Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have ristal in Dave, We do a
Speaker 1: lot to get into a very latest coming out of Israel,
Speaker 1: both a extension of that temporary pause and also some
Speaker 1: indications of what is going to come next, So get
Speaker 1: into all of that. We also have the White House
Speaker 1: panicking over so called misinformation about the economy. Break that
Speaker 1: one down for you. Some behind the scenes details about
Speaker 1: what may have transpired that triggered the temporary firing of
Speaker 1: Sam Altman before he was brought back at OpenAI says
Speaker 1: a lot about the future of AI in the direction
Speaker 1: that that whole industry is going in. We also wanted
Speaker 1: to dig into those violent riots that unfolded in Ireland's
Speaker 1: quite shocking and some of the untold details about what
Speaker 1: may have caused that outburst of anger and violence, So
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. Also, APAK apparently extremely desperate to
Speaker 1: get Rashida to leave out of office. You now have
Speaker 1: multiple candidates who say that they have been offered twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars to fund a campaign against Rashida to leave,
Speaker 1: coming from APAC affiliated donors. To break that down for you.
Speaker 1: Have also got some news about what's going on at
Speaker 1: the RNC not looking good in terms of their finances.
Speaker 1: Maybe they should talk to those other donors. And there's
Speaker 1: pay a lot of money flying around, and George Santos
Speaker 1: is going ham on.
Speaker 3: His colleagues, going out with a bank sort of.
Speaker 1: A Madison Cawthorne kind of vibes.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's telling the truth this time. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: this might be the most believable thing he is. With
Speaker 2: all of that, though, before we get together, we have
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Speaker 3: But with that, let's get dis.
Speaker 1: I also want to say shout out to part who
Speaker 1: was wearing Oh Beautiful last night at Ryan Graham's book
Speaker 1: event here in the city and he looked fantastic in it,
Speaker 1: and yeah it was Wanda say.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm jealous because Kurt, you have a sweater
Speaker 3: before I have.
Speaker 1: I know that's exactly what I said to you. It
Speaker 1: looked great on him though. So all right, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get to what is, of course, very serious news.
Speaker 1: I want to start with this, even though we do
Speaker 1: have the news about the ceasefire temporarily extend. We're going
Speaker 1: to break that down for you as well. But as
Speaker 1: a way to set the tone for this segment, we've
Speaker 1: been talking about how Nanyahu is under tremendous pressure. Basically
Speaker 1: everyone in Israel wants him gone. He's just been trying
Speaker 1: to hold on by you know, the skin of his
Speaker 1: fingertips as long as he possibly can delay, delay, delay,
Speaker 1: any sort of accountability to try to maintain his grip
Speaker 1: on power. We now have a scoop, this is from
Speaker 1: Israeli media about put this up on the screen about
Speaker 1: the case he is making to his fellow Lakud party
Speaker 1: members Lacud being you know, his right wing party that
Speaker 1: he has been the head of for some time. He
Speaker 1: says he should stay in government because quote, I'm the
Speaker 1: only one who will prevent a Palestinian state in Gaza,
Speaker 1: Judea and Samaria, which is the name that Zionis call
Speaker 1: the West Bank. He says, I'm the only one who
Speaker 1: can withstand US pressure. He goes on to say it's
Speaker 1: because he knows Biden for forty years, which has the
Speaker 1: ring of truth, because Biden is so like relationship based,
Speaker 1: very similar to Trump in that way, and I know
Speaker 1: how to manage American public opinion. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that consistently, from the beginning of this outbreak of conflict,
Speaker 1: the one thing that Biden has always said is I'm
Speaker 1: committed to a two state solution. Afterwards, we've got to
Speaker 1: get to a two state solution. So here you have
Speaker 1: the head of government actively admitting at this moment not
Speaker 1: only is he not interested in peace, he is making
Speaker 1: an affirmative case that they should keep him in power
Speaker 1: because he will. He is damn short and determined to
Speaker 1: make sure that Palestinians never have a state. So incredibly
Speaker 1: important context to keep in mind in terms of what
Speaker 1: may unfold and Gaza going forward, what the political dynamics
Speaker 1: are going to look like inside of Israel. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just thumbing the nose at the
Speaker 1: US president at a time when we've provided them with
Speaker 1: unequivocal and totally unconditional support, including comments that there are
Speaker 1: no red lines for their operation here.
Speaker 2: For me, that was the biggest takeaway because this is
Speaker 2: it's obvious. BB has said it many times before about
Speaker 2: preventing Palestinian statehood, about how the Likud party another should
Speaker 2: actually be hopeful that Hamas remains in power, because that's
Speaker 2: the perfect cudgel to say that there's no reason we
Speaker 2: should move forward with the peace process. But I thought
Speaker 2: the fact is is that he's willing to say this
Speaker 2: to his own party to try and save his own
Speaker 2: skin at the very same time that he's not an idiot.
Speaker 2: He knows what we can't read or hit Google translate.
Speaker 2: We obviously can see clearly about what is happening. Don't
Speaker 2: forget either, Crystal. We have a pretty good visibility apparently
Speaker 2: into Israeli spy networks, because we had those Discord leaks,
Speaker 2: and one of the things that came out from those
Speaker 2: classified files, which we reported on here on the show,
Speaker 2: was specifically about our visibility into Mosad and their efforts
Speaker 2: to try and thwart Bebe eventually coming back into power.
Speaker 2: So at a spy level, I'm almost certainly we're getting
Speaker 2: updates in the same way that we spied on the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians about like, hey, what are they actually saying to
Speaker 2: each other, and the fact that it's now spilling out
Speaker 2: into the Israeli press about what the end state here?
Speaker 2: It just shows you how the fundamental long term goal
Speaker 2: for bb Netchunyahu and for the United States, and really
Speaker 2: I think anybody who is legitimately pro Israel is just
Speaker 2: diverging to a point where it has to be untenable.
Speaker 2: I mean, Bebe should have gone I think really the
Speaker 2: day after October seventh, or at the very least at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the war, to ensure real coalitional support
Speaker 2: inside Israeli society and to give anybody who's pro risual
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 3: The unequivocal support that they would want.
Speaker 2: But the issue is that while they have that with
Speaker 2: the stated goal of US policy going all the way
Speaker 2: back to Bill Clinton and honestly even before that is
Speaker 2: a two state solution and has remained unchanged.
Speaker 3: It now actionably actionable wise.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a priority under the Trump administration, the Biden administration,
Speaker 2: or the Bush administration, let's all be honest, the.
Speaker 3: Same with Obama.
Speaker 2: But it still remains the thing that we're all supposed
Speaker 2: to be working towards. And if he is directly opposed
Speaker 2: to the desired end state as articulated by the American
Speaker 2: President and really by the American Congress, by all of
Speaker 2: the Western allies who are supportive of him so far,
Speaker 2: then why is he currently you know, getting the one
Speaker 2: hundred percent support from the US Congress and from that administration.
Speaker 2: So he's putting them in a place where, look, you know,
Speaker 2: they can beat the drama of like we support Israel's
Speaker 2: ratchter defended himself. I think that'll last up until the
Speaker 2: end of the war. But you know, eventually the bombs
Speaker 2: will end. Eventually the military campaign has to come to
Speaker 2: a close. And at that point, if they're going to
Speaker 2: you know, already while they're you know, John Kerr has
Speaker 2: said there are no red lines.
Speaker 3: Secretary Blincoln has been like.
Speaker 2: There will be no mass expulsion from the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: There will be no you know, leaving to Egypt and
Speaker 2: never coming back. There will be no mass deportation. They
Speaker 2: are going to remain in Gaza and there will be
Speaker 2: a state. Now we're a long way away from that,
Speaker 2: but that is the stated goal of US policy. So
Speaker 2: for me, that's The big story is that he's laying
Speaker 2: it out that his only future is one directly opposed
Speaker 2: to US policy. In my opinion, US interest, which it
Speaker 2: always has been to have a two state solution.
Speaker 1: Well, I would also say it's countered Israeli interest, given
Speaker 1: that you know, this direction of denying any sort of
Speaker 1: a state and propping up to US. Has that led
Speaker 1: to security for the Israeli people. I think that's clearly
Speaker 1: has not worked in that direction. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to say about this because you always hear
Speaker 1: this rhetoric about how there's no partner for peace on
Speaker 1: the Palestinian side, and of course that's always been the
Speaker 1: goal of NETNAHUO and people on the right wing of
Speaker 1: Israeli politics, which is the majority of the Israeli public
Speaker 1: at this point and have you know, been dominating politics,
Speaker 1: always say there's no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.
Speaker 1: And you know that has some legitimacy, even though Hamas
Speaker 1: actually even Hamas has now at points accepted the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven borders. But you can look at this, this is
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization like all of that. That's fair, okay,
Speaker 1: but this is pretty clear you don't have a partner
Speaker 1: for peace on the other side either. And there is
Speaker 1: such a fantasy version of Israeli politics that gets articulated
Speaker 1: by American politicians and American press. This is not a surprise.
Speaker 1: This has been Netanyahu's goal for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: He stated it plainly. The continued expansion of settlements in
Speaker 1: the West Bank. Just ask that settler that Isaac Chattner
Speaker 1: interviewed that we covered here in the show, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 1: the settlements are because we don't want a Palestinian state.
Speaker 1: And she goes on to say, it's fair very simple
Speaker 1: to understand. It is very simple to understand because the
Speaker 1: more you expand those illegal settlements, the more impossible it
Speaker 1: makes it to ever envision a Palingestadian state. The more
Speaker 1: you build up hum Us and the more you keep
Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank separate, the more
Speaker 1: that you make it impossible to have a Palestinian state.
Speaker 1: That has always been the goal of Netnyahoo. That has
Speaker 1: always been the goal even more so of his coalitional partners,
Speaker 1: who are you know. In a lot of ways, this
Speaker 1: is something that Darrel Cooper of Martin made the right
Speaker 1: wing of Israeli politics has always been more honest, honestly
Speaker 1: than the left wing or liberal part of Israeli politics.
Speaker 1: They're very upfront about this as a subtler colonial project,
Speaker 1: very upfront about, you know, what we ultimately want to see,
Speaker 1: is gazin' suspelled from the strip, any final solution for
Speaker 1: us to take back all the land. They are quite
Speaker 1: up front about their goals, and here in the US,
Speaker 1: American politicians just like put their thumbs in their ears
Speaker 1: and pretend like they're not hearing it and pretend we
Speaker 1: still live in this like fantasy land of the Oslo
Speaker 1: Accords and a quote unquote peace.
Speaker 2: Prop Yeah, so that's actually I think the big problem
Speaker 2: is most Americans as usual have a disneyfied version of
Speaker 2: basically anything that goes on abroad. If you want to
Speaker 2: look to what's going on in Israel, maybe you should
Speaker 2: ask people who's live in Israel. If you actually want
Speaker 2: to go to Israel, you maybe shouldn't go on an
Speaker 2: apac guided.
Speaker 3: Tour or your birthright.
Speaker 2: Sorry to break it to you, just going on birthright
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you actually know that much.
Speaker 3: You probably should spend some time there.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I spent
Speaker 2: a decent amount of time and I actually know people
Speaker 2: who live there and also have spoken to a pretty
Speaker 2: wide array. And then also you look to people who
Speaker 2: have spent years and years of their life and you
Speaker 2: can what quickly emerges as a very dynamic complex, politically
Speaker 2: very split even religiously split in many cases, and ethnically
Speaker 2: split society, which is why it is always so difficult
Speaker 2: to describe Israel like as a single polity. It's both
Speaker 2: a Jewish state, it's a sovereign state, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's an economic miracle, but it's also a security like nightmare,
Speaker 2: at least for the United States and for the Israeli people.
Speaker 2: So to break down really, I think this is what
Speaker 2: Daryl also brings out from the Martyr Maide podcast is
Speaker 2: he's like, look, the biggest issue is that you have
Speaker 2: these very small factions of the Israeli right and of
Speaker 2: the Palestinian right who have always at every turn resorted
Speaker 2: to violence at critical moments to derail the peace process
Speaker 2: and inflame the tensions. And that is a deeply unfortunate reality,
Speaker 2: and it reminds you of the power of these single
Speaker 2: incendiary you know, even fringe eras of society which are
Speaker 2: able to use this violence to then flare things up
Speaker 2: to a level where they make it politically impossible. You
Speaker 2: can also read the Hamas attacks in that same vein
Speaker 2: which is Hamas and the Palestinians were realizing and the
Speaker 2: pa everybody was open and honest about this, that the
Speaker 2: Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations between the Gulf
Speaker 2: Arab States and Israel was an existential threat because it
Speaker 2: meant that the Arab States would no longer even pretend
Speaker 2: that Palestinian statehood was a political.
Speaker 3: Priority for them. So what do they do.
Speaker 2: They carried out this heinous political attack. They inflamed the
Speaker 2: tensions of the Golf monarchies and of the actual populations,
Speaker 2: which are way more pro Palestine and let's be real
Speaker 2: pro terrorists than the actual Golf monarchs. And so now
Speaker 2: the monarchs are stuck in a place where they're like,
Speaker 2: we can't normalize relations.
Speaker 3: Our people hate you.
Speaker 2: And so to have them in a scenario where they're
Speaker 2: normalizing relations and there's like bilateral agreements and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: not even just in secret but out in the open,
Speaker 2: impossible now, probably for a generation at this point. So
Speaker 2: you have to always remember like what the meta context
Speaker 2: of this is, and that's where moving towards a Palestinian
Speaker 2: statehood and at least if you wanted to make that
Speaker 2: the goal, I think you would conduct your military operation
Speaker 2: very very differently.
Speaker 3: And same with the US.
Speaker 2: Part of why we are just stuck in such a
Speaker 2: rock and a hard place between our domestic political support
Speaker 2: for Israel and the geopolitical reality of what the future
Speaker 2: on the ground.
Speaker 3: There is going to look like.
Speaker 1: You can't lock people in a cage for decades and
Speaker 1: think there's not going to be some sort of response.
Speaker 1: And there have been attempts, you know, always where's the
Speaker 1: non violent Palestinian resistance? I mean, there have been real
Speaker 1: attempts at at the Great March of Return that happened
Speaker 1: that was met with you know, sniper fire and people
Speaker 1: being killed and massacred and their legs shot. That was
Speaker 1: a genuine grassroots attempt in Gaza at nonviolent resistance. And
Speaker 1: so you can't think that you're going to lock people
Speaker 1: in what has been described by many as an open
Speaker 1: air prison and what has been described by some as
Speaker 1: a concentration camp and think that there's not going to
Speaker 1: be a response. Now as to the US, and I
Speaker 1: do want to get to the immediate news here in
Speaker 1: a minute. Biden likes to feign, you know, they're leaking
Speaker 1: to the press. Oh, they're really trying behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: like he's really pressing baby and he's given them a
Speaker 1: hard time about X and Y and Z and trying
Speaker 1: to push more aid and et cetera, et cetera. This
Speaker 1: leak also reveals that any sort of gains that have
Speaker 1: been made here in terms of the hostage deal and
Speaker 1: the temporary cease fire, this didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with us. This was all because of domestic political pressure
Speaker 1: and the grassroots movement and the energy of the families
Speaker 1: of the hostages, and the pressure that they applied from
Speaker 1: day one. Say hey, my family members are in Gaza
Speaker 1: and we have to bring them home. That's what he
Speaker 1: was responding to. And then the other piece of this is,
Speaker 1: you know, all this feigned impotence, like, oh, well, we
Speaker 1: asked him really nicely, like we're really trying behind the scenes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're not willing to do the one thing that
Speaker 1: would matter, which is to say no, you're not getting
Speaker 1: our weapons, you're not getting our money. We are going
Speaker 1: to you know, we're not going to provide you endless
Speaker 1: diplomatic cover at the UN unless you conduct this operation
Speaker 1: in a way that is consistent with trying to achieve
Speaker 1: Palestinian statehood and with trying to achieve the minimal amount
Speaker 1: of civilian casualties possible. But you know, instead, the not
Speaker 1: just the words, but the deeds have been no red
Speaker 1: lines and unconditional support. The Intercept had a piece about
Speaker 1: how we lifted all the restrictions on our weapons stockpile.
