The Megyn Kelly Show - Chilling Journalistic Crackdown by Feds, and the Future of Unions, with James O'Keefe and Max Alvarez ｜ Ep. 299

00:00:00.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.580 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.960 On the program today, the ever-controversial and always interesting James O'Keefe of Project Veritas.

00:00:23.060 For the past few months, James has been locked in a high-stakes, unbelievable legal battle

00:00:28.460 with the U.S. Department of Justice over an abandoned or stolen diary apparently belonging

00:00:34.480 to President Biden's 40-year-old daughter, Ashley. We're going to get into this. You're

00:00:39.660 not going to believe this story. This past November, the FBI raided the homes of several

00:00:44.980 Project Veritas employees. Okay, this is a journalism operation. Raided the homes of

00:00:49.860 several journalists working for Project Veritas, including James. The government took several

00:00:56.080 dozen phones and computers containing information on confidential sources, upcoming stories,

00:01:02.260 and private donor information. James says the raids far exceeded the limits set by the warrants.

00:01:09.420 The raid was so controversial, the ACLU, which can't stand Project Veritas, came out in defense

00:01:15.640 of James, saying it, quote, could have serious consequences for press freedom.

00:01:20.660 Then a few weeks ago, Project Veritas found out from Microsoft that federal prosecutors had compelled

00:01:28.280 Microsoft to allow them to secretly access emails of some staffers. Microsoft wanted to tell Project

00:01:37.800 Veritas that this had happened. The Fed said, keep your mouth shut. And the only reason they ultimately

00:01:43.240 found out is because Microsoft took them to court. So good for them.

00:01:46.820 In court documents, Project Veritas alleges that the government seized nearly 200,000 of its emails

00:01:54.740 and files. And now Project Veritas has learned the government's actions did not just include

00:02:01.160 Microsoft, but the Feds also went to Google and Apple.

00:02:11.060 James O'Keefe joins me now in an exclusive interview on all of this new information and where

00:02:16.620 the case stands. James, great to have you here.

00:02:19.420 Megan, great to be with you.

00:02:20.600 This story is so unbelievable to me. And it's it's great. I mean, you've done the unthinkable.

00:02:25.120 You've gotten the ACLU to defend you. So already kudos to you. We never thought we'd see the day.

00:02:30.760 But this is deadly serious. And I realize it must have been very jarring for you before we get to

00:02:35.880 the latest information of Microsoft and Google and Apple, which I definitely want to get to.

00:02:39.940 Let's just get the viewers and the listeners up to speed on the underlying saga, right? Like you're

00:02:48.820 there. You're an investigative journalist. You use controversial tactics that have been used by the

00:02:54.880 left for decades. It's fine when they do it, but not when you do it to get people on camera saying

00:03:01.100 things that may betray their public messaging. I mean, this is, you know, this is not a new approach

00:03:06.060 to journalism. It's just one they don't like when it's employed against their side. And you tell us

00:03:13.500 what happened. You were contacted by a source saying that they had the grown daughter of Joe

00:03:19.520 Biden's personal diary. That's right, Megan. This is an unbelievable story. And and as I get started

00:03:26.600 here, it's probably one of the biggest abridgments of freedom of the press in the history of the United

00:03:30.620 States. I know it's it's hard to shock people these days and and nothing really surprises us.

00:03:36.060 But this one, this one really cuts to the heart of everything this country was founded on.

00:03:39.640 We are investigative reporters. We run a nonprofit news organization called Project Veritas,

00:03:44.660 and we often use undercover techniques to get information out of people, which has been used

00:03:49.540 for 100 years. It's fallen out of favor in the last 20 years, mostly because it's expensive and

00:03:55.760 difficult. And you get sued and you have to fend off the lawsuits. But yes, tipsters reached out to

00:04:01.680 us in September of 2020, some two months before the presidential election with Joe Biden, Donald Trump.

00:04:08.340 And they said they had a copy of of Ashley Biden's diary, the daughter of the president. Most people

00:04:13.180 don't realize that Joe Biden has a daughter named Ashley. Right. And we we got this document.

00:04:19.880 And this was a document that I was fairly confident it was Joe Biden's daughter's diary,

00:04:27.860 but I wasn't 100 percent certain. So we did things like we hired a handwriting expert.

00:04:33.800 We we tried to corroborate this document. And it turns out, Megan, I guess we're better journalists

00:04:39.860 than we thought we were, because it now appears to be authenticated because the FBI has gotten involved

00:04:44.920 and raided my home. But at the time, I made the decision not to publish this this document.

00:04:50.860 There were some personal things in the diary, some some comments about her father. I don't feel

00:04:56.220 comfortable sharing those with you because I felt it was a cheap shot. I felt I felt this was some

00:05:01.280 some things public eyes should not see. So even if I could authenticate that it was 100 percent hers,

00:05:06.560 I could not corroborate that the the things she wrote about her father actually happened. So I made the

00:05:12.420 decision not to publish the document. I then reached out to President Biden for comment.

00:05:18.680 We we reached out our lawyer, sent a letter to Ashley Biden's attorney. And then and that's when

00:05:25.560 Ashley Biden's attorney said, we're taking this to the Southern District of New York. That's for those

00:05:30.200 of you who don't know what that is, that's the federal jurisdiction, the Department of Justice in

00:05:35.120 New York where we're located in Westchester County, New York. And and they referred to this somehow

00:05:40.600 this got to the FBI, the Department of Justice. And this is where things take an insane turn.

00:05:46.860 A year later, a year later, suddenly my two journalistic colleagues get raided by the FBI

00:05:53.280 with a battering ram. They go into my colleagues' houses at 6 a.m., take all types of computers and

00:06:00.760 laptops. These are journalists, news gathering materials, confidential sources. This has never

00:06:06.180 happened before in history for the for the executed search warrant like this. And then now we find out

00:06:12.440 some this was last month that they issued secret warrants to Microsoft Corporation. And and and of

00:06:20.180 course, the news that we're breaking on your show today. So that's kind of an overview of what has

00:06:23.780 happened, Megan. Completely insane and unlawful and a violation of the First Amendment.

00:06:29.140 It's shocking. I I cannot imagine my own reaction if such a thing were to happen to me. And I saw all

00:06:37.220 of my phones, my laptop and all all this, you know, the places where you store information from sources

00:06:43.740 who call you with a story, especially in your business, because you're really breaking controversial

00:06:47.980 stuff. I can't imagine the fear, the anger, the sense of frustration and betrayal by one's own

00:06:54.980 government. And now it gets worse by the day, because I mentioned in the intro, the only reason

00:07:01.300 you found out that the government went to Microsoft, I mean, so they executed these raids on your

00:07:05.780 employees and then ultimately you. But the only reason you found out that separately they were

00:07:11.280 basically spying on you through Microsoft is because Microsoft had a problem with the feds coming

00:07:18.960 to them and demanding all of your information. And and you tell me, but it looks to me like they were

00:07:23.100 kind of trying to fight against the feds all along. And ultimately, the reason you found out is

00:07:28.620 because they won the legal battle. We use Microsoft Outlook for our emails. And this is a before I get

00:07:35.440 into this, this has been terrifying, Megan. It's it's psychologically that they came to my house at

00:07:42.260 6 a.m. I was not fully clothed. They banged on the door with some dozen, 10 or dozen agents.

00:07:49.000 They had flashlights. They had vests, just like a movie, blue jackets. And they they opened the door,

00:07:55.680 handcuffed me, put me in the public hallway of my apartment building. I've got neighbors in an

00:07:59.900 apartment building and I was in my underwear. So I guess it was designed to humiliate me.

00:08:05.600 And I would say for about a day or two, I was pretty it shakes you up. I don't think I think

00:08:09.640 you have to live through it to fully understand how. How absurdly terrifying this sort of thing is.

00:08:16.020 And again, I'm a I'm an American journalist and we use we work with a lot of people in the government.

00:08:20.660 We have sources inside tech and the federal government and even the Department of Justice.

00:08:26.320 We have sources inside these different organizations that and we're one of the only places for these

00:08:31.820 people to go. Right. They can't go to the Washington Post and the New York Times because

00:08:36.640 those organizations tend to work in alignment with the powers that be. Right. They they they work

00:08:43.700 in reciprocation with the powers that be. So they come to Project Veritas and this is an insane

00:08:49.220 chilling effect on the people that I work with because they obtained, Megan, 200,000 emails from

00:08:56.460 from Microsoft. So then fast forward a few months after the raid in January of this year,

00:09:04.180 the the FBI, after my home gets raided, goes back to Microsoft. Department of Justice asks them to gag

00:09:13.440 Microsoft, ask Microsoft, ask a magistrate judge in New York City to issue a gag order, a secret gag order.

00:09:20.320 And so you can't talk about this. Microsoft, to their credit. Thankfully, we have some honest

00:09:25.020 people with integrity at Microsoft Corporation drafts a motion opposing that gag.

00:09:31.700 And when the feds see the draft of that motion, they back down in extraordinary fashion.

00:09:36.620 March 10th or thereabouts, this these gag orders become public. And it is insane. There's nine different

00:09:44.820 magistrate judges or I think six or nine judges. They went around and shopped this around and got

00:09:50.780 them to stamp this the secret order going back to January 2020, eight months before I even found

00:09:58.280 anything out about this diary. The sources didn't come to us until September. They got emails going back

00:10:03.560 to January 2020. It was unlawful. It was unconstitutional. It was a violation of the

00:10:09.600 Privacy Protection Act. It was a violation of the Attorney General of the United States. That's Merrick

00:10:13.940 Garland's order in July saying that you can't do this to people who purport to be members of the

00:10:20.780 news media. You can't issue secret warrants against journalists, obviously, because the whole point of

00:10:27.320 journalism is to get people to trust you. And the and the U.S. attorneys, the federal prosecutors in New York,

00:10:33.560 made the argument for the federal judge that James O'Keefe and Project Garitas are not journalists

00:10:39.200 because they don't get permission. They don't get consent when they record people, which is an absurd

00:10:44.660 argument, really, because the whole point of investigative journalism is to is to expose things

00:10:49.880 that powerful people don't want exposed. So this case is is become, Megan, an absolute. It's it's so

00:10:57.040 central now. And of course, the breaking news on your show here today is they didn't just do it to

00:11:01.340 Microsoft. They went to our Gmail accounts, Google, and they went to Apple computer and gagged them

00:11:08.560 and extracted things not just for my team, Megan, but my security, my security team as well. They

00:11:14.920 went after our security guards, Megan, in an apparent effort to intimidate us, humiliate us 1.00

00:11:20.020 and hurt us. This is this is this is insane. I we've never seen anything like this. And that's

00:11:27.060 saying something, honestly. Yeah, that's saying. And what and we're talking about a diary. I mean,

00:11:33.500 it's not like James O'Keefe is part of a terrorist plot to blow up America. This is you may or may not

00:11:41.000 have gotten your hands on the president's daughter's diary. That's what we're talking about

00:11:47.700 here. Have they suggested to you, James, in any way that because the rule is you as a journalist, you

00:11:56.160 can get stolen goods and you could publish the stolen goods. You just can't help orchestrate the

00:12:01.100 theft. You know, you can even encourage the theft, but you can't orchestrate the theft or be a part of the

00:12:06.580 theft. You can't be the thief and then profit off of the goods. Anyway, have they suggested to you

00:12:11.900 that they believe you encourage the theft or help the theft or knew about the theft, alleged theft,

00:12:18.140 I should say, of Ashley Biden's diary? Right. They that the Supreme Court of the United States

