Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3: But enough with that, Let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Good morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. Ryan. How are you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. How about you?
Speaker 4: I'm doing well.
Speaker 5: We've got a big show, including a very interesting conversation
Speaker 5: that you set up with Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Tayeb
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit about what we can expect
Speaker 5: from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is going to be good.
Speaker 6: So we had Matt Tayube on the show a month
Speaker 6: ago or so, and Matt and I both made some
Speaker 6: gently disparaging remarks about Jeffrey Sachs the old jobs, as
Speaker 6: one does from the eighties or nineties, But we were
Speaker 6: both kind of going off what we understood from the
Speaker 6: time about the reporting at the time about what he'd
Speaker 6: been doing in the Soviet Union and into the transition
Speaker 6: from the Silvit Union into Russia. He reached out and
Speaker 6: added some fascinating context to what we'd been talking about,
Speaker 6: and I asked him if he'd be willing to write
Speaker 6: what he said for a drop site news and then
Speaker 6: come back on the show and talk about it with Matt.
Speaker 3: So we're going to add some.
Speaker 6: I think genuinely new historical context to our understanding of
Speaker 6: the US Russian relationship since the breakup of the Soviet
Speaker 6: Union and leading all the way up to the war
Speaker 6: in Ukraine, in which we have some news from there,
Speaker 6: vladimart Zelenski insisting that he is not leaving Russian territory,
Speaker 6: which of course that's what you would say. You're not
Speaker 6: going to start out your negotiation by saying that you're
Speaker 6: about to walk out.
Speaker 5: Foreign minister resigned overnight as well. That's breaking as we're
Speaker 5: recording this. So lots of Ukraine used to get to
Speaker 5: We will get to that in the show. We're going
Speaker 5: to start with Donald Trump doing an interview with Lex Friedman.
Speaker 5: There's a lot to break down from how they had
Speaker 5: that conversation, what they talked about, what they didn't talk about,
Speaker 5: and all that good stuff. AOC and Jill Stein are
Speaker 5: at war for one reason or another. So we're going
Speaker 5: to dive into all of that. It's actually pretty interesting conversation,
Speaker 5: especially given the RFK junior context. He is remaining on
Speaker 5: the Michigan ballot, it appears, So let's talk about there
Speaker 5: and some updates of course from Israel as well, Ryan,
Speaker 5: because just yesterday we got some statements out of the
Speaker 5: Biden administration that add to this discussion.
Speaker 6: So, yeah, Biden administration is saying that they're going to
Speaker 6: offer a take it or leave it deal to both
Speaker 6: Israel and Hamas right at the same time that Israel
Speaker 6: is now leading its biggest invasion into the West Bank
Speaker 6: since two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: It drops out.
Speaker 6: We have a reporter who's on the ground there who
Speaker 6: said a dispatch last night that we can talk about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, excited to talk about that.
Speaker 5: Also, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in Israel,
Speaker 5: so a lot of pressure on Net and yahou. Let's
Speaker 5: start with Donald Trump on Lex Friedman's show. We're going
Speaker 5: to play this first st where Lex Friedman pushed him.
Speaker 5: This was the most Lex Friedman pushed him in their
Speaker 5: forty five minute cumbers station on voting irregularities in the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two election. Alleged voting irregularities in the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty election. Lex Friedman said he's independent. His friends are independent.
Speaker 5: They like what Trump says about a lot of things,
Speaker 5: but it's just the twenty twenty election lies that gives
Speaker 5: him pause.
Speaker 4: So here's how Donald Trump responded to that.
Speaker 7: I became president. Then the second time, I got millions
Speaker 7: of more votes, and I got the first time, I
Speaker 7: was told if I got sixty three million, which is
Speaker 7: what I got the first time, you would win.
Speaker 3: You can't not win.
Speaker 7: And I got millions of more votes and that and
Speaker 7: lost by a whisker.
Speaker 4: He lost by a whisker.
Speaker 6: Whisker, The way he said was so good. Yeah, he
Speaker 6: paused before he said it. He's like, well, he did
Speaker 6: not want to admit that he actually lost. And then,
Speaker 6: to his great credit, he said he lost by a whisker. Yes, also,
Speaker 6: whoever told Here's what he doesn't understand, and which is
Speaker 6: so fascinating. Why did so many more people vote in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty than voted in twenty sixteen and voted in
Speaker 6: any presidential election in American history? A Obviously populations higher
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty than it was in nineteen twenty. But
Speaker 6: why did so many millions more people come out in
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen to vote against Donald Trump after he was
Speaker 6: in the office for four years. He can't he just
Speaker 6: can't seem to stumble on the answer that a lot
Speaker 6: of people were just motivated to come out and vote
Speaker 6: against him.
Speaker 3: Well, he animated millions of people to.
Speaker 6: Get off the sidelines, register to vote and just come
Speaker 6: out and say I do not like this man.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's interesting because the cope has some
Speaker 5: truths wit in this case, which is there was this massive,
Speaker 5: multi hundred million dollar effort to make voting really easy
Speaker 5: during COVID And yeah, so that's I mean, he's not
Speaker 5: wrong about that. But he also on the one hand,
Speaker 5: when Lex Friedman says, a lot of people will call
Speaker 5: you what authoritarian or fascist or something, I actually thought
Speaker 5: the most interesting part of the interview was that exchange.
Speaker 5: Lex Friedman says, I don't think Kamala Harris is a
Speaker 5: communist and Donald Trump is basically like, well, they call
Speaker 5: me authoritarian, so you know I can call her a communist.
Speaker 4: I have to fight fire with fire.
Speaker 5: That's hugely significant because it's such a Trumpian moment. It
Speaker 5: is so rare that you see the candidate admitting that
Speaker 5: their political.
Speaker 4: Spin is a lie.
Speaker 5: Ran you just don't ever that is an unspoken fact.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows it, but nobody ever says it. And he
Speaker 5: said it right there, and he's like so trumping and
Speaker 5: completely honest about it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: On the one hand, during this interview, he says, the
Speaker 6: thing about running for president is you have to not
Speaker 6: care what people say about you, because it's it takes
Speaker 6: a lot of courage to get into the ring, and
Speaker 6: if you care, you're going to choke. On the other hand,
Speaker 6: he cares very clearly, cares very deeply, and is wounded
Speaker 6: by all the things that people say about him, particularly
Speaker 6: when they call he talked about I never said that,
Speaker 6: you know, World War One soldiers were suckers and losers. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 6: he has a lot of things that he's has grievances
Speaker 6: about that he thinks he was unfairly maligned or that
Speaker 6: were attributed to him in an unfair way. One of
Speaker 6: them X people says, well, they call you a fascist,
Speaker 6: and he's like, right, that's why I call her a
Speaker 6: communist and she you know, they can dish it, but
Speaker 6: they can't take it. So it was it was clear that, yeah,
Speaker 6: he doesn't really think she's a communist. No, they said
Speaker 6: her father's a Marxist, right, and Freedman's like, oh, that's true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he said it's important to fight fire with fire,
Speaker 5: meaning if they call me one thing, I have to respond.
Speaker 5: And that's to your point about just to get back
Speaker 5: to the voting thing for a moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's also a part of his cope.
Speaker 5: That you know it's and there's some truth to it
Speaker 5: as well, that he's the people have lied about him
Speaker 5: and hyperbolized about him for so long that obviously if
Speaker 5: the people knew the truth, they would love me. Just
Speaker 5: not necessarily true, but that's probably how he sees it.
Speaker 5: And Lex Friedman always reminds me of James Lipton from
Speaker 5: Inside the Actor's Studio, Actually Will Ferrell's impression of James
Speaker 5: Lipton from Inside the Actor's Studio, where he's just like,
Speaker 5: if Heaven is real, what do you want to hear
Speaker 5: God say to you when you get there? Just trying
Speaker 5: to open up this part of Donald Trump that hasn't
Speaker 5: quite been unlocked.
Speaker 4: And Trump is just so good at not really answering
Speaker 4: those questions.
Speaker 5: You know, he's so good at just totally running out
Speaker 5: the clock and saying nothing. He's better than Kamala Harrisons
Speaker 5: saying nothing.
Speaker 6: Yet also letting you know kind of what he's thinking
Speaker 6: about sometimes, even if he's trying to conceal it or
Speaker 6: trying to say it in a way that you can't
Speaker 6: kind of tie him to a layer.
Speaker 5: Well, let's talk about that, because here's Lex Friedman pushing
Speaker 5: Donald Trump on whether or not he would release files
Speaker 5: related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 4: So here's the clip.
Speaker 7: But a lot of big people went to that island,
Speaker 7: but fortunately I was not one of them.
Speaker 8: It's just very strange for a lot of people that
Speaker 8: the list of clients that went to the island has
Speaker 8: not been made public.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't It Probably will be.
Speaker 8: By the way, So if you're able to, you'll be Yeah.
Speaker 7: Certainly take a look at it now. Kennedy is interesting
Speaker 7: because it's so many years ago. You know, they do
Speaker 7: that for danger too, because you know, endangers certain people,
Speaker 7: et cetera, et cetera. So Kennedy is very different from
Speaker 7: the Epstein thing. But yet I'd be inclined to do
Speaker 7: the Epstein I'd have no problem with it.
Speaker 5: He really didn't want to talk about Epstein to the
Speaker 5: point where he pivoted Jfkenny, like, if the Kennedy assassination
Speaker 5: is your crutch to get out of an uncomfortable situation.
Speaker 6: That's your easy question, right And for people who don't
Speaker 6: have the background, Roger Stone is one of the people
Speaker 6: who is Trump's best friend. Has been pushing for the
Speaker 6: CIA is Kennedy documents to be released basically his entire life.
Speaker 6: Roger Stone had one job as friend of Donald Trump,
Speaker 6: and that was to get your friend the president to
Speaker 6: declassify all of the JFK documents while he was president,
Speaker 6: and they were due on schedule court ordered to be
Speaker 6: declassified under the Trump administration, and he buckled to Mike
Speaker 6: Pompeo and pressure from the CIA to withhold an enormous
Speaker 6: number of those documents towards the end of his tenure.
Speaker 6: And now he's saying that he will he'll do it
Speaker 6: this time if he goes back in, and he's also
Speaker 6: saying has no problem he's going to do the Epstein ones.
Speaker 6: But Trump is not good at hiding his body language.
Speaker 6: He was so uncomfortable talking about Epstein there.
Speaker 5: Uncomfortable but almost like bemused when Friedman was like a
Speaker 5: lot of people went to that island. And you can
Speaker 5: see the look of on Donald Trump's face where he says, fortunately.
Speaker 4: It wasn't me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, elsewhere he says, yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 6: There's this incredible video of Trump and Epstein right like yeah,
Speaker 6: like aling women at a at a party and like laughing.
Speaker 6: And Trump tells Epstein some joke and Epscene doubles over laughing.
Speaker 3: Uh, like Lix. Freedman asks him why why.
Speaker 6: Did people why was he so effective at insinuating himself
Speaker 6: into people's lives and and Trump says, what he was
Speaker 6: a hailty Well fellow, and he had a lot of
Speaker 6: assets Blake and island when he would use to attract people.
Speaker 6: But yeah, he at first he does not seem interested
Speaker 6: at all in releasing those names or in really talking
Speaker 6: about it at all, but then by the end he says, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'll do it.
Speaker 5: Roger also friends with Howard Hunt's son, So just so
Speaker 5: much to unpack.
Speaker 4: In the drum.
Speaker 6: Yes, and Howard Hunt's son is the one who claimed
Speaker 6: that Howard Hunt on his deathbed, Yes, confess that there
Speaker 6: was a c I A, uh, there was a CIA conspiracy.
Speaker 6: If you listen into the tapes, it's not quite like,
Speaker 6: it's not really quite there. Any kind of leads me,
Speaker 6: and it's not clear how how there Howard Hunt is.
Speaker 6: But yes, Howard Hunt's son is speak because yes, Rogerstone is.
Speaker 6: If there was a guy who was going to convince
Speaker 6: his friend to release the documents, it was Rogerstone.
Speaker 5: You'd think you'd think, Well, let's hear how Trump responded
Speaker 5: when Lex Friedman pressed him on Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: This is the clip.
Speaker 8: Let me ask you about Project twenty twenty five. So
Speaker 8: you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection
Speaker 8: to nothing.
Speaker 7: I know nothing about it, and they know that too,
Speaker 7: Democrats know that. And I purposely haven't read it. Because
Speaker 7: I want to say to you, I don't. I have
Speaker 7: no idea what it's all about. It's easier than saying
Speaker 7: I read it, and you know all other things. No,
Speaker 7: I purposely haven't read it, and I've heard about it.
Speaker 7: I've heard about things that are in there that I
Speaker 7: don't like, and there's some things in there that everybody
Speaker 7: would like.
Speaker 4: Oh, that was sort of a useless exchange. I felt
Speaker 4: it was sort of.