Speaker 1: There's normally a process that involves, you know, really supposed
Speaker 1: careful determination of what weapons goes to whom, trying to
Speaker 1: ensure that they're not going to be used against civilians.
Speaker 1: All of that completely lifted in this conflict. Let me
Speaker 1: go ahead and get to the very latest in the news.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned now a couple times, there has been
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen, a two day extension
Speaker 1: of the ceasefire as additional hostages are released. Qatar said
Speaker 1: mediators had secured that deal to prolong the temporary truce
Speaker 1: by two days. The US is welcoming that extension and
Speaker 1: said it would like to see the pause has extended
Speaker 1: further beyond the additional two days. You guys will probably
Speaker 1: remember the deal here was initially fifty hostages for one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty Palestinians were being held in Israeli prisons.
Speaker 1: For every additional ten hostages that Hamas was able to
Speaker 1: locate and release, they were going to extend the pause
Speaker 1: for an additional day. The hostages, they go on to
Speaker 1: say here releases have received near walla wall media coverage
Speaker 1: inside of Israel, while thousands of Palestinians have gathered each
Speaker 1: evening outside off prison between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, letting
Speaker 1: off firecrackers to celebrate the prisoner's release and bolstering Hamas's
Speaker 1: political standing. So this is the absolute focus of at
Speaker 1: times right now in Israel. But again to this question,
Speaker 1: I mean, the US is getting a little uncomfortable, you
Speaker 1: might say, with the level of civilian death and atrocities
Speaker 1: that have been committed here, and so there's a push
Speaker 1: for let's extend the ceasefire as long as possible. But
Speaker 1: the Israelis are very clear that this is not the
Speaker 1: end of their bombing campaign. Israeli Defense Minister, you havev
Speaker 1: Glant go ahead and put this up on the screen,
Speaker 1: says that it will be bigger. The fighting when it
Speaker 1: resumes will be bigger and take place around the Gaza Strip. Quote.
Speaker 1: The enemy will meet first the bombs of the air force,
Speaker 1: and after the shells of the tanks and the artillery
Speaker 1: in the scoops of the D nine bulldozers and finally
Speaker 1: gunfire of the infantry troops. We will fight in the
Speaker 1: entire strip. So, of course, the initial bombing campaign was
Speaker 1: throughout the entire strip, but concentrated on the northern part
Speaker 1: of Gaza, which has now been effectively completely destroyed and
Speaker 1: rendered uninhabitable. People are told to flee to the south.
Speaker 1: They're now being told to move to what is a
Speaker 1: very small part of the south for this expansion, planned
Speaker 1: expansion of the bombing campaign. As they've now said, Ohamas
Speaker 1: leaders have moved to the southern part of the strip
Speaker 1: and located in Conunis. So that is the plan for
Speaker 1: the military campaign going forward. Effectively no end in sight
Speaker 1: as far as they're concerned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, And this just kind of brings us
Speaker 2: back to what we're talking about in terms of the
Speaker 2: political realities of the future. If we can put the
Speaker 2: next part please up on the screen. Can the Palestinian
Speaker 2: authority really govern Gaza after the war. This was written
Speaker 2: by Stephen Erlinger. He's a fantastic reporter. I've followed him
Speaker 2: for many, many years, the foreign correspondent currently working over
Speaker 2: at the New York Times. But what I think he
Speaker 2: hits on correctly is that a boss, the PA have
Speaker 2: never had less political legitimacy than at this time. That
Speaker 2: the over the goal from two thousand and five onward
Speaker 2: to establish the PAS a legitimate governing authority mostly propped
Speaker 2: up by the United States and the international community, not
Speaker 2: really by the actual Palestinian people, and then you know,
Speaker 2: docilely accepted ish by the Israeli government has actually made
Speaker 2: it so that the entire generation that's grown up under
Speaker 2: them feels as if they are not advocating for their
Speaker 2: interests and are instead either puppets or props of the
Speaker 2: West and over or docile companions of these roels, which
Speaker 2: I can understand.
Speaker 1: I don't think they just feel that way. I think
Speaker 1: that is the reality.
Speaker 2: I'm only describing how they would put it in the
Speaker 2: kindest possible way. The problem, you know, and this was
Speaker 2: the dream really of Oslo to have legitimate political representation,
Speaker 2: and then the falling apart of that dream two thousand
Speaker 2: and five early onward, has made it so that the
Speaker 2: US dream of simply installing some sort of pa government
Speaker 2: over the Gaza strip really bears any question of whether
Speaker 2: the population would accept it, because many of the Gazans
Speaker 2: who now have been through this horrific ordeal, and while
Speaker 2: they may not support Hamas, and in fact, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of indication about Hamas support and all
Speaker 2: of that that it's not nearly as iron clad as
Speaker 2: everybody says. You know, Everyone's like, oh, well, they've voted
Speaker 2: them in seventeen years ago. I'm like, yeah, well it's
Speaker 2: been seventeen years. And they've also been rife with corruption,
Speaker 2: They've siphoned off aid for themselves, They've enriched themselves to
Speaker 2: the tunes of millions of dollars and built all of
Speaker 2: these tunnels. The population, arguably nobody has suffered more than
Speaker 2: the actual Gossens who have lived under Hamas rule, many
Speaker 2: of whom are not fundamentalist Islamic. You know, they're not
Speaker 2: fundamental fundamentalist Muslims either. This is a very very different population.
Speaker 2: So put that all of that aside, they are and
Speaker 2: any any sovereign nation wants legitimate political representation. And that
Speaker 2: is just where the big question of what can operationalize
Speaker 2: the wants and the needs and the desires of these
Speaker 2: two point two million which is acceptable to them and
Speaker 2: also acceptable to the international community, and that is it
Speaker 2: just does not appear to be what the pile stony
Speaker 2: authority is. And then you run into the same Iraq problem,
Speaker 2: where any authority which is deemed acceptable to the West
Speaker 2: and or to Israel is automatically seen as a puppet
Speaker 2: that will have no actual governance capability. And then people
Speaker 2: either don't show up to the elections or they support,
Speaker 2: you know, Islamic terrorism like the Sunnis did in Iraq,
Speaker 2: and they had no legitimacy in terms of the Iraqi elections,
Speaker 2: and then the only legitimately elected Iraqi leaders end up
Speaker 2: being people who are hopelessly corrupt and can only stay
Speaker 2: in power by giving the finger to America, even though
Speaker 2: they ones who are pay all of their bills. We
Speaker 2: ran into this in Karzai, with Karzai in Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: his eventual successors. We ran into this very basically every
Speaker 2: person who ruled over Iraq all the way up until today.
Speaker 2: I think we're running into the same problem right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Palestime, the PA basically cooperates with the
Speaker 1: Israeli security, and so in the West Bank where you
Speaker 1: have you know, repeated settler incursions and violence pushing Palestinians
Speaker 1: off their land, and the people who are supposed to
Speaker 1: represent there are nowhere in sight to protect them from this, Like,
Speaker 1: of course, how are they going to feel about that?
Speaker 1: And so you do have this dichotomy of you'll see
Speaker 1: some polls that are like, oh, Palstinians overwhelmingly support Hamas,
Speaker 1: and then you'll see other indications to your pointing to
Speaker 1: Sagaa's like actually, no, they're very frustrated with Hamas because
Speaker 1: of their failures of governance and just like basic you know,
Speaker 1: ability to live your life and you know, be able
Speaker 1: to get food and a job for your family, et cetera. Well,
Speaker 1: those are basically they're only two political option, putting aside
Speaker 1: a lot of smaller parties. So you've got either Fatah,
Speaker 1: which is you know, PA and is effectively an Israeli collaborator,
Speaker 1: or you've got Hamas. I thought this article was really
Speaker 1: interesting because they actually talked to Palestinians about how they
Speaker 1: view the political situation. They spoke with it. A housewife,
Speaker 1: a thirty year old housewife from Ramala that's in the
Speaker 1: West Bank, asked if the Palestinian authority could run Gaza.
Speaker 1: She said absolutely not. The PA is just sitting she said,
Speaker 1: with many years without elections. The one who does for
Speaker 1: the people should be in charge of the people, she added,
Speaker 1: referring to Hamas. They also talked about you know the
Speaker 1: reason that Hamas gains support because if you look at
Speaker 1: support for violent resistance versus more moderate forces throughout Palestinian history,
Speaker 1: what you see is when peace is being negotiated, it's
Speaker 1: the legitimate possibility. You see support for the armed violent
Speaker 1: resistance plummet when there's an actual prospect of real peace.
Speaker 1: So this article points out the failure to reach a
Speaker 1: negotiated piece has made the other obvious alternative, that of
Speaker 1: armed Palestinian resistance is really occupation, more acceptable and popular.
Speaker 1: Go on to quote a moderate Palestinian who is the
Speaker 1: president of Al Kud's University. From the Palestinian point of view,
Speaker 1: he said, October seventh, look like a miracle. This fortress
Speaker 1: Israel suddenly seemed vulnerable. This professor goes on to say
Speaker 1: that he abhors the violence that was perpetrated, but was
Speaker 1: clear about the impact. Who is Palestinian leadership now it's Hamas,
Speaker 1: like it or not. At the moment, Hamas is seen
Speaker 1: by Palestinians as the foremost representative of Palestinian interests and
Speaker 1: why because no one else is. The PA does not
Speaker 1: figure in people's minds. Another prominent Palestatim Polster, sent his
Speaker 1: latest survey, not yet published, sixty six percent of pilstatings
Speaker 1: in the West Bank regard the PA as a burden.
Speaker 1: These are the people that we want to put in
Speaker 1: charge of everybody. Everyone already hates them. Some eighty five
Speaker 1: percent went mak Muda Bas, who is the head, to resign,
Speaker 1: and that means more than sixty percent of his own
Speaker 1: rank and file in Fatah want him to go. So
Speaker 1: what they're saying is that one of the only possible
Speaker 1: potential political solutions would be an agreement to disarm Humas
Speaker 1: and actually bring them in as part of a more
Speaker 1: legitimate governing coalition, because the PA has no legitimate legitimacy whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And that's all that is left. And in fact, if
Speaker 1: you put this next piece up on the screen, there
Speaker 1: are Arab leaders who are trying right now to get
Speaker 1: Hummas to lay down their arms. They're saying like, listen,
Speaker 1: you stand no chance. You may as well lay down
Speaker 1: your arms now before they are destroyed, before you are destroyed.
Speaker 1: And they also suggested that should Humas disarm, they could
Speaker 1: join the leadership of the PLO as a purely political party.
Speaker 1: So this is an active conversation. There's one other piece, Sagger,
Speaker 1: that I want to mention before I get your reaction
Speaker 1: to all of this, which is, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, oh, who could be the you know,
Speaker 1: who could be the head who has legitimacy among the
Speaker 1: Palestining people, who's a possible leader here? And the person
Speaker 1: that I keep seeing brought up is Marlon Bargudi, who
Speaker 1: is right now being held in Israeli prison because of
Speaker 1: his involvement with the Second Intifada. But this is someone
Speaker 1: who has, unlike Mankmoudabas, he is not a mus and
Speaker 1: he has widespread support and legitimacy among the Palestining people.
Speaker 1: So if you're actually serious about a potential you know,
Speaker 1: post war government, he would seem like a logical potential choice.
Speaker 2: Problem with all this is it makes sense on paper,
Speaker 2: and if you were to ask me how this will
Speaker 2: eventually end up. Decades from now, It'll probably look like this.
Speaker 2: The issue is that through all of human history, it's
Speaker 2: the bitterest pill on earth to swallow, to look a
Speaker 2: man in the face who's tried to call you and
Speaker 2: who ordered people who.
Speaker 3: You know, is death.
Speaker 2: And the only really way to get there is a
Speaker 2: ton more death. And I don't condone it, but that's honestly,
Speaker 2: that's the reality. For the Israelis to accept something like that,
Speaker 2: they are going to have to go through a brutal
Speaker 2: occupation regime. They're gonna have to exhaust every other possibility
Speaker 2: force it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we a we would have.
Speaker 2: Even if we force it, I'm not sure they could
Speaker 2: accept it at this current moment or even in the
Speaker 2: next year or even two years. The memories of October seventh,
Speaker 2: ay are just going to be too big to swallow.
Speaker 2: But twenty years from now, in the same way, the
Speaker 2: US commanders who spent their entire careers trying to kill
Speaker 2: the Taliban eventually found I mean, imagine, you know, an
Speaker 2: insane situation where you have the commander of Scentcom whose
Speaker 2: entire job was to kill Taliban, then on the phone
Speaker 2: with the Taliban negotiating an exit from Kabble. That's a
Speaker 2: surreal moment, but honestly, that's mostly how those things end up.
Speaker 2: Even in the First World War, if you ever look
Speaker 2: at any sort of negotiated solution where you don't have
Speaker 2: unconditional surrender, it just takes like millions and millions of
Speaker 2: people to die for people to even entertain the possibility
Speaker 2: of sitting across from people who have tried to kill
Speaker 2: you in the past.
Speaker 3: Obviously, that's really unfortunate.
Speaker 2: I however, though, in the same way that those those
Speaker 2: conflicts were easily foreseen as how they would eventually end up,
Speaker 2: this one also just seems very very obvious to me.
Speaker 3: It just seems that politically it's going to be incredibly difficult.
Speaker 2: It would take America to force it, and it would
Speaker 2: take Israel honestly suffering a tremendous loss either in soldiers
Speaker 2: or in economic costs, and possibly both before they could
Speaker 2: entertain it. And of course Natanyahu would have to be
Speaker 2: long long gone ye before you could get to it,
Speaker 2: which is part of why I think it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's even worse because you just know how much of
Speaker 2: a Gordian knot that this is going to remain and around,
Speaker 2: I think all of international politics for honestly decades, decades
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 3: Well, i'll see how it can end.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I agree with you that it seems impossible to imagine, yeah,
Speaker 1: that out of this just I actually get a peace
Speaker 1: broad and we actually get a two state solution and
Speaker 1: you know, rights for Palestinians. But there's also no doubt
Speaker 1: in my mind that even if you're just if, even
Speaker 1: if you just care about security for israelis that's the
Speaker 1: direction we should go in, because you can't keep people
Speaker 1: locked up, you know, you can't keep them in this
Speaker 1: apartheid system in the West Bank with settler violence and
Speaker 1: continued incursions on their land. You can't keep the indefinite blockade.
Speaker 1: You can't keep destroying them and mowing them and mowing
Speaker 1: the grass and these horrific wars and think that this
Speaker 1: is going to provide peace and security for your own people.
Speaker 1: At the same time, there's new reporting about internal dissent
Speaker 1: within the White House about the way that they have
Speaker 1: provided unconditional support to Israel, both publicly and through their actions.