00:12:24.040 in a case called Bartnicki v. Vopper, authored by John Paul Stevens, it says you you can you can receive

00:12:31.240 stolen information as a journalist. In fact, that's what journalists do every day. All the time. You just

00:12:36.140 can't you just can't participate in the theft. You could even according to another case recently. This is

00:12:41.320 in twenty nineteen DNC versus a Russian Federation case. You can solicit stolen information. That's what

00:12:48.460 journalists do. You just can't play a part in in this. And we didn't. And there's no evidence to suggest

00:12:55.500 that we did, Megan. They have no evidence because it doesn't exist. This is a non-crime. It's insane. They've

00:13:02.280 handed over all these emails. The feds assigned a special master, which is sort of like a special

00:13:06.500 overseer. And the federal judge, this is Annalisa Torres in the Southern District of New York,

00:13:11.380 federal judge, article three judge said that we're entitled to journalistic privileges. So the judge

00:13:15.840 called us a journalist. I'm sure the FBI did not anticipate that. They thought they could just

00:13:21.040 railroad us and and silence me into submission. But there's no crimes here. There's no evidence of

00:13:26.920 any crimes because none were committed. The sources had this diary and we transported the diary to to

00:13:32.980 New York from where it was in Florida. And they and this is insane. The feds and the warrant, it said

00:13:38.960 transportation of stolen documents across state lines, which is, again, an absurd insinuation, because

00:13:45.260 it's if it's a crime to transport documents across state lines, they'd have to charge every journalist in

00:13:50.640 every newsroom in the country. It's just it's just actually so absurd that I actually think that right

00:13:57.300 now people always say, you know, Megan, I'm sure they say this to you. They say to me, when are these

00:14:01.800 people in the FBI ever going to be held accountable? This actually might be one of those times because

00:14:07.840 the motion that we filed this week, this 41 G motion, it's a motion to get my property back. This is

00:14:15.480 an amazing document because it outlines all the abuses of power from the Department of Justice

00:14:21.300 against my team. And it is staggering. They violated the Privacy Protection Act. They broke

00:14:27.780 the law. The attorney general, you cannot get permission to execute a search warrant against

00:14:33.120 a journalist, especially when it comes to news gathering activities. So, no, to answer your question,

00:14:37.840 there's no evidence of any crimes here. There's no there's no evidence of that. And I think they're

00:14:42.820 they're in too far. These federal prosecutors are hiding behind their badge. They're they're

00:14:48.200 abusing their power. And they thought they could be a schoolyard bully. And yes, it has had a chilling

00:14:54.860 effect on my sources. Of course, I think it's also inspired a lot of people to see how much they fear

00:15:02.140 Project Veritas. They should get people should be getting on a bus now and just dropping off packages

00:15:07.660 with information at your at your headquarters. Forget the email. Forget the texting. But we I

00:15:13.060 want to I want my understanding of the law. Journalists aren't immune from federal subpoenas

00:15:18.300 or federal raids. It's not like it's a cloak that protects you in all circumstances. But my understanding

00:15:24.660 of the law is it's the bar is just very high. The DOJ knows that any federal magistrate judge would know

00:15:31.620 that before you sign off on a warrant allowing the FBI to go into a journalist's home and seize his

00:15:38.160 computers and his phones. The burden on the government would be very high. That would be

00:15:44.060 typically how it would go. And so that's what's curious about this case. Like unless unless they

00:15:50.140 have something right that against you that we don't know, like they've got somebody saying something

00:15:55.000 nefarious happened. None of this makes sense to me. Yes. And so that's a great point. And that's why

00:16:01.380 the reporters committee, which is, again, you pointed out that the ACLU hates us. But this is

00:16:07.500 one of those cases where there's a Venn diagram between the left and the right in this country

00:16:11.820 that's ever shrinking. Right. We're very divided in this country. Obviously, this is one of those

00:16:15.980 issues where we still are united on. You don't you don't take journalists stuff without probable

00:16:21.060 cause. And you might say, well, didn't you break the law? So well, didn't you break the law?

00:16:24.860 Didn't you break the law? Well, no, we didn't. But let's assume you're falsely accused or someone

00:16:29.540 makes a claim of something. Let's assume let's assume for a minute that Ashley Biden 1.00

00:16:33.780 made a claim to the FBI that was untrue. And it was in a sworn affidavit, for example.

00:16:40.020 And they said, James O'Keefe tried to extort me. Well, that didn't happen. We asked for comment.

00:16:43.780 That's not extortion. Let's assume she made that claim in a sworn affidavit. Let's assume let's

00:16:48.200 assume for a minute that she even lied. You can't you can't just seal the affidavit against a

00:16:53.520 journalist. You have to see the charges against you because society and this is all in the Supreme

00:16:59.960 Court and all these lawsuits that have happened prior. The Supreme Court of the United States is

00:17:06.260 established that when it comes to journalism, society has a right to see those things. They

00:17:10.840 have to be unsealed. And right now, the affidavits that were given to these all these judges,

00:17:16.500 we're talking nine different magistrate judges. They shopped this around. They tried to keep this

00:17:21.500 secret from the federal judge. All those affidavits need to be unsealed. And we're not making that

00:17:27.420 argument. The Reporters Committee, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, we're talking

00:17:32.380 Wolf Blitzer, Andrew Mitchell, Josh Gerstein, the Politico, people that you would think don't like me.

00:17:39.520 They even they recognize the principles at stake here. And when you when you raid a journalist's home

00:17:44.560 like you have done here, which I don't remember a case where this has happened. This is, in fact,

00:17:50.800 I don't think it's ever happened before, especially secret warrants against journalists

00:17:53.880 in 2020. And during the Trump administration, they went to Google, but they didn't seal the

00:17:59.340 warrants when they tried to get the New York Times's leaks. They New York Times was able to fight it

00:18:05.680 publicly. Well, here you have a case where they have secret affidavits that are sealed. And we've

00:18:10.620 asked the judge to unseal those affidavits, Megan, and the Reporters Committee have asked that

00:18:14.680 because we need to see. Let me ask you this. How do you square it? Like normally, if there's a grand jury

00:18:20.260 investigation, that's that's what we understand is happening here. There's a grand jury investigation

00:18:24.520 against a target. The feds don't have an obligation to tell the target they can execute. They can get

00:18:30.760 warrants. They can get all sorts of information. And there's no obligation to tell the target it's

00:18:35.320 happening at all until they're ready. Right. Isn't that their defense here? Like, I'm sure you would

00:18:40.620 have liked to have known, but too bad. And so that's how they defend all the secrecy around this.

00:18:46.940 Like we weren't ready yet to, you know, alert you to anything prior to when they had to like the

00:18:54.500 rate. Right. And that, and, and the case law says that the, the, the chilling effect on the freedom of

00:19:00.040 the press that this has to seal the, these supposed allegations or say they interviewed someone who made

00:19:09.140 some claim that was spurious or false. The, the chilling effect that it has on the principles this

00:19:15.240 country was founded on, which, which is very central, informed consent, people knowing what's

00:19:20.580 going on. That chilling effect is more important. It outweighs whatever marginal interest there is

00:19:27.020 that the prosecutors have in a quote unquote, ongoing investigation. Cause you're right. Usually

00:19:32.080 you wouldn't see, um, the sealed, uh, you wouldn't unseal the affidavit until there's an indictment.

00:19:38.600 Okay. That that's what they say. Well, we were an ongoing investigation. Well, what's to prevent

00:19:43.680 them from going after a, uh, uh, journalist in the future under a Trump administration,

00:19:48.000 right? Anybody who's working on a bad story, right? Let's go after them all. I'm sure there's

00:19:52.600 some evidence. Let's just falsely accuse journalists of things. And then, you know what,

00:19:56.060 we're going to seal the affidavit. It's a tautology. It's a, it's a, it's a self-fulfilling

00:19:59.800 prophecy. And that's precisely why these things need to be unsealed. And the only argument they might

00:20:05.040 make, which we don't know if they made before these magistrates, well, James O'Keefe is not

00:20:09.360 a journalist. Well, I'm happy to litigate that to the second circuit court of appeals. I'm happy

00:20:13.580 to litigate that. That'll go to the United States Supreme court. And the issue before your honor is,

00:20:18.280 well, let's just not consider him a journalist. Well, they're going to lose that.

00:20:21.700 That's not going anywhere. Because the privacy protection act makes it clear that even when you

00:20:26.020 purport to be a member of the media, if, if it walks like a talk, what walks like a duck and quacks

00:20:32.040 like a duck, if my job is to disseminate information for the public interest, if that's

00:20:36.720 what I do, then, then the law has to consider you that the reporter's shield is so critical.

00:20:42.960 And that's why this is so, particularly in a country where citizen journalism and independent

00:20:49.200 journalism right now is often the only way for people to get what's going on.

00:20:55.640 Yeah. Wait, okay. So let's back up. I have so many questions. The, have you seen anything

00:21:01.460 to this day? Like, have you yet seen it laid out what their claims are, whether they claim you

00:21:06.840 committed some underlying crime, you know, participated in the alleged theft? Have you,

00:21:12.080 has that been spelled out yet in any way that has been shared with you?

00:21:16.140 No, no, but in this motion, this, this, this, uh, this 41 motion, we lay out the facts is it is

00:21:22.940 pretty extraordinary motion we filed before a federal judge, because not only most people,

00:21:27.280 when they're, when the feds raid them, there's an immediate indictment. I haven't been charged

00:21:32.180 with a crime. Yeah. In fact, my lawyer is in this, this 50 page document, which is, which is really an

00:21:38.240 amazing document. We, we, uh, we filed in court. We laid out all the facts as we know them. I went on

00:21:44.140 the record. I talked about everything I did. I've got nothing to hide. They're going through my emails.

00:21:48.580 They're going to be like, this guy's a boy scout, which literally I am an Eagle scout. And I have a

00:21:53.580 couple of people on my team or we got lawyers to look at everything before we do anything.

00:21:57.400 And they're looking at all these, this, this evidence. I think they went through 200,000 emails

00:22:01.520 and the special master returned some 200 or so texts and things that pertain to this.

00:22:07.960 I've seen all of the, although there's no, there's no, there's no crime. So I know, I know the facts

00:22:13.740 because I'm, I know what I did and they know the facts because they're looking at all the texts I'm

00:22:19.300 looking at because of you don't know what they're accusing you of. That's the frustration here. I

00:22:23.460 mean, you're not being afforded due process and the freedom of the press, which is another piece

00:22:29.220 of the bill of rights is not being protected right now. There's a reason it's right up there in the

00:22:33.900 first amendment. That's how important the founders considered the freedom of the press. So they're

00:22:38.880 stepping on that. They're not affording you due process and you're, you're still unsure what it is

00:22:43.780 you've been accused of that and unclear of who made what allegation, who, which source made which

00:22:49.840 claim. So that, that would have to be a hypothesis or an assumption that we draw, uh, Megan, but we do

00:22:55.880 know, uh, the facts you're going back to January. This is, this is no longer a matter of fact. Now

00:23:00.600 it's a matter of law. Like you don't, we already know enough facts to know that they broke the law.