Speaker 5: Just like Donald Trump in any kind of mainstream interview
Speaker 5: being asked about Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: I don't know what did you make about that?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 6: He didn't press any further on it, right, and he
Speaker 6: didn't talk about what's in it, right, It just which
Speaker 6: is that's the like what's good about alternative media is
Speaker 6: when it gets into the specific somebody at least he
Speaker 6: had the thing up on the side it said, you know,
Speaker 6: firing fifty thousand that are workers is one of the
Speaker 6: things in Project twenty twenty five. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: other cultural stuff in there. That's the stuff that Trump
Speaker 6: is running from. You know, I haven't read the exact
Speaker 6: details of what it says around abortion and IVF, but
Speaker 6: it's not going to be it's not going to be popular.
Speaker 6: It's not going to be the remotely moderate stuff, right, Yeah, So,
Speaker 6: I mean what else in there do you think that
Speaker 6: he's right?
Speaker 3: Is he running from.
Speaker 5: And on Project twenty five five? I mean, I think
Speaker 5: he just is running from the image that Democrats have
Speaker 5: successfully created of it being a boogeyman that you can
Speaker 5: kind of because there are things that are not in
Speaker 5: Project twenty twenty five, that the Harris campaign is pretty
Speaker 5: successfully just getting to associate with Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: and they've already associated Project twenty twenty five with Trump.
Speaker 4: It's been like this brilliant.
Speaker 5: Marketing effort, pr effort to build something out of just
Speaker 5: the name Project twenty twenty five, which is so broad
Speaker 5: that you can kind of project onto it, what do
Speaker 5: you want to project onto it? So I think he's
Speaker 5: running away from Project twenty twenty five itself entirely. And
Speaker 5: that's why the Trump campaign has started to put out
Speaker 5: its own sort of policy plans so that they can say,
Speaker 5: this is what he want to do, has nothing to
Speaker 5: do with what like you can compare and contrast, But
Speaker 5: they don't own our plans. We thoroughly own what our
Speaker 5: policy plans are going forward. And to the extent that
Speaker 5: the Trump campaign does own Project twenty twenty five, it's
Speaker 5: just because there would be I think overlap in staffing
Speaker 5: that there there would actually be a lot of people
Speaker 5: who were involved with Project twenty twenty five who would
Speaker 5: end up working in a Trump administration like that's and
Speaker 5: they have ideas that they've put on paper about what
Speaker 5: some of the policies are that they'd want to implement.
Speaker 5: But it's you know, that's why the Trump campaign is
Speaker 5: running from the whole thing.
Speaker 4: From my perspective.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it seems fair to ask Trump to actually
Speaker 6: put out some policies like he gets he gets a
Speaker 6: pass from that from the media because I think he's
Speaker 6: Trump and there's something almost absurd about him, even like
Speaker 6: having detailed policy. Like when he said I haven't read
Speaker 6: it because I wanted to be able to say to
Speaker 6: you that I have nothing to do with it, It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 6: you also didn't read it because you just don't read
Speaker 6: stuff like you didn't. You didn't need a reason not
Speaker 6: to read a long document like we've all read the reporting,
Speaker 6: like the military like draws pictures and stuff.
Speaker 3: Because he has a very short attention.
Speaker 5: Listen, I don't think anybody wants to read Project twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five because it's so long.
Speaker 3: I haven't read it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's I've looked at it, but I haven't like
Speaker 6: read it all the way.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, yeah, so I should. I'm not doing
Speaker 3: my job here.
Speaker 10: Well.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 5: Trump was also asked by Lex fre about basically how
Speaker 5: he posts on truth social that I did find useful
Speaker 5: and interesting in the sort of James Lipton inside the
Speaker 5: Actors studio sense, because he said that he posts from
Speaker 5: bed and that sometimes you know.
Speaker 3: If you run sleep much, right, He's not one.
Speaker 4: He's not one for sleeping something like this.
Speaker 5: So let's roll this clip of Donald Trump talking about
Speaker 5: reposts on truth social.
Speaker 8: I'd love to get your psychology about behind the tweets
Speaker 8: and the posts on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally
Speaker 8: provocative or are you just speaking your mind? And are
Speaker 8: there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I do, I mean, but not that often. Honestly, you know,
Speaker 7: I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get
Speaker 7: in trouble with are the reposts because you find down
Speaker 7: deep they're into some group that you're not supposed to
Speaker 7: be reposting. You don't even know if those groups are good, bad,
Speaker 7: or indifferent. But the repot so the ones that really
Speaker 7: get you in trouble. When you do your own words,
Speaker 7: it's sort of easier, but the reposts go very quickly.
Speaker 7: And if you're gonna check every single little symbol and uh,
Speaker 7: I don't know, it's worked out pretty well for me.
Speaker 9: I tell you, it's.
Speaker 4: Truth is it's the reposts.
Speaker 3: It's the repost that gets you.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 5: The hair is Champagne is not wrong. So the Hair's
Speaker 5: campaign took that video and tweeted. Trump asked about reposting
Speaker 5: QAnon a misogynistic content quote, I do a lot of reposting.
Speaker 4: It's worked out very well.
Speaker 3: Yes, he did. He in the end, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it worked out great for me.
Speaker 4: So this brings us full circle too. I know, we're
Speaker 4: breaking down real quick.
Speaker 6: The reason it works out well for him is that
Speaker 6: he can dog whistle to these groups. So like he's like, oh,
Speaker 6: there's some symbol that I didn't realize what that symbol was. Well,
Speaker 6: it's on truth social and it's controversial. It's some type
Speaker 6: of white nationalist symbol that he's referring to in general.
Speaker 6: And so he retruths that or whatever his word.
Speaker 4: And what is like, what is the you means something specific?
Speaker 9: You mean no?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 6: The way that he said it was like, you don't
Speaker 6: look all the way down at the bottom of the
Speaker 6: post that you're reposting and there's a there's some symbol
Speaker 6: there that represents some group that you didn't know about,
Speaker 6: and it's controversial and you reposted it, and now you're
Speaker 6: tagged with associating with that group, Like Q and stuff
Speaker 6: did happen ninety percent of the time you're talking q
Speaker 6: and on stuff or white Nash.
Speaker 4: So where we go on we go all hashtags.
Speaker 6: Stuff like that exactly or fourteen words or like something
Speaker 6: that's like So, what he gets is to give a
Speaker 6: little bit of a love to those groups while maintaining
Speaker 6: plausible deniability because he genuinely, I think probably Off in
Speaker 6: many cases, doesn't know what that what that symbol is,
Speaker 6: but he knows that there's a bunch of stuff he
Speaker 6: doesn't know, and he knows the direction it's going.
Speaker 3: So he's like, he's like, oh, I can.
Speaker 6: Be clever here, Well, I can show them that I'm
Speaker 6: on their side, while being like, oh, geez, it's just
Speaker 6: fourteen words. I didn't know what fourteen words meant.
Speaker 5: Which I mean plausible deniability on that one for the
Speaker 5: first time. Yeah, But I mean also that's sort of
Speaker 5: like the typical politician as gatekeepers.
Speaker 6: Right, but exactly, and it also shows to his people
Speaker 6: that he's not a typical politician.
Speaker 3: But I think he not.
Speaker 6: What it shows is he knows what he's doing because
Speaker 6: in the end, he says, it works out really well
Speaker 6: for me.
Speaker 5: He so, and this brings us, I think to the
Speaker 5: thirty thousand foot view of Donald Trump doing an interview
Speaker 5: with Like Friedman, they talked about whether he would.
Speaker 4: Do an interview with Joe Rogan. He said, I don't
Speaker 4: really know Joe Rogan.
Speaker 5: I see him when he walks into the arena with
Speaker 5: Dana White and Alex Friedman pushed him a little bit
Speaker 5: and said, there's some tension between you and Joe Rogan
Speaker 5: because he, you know, said he really likes RFK Junior.
Speaker 4: And Trump was like, I don't think there's really any tension.
Speaker 4: I don't really know the guy. I don't know if
Speaker 4: i'd do a show, I'd probably do.
Speaker 5: A show, but I'm not going to ask him, he says.
Speaker 5: I haven't been asked, but I'm not going to ask him.
Speaker 6: He said, and he said he seemed like a liberal guy,
Speaker 6: which I wish.
Speaker 3: The left could understand.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, like Trump is right, like Rogan does have
Speaker 6: like post twenty twenty when he got completely destroyed for
Speaker 6: endorsing Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 3: I think he's drifted.
Speaker 6: Right in some cultural ways, but in general he's he
Speaker 6: has a lot of like left wing instincts, hirement and wage,
Speaker 6: supports unions, you know, supports Medicare for all, endorsed Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 6: There's a reason Trump says that he seems like a
Speaker 6: liberal guy, right, because he has a lot of liberal impulses.
Speaker 5: Yeah, almost, I mean, yes, he's in Bernie Sanders. He
Speaker 5: likes Tulsia Gabber, he likes you know, I don't know
Speaker 5: where he stands on Tulsia Gabbert now, but obviously he
Speaker 5: likes RFK Junior.
Speaker 4: And yes.
Speaker 5: So all that is to say, though, Donald Trump has
Speaker 5: been on this tour of alternative media podcasts and it's
Speaker 5: pretty interesting as a political strategy. Sometimes Alex Friedman gets
Speaker 5: a little bit of or Theovon is a good example.
Speaker 5: I thought Theovonne got more out of Trump psychologically than
Speaker 5: Lex Friedman did, just because they were talking, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's Donald Trump having a long form conversation with a comedian.
Speaker 5: It becomes interesting in ways nobody expects. But Lex Friedman
Speaker 5: I think got some genuinely interesting stuff out of Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, that's not like Trump sitting down
Speaker 5: with you know, Katie Kirk.
Speaker 4: In some ways that are good in some ways that
Speaker 4: are bad. I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's it's as a campaign strategy. Pretty interesting, he talked.
Speaker 5: This was one of the most compelling parts of the
Speaker 5: interview as well. Trump talked about why you need to
Speaker 5: do new media. He was like, maybe it's more powerful
Speaker 5: than TV. And hearing that from Trump is so interesting
Speaker 5: because this is a man who like mastered the use
Speaker 5: of television before he became a political candidate and when
Speaker 5: he became a political candidate. So there's something going on.
Speaker 5: I think that was a window into the way he's
Speaker 5: thinking about it. He talked about how Elon had him
Speaker 5: on a spaces and got, you know, more listens than anyone.
Speaker 5: There's something going on, or he's starting to reckon with
Speaker 5: the alternative media or the old media, the gatekeepers having
Speaker 5: less and less power, which is interesting to watch him
Speaker 5: reckon with that in real time because he was a
Speaker 5: huge Like he's the one that poured the fuel on
Speaker 5: the fire of people starting to question the gatekeepers more
Speaker 5: than they ever have before. I mean, it was him
Speaker 5: coming out in twenty fifteen and sixteen talking about fake
Speaker 5: news and baiting the media into kind of exposing itself
Speaker 5: again for better or worse. I think for better when
Speaker 5: it comes to having transparency about how awful the media is.
Speaker 5: But to see him sort of not look at himself
Speaker 5: as a main character, and that was interesting as well.
Speaker 3: When's he going to come on here? What are we
Speaker 3: doing wrong?
Speaker 4: That's right? An invitation? Are what are we doing wrong?
Speaker 4: Probably said all kinds of things. He would consider things
Speaker 4: that we're doing wrong.
Speaker 3: Does he take that personally? He said, Hey, you have
Speaker 3: to not care.
Speaker 4: I'm sure likex Friedman has some interesting stuff too.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he has.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So anyway, it's it's smart. I mean, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 4: we're not asking him.
Speaker 3: He's not going to ask us. So well. Kamlin Harrison.
Speaker 5: Probably she did Charli Maine and just Face Planet on
Speaker 5: Charli Mane if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing some clips from it, which is not good.
Speaker 5: Right, But hey, they should both they should both get
Speaker 5: even more comfortable with new media. But you know, I'll
Speaker 5: take one candidate becoming comfortable with new media because and.
Speaker 3: Jade Vance he's been here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I reach I did reach out to the Walls
Speaker 6: camp and say, look, Jadie Vance comes on these.
Speaker 3: Shows, you might as well too. Hey, that's right, he's
Speaker 3: not here yet.
Speaker 5: Let's move on to this feud between Alexandria Kazio Cortes
Speaker 5: and Jill Stein. Ryan, do you want to set the
Speaker 5: table for us on this because it's sort of straight.
Speaker 4: Out of your book.
Speaker 6: Well, so AOC was doing in Instagram live and taking
Speaker 6: questions from her audience, and one of them was basically,
Speaker 6: what should I say to my friends who are considering
Speaker 6: voting Green Party or thinking about voting for for Jill Stein?
Speaker 3: Let's roll the AOC clip that kicked this off.