Speaker 1: As we were saying before, this was a really interesting
Speaker 1: and revealing piece of reporting. Put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen from the Washington Post. They start off by talking
Speaker 1: about how earlier this month, a group of about twenty
Speaker 1: distressed White House staffers requested a meeting with Biden's top advisors.
Speaker 1: The diverse group had three main issues they wanted to discuss,
Speaker 1: and this was with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Science,
Speaker 1: Senior Advisor and Needed Done Deputy National Secure Already Advisor
Speaker 1: John Feiner. They wanted to know the administration's strategy for
Speaker 1: curbing the number of civilian deaths, the message it plans
Speaker 1: to send on the conflict, and its post war vision
Speaker 1: for the region. The aides, they say, listen respectfully, but
Speaker 1: participants felt that they fell back on familiar talking points
Speaker 1: and basically did nothing to alleviate their concerns in this
Speaker 1: private meeting. There's some interesting details here about why Biden
Speaker 1: has gone in the direction that he's gone, and it
Speaker 1: harkens back to what Boebe was saying about a I've
Speaker 1: known this guy for forty years. I can control him.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. That's why you got to keep
Speaker 1: me in place. Biden went and visited Israel back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three and met with then Prime Minister Goldemeier.
Speaker 1: And at the time, you know, Israel was a very
Speaker 1: different state politically, it was basically left leaning. It was
Speaker 1: you know, much less of a sort of military behemoth
Speaker 1: as than it is now. Now it is this incredibly
Speaker 1: right wing state with the you know, the occupation war,
Speaker 1: vicious and brutal than it's ever been. But he still
Speaker 1: has this like nostalgic view of his trip there and
Speaker 1: meeting with gold in my ear. So that's part of
Speaker 1: I mean, this classic Biden, right, that's part.
Speaker 3: Of my life think. But it's not funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, he has not updated his view since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, is basically the view that you come away with.
Speaker 1: Biden aids are admitting that this is kind of a disaster.
Speaker 1: The division inside the White House is to some degree
Speaker 1: between Biden's senior longtime aids, they say, in an array
Speaker 1: of younger staffers of diverse backgrounds. But even top advisors
Speaker 1: say they recognize the conflict has hurt America's global standing. Quote,
Speaker 1: we are taking on a lot of water on Israel's behalf.
Speaker 1: So even the people who are most inclined to back
Speaker 1: Biden's support of this war on Gaza, even they know
Speaker 1: this has been really bad for us. And there's one
Speaker 1: other piece here that I wanted to lay out that
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention. You guys might remember Biden
Speaker 1: called into question the debt counts coming out of Gaza,
Speaker 1: and you know, really trying to un the idea that
Speaker 1: there has been just mass civilian death in this indiscriminated
Speaker 1: bombing campaign, including seventy percent women and children who'd been
Speaker 1: killed here. Apparently he has, they say, at times, wrestled
Speaker 1: with his own emotions regarding the war. On October twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: he voice skepticism about that Gaza death toll. He says,
Speaker 1: I have no notion about the Palace about that the
Speaker 1: Palestinans are telling the truth about how many people are killed.
Speaker 1: The very next day, Biden met with five prominent Muslim
Speaker 1: Americans who protested what they saw is his insensitivity to
Speaker 1: the civilians who were dying. All spoke of people they
Speaker 1: knew who had been affected by the suffering and gods,
Speaker 1: including a woman who had lost one hundred members of
Speaker 1: her family, and he appeared to be affected by their account.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm sorry, I'm disappointed in myself, he told
Speaker 1: the group, accordinated to people familiar with the meeting, I
Speaker 1: will do better. Meeting was supposed to be thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: ended up lasting for an hour or so. Even behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, even he admitted that he was wrong to
Speaker 1: call into question the rate of civilian death that is
Speaker 1: unfolding in Gaza.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the thing is is, instead of trusting
Speaker 2: the Gaza health Ministry or any of that, we have
Speaker 2: just looked to what Israeli sources are saying. And these
Speaker 2: Raelies are like, yeah, it's between ten to twenty thousand.
Speaker 2: That's what these rerely military says. So even if you
Speaker 2: don't believe them, you should believe the others. And you know,
Speaker 2: my thing is, I instinctally am in a distrust most
Speaker 2: of what is put out by either of these parties.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that reporting wise was Ryan
Speaker 2: Graham just going and checking the names of people who
Speaker 2: acclaimed dead and then going, I think that's actually a
Speaker 2: journalistic possibility, and.
Speaker 3: The others it's not sure why more people haven't looked
Speaker 3: into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, yeah, leave it to Ryan, just like,
Speaker 1: let me make this actually shack oh. Turns out it
Speaker 1: was accurate, if anything was understating the deaths. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can also look at past conflicts where the same
Speaker 1: Gaza health ministry run by Humas was accurate more or
Speaker 1: less in their accounts. So you know, we have history
Speaker 1: to judge by. So in any case, it shows you
Speaker 1: that even within the White House, despite their bluster and
Speaker 1: their continued insistence on like staying the course with unconditional support,
Speaker 1: even the people who most support this direction know that
Speaker 1: in terms of world standing and in terms of the politics,
Speaker 1: it's been an utter disaster.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, referencing earlier book that I had had
Speaker 2: here in the work of John Meyerscheimer, he called all
Speaker 2: of this a long, long time ago. He's actually done
Speaker 2: a couple of podcasts working on trying to get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'd like to have I really would like to.
Speaker 2: I haven't said with him because he was a a big,
Speaker 2: a big influence on my thinking around this subject and
Speaker 2: has basically on every subject for a long time.
Speaker 1: So at the same time, we wanted to give you
Speaker 1: an update out of Vermont. You may have been following
Speaker 1: the story already put this up on the screenect. A
Speaker 1: suspect has been arrested in the shooting of three men
Speaker 1: of Palestiniane Descent. This occurred near the University of Vermont.
Speaker 1: That suspect has already now pled not guilty to the shooting.
Speaker 1: Two of the victims here are in stable condition. The
Speaker 1: third is being treated for more serious injuries. The suspect
Speaker 1: who was arrested is named Jason Eaton. He is forty
Speaker 1: eight years old. Made his initial court appearance. This is
Speaker 1: now being investigated as a hate crime. The FBI and
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are assisting
Speaker 1: Vermont authorities in that investigation. And basically what happened here
Speaker 1: is these three men who are from Palestine, from the
Speaker 1: West Bank. They were actually out walking in Burlington. They
Speaker 1: were going to one of their grandmother's house for Thanksgiving dinner.
Speaker 1: They'd gone bowling, they were just coming back. Two of
Speaker 1: them were wearing the Kafia scarves, which are synonymous with
Speaker 1: Palestine and with the Palestinian liberation struggle as well, so
Speaker 1: they were easily identifiable as Palestinian or Arab. They were speaking,
Speaker 1: they said a mix of sort of Arab and English,
Speaker 1: and this person came out and shot them. We now
Speaker 1: have a little bit of details about I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody goes in scripts social media accounts to see what
Speaker 1: they can figure out about who this person is, and
Speaker 1: you know what possible motive you could potentially discern here
Speaker 1: from their actions. Put this up on the screen. In
Speaker 1: a now locked account on x, Jason Eaton described himself
Speaker 1: as a radical system citizen who patrols democracy misspelled with
Speaker 1: a K, and capitalism for oath creepers. His banner image
Speaker 1: features bold texts saying libertarians want trans furries to be
Speaker 1: able to protect their cannabis farms with unregistered machine guns. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of any of that.
Speaker 1: His archive posts are apparently a little more moderated. He's
Speaker 1: got a lot of criticism of the IRS and the FED,
Speaker 1: describes himself as a libertarian, expresses support for both democratic
Speaker 1: and Republican lawmakers. He also had a substack, the one
Speaker 1: that remains up. There is apparently some long dissertation on
Speaker 1: how restaurants can keep dishwashers employed. But there were a
Speaker 1: lot of previous substack posts that were apparently deleted. Some
Speaker 1: of them were anti vacs. There was one that was
Speaker 1: titled thought crime that Weis describes as an anti vax
Speaker 1: screed that labels COVID nineteen as a government conspiracy, the
Speaker 1: scale and the scope of this operation with the next level,
Speaker 1: he wrote. They also were able the Daily Beast was
Speaker 1: able to talk to his mother, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of headlines that were all about like how is mom.
Speaker 1: Sophy's a great guy, which was not a great way
Speaker 1: to leave these pieces, but anyway, she said they just
Speaker 1: spent Thanksgiving together, saw nothing amiss with her son. Made
Speaker 1: no reference to the Israel Hamas conflict, which has of
Speaker 1: course been sharply polarizing, but she did say that he
Speaker 1: had struggles with mental health in the past and described
Speaker 1: him as a quote very religious person who regularly reads
Speaker 1: the Bible and finds connection to various religious figures. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of everything we know at this.
Speaker 3: That's what we know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we don't yet have a motive that has
Speaker 2: been released by Burlington PD. Really what struck out to me, Crystal,
Speaker 2: is everything about this and we were actually finally talking
Speaker 2: about this before the show. Anytime you're in a position
Speaker 2: like this, you're kind of a magnet for schizophrenia. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you how many times I've received a scribbled
Speaker 2: of dossier's in the mail and other things with delusions
Speaker 2: of connections, and you know, I've seen it all from
Speaker 2: QAnon to others, and really what stuck out to me
Speaker 2: was this quote religiously reads the Bible and finds connections
Speaker 2: to various religious figure figures. Nothing wrong at that per se,
Speaker 2: but it's also a textbook symptom of schizophrenic or schizophrenic
Speaker 2: type behavior, especially when he's got exactly when the mom says,
Speaker 2: you have mental health issues. Maybe he's been undiagnosed, but
Speaker 2: belief in conspiracy, the ramblings, unable to hold a job
Speaker 2: if he indicates he was a dishwasher, and the best
Speaker 2: way to treat them, these are exactly the type of
Speaker 2: people will float.
Speaker 1: He was Actually he was actually a like financial consultant
Speaker 1: in some way, and so he was giving advice to
Speaker 1: business owners in that stop Dac post. He wasn't coming
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the dishwasher. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: didn't read the post. That's just how it was characterized
Speaker 1: in this piece. But you know, when you have three
Speaker 1: men college students who two of them are wearing the Kafia,
Speaker 1: just walking down the street talking to each other, going
Speaker 1: to Grandma's house with Thanksgiving, and someone comes out and
Speaker 1: you know, wantonly tries to kill them. Of course, this
Speaker 1: is going to raise questions about whether this was a
Speaker 1: targeted hate because of their race and because of their religion.
Speaker 1: So that's what it's being investigated as. And that's effectively
Speaker 1: what we know about it at this point. And thank goodness,
Speaker 1: they're all three alive, although as I said, one of
Speaker 1: them is in really serious condition.
Speaker 2: One of them is a serious condition. Yeah, and will
Speaker 2: bear out the investigation. Is what we said yesterday. By
Speaker 2: the way, is you know, with all these things, probably
Speaker 2: just better to wait for information and to characterize it
Speaker 2: responsibly rather than just rushing to judgment, unlike Fox News
Speaker 2: with their Canadian terrorist attack that ended up just being
Speaker 2: a high speed car crash. Let's move on to the economy.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on in the world, not only
Speaker 2: of inflation of grocery prices and all of that, but
Speaker 2: of course around the election, because how people feel about
Speaker 2: the economy is usually the single biggest determinant of how
Speaker 2: they will eventually end up voting and or not voting.
Speaker 2: So for President Biden, the economy remains a problem. What
Speaker 2: have they done for that? Have they instituted policies or
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time talking and thinking about it. No, instead,
Speaker 2: there is a new it seems effort. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. Actually reported by our friend
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein, where in response to a viral sixteen dollars
Speaker 2: McDonald's meal that is explaining voter anger at Biden, they
Speaker 2: say a White House official says, the administration is now
Speaker 2: working with TikTok creators to tell positive stories of Biden's
Speaker 2: economic stewardship, while also working with the social media platforms
Speaker 2: to quote counter misinformation. And so anytime we see government
Speaker 2: working with social media platforms counter misinformation, we have course
Speaker 2: have to ask what in misinformation? And it brings me
Speaker 2: back to Ken Klippenstein's report about the Department of Misinformation
Speaker 2: within the DHS, where they would both they would try
Speaker 2: and label in the same bucket of misinformation stuff about
Speaker 2: COVID having microchips, with criticism of the Afghan withdrawal. And
Speaker 2: you're like, well, hold on a second here, one of
Speaker 2: those may be misinformation, the other one is a legitimate
Speaker 2: political critique. And having watched now the viral TikTok with you, Crystal,
Speaker 2: what does the guy say, He goes, can you believe this.
Speaker 3: Here's my receipt of McDonald's.
Speaker 2: Here's a burger, a soda, and some fries that costs
Speaker 2: me sixteen dollars.
Speaker 3: Where is the misinformation in that? Nothing?
Speaker 2: And in fact, you know, I see these sometimes too,
Speaker 2: just because I also, I guess this is where my
Speaker 2: mind goes around. Like egg prices in the grocery store.
Speaker 2: That's not misinformation. And when people make reels or tiktoks
Speaker 2: or whatever about them, it's because they feel as I do.
Speaker 2: When have you ever seen eggs that cost ten dollars
Speaker 2: before in your whole life. I just saw it yesterday,
Speaker 2: ten dollars and ninety two cents. It's burned into my memory.
Speaker 2: They're pastor raised eggs. To be fair, they're the most
Speaker 2: expensive of whatever ones on the shelf.
Speaker 3: But I'm skipping them.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no way, I'm not paying eleven dollars for
Speaker 2: twelve and that's almost a dollar an egg. That's insane.
Speaker 2: I mean the cheaper ones were like four bucks, I
Speaker 2: think something like that. And the same thing. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I understand the prices can go up, you know, over time,
Speaker 2: but we're talking about in the rapid, in a rapid
Speaker 2: period of three years, you saw a year over year
Speaker 2: inflation come to like forty fifty sixty percent in the
Speaker 2: case of some goods, especially whenever it comes to staples
Speaker 2: like beef, and especially like beef eggs, and then many
Speaker 2: other animal based products which for a variety of supply
Speaker 2: based constraint reasons and inflation and all of that have
Speaker 2: just gone way up, combined with restaurant bills which have
Speaker 2: skyrocketed from both the input costs going up and labor.
Speaker 2: So the point of all of this is to say,
Speaker 2: it's not misinformation, it's a real concern, and actually just
Speaker 2: to show you what I guess they're trying to push
Speaker 2: back against.
Speaker 3: There was a TikTok that went very viral of a nurse.
Speaker 2: Who's living in Pennsylvania who described, I think of what
Speaker 2: a lot of Americans are feeling currently at this moment,
Speaker 2: which is why I touched a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 5: I feel like my husband and I are doing everything right.
Speaker 5: We both have good jobs. I'm a nurse. I'm a
Speaker 5: registered nurse who worked full time. He works full time.
Speaker 5: We just got paid this past Friday, right, we paid
Speaker 5: the mortgage, bought some groceries. Put some gas in the car. Guys,
Speaker 5: it is Tuesday, and we have like two or three
Speaker 5: to last does until next Friday. I don't I don't
Speaker 5: know what to do. I'm in school full time, I
Speaker 5: work full time. He works more than full time. He
Speaker 5: works overtime every week. This isn't how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 5: Growing up, we were told, you know, go to college,
Speaker 5: get a degree, work to support your family. Here we
Speaker 5: are did that.