00:23:06.440 The federal government broke the law. And I think they're too far into this deal. They didn't expect

00:23:11.600 the judge to assign the master. They didn't expect the secret warrants to be unsealed. Um,

00:23:18.600 and, and let me add that the DOJ regulations, I have them printed out here because I want to make

00:23:22.180 sure I get my facts right. The DOJ regulations say that when you do execute a search warrant against

00:23:27.240 a journalist and there's, and, uh, the prosecutor has to quote, pursue negotiations with the members

00:23:33.300 of the news media, they have to make a good faith. So my lawyer, Paul Calli reached out to the

00:23:38.620 department of justice, uh, in the days prior to the raid, when we found out that they were knocking

00:23:43.740 on the doors of our sources to do the very thing that the law says we're supposed to do,

00:23:49.120 which is to kind of talk to the prosecutors and negotiate. And then a couple of days later,

00:23:53.860 they raided my journalists' homes. So they broke the rules of criminal procedure. They broke,

00:23:59.000 they broke the privacy protection act. They violated the, uh, the memorandum by the attorney general

00:24:03.640 in the United States. So the real question, Megan is, did the attorney general of the United States

00:24:09.280 authorize this or not? If he did, that's a scandal. If he did not, then the people in the Southern

00:24:16.600 District of New York broke the rules. This is like, this is like Watergate level stuff here.

00:24:22.640 There's more to it because even if the raid was proper, okay. Giving them the benefit of the doubt

00:24:29.420 for the purposes of this conversation, let's say it was proper. We don't know why it was proper

00:24:32.400 because they're not showing their hand. They, they took everything. They didn't screen for

00:24:38.020 privilege. They didn't screen for even relevance from the sound of it. And your lawyers went into

00:24:43.940 court and said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. There are communications between us and James and our

00:24:51.180 clients, uh, representatives on those phones and on those emails in no world should the government

00:24:58.740 be allowed to look at any of that. And separately, you have a defamation lawsuit going against the New

00:25:07.540 York times that predates all of this. And that involves attorney client communications. Again,

00:25:14.340 the government should not have access to that. That would be irrelevant and privileged there.

00:25:18.920 The government doesn't get to see everything just because they have a warrant to see some things.

00:25:24.100 They've seen everything, Megan. They went after our Apple, they went after our Apple, they hired,

00:25:30.260 they went after my director of HR's Apple account. Think of what is the listeners listening to this

00:25:35.780 program. Just that I know this is a lot of legal in the weeds, but it's important. Think of what's

00:25:39.700 in your Apple photos. Think of what's in your Gmail. Those of you who's Google Gmail, think of what's in

00:25:45.060 there and imagine you're a citizen like journalist. And some of you are citizen journalists listening to

00:25:50.440 this program. Maybe you go on Instagram, you post, imagine someone sends you a document.

00:25:55.880 In this case, it was a diary, but whatever it is, it's your ethical obligation to try to corroborate

00:26:00.800 that, which is what I attempted to do. Let's, let's remember two facts here. Fact number one,

00:26:05.660 I never published the document. If I really was a right-wing scumbag, which is some people, 0.93

00:26:11.440 I think that's happening less and less, particularly now the ACLU has come to our defense. I would have 0.97

00:26:15.360 published it to try to hurt Biden or humiliate. I did not do that because I felt it was a cheap

00:26:21.240 shot and I couldn't fully corroborate what she wrote in it. Look, I'll just jump in and say if

00:26:27.340 what's, cause there, it's somebody has now leaked the headlines of what was in it. And if what's in

00:26:32.660 it is true, it's a story. It's definitely a story. And it has to do with an inappropriate

00:26:37.880 relationship allegedly between Ashley and possibly Joe Biden, not corroborated. We don't know. I'm just,

00:26:44.600 the audience deserves to know what it is we're juggling with here. And again, no one's suggesting

00:26:49.860 it actually happened. No one's suggesting we verified it, but this is what you were dealing

00:26:54.020 with. If that's true, if there's a story like that, it's of course a story. It's a national

00:26:58.400 news story. Joe Biden wouldn't have wanted to be embarrassed by it. You would have been within

00:27:02.560 your rights to publish it if you, if you had it, you know, if you, if it really were the first time

00:27:06.200 we've heard of the feds investigating an abandoned diary, the feds don't even have jurisdiction.

00:27:11.540 It's a, even if it was stolen, which it appears to not have been, even if it was by a source who

00:27:18.000 then sent it to us, it would still not be a federal crime. So, so, and, and, and there's

00:27:24.920 nothing in the government pleadings, nothing that suggests that, that this diary was journalists

00:27:30.280 stole the diary, nothing. You're talking about transportation of stolen material across state

00:27:35.220 lines, which is an absurd, the implication of that crime, Megan, you'd have to incarcerate all

00:27:41.060 the people in every newsroom, the Pentagon papers. You couldn't have published the Pentagon paper.

00:27:46.280 Of course. Oh, I mean, listen, no one had any problem with it when the times published Sarah

00:27:51.620 Palin's emails that were obtained not by the times illicitly, but by somebody illicitly. And

00:27:57.300 they published away. They loved it. It was exciting. They had a big scoop. Um, but I guess when it's

00:28:02.580 Ashley Biden's diary, it's a different story. As you point out the, um, within minutes of,

00:28:08.960 of the raid of my home, these FBI agents are in my apartment building. And it is terrifying. I was

00:28:15.700 handcuffed. They put me in handcuffs. They can, they rummaged through my, my, my house. They took

00:28:20.000 my two phones. And then these agents, uh, stopped and said something to me like Mr. O'Keefe, we know you

00:28:27.760 have a flight at 2 PM. I was like, how do you, first of all, how do you know that second? I did,

00:28:32.200 I wasn't getting on that plane as of the day before, because of what had happened at my

00:28:36.380 organization, my other colleagues. And then they go, do you have any more questions? It was, it was

00:28:41.440 just, it was so invasive. It was an act of violence against the first amendment against me and my team.

00:28:47.560 It was an act of violence. And, and they took photographs of my phone and they backed out of

00:28:52.380 my building and took photographs. And then Megan minutes later, I get a text message from a national

00:28:57.580 security reporter at the New York times by the name of Mike Schmidt. Wait, now hold that thought,

00:29:03.340 held that thought because that's, that's an important piece of what's been happening to you.

00:29:07.160 The coordination between the department of justice and the New York times who again, remember James

00:29:11.980 was suing for defamation prior to all of this. Um, we're going to pick it up fresh there after this

00:29:18.780 quick commercial break, so much more to dissect with James O'Keefe coming up.

00:29:22.380 Let's talk about the New York times and how they are sort of on a parallel track to the DOJ

00:29:33.120 in, I don't know if I don't, if I want to say out to get you, but certainly adverse to you. Um,

00:29:40.180 tell us what happened. It was at the day before the raid, the day of the raid, the day after the

00:29:44.260 raid or all three that the New York times started reporting on the raid.

00:29:47.440 Uh, all three, all three, uh, Megan, what happened was that I was in handcuffs and I was in my

00:29:53.580 apartment. The FBI had just executed a search warrant against an American journalist and

00:29:58.400 unlawfully and broke the law as all the things we just talked about. And then with minutes later,

00:30:02.480 I get a text message from Mike Schmidt, national security reporter, New York times, who somehow

00:30:07.320 he knows all these details. And I don't think the neighbors tipped him off that this is something

00:30:12.340 that he knew he had leaks from the department of justice. And I, we have the entire national

00:30:17.300 security team, the New York times, Adam Goldman, Mike Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti. These are Pulitzer

00:30:22.720 prize winning reporters who've done some dozen plus stories about this diary, working with the DOJ,

00:30:29.640 trying to advance this, this unknown theory that we somehow had something to do with this diary being

00:30:37.040 stolen. We didn't even they, Mike Schmidt later admitted that it, it appears perhaps the government

00:30:43.560 may have overreached, but, but, but the New York times, Megan, as you point out, I've sued them for

00:30:48.820 defamation stemming from an investigation I did in 2020 and in an extraordinary fashion, we got past

00:30:54.900 motion to dismiss in New York state. And the judge in New York said that the New York times was engaged

00:31:00.860 in disinformation, uh, uh, against project Veritas when they said that our videos were deceptive. So

00:31:06.680 we got past this huge barrier and the New York times has kind of been on a seek and destroy mission

00:31:11.880 against our organization. And days after this raid, the New York times publishes, uh, my attorney

00:31:20.340 client privileged communications. They publish private documents. The documents make me look good,

00:31:25.940 but on principle, I mean, the documents were saying that we don't break the law and we checked

00:31:30.280 with lawyers to make sure everything we do is legal, but on principle, why and how, how is the

00:31:35.400 New York times obtaining these private documents from within my organization? James, you know what

00:31:39.100 this reminds me of? It reminds me of Aaron Andrews, a sports reporter who had some creep spying on her

00:31:44.620 through her hotel window or a hotel peep hole in the door and taking videos of her nude that she

00:31:51.520 didn't consent to and didn't know about. And at the time it broke, there was all the speculation

00:31:56.580 amongst guys in our industry about whether she orchestrated it because she looked so good.

00:32:02.780 She looked amazing. Aaron, she's a friend. She's gorgeous. Aaron was deeply traumatized by what

00:32:09.740 happened to her. Trust me when I tell you she had absolutely nothing to do with it. It wasn't a setup

00:32:13.800 and remains traumatized by the whole thing to this day. But the point is not how good you look

00:32:20.340 when someone inappropriately looks through the peephole. The point is, why are they looking

00:32:25.200 through the peephole? And when you have the New York times with your attorney client privileged

00:32:30.240 information, the question is not, why does he look so good? And does that make us think he allowed

00:32:36.000 this? The question is, what the hell are you doing looking through the peephole?

00:32:39.240 Well, yeah, it's an American jurisprudence, attorney client privilege. We're in litigation

00:32:46.100 against the New York times because some people, I said that because, well, James, you're an

00:32:48.960 undercover guy. You're a hypocrite. No, no. I would never publish the attorney client communications 1.00

00:32:54.840 of an adversary that I was currently in litigation with. That's sanctionable conduct. Just like you

00:33:01.300 wouldn't publish, there are certain things I just don't publish. I stay away from people's private

00:33:05.360 lives. I don't publish, you know, conversations with therapists that people have. So this happens

00:33:11.840 and a judge in New York, now keep in mind, we got past motion to dismiss. The judge issues this

00:33:17.460 stunning order against the New York times saying that they're engaged in disinformation and deception.

00:33:21.960 They're projecting onto project Veritas what they do when they accuse me of editing. And then on

00:33:28.060 Christmas Eve, December 24th, some six weeks after the raid, the judge in New York, Supreme Court in New

00:33:34.160 York orders the New York times to sequester these, these memorandums. They, they order them that

00:33:39.620 they've misbehaved. And the New York times just goes bonkers. They, they write an op-ed. This is a,

00:33:45.980 this is like the Pentagon papers. This is, you're against the first amendment, which is of course

00:33:50.860 absurd. Publishing the attorney client memorandums of project Veritas, who you're in litigation with

00:33:57.420 and whom you're entering discovery in a lawsuit is not like publishing the Pentagon papers about

00:34:02.320 national security. And furthermore, uh, the New York times continues to dox our sources, Megan,

00:34:07.780 these, these reporters, Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti go to Florida and they dox our sources

00:34:12.920 that communicate to us about Joe Biden. They publish the names of the sources, which is,

00:34:17.640 which is the very harassment quote unquote, that they project onto me. What they accuse me of is what

00:34:24.500 they do. Well, but again, these are the times in the DOJ are clearly coordinating because there's

00:34:30.540 no way the times would have known about the raid or had your attorney client privilege communications

00:34:34.600 if they hadn't received a leak and you're not the leak. Uh, so who it's not going to be your lawyers

00:34:41.420 leaking in the New York times, as you say, it's not your neighbors who wouldn't have had your attorney

00:34:45.060 client privilege information. Um, so, you know, like you say, it smells like a duck. And in this case,

00:34:50.560 it appears to be a duck that's coordinating, um, in, in the guise of the DOJ with the New York

00:34:56.340 times. So you, they have many reasons to dislike you. It's not just your lawsuit, but it's, there's

00:35:02.280 this other guy. So you get this guy on tape. I just, I have to play this soundbite because people

00:35:06.700 need to understand why, why these guys hate your guts and want to shut you up and why it's important

00:35:12.400 to the, for the rest of us to not let that happen. Um, there's a reporter for the New York times

00:35:18.460 named Matthew Rosenberg, who I want the audience to understand writes pieces for the times entitled,

00:35:26.800 for example, this is about January 6th, the next big lies January 6th was no big deal or a left wing

00:35:36.360 plot. Okay. So that's, that's kind of stuff he writes. You get him through one of your, uh,

00:35:43.320 operatives, a journalist, a young woman on tape in a more candid moment, speaking about January 6th.