Speaker 1: You are the leader of your party, and if you
Speaker 1: run for years and years and years and years and
Speaker 1: years in a row and your party has not grown,
Speaker 1: and you don't add city council seats, and you don't
Speaker 1: add down vallet candidates, and you don't add state electeds,
Speaker 1: that's bad leadership. And that, to me is what's upsetting,
Speaker 1: because if you have been your party's nominee for twelve
Speaker 1: years in a row, four years ago and four years
Speaker 1: before that and four years before that, and you cannot
Speaker 1: grow your movement pretty much at all, and can't pursue
Speaker 1: any successful strategy, and all you do is show up
Speaker 1: once every four years to speak to people who are
Speaker 1: justifiably pissed off. But you're just showing up once every
Speaker 1: four years to do that. You're not serious, you're not authented.
Speaker 1: To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads
Speaker 1: as predatory. I'm sorry, I'm just saying it.
Speaker 3: And let's roll Jill Stein's response from an.
Speaker 9: Airport here still here.
Speaker 12: I'm about to board, but very quickly. I just wanted
Speaker 12: to thank AOC Pelosi so very much for her very
Speaker 12: authentic concern about growing green power. Clearly, AOC is the
Speaker 12: attack dog d joure and the Democrats are running scared,
Speaker 12: and they should be, because who wants to support a genocide?
Speaker 12: Who wants to vote for a genocide? And if there's
Speaker 12: anything that's predatory here, it's saying that your candidate is
Speaker 12: working tirelessly for a ceasefire, when actually they are actively
Speaker 12: funding and arming genocide and actually refusing to even consider
Speaker 12: an arms embargo, which would bring the genocide to a
Speaker 12: screeching halt. AOC, who's supposed to be in leadership of
Speaker 12: the Democratic Party, it's amazing if she doesn't know about
Speaker 12: the anti Democrat tactics and strategies that the Democratic Party
Speaker 12: uses to crush and silence political opposition, and.
Speaker 3: To take it to another level.
Speaker 6: The DNC is now attacking Jill Stein if you can
Speaker 6: put up this element here. So Jill Stein went down
Speaker 6: to support three black nationalist activists who are charged with
Speaker 6: acting as agents of Russia.
Speaker 3: She went down to support them.
Speaker 6: The DNC spokespresident said, Jill Stein is a useful idiot
Speaker 6: for Russia. After parrotying Kremlin talking points and being propped
Speaker 6: up by bad actors in twenty sixteen, she's at it again.
Speaker 6: Jill Stein won't become president, but her spoiler candidacy that
Speaker 6: both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in,
Speaker 6: can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is
Speaker 6: a vote for Trump, which is that is the like
Speaker 6: that's the oldest line in the book from mainstream parties
Speaker 6: towards third party candidates, that a vote for X is
Speaker 6: actually vote for Why, as somebody on the outside, when you.
Speaker 3: Watch these those three different clips, what was your reaction
Speaker 3: to him?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think Jill Stein got the better of
Speaker 5: AOC in that exchange because on the question of like,
Speaker 5: they're both talking about what they believe is genocide, So
Speaker 5: it's pretty black and white when you can spit back
Speaker 5: at AOC that she's on the side of the party
Speaker 5: that's saying Joe Biden is working tirelessly or Kamala Harris
Speaker 5: is working tirelessly for a ceasefire. I mean, that felt
Speaker 5: like kind of a slam dunk, even though obviously Jill
Speaker 5: Stein AOC is correct that Jill Stein has not found
Speaker 5: much of a constituency over her many years in politics.
Speaker 5: But where it's somewhat I don't know if disappointing is
Speaker 5: the right word, but somewhat frustrating to hear from AOC
Speaker 5: who I disagree with on most things but so thoroughly
Speaker 5: enjoyed her defeat of Joe Crowley. Is you know, that's
Speaker 5: not all for That's not all Jill Stein's fault. There
Speaker 5: are a lot of other forces that AOC should theoretically
Speaker 5: be opposed to that were gatekeeping Jill Stein. I don't
Speaker 5: think Jill Stein is like a brilliant once in a
Speaker 5: generation politician, or is anyone that could turn out to
Speaker 5: be like a Ross Perot level third party candidate. I
Speaker 5: just don't find her that compelling. I don't think a
Speaker 5: lot of other people find her that compelling. There are
Speaker 5: many people who do, but not enough to obviously become viable.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of gatekeepers that are pushing to
Speaker 5: ensure people like Jill.
Speaker 4: Stein aren't viable.
Speaker 5: And you'd think AOC would have some sympathy because her
Speaker 5: entire sort of Instagram video, her entire argument, and that
Speaker 5: Instagram video was sort of saying if you're not finding
Speaker 5: it was kind of smug, right, It's like, if you're
Speaker 5: not finding a constituency, then that's on you. It's like, well,
Speaker 5: it's probably also on a lot of the factors you
Speaker 5: say you don't.
Speaker 6: Like too it is, but you have to you know,
Speaker 6: if you're one person you work with the world. You've
Speaker 6: got one correction on to AOC's argument there. It's actually
Speaker 6: Howie Hawkins, who was the Green Party nominee in twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: If you remember Howie Hawkins, No, which goes to the
Speaker 6: point like nobody even knows who the Green Party nominee was,
Speaker 6: for instance, in twenty twenty. Yeah, like we know Ralph
Speaker 6: Nader in two thousand is a Green Party nine.
Speaker 3: Pretty much the last time they were kind of relevant.
Speaker 6: So it's Jill Stein in twenty sixteen out Hawkins in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty Hawkins. A lot of Greens were upset with
Speaker 6: Hawkins because they thought that he didn't kind of challenge
Speaker 6: the duopoly enough and kind of made way in different
Speaker 6: states for Biden to take on Trump. Because there's this
Speaker 6: there is this perennial concern that as a third party
Speaker 6: does better, let's say, like the Greens in two thousand,
Speaker 6: a substantial number of those voters then get concerned, Oh,
Speaker 6: we did better, the party did not improve, did not
Speaker 6: move our direction, and now we're getting blamed for spoiling
Speaker 6: the election, and then it drains support from them again
Speaker 6: in the future. I've got my own complicated Green history.
Speaker 6: I was actually a Green Party member.
Speaker 4: Least surprising I've received.
Speaker 6: In New York shout out to Paul Gilman, who invited
Speaker 6: me to join the Queen's Green Party back in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety nine to two thousand. I even went to on
Speaker 6: a like a with a convay of buses.
Speaker 3: I literally went to the Green Party.
Speaker 4: Convention just Doc Martins everywhere.
Speaker 6: Two thousand door knocking, like volunteered this Madison Square Garden
Speaker 6: rally where he packed the entire event. So every single
Speaker 6: argument that anybody could make for the Green.
Speaker 4: Party, you're sympathetic too.
Speaker 6: I made myself in a louder and more obnoxious way
Speaker 6: many many times over. And the basic arguments are, there's
Speaker 6: no difference between the two parties. And then the second
Speaker 6: argument is, by building third party power, you're going to
Speaker 6: kind of force the Democrats to move better, to move
Speaker 6: in your direction, and we can take each one of those,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 3: Two thousand argued.
Speaker 6: So the Greens also have this thing that they do
Speaker 6: where they say, and I did it myself.
Speaker 3: That okay.
Speaker 6: Look if you say, look Ralph Nader got x thousands
Speaker 6: of votes in Florida and that swung the election to
Speaker 6: Bush the Greens, and go scroll down to the comment section,
Speaker 6: you'll see him doing it right now. The Greens will say,
Speaker 6: that's absolutely not true. That they were registered Democrats who
Speaker 6: ended up voting for George Bush, and that's the fault
Speaker 6: of Democrats. Those were like, but those are Southern Democrats
Speaker 6: like who were actually Republicans who were always going to
Speaker 6: vote for Republicans. There were definitely, like, it's five hundred
Speaker 6: and thirty seven votes in the end separated Gore and Bush.
Speaker 6: Like you just have to say, like, okay, there there
Speaker 6: were tens of thousands of people who voted for Nator,
Speaker 6: who if he wasn't running, they would.
Speaker 3: Have voted for al Gore. Like, that's just a fact.
Speaker 6: And to me, as a third party supporter, the proper
Speaker 6: answer is not to like split hairs about this and
Speaker 6: argue that, no, it didn't actually have an effect.
Speaker 3: You have to own it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, because it's your argument. That's your argument.
Speaker 6: There's no difference, yeah, and it's and it's good like whatever,
Speaker 6: like we're we're going to vote for this person, come
Speaker 6: what may, and there's no difference anyway. And then as
Speaker 6: soon as it has some impact on the real world,
Speaker 6: they run from any responsibility from it. And so then
Speaker 6: a couple things happen after two thousand and one.
Speaker 5: Which implies you don't like the consequences, right, although you
Speaker 5: were threatening those very consequences as a good.
Speaker 3: Thing, right exactly.
Speaker 6: So I have much deeper respect for the argument that, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's right, it did cost him, and you know what,
Speaker 6: Democrats should have been a better party, and if they
Speaker 6: were a better party, then we wouldn't have run, and
Speaker 6: he wouldn't have gotten as much.
Speaker 4: Support or a should have earned those votes.
Speaker 6: Nobody is like, nobody's born with the right to have
Speaker 6: having you vote for them, Like, those are better arguments
Speaker 6: to me on a moral level. That's a great point
Speaker 6: than to say I didn't actually And so you get
Speaker 6: this from Greens all the time.
Speaker 3: Actually it didn't matter.
Speaker 6: Like the thing that I talk about all the time,
Speaker 6: you know, my choice to vote third party doesn't actually
Speaker 6: mean anything. They're like, well, why are you talking about
Speaker 6: it constantly?
Speaker 3: It didn't actually mean anything.
Speaker 6: So after two thousand you get September eleventh happens, Bush
Speaker 6: is in office, he invades a Raq, and so a
Speaker 6: lot of people, including myself, were confronted with the question,
Speaker 6: now I voted in New York didn't matter.
Speaker 4: Well, also there's the question, would al Gore have done
Speaker 4: the same thing?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 3: I think the answer is no.
Speaker 6: I think in order to for the US to invade Iraq,
Speaker 6: you need the Neocon in positions of power.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's been those levers.
Speaker 5: I mean the Georgia bubush, going from saying we're going
Speaker 5: to end Middle East interventionism to you know, championing Middle
Speaker 5: East right.
Speaker 6: But it was his vice president Dick Cheney and his
Speaker 6: uh you know, Secretary of Events down On Rumsfeld and
Speaker 6: Paul Wolfowitz and like tho that that clack of people
Speaker 6: really kind of did a lot of internal organizing to
Speaker 6: make sure that that happened. You can read Bob Woods's
Speaker 6: book about nine to eleven. Like within a day or
Speaker 6: two of the attack on the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld
Speaker 6: is saying, we need to invade Iraq because there aren't
Speaker 6: enough targets in Afghanistan and the and they immediately start
Speaker 6: laying the groundwork for that, and that this was a
Speaker 6: particular set of people who had a particular vision it is.
Speaker 5: It was the neo conservatism gets thrown around a lot,
Speaker 5: but it is a very specific like in its literal sense,
Speaker 5: there is a very specific sort of group.
Speaker 6: Of people that are referred These were the intellectual leaders
Speaker 6: of it, and they were in the exact right positions
Speaker 6: of power to kind of jam it into happening.
Speaker 5: That said, the Greens, like yourself at that very moment,
Speaker 5: may have had a good case to own. Frankly, that
Speaker 5: personnel and an al Gore administration continued from the Clinton
Speaker 5: administration could have made some of the very same errors.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that's absolutely accurate. I'm just saying there
Speaker 5: was the green case that both parties are the same
Speaker 5: through the lens of the or the response to nine
Speaker 5: to eleven not a terrible argument, because there is some
Speaker 5: overlap between Clinton neo conservatism and ultimately what became Bush
Speaker 5: neo conservatism. Some important differences too, but it's yeah, it's
Speaker 5: hard to.
Speaker 6: Say yeah, And that gets to the more difficult question
Speaker 6: of today, because I think, yes, yes, I think back
Speaker 6: then it was clear the Republicans were much more both
Speaker 6: part like this is a America. Both both parties have
Speaker 6: like enormous numbers of warmongers in them on the scale
Speaker 6: of warmongers, and two thousand Republicans had the had the
Speaker 6: neo cons they had the they had the aggressive militarism
Speaker 6: of Reaganism still kicking, and uh, Democrats had like, say,
Speaker 6: let's say half of that. Today, I think if if
Speaker 6: it's a if you're asking about workers, unions, on the economy,
Speaker 6: on domestic policy, I genuinely do think Democrats are better
Speaker 6: for workers than Republicans are today when it comes to
Speaker 6: American militarism abroad and foreign policy.
Speaker 3: I can't say that for sure.
Speaker 5: And don't you think AOC is saying that, I mean,
Speaker 5: is a Democrat like that?
Speaker 6: And she's saying Democrats are better than Republicans, and any
Speaker 6: Democrat ought to say that. But when it comes to
Speaker 6: foreign policy, Trump could be a complete madman his second term.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 6: But we know that Democrats have embraced a militarism and
Speaker 6: a hawkish foreign policy that that is frightening, and.
Speaker 4: Does it, from that perspective make them better?
Speaker 3: So then you're asking yourself a real question.