Speaker 2: Now what I feel a lot of sympathy for her, because,
Speaker 2: you know, let's think about some of the line items
Speaker 2: in this woman's budget. She's talking about mortgage. Now, she
Speaker 2: lives in Pennsylvania. It's not even a particularly expensive state,
Speaker 2: at least if you compare it to other people in
Speaker 2: the East Coast. I just looked it up gas There
Speaker 2: is three dollars and fifty six cents a gallon on average,
Speaker 2: which is quite high. It's on the higher end for
Speaker 2: the United States. Then, really, what she mentioned she mentioned
Speaker 2: her schooling, and I think why that hits a nerve
Speaker 2: is she probably works in one of the best industries
Speaker 2: that you can work in in the United States, nursing. Nursing,
Speaker 2: there's a shortage of nurses right now. They get paid
Speaker 2: all kinds of money. And what she's talking about is,
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume on her part, her and her
Speaker 2: husband a six figure income, two working adults, and I
Speaker 2: think it just bears really out the entire two income
Speaker 2: trap from that we Elizabeth Warren wrote about a long
Speaker 2: time ago, but of runaway inflation, cost for housing, for schooling,
Speaker 2: and then food, and you put those three cores of
Speaker 2: society together and you get a breaking point of like
Speaker 2: what that woman felt like and again, why it went
Speaker 2: off and took viralis I just think millions of people
Speaker 2: feel exactly the same. And you know, it's not right.
Speaker 2: It's not like she doesn't look like a profligate spent. Look,
Speaker 2: we don't know our financial situation, right, but if what
Speaker 2: she's saying is true, and she's just you know, those
Speaker 2: are the major line items in there, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: have to assume schooling is taking out a ton of that,
Speaker 2: and that's wrong.
Speaker 3: It's not supposed to be that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean, even if you put the current
Speaker 1: inflation aside, school, healthcare, housing, and kids, how guy rocketed
Speaker 1: in costs and those are like the basic bedrocks of
Speaker 1: feeling like you have a stable, potentially middle class life,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, people are stretch incredibly thin. And even
Speaker 1: if she's lying and she's acting and this isn't true
Speaker 1: or whatever, even if this is technically fake news, you
Speaker 1: can just go and look and look at the statistics
Speaker 1: and know that there are millions and millions of Americans
Speaker 1: who are working two jobs, or a husband and a
Speaker 1: wife for both working, and they're trying to raise the kids,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to do everything right and they're still
Speaker 1: barely making it paycheck to paycheck. And you know, to
Speaker 1: get back to Jeff Stein's piece about the sixteen dollars
Speaker 1: McDonald's meal and the White House effort to combat misinformation
Speaker 1: about the economy, et cetera, et cetera, it really gets
Speaker 1: to this core debate of like, are Americans how what
Speaker 1: is the reality of the economy? Are Americans being influenced
Speaker 1: by social media to think it's really bad? Or is
Speaker 1: there something real here? And if you just look at
Speaker 1: the course of the Biden administration, and I've said this
Speaker 1: a million times, let me just say it again. The beginning,
Speaker 1: some relief gets passed for COVID. If you look at
Speaker 1: the statistics in terms of during the COVID period, when
Speaker 1: you had this much larger social safety net that was erected,
Speaker 1: and you had child tax credits going out, you had
Speaker 1: direct checks going out, you had beefed up unemployment insurance,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Guess what, those things really helped people. The
Speaker 1: student loan debt pause, those things really really help people.
Speaker 1: And the story of the Biden Ma instration has been
Speaker 1: deconstructing all of that social safety net. So is it
Speaker 1: any wonder then that people then look and say, I'm
Speaker 1: doing worse off now. Of course you are because all
Speaker 1: of the things that were helping you and that we're
Speaker 1: bolstering your income and giving you a little bit extra
Speaker 1: in your savings account, all of those things are gone.
Speaker 1: And in addition, prices have gotten much higher. So to me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's no mystery. And I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: find things that are inaccurate that are being told online
Speaker 1: about the economy, et cetera, et cetera. But there's a
Speaker 1: reason why people feel the way they do, and it's
Speaker 1: not because they're crazy or because they are brainwashed. And
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, we have this piece that we
Speaker 1: can show you with some of the numbers here. Americans
Speaker 1: are getting very close to maxing out their credit cards.
Speaker 1: Because this is one of the mysteries is people say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we know that they're really like they're lying about the
Speaker 1: economy or they're fooled about the economy because they're still
Speaker 1: spending a lot of money. Well, perhaps this will help
Speaker 1: you solve the mystery. Bracking up a lot of debt
Speaker 1: to continue to spend that money. American borrowers are getting
Speaker 1: closer to maxing out. This is per the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: They say all of this highlights that some Americans spending
Speaker 1: habits might not be sustainable, at least when it comes
Speaker 1: to their credit cards. Some people might be starting to
Speaker 1: consume more of their available credit from month to month
Speaker 1: could hit the wall once those lines are exhausted. Recent
Speaker 1: note published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found
Speaker 1: that as of July, consumers with annual household incomes of
Speaker 1: less than fifty K whose accounts were delinquent we're on
Speaker 1: average utilizing eighty to ninety percent of their available credit.
Speaker 1: Of course, that leaves them with a tiny cushion, and
Speaker 1: across all cardholder income groups, as of July, the ratio
Speaker 1: of outstanding card account balance to the account's credit limit
Speaker 1: was way was above February twenty twenty levels. So you
Speaker 1: have this indication that people are having to use more
Speaker 1: of their available credit and effectively max out their credit
Speaker 1: cards to be able to maintain what they have been
Speaker 1: doing over this time period.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, and that just means more keying up with
Speaker 2: the Joneses, and then more feeling like that paying the
Speaker 2: minimums and feeling perpetually like well.
Speaker 1: May not even keeping up with the jones is just
Speaker 1: being able to keep up.
Speaker 2: I think it's ahead about the wall probably makes it well,
Speaker 2: depending on the income strata that they were looking at. Here,
Speaker 2: if you're one hundred k and you're starting to lose
Speaker 2: use a lot more, although you know, I'm assuming that
Speaker 2: the to nurse and somebody else is working more than
Speaker 2: full time is probably making somewhere in that range. Whenever
Speaker 2: you start to feel like that and the walls close in,
Speaker 2: that's whenever you make desperate decisions, and that's really whenever
Speaker 2: you can make life changing financial decisions that will have
Speaker 2: a massive impact on you for decades to come. This
Speaker 2: is always be my biggest beef, which student debt. Most
Speaker 2: of the people have no idea what they're even signing
Speaker 2: up for, and many of their parents are you know,
Speaker 2: didn't experience the same cost and so emotionally can't really
Speaker 2: understand what it means to have twenty five years of
Speaker 2: debt hanging.
Speaker 1: Over you and you're told like this is the way
Speaker 1: to do it. Yes, like this, I get it to
Speaker 1: you're you know, to you making it and being in
Speaker 1: the middle class.
Speaker 2: I don't blame anybody involved except for the government and
Speaker 2: the debt preveyer. So it's not the actual people taking
Speaker 2: it out, although a lot of people do like to
Speaker 2: switch that. The overall lesson of this, though, is that
Speaker 2: when you're getting closer and closer to maxing out is
Speaker 2: you eventually do face some sort of penalty. And so
Speaker 2: the way the Wall Street Journal posts this is like, oh,
Speaker 2: it could be good for retailers because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: in the short term, but what about six months from now?
Speaker 3: What about a year from now, Like, whenever you're max
Speaker 3: to the max, what.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna do, maybe you're not gonna get any
Speaker 2: more credit? What about next holiday season? And look, I'm
Speaker 2: not naive, I know in America, eventually, you know, things
Speaker 2: usually move around and full blown collapse and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But every piece that you look at at a consumer level,
Speaker 2: the government is like, you're doing better off than ever.
Speaker 2: Everyone just yesterday was talking making fun of Americans for
Speaker 2: feeling bad because yesterday Sunday was the biggest travel day.
Speaker 3: In the history of the United States. According to TSA.
Speaker 2: It's as if they haven't heard of putting a flight
Speaker 2: on a credit card, right just because you know it
Speaker 2: just maybe this spent three years locked in home and
Speaker 2: you have a relative across the country. Actually met some
Speaker 2: people like this when I was in San Diego for Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: and they were like, you know what, now's the time.
Speaker 2: And it's not necessarily because you have the money. It's
Speaker 2: because you've been separated from your relatives or your family,
Speaker 2: or you wanted to go do something for so long
Speaker 2: until you decide that now is the appropriate time.
Speaker 3: Money can be a constraint.
Speaker 2: But don't forget also about the trauma that I think
Speaker 2: a lot of Americans have been through over the last
Speaker 2: couple of years. So long wave of saying it's not misinformation,
Speaker 2: White House, it's an actual economic problem. Let's move on
Speaker 2: to the next part here, a topic I know so
Speaker 2: many of you are so interested in let's put this
Speaker 2: police up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: An indication at the very basic level, and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of what we'll actually talk about today about economic feeling
Speaker 2: and others is housing, and the housing market right now
Speaker 2: is just the worst of all worlds. You have high
Speaker 2: prices and high interest rates. You have also a feeling
Speaker 2: for a lot of people of being trapped because home
Speaker 2: sales have now fallen to a thirteen year low in October,
Speaker 2: the lowest since two thy eleven. And from these economic forecasts,
Speaker 2: what you're seeing is that while there has been a
Speaker 2: slight dip in price, high rates have predominantly had the
Speaker 2: effect not of pushing down prices, but instead of locking
Speaker 2: home owners in to where they currently are and refusing
Speaker 2: to move.
Speaker 3: This has a lot of issues.
Speaker 2: One, if you are in the entry of the housing market,
Speaker 2: there's probably never been a worst time to try and
Speaker 2: buy a house with a high, high interest rate and
Speaker 2: with a high price. Two, So you decide to rent
Speaker 2: a couple more years than you would have in the
Speaker 2: past when you had if you had the down payment
Speaker 2: and the ability to buy, well, what does that do
Speaker 2: That causes rent inflation to continue to go up? And
Speaker 2: lo and behold, every single time you look at the CPI,
Speaker 2: rent and housing inflation remains one of the top drivers
Speaker 2: of the overall consumer price index. So the housing crunch
Speaker 2: both at a price level in terms of the inability
Speaker 2: to sell, and then the massive pressure on the rental market,
Speaker 2: combined with if you're a developer right now, why are
Speaker 2: we building a house exactly if I can't sell it
Speaker 2: and if I, you know, have to pay eight percent
Speaker 2: interest on my construction loan. So you have a supply crunch,
Speaker 2: a rent crunch, and a housing crunch all wrapped in
Speaker 2: to the same time. I honestly think this is like
Speaker 2: on par with the nineteen seventies, you know, level stagflation,
Speaker 2: where at that point it was unemployment that was getting
Speaker 2: all the attention. But here housing just floats under the rug.
Speaker 2: People just don't talk about it as much. And yet
Speaker 2: we have seen a tremendous amount of audience interest because
Speaker 2: I think this is probably at the top of so
Speaker 2: many of your heads, especially if you're younger. You know,
Speaker 2: for a lot of the boomers, they've got what they need.
Speaker 2: But you know, and I guess that's why cable news
Speaker 2: and others would ignore it. And if you're rich, you know,
Speaker 2: none of this really applies to you. But if you
Speaker 2: are even upper middle class or lower, you're having a
Speaker 2: tough time out there right now trying to buy a house,
Speaker 2: especially with average home price in a major metro area
Speaker 2: has crossed half a million dollars.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that poll that we looked at that
Speaker 1: was like people were praying for a housing crash because
Speaker 1: they were like, how else am I ever going to
Speaker 1: afford a house? And instead, the worst of all worlds,
Speaker 1: mortgage rates have gone way up and housing prices have
Speaker 1: still gone up, and so yeah, the market is just
Speaker 1: completely frozen. Rents are still wildly expensive, and people just
Speaker 1: feel like I will never be able to make it.
Speaker 1: This will never be sustainable. I will never be able
Speaker 1: to be in like a stable position as a homeowner
Speaker 1: building something. And that's why I put this next piece
Speaker 1: up on the screen. You have so many people saying
Speaker 1: in a new Wall Street Journal poll that the American
Speaker 1: dream is dead. It's slipping out of reach. Fewer people
Speaker 1: believe that anyone who works hard can get ahead. Only
Speaker 1: thirty six percent of voters in this poll say that
Speaker 1: the American dream still holds true. That is way fewer
Speaker 1: than the fifty three percent majority who said that just
Speaker 1: back in twenty twelve and the forty eight percent who
Speaker 1: set it back in twenty sixteen in similar surveys asked
Speaker 1: by a different polster. There was also a Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal poll last year that asked whether people who work
Speaker 1: hard were likely to get ahead, and some sixty eight
Speaker 1: percent and actually said yes, nearly twice the share as
Speaker 1: in this American Dream pool. Now, those are slightly different questions,
Speaker 1: but it shows you still there has been a deterioration
Speaker 1: even in the past year. The American dream, they say,
Speaker 1: seem most remote to young adults and women. Some forty
Speaker 1: six percent of men were actually like, okay, yeah, American
Speaker 1: dreams still real. Only twenty eight percent of women said
Speaker 1: the ideal of advancement for hard work still holds true,
Speaker 1: as did forty eight percent of voters age sixty five
Speaker 1: or older, but only twenty eight percent of those under
Speaker 1: age fifty. And I would be curious to see, you know,
Speaker 1: under age thirty. What are those numbers? I thought, it's
Speaker 1: even lower than twenty eight percent who feel like the
Speaker 1: American dream is still even a possibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so to have it just flip completely in the
Speaker 2: span of us not even a single generation, but really
Speaker 2: in a decade is one of the more profound economic
Speaker 2: stories of all American history. There have been very few
Speaker 2: as transformative times as we're in right now. This is
Speaker 2: on par with the Great and really I think extension
Speaker 2: of the Great Recession and the attendant like social fallout.
Speaker 2: We had the Great Depression, which is really the only
Speaker 2: other previous time in modern industrial society that we've seen
Speaker 2: anything like this, and we instead don't. We try to
Speaker 2: pretend and we live with the day to day, and
Speaker 2: of course, you know, we're talking about Israel and open
Speaker 2: Ai in Ireland and all.
Speaker 3: This other stuff. But this is by and large the
Speaker 3: single biggest.
Speaker 2: Determinant of how you're going to live your life, how
Speaker 2: you're going to get a job, whether you're able to
Speaker 2: get married, what it actually looks like, what your prospects
Speaker 2: are to the future, if you have and want to
Speaker 2: even work to anything in the future.
Speaker 3: Or like, why you.
Speaker 2: Would even choose to go into debt to get some schooling.
Speaker 2: You only do that if you think that you're going
Speaker 2: to come out better on the other side. And the
Speaker 2: same holds true for really any investment they're going to make,
Speaker 2: so nihilism has a really downstream terrible impact economically, and
Speaker 2: then of course on a personal and life level, it's
Speaker 2: just it's an awful way to live. And the way
Speaker 2: that that comes out in politics is the primal screams.
Speaker 2: You have Trump, you have Bernie, you have all these
Speaker 2: like a flash in the pan moments. They establishment panics.
Speaker 2: It tries to co opt and all of that. But
Speaker 2: I think at this point they have failed so dramatically
Speaker 2: to grapple all the way from two thousand and one
Speaker 2: onward that they don't deserve a single ounce of trust anymore.