00:35:51.660 And listen to this. It's, if you watch it on YouTube later, you'll see it transcribed. I think

00:35:56.520 you can understand it well enough, uh, for us to play it for our listening audience as well. Listen.

00:36:02.220 It's like January 6th stuff that is like, so we're at this point. So the less overreaction,

00:36:08.820 the less reaction to it in some places are so over the top. It's like me and two other colleagues

00:36:13.020 who were there or outside. And we were just like, dude, come on. Like, we were not in any game. I

00:36:19.020 think you can tell how much fun we had on January 6th. Oh, that's great. Are you allowed to have

00:36:23.920 that much fun on January 6th? I just want to be warning. I know, I know. So I'm so traumatized.

00:36:28.340 You were not in any danger. It, this, the less reaction was so over the top, uh, and on and on,

00:36:55.080 but the piece, again, the pieces that he wrote, uh, next big lies, January 6th is no big deal.

00:37:00.400 Then he writes a piece, 90 seconds of rage. Uh, then he goes on about capital attack could fuel

00:37:07.200 extremist recruitment for years. Experts warn how to, how to, uh, what is it? The far,

00:37:13.720 how to decode the far right symbols of the Capitol, right? I mean, he's very, very interested

00:37:17.380 in stirring up emotions on January 6th when he's writing for the times behind the scenes with your

00:37:22.140 operative. Not so much. He's laughing about what fun the day was. So put that in perspective for us,

00:37:29.380 James. He contradicts, this is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter for the New York times,

00:37:34.780 contradicting himself in private, in a social situation where he did not know he was being

00:37:39.900 recorded. He was speaking to one of my colleagues, a journalist who did not identify herself as such.

00:37:45.100 And he says, and I can't even say on the radio, some of the things this man says, but he called his

00:37:49.820 colleagues effing B words. Uh, he said, you're traumatized. And then in the New York times,

00:37:55.120 there's a schism right now between the woke elements and kind of the traditional newsroom

00:37:59.700 elements that these two are, are, are clashing and they're contradictory. And this guy appears to

00:38:04.520 have some, some sort of common sense, reasonable thoughts. Like we're over hyping this. This is,

00:38:09.880 this is too much. It might be something that someone on this audience would say. And he got in

00:38:14.880 trouble for saying these things. Dean back. Hey, the head of the New York times had a meeting.

00:38:19.640 People were upset and Dean back. So we don't want to empower James O'Keefe by being too, uh,

00:38:26.320 responding too harshly to this. If it was anybody else that published this tape, except me,

00:38:31.240 this man probably would have lost his job and then, you know, there would have been, you know,

00:38:34.460 hell to pay. But what's remarkable about this tape is that Rosenberg, I sat down with Rosenberg,

00:38:39.500 kind of Chris Hansen, NBC dateline style. I sat down in the chair when she got up to go to the

00:38:45.000 bathroom and he then said to me, and this is on, it's on YouTube. It's on tape. He goes,

00:38:50.120 you got me in private. I was just in a social situation. And then I showed him a video himself

00:38:55.820 quite literally saying it's fair game at the New York times to get people in social situations and at

00:39:02.320 bars. So everything that came out of this man's mouth was a contradiction. It was almost

00:39:07.700 straight out of George Orwell's 1984 to, to tell deliberate lies and contradict oneself and to

00:39:13.320 hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. And this is a New York times Pulitzer prize winner.

00:39:18.780 This is not just some Joe random guy. So what does that tell you? We're putting this in the context,

00:39:25.000 the people that inform us, the, the people that manufacture the public's consent, the powers that

00:39:30.860 give us the information are full of BS and don't take my word for it. Just watch the video. And

00:39:38.720 that's why this, when they work with the department of justice, when they have the sources in the DOJ and

00:39:44.000 they collaborate with the prosecutors, they're not, they're not, they're not, they're not doing their

00:39:48.620 jobs. They're not holding power to account. They're the messengers of the people in power to attack

00:39:54.600 people like us who are trying to give you the actual information. So that's why even fellows,

00:40:00.540 you'd think for self-preservation reasons alone, they would have had some pause about what was being

00:40:04.640 done to you guys rather than just jumping on board and being complicit with it. Um, just to jump back

00:40:10.160 to that. Okay. Cause we're, we're asking what could they be alleging about against you? Okay. They

00:40:15.300 could be alleging that you helped in the theft. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. And you deny it,

00:40:19.340 but that's, that would be the potential basis for a criminal charge and this kind of level of

00:40:24.540 interest. They could, they could be alleging a bribery scheme. They, there was a reference to

00:40:31.880 bribery in one of the documents seeking a subpoena. Um, and my, in reviewing your case, the only thing I

00:40:39.200 could find that I was like, okay, maybe it's, maybe it's that when you, when you went to Biden and said,

00:40:46.580 do you want to comment on this after you decided not to publish it? Right. Was that an attempt to

00:40:53.120 extortion really is what we're talking about. Not bribery. Right. So let me just address that

00:40:56.940 because this is even more extraordinary. They put on the subpoena or the, the warrant blackmail.

00:41:02.960 And obviously that was referencing me reaching out for comment to, to the Biden. And I had made the

00:41:09.160 decision not to publish it. I thought, well, it's my responsibility to go to the Biden campaign

00:41:12.820 because maybe they'll offer some corroborating evidence here. You know, like my thought process

00:41:16.520 is, well, there's a one in a thousand chance or even less. Why wouldn't I, but, but I got to make

00:41:20.620 the attempt. That's what journalists do. It's actually the ethical thing to do is to ask for

00:41:24.800 comment. It doesn't mean you're going to publish it. You're just reaching out. Right. And we reached

00:41:30.240 out. Can I just say, it also means like, I'm not going to publish it now. Doesn't mean I'm never

00:41:35.680 going to publish it. And what we normally do is we continue working our sources. And then you reach the

00:41:41.040 point where you realize it's falling apart. It's no good or I've got it. You got it, but you got to

00:41:45.100 make, you got to make the attempt. You got to reach out to people. You reserve the right to publish it.

00:41:48.880 That doesn't mean you're blackmailing someone obviously. And furthermore, that was on the

00:41:53.040 warrant. Guess what, Megan, that came off the warrant when they came to my place. So that was

00:41:57.440 on the secret warrant back in November. So whatever probable cause, remember the magistrate judge

00:42:01.080 stamp when they present her the secret affidavit? Well, apparently that was BS because,

00:42:06.380 because the feds dropped that as a, as a possible crime on the warrant that they delivered to me.

00:42:13.820 So that means that whatever was on that initial affidavit wasn't true. And, and, and, and that's

00:42:22.080 where this is, it's all falling apart. I got it. I got it. Just to back up too, cause we haven't a

00:42:26.060 short time left, but I I'm interested in the underlying. Can you explain as you have before

00:42:29.840 on your papers? Cause I'm sure all the audience is wondering how did Ashley Biden's alleged diary

00:42:35.080 get into the hands of these people who gave it to you? And that's all, you know, you've,

00:42:38.620 you've talked about it now, but like, as I understand it, it was in a house in Florida

00:42:43.440 that of a, of a guy she used to live with or stayed with for a while during the pandemic.

00:42:49.080 And she left and she left a bunch of her stuff. This is the allegation. She left piles of her stuff

00:42:54.260 and, uh, in included in that was the diary. And then a couple of, uh, that guy's other friends

00:43:00.240 found it and brought it to you. Is that right? It's something to that effect. The, the, that's

00:43:06.660 all laid out, all the facts laid out in this, this document we filed, they, they abandoned,

00:43:11.560 apparently it was abandoned. And we were informed of that. It appears to have not even been stolen

00:43:16.260 by the sources that gave them to us, uh, abandoned in this house in Delray, Florida. And, uh, we sent

00:43:22.860 a couple of our journalists down there, uh, and transported the diary back to New York.

00:43:26.900 And, uh, and we, we, we hired a handwriting expert, try to, you know, we did everything

00:43:31.260 I could do to try to. Okay. I get it. I get it. But wait, I want to ask you this. And I know the

00:43:35.760 handwriting expert said, I think it's hers. Um, was the, were the entries, and again, we're not

00:43:41.360 going to get it to, I've given the audience a sense of why it's controversial, but the content in

00:43:46.140 the diary, that's controversial. Is it out of place? Is, does it appear to be sequential to the

00:43:51.420 other content in the diary? In other words, is it like, Oh, and now there's a two page insert

00:43:54.900 alleging inappropriate things, you know, or does it appear to have been made in sort of the normal

00:43:59.340 course? Well, well, well now with hindsight, based upon the, the, the, the, the entire national

00:44:04.920 security operator, the entire national security apparatus, the United States government is trying

00:44:10.160 to, uh, intimidate and stop me. Evidently the diaries have been authenticated by also the New

00:44:16.760 York times. So now in hindsight, the answer is yes. Um, and again, if someone is, is the Biden

00:44:23.220 children appear to be seriously troubled individuals, right? So that is true. They're

00:44:28.240 writing the musings of them in a, in a, in a diary. I don't know how much credibility to give

00:44:34.040 those words, even if they're authentic. I don't know if what they're alleging occurred. So it's hard

00:44:40.640 for me to make an assessment. I'm not qualified to, to, to make an assessment about the, the, the

00:44:46.620 penmanship and the writing and what it means. It could be poetry. It could be a lot of things. I mean,

00:44:50.720 when people say a lot of things in private that I don't feel ethically as a journalist,

00:44:56.340 particularly as a journalist who deals in visual cooperation, not just according to people familiar

00:45:01.000 with the matter, like the New York times does, I have to see it for myself or I'm not comfortable

00:45:06.120 publishing it. I'm not a psychologist or an addiction counselor or her or someone who knew her

00:45:11.400 at the time. Yeah. To go on the record. I, well, you did the right thing in, in trying to run down

00:45:16.060 the sourcing, you didn't wind up publishing it and the feds are going to have to show their cards

00:45:21.500 that they, they don't, they don't get to keep it a secret forever. And I know you've got a great

00:45:26.260 legal team and we'll, and if they're watching Megan, I hope they are watching. Cause I'm going

00:45:30.820 to say it on the record here. You're bullies. You hid behind the badge and it's a disgrace what 0.99

00:45:37.200 you've done. It's terrifying. It's obviously hurt my team, but you're in too deep now and there's

00:45:43.940 no way out. What you've done here is unprecedented. It's unconstitutional. It's wrong. It's morally

00:45:50.720 wrong. And, and even the ACLU and the reporters committee are now on our side. In fact, even the

00:45:54.860 New York times published a positive article, even they Mike Schmidt was like, Whoa, this is crazy.