Speaker 6: It's a lesser of two years of two you've got
Speaker 6: two parties, which one is better or worse on the
Speaker 6: particular issue that I care about more like if I
Speaker 6: think it's clear, if it's domestic policy, it's Democrats, Like,
Speaker 6: I don't think there's any question about that.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 6: This realignment is fascinating. Four years, eight years from now,
Speaker 6: we might have a different answer to that question foreign policy.
Speaker 6: They might be better, but they might not. It's like,
Speaker 6: it's not as obvious a question to me. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: agree as it as it used to be because.
Speaker 5: There are wars happening in both parties right now over
Speaker 5: who gets to control foreign policy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's yeah, it's clearly happy.
Speaker 5: I think it's more interesting right now on the Republican
Speaker 5: side because there are people who have genuinely heterodox views
Speaker 5: on foreign policy that are starting to look like they're
Speaker 5: coming out ahead in tug of war. Jd Vance is
Speaker 5: one of them that doesn't seem like it's happening as
Speaker 5: much on the left, although Ilhan Omar is someone who's
Speaker 5: certainly ascendant and has staked out a position actually directly
Speaker 5: during DNC week against AOC.
Speaker 6: And to me, those are the real questions that you
Speaker 6: have to ask yourself. And if you notice what's not
Speaker 6: in there, this is the third party stuff, right, or
Speaker 6: in particular the Green Party. The Green Party has just
Speaker 6: done a deplorable job of growing power at the local
Speaker 6: level and at the state and at the federal level.
Speaker 5: But some of that is clearly the fault of gate
Speaker 5: keeping on behalf of vicious the DNC operatives and the media.
Speaker 5: And I mean, like they're not entirely wrong about being
Speaker 5: marginalized by you know, the pro lowercase D democracy factions
Speaker 5: in American factions.
Speaker 6: But people kind of sometimes make the mistake of assuming
Speaker 6: that a political party that is named the Democrats would
Speaker 6: support democracy.
Speaker 4: Big mistake, big mistakes.
Speaker 3: But they don't.
Speaker 6: They support the Democratic Party, and so yes, whatever is
Speaker 6: in the interest of the Democratic Party, that's what they're
Speaker 6: going to do, and if that means trying to kick
Speaker 6: the Greens off the ballot, it's awfully hypocritical, but it's
Speaker 6: exactly what you would.
Speaker 3: Expect of them.
Speaker 6: The fundamental problem that any third party has is the
Speaker 6: system that we have, which is this it is not
Speaker 6: parliamentary in Europe and some other places around the world.
Speaker 6: You win seven percent of the vote, you get seven
Speaker 6: percent of the seats in parliament, and then you join
Speaker 6: a coalition and then you can use that's that's the
Speaker 6: leverage that you have here are coalitions are formed ahead
Speaker 6: of time and then it's a first past the post.
Speaker 6: Whoever gets not even a majority, whoever gets more votes.
Speaker 6: That's why like Bill Clinton could win with thirty percent
Speaker 6: one percent whatever he had in nineteen ninety two because
Speaker 6: Ross pro drained out nineteen percent. And so that means
Speaker 6: that a voter going into the polls, by the time
Speaker 6: they get into the booth knows it's either going to
Speaker 6: be this person or this person. And so all of
Speaker 6: the different law fare and legal challenges and gatekeeping that
Speaker 6: the media does to the Greens and to other the
Speaker 6: Libertarians and other third parties, even RFK Junior like that
Speaker 6: that hurts them a lot, but nothing hurts them more
Speaker 6: than just the fundamental design of the system we have
Speaker 6: because people because people go in and they want their
Speaker 6: vote to count between one party or the other.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's what's interesting about Alexandria Kazu Kortez's response.
Speaker 5: She could have said, she could have expressed any sort
Speaker 5: of empathy for that perspective and went, I think instead
Speaker 5: with the sort of smug dunk, which I get because
Speaker 5: to the point that you're making, and as we're talking
Speaker 5: about this, I find it so interesting. There are you know,
Speaker 5: there's a real blame on the Greens for not being
Speaker 5: more compelling to the average American voter that you know,
Speaker 5: they're there's something that they haven't tapped into it. There
Speaker 5: are real failures on their part. There are things that
Speaker 5: they and do better.
Speaker 4: I get that.
Speaker 5: I just would think, as somebody who's sort of sympathetic
Speaker 5: to the anti establishment movements on either the left or
Speaker 5: the right, that you would be your priority would be
Speaker 5: saying like, hey, I hear you.
Speaker 3: Agree with you.
Speaker 6: Well, she did say at the beginning, which we didn't
Speaker 6: play on that clip. She said, at the beginning, Look,
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about the people themselves who are considering
Speaker 6: voting for Jill Stein. She's like, look, I get that,
Speaker 6: because the parties suck and frankly like, she went up
Speaker 6: on stage and said, Kamala Harris working tirelessly to end
Speaker 6: of Ce's fire, while to Kamala Harris's administration is sending
Speaker 6: weapons to Israel yep.
Speaker 3: And while net Nyaho is using.
Speaker 6: The Biden administration's support of net Nyahu to fight off
Speaker 6: pressure from his own coalition to reach a deal, we
Speaker 6: are actively thwarting a deal, not working tirelessly to get one.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we can all understand why somebody would not
Speaker 6: want to vote for one of these these two parties.
Speaker 6: So she's not talking about those voters themselves. She's saying
Speaker 6: that people like Stein herself are the ones that are
Speaker 6: being predatory. Well, and one other point on the Greens, Yeah,
Speaker 6: ask yourself, why did Cornell West run for the Green
Speaker 6: Party nomination, spend about three weeks looking at the mess
Speaker 6: that the Green Party had become and decide that he
Speaker 6: wasn't going to run anymore?
Speaker 3: Like this is And we can say, Okay, maybe it's
Speaker 3: not their fault, etc.
Speaker 6: Because of all the structural problems that they have anybody
Speaker 6: who's active in the Green Party knows the Green Party
Speaker 6: is a mess.
Speaker 3: It's a complete and total mess.
Speaker 4: It's the same thing with the Libertarians. I mean it's
Speaker 4: and both of us know this.
Speaker 5: It's like their fringe political movements are often led by
Speaker 5: eccentric characters who are already fighting the Sissifian battle against
Speaker 5: the system that is designed to crush them. But anybody
Speaker 5: who is willing to expend the like tireless effort that
Speaker 5: involves to fight that's the Sisciphian battle, more often than
Speaker 5: not as eccentric and more often than not not the
Speaker 5: like best organizer in the world. It's like a lot
Speaker 5: of like very interesting, you know, principled people on in
Speaker 5: Green circles and libertarian circles, and those spaces get really
Speaker 5: really messy.
Speaker 3: I mean the on the libertarian side.
Speaker 6: It's the same that it becomes a lifestyle for people
Speaker 6: that it is a social thing. Comes now it's not
Speaker 6: a lot of Democrats, like the ones who go to
Speaker 6: the conventions as like delegates, same thing. That's a lifestyle
Speaker 6: thing for them too. They just like being democrats. They
Speaker 6: go to the county meetings like that's it. This is
Speaker 6: it's what they do for their community. The difference there
Speaker 6: is that you know, they might win some elections sometimes
Speaker 6: where Greens Libertarians, it just becomes like this is this
Speaker 6: is my identity, this is the thing I do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so as we're saying this, Robert F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 5: is staying on the Michigan ballot, which is actually fairly
Speaker 5: huge news because there were a lot of voters that
Speaker 5: he appealed to. I mean, we're getting in a night
Speaker 5: or territory potentially with something like Michigan right now. There
Speaker 5: are a lot of voters he appealed to who will
Speaker 5: not be persuaded to vote for Donald Trump because they
Speaker 5: were double haters and they're not going to you know,
Speaker 5: sort of along the lines of what we talked about
Speaker 5: with you in the debate we hosted with Michael Tracy
Speaker 5: and our Kidjunior field organizer former last week. There's just
Speaker 5: a whole lot of people that cannot be persuaded to
Speaker 5: vote for Donald Trump. They are the sort of RFK
Speaker 5: Junior Green equivalent. You know, both parties are the exact
Speaker 5: same thing. And when you are in a race that
Speaker 5: could get you just what was up five hundred and
Speaker 5: something votes in Florida in two thousand, when you're in
Speaker 5: a race that could be just as close as that
Speaker 5: one and the electoral College is on the line in
Speaker 5: states like Michigan, having his name on the ballot is
Speaker 5: for people who you know, don't pay super close attention
Speaker 5: to politics and just want to cast a protest vote.
Speaker 5: That's really dangerous of the Trump campaign. And Mark Cuban tweeted,
Speaker 5: you know who helped pay for the lawsuit that got
Speaker 5: RFK Junior Cornell West on the North Carolina ballot?
Speaker 12: Me?
Speaker 4: He said, I help fund voter choice.
Speaker 5: I'm not a fan of the two party system, and
Speaker 5: voter tchoice helps get candidates on the ballot, and we're
Speaker 5: good at it. His North Carolina organization came to us
Speaker 5: for help. We helped no cost to them, So I
Speaker 5: don't feel bad that he can't get off the ballot.
Speaker 5: So Cubans are taking a victory lap on that one,
Speaker 5: because the RFK Junior campaign was trying really hard to
Speaker 5: get on the ballot in all of these states, and
Speaker 5: then when you flip for Trump, you can't get off
Speaker 5: of it because it's late in the game. I could
Speaker 5: really I think that could really really hurt Donald Trump. Yeah,
Speaker 5: hard to think of a Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because if you go in because his job, he's
Speaker 6: not going to make himself more popular or Trump.
Speaker 3: He's going to make com Lris more less popular. That's
Speaker 3: his goal.
Speaker 6: And you know she's try to tear him down, but
Speaker 6: you know, views are kind of baked in on him.
Speaker 6: So by the time people go into the booth a
Speaker 6: lot and we're going to hate both. And if RFK
Speaker 6: Junior's name is there, then maybe right.
Speaker 5: Well, when we're planning the show, just a little inside
Speaker 5: baseball here, we come up with topics that we think,
Speaker 5: you know, we'll make good blocks for fifteen minutes something
Speaker 5: like that. And we just turned a block on an
Speaker 5: Instagram post from Alexandra Acasio Corotez into like ecologies, half
Speaker 5: our discussion about Ryan's history of the Green Party, which
Speaker 5: was so interesting.
Speaker 4: Actually, and four well, yeah, it's all gone, you'll never.
Speaker 5: See it, all right, Ryan, Let's move on to the
Speaker 5: Middle East. Now, there's a story up on drop site
Speaker 5: right now with some important reporting.
Speaker 4: Tell us what's going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we throw this element up on the screen so
Speaker 6: that Israel's launching its biggest invasion of the West Bank
Speaker 6: since two thousand and two. I'll just read from a
Speaker 6: note that Jeremy Scahill attached to this article that we
Speaker 6: published yesterday.
Speaker 3: He wrote, a.
Speaker 6: Few days ago, we reached out to Pali City and
Speaker 6: journalist muja Ahead Alsadi for coverage from the ground on
Speaker 6: the target of Jeanine's hospitals by the Israelian military. A
Speaker 6: reporter from Jeanne who covered the region since twenty twelve,
Speaker 6: Alsadi is no stranger to the dangers. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 6: he was just a few feet away from his friend
Speaker 6: and colleague Scherin Abu Akhla, the legendary Al Jazera correspondent,
Speaker 6: when an Israeli sniper shot and killed her. When we
Speaker 6: can put this vo up on the screen in the
Speaker 6: second element here, Jeremy goes on, you can hear the
Speaker 6: gunshots here from the IDF and on Monday, as he
Speaker 6: was reporting this story, Alsati was among a group of
Speaker 6: journalists who came under attack by Israeli forces and bulldozers
Speaker 6: while they were covering the destruction of a roundabout and
Speaker 6: surrounding shops in downtown Jeanine.
Speaker 3: The soldiers opened fire on them Injuring two, while the.
Speaker 6: Bulldozers drove at them at high speeds, forcing them to
Speaker 6: take cover inside shops. It's quite terrifying to have the
Speaker 6: bulldozer rush at you, for them to shoot at you,
Speaker 6: he told us. They were trying to revent us from
Speaker 6: doing our coverage. The next day, Palstinian journalists Amon al
Speaker 6: Nubani and Mohammed Monsur were shot and injured by Israeli
Speaker 6: forces in the village of caffd Dan, west of Jeanine.
Speaker 6: So this story was commissioned for us by Sharif abdel Cadus,
Speaker 6: who legendary correspondent from the from the Least who uh
Speaker 6: is working with us now. He edited and translated this
Speaker 6: this report from from Arabic.