Speaker 2: And it's really a generational gap between people who are
Speaker 2: our age Crystal and then people who are twenty five
Speaker 2: thirty years older who can remember the nineteen nineties, who
Speaker 2: were adults at that time and who were living large,
Speaker 2: whereas for the rest of us that's a distant memory.
Speaker 2: It's like something that exists in the past. I've been
Speaker 2: rewatching friends recently. It isn't amazing. It's like a time capsule.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the reasons why people love
Speaker 2: the show so much is, man, what an awesome time
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. They sad cell phones the stock market
Speaker 2: was going like twenty No nine to eleven, and just
Speaker 2: like the care free like nature in which you could
Speaker 2: just watch six people screw off at a coffee shop.
Speaker 3: It really does show you what America.
Speaker 2: Was like at that time as opposed to what's popular
Speaker 2: now for most people.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was an exactulate, exactly, an accurate.
Speaker 3: Individd why did it hit to the court?
Speaker 1: Well, and not only then, but it's it still Mistah,
Speaker 1: fifteen year old watched the whole thing and was obsessed
Speaker 1: with it and whatever you know on the American dream piece.
Speaker 1: There's a great book that I've mentioned on the show before,
Speaker 1: and we've actually had the author, justin guest on the
Speaker 1: show as well, called The New Minority, and it's a
Speaker 1: look at the white working class, and part of one
Speaker 1: of the sections, it's actually comparison of the white working
Speaker 1: class in the US in Youngstown, Ohio and the white
Speaker 1: working class in a working class of London. And they
Speaker 1: actually found that in some ways the belief in the
Speaker 1: American dream was kind of insidious. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because if you have this pervading mythology of like,
Speaker 1: if you work hard, you can make it, and it's
Speaker 1: all about you, right, your individual work, ethic and agency
Speaker 1: and all of that. Then it leads people to blame
Speaker 1: themselves when like that nurse that we played earlier, when
Speaker 1: they're going through it and they're struggling, and I mean
Speaker 1: she says something, She's like, I did everything right, Like
Speaker 1: I did everything right, and there's all this shame wrapped
Speaker 1: up in it. And what he found through, you know,
Speaker 1: like a statistical analysis, is that that belief, that persistent
Speaker 1: belief in the American Dream actually undercut activism because it
Speaker 1: led people more to look inward and be like, I
Speaker 1: must be doing something wrong. I must be a failure.
Speaker 1: And anyone can look at their life and find like,
Speaker 1: oh I shouldn't have bought that, or I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: made that decision, or maybe I'm doing this wrong, or
Speaker 1: maybe I'm doing that wrong. Everybody can do that right.
Speaker 1: But it led them to focus inward rather than engaging
Speaker 1: in collective action to actually change government policy, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a really you know, a really interesting insight.
Speaker 1: So with regards to American Dream, something I've been thinking about.
Speaker 1: We've actually had the author of this book The New Minority,
Speaker 1: on the show, which looks at the white working class,
Speaker 1: and he did an analysis comparing the white working class
Speaker 1: in Youngstown and the white working class in a suburb
Speaker 1: of London, and one thing that he found is that
Speaker 1: the idea of the American dream is actually, in a
Speaker 1: sense kind of insidious, because if the idea is you know,
Speaker 1: if you work hard, you can make it, then if
Speaker 1: you don't make it, the natural instinct is to say, well,
Speaker 1: I must have done something wrong. And so in a sense,
Speaker 1: sagas sort of short circuits the type of collective action
Speaker 1: that could push the government to make different policy decisions.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, while of course it's bad
Speaker 1: that people feel like they can't make it in the
Speaker 1: American dream is dead, I'm actually for establishing some new
Speaker 1: mythology that's not all about like if you don't make
Speaker 1: it, it's your fault. You should feel shame, you should feel horrible,
Speaker 1: you should examine everywhere that you went wrong in your life,
Speaker 1: and instead looks at not only personal agency we can
Speaker 1: keep still, you know, hold open some piece of personal agency,
Speaker 1: but also looks at the manifest ways that elites and
Speaker 1: our government have completely failed the American people over decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the story of the US just to
Speaker 2: tie a bone on. It is a battle between rugged
Speaker 2: individualism and then labor capitalism, and so the transition of
Speaker 2: the expansion West, and you know, it's like the California
Speaker 2: gold Rush. You can go out there, you can make
Speaker 2: it on your own. Oops, a bunch of people go bust.
Speaker 2: And then we have like financialization and we have mass industrialization,
Speaker 2: and you have if anybody ever watched the TV show
Speaker 2: one of my favorite shows, The Gilded Age, the current
Speaker 2: season is actually really working through some of this where
Speaker 2: you have these titans of like Robber Baron type capitalism,
Speaker 2: but you also have union union officials that are emerging
Speaker 2: in a movement at the same time. And there's a
Speaker 2: scene where one of the guys starts to buy one
Speaker 2: of the union leaders off and he's like, you don't
Speaker 2: really get what's going on here, do you?
Speaker 3: And whenever he goes.
Speaker 2: Back, and then that struggle is really the story of
Speaker 2: the modern industrial economy. It played out here, it played
Speaker 2: out all across Europe. And the way that US and
Speaker 2: Britain really separated themselves from Germany and from Russia and
Speaker 2: others that went in a much more communist direction is
Speaker 2: that their elites recognized that you have to treat and
Speaker 2: pay people better and try their rights into law, and
Speaker 2: they basically acquiesced, whereas the Russian and the German monarchies
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, we're not doing basically any of that.
Speaker 2: And what happened to there if their society's collapsed, broke
Speaker 2: down and they had massive revolutions. So if we don't
Speaker 2: want to repeat the mistakes that they made, we have
Speaker 2: to do what really I think saved capitalism in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, which is what FDR and his predecessors did,
Speaker 2: is recognized those rights and incorporated both into the rugged
Speaker 2: American story as well as recognizing that structural factors are
Speaker 2: of course going to impact everyday people's lives. And so anyway,
Speaker 2: I think the reason that we are currently in the
Speaker 2: scenario that we are is that we've swung much more
Speaker 2: back in that direction and have really forgotten, i think,
Speaker 2: a cherished part of our history which has been missing
Speaker 2: now for a long time.
Speaker 1: So last week we covered all kinds of turmoil over
Speaker 1: at open AI. Sam Altman, the CEO, he was out
Speaker 1: kicked down by the board, He's brought on by Microsoft,
Speaker 1: then he was brought back in Over at open AI,
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about what is going on and
Speaker 1: why is this happening right now? Raiter's got to look
Speaker 1: at a potential reason for why this action was taken
Speaker 1: at this moment. Let's put this up on the screen,
Speaker 1: so they say. Ahead of open ai CEO Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: four days in exile, several staff reacher researchers wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity. This
Speaker 1: was according to two people familiar with the matter. That's
Speaker 1: what they told Reuters. That previously unreported letter and AI
Speaker 1: algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Altman,
Speaker 1: according to those two sources. So open ai declined to comment,
Speaker 1: but they did acknowledge in an internal message to staffers
Speaker 1: a project called q Star. The open ai spokesperson said
Speaker 1: the message, sent by a longtime executive, alerted staff to
Speaker 1: certain media stories, without commenting on their accuracy. Some open
Speaker 1: Ai believed that q star could be a breakthrough in
Speaker 1: the startup search for what's known as artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 1: One of the people told Reuters open ai defines AGI
Speaker 1: as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of details about what this
Speaker 1: alleged breakthrough is or even you know, additional reporting about
Speaker 1: whether this is in fact accurate. But the reason that
Speaker 1: this potentially tracks Soger is because the divide in the
Speaker 1: AI community, as reflected in the divide within Open Ai,
Speaker 1: is between the tech optimists who are basically like letterrip,
Speaker 1: let's go make tons of money, let's just like develop
Speaker 1: this like crazy, let's see what we can do, let's
Speaker 1: push the boundaries here, and more of the you know,
Speaker 1: it's actually a lot of like effective altruists, but that
Speaker 1: side of the tech community that is very worried about
Speaker 1: the risks of AI development, what it could mean for humanity,
Speaker 1: what it can mean for jobs, what it could mean
Speaker 1: for you know, potential dangers for the future. And with
Speaker 1: Sam Altman being brought back in effectively his side of
Speaker 1: the TI tech optimist piece one out and the people
Speaker 1: who want to just you know, profit as much as possible,
Speaker 1: put it in the hands of corporations like Microsoft and
Speaker 1: develop it to its fullest extent. Right now with a
Speaker 1: few guardrails, that side of the equation seems to be
Speaker 1: winning out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have complicated feelings on this because I understand
Speaker 2: that that's a useful framework. But the thing is about
Speaker 2: Sam and these effective altruists and others is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: they believe in the profit and all of that, but
Speaker 2: really what they believe is it's like responsible AI, and
Speaker 2: what they mean by that is pairing with giant corporations
Speaker 2: like Microsoft and regulation and control so that they're the
Speaker 2: only ones that really get to use the technology. So
Speaker 2: I kind of find myself in a more anarchist position
Speaker 2: with AI where my deepest suspicion doesn't actually come through,
Speaker 2: you know, like, oh, they're going to replace us in
Speaker 2: all this. My fear is exactly what's happening right now,
Speaker 2: which is total corporate capture and control, where effectively we're
Speaker 2: watching Microsoft develop the world's greatest office enterprise technology and
Speaker 2: all of the money being funneled into how to make
Speaker 2: word Excel and Skype calls and teams more efficient, which
Speaker 2: is in my opinion, the.
Speaker 3: Worst use of research dollars and other things.
Speaker 2: As opposed to actually helping people and so watching really
Speaker 2: what it is is the titans of Google and Facebook
Speaker 2: and Microsoft now basically capture the entire stream of AI
Speaker 2: developments and others makes me more worried about the future
Speaker 2: than any sort of AI breakthrough that's going to replace
Speaker 2: all of our jobs and other this. So some of
Speaker 2: this was captured in the CNBC interview where they talk
Speaker 2: here about how Microsoft sat Jawnadella really is the true winner.
Speaker 3: Here's what they had to say.
Speaker 6: The Golden child Altman is ultimately really in Microsoft's hands.
Speaker 6: And I think the way they played this was a
Speaker 6: poker move for the ages from Nadella, and I think
Speaker 6: as it plays out, you had the little kids playing
Speaker 6: checkers at the kids table in terms of the open
Speaker 6: AI board, and then the master chess master came in
Speaker 6: here and I think, right now it's Microsoft just that
Speaker 6: much more of a flex the muscles on AI. What
Speaker 6: you want to see from jasse and Aws, Okay, what
Speaker 6: do you bring it? Show us the technology. How could
Speaker 6: I have confidence from a share perspective that you're not
Speaker 6: going to be potentially the third player behind Microsoft, behind Google.
Speaker 6: This is an arms race plan out and right now
Speaker 6: Microsoft and they're popping Champagne and Redmond because of the
Speaker 6: way the Della played this.
Speaker 7: Out cap profit structure that Sam instituted in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 7: the idea here was to cap investors profits at one
Speaker 7: hundred times their original investor investment, because he suggested that
Speaker 7: if OpenAI could get to so called artificial generalized intelligence,
Speaker 7: which is this sort of more sophisticated AI that we
Speaker 7: seem to be moving toward quickly, that it could be
Speaker 7: so powerful and so lucrative that he wanted these investors
Speaker 7: not to sort of hold all of the in the world.
Speaker 7: In fact, he spoke at one of my events for
Speaker 7: strictly VC, which is now subsidiary of TechCrunch, and he
Speaker 7: said that if OpenAI manages to crack this particular nut,
Speaker 7: it could quote maybe capture the light cone of all
Speaker 7: future value in the universe. And that for sure is
Speaker 7: not okay for one group of investors to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the future value of all who's going to
Speaker 2: own that? Open Ai and Microsoft? So really, again, let's
Speaker 2: look at who he actually replaced the board with. Let's
Speaker 2: put this please up there on the screen that Kevin
Speaker 2: Russwright wrote about AI belongs to the capitalists. You have
Speaker 2: freaking Larry Summers here on the board, I mean, like
Speaker 2: a cartoonish figure of quote unquote responsible corporate capitalism. And
Speaker 2: then you have a former Dropbox executive and Adam D'Angelo
Speaker 2: of Quorra. So if you put all this together, Crystal,
Speaker 2: where I look at it is I am most afraid
Speaker 2: of exactly what's happening right now, where AI is becoming
Speaker 2: a corporate tool of white collar of not only white
Speaker 2: collar industry, but just like plussing up any sort of
Speaker 2: HR and other stuff, as opposed to funneling towards technology
Speaker 2: that would actually help most Americans in their daily lives.
Speaker 2: They're trying to focus on reducing HR costs and legal
Speaker 2: fees on it. Listen, I support all of that, but
Speaker 2: should that really be the sole driver of our innovation?
Speaker 2: This is why I think some of the conversation around
Speaker 2: this can get really muddled.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of different levels. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: piece you're pointing to, you know, what are corporations incentivized
Speaker 1: to develop Their incentivized to develop anything that's going to
Speaker 1: be profitable to them. There will be many applications, potential
Speaker 1: applications of AI that would benefit humanity that would not
Speaker 1: be particularly profitable. Yes, those are not going to be developed,
Speaker 1: Like that's the reality. On the other hand, what are
Speaker 1: corporation's left to do eliminate human beings and their usefulness
Speaker 1: and their are jobs because human beings cost a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and they take sick days, and they have babies,
Speaker 1: and they're complicated and whatever. So let's get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Let's get rid of their jobs. And so there will
Speaker 1: be huge incentive to develop AI that can enable the
Speaker 1: elimination of jobs. So that's the corporate piece that you're
Speaker 1: pointing to. But you know, my feelings about AI sort
Speaker 1: of ranges from terror to comedy. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys saw there's a story about was that ESPN
Speaker 1: or supports sports illustry Sports Illustrated that got caught using
Speaker 1: these AI generated articles and they were preposterous, Like they
Speaker 1: were so bad. The writing was so weird and clunky.
Speaker 1: It was like an alien, you know, trying to write
Speaker 1: about volleyball or whatever it was. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you have this story reported out by The
Speaker 1: New York Times that the deployment of AI controlled drones
Speaker 1: that can make autonomous decisions about whether to kill human
Speaker 1: targets is moving closer to reality. Lethal autonomous weapons that
Speaker 1: can select targets using AI are being developed by the US, China,
Speaker 1: and Israel. Killer robots that can autonomous decide whether you're
Speaker 1: going to live or die. So and obviously for the
Speaker 1: military industrial complex, that is very profitable as well. So
Speaker 1: that's like the nexus of both the terror of what
Speaker 1: this could mean for humanity and also the profit motive.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's troubling that the people it's not
Speaker 1: just who was put on the board. The people who
Speaker 1: were taken off the board were the people who were,
Speaker 1: like you know, the War of the academics, the technologists,
Speaker 1: who were concerned with some of the direction, both in
Speaker 1: terms of the corporate capture and also in terms of
Speaker 1: what this could mean for jobs and what this could
Speaker 1: mean for the future of humanity. Those people are taken
Speaker 1: out and freaking Larry Summers.
Speaker 3: Brought Yeah, I know the Summer's piece is particularly offensive
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: And also though part of what I get the most
Speaker 2: skeptical about are all these AI safety advocates or I'm like,
Speaker 2: what are we saying here?
Speaker 3: Like what are you trying to program in here?