00:45:59.980 Secret warrants. They said it was highly unusual. Never happened before. And now we have Apple and

00:46:04.860 Google, uh, warrants as well. So I hope they're watching this, Megan. Wow. James, thank you so much.

00:46:11.320 We'll continue to follow it. Thank you for having me on. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

00:46:19.780 This hour, we wanted to take a deep dive into the recent moves by workers in several major U.S.

00:46:25.620 companies to unionize, including companies like Starbucks known for its progressive stances on

00:46:31.740 social issues, but it seems not so progressive when it comes to its workers unionizing here to help

00:46:37.680 explain to us what's happening and the future of work in a post pandemic world. A guy who's got his

00:46:44.040 finger on the pulse of the working class and wants us to know a bit more about them. Maximilian

00:46:50.320 Alvarez. He's the editor in chief of the real news network, hosted the podcast working people and author

00:46:56.420 of the work of living. Max, great to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. So I understand

00:47:03.840 you have an interesting background. You, uh, grew up more conservative, very Catholic. Uh, your dad

00:47:09.320 is a Mexican immigrant, uh, and you were listening to Larry Elder and Rush Limbaugh and just sort of

00:47:16.480 that's where you were politically. And then something changed and it happened right around the financial

00:47:22.680 crisis of 2008. Walk us through it. Yeah. Well, thank you for, for asking. Um, I, I was raised very

00:47:28.900 Catholic, very conservative, like you said, in, um, Southern California, Orange County, right. In many

00:47:34.260 ways, it's kind of the heart of the Reagan revolution. And yeah, when you grow up in Southern

00:47:39.980 California and you're driving on the freeways everywhere and you're stuck in traffic, you know,

00:47:44.520 talk radio has a really outsized ideological influence on you. And so Larry Elder, Rush Limbaugh,

00:47:51.680 my mom listened to Dr. Laura Schlesinger, right. These were very much the voices of my childhood.

00:47:56.900 And then after 1996, we had Fox news on all the time. You know, I would say my mom largely described

00:48:03.600 herself as a Reagan Democrat. My dad was very much, you know, died in the wool Republican. The

00:48:08.760 first person he ever voted for when he became a citizen was Ronald Reagan. And in 2016, he also

00:48:14.720 voted for Donald Trump. But like you said, we've had kind of a, uh, a long, uh, period of, of

00:48:21.120 transition, um, that is very much tied to, you know, what a lot of other folks in this country have

00:48:26.480 been going through over the past 30 or 40 years. So, um, you know, I think that in the nineties,

00:48:33.400 when we were in the kind of post cold war moment, when we had like the.com boom, when it really felt

00:48:40.140 like, you know, capitalist industry and liberal democracy had triumphed and the pie was going to

00:48:45.800 be big enough for all of us to get a piece. It really felt like that was the case in the 1990s.

00:48:52.060 And so that's why my generation, you know, focused so much on going to the best college that we could

00:48:57.580 possibly get into worked our butts off, you know, like to get there. And then everything kind of came

00:49:04.000 crashing down in 2008. And, uh, I graduated college in 2009. So like many others got spat right out into

00:49:13.020 the recession. Uh, and it wasn't great, you know, like it wasn't great for millions upon millions of

00:49:18.600 people in the country and around the world. And, you know, eventually that American dream that,

00:49:25.220 that my folks had worked so hard for that had secured us, you know, that, that sort of elusive,

00:49:31.180 uh, middle-class existence where they were able to buy a house, they were raising a family,

00:49:36.340 they felt pride in their work and their place in the world. It all disappeared. Right. Um, so we ended

00:49:43.580 up losing the house that I was raised in. Um, and you know, my, my folks, their economic lives were

00:49:50.420 turned upside down, um, as was mine. So after college, I ended up working, uh, mainly as a temp,

00:49:57.420 uh, at factories and warehouses in Southern California for, you know, 12, 13, 14 hours a day,

00:50:04.460 uh, which is very brutal work. But, you know, I've also worked as a pizza delivery guy,

00:50:08.800 you know, in retail waiter, so on and so forth. Right. But this particular moment about 10 years

00:50:14.620 ago was really, I think, eyeopening for me because, you know, we're, we're not a perfect family,

00:50:20.300 but we very much felt like we had done what was asked of us, right. Then that, that we had worked

00:50:25.960 hard. We had put our heads down, um, studied as hard as we could saved what we could, yada, yada,

00:50:31.220 yada. And it just wasn't enough. Like it was for so many people. And then we kept hearing about this

00:50:36.520 recovery, right. You know, during the Obama administration, and we were looking around like

00:50:40.360 recovery for whom, right. It looks like just the people at the top are getting off scot-free and

00:50:45.080 the rest of us are being left to flounder. And that's what it felt like as we were in the process

00:50:50.340 of losing everything. But, you know, again, it was that sort of period for all of us that I think

00:50:55.820 forced us to sort of confront, um, you know, the reality in front of us and how disconnected that

00:51:01.880 reality was from the America that we believed in, right. This seemed to be a government and a

00:51:08.820 financial and economic system that was more concerned with protecting the profits of the

00:51:13.260 people at the top than the millions upon millions of people who were floundering, right. Which,

00:51:17.960 you know, is where a lot of people ended up voting for Trump, like my dad, where a lot of people ended

00:51:23.040 up getting really excited about Bernie Sanders because they were speaking to the very real pain

00:51:27.500 that so many people were feeling. Um, and they were feeling the desperation that, that so many of

00:51:33.460 us were, were kind of stewing in. And so I think, um, you know, as I've talked about on my podcast,

00:51:39.020 working people and, and on other interviews, that was really the moment where I think I started to

00:51:44.100 sort of move more in a leftward direction. Um, but it was also, you know, a moment where my folks

00:51:50.980 really kind of started to change their thinking as well, because I think for a number of years,

00:51:55.840 we were just punishing ourselves like a global recession was entirely our fault. And we just

00:52:01.720 kept thinking about what could we have done differently to avoid this tremendous pain,

00:52:06.140 this embarrassment. We receded in to ourselves. We cut ourselves off from our church, our family,

00:52:12.080 our friends, and we just stewed in, in silence and suffered in silence. And even our family started

00:52:17.280 to fall apart a bit and we were losing each other because we were punishing ourselves so mercilessly

00:52:23.760 for what was a very big system-wide, you know, global problem. And I don't think it was until,

00:52:30.720 you know, I was taking smoke breaks and, and regular breaks, just kind of talking to the other

00:52:36.220 guys at the warehouse. We came from such different backgrounds. Some were ex-convicts,

00:52:41.560 some were undocumented folks, some like me, you know, like a college degree, but we were all there.

00:52:47.060 We were all talking about, you know, how much that job, um, meant to us, but also how hard the work

00:52:52.900 was and how little of a say we had in our working conditions and so on and so forth.

00:52:57.860 At the same time, my dad, you know, to, um, to get by, to pay rent was driving for Uber and Lyft.

00:53:04.260 And I think that there was something really important there because just to keep his ratings up,

00:53:08.840 right. He started talking to his passengers. Um, you know, my dad's a very affable guy,

00:53:13.320 but he's not a very talkative guy, but in that situation, you know, he's trying to make polite

00:53:17.240 conversation. And it was then that he started to realize that he was driving people his age

00:53:22.120 who were also immigrants, who had also lost their homes, who were headed to their second or third

00:53:27.120 job. And that was when he started to realize, Oh, it's not just me, right. Other people are going

00:53:32.740 through this. Um, and my mom had similar experiences, uh, herself. And so that really

00:53:37.860 clued me into the power of workers sharing their stories with one another and not just taking all of

00:53:43.540 that burden on ourselves and suffering in silence and feeling like every single injustice of this

00:53:50.640 system is per is our personal fault. There has to be more going on here. And so that's why I started

00:53:56.900 doing the work that I did. I joke that in a lot of ways I started the podcast, you believe in personal

00:54:02.580 responsibility. You believe in hard work, you believe in the American dream, but when you keep

00:54:06.880 bumping up against it and, and doing all those things without results for too long, you learn other

00:54:12.720 lessons, right? You learn like there might be a shared responsibility here amongst corporate America

00:54:18.560 to help keep the roads clear that I want to travel on, or at least travel a boat. Like if it can't just

00:54:24.540 be full of roadblocks and then you just keep looking at me saying, try harder.

00:54:28.860 I think that's exactly right. Right. And that was, that was one of the big things that I realized,

00:54:33.120 right? Because again, growing up, I had always just kind of assumed and I, and I had been told,

00:54:39.000 right, that if folks weren't advancing in their jobs, if they weren't, you know, working towards that

00:54:44.820 comfortable, dignified middle-class or upper middle-class existence, or even if they were,

00:54:49.280 if they weren't shooting higher, right. To be one of the, you know, entrepreneurs, right. That it was

00:54:53.860 their fault that they just didn't want, you know, the, the, the rewards enough and they deserved a lot

00:54:59.580 that they got in life. That was very much how I was, you know, how I thought of the situation when I

00:55:05.200 was growing up after the recession. Again, I started kind of talking to, to my coworkers. Um, and I was

00:55:12.560 like, these aren't bad people. These people work harder than anyone I've ever met. Why aren't they

00:55:17.440 advancing? Right. You know, there, there, there are other structural issues here that is keeping us

00:55:22.120 from being able to advance. Like the fact that at this particular warehouse, they had figured out

00:55:27.400 that they could stock their workforce with over 80% of temps, um, who had no, you know, bargaining

00:55:33.540 rights, no protections could be fired at the drop of a hat. And then you could just bring in whoever was

00:55:38.040 waiting at the temp agency that morning, every morning I would show up at four 30 in the morning

00:55:42.620 and there was a huddled mass of folks outside of the gate, just hoping that someone didn't show up

00:55:47.940 that day. Right. And, um, you know, my, my, that's what my folks started to realize as well. Right. You

00:55:55.100 know, everyone does have that personal responsibility. I still very much, yeah, of course, believe in that,

00:56:00.840 but I think it became increasingly clear to a lot of people around the country that we had been

00:56:06.120 holding up our end of the bargain. We had been working hard and you can see the results. American

00:56:11.100 workers' productivity has just been a straight upward line for the past 40 years. And yet our

00:56:17.820 wages have more or less stagnated over that time. And the fruits of that productivity have largely

00:56:23.200 been siphoned off by the people at the top. So we have been more productive. We have been working

00:56:27.860 harder. We have been working longer and producing more, but we are not getting that share of the pie.