Speaker 3: You can check check it out. There's some harrowing details
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 6: One of them, among them, among the many, has details
Speaker 6: on how much how many sewer lines have been ripped up,
Speaker 6: you know, the extensive damage to the infrastructure. But then
Speaker 6: some of the personal details he got are intense. One
Speaker 6: about a mother of three who took two of her
Speaker 6: children to a doctor's appointment in a hospital in Janeine
Speaker 6: last week, left her five month on five month old
Speaker 6: home with family, and that's when the assault happened, and
Speaker 6: she has been trapped in this hospital ever since. Just
Speaker 6: trying to imagine like taking my kid to the dentist
Speaker 6: and then all and then then then you're surrounded for
Speaker 6: days and you're can't even get you know, the cell
Speaker 6: phone line has been cut, like there's no internet, can't
Speaker 6: even get in touch. You don't even know, like is
Speaker 6: my family still okay? When am I ever going to
Speaker 6: leave this? Like are they getting attacked?
Speaker 3: And so?
Speaker 6: And this again is this is the West Bank, this
Speaker 6: is this is not Kaza, this is UH right, and
Speaker 6: it's and it's unfolding with exponential force.
Speaker 3: It seems like you day after day. Meanwhile, all while.
Speaker 6: The US net Yahoo and and AMAS kind of jockey
Speaker 6: over the terms of a potential UH cease fire deal,
Speaker 6: we have we have net Yahoo delivering a press conference
Speaker 6: recently where he laid out some of his conditions.
Speaker 3: Let's roll.
Speaker 9: Nen yago I was asked whether.
Speaker 11: Israel as not I'm not doing enough to the release
Speaker 11: of hostages. Well, I want to set the record straight.
Speaker 11: On August twenty eighth, that's five days ago. Five days ago,
Speaker 11: deputies CIA director said that Israel shows seriousness in the
Speaker 11: negotiations now Tramas must show the same seriousness. I want
Speaker 11: to ask you something. What has changed in the last
Speaker 11: five days.
Speaker 3: What has changed?
Speaker 11: One thing? These murderers executed six of our hostages. They
Speaker 11: shot them in the back of the head. That's what's changed.
Speaker 11: And now after this, we're asked to show seriousness, We're
Speaker 11: asked to make concessions. What message does this send Tramas.
Speaker 9: It says, kill.
Speaker 11: More hostages, murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions.
Speaker 6: White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, in a
Speaker 6: briefing with reporters, who said the opposite of what Nanyahu
Speaker 6: has been saying.
Speaker 3: We can put up this Times of Israel article.
Speaker 6: It quotes that quotes Kirby here he says, the deal itself,
Speaker 6: including the bridging proposal that we started working with, includes
Speaker 6: the removal of IDF forces from all densely populated areas
Speaker 6: in phase one, and that includes those areas along and
Speaker 6: adjacent to that quarter.
Speaker 3: He's talking about the Philadelphia Quarter.
Speaker 6: And this is yesterday, right, yes, And that's he says,
Speaker 6: that's the pro that's the proposal that Israel had agreed to.
Speaker 6: So Israel had previously agreed to a proposal that would
Speaker 6: remove IDF troops from the Philadelphia Corner, which is in
Speaker 6: Dan and Rafa, the border between Israel and Egypt. Nennyah,
Speaker 6: who is now saying that he has American support not
Speaker 6: to do that is a complete public Disagreement's play. We
Speaker 6: can play a little more net Yahoo, just to show
Speaker 6: how just stark this divide is.
Speaker 10: The Philathic Crridle, which separates Egypt from the Guzza Strip,
Speaker 10: will not be evacuated. If Israel will give up control
Speaker 10: of it. Guzza will become an enclave of terror. When
Speaker 10: Ira designed from the government, when I realized that they
Speaker 10: were going to do the disengagement and they were going
Speaker 10: to break up these Jewish communities, I gave a mindative
Speaker 10: resignation to Prime Minister Sharon and I said in it
Speaker 10: that the minimum requirement of mine was to leave the
Speaker 10: Philadelphia Corridle in Israeli control.
Speaker 6: So in that press conference Emily and he said to
Speaker 6: he said, sinowar, it's not going to happen, ye like
Speaker 6: he was. It's like I am not leaving the Philadelphic Corrider,
Speaker 6: Like he's not going to agree to anything that requires
Speaker 6: idea of troops to leave. Meanwhile, you have the US
Speaker 6: saying that he has agreed to that, and the US
Speaker 6: wants him to do that, and you have nt Yahoo
Speaker 6: telling his cabinet.
Speaker 3: Barack Revied reported this, He's like, the.
Speaker 6: US has agreed to let them stay. Why are you
Speaker 6: trying to get us the cave? What kind of like
Speaker 6: incompetent incoherence are we witnessing here?
Speaker 3: Like what's the US policy?
Speaker 6: What's at least nat Yahu's policy seems well, I mean
Speaker 6: he's incoherent to because he previously approved a plan and
Speaker 6: a deal that would see Israeli troops leave the Philadelphia corridor.
Speaker 3: Now he's saying that he won't sure.
Speaker 5: And your colleague Jeremy Skhill has talked to at Drop
Speaker 5: site people on the Hamas side about what these negotiations
Speaker 5: have looked like. There isn't a lot of that reporting
Speaker 5: in mainstream media, which makes it kind of difficult to
Speaker 5: weigh competing claims, which is something that we're doing, for example,
Speaker 5: between Ukraine and Russia right now. You can sort of
Speaker 5: weigh the competing claims and try to get a window
Speaker 5: into these negotiations that are happening.
Speaker 3: Right Russia says this. Ukraine says this.
Speaker 4: Right, and some of it is you know, they're both.
Speaker 5: Some of the spin is obviously different than what's being
Speaker 5: said behind closed doors, and some of it is what's
Speaker 5: said in public to pressure the other side is different,
Speaker 5: or to pressure people in your own country is different
Speaker 5: than what's being said behind closed doors.
Speaker 4: So I guess right, I'm curious for.
Speaker 5: What your sense is is about if there's similar incoherence
Speaker 5: that because if you're fighting incoherent demands from one side
Speaker 5: with incoherent demands from another side, that makes mediation extraordinarily difficult, obviously,
Speaker 5: But what's your sense Having worked with Jeremy and red
Speaker 5: Thot reporting.
Speaker 6: HAMAS has actually been incoherent in its response to the
Speaker 6: killing of the hostages, you had a beta basically confirming
Speaker 6: that Hamas as the result of a new directive given
Speaker 6: to guards of hostages. After so, if you remember back
Speaker 6: in June, there was a hostage rescue operation that was successful,
Speaker 6: but that led to more than two hundred Palestinians being killed,
Speaker 6: like entire neighborhoods, strafed and bombed. And after that they
Speaker 6: said they put in a new order that if that happens,
Speaker 6: execute the hostages. That pretty clear confirmation that they had
Speaker 6: done it. You had, and you can find this on
Speaker 6: our Twitter account else where. You had a political bureau
Speaker 6: spokesperson go on Al Jazeera last night.
Speaker 3: And say, well, maybe.
Speaker 6: They died and crossfire and like throwing a lot of
Speaker 6: like kind of mud and dust up in the air
Speaker 6: and saying, you know, who knows exactly what happened. It's like,
Speaker 6: wait a minute, You're your people on ground basically confirmed
Speaker 6: it yesterday, two days ago.
Speaker 3: Now you're saying that who knows.
Speaker 6: So there is there does seem to be a serious
Speaker 6: divide between the political bureau Hamas types who were like
Speaker 6: in Doha and the and the people still on the
Speaker 6: ground in Gaza.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to the ceasefire.
Speaker 6: Negotiations there there's coherence from Hamas. They are saying that
Speaker 6: their terms are very clear. Israel has to leave Gaza
Speaker 6: like that, that's pretty and then the war has to
Speaker 6: end like that.
Speaker 3: Those are their demands and Nanyas.
Speaker 6: Had previously agreed to that, and they the Hamas is saying,
Speaker 6: we just implement that previous agreement that they laid out,
Speaker 6: that is real laid out and that Biden made public.
Speaker 9: Just do that.
Speaker 6: Andya was saying, no, we're not doing that one anymore.
Speaker 4: Let's look at this map. So this is C five.
Speaker 4: If we could put this.
Speaker 5: Up on the screen, Ryan, can you explain what we're
Speaker 5: what we're looking at, especially for people who are listening
Speaker 5: to because this is fairly interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So this is Nanyahu during his very long press conference
Speaker 6: the other day where he's laying out his position on
Speaker 6: uh not being willing to leave the Rafa border crossing,
Speaker 6: and anybody with any familiarity of the region, we can
Speaker 6: look at that and be like, seems to be something
Speaker 6: missing there.
Speaker 3: Entire West Bank, entire West Bank.
Speaker 6: Right before October seventh, he gave a present at the
Speaker 6: UN where he put up a similar map that didn't
Speaker 6: even have Gaza. Then like that one, at least this one,
Speaker 6: I guess has has the Gaza strip still there? It
Speaker 6: has to because he's talking about the Gaza strip.
Speaker 3: But that is the Like.
Speaker 6: What what critics have said is that this map represents
Speaker 6: Netnyahu's vision, and in fact, the vision of greater Israeli
Speaker 6: extends even further, goes back like there there are still
Speaker 6: huge factions within Israeli body politic that think that giving
Speaker 6: back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in the seventies was
Speaker 6: a mistaken that they still need to like that's that.
Speaker 3: Deep into Lebanon.
Speaker 6: And Syria, that this is all you know, greater Israeli,
Speaker 6: you know, territory by just God given writer, natural writer,
Speaker 6: whatever it is. So yeah, so when when people saw
Speaker 6: him put up another map after taking so much heat
Speaker 6: internationally for the last one, then he put up that
Speaker 6: didn't include either the West Bank or Gaza. This one
Speaker 6: he puts up doesn't include West Bank or like God.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, here in the States, it's the first day, or
Speaker 5: was the first day of classes at Columbia University, obviously
Speaker 5: the center of the widespread campus protest. Really it was
Speaker 5: the center of the momentum as protests fanned out across campuses.
Speaker 5: And we can start rolling this clip that if you're
Speaker 5: listening to it, what you're going to see is the
Speaker 5: alma mater statue at Columbia University being drenched in red
Speaker 5: paint meant to look like blood. And this is going
Speaker 5: to play out in some interesting ways. I'm very curious
Speaker 5: how this plays out in the fall, because to the
Speaker 5: conversation we were just having, there is really no light
Speaker 5: at the end of this tunnel and there's really no
Speaker 5: end in sight. There seems like there's no path to
Speaker 5: cease fire in sight, no matter how much the Biden administration.
Speaker 5: Biden insists that we're getting closer and closer. We've been
Speaker 5: hearing that, obviously, over and over again for months, so
Speaker 5: this could take off. And the other news to mention
Speaker 5: we can put C seven up on the screen is
Speaker 5: in the United Kingdom amid pressures, not unlike pressures from
Speaker 5: the left in the United States, they have decided to
Speaker 5: suspend some arms to Israel.
Speaker 4: That's what the Reuter's headline says.
Speaker 5: UK decision to suspend some arms for Israel frustrates both sides,
Speaker 5: and it's pretty apparent why that would frustrate both sides. So, Brian,
Speaker 5: this is the way that this is playing out in
Speaker 5: the West, as we keep hearing we're just centimeters away
Speaker 5: from a ceasefire, and everyone kind of is calling bs
Speaker 5: on that.
Speaker 4: I mean, everyone kind of knows that.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the right.
Speaker 6: The reporting out of Israel's at Naniaho is genuinely starting
Speaker 6: to feel some pressure. If you look at his public statements,
Speaker 6: he doesn't seem like he's willing to bend on this.
Speaker 6: It's also September, so we're now two months away from
Speaker 6: a presidential election, in which he might think, who knows,
Speaker 6: now it's you. You know, he's one of those politicians
Speaker 6: you live to see another day. Now he's two months
Speaker 6: away from a who knows moment? So at that point
Speaker 6: you think, well, why why I greet anything now?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: If I can just slow walk it into November totally.
Speaker 5: I mean, the way that these external pressures are affecting negotiations,
Speaker 5: we don't have super clear information on yet, but we
Speaker 5: can guess, you can sort of surmise what might be
Speaker 5: affecting it. And obviously Netanyahu Christlin Sager covered this, but
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of people general Stike strike in cities
Speaker 5: like Tel Aviv, taking to the streets, similar crowd. This
Speaker 5: was either I read this in another ap R Reuters.
Speaker 5: I thought this was an interesting bit of information. Pretty
Speaker 5: similar crowd in terms of overlap between people who were
Speaker 5: trying to protest his were protesting his attempt at judicial reform,
Speaker 5: So anti net and Yahoo people, but the anti net
Speaker 5: and Yahoo people after October seventh were not immediately.
Speaker 4: Still anti yes, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: So pressure is certainly looming over his decision making too. Yeah,
Speaker 5: all right, Ryan, you have some reporting to share.
Speaker 4: Let's get to that.