Speaker 2: And I see the government and Biden stepping in being like,
Speaker 2: we need an AI Bill of Rights, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: well maybe conceptually, but I don't honestly trust you to
Speaker 2: be able to implement this into the technology at all.
Speaker 2: I think there needs to be some level of democratic input.
Speaker 2: So I'm genuinely the democratic input. I mean that's what
Speaker 2: the government is.
Speaker 3: Yes, well not but the White House. That's the idea.
Speaker 1: White House the government is supposed to be where the
Speaker 1: democratic interusts.
Speaker 2: But I think it needs to come through Congress and
Speaker 2: not from the White House and top down. And actually
Speaker 2: my bigger fear is less about the government at least
Speaker 2: right now, because they're not doing anything.
Speaker 3: It's all these fake nonprofits that are out there being.
Speaker 2: Like we're developing the AI code about this, and that
Speaker 2: there's already been problems with chat GPT around political bias
Speaker 2: and all these other things. And that's where the again,
Speaker 2: where I fear is the concentration of AI in basically
Speaker 2: woke capitalism, where through Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook applied
Speaker 2: almost entirely to enterprise technology and you're just going to
Speaker 2: have software rule your drone cubical life if you happen
Speaker 2: to even make the cut for afterwards. And I genuinely
Speaker 2: think that is what the future of this is going
Speaker 2: to look like, as opposed to know all of our
Speaker 2: daily lives changing. I just think white collar work is
Speaker 2: the only thing which will marginally change, but in my opinion,
Speaker 2: probably in a worse direction where things are more automated.
Speaker 2: But the hope that I have here is that in
Speaker 2: every case, like the Sports Illustrated and others, these things
Speaker 2: have turned out to be so clownish that it just
Speaker 2: reveals to us how in some ways it's so far away,
Speaker 2: Like we're not even close to AI being able to
Speaker 2: replace a human journalist.
Speaker 3: It would take five to maybe ten years.
Speaker 2: And we heard for years about car development. I talk
Speaker 2: about the self driving car thing a lot. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: automated autopilot is cool, but can it turn left really
Speaker 2: well yet?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 2: And it's taken them what Tesla's been around since two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, you know, working on this technology and
Speaker 2: they have billions and billions of dollars that they've thrown
Speaker 2: into it, and they still haven't really mastered it. So
Speaker 2: and you know, we saw the Austin example about all
Speaker 2: those self driving cabs that come like this, this is
Speaker 2: a really really difficult problem. So I'm less worried as some.
Speaker 1: A military application to me is really scary because let's imagine,
Speaker 1: I mean, we can already see like what Israel is
Speaker 1: doing in Gaza right now, that there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of concern for who's a civilian and who's a combatant,
Speaker 1: and who's a woman and a child, and who's an
Speaker 1: actual Hamas militant, et cetera. So while the technology may
Speaker 1: not be all the way there in terms of discriminating,
Speaker 1: they may not really care. I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: any evidence that they would really care. And so if
Speaker 1: it's an autonomous drone that's murdering people, like where there's
Speaker 1: no chance of accountability, at least if it's a human operator,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a chain of command, at least
Speaker 1: there's a possibility of holding some sort of human being accountable.
Speaker 1: If you have drones that are able to themselves decide
Speaker 1: who gets to live and who gets to die. And
Speaker 1: this is active, actively in development by US, China and
Speaker 1: Israel and getting closer and closer to fruition. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: something I'm very concerned about right now in the near term.
Speaker 3: I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: I just love humans are always going to have to
Speaker 2: make some sort of decision. So this is if something
Speaker 2: I talked about with Mark and reasons, like at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, like humans are going to have
Speaker 2: a level of a tremendous level of input, and you know,
Speaker 2: we can think about that, what is there true difference
Speaker 2: between where we are right now, where Israel decides where
Speaker 2: to bomb and yet they use a jadam, a guided
Speaker 2: precision bomb, which where we pick the target and then
Speaker 2: the missile and computer targeting systems work to hit that.
Speaker 3: There will always be some level.
Speaker 2: Of decision making that gets programmed into it from what
Speaker 2: the actual want of the person is.
Speaker 3: So what truly separates that is it just that.
Speaker 2: We can deliver the bomb in a quicker manner because
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, like the human discretion
Speaker 2: and the political determination of how and what it will
Speaker 2: be used.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Maybe the AI can roll this clip of me one
Speaker 2: hundred years from now and make fun of me while
Speaker 2: you know, my grandchildren are living in the matrix.
Speaker 3: But we'll see. Let's move on to Ireland.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot happening in Ireland that you might
Speaker 2: have seen this broken out over the last week or so,
Speaker 2: riots and violence exploding in downtown Dublin.
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and play some of this footage.
Speaker 2: Absolutely crazy crazy stuff. This midir a Western European capital,
Speaker 2: and of course there's been a lot of i think
Speaker 2: media misinformation and reporting around all of this has even
Speaker 2: ensnared the k UFC King Connor McGregor, and so anyway,
Speaker 2: what exactly is going on behind the scenes here? So
Speaker 2: at a very very basic level, here is what happened.
Speaker 2: There was a stabbing incident which involved a foreign national, whoever,
Speaker 2: though had actually lived in Ireland since two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: So let's please put this tear sheet up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, which from the Times of England, which actually
Speaker 2: has some of the best reporting that we've seen on
Speaker 2: the subject.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: The suspect arrived in Ireland in two thousand and three
Speaker 2: applied for asylum. His application was rejected, his deportation ordered,
Speaker 2: but he successfully challenged it and he now.
Speaker 3: Has full residency rights.
Speaker 2: There are suggestions that his mental health had deteriorated after
Speaker 2: he was diagnosed with a brain tumor about two years ago,
Speaker 2: and his friends had told the police that his behavior
Speaker 2: was changing radically afterwards. He was then arrested in possession
Speaker 2: of a knife in Dublin last May and appeared before
Speaker 2: the District Court in June. The outcome is unclear. He
Speaker 2: went on to stab multiple small children in Ireland. The
Speaker 2: riots essensibly then were set off with anti immigrant sentiment. However,
Speaker 2: Christal and I we were talking about this and I
Speaker 2: think they have really mischaracterized a lot of what is
Speaker 2: happening here. Yes, a lot of this is downstream of immigration,
Speaker 2: but Ireland is facing a very very serious housing crisis
Speaker 2: right now, which has a huge part to do not
Speaker 2: only with Islamic refugees but also a lot of Ukrainians.
Speaker 2: So let's please put this up there. And I'm also
Speaker 2: going to read some statistics. Quote ireland demography has been
Speaker 2: transformed in decades. A fifth of the five million people
Speaker 2: now living in Ireland were born elsewhere, and a recent
Speaker 2: increase in refugees from Ukraine and other countries has fueled
Speaker 2: a backlash amid concern over housing shortage and straining public services.
Speaker 2: The number that is housed by the state has jumped
Speaker 2: from seventy five hundred and twenty twenty one to seventy
Speaker 2: three thousand in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 8: Quote.
Speaker 2: Ireland has received more than one hundred and forty one
Speaker 2: thousand immigrants in the last twelve months through April. That
Speaker 2: is the highest total in Irish society since two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, and the influx of migrants is driven an
Speaker 2: eleven percent increase in Irish population over the last eleven years,
Speaker 2: which has contributed to a steady increase in housing crist
Speaker 2: in housing prices. So really, what I think this is
Speaker 2: crystal is a story not only of mass immigration, but
Speaker 2: of frankly Ukrainian refugees and other refugees from around the
Speaker 2: world that are flooding into Western Europe as these Western
Speaker 2: European capitals have to grapple with their tremendous social safety
Speaker 2: in it their Western liberal politics, but frankly disregarding and
Speaker 2: this is what I think the reason that this really
Speaker 2: touched here was their own domestic population, whose houses are
Speaker 2: getting so unaffordable as they're watching foreigners get housed in
Speaker 2: state housing, as you have Irish citizens and others who
Speaker 2: are homeless on the street. That was like the core
Speaker 2: of the spark here, and I haven't seen that particularly
Speaker 2: well articulated in Western media as to what's happening. And
Speaker 2: we'll get to the crackdown and in the second if
Speaker 2: you want to comment on any of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean and listen to state the obvious just
Speaker 1: is when we're analyzing what happened in October seventh, it's
Speaker 1: not a justification. And as we're analyzing what happened with
Speaker 1: these rides, also not a justification. But yeah, when you
Speaker 1: couple the highest homelessness that Ireland has ever seen, yeah,
Speaker 1: massive housing crisis, Ireland's they were one of the countries
Speaker 1: that got the most screwed in the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight financial crisis and have in some ways never recovered.
Speaker 1: So when you couple this, but I think the piece
Speaker 1: seems to be really central. You know, based on the
Speaker 1: analysis that we were able to read, and like I said,
Speaker 1: the very high homelessness rate, when you couple that with
Speaker 1: you know, a large influx of people from other countries,
Speaker 1: you have created a tinderbox in which, yeah, the easiest
Speaker 1: thing for people to do is going to be and
Speaker 1: for you know, cynical politicians and influencers and whoever is
Speaker 1: to blame the immigrants, and you know, it's classic scapegoating,
Speaker 1: that's very common to see what unfolded here, and you know,
Speaker 1: and there was like misinformation about who this person actually
Speaker 1: was the context of actually the dude's been here for
Speaker 1: twenty years, by the way, was not in there whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but it lit the spark that explodes in these unbelievable
Speaker 1: riots that unfolded. Also worth mentioning that the man who
Speaker 1: disrupted the attack, who hit the dude who was stabbing
Speaker 1: children over the head with his helmet, was a recent immigrant.
Speaker 3: From Persia, from Brazil. He was actually thanked by Connor McGregor.
Speaker 3: So let's let me tie it in.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear. But but yeah, I think you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's we have had this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine War and that it's obviously beautiful that all
Speaker 1: these countries have taken in refugees, and we covered yesterday
Speaker 1: how the US is really central, I mean, the reason
Speaker 1: that this war has gone on on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and we can't deny the fact that, especially in a
Speaker 1: time when countries' safety nets are stretched, when inflation is tough,
Speaker 1: when people all over the world are feeling very stretched economically,
Speaker 1: that this is the type of politics that oftentimes results.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I just looked it up.
Speaker 2: The average sale price of a home in Dublin is
Speaker 2: one point three million euro as of last month.
Speaker 1: And people feel like they can no longer afford to
Speaker 1: live in the neighborhoods where they grew up and where
Speaker 1: their family is, et cetera. They feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: and like they have no hope and all of this
Speaker 1: again not justification, but just to understand. These things don't
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. And so instead of focusing classic
Speaker 1: like you know, sort of neoliberal political moved so, rather
Speaker 1: than focusing on those core problems, well what should they do? Instead,
Speaker 1: they're going to crack down on the misinformation.
Speaker 2: And let's get to that, because this is what the
Speaker 2: response of the Irish government has been, which is, no,
Speaker 2: we don't need to maybe reconsider our refugee resettlement population,
Speaker 2: or we don't need to reconsider our housing policy. We
Speaker 2: need to crack down on hate speech, which is what
Speaker 2: incited these riots, which is why Connor McGregor is under investigation.
Speaker 2: Here is the Prime Minister laying some of this out
Speaker 2: as a response to the riots.
Speaker 4: In addition to that, I think it's now very obvious
Speaker 4: to anyone who might have doubted it that our incitement
Speaker 4: hatred legislation is just not up to date. It's not
Speaker 4: up to date for the social media age, and we
Speaker 4: need that legislation through. We need to through within a
Speaker 4: matter of weeks, because it's not just the platforms who
Speaker 4: have a responsibility here, and they do. There's also the
Speaker 4: individuals who post messages and images online that stir a
Speaker 4: hatred in violence, and we need to be able to
Speaker 4: use laws to go after them individually as well.
Speaker 2: Got to go after the people who were talking about
Speaker 2: it's bs that Ukrainians are getting free housing when an
Speaker 2: average home price is one point three million. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: sounds like the right thing to do. Here is one
Speaker 2: of their Green Party senators. This is a very viral clip,
Speaker 2: but it really represents this ideology that's prevailed all throughout
Speaker 2: Western Europe about what freedom of speech actually means to them.
Speaker 3: Basically nothing.
Speaker 9: Take a listen when you think about it, all law,
Speaker 9: all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. That's exactly
Speaker 9: what we're doing here is we are restricting freedom, but
Speaker 9: we're doing it for the common good.
Speaker 3: You will see.
Speaker 9: Throughout our constitution. Yes you have rights, but they are
Speaker 9: restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced.
Speaker 9: And if your views on other people's identities go to
Speaker 9: make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep
Speaker 9: discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe
Speaker 9: that it is our job as legislators to restrict those
Speaker 9: freedoms for the common good.
Speaker 3: There you go. Safety ism in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a bunch of conservatives right now talking about
Speaker 1: anti semitism in college Cansas.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, not wrong. True, it's true. But here's
Speaker 3: the thing this is leading to now.
Speaker 2: Connor McGregor's investigation for this following tweet, let's put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. I'm gonna read it to
Speaker 2: you directly. He says, innocent children ruthlessly stabbed today by
Speaker 2: mentally deranged non national Dublin in Ireland today. Our chief
Speaker 2: of Police had this to say on the riots of
Speaker 2: the aftermath.
Speaker 3: Not good enough.
Speaker 2: There's grave danger among us in Ireland that should never
Speaker 2: be here in the first place. There has been zero
Speaker 2: action done to support the public in any way, shape
Speaker 2: or form with this frightening fact. Not good enough, make
Speaker 2: change or make way Ireland for the victory.
Speaker 3: God blessed those attack today. We pray that's what he said.
Speaker 2: And they're claiming that he glorified violence, and yet they're
Speaker 2: ignoring that he thanked the Brazilian immigrant. But Brazilian Irish
Speaker 2: immigrant who actually stopped the violence. He says, I don't
Speaker 2: condone last night's riots. I don't condone attacks on our
Speaker 2: first responders in their line of duty.
Speaker 3: I don't condone looting.
Speaker 2: Last night's scenes achieved nothing towards fixing this issue. I
Speaker 2: do understand the frustrations, however, and I understand a move
Speaker 2: must be made to ensure the change that we need
Speaker 2: is ushered in.
Speaker 3: That's what he said. What's wrong with that exactly?
Speaker 1: Even if he did say something wrong and heinous, terrible.
Speaker 3: Let's put that asta.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then he still should be able to say
Speaker 1: those things. And it's such a dodge to just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to crack down on the misinformation, as if
Speaker 1: that's going to solve the underlying problems. I was just like,
Speaker 1: very similar to here.
Speaker 3: You don't want to admit the actual problem here. And
Speaker 3: you know, Iron's a small country. They got five million people.
Speaker 3: One hundred and forty thousand people is a lot of.
Speaker 2: People, and twenty percent of your population being foreign born.
Speaker 2: And I'll press the red button and I'll go to
Speaker 2: what Margaret Thatcher said of her own country. Europe is
Speaker 2: about history, America is about an idea. It's like, these
Speaker 2: are very different populations with very different understandings of immigration. They,
Speaker 2: I think, behave in a completely responsible manner whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to refugee resettlement in all of this, and you
Speaker 2: combine that with their generous welfare states neglecting their own population.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just think, Crystal, the more I did
Speaker 2: research into this, I was honestly shocked at the way
Speaker 2: that it has been portrayed.