00:56:32.640 It's just not you. That's the thing, right? It's like, you look at Jeff Bezos. That's the best

00:56:36.680 example, right? Like look at him. How many yachts does he have? How many private jets? How many

00:56:39.740 spaceships? And the Amazon workers are unhappy and miserable and trying to find a way to have a 0.95

00:56:45.340 better life. So can I ask you before we get to modern day and the unionization attempts and so on,

00:56:50.880 what changed between, you know, the 1940s, the 1950s, when you could have, you could make a sort of

00:56:57.420 livable wage and you could have the house and the two car garage and the 2.3 children and the dog

00:57:03.320 to, you know, flash forward to 2009 where we had the housing collapse. It was a nightmare. It was the

00:57:10.320 Great Recession. And all we were told was it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine without people

00:57:13.880 actually feeling it. You know, corporate corporations were still greedy back then. They

00:57:19.600 had the we were still capitalists. The goal was still to make money. So why did the system work better

00:57:24.500 then versus the way it works now? So it's a, it's a fantastic question that I don't have enough time

00:57:31.460 to answer in full. So I would just, I would start by just encouraging folks to read as much as you can

00:57:36.200 about this because we are often kind of conditioned to forget this history, but it's our history. If we

00:57:40.660 want to know how to get out of the problems that we're talking about here, we should look to how we

00:57:45.840 got out of them before, or we should try to understand better the conditions that have created

00:57:50.460 the crises that we're dealing with now that have prevented more working people from being able to

00:57:55.420 advance, from being able to have that dignified life to having a voice in their workplace, so on

00:58:01.460 and so forth. You know, I'd say it was a number of things. I actually went on Marianne Williamson's

00:58:05.720 show last week and I kind of gave a more fuller history of this. So if folks want to hear me talk

00:58:09.840 about it there, I would say, go, go check that out. In a lot of ways, what I said then is that

00:58:14.860 there were kind of poison pills put into labor law in the 1940s that are still plaguing us

00:58:22.300 today, and this was largely a response to the tremendous explosion of the labor movement in the

00:58:28.700 mid-30s up to the mid-1940s. You know, we saw just a humongous wave of unionization efforts, really

00:58:36.840 militant worker action like the Flint sit-down strike, workers actually occupying plants to bring

00:58:43.880 the most notorious anti-union employer in the country to the bargaining table. And they didn't

00:58:50.180 come to the bargaining table until the governor of the state basically refused to send in troops to

00:58:54.500 put down the worker strike. So like it was a very contentious time. Workers made a lot of gains. They

00:59:00.060 had every right to be pissed off after, you know, going through the Great Depression. But then, you know,

00:59:05.280 the moment that the kind of forces on the other side had an opening in the 1940s, they took it and so

00:59:11.320 they pushed through things like Taft-Hartley in the late 1940s, which really limited the tools that

00:59:17.380 labor had in the previous decade and the tools that allowed labor to grow in that decade. So I won't go

00:59:23.240 into the details there, but that Google Taft-Hartley, look up the ways that it is limited, you know, what

00:59:27.880 unions can do and how they can grow and so on and so forth. Then we kind of have, you know, this longer

00:59:33.460 arc that includes problems within the labor movement, larger sort of geopolitical and

00:59:41.000 economic forces and then also very targeted policy changes that, you know, I guess we put under the

00:59:47.120 umbrella called neoliberalism that took hold in the last third of the 20th century. But obviously,

00:59:52.700 we remember the 1970s were not a great time. It was kind of when the post-war boom sort of ran out

00:59:58.300 of steam. We were dealing with inflation. We were dealing with economic and political turmoil. And so

01:00:04.420 the mechanisms that, you know, like our government and industry came up with to solve that from the

01:00:11.240 late 1970s onwards, a big part of that was we need to go to war with labor, right? We need to kind of

01:00:18.140 declare open season on the labor movement and decrease labor costs. And that's kind of what

01:00:24.540 happened from the Volcker, you know, monetary shock that jacked up interest rates and changed the

01:00:30.900 calculus of business owners for how they factor in labor costs, the ability of corporations to

01:00:37.540 move, you know, with free trade agreements to move to different countries more freely where they could

01:00:43.220 find cheaper labor and so on and so forth. That was very much a way to undercut, right, the gains that

01:00:48.400 the labor movement had meant. And as I said, you know, I grew up hearing about all the problems with labor

01:00:53.620 and having, you know, learned more about them, like there are problems there too. Like the fact that

01:00:59.480 labor was always split within itself. It gave up its kind of more militant focus on improving folks'

01:01:04.940 conditions and it focused more on holding on to what it had. It attacked its left wing. It made a 0.98

01:01:10.620 more concessionary kind of agreement with management. So there are a lot of factors here. But as you said,

01:01:16.100 the fact is union density in this country has been on just a steady decline. It is now at record lows,

01:01:22.740 barely over 10 percent of the American workforce is unionized. As I said, even as workers have been

01:01:28.680 more productive and have been seeing fewer and fewer shares of the productivity that they are

01:01:33.380 generating. When we're talking about life under Obama after the, you know, alleged recovery and

01:01:41.180 how, you know, you're being told not to believe your lying eyes. It's interesting because you

01:01:44.700 mentioned this is what drew a lot of people to Trump and Bernie Sanders. And I think that's exactly

01:01:48.100 right. And then under Trump, things did get better. I don't think that's disputable. We just had

01:01:54.600 Jason Riley on the show not long ago, a writer for the Wall Street Journal. And he was writing

01:02:00.140 in particular about how one of the untold stories of the Trump presidency was the extent to which

01:02:05.820 black economic fortunes improved and just lower, you know, working class or lower educated, 1.00

01:02:11.880 more working class workers lot improved. This is from an article he wrote in the Wall Street Journal,

01:02:17.660 January 28th. But he has a book out called Black Boom. He is black. And he writes over the first

01:02:24.960 three years of Mr. Trump's presidency, blacks and Hispanics experienced record low rates of

01:02:30.540 unemployment and poverty, while wages for workers at the bottom of the income scale rose faster than

01:02:35.840 they did for management. And he goes on to say that part of what made the Trump boom unique was who

01:02:42.880 benefited the most. The economy grew in ways that mostly benefited low income and middle class

01:02:47.320 households, categories that cover a disproportionate number of blacks. He writes between 2017 and

01:02:53.240 19 median household incomes grew 15.4% amongst blacks, just 11.5% amongst whites. I know I realize 1.00

01:03:00.060 you're not making this a racial issue. I just think it's interesting. And then he says the investment

01:03:03.720 bank Goldman Sachs released a paper in March 2019 that showed pay for those at the lower end of the

01:03:09.420 wage distribution, rising at nearly double the rate of pay for those at the upper end. Average hourly

01:03:15.820 earnings were growing at rates that hadn't been seen in almost a decade. CNBC reporting that the

01:03:22.240 bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half under the Trump presidency. In fact,

01:03:27.540 about twice as much. So to me, that's very interesting. I'm not a number cruncher or math

01:03:31.800 person. But this, I think, is why Trump wound up doing so well with those groups electorally,

01:03:36.540 despite some of his rhetoric, is that they did feel an improvement under him. Wasn't perfect,

01:03:41.540 but it was an improvement. Do you agree with that?

01:03:46.460 I mean, I think like under any administration, it's always like a mixed bag, right? Because I think,

01:03:51.440 so first, yeah, there were, you know, plenty of workers at those lower tiers who did see

01:03:57.760 kind of wage growth, which was awesome. I don't care who does it. If that's the case,

01:04:01.960 I'm all for it, right? You know, like, but at the same time, you know, I think that one

01:04:07.940 facet to that that is very much bipartisan, right, is as I said, after the 2008 financial crash and

01:04:14.760 then the long recession, inequality continued to sort of skyrocket. Workers were very much left

01:04:20.440 to flounder. So like their wages going up, their working conditions improving a bit is awesome. But

01:04:27.420 like they were coming from a very low point and they still had a lot of ground to make up,

01:04:32.440 which I think is also why you saw a lot of strikes at this point. So like the strike wave,

01:04:37.000 quote unquote, that we had last year during COVID-19, it's important for folks to remember

01:04:42.580 that that it's not like strikes just happened right then. Like there were strikes going on

01:04:46.860 before the pandemic, like the Red for Ed movement, where you had teachers in red states and blue

01:04:52.520 states like Cal from California to Oklahoma, launching these massive strikes saying we have

01:04:57.320 been underfunded and understaffed and our resources have been gutted for decades. We are not able to do

01:05:03.560 our job and serve our children and our communities the way that we can. We're losing teachers.

01:05:07.940 And so they struck, right? And they actually won a lot of huge gains, which is awesome, right? At the

01:05:14.180 same time, you know, like folks did get a tax break. That's great. But that also just supercharged

01:05:20.480 kind of inequality. The 1% is running just, you know, universes ahead of us. So that's a very much a

01:05:26.640 long running problem that anyone on the Republican or Democratic side is going to have to figure out

01:05:31.080 how to do something about it because it's a really, really big problem. But the other thing

01:05:36.320 that I think is really significant, Megan, that, you know, if anyone like does refuse to acknowledge

01:05:43.880 this, they are being dishonest. But like something happened during the COVID-19 pandemic that was

01:05:48.560 really paradigm changing, right? It started under Trump's administration, carried over for a bit

01:05:55.280 into Biden's administration. But unlike the 2008 recession, where the establishment essentially

01:06:00.940 threw its arms around the banks and big capital and protected them at all costs, while the rest of

01:06:06.480 us were left, you know, like to our own devices. And we've spent the past decade really trying to make

01:06:11.460 up that loss before COVID-19 hit. Unlike that time, we actually experienced something incredible where

01:06:18.660 the government injected money directly into people's pockets with the stimulus checks, with the

01:06:24.640 child care benefits and the unextended employment benefits. Like we saw massive, even historic drops

01:06:32.980 in poverty levels, in large part because of this government aid, which was incredible. And now,

01:06:41.500 unfortunately, we're sort of seeing the ruling class claw it all back by jacking up prices and rents.

01:06:48.720 Inflation, you know, over the past year has already outpaced the wage growth that happened last year.

01:06:53.900 And so like whatever, whatever gains like workers are making year by year are important. But in the

01:07:00.020 grander scheme of things, we still have a very, very long way to go.

01:07:05.060 Makes sense. Makes perfect sense to me. I mean, I've always been somebody who distrusts unions because

01:07:11.360 I just, it seems to me that the unions get in control and then they don't even actually do what's best for

01:07:17.400 the union members. They seem to do what's best for the union leaders. And like the teachers union has

01:07:22.580 been so irritating as somebody who's got three kids in these schools. I follow it. I follow it

01:07:28.220 closely, though my kids are in private school. And I know that you've spoken out in defense of

01:07:32.880 teachers unions. But, you know, for me, like what happened in Chicago this year was just dreadful.

01:07:37.920 And I felt like the kids came last. The leaders of the teachers unions came first. And many of the

01:07:43.360 teachers themselves were supporting this never ending refusal to go back to work.

01:07:47.800 And who suffered? The kids. The suicide rates were climbing astronomically, the depression rates.

01:07:55.440 And it was basically the Chicago teachers saying, well, we're not going back. It's not safe. As

01:07:59.440 they released video of themselves dancing, dancing in their homes and their interpretive dance, like,

01:08:05.160 don't send me back. It's not safe. It's like, well, you look perfectly safe.

01:08:08.260 And what's actually happening now is that we have dramatic mental health,

01:08:12.220 a dramatic mental health crisis happening for the students who aren't allowed to go back to school

01:08:17.260 because no teachers are showing up. So I think there's a lot there. So I'll try to I'll try to

01:08:24.840 approach it piecemeal. Right. I mean, I think the first thing to say is there is no one in this

01:08:29.500 situation who is not suffering. Right. You know, this is this is something that I would I think that

01:08:35.160 we can at least agree on. Right. Is that I don't know, just just talking to teachers, not just in

01:08:41.040 Chicago, but all over the country teacher. Like I mentioned, there were massive strikes before the

01:08:46.220 pandemic because we have had a sustained crisis in our education system that is also hurting

01:08:52.540 children. Right. And this is what a lot of teachers have told me over the past two years.