Speaker 6: So after the IDF discovery of six hostages who'd been
Speaker 6: killed in a tunnel in Gaza, Hamas released a video
Speaker 6: of Idan Yuroshami speaking to the camera. It was a
Speaker 6: cold display of cruelty to Adon's loved ones, who were
Speaker 6: only beginning to process her tragic and needless death. In
Speaker 6: the video, which is undated, Dan tells her family how
Speaker 6: much she misses them and Lambastnyahu for the relentless bombing
Speaker 6: campaign and for failing to free the hostages. The New
Speaker 6: York Times rightly cited human rights groups in condemning Hamas's
Speaker 6: production of the hostage video, writing quote, rights groups and
Speaker 6: international law experts say that a hostage video is by
Speaker 6: definition made under duress, and that the statements in it
Speaker 6: are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called the video a
Speaker 6: form of quote, psychological warfare, and experts say their production
Speaker 6: can constitute a war crime unquote.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 6: Now, let's take that moral clarity and apply some moral consistency.
Speaker 6: Earlier this year, former Facebook executive Cheryl Sandberg produced a
Speaker 6: documentary that was screened at the White House and on
Speaker 6: Capitol Hill last.
Speaker 13: Year, Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence. Cheryon, I
Speaker 13: thank you for all your work to bring to light
Speaker 13: the horrors of this issue, and for your film about
Speaker 13: what happened on October seven.
Speaker 6: The way that Sandberg proved her case shockingly was significantly
Speaker 6: through the use of coerced interrogation videos. Tom The documentary,
Speaker 6: of course, won praise in the pages of the New
Speaker 6: York Times and is to this day sitting on the
Speaker 6: White House website. The White House website now says quote
Speaker 6: Preventing and responding to conflict related sexual violence is a
Speaker 6: top priority for President Biden and Vice President Harris. Since
Speaker 6: October seventh, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and our entire
Speaker 6: administration have consistently condemned hamas horrific sexual violence. June seventeenth,
Speaker 6: the Vice President hosted an event at the White House
Speaker 6: which included a panel discussion and remarks by advocates and
Speaker 6: survivors of crs FEE from around the world, and a
Speaker 6: partial screening of Sheryl Sandberg's documentary Screens Before Silence on
Speaker 6: Hamas's sexual violence. On October seventh, now AMC International, a
Speaker 6: human rights watch, bets Salem, and Physicians for Human Rights
Speaker 6: Israel all rejected the use of hostage interrogation videos in
Speaker 6: the months after October seventh, and most news outlets chose
Speaker 6: to reject their use as well, citing the likelihood the
Speaker 6: confessions were extracted by torture. Eryl Sandberg, the White House,
Speaker 6: and Hamas have all gone a different direction. The innocent
Speaker 6: people caught in the middle deserve so much better. And Emily,
Speaker 6: it was so infuriating to me to see Hamas post
Speaker 6: those photos of the hostages after they were killed and
Speaker 6: post the video as well, And then it reminded me
Speaker 6: that the New York Times, the White House and others,
Speaker 6: as CNN has had Sandberg go one to talk about
Speaker 6: this documentary, has said absolutely nothing about the fact that
Speaker 6: she so prominently relied on these coerce interrogation videos and
Speaker 6: Coerce is doing a lot of work there in euphemistically
Speaker 6: describing what bets Aalem, the Israel Human Rights Organization calls, you.
Speaker 3: Know, hell on Earth, like their.
Speaker 6: Recent report on Israeli detention centers is called Welcome to Hell,
Speaker 6: and it describes the systematic torture and sexual violence that
Speaker 6: is doled out to policity and detainees to then while
Speaker 6: they're still in custody, to use interrogations of them. And also,
Speaker 6: by the way, the press has tried to follow up
Speaker 6: on a lot of these quote unquote confessions that were
Speaker 6: produced by these IDF videos, and even the ones that
Speaker 6: have extraordinary amounts of detail, they have never been able
Speaker 6: to find any remote substantiation. I like, if the story
Speaker 6: is told by those men and those coerced confession videos
Speaker 6: were true, you would think you'd be able to find
Speaker 6: a victim that somewhat matches the descriptions because the descriptions
Speaker 6: are so clear and precise and nothing. And so that's
Speaker 6: why human rights groups and the media in general don't
Speaker 6: rely on these and it's why Hamas should never have
Speaker 6: posted that video, and it's why the White House should
Speaker 6: be deeply ashamed of itself.
Speaker 3: From my perspect of playing those playing those videos.
Speaker 5: Of having played the Sandberg, Yeah, yeah, I struggle with
Speaker 5: this a lot, a lot, because, on the one hand,
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe it's okay to just not have a
Speaker 5: strong opinion on this, because I'm not sure that I do,
Speaker 5: and it's very.
Speaker 3: You're forgiven for that you.
Speaker 14: But no.
Speaker 5: I mean the reason I say that is I almost
Speaker 5: feel like, I'm curious what you think about this. The
Speaker 5: Hamas videos and the confession videos, the alleged confession videos
Speaker 5: are apples and oranges, if that makes sense, that like
Speaker 5: what Hamas did with this is so different than even
Speaker 5: if like totally as, I do accept the argument that
Speaker 5: those may well have been coerced out of torture, I
Speaker 5: still feel like Hamas is publishing of the hostage videos
Speaker 5: before they killed these people that they had taken hostage.
Speaker 5: It just seems to me like they're different things. But
Speaker 5: I don't know, I'm curious what you think about that.
Speaker 3: Maybe not.
Speaker 6: We don't know without seeing evidence and without a trial,
Speaker 6: whether the people, the Palestinians and those videos had anything
Speaker 6: to do with Hamas or pij.
Speaker 3: They might, but they also might not.
Speaker 4: They may they may well have done all of those.
Speaker 4: They may well drivers Because one thing we know.
Speaker 5: Is that there were absolutely inexcusable and reprehensible, disgusting acts
Speaker 5: of violence on October seventh. Then maybe those guys were
Speaker 5: part of that.
Speaker 3: But that's so crazy. There was horrific violence on October seventh, that.
Speaker 4: Is on camera.
Speaker 6: Yeah, innocent civilians were slaughtered. The need to ratchet up
Speaker 6: to something different is something that I never quite understood.
Speaker 6: It's like, it's horrible.
Speaker 4: And there's always some thing to there's always something to.
Speaker 5: Upholding these standards of decency and civilization and morality that
Speaker 5: are then undermined consistently by countries in the West. Or
Speaker 5: the quote that I've always gone back to since October
Speaker 5: seventh has nothing to do with it, is that Ollie
Speaker 5: North quote in his memoir where he talks about and
Speaker 5: actually the Israelis are involved in it, where he talks
Speaker 5: about how, you know, the worst thing for him was
Speaker 5: that the US was doing exactly what it was telling
Speaker 5: other countries not to do and was.
Speaker 4: Saying that it wasn't doing right.
Speaker 6: And now Israel's is caught in this like public debate
Speaker 6: with defending the use of sexual violence by IDF soldiers
Speaker 6: against Palestinians in prisons. Yes, it's an incredible general round.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely agree on that part.
Speaker 3: No, it is a Sheryl Sandberg documentary about that yet.
Speaker 5: Not yet, but just a very like I know that
Speaker 5: I said, I don't have a super opinion on this,
Speaker 5: but I think there's a really provocative and worthwhile point,
Speaker 5: and I'm glad that you caught it so we could
Speaker 5: talk about it all right.
Speaker 6: Up next, we're gonna have Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Tayibi
Speaker 6: in what is sure to be a fascinating conversation about
Speaker 6: the roots of the Ukraine conflict.
Speaker 4: Absolutely well, for.
Speaker 5: What is sure to be a fascinating segment, Ryan and
Speaker 5: I are excited to be joined this morning by Jeffrey Sachs,
Speaker 5: the one and only Ryan.
Speaker 4: What are we gonna be talking about today?
Speaker 6: So first of all, we're gonna start start with Ukraine,
Speaker 6: and then we're going to back up into how we
Speaker 6: got to the situation that we're in now. People may
Speaker 6: remember a couple of months ago, uh, Matt Tayibi was
Speaker 6: on the program, and in a kind of offhanded way,
Speaker 6: Matt and I were talking about the role that we
Speaker 6: understood that doctor Jeffrey Sachs had played in the in
Speaker 6: the Soviet Union, in the post Soviet Union, a transition
Speaker 6: into Russia derogatory terms, and said, what a remarkable kind
Speaker 6: of journey it had been for doctor Sachs to have
Speaker 6: gotten to kind of where he is now, somebody who's
Speaker 6: often challenging power, and that was that that was from
Speaker 6: what we understood, just from the kind of pop culture
Speaker 6: that we were raised in at the time. I'm glad
Speaker 6: that Professor Sachs reached out and said, look, I'm happy
Speaker 6: to come on and talk about what actually happened during
Speaker 6: that time. We're hopefully going to be joined by Matt
Speaker 6: Taib as well, who lived in Russia at that time,
Speaker 6: has done enormous amount of writing on that question. Doctor
Speaker 6: Sax has written an essay for us over at drop
Speaker 6: site News, which we'll be publishing later today. It will
Speaker 6: also be published over at Matt Tayeb's Racket. But we
Speaker 6: want to start with the latest in Ukraine because this
Speaker 6: is related to everything that we're talking about. So we
Speaker 6: can put this first element up on the screen. That
Speaker 6: you've got Ukrainian President Vladimore Zelenski condemning Russia for a
Speaker 6: strike killing more than fifty and meanwhile saying that the
Speaker 6: Ukrainians have no designs whatsoever on leaving Russian territory that
Speaker 6: they have recently conquered.
Speaker 3: Let's roll this clip from Zolanski.
Speaker 14: Now you've captured this territory in Russia, so the big
Speaker 14: question is what do you plan to do with it
Speaker 14: Narisk territory.
Speaker 15: We don't need the Russian territory. Operation is aimed to
Speaker 15: restore our territorial integrity. We capture Russian troops to replace
Speaker 15: them with the Ukrainian We tell them, you know, we
Speaker 15: need our military soldiers in exchange with the Russian. The
Speaker 15: same attitude is to the territories, we don't need their land.
Speaker 3: Is the plan to take more territory?
Speaker 9: I will not tell.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I can't speak about it.
Speaker 8: Is it's like the beginning of hour this course operation.
Speaker 3: With all the respects, I can't speak about it.
Speaker 13: I think that the success is very close to surprise.
Speaker 3: But conceptually you have this territory. Now you say you
Speaker 3: don't want to keep it long. Conceptually we will hold it.
Speaker 3: Conceptually we will hold it.
Speaker 6: And meanwhile there's a split screen going on on the
Speaker 6: front line. If we can put up this third element
Speaker 6: from the economists, they say, even as it humiliates Russia,
Speaker 6: Ukraine's line is crumbling in the domebos chock rate inside
Speaker 6: Kursk has not distracted the Kremlin from advancing. So you've
Speaker 6: got Russia advancing in ways that we have seen them
Speaker 6: over the past year. Even as this incursion is succeeding
Speaker 6: gaining ground inside Russia. So, Professor Sachs, what is yours,
Speaker 6: somebody who's been following this extraordinarily closely, what is your
Speaker 6: assessment of where we are today?
Speaker 14: Ukraine is losing on the battlefield. Zelensky's government is in
Speaker 14: its last legs, maybe even its last moments actually, because
Speaker 14: the contact line, the front line, is in a state
Speaker 14: of collapse for Ukraine. Not surprisingly, this whole war was
Speaker 14: misconceived and generally falsely reported by the mainstream Western media
Speaker 14: because Ukraine could not win this war, and it is
Speaker 14: in fact losing one to two thousand soldiers every day
Speaker 14: now to death or serious wounds.
Speaker 9: This is a disaster underway.
Speaker 14: It's hidden from view by the official narratives of the
Speaker 14: US government and the British government, especially by NATO spokespeople.
Speaker 14: But this is a disaster, and it's a disaster that
Speaker 14: was largely caused by the United States. Logically, again, basic
Speaker 14: facts that are hidden from view. But the US walked
Speaker 14: Ukraine into this disaster, and some of us have been
Speaker 14: saying this for years, and now it's becoming a plain
Speaker 14: as day as Russia advances on the battlefield. So Zelenski,
Speaker 14: he's either delusional or just doing what he does. He's
Speaker 14: an actor who plays his part.