Speaker 1: It's when you look at you know, political science analyzes
Speaker 1: of countries with large immigrant populations. When things are going well,
Speaker 1: it's fine. You know, when people feel like I can
Speaker 1: buy a house, I can have a family, I can
Speaker 1: have a job, I can have a good income. But
Speaker 1: when things are not going well, then guess what again,
Speaker 1: You're going to look for scapegoats. And this is the
Speaker 1: tale as old as time. So so in any way,
Speaker 1: in any case, the idea that you're going to fix
Speaker 1: it by like cracking down on social media and Connor McGregor.
Speaker 3: Is silly, not going to happen.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about some domestic politics here. This
Speaker 1: is stunning. This is brazen, even for the pretty brazenly
Speaker 1: typical corrupt state of American politics. You now have two
Speaker 1: two candidates who are right now in the Democratic primary
Speaker 1: for Senate in Michigan, who have been offered separately twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars by a donor to drop out, and primary
Speaker 1: Rashida Taled, who of course has come under incredible fire
Speaker 1: for her public stance in favor of Palestinians and Palestinian
Speaker 1: humanity and calling for a ceasefire. Let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to We actually talked to this candidate and NASA on
Speaker 1: this show recently about how he was approached and offered
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars to draw out and primary Rashida to leave.
Speaker 1: Take a listen.
Speaker 10: I was offered twenty million dollars to withdraw from the
Speaker 10: senatorial race and run against my friend Rashida Talib. The
Speaker 10: pro Israel lobby will go to any link to remove
Speaker 10: anybody from the US Congress that has any opposition to
Speaker 10: their agenda and their total unequivocal support for Israel, good, bad,
Speaker 10: or indifferent. We need to make sure that money is
Speaker 10: not the main catalyst to get people elected, because the
Speaker 10: pro Israel lobby is only tool, and what they use
Speaker 10: to threaten politicians is the amount of money they're going
Speaker 10: to spend against them or for them. America, let's come
Speaker 10: together and elect people who truly represent our values.
Speaker 1: So the other candidate was a gentleman named Hill. Harper
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Another Senate candidate in
Speaker 1: Michigan who Politico originally got this report that he was
Speaker 1: offered twenty million dollars to drop out and run against
Speaker 1: Rashida to leave. He confirmed the story, says, I didn't
Speaker 1: intend for a private phone call to turn public, but
Speaker 1: now that it has, here's the truth. One of apak's
Speaker 1: biggest donors offered twenty mil if I dropped down a
Speaker 1: US Senate race to run against Rashida. To leave, I
Speaker 1: said no. I won't be bossed, bullied, or bought. One
Speaker 1: of the crazy things here too. By the way, an
Speaker 1: APAC deny, as I should add, he says, the group
Speaker 1: was absolutely not involved in any way in this matter.
Speaker 1: Our records indicate this individual has not contributed to APAC
Speaker 1: in over a decade. So that's their side of the story.
Speaker 1: But one of the really crazy things about this saga
Speaker 1: is that both Hill Harper and naserbay Dun, they both
Speaker 1: are like calling for a ceasefire and standing up for
Speaker 1: Palestinian civilians being killed right now. And I think the
Speaker 1: idea is just you know, they know with Rashida to leave,
Speaker 1: that she is a tireless advocate, they know she's outspoken,
Speaker 1: they know she's been a leader in this moment of
Speaker 1: calling for a ceasefire. I mean, she's Palestinian American here,
Speaker 1: and so they sort of feel like, we don't care
Speaker 1: who it is, we'll take anyone other than Rashida to
Speaker 1: leave because of her dedicated commitment on the issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I think that this is really just a
Speaker 2: matter of we do it because we can, and it's
Speaker 2: one of those where they want to take her out
Speaker 2: just to show that it is possible as well.
Speaker 3: To teach a US warning shot.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Well, I don't like Rashita to leave.
Speaker 2: I think she's actually incredibly I think she's done a
Speaker 2: disservice to her own Palestinian cause we could talk about
Speaker 2: in a different wildly disagree with Well. I mean, she's
Speaker 2: just conducted herself in a ridiculous manner and she's honestly
Speaker 2: just fulfilled, like, in my opinion, the worst characteristics of
Speaker 2: I totally totally.
Speaker 1: Being no, that is not true. I mean she's condemned.
Speaker 1: She's condemned the homoc atrocity. That's not what she's been
Speaker 1: standing up for. Ceasefire in Palestinian civilians. I think it's
Speaker 1: been incredibly courageous.
Speaker 3: The record on the hospital attack just fulfilled.
Speaker 1: The witch still still in dispute.
Speaker 3: By the way, what is the Human Rights Watch came
Speaker 3: out yesterday and claims.
Speaker 1: They bombed like every triaging hospital in Gaza.
Speaker 2: I am only going to say that she did herself
Speaker 2: no favors by doing that, and by putting herself out
Speaker 2: there and in my opinion, fulfilling the worst dreams of
Speaker 2: her critics. If you're a politician, you should know whenever
Speaker 2: you're going up against the wildest lobby in all of
Speaker 2: American politics, you should probably not just hand them on
Speaker 2: a silver platter. But look, that's her life. She can
Speaker 2: do what she wants. I'm saying I don't like her.
Speaker 2: I think don't think she's done herself with any real
Speaker 2: service for a propole stand and cause.
Speaker 3: But I don't support.
Speaker 2: Primarying her or getting her taken out by a major
Speaker 2: lobby for a foreign government. To me, I find that
Speaker 2: particularly offensive. So anyway, I'm looking at this and APAC
Speaker 2: and all their influence, and it's just shocking to me,
Speaker 2: you know, with the John Fetterman case as well, to
Speaker 2: watch how they have co opted so many of these
Speaker 2: Democratic politicians in recent times, even people who had expressed
Speaker 2: different differing views, whenever they would come over the top
Speaker 2: and help them in some of their primary processes. So
Speaker 2: Ryan's done a lot of great work on this. I
Speaker 2: know we've covered it here on the show as well.
Speaker 2: The Democratic Majority for Israel for example, coming in.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, didn't they think that work against
Speaker 3: Nina Turner? Oh if I remember.
Speaker 1: So Ryan has all these details in his new book
Speaker 1: The Squad, which I recommend, and it's actually incredible how
Speaker 1: much reporting he has on Apak, Democratic Majority for Israel
Speaker 1: and other sort of allied groups. And he said when
Speaker 1: he was writing the book, he was like, I'm crazy
Speaker 1: for including so much of this, but it ended up
Speaker 1: being so central to shaping the Democratic Caucus and trying
Speaker 1: to mold uniform views on Israel and Palestine. And so
Speaker 1: he has the behind the scenes story of Fetterman who
Speaker 1: sees all this money coming in to crush Nanna Turner.
Speaker 1: The first expenditures were actually against Bernie in Iowa. You know,
Speaker 1: coming in against Summer League, who's able barely to survive
Speaker 1: the onslaught. He sees all this coming in and he
Speaker 1: just goes and was like, tell me what I should say.
Speaker 1: And they had drafted a position paper and they sent
Speaker 1: it in to Democratic Majority for Israel and were like
Speaker 1: how's this and they're like, oh, we'll make some changes,
Speaker 1: and they're like, good done, undusted.
Speaker 3: Here you go.
Speaker 1: We're going to this is what we're going to stand
Speaker 1: for now. Some are lee on the other hand, because
Speaker 1: she had previously sent some really basic I think it
Speaker 1: was during the Great March of Return, some really basic
Speaker 1: tweets in support of like, hey, maybe Israel shouldn't be
Speaker 1: killing innocent civilians who were trying to peacefully protest. She
Speaker 1: knew she was going to be a target. There was
Speaker 1: no way out of it, and she was open with
Speaker 1: Ryan about that, like in her head, if there was
Speaker 1: a way of doing the pulling the John fetterman. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that she was like, oh, I would never do that.
Speaker 1: She was like, I knew it wouldn't work because I
Speaker 1: was already a target. And so yeah, this was determinative
Speaker 1: in a number of races, and they you know, secured
Speaker 1: the obviously very outspoken support now of Senator John Fetterman.
Speaker 1: And now they've said that they're going to spend even
Speaker 1: more money going forward, and we see these incredibly clumsy
Speaker 1: and naked attempts and by the way, potentially illegal because
Speaker 1: you can't you can't just give a candidate twenty million dollars,
Speaker 1: and so if it's going to go through a super pack,
Speaker 1: you also can't coordinate with them. And then there's a
Speaker 1: question of whether these are like straw donations.
Speaker 3: Wait, I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's also like not really legal to do this.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it just shows you how disturbed they are
Speaker 1: that there is any descent on the issue. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that comes through in Ryan's book, which is
Speaker 1: really interesting too, is this is the one time when
Speaker 1: the squad has actually really stood up to democratic leadership
Speaker 1: in President Biden. And a lot of it is because
Speaker 1: you know, Rashidias leave. Obviously this is an issue she
Speaker 1: was passionate about Ilhanomer, obviously an issue she was passionate about.
Speaker 1: AOSC really didn't know a thing about Israel and Pales
Speaker 1: Diamond ad Many. She admitted to that of coming in
Speaker 1: and some release same things. This wasn't like a major
Speaker 1: focus of her, but because the adversaries were so fierce,
Speaker 1: it really sort of hardened them in their positions because
Speaker 1: they know they're never going to win those over them over,
Speaker 1: so they're like, well, why not just say what I
Speaker 1: actually think since there's no way I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: these people from trying to primary me and destroy my
Speaker 1: political gres.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I actually, I mean I think it's a
Speaker 2: human thing. On any level, someone's gonna be like, hey,
Speaker 2: screw you. You're like, well, hold on a second, I'm
Speaker 2: maybe gonna think a little bit for myself. And if
Speaker 2: you're going to come out oppositional from the gate, I mean,
Speaker 2: remember that horrible what was it, the AOC firing line interview.
Speaker 3: This happened like right after she was elected. She looked
Speaker 3: like such an idiot. Yeah, throughout it.
Speaker 2: But to underscore your point, we have this tweet from
Speaker 2: Mark Pokan, the congressman who's from the Progressive Caucus.
Speaker 3: Let's put it up there.
Speaker 2: He says, quote, the truth is that APAK is a
Speaker 2: conservative org raising money from rich Republicans and tries to
Speaker 2: buy Democratic primaries with it distorts campaign finance law in
Speaker 2: the worst way. Their big money influence is toxic to democracy.
Speaker 2: Forget what they claim, look at their record toxic money.
Speaker 2: And that's extraordinary coming from a Democratic congressman. I'd be
Speaker 2: remiss too if I didn't mention Thomas Massey, who's been
Speaker 2: putting them also on blast. Were running ads against him
Speaker 2: because he has a consistent policy.
Speaker 3: He is a libertarian where he says, I.
Speaker 2: Don't vote for foreign aid period and he said, I
Speaker 2: don't do it for Israel, I don't do it for
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, I wouldn't do it for Palestine.
Speaker 3: He's like, this is just not something that I do.
Speaker 2: And they're running millions of dollars of ads against him
Speaker 2: in Kentucky. So look, if anything, actually I support people
Speaker 2: coming out and breaking with APAC kind of publicly because
Speaker 2: I think they saved all this political capital and all
Speaker 2: this and they blew it on the Iran Deal. It's
Speaker 2: the single biggest mistake they ever made because they put
Speaker 2: themselves in direct opposition with the President of the United States,
Speaker 2: put all this ideological space open for people who agreed
Speaker 2: with the Iran Deal and Democrats, and then they tarred
Speaker 2: them as anti Israel, and they're like, well, if you're
Speaker 2: gonna tar me as anti Israel, I'm gonna say.
Speaker 3: What I actually think.
Speaker 11: And anti Simitis, anti Sydrill that came a little bit later,
Speaker 11: and that came now, and now we have Rashida tale
Speaker 11: ilhan Omar and others, and you have an entire generation
Speaker 11: of younger people too, who you know, it drives me crazy.
Speaker 2: People are like, she's pro Hamas. Okay, as I just
Speaker 2: laid out here. I think she conducts herself like a fool.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's pro Hamas. That's a ridiculous statement.
Speaker 2: When you say you're pro Hamas, you say I support
Speaker 2: the terrorists attack of October seventh. So like words have
Speaker 2: lost meaning on anti semi anti Israel, anti Zionism, pro Hamas,
Speaker 2: pro Palestinian. And they've tried, you know, with great success,
Speaker 2: I think, to use that in the pat for their
Speaker 2: tactics of the past in the modern age, though, people
Speaker 2: just see right through it. It's just totally ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Maybe, but that amount of money, because remember, it's not
Speaker 1: like when they're spending that money that every.
Speaker 3: Apple is about, right, it's about all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's about whatever they can find to try to dislodge
Speaker 1: this person from power. So you know, I mean ilhan Omar.
Speaker 1: Actually they kind of messed up last time around because
Speaker 1: they didn't really spend a lot of money against her,
Speaker 1: and she narrowly won.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, so if I remember she
Speaker 2: ran eighteen points behind Biden in her distripation.
Speaker 1: I I don't remember the numbers she won, but it
Speaker 1: was much closer than they expected. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of these members who have supported a ceasefire, they have
Speaker 1: a target on their back. And you know, they're denying
Speaker 1: the one hundred million number that got reported of the
Speaker 1: amount of money that they're going to flood into these races,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's not something to sneeze at. And
Speaker 1: clearly they're making an aggressive effort to try to make
Speaker 1: sure that there is no sentiment in favor of Palestinian
Speaker 1: statehood or criticism of the Israeli government or certainly you know,
Speaker 1: the current moment calling for a ceasefire. And it is
Speaker 1: remarkable because you remember ilhan Omar put out that tweer.
Speaker 1: Remember it's all about the Benjamins with regard to APAC money,
Speaker 1: and she was centered for that, and it was the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and so to now see Mark Polkan, who's
Speaker 1: much less of like a radical than she is, saying
Speaker 1: effectively the same thing and potentially more polished terms. But
Speaker 1: you're right, the mask is kind of off and people
Speaker 1: now feel more comfortable calling out exactly what's happening.
Speaker 2: Carry all just now acknowledge it was like a temporary
Speaker 2: insanity and American Party.
Speaker 3: He's obviously right, and she's still right today. She was right.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a whole justice for il Han. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the R and C funding, all right. So
Speaker 1: there was this moment in the debate. You guys probably
Speaker 1: remember the last debate that everyone hated, nobody watched and whatever.
Speaker 1: But the bate came out out of the gates swing
Speaker 1: in and it was a bit of an unusual target
Speaker 1: that he's selected here in RNC RONA Romney McDaniel were
Speaker 1: supposed to drop the Romney.
Speaker 3: Now Trump, we should the route.
Speaker 1: Okay, Anyway, here's what candidate for president of vager Amason
Speaker 1: only had to say.
Speaker 12: We've become a party of losers. At the end of
Speaker 12: the day, is a cancer the Republican establishment.
Speaker 13: Let's speak the truth.
Speaker 12: I mean, since Ronal McDaniel took over as chairwoman of
Speaker 12: the rn C in twenty seventeen. We have lost twenty eighteen,
Speaker 12: twenty twenty twenty two. No red wave that never came.
Speaker 12: We got trounced last night in twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 12: I think that we have to have accountability in our party.
Speaker 12: For that matter, ron if you want to come on
Speaker 12: stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in
Speaker 12: the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn
Speaker 12: over my yield my time to you, and frankly, look
Speaker 12: the people they're cheering for losing in the Republican Party.
Speaker 12: Think about who's moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 12: Joe Rogan and Elon Musk. We'd have ten times the viewership,
Speaker 12: asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about and
Speaker 12: bringing more people into our party, getting the Democrats, and
Speaker 12: we've got Christian Walker here.
