it was an interesting kind of thought process in the sense that, yeah, like our system has so many places where kind of money owed can be forgiven. And these were highlighted in many instances like the ppp, bankruptcy is an area where you can get debt wiped away. And you know, like, it's not like people are declared bankruptcy and then they go back. They, if things turn and they want to go pay all that stuff back anyway. And there's other areas where money that you otherwise would owe that, you know, like, has to be paid and then something happens, you know, change in legislation or whatever. And like I said, the sports teams in the arenas and the stadiums to me is so like, that's free money from the government. They don't even have to borrow it up front. So I think that it seemed to be a matter of the who was getting the benefit more than anything. With that. As far as demonizing the forgiveness, which I think is unfortunate, I wasn't surprised by it. It bothers me at a low level, but I'm pretty. Like you said, I'm pretty used to it in terms of. It seems like in many instances, and this breaks somewhat along political lines, but I think it actually doesn't really, because where this would break is more so looking at people like Bernie Sanders versus everyone else, like most Americans, I would say, are more conditioned to be understanding and accepting of very wealthy people getting benefits that may not necessarily be deserved on the merits from governments, whether it be state, local, whatever. Like, they're used to that. People don't bat an eye if someone gets, you know, someone who is. Has a lot of money, gets a big benefit from the government, millions of dollars, you know, whatever. Like I said, NFL owners, you know, billion dollars.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: No, it's like that old thing where Warren Buffett says, you know, my tax rate's lower than my assistant.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: Correct.
And so it's the who again, I always talk about this judging, you know, actors and not actions. And so it's the. Because this is college students, it's almost like for most people, again, unless you're Bernie Sanders and over. Or more to the left from that, most people seem to be conditioned to be more bothered, maybe because it doesn't happen as often when regular people, so to speak, get a benefit. And that this is expressly targeted at what they deem to be, quote, unquote, regular people. Because that income cap at 125 ensures basically that, you know, even if you're like, you could be. I could be middle class and like you said, in some municipalities, but you're out, you know, and you could be rich in other places, and you're in. But, you know, nonetheless, I. So I do think that in terms of just, it's another example of how we, as people, most of us, like I said, are conditioned to see a lot of these things. And as Warren Buffett pointed out, you know, like, what do you say? It was a class war and my class won.
So, like, it's like, yeah, I guess you're right. Because, yeah, people don't even see things like that in the same way. Yeah, but I think we can wrap from there, man. You know, it's. It's an interesting topic. Again, it's really just kind of a way that we see ourselves, our society reflected. I mean, that. That's kind of, you know, why I wanted to talk about the actual, you know, what happened, but then also what, you know, kind of just what we saw in that reaction. So we appreciate you all for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think, and, you know, share with a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
All right, and we'll talk to you next time.