Speaker 5: That's probably a great time to start looking back, because actually,
Speaker 5: I imagine you have a lot of thoughts on the
Speaker 5: days after the fall of the Soviet Union, how poorly
Speaker 5: Western media reported on it, and how poorly they sort
Speaker 5: of understood what NATO and others were doing at the time. So,
Speaker 5: doctor Sex, I guess maybe one good place to start
Speaker 5: on that question is what does Western media get wrong
Speaker 5: and why are they so bad at reporting the truth,
Speaker 5: the reality of what happens between Russia and now other
Speaker 5: countries in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 14: Well, what Western media, in the mainstream do is report
Speaker 14: the official narrative. So the question really is what is
Speaker 14: the US government get so wrong? And then why is
Speaker 14: it parroted by the New York Times or the Washington
Speaker 14: Post or the other mainstream media. What the US government
Speaker 14: has gotten wrong all along since nineteen eighty nine, or
Speaker 14: I would say since nineteen forty five, is the idea
Speaker 14: that there could be peaceful relations with Russia, just normal, cooperative,
Speaker 14: peaceful relations. But from the first moments after the defeat
Speaker 14: of Nazi Germany in nineteen forty five, the US government
Speaker 14: did prepare for war with the Soviet Union, turned on
Speaker 14: what was an ally during the war and made it
Speaker 14: to the Great Enemy. We came close to global annihilation
Speaker 14: between nineteen forty five and nineteen eighty nine. In the
Speaker 14: Cold War, I played a role as a much younger
Speaker 14: economist in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 14: As the Cold War was ending, or so I thought,
Speaker 14: I advised the Polish government, I advised the Gorbachev the government,
Speaker 14: his economic team. I advised the ELTs In government, I
Speaker 14: advised the Kuchma government of Ukraine. So I was there
Speaker 14: during that period front row seats at least, and what
Speaker 14: I saw was that the United States was eager to
Speaker 14: cooperate and to support the lights of Poland, for exams ample,
Speaker 14: or the Central European countries that had been under the
Speaker 14: Soviet sphere and Soviet domination, but when it came to
Speaker 14: the Soviet Union and then later to Russia, that remained
Speaker 14: an enemy even at the end of the Cold War,
Speaker 14: completely contrary to what I saw, what I understood, what
Speaker 14: I believed till today, that what Gorbachev and Yeltsen were
Speaker 14: offering was normalcy, peace, cooperation, the chance for a very
Speaker 14: different and vastly safer world. Well, the United States would
Speaker 14: have none of it. In fact, what the US wanted
Speaker 14: was domination. It wanted hegemony, it wanted full spectrum dominance.
Speaker 14: As the Defense Department famously put it, what the US
Speaker 14: wanted was expanding NATO, even breaking apart Russia, because that
Speaker 14: was a part of the CI ideas that we can
Speaker 14: intervene in the periphery of Russia and perhaps break it
Speaker 14: apart on ethnic lines, just like the Soviet Union had
Speaker 14: broken apart. So this is what I did not understand
Speaker 14: as I was trying to give economic advice at the
Speaker 14: end of the nineteen eighties and early nineties. My advice
Speaker 14: was help help the Soviet Union, help Russia. Help because
Speaker 14: that's what I understand good economics and good geopolitics and
Speaker 14: security to be. But all my recommendations were rejected. Basically,
Speaker 14: whenever I said help the Soviet Union or help Russia,
Speaker 14: no are you kidding, No way we're going to do that.
Speaker 14: And I didn't quite believe them that they would be
Speaker 14: so blind to the usefulness of this.
Speaker 9: But you know, if you look back and.
Speaker 14: Now, with a lot of documents that are have been exposed,
Speaker 14: and explained we never ended the Cold War in nineteen
Speaker 14: ninety one, we continued to prosecute the war against Russia. Already,
Speaker 14: by nineteen ninety four, in the Clinton administration, the decision
Speaker 14: was taken that NATO would enlarge, contrary to promises solemnly
Speaker 14: given in nineteen ninety to Gorbachev and to the Russian leaders,
Speaker 14: to Yeltsin and others, that we would not move one
Speaker 14: inch eastward. Nineteen ninety four, Clinton already agrees not only
Speaker 14: will NATO move eastward, it will move to Ukraine, to
Speaker 14: the two thousand, one hundred kilometer.
Speaker 9: Border with Russia.
Speaker 14: And that is the provocation that has gotten us into
Speaker 14: this mess.
Speaker 6: And this period to me, nineteen eighty nine to nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety four or so is to me one of the
Speaker 6: great hinge moments in world history, because you can quite
Speaker 6: easily imagine a world in which the United States has
Speaker 6: a relationship with any country that is similar to that
Speaker 6: that we have would say Germany or Japan. I mean,
Speaker 6: we're in a cataclysmic world war with Germany and Japan.
Speaker 3: And here we are, you know, some.
Speaker 6: Decades later, you know, there's some tensions here and there
Speaker 6: when it comes to trade and other foreign policy. But
Speaker 6: in general we're allies with those countries. There's no there's
Speaker 6: no chance we're really going to war with either it
Speaker 6: at any time soon.
Speaker 3: So welcoming. You know, Matt Taibe, who was a journalist in.
Speaker 4: So materialized out of thin air the time.
Speaker 6: So I know that you lived through this period and
Speaker 6: you were equally fascinated by this, this piece that Professor
Speaker 6: Sachs has written for us. I woantn't to ask you
Speaker 6: if you wanted to ask him to tease a few
Speaker 6: parts of it out or yeah.
Speaker 16: First of all, hello, professor, and thanks for coming on
Speaker 16: joining us, of course with this discussion. I was really
Speaker 16: amazed by some of the things in this essay. Could
Speaker 16: you talk first about you know, you advised Yegor guy
Speaker 16: Dar I believe he was still the Prime Minister of
Speaker 16: the Soviet Union at the time.
Speaker 9: Now he was Prime Minister of Russia.
Speaker 14: Guidark I advised Lynsky earlier, who was the economic advisor
Speaker 14: to Gorbachev.
Speaker 16: Right, and I'm sorry, okay, this was in November ninety one,
Speaker 16: but you advised him to go to the G seven
Speaker 16: and ask for debt stabilization. What happened when he did that.
Speaker 14: Basically, you know, when I was asked to come help,
Speaker 14: why would they ask me for all the you know,
Speaker 14: for God's sake? And the answer was that I knew
Speaker 14: something about the financial stabilization and financial crises, and I
Speaker 14: had a view that by the way, went back to
Speaker 14: John Maynard Keynes, who was the great British economist who
Speaker 14: was involved in the Versailles negotiations after World War One.
Speaker 14: He said, don't make a harsh settlement. You'll pay for
Speaker 14: that later. Very prescient, very powerful analysis. I was very
Speaker 14: much influenced by that as a young economist, and I said,
Speaker 14: don't make a harsh piece and don't let the Soviet
Speaker 14: Union or Russia spiral into a deep financial crisis. Well,
Speaker 14: they had a deep financial crisis, that's why things were
Speaker 14: falling apart. And they asked me help us get out
Speaker 14: of this financial crisis. And I took the normal tools
Speaker 14: of the trade, for example, saying you need to not
Speaker 14: pay the debt temporarily at least maybe permanently, but you
Speaker 14: need a debt standstill. In other words, you're running out
Speaker 14: of money. You're in the deepest crisis. This is a
Speaker 14: historic moment of profound significance. I'm talking about nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 14: Russia is about to become an independent and wants to
Speaker 14: be a democratic country. My god, this is phenomen so,
Speaker 14: this is a big deal. So get some space on
Speaker 14: your debt, because you don't have financial reserves. You're in
Speaker 14: deep financial crisis. That's what I suggested to Yegor Gaidar,
Speaker 14: who was then the head of the economic team for
Speaker 14: Boris Yeltsen, who was about to become president of an
Speaker 14: independent Russia. And it was the kind of advice I
Speaker 14: had given to Poland two years earlier, which had worked
Speaker 14: to stabilize Poland's economy, and the kind of advice I
Speaker 14: had given a few years earlier than that to help
Speaker 14: end a hyperinflation in South America.
Speaker 9: Now I gave it to Guidar.
Speaker 14: I sat in the Anti Anti room as he walked
Speaker 14: into meet with the so called G seven deputies, that
Speaker 14: means the finance ministry deputies are, in the case of
Speaker 14: the US, the US Treasury under secretary or Deputy secretary.
Speaker 9: On finance.
Speaker 14: And this was a key meeting in November nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 14: and I sat in the ante room, and he came
Speaker 14: out ashen face and yegor what happened, he said, They
Speaker 14: told me, you pay every penny of interest as it
Speaker 14: falls due, or we stopped the shipments of food on
Speaker 14: the high seas that are coming as emergency relief for you. Unbelievable,
Speaker 14: but that's actually the advice.
Speaker 9: That's what they did.
Speaker 14: By the way, they continued to pay until they went
Speaker 14: into default early in nineteen ninety two because they literally
Speaker 14: ran out foreign exchange reserve, so they went to zero.
Speaker 14: And then massive crisis came and the US is just
Speaker 14: sitting there. I thought sucking its thumb was even worse
Speaker 14: than that. It was watching a crisis unfold with no
Speaker 14: real intention to do much about it.
Speaker 9: As far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 14: Because nobody I thought it was ignorance, delay, bureaucratic ineptitude.
Speaker 14: But it turned out to be a persistent policy that
Speaker 14: the US was just not going to help. What it
Speaker 14: was going to do was build US power in the region.
Speaker 14: It was going to expand NATO, it was going to
Speaker 14: make its demands. It was going to tell Russia, yeah,
Speaker 14: you can be a player, listen to us, join our team,
Speaker 14: do what we say, don't complain. That was the idea
Speaker 14: of US foreign policy beginning in nineteen ninety one ninety two,
Speaker 14: but it was in a way a continuation from nineteen
Speaker 14: forty five. Interestingly, and I need to men back in
Speaker 14: nineteen forty five we were allies with the Soviet Union
Speaker 14: against Hitler, and the Soviet Union had lost twenty seven
Speaker 14: million people. This unbelievable disaster had borne the brunt of
Speaker 14: defeating the German army, and within weeks or months of
Speaker 14: the end of World War Two, we started to hire
Speaker 14: German Nazi scientists, those of course who had made the
Speaker 14: two missile systems, German warfare specialists who had tortured inmates
Speaker 14: and killed inmates and concentration camps, done human experiments.
Speaker 9: We took them on.
Speaker 14: Because the idea already in nineteen forty five, and then
Speaker 14: it just built in forty six, in forty seven and
Speaker 14: forty eight was the next enemy is the Soviet Union.
Speaker 14: We need to prepare for total war. So this idea
Speaker 14: is very deep seated in America. But I thought, hey,
Speaker 14: I could not have been more thrilled in nineteen eighty
Speaker 14: nine ninety ninety one to be witnessing the birth of
Speaker 14: worldwide peace in front of my eyes.
Speaker 9: But we just wouldn't habit the end.
Speaker 6: Of his story and one of the So there's kind
Speaker 6: of multiple layers of the scandal and the way that
Speaker 6: the Western world treated Russia. One of those is the
Speaker 6: macro level that you talked about kind of driving them
Speaker 6: into one of the greatest you know, maybe the greatest
Speaker 6: financial collapse in world history.
Speaker 9: I wouldn't say that, but a big one, big, a
Speaker 9: big one.
Speaker 3: This is a big one, very big one.
Speaker 6: But then the second one is on the micro level,
Speaker 6: the extraordinary theft and corruption around the around the privatization
Speaker 6: of national industries. And you've gotten lumped into that sometimes
Speaker 6: because the Harvard Institute for International Development, which you were
Speaker 6: involved with, had some of its members involved with that.
Speaker 3: So can you talk.
Speaker 6: About that connection, like who was involved with that? And
Speaker 6: I know you're write in the essay that anyway, just
Speaker 6: you go ahead and tell them.
Speaker 14: Yeah, just very very briefly. My gig and my side
Speaker 14: of the work was finance and macroeconomics. I'm an international
Speaker 14: finance economist by training. I had stopped the hyperinflation, I
Speaker 14: had helped cancel debts, I had helped Bolivia to get
Speaker 14: back on its feet. I was asked to help bring
Speaker 14: in Western money to help stabilize the situation in the
Speaker 14: Soviet Union in nineteen ninety ninety one. That didn't work
Speaker 14: because the White House turned it down flat, the whole idea.
Speaker 14: And then again for Yelson, where I thought this is
Speaker 14: a slam dunk. Now we have an independent Russia, post communists, democratic,
Speaker 14: all the rest.
Speaker 9: I thought it was slam dunk. They turned that down again.
Speaker 14: I was not part of privatization and I was not
Speaker 14: asked to be frankly, because there were other people involved
Speaker 14: to didn't really even want me to be involved.
Speaker 9: Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 14: So I was doing my thing, not succeeding because I
Speaker 14: couldn't convince Washington about any of this, by the way,
Speaker 14: which was really strange for me, because what I had
Speaker 14: recommended in Poland had worked, and so I was saying,
Speaker 14: it's the same, multiply by four, you know, it's bigger country.
Speaker 14: But they said, no, no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 9: No, we're not doing that. It was very strange.
Speaker 14: Now on the privatization, I was not part of strategy
Speaker 14: or even asked. I had my own views which were
Speaker 14: very very different, but it wasn't my BAILI wick I
Speaker 14: actually after a year of trying to help yelts and
Speaker 14: I told him I can't help you know, they're not interested.
Speaker 9: I can't be helpful for you.
Speaker 14: I can't bring any money to Russia to help the stabilization.
Speaker 14: A new finance minister was appointed at the end of
Speaker 14: nineteen ninety two, and he begged, a very nice person
Speaker 14: named Boris Fyodorov, who died young.
Speaker 9: He begged me, please stay, please help.