Speaker 1: I think it's preposterous to blame Roni McDaniel for the
Speaker 1: losses in Virginia, for you know, the losses on all
Speaker 1: the abortion ballot measures, the underperformance in the midterm. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very clear what the big factors were here. But
Speaker 1: there is some interesting recording about something that you know
Speaker 1: is going on behind the scenes. I don't think as
Speaker 1: a point, but anyway, put this up on the screen
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post with regard to the rnc's funding,
Speaker 1: Apparently the Republican Party's finances are incredibly worrisome to party members,
Speaker 1: advisors to former President Donald Trump, and other operatives involved
Speaker 1: in the twenty four election effort. They just disclose they
Speaker 1: have nine point one million dollars in cash on hand
Speaker 1: as of October thirtieth. That is the lowest amount for
Speaker 1: the rn C in any Federal Election Commission report since
Speaker 1: February of twenty fifteen. Compares with about twenty million at
Speaker 1: the same point in the twenty sixteen election cycle. So
Speaker 1: they've got less than half of what they had at
Speaker 1: that point in twenty sixteen and about sixty one million
Speaker 1: four years ago when Trump was in the White House.
Speaker 1: The DNC has a lot more money, roughly double seventeen
Speaker 1: point seven million as of October thirtieth. And as to
Speaker 1: what's going on here, there isn't a lot of insight.
Speaker 1: You've got a Tennessee RNC member who said, is just
Speaker 1: a revenue problem. We're going through the same efforts we
Speaker 1: always go through to raise money the same donor meetings retreats,
Speaker 1: digital advertising, direct mail, but the return is much lower
Speaker 1: this year. If you know the answer, I'd love to
Speaker 1: know what the staff has managed to tighten down and
Speaker 1: expenses to keep the party from going into the red.
Speaker 1: Donors have not cut as many large checks of the
Speaker 1: R and C in recent years, and the party small
Speaker 1: donor program has also suffered. I wonder what your analysis
Speaker 1: of what is going on here because my guess is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is the Republican Party, so and we
Speaker 1: know the way that he really burns through his fundraising
Speaker 1: lists and exhaust donors with just constant, repeated requests, and
Speaker 1: so I think he's burned their donor base. And also
Speaker 1: is just like it is him that is the party,
Speaker 1: so there's less incentive to then give to like the
Speaker 1: official party apparatus.
Speaker 2: I'll bring it back to where I was talking about
Speaker 2: with vague A. I think had a point in terms
Speaker 2: of partnering with NBC, which I think is stupid. But
Speaker 2: let's put that aside and let's think about the rn
Speaker 2: C as is constructed.
Speaker 3: You were right macro level, it's never going to change anything.
Speaker 2: But I know a lot of people actually worked at
Speaker 2: the R and C and they were very proud because
Speaker 2: of a lot of money that they brought in into
Speaker 2: they twelve is that they invested a ton of the
Speaker 2: Romney money and all the other things in that time
Speaker 2: for a voter outreach system which dramatically outperformed the DNCS
Speaker 2: similar technology in twenty sixteen, which again it's mostly because
Speaker 2: of Trump. But for these party apparatuses, it's all about infrastructure.
Speaker 2: For smaller organization refer and candidates like Act Blue, it's
Speaker 2: been a massive success for Democrats, and Win Red has
Speaker 2: been ish, not not as good. I think what Vivic
Speaker 2: the legitimate point I think he makes here, and also
Speaker 2: that this shows is that bad stewardship of the party
Speaker 2: really is about investment at the party level, where you're
Speaker 2: able to help people in you know, BS in some
Speaker 2: race nobody's ever heard of. You can put some money
Speaker 2: in at the last minute, you can give them technology,
Speaker 2: you can connect people with volunteers, and that stuff just
Speaker 2: costs tremendous, tremendous amounts of money. So Roni McDaniel has also,
Speaker 2: I think been a bad RNC chairwoman a because she
Speaker 2: hasn't investor hasn't been a to raise.
Speaker 3: Money properly be she can't pick a lane? Are you
Speaker 3: either pro Trump or not?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: What are we doing here? Are we going to do?
Speaker 2: You know, we're endorsing a primary process. We're putting on
Speaker 2: debates which Trump is not showing up to. So in
Speaker 2: some ways she's oppositional to him, but she's also going
Speaker 2: to be supportive of him if he eventually becomes the nominee.
Speaker 2: She's tried to govern in this very like middling direction,
Speaker 2: and I think that has both led to lack of fundraising,
Speaker 2: lack really of also a lack of relationship management with Trump.
Speaker 2: Where why don't we have like the ground apparatus? Where
Speaker 2: are we not sharing the mailing list and all these
Speaker 2: other things. I know this can sound boring, but the
Speaker 2: party itself has not performed at a good level. A
Speaker 2: lot of that is due to Trump, abortion, you know,
Speaker 2: all this other stuff, but in stuff that they can control.
Speaker 2: At least from what I understand, even the consultants and
Speaker 2: all these other people are very dissatisfied with her leadership.
Speaker 3: I may have that to you.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that she's been a terrible leader. But
Speaker 1: I also would say, like I think The biggest problem
Speaker 1: for them is probably structural. There's been a drop in
Speaker 1: grassroots fundraising across the board, Democrats, Republicans, you know, independent organizations.
Speaker 1: There's been a huge shop in grassroots fundraising. There may
Speaker 1: be a variety of reasons for that. One is people
Speaker 1: feeling really stretched. Another is they feel sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, nihilistic, like why would I give my money
Speaker 1: at this point? There may be a whole host of reasons,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of been an across the board phenomena
Speaker 1: in terms of the big donors. If you're thinking about it,
Speaker 1: like if you're a Trump person, you're going to give
Speaker 1: to Trump. If you're an anti Trump person, you're going
Speaker 1: to give to Nikki Haley, or you're going to give
Speaker 1: to Chris Christy. Why would you give to the RNC
Speaker 1: if your project is either Because Trump is a central
Speaker 1: dividing line in our politics and certainly in the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: So if you're a pro Trump person, he is effectively
Speaker 1: the party that's where you're going to invest your resources.
Speaker 1: And if you're an anti Trump person, like Ronna McDaniel,
Speaker 1: is effectively his you know, he supports her and supported
Speaker 1: her staying in as R and c chair, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't make a lot of sense to give the money there,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then you also have hanging over
Speaker 1: all of this, like all of the stuff that was
Speaker 1: happening in the House, and they can't get a speaker
Speaker 1: and they can't pass any legislation, and they're just sort
Speaker 1: of like in chaos and aimless and kind of a
Speaker 1: mess over there as well. So it also doesn't inspire
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence in the organization of the Republican
Speaker 1: Party institution itself. But I really think the key thing,
Speaker 1: if I had to guess, is just the fact that
Speaker 1: Trump has subsumed the party. You know, he is a
Speaker 1: much larger like it's no longer about the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: it's about the person of Donald Trump. And so to me,
Speaker 1: that's probably the bigger story.
Speaker 2: That's definitely of course that overlays it. I'm more saying,
Speaker 2: like terms of what she can control. There was also
Speaker 2: an interesting moment last night on lower Ingram Show where
Speaker 2: ron DeSantis was pressed on Ronald McDaniel whether she should
Speaker 2: stay and he was tripping all over himself on this answer.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 13: We'll be able to say.
Speaker 3: I think there should be no change and they aren't
Speaker 3: aren safe. Actually it's working out. Actually, I.
Speaker 13: Called for change after the midterms. I was the only
Speaker 13: presidential candidate running that called for change. I wasn't running
Speaker 13: at the time. But my ewer wife, we've lost all
Speaker 13: these elections in a row. Why are we continue to
Speaker 13: do it? But here's the thing. As the nominee, I
Speaker 13: will be responsible for doing it, and I will get
Speaker 13: the job done, regardless of who the chairman of it is.
Speaker 13: I led the drive in Florida. I'll lead the drive nationally.
Speaker 13: We can do it. We just need leadership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need a Republican party that has a message
Speaker 2: beyond just you know, Biden bad. So anyway, I think
Speaker 2: what Laura is reflecting there is there is a lot
Speaker 2: of activist energy that I see that is against R
Speaker 2: and C. And the fact that DeSantis kind of has
Speaker 2: to pick and choose his way through interesting to me,
Speaker 2: very interesting.
Speaker 1: I just lasting on this. The focus on Ronald McDaniel
Speaker 1: just to me seems like cope because they don't want
Speaker 1: to say it's Trump's fault or abortion. They don't want
Speaker 1: to say it's abortion, like those things are uncomfortable because
Speaker 1: then you have to deal with, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: core part of your base or a core part of
Speaker 1: the party platform, or you got to deal with the
Speaker 1: guy Donald Trump, which almost all of them are afraid
Speaker 1: to do. And so she's like, you know, a useful
Speaker 1: scapegoat here, and you know, you look at the fundraiser
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, it's your fault. That must be
Speaker 1: the reason that we're losing. Maybe it's like tenth down
Speaker 1: the list of important factors in these elections, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it's this is a dodge to avoid dealing
Speaker 1: with the real central problems.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, let's move on to the next part.
Speaker 2: George Santos. He's facing possibly an expulsion vote in Congress
Speaker 2: sometime this week, but he is.
Speaker 3: Going out with a bang.
Speaker 2: He did a X of Spaces formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 2: in which he really went off on some of his colleagues,
Speaker 2: alleging some pretty debaucherous behavior behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Now, look, he's a proven liar. Should we believe him? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Maybe not, although I suspect this may be the truest
Speaker 2: thing that he's ever said.
Speaker 14: I have co a colleague who are more worried about
Speaker 14: getting drunk every night with the next lobbyists that they're
Speaker 14: going to screw and pretend like none of us know
Speaker 14: what's going on and sell off the American people not
Speaker 14: show up to vote because they're too hungover or whatever
Speaker 14: the reason is, or not show up to vote at all,
Speaker 14: and just give their card out like fucking candy for
Speaker 14: someone else to vote for them.
Speaker 15: This shit happens every single week. Reporters don't care to
Speaker 15: write about adultery anymore. And trust me, there's been plenty
Speaker 15: of this Congress and nobody writes about it anymore because
Speaker 15: Joey Santas is here. They should look at it this way. Look,
Speaker 15: with George being around, a lot of this shit's gonna
Speaker 15: go under the ruck because none of the reporters write
Speaker 15: about it anymore. Just putting that out there because I
Speaker 15: think it's relevant. Who has no real track record of trading.
Speaker 15: This member has been able to outperform every single pointed
Speaker 15: measure of stock trading this year so far. I mean
Speaker 15: talk about insider trading, and there's so much a there's
Speaker 15: so much, there's so much proof to just pinpoint today
Speaker 15: and times of when trades happen and when information was
Speaker 15: bought in front of that specific committee. He is going
Speaker 15: to be undermined all throughout this election process by the
Speaker 15: very people that should be supporting him. These people will
Speaker 15: undermine him, they will get in his way, they will
Speaker 15: redirect voters from him to others. Make no mistake, there
Speaker 15: is a lot of members in this body who hate
Speaker 15: Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: So this has been his strategy, is to wrap himself
Speaker 2: in the shroud of Trump and be like, I'm on
Speaker 2: Trump's side. That's why he shouldn't take me out as
Speaker 2: if it's why.
Speaker 1: Care so deeply about adultery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he cares a lot about adults.
Speaker 2: That's why he had an OnlyFans account that he paid
Speaker 2: for with his campaign finance funds. My favorite is when
Speaker 2: he went what he went on TV and he claimed
Speaker 2: you didn't know what OnlyFans was, and then as exposed
Speaker 2: to have been having it out. Okay, certainly and interesting.
Speaker 2: Reminds us a little bit of the Madison Cawthorne event.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there on the screen, don't forget.
Speaker 2: Whenever he alleged that there were GOP lawmakers engaged in
Speaker 2: orgies and who did key bumps of cocaine in front
Speaker 2: of him, he drew a huge ire from Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 2: and others who forced him to apologize again as possible,
Speaker 2: he was telling the truth too. But all of this
Speaker 2: is in the backdrop of Santos facing a expulsion vote.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put Axios please up there where it
Speaker 2: currently looks like Santos says that he will not resign,
Speaker 2: that he will not resign, but is facing a vote
Speaker 2: of expulsion. After that Ethics Committee report was released, which
Speaker 2: was the thing that Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson and
Speaker 2: others had held onto. Johnson said that he spoke with
Speaker 2: Santos yesterday and that they're, you know, looking at a
Speaker 2: variety of options. That he's kind of thinking about what
Speaker 2: he wants to do. But Santos has been pretty unequivocal
Speaker 2: that he won't resign. Of course, you know, it'd be
Speaker 2: pretty humiliating to get expel expelled from Congress.
Speaker 3: He would be the only sixth person in American history.
Speaker 1: This man is impervious to humiliation, That's true. Congressman tells
Speaker 1: everybody what they want to hear. Whenever they Oh you
Speaker 1: played volleyball, I played volleyball. Oh you're Jewish, I'm chewish.
Speaker 1: Oh you have a connection to the world trip to
Speaker 1: the nine to eleven. Oh my mom was killed in
Speaker 1: that attack. So listen for him from Madison Cathine whatever.
Speaker 1: We are all prepared to believe the most saalacious things
Speaker 1: you have to say about your colleagues there. But you
Speaker 1: got to bring some receipts, okay, especially at this point,
Speaker 1: credibility is not exactly at a high water mark, shall
Speaker 1: we say, right at this moment. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you're going to spill the tea good, bring some receipt receipts.
Speaker 1: Tell us who.
Speaker 3: Take video, Yeah, go ahead, send me the videos.
Speaker 1: The truth, expose the truth. We're all cheering for you, buddy.
Speaker 3: Anyway.
Speaker 2: So will he get expelled or not? You know, we'll see.
Speaker 2: It remains to be seen. If the vote will likely
Speaker 2: happen sometime this week. I mean, the Democrats are almost
Speaker 2: one hundred percent on board. There have been some dear
Speaker 2: colleague letters that have been circulating of Republicans being like, hey,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't maybe we shouldn't kick him out. But the
Speaker 2: biggest issue for Santos is that even his Republican party
Speaker 2: remember this at home, They want him to go, They
Speaker 2: want him to resign. The people who are in his
Speaker 2: office stay that they won't work with him, the mayor
Speaker 2: and other state that I absolutely refuse, so the local apparatus,
Speaker 2: the population, the Republican Party and now House leadership.
Speaker 3: And others. I don't see.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's gonna last if it comes to
Speaker 2: a vote, of which is very possible.
Speaker 3: I think I don't think he's got it.
Speaker 1: Looks like looks like the Swan song days for our
Speaker 1: great times with George Sands.
Speaker 3: Oh missus fashion and his slip filler, and so many
Speaker 3: other things he was maybe.
Speaker 1: I still don't know about that one.
Speaker 3: Maybe husband, whether it's true or not.
Speaker 2: There's so many, so many things among the mysteries about
Speaker 2: mister George Santos, as you said, America's congressman. Okay, guys,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for watching. I know it's been
Speaker 2: a long show today. We've got the merchandise on for sale.
Speaker 2: We of course have our discount going for our yearly subscription.
Speaker 2: We appreciate, we love all of you. We have a
Speaker 2: great counterpoint show for everyone tomorrow, and we'll see you
Speaker 2: all on Thursday.
Speaker 8: Shot shout didn't