01:08:57.100 They said, like, look, trust us. Like we are as concerned with students, you know, like mental health

01:09:02.340 as anyone, because we're guarding them every day. We're working with them. We're trying to help them

01:09:07.080 learn. And if they are feeling depressed, if they are undervalued and having issues like we can't do

01:09:13.380 that, we can't do our job, which is why teachers struck in such massive numbers beforehand. And they

01:09:18.560 were pointing out, they said, if we actually cared about students' mental health, then why are there so

01:09:24.300 few mental health counselors in in schools across the country? Why is that been gutted over the course of

01:09:30.320 decades where you have like one counselor essentially floating around a massive district

01:09:34.260 who could only be in certain schools for certain hours during the week? That's not helping anybody.

01:09:39.740 So that was not the issue for Chicago. That was not. But during the pandemic, Chicago and many other

01:09:44.220 cities got tons of money. I mean, Chicago got one point eight billion dollars and there were and a lot

01:09:49.420 of that was meant to be dedicated toward finding counselors and people who would help the teachers

01:09:53.100 do the teaching and so on. And they weren't hiring them. I mean, I think it was just March,

01:09:57.480 right? We're in April. It was last month that there was a report, something like over five,

01:10:01.360 like 540 million hadn't been spent yet. Just sitting there like piss poor management from the

01:10:07.020 people who get the money. That's not the teacher's fault. I agree. I'm pissed about that.

01:10:10.580 Well, I'm just saying it's not it's not a question of money. They have plenty of money,

01:10:13.400 but like the teachers and I get it. I get it. They're mad because it's like in addition to teaching,

01:10:17.480 now you have to sterilize the chair and you have to like make sure all the protocols are being

01:10:21.980 followed. And it's like, well, that's a lot. There's a lot for me to do. But

01:10:25.060 I'm really not that sympathetic, as you can hear, because at the end of the day, it's like get the

01:10:30.520 kids in there. They when the kids sit at home, they get abused in Chicago, South Side. They get

01:10:34.540 shot. They their mental health goes down the toilet in ways that are not going to be recapturable for

01:10:40.260 many of them. So I don't really care. You know, I feel like I'm sure it is hard. A lot of us have

01:10:44.960 hard jobs. You had a hard job working in the factory. My mom's had a hard job working as a nurse, 1.00

01:10:49.520 but we do it and we do it. We especially do it if you're taking care of a sick patient

01:10:53.960 or taking care of kids. Well, so I, you know, I think that that's an important point. And I guess

01:11:01.700 I would say that for folks viewing and listening, right? Like, yeah, I think it's important that

01:11:05.880 we're having this discussion because there have been too few of them over the past two years,

01:11:10.440 right? Between left and right to say, okay, we clearly got a problem. How are we going to fix it?

01:11:15.480 And so, you know, if I don't sway anyone, that's fine. I guess I would just really stress to people

01:11:21.160 that as like, it is my job, as you said, to, to interview workers, not just teachers, but

01:11:26.220 folks in healthcare, gig workers, manufacturing workers, farm workers, so on and so forth. Like

01:11:31.600 this is what I do every day. And I can tell you that regardless of how we feel about it, whether

01:11:37.340 we're sympathetic or not, there is a crisis happening right now. And we're going to be feeling

01:11:42.780 the effects of it because we're, we're, we're running out of workers, right? Like, um, the,

01:11:48.700 the exodus of healthcare workers after two years of this is incredible. Like, I mean, the work,

01:11:54.420 these healthcare workers are just so beaten down. They've lost so much faith in, you know, the CDC

01:11:59.880 and everyone. And they're leaving as our teachers. There was a Minneapolis teacher strike a couple of

01:12:06.160 weeks ago. And this is what they were saying. They're like, we can't retain teachers because,

01:12:10.280 you know, we're so understaffed, people are so overworked and they're, they're tired of being

01:12:13.640 vilified that they're just leaving. Eventually we're going to run out of people to actually

01:12:17.580 stock these classrooms. And that's going to hurt the kids too. So again, if you, if you don't think

01:12:23.120 that unions are the solution, that's fine, but you have to think of some way to fix this because we

01:12:28.520 are actually in the middle of a slow moving crisis that is going to extend for years. And we, if we all

01:12:33.780 want our children to have the best education possible, and if we all acknowledge that something

01:12:38.680 about our current Frankenstein's monster of, you know, like an education system is not working,

01:12:44.880 then we should sit down and try to talk about how to fix it and improve it for everyone instead of

01:12:49.380 just kind of like making these, these life rafts that help some and, and, and not others. We, it's

01:12:54.720 a much bigger structural problem that's going to impact everyone. So we have to sit down, put our

01:12:58.840 heads together and come to a solution on this because it's not going to go away.

01:13:02.060 Mm-hmm. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, I've been following the mass exodus of teachers

01:13:07.300 from the teaching profession and yes, healthcare is another one. Of course that got hit hard during

01:13:11.700 the pandemic. So we have to be solutions oriented because we need, we need people in there. Um,

01:13:18.900 I, I just see union leaders as an obstacle as opposed to somebody who's going to help us fix this,

01:13:25.500 but I don't see corporate America stepping up and doing its part either. So I don't, I don't have

01:13:31.800 the solution. I'm glad you're doing what you're doing and having the discussions and it's, there's

01:13:35.740 the public sector unions, of course, and then there's the private sector and the private sector is

01:13:38.820 starting to, they're falling like this domino and that domino and the other domino because there you

01:13:43.480 can really see how much is the CEO making? How much am I making? How, how's he enjoying his yacht?

01:13:50.360 Uh, I haven't taken a vacation ever. You know, I heard you talking with, uh, my pal, Emily

01:13:55.720 Jasinski over on the federalist about how some of these workers are like, I just want to see a beach.

01:14:00.800 I don't, I've never seen a, I've never taken my child to see a beach. They don't need to go on the

01:14:07.660 spaceship, right? So it's, that is a real problem that needs a real solution. That's where I'm going

01:14:13.180 to pick it up right after this. I'm going to squeeze in a break and we'll talk about what's

01:14:15.940 happening at Amazon and some of these other mass corporations where those at the top are

01:14:20.180 riding high without much thought, it appears for those who are at the bottom. All right,

01:14:25.740 don't go away. That's where we're going to pick it up with Max right after this.

01:14:32.060 As I understand it at Amazon now, we've had a couple of attempts at unionization,

01:14:36.840 one in Staten Island that worked one in Bessemer, Alabama, right? Alabama, um, that didn't work.

01:14:46.160 And, um, what does that tell us? Like what's happening? What's the bigger picture

01:14:49.660 about what's happening here at Amazon? Yeah. So I, I would answer that by way of,

01:14:54.600 like you said, big picture first, then kind of winnowing down, right? Because I would say to

01:14:59.580 folks watching and listening, right. That if you're trying to make sense of the sort of labor action

01:15:05.580 that's happening right now, consider the fact that we just got two very clear, uh, examples of what

01:15:12.740 workers are so pissed off about and why they're increasingly resorting to unionization efforts,

01:15:18.840 uh, or kind of like, uh, ramping up mill and see within the existing unions to fight these issues.

01:15:25.300 The first that we kind of talked about a little bit earlier is the inflation problem, right? As I said,

01:15:30.840 inflation grew 7% last year already outpaced the average wage growth, which is around 4.7%.

01:15:37.360 And so we're being told right now that it's, Oh, it's, it's the war, right? It's supply chain

01:15:42.080 issues or it's workers demanding higher wages. That's driving up costs. But the, the, the very

01:15:48.000 simple lie that more and more workers and consumers are seeing through right now is the fact that,

01:15:54.320 you know, like on average corporate profits hit a 70 year, like it hit the increase in corporate

01:16:00.800 profits hit a 70 year high last year. And this is very much something that I heard from a lot of

01:16:05.860 folks who were on strike last year. I'll give one example. We all remember the, the John Deere strike,

01:16:11.120 or maybe you didn't hear about it, but 10,000 John Deere workers in multiple States went on strike

01:16:16.760 last fall. And when the, one of the things that they kept pointing to was like, they had made

01:16:21.480 that company more profitable than it had ever been in the very year that this strike was happening.

01:16:27.140 The very year that the company was trying to take more from workers and push them into this two tier

01:16:32.340 wage system, or even a three tier wage system where future workers are going to get screwed over and

01:16:37.140 everyone's going to gradually lose their benefits and their pay and so on and so forth. John Deere was

01:16:42.400 trying to take more from its workers who had sacrificed and worked during a pandemic during its most

01:16:47.520 profitable year on record. So like when that's the case, you as a worker are going to say, well,

01:16:52.540 I'm getting gypped off here. Right. And at the same time, this is not an aberration. We have CEOs and,

01:16:58.940 and private equity fund managers on earnings calls bragging about seeing these record revenues bragging

01:17:05.360 about jacking up prices on all of us. And the list goes on and on Exxon BP Kellogg's, which also

01:17:11.840 experienced a strike last year, last year, McDonald's, Amazon, whose business model has

01:17:17.260 exploded over the course of the pandemic because more people are staying home. More people are

01:17:21.540 ordering from Amazon. The amount that Amazon has grown over the past two years is truly astronomical.

01:17:27.300 And yet it is still pushing its workers to the brink. It is still treating them like robots. Like I was

01:17:34.140 down there in Bessemer this time last year when the first election union election vote was happening.

01:17:39.900 And just because that first election failed, um, and the pro union votes were soundly defeated,

01:17:46.260 um, doesn't mean all the issues that we were talking about regarding working conditions at Amazon just

01:17:52.160 suddenly went away. They didn't. Does anyone remember, uh, at the end of last year, we had

01:17:57.160 horrifying stories like an Amazon warehouse in Illinois that collapsed during a tornado, six workers died.

01:18:03.960 And we later found out that Amazon managers were telling them to stay there to keep working. They

01:18:09.040 couldn't leave. They couldn't call their families. And now people are dead and they're never coming

01:18:14.420 back to say nothing of the workers again at Amazon who have been cycled in broken down and spat out.

01:18:20.820 This is part of Amazon's business model. They have a turnover rate on average of 150%. And what I tell

01:18:27.600 people is like, if you're, if you're workers trying to organize your workplace and an Amazon facility

01:18:32.440 that has 5,000, 6,000, 8,000 workers, that's like trying to organize a bathtub because Amazon has

01:18:38.500 made it so that you're constantly pouring in new workers while other workers are leaving because the

01:18:45.140 work is so brutal and folks can hardly stay there long enough to recoup the benefits that Amazon touts

01:18:51.300 as a good reason to work there, yada, yada, yada. And so the inflation thing, um, again, like when,

01:18:57.660 when workers wages and their demands for, for better pay and benefits, and they're told no,

01:19:02.560 uh, at the same time that the companies they work for are raking in record profits and flying to

01:19:07.700 space, like there's going to be a big disconnect there. It's annoying. It's a bit annoying, right?