Speaker 14: So I stayed another year, completely ineffectually, because the Western
Speaker 14: idea was quite different the US government idea of the
Speaker 14: imf ID and so forth. So I stayed and then
Speaker 14: I resigned at the end of nineteen ninety three. The
Speaker 14: big things that created the oligarchs were things like eight
Speaker 14: Shares for Loans scandal of nineteen ninety five ninety six,
Speaker 14: which by the way, was also part of financing Yeltsin's
Speaker 14: re election campaign at that time. So I was nowhere
Speaker 14: nearby at all in any of that, except that I
Speaker 14: knew the people and the players. One of them described
Speaker 14: to me laughing how the whole Shares for Loan's thing
Speaker 14: had gone down, and I found it disgusting, corrupt, gross.
Speaker 14: So I called US government officials and imf and World
Speaker 14: Bank officials. I said, well, maybe it's like the line
Speaker 14: in Casablanca. There's corruption going on in this place. There's
Speaker 14: ampling going on in this place. But I was serious,
Speaker 14: you know, you really need to look into that, and
Speaker 14: I just got blank stares back, because of course they
Speaker 14: knew what was going on, but they weren't interested. Well,
Speaker 14: I took a lot of shit for that, if I
Speaker 14: can say that on your show.
Speaker 9: Four years completely the opposite.
Speaker 14: I was the one trying to say stuff, but of
Speaker 14: course I wasn't on the inside.
Speaker 9: I wasn't anywhere near.
Speaker 14: But I was trying to push the USG and World
Speaker 14: Bank and IMF to stop it then. And I actually
Speaker 14: don't want to go into details because it's thirty years
Speaker 14: later and its personalities and so forth. But some of
Speaker 14: my colleagues didn't do the right thing at Harvard and
Speaker 14: they messed up, and its public record and people can
Speaker 14: look it up, and it was an unpleasant experience. It
Speaker 14: was part of my responsibility to tell them that they
Speaker 14: were in trouble, but it wasn't my responsibility to do
Speaker 14: anything about it. But again, I was a very known person,
Speaker 14: and so I was lumped together as the Harvard boys
Speaker 14: do Russia. Okay, you know this is media. You guys
Speaker 14: are the world's authorities on this media. Once you got
Speaker 14: the media, you can't fight the media when you get
Speaker 14: the waves of slogans that are so good. So truly,
Speaker 14: let me say two things. The big part of this
Speaker 14: story is that the US didn't want to help and
Speaker 14: didn't help in the nineteen nineties on the economic side.
Speaker 14: But there's a second part of this story which is
Speaker 14: more important, which is that even with that, even with
Speaker 14: the financial crisis that Russia went through, which was very painful,
Speaker 14: even with the default of nineteen ninety eight that Russia
Speaker 14: went through, which was very painful. Putin was not anti
Speaker 14: American or anti West or anti Europe when he came
Speaker 14: to power.
Speaker 9: He wasn't in.
Speaker 14: Love with the US, let me put it that way,
Speaker 14: but he wanted normal relations even then. This did not
Speaker 14: set things in an inevitable course.
Speaker 9: It didn't help. But the real.
Speaker 14: Changes that put things in a disastrous course were on
Speaker 14: the security side, first the expansion of NATO, then the
Speaker 14: bombing of Belgrade in nineteen ninety nine, seventy eight straight
Speaker 14: days of some hair brained, terrible scheme of Madeline Albright,
Speaker 14: and to break apart Serbia, which was Russia's ally, and
Speaker 14: create Kosovo and put the largest NATO military based Bonda
Speaker 14: Skiel in Kosovo to cover Southeast Europe.
Speaker 9: Okay, Putin watched that. He didn't like that at all.
Speaker 14: Then came nine to eleven and Putin said, okay, we
Speaker 14: want to cooperate with you, we can help, we also
Speaker 14: face insurgencies.
Speaker 9: We don't like this.
Speaker 14: The US more or less brushed Russia off at that point.
Speaker 14: In two thousand and two, the US did something even
Speaker 14: more provocative and profound, which was to abandon the Anti.
Speaker 9: Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Speaker 14: This for Russia was a first class security disaster because
Speaker 14: the ABM treaty was viewed as a protection against the
Speaker 14: US nuclear first strike. And this was viewed in an
Speaker 14: incredibly harsh way by Russia, and it is a massive danger.
Speaker 14: Then immediately in two thousand and three came the Iraq
Speaker 14: invasion over Russia's absolute objections, over the UN Security Council
Speaker 14: absolute objections. Then in two thousand and four came a
Speaker 14: NATO enlargement to seven more countries, including the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Speaker 14: including two Black Sea countries. Bulgarian Romania and including two
Speaker 14: Balkans countries, Slovakia and Slovenia. So one thousand and seven,
Speaker 14: then the temperature was up to hear and President Putin
Speaker 14: gave at the Munich Security Conference a very strong message
Speaker 14: stop this, stop this. You are pressing right up against
Speaker 14: our red lines.
Speaker 9: Do not go further.
Speaker 14: And then famously, in two thousand and eight, the US
Speaker 14: announced a policy that had actually been adopted fourteen years earlier,
Speaker 14: but it made it public, which was the demand that
Speaker 14: NATO would enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia.
Speaker 9: In the Caucuses. And this for Russia was unbelievable.
Speaker 14: Now Russia would be surrounded by NATO in the Black
Speaker 14: Sea region, and European leaders at the time called me privately.
Speaker 14: I had long conversations, what is your president doing? This
Speaker 14: is so reckless, so provocative. By the way, many of
Speaker 14: these same leaders now are completely mum, we love the
Speaker 14: United States. This has nothing to do with NATO. This war,
Speaker 14: of course, it's about NATO. The whole thing is about NATO.
Speaker 14: It's always been about NATO. And this was true in
Speaker 14: two thousand and eight, and then quickly to bring this
Speaker 14: story up to date in twenty eleven. Again, these neocons
Speaker 14: doubled down. We're going to overthrow Syria, where Russia happens
Speaker 14: to have a naval base. We're going to overthrow Libya,
Speaker 14: where Russia has an ally. And we then took steps
Speaker 14: and in twenty fourteen overthrew the government of Ukraine. Victorianikovich
Speaker 14: February twenty second, twenty fourteen. This was a coup in
Speaker 14: which the US played a significant role. Sad to say,
Speaker 14: I saw some of it with my own eyes, which
Speaker 14: I did not want to see, but I did see
Speaker 14: some of it with my own eyes.
Speaker 9: The US was up to its neck in that coup,
Speaker 9: and of course the Russians knew it.
Speaker 14: They even did us a favor of intercepting Victoria Newlan's
Speaker 14: phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Piat,
Speaker 14: who's now a senior State Department official. Victoria Newlan's my
Speaker 14: colleague at Columbia University.
Speaker 9: Unbelievably, and.
Speaker 16: Our guy call with that, that's the yachts is our
Speaker 16: guy call.
Speaker 9: That's the yachts is our guy call.
Speaker 14: And the reason I saw some of it is that
Speaker 14: yachts yachtsanook who became the US installed prime Minister called
Speaker 14: me said I want you to come talk to me
Speaker 14: about this economic crisis.
Speaker 9: I mean, oh my god.
Speaker 14: Well I knew Ukraine, I had advised Kuchma, I did
Speaker 14: not understand exactly what had happened by any means. So
Speaker 14: when Yachtsanook asked me to go there, I flew there
Speaker 14: and this was just I don't remember exactly a day
Speaker 14: or a few days after my dawn after the violent coup.
Speaker 14: And when I got there, American or somebody representing an
Speaker 14: American NGO said, you want to go see the Maidan
Speaker 14: because we have a few hours before the meeting with
Speaker 14: the Prime Minister. And when we went to the Maidan,
Speaker 14: they explained to me how much American money had gone
Speaker 14: into pumping up the Maidan. You know, I saw it. Literally,
Speaker 14: we gave fifty thousand to this one, five thousand of
Speaker 14: this one. So forth, this NGO extraordinarily unpleasant. I got
Speaker 14: the hell out of there that night. And this is
Speaker 14: the reality. So where did this war come from? It
Speaker 14: came from the fact that the US was we call
Speaker 14: it now Cold War two point zero, but it's really
Speaker 14: the same Cold War. It never really stopped. The US
Speaker 14: had a campaign well Russia is going to be second
Speaker 14: rate or maybe divided or decolonized, use a favorite word
Speaker 14: in Washington. But we're going to continue this effort because
Speaker 14: they're on the other side. You know, it turned out
Speaker 14: didn't have anything to do with Bolshevism, didn't have anything
Speaker 14: to do with communism, didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 14: democracy or not democracy.
Speaker 9: The US did.
Speaker 14: Not want a big power there except one completely subservient
Speaker 14: to the US.
Speaker 16: When do you think the Russian government figured that out?
Speaker 16: I mean, I know from living there at the time
Speaker 16: that sort of the ordinary person in Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 16: Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was
Speaker 16: a lot of hope and enthusiasm that there was going
Speaker 16: to be this glorious partnership with the United States. And
Speaker 16: you mentioned your hopes that there would be kind of
Speaker 16: a new Marshall Plan. I know that there were people
Speaker 16: in Russia who were kind of hoping the cavalry would
Speaker 16: come and help stabilize their economy and there would be this,
Speaker 16: you know, this new flower of a relationship. But it
Speaker 16: sounds like what you're saying and what you've written is
Speaker 16: that there was never any intention to really integrate Russia
Speaker 16: as any kind of democratic partner. I know, when the
Speaker 16: ordinary Russians started to feel that that that was going
Speaker 16: to not happen. I think Serbia was really a breaking
Speaker 16: point for them. But when do you think the Russians
Speaker 16: figured it out? Was it, you know, by the time
Speaker 16: Putin came to power, or before that, or when the
Speaker 16: relationship turns now or finally.
Speaker 14: I think, Look, the situation was very tough economically throughout
Speaker 14: this whole period. Gorbachev was reviled because of an economy
Speaker 14: that was in collapse already in the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 14: Shortages were everywhere, prices were sore, and living standards were falling,
Speaker 14: so and there was tremendous disarray. When the Soviet Union ended,
Speaker 14: another dimension of disarray came because now you had fifteen
Speaker 14: success or states that couldn't even manage the mechanics of
Speaker 14: trade among each other, even though they were deeply interconnected
Speaker 14: in physical supply chains that used to be on the
Speaker 14: basis of orders from ghost plant from the State Planning ministry,
Speaker 14: but now that didn't exist anymore. So there weren't even
Speaker 14: mechanisms for trade. So for the person in the street,
Speaker 14: this was a terrible period. Very difficult, very dark from
Speaker 14: the start. Maybe they hoped the US would do something,
Speaker 14: and Bill Clin did smile a lot and did toast
Speaker 14: Yeltsin and so forth, but I don't think anyone felt
Speaker 14: too warmly about the United States. I thought it was
Speaker 14: inevitable that we would help, because how could we not.
Speaker 14: The opportunity was so great, And so I said to
Speaker 14: President Yeltson in December nineteen ninety one, of course, we're
Speaker 14: going to help. He said, we want to be a
Speaker 14: normal country, we want to have good relations. I said,
Speaker 14: of course, and we're going to help. It's going to
Speaker 14: be wonderful, so I thought. And I'm a little slow
Speaker 14: to learn, because I thought it was so right to do.
Speaker 14: I kept thinking, in twenty nineteen ninety two, they'll figure
Speaker 14: it out. In nineteen ninety three, Clinton's now and they'll
Speaker 14: figure it out. No, well they never figured that part out.
Speaker 14: What I did not know, of course, and didn't pay
Speaker 14: attention to at the time, was the NATO side that
Speaker 14: already basically they're planning the NATO enlargement, and now we
Speaker 14: know a lot more about the actual timing of that. Interestingly,
Speaker 14: as usual, there's a very pointed article by his big
Speaker 14: Brzinski in nineteen ninety seven published in Foreign Affairs magazine,
Speaker 14: where it's called a Strategy for Eurasia, and he lays
Speaker 14: out a timetable for NATO enlargement to Ukraine, which he
Speaker 14: says will be two thousand and five to twenty ten.
Speaker 14: Now it's clear he was reporting actual policy. He wasn't
Speaker 14: just putting forward a Brushinsky plan. He was reporting what
Speaker 14: Washington had settled on in fact.
Speaker 9: So I think things took time.
Speaker 14: But yel, I know that Putin was still optimistic about
Speaker 14: normal relations, good relations with Europe when he came to power,
Speaker 14: and even in the early two thousands. You know, he's
Speaker 14: a cynical guy for understandable reasons. And maybe he never expected,
Speaker 14: like I did, that the West would actually help.
Speaker 9: But he thought, okay, we could still live together.
Speaker 14: And I know many Western European leaders, like a wonderful
Speaker 14: Romano Proty, former Prime Minister of Italy and and former
Speaker 14: President of the European Union, who had very good relations
Speaker 14: with Putin, and Putin reciprocated the good relations, and it
Speaker 14: seemed just natural even in the early two thousands that
Speaker 14: things would be okay. And remember then in two thousand
Speaker 14: and three with the Iraq War, which the Russians hated.
Speaker 14: Of course, many European countries were at that point ready
Speaker 14: to express opposition to the US. France and Germany said no,
Speaker 14: this is a bad idea. So that was siding on
Speaker