01:19:14.000 And, uh, Christian Smalls, uh, the president of the Amazon labor union had a great quote where he said,

01:19:18.340 uh, after they successfully unionized, uh, voted to unionize in Staten Island, he said,

01:19:22.080 I want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space. Cause while he was up there,

01:19:24.860 we were down here organizing a union, right? And, and Jeff Bezos really spat in the face

01:19:30.040 of his workers after he took his little, you know, vanity space trip by saying, Oh,

01:19:34.240 I want to thank all the workers. Uh, cause you paid for this. Like that is just such a callous way

01:19:39.240 to, you know, spit in the face of your workers who are peeing in bottles because they can't make 0.62

01:19:44.040 it to the bathroom without getting, you know, their, their, um, you know, records docked for taking

01:19:49.020 time off tasks, so on and so forth. Amazon workers are heavily surveilled. We are, 0.69

01:19:53.080 we already know this, um, yada, yada, yada. So that sort of disconnect between corporate profits,

01:19:58.820 um, and, you know, worker wages has been a big driving force throughout a lot of the strikes that

01:20:04.980 we saw over the past year. Right. Let me ask you some, some numbers. This is what the other side

01:20:11.220 says. My, my pals over at the national review are, you know, more conservative and they, they were

01:20:16.480 writing up about the Bessemer, Alabama, uh, facility where the unionization attempt failed.

01:20:21.780 And they said, um, okay, they weren't exactly, these workers were not exactly on the fence when

01:20:26.800 they were at last asked to vote on this question. More than 70% of the Amazon workers in Bessemer

01:20:30.580 voted against forming a union chapter. They said the median pay there is between 15 and $20 an hour

01:20:38.080 in the warehouses with delivery drivers making around $70,000 a year and getting nice benefits.

01:20:43.080 That is not big money compared to what a software developer makes at Amazon or anywhere else,

01:20:47.380 but it is pretty good money compared to what workers typically make in warehouse jobs.

01:20:51.820 So what are they missing? Well, they're, they're showing you only part of the, the fuller picture,

01:20:57.840 right? Cause as, um, folks who were, who were in the warehouse in Bessemer last year and, and those

01:21:04.960 who are still in it there have been quick to point out when Amazon's kind of outside consultants that

01:21:10.680 they hired to essentially turn people against the union, when Amazon, when those consultants kind of

01:21:15.580 make that same point, they can point, the workers can point directly to the statistics and say,

01:21:19.980 well, like, yeah, in Bessemer, which is a de-industrialized town, majority black town that 0.99

01:21:25.300 has twice the national poverty rate around a $15, you know, like hourly wage for warehouse workers

01:21:31.560 is higher than the average in that town. But in the greater Birmingham area, union workers doing

01:21:37.160 similar work get paid on average $2 more. Right. And so like, it's, it's, you know, like if we're going

01:21:42.900 to have a real discussion about this, we got to be honest and stop trying to treat workers like

01:21:46.920 dupes. Right. We gotta, we gotta show them that like, actually there are, you know, like other people

01:21:52.220 doing similar work to you who have different conditions. If you have all the facts and want to make that

01:21:56.780 decision, have a union election. Right. And I guess the other thing that I would say, um, because we can't

01:22:03.220 push the defeat under the rug. However, um, we can point to the fact that the national labor relations

01:22:08.800 board deemed that Amazon had illegally tampered with that election, which is why workers at that

01:22:14.700 facility in Bessemer have gotten a second shot at an election. Right. That doesn't just happen. That

01:22:19.760 happens when the actual agency that is charged with reviewing labor relations says, Hey, this massive

01:22:25.940 company broke the rules and tilted the chessboard in favor of itself against, you know, like it's workers

01:22:32.980 desire to hold a union election. They deserve another shot. Um, so I think it's a good example

01:22:39.540 that like, if you don't like the whole thought about right to work States and so on, was that

01:22:43.740 it would give corporate America to do right by the workers. Like you, you want to, you don't want to

01:22:48.240 be told what to do by the unions do right by the workers and you won't have to deal with this problem.

01:22:52.540 And if you don't do right by the workers, things are going to go South. They're going to, they are

01:22:56.880 going to revolt at some point. Um, and we're seeing, it just feels to me like we're seeing more and

01:23:01.600 more of that love. The corporations not, not doing right by the workers, not wanting to take care of

01:23:06.320 their staff in the way they should. And I mean, I know you've been talking about Kroger. That's a

01:23:11.720 great example. Now we're seeing Starbucks big union push there. The numbers are, um, okay. Starbucks

01:23:17.440 said quarterly profit jumped 31% at the end of last year to 816 million. That's amazing per the New York

01:23:24.240 times. Uh, meanwhile, more than 200 Starbucks locations across the country in some 30 States have

01:23:28.820 filed petitions to organize because the old trickle down doesn't seem to be happening, uh, outside of

01:23:35.580 the coffee pot. You're right. I mean, like in the end, it really is that simple. Like, you know,

01:23:42.560 the trickle down theory was nice. It sounded good in principle. We have enough data to see now

01:23:47.680 it didn't work. It didn't work for us, right? It worked for a very small few people, right? But for

01:23:53.960 the vast amount of workers who, as I said, have been working longer, working harder and

01:23:58.540 been more productive over the past half century, uh, and yet have seen the majority of their

01:24:04.160 wages stagnate as the cost of living continues to go up. We've gone the longest period in American

01:24:08.880 history without raising the federal minimum wage like there. And all the while the fruits

01:24:13.920 of that productivity are getting pocketed by, you know, shareholders and CEOs and so on and

01:24:19.040 so forth. Starbucks, as you mentioned, is having this kind of, uh, really incredible sort of

01:24:23.760 unionization effort, a grassroots bottom up effort at the very moment that, you know, it recorded 31%

01:24:30.180 profit increase last quarter. And, uh, Kevin Johnson, the CEO had a massive increase in pay to 20.4

01:24:37.340 million in 2021 before resigning. And now CEO Howard Schultz is back in there. So again, you're seeing

01:24:42.660 people say like, okay, from inflation to COVID policies that we had no say over whatsoever,

01:24:48.700 we've lost coworkers who have died. How can we ever measure like that? Or how come we got no say

01:24:54.500 over when we reopened or any of that? We were just told to go back to work, to shut up, to be happy with

01:25:00.820 what we were given at the same time that like our companies praised us as essential in the public

01:25:05.600 facing realm, but they didn't actually treat us like they, like we were essential on the shop floor.

01:25:11.300 So there's a really big problem there and workers are saying we've had enough of it. And I just wanted

01:25:16.140 to pick up on the Kroger thing. Cause I know that, um, we're, we're at time and I'd be remiss if I

01:25:19.940 didn't mention kind of two things, because when it comes down to it, having a union, being in a union

01:25:25.380 should mean, and always should mean that you're, you and your coworkers have each other's backs.

01:25:30.940 That is really it. If it becomes this bureaucracy that you have no say in, there's a problem and you

01:25:35.540 need to fix it. And workers are trying to fix their unions, like in the UAW that just passed a

01:25:40.500 referendum. Now workers can have direct elections of their union leadership and they can vote out

01:25:44.620 the people who aren't serving their interests. So there are people trying to revive and fix

01:25:49.200 unions, but ultimately what it means is having people's back at work. And that's something that

01:25:53.800 I think we should support because if you Google the name, Evan Seyfried, you will see the true cost

01:25:59.560 of someone who, who, whose coworkers, uh, whose business, um, the, the, the managers and the union

01:26:06.880 itself did not have his back. He was bullied, uh, at Ohio Kroger. He was a 20 year employee,

01:26:12.760 dedicated employee, loved his job. And he was bullied by management into committing suicide.

01:26:17.100 And now he's no longer here. And the union failed him. The company failed him. He tried many times to

01:26:22.440 get help and no one was there for him. That should not happen. That cannot happen. At the same time,

01:26:28.120 the 1100 coal miners in deep red Alabama have been on strike for over a year now. And, and many of them

01:26:34.940 are conservative and every election year I hear Republicans, you know, go on the campaign trail

01:26:39.960 and say like, Oh, we're friends of the humble coal miner. Where have they been over the past year?

01:26:44.740 Where's right wing media been? There's so many people in Alabama who are dying for, for attention

01:26:49.680 and they want, uh, us to help them help lift up their struggle. And we are ignoring them and we can't,

01:26:55.120 but they have each other's backs. That is why they've been able to hold the line for over a year

01:26:59.580 under great duress. And that is what the labor movement ultimately means. It means we're not

01:27:04.020 all on our own at work. We're not all solely at the behest of top-down decisions made by people

01:27:10.160 who don't have to listen to us. It means that we should have more of a say in our working conditions

01:27:14.380 in the world that we live in. And even when I was a conservative, I would have said, you know what,

01:27:18.640 that sounds good because I'm looking around me and I'm seeing the results of a society that is

01:27:23.780 managed by a handful of powerful decision makers who don't listen to working people. And we are seeing

01:27:28.860 the destruction that that system wrecks. So I am all for workers having more of a say in how this

01:27:34.260 society is run. And that starts in the workplace and it goes beyond that. Yeah. Well, very well said.

01:27:39.940 I know it's during the pandemic, obviously it wasn't a great, great time, but there were some

01:27:45.880 upsides to it, including the chance by some to reflect on whether they'd been living their lives

01:27:53.940 the way they wanted to, whether they'd been spending their time on this earth the way they

01:27:58.560 wanted to. And that was working class and on up. Of course, the rich, it was like a vacation. You 0.70

01:28:04.400 know, they got to work from home. They was like the laptop class, but even the working class, you know,

01:28:08.960 deemed essential and thrown in there and so on, sort of started to see things differently. I've heard

01:28:13.040 you talk about that too. And I think if there's one advantage of all of this, if people are unhappy

01:28:18.900 with the way they're living, with being forced to work this number of hours for very little pay and

01:28:23.020 having no life and not seeing the ocean and not seeing their children, then they will demand change.

01:28:29.680 Like the human spirit will demand change. There's only so long people can handle living in oppressed

01:28:38.020 circumstances like that when their heart desires something else. So that's hopeful. That's hopeful

01:28:43.280 because that change ultimately won't be denied. You know, the people are leaving the workforce because it

01:28:48.120 won't be denied and they need jobs eventually. They're going to have to come up with another

01:28:51.700 solution. So hopefully the marketplace will respond. Max, thank you for shining a light on it and for

01:28:56.840 coming on and telling your story. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. All the best to you.

01:29:01.660 Don't forget to tune in tomorrow when we have Peter Schiff's coming back. He was one of our most

01:29:06.000 popular guests. We're going to dig into the latest inflation crisis and what it means for all of us.

01:29:10.320 We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:29:18.120 He was a regres. Right, bro.

01:29:19.620 The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:29:19.780 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. No she leaves holding a mattress back. 0.98

01:29:22.080 My William. Oh great.

01:29:23.060 Thank you.

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01:29:23.900 Thank you.

01:29:24.020 Thank you.

01:29:26.700 Thank you so much Brian unclosed.

01:29:27.340 Hello.

01:29:27.640 In the previous video livre cooking.

01:29:28.520 Have a good day.

01:29:30.120 Oh my God.

01:29:30.880 Oh my God.

01:29:31.440 What a good day.

01:29:31.800 Oh my God.

01:29:33.060 Oh my God.

01:29:34.100 Ah my God.

01:29:35.060 Oh my God.

01:29:35.140 Oh my God.

01:29:35.740 Is thisstäpare.

01:29:36.060 Oh my God, why?

01:29:38.360 Oh my God.

01:29:39.300 Oh my God.

01:29:40.760 Holy God.

01:29:41.180 Oh my God.

01:29:42.940 Oh my God.

01:29:43.420 Oh my God.

01:29:44.140 Oh my God.

01:29:45.720 Oh my God.

01:29:46.340 Did you.

01:29:47.380 Oh my God.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 13, 2022

Chilling Journalistic Crackdown by Feds, and the Future of Unions, with James O'Keefe and Max Alvarez ｜ Ep. 299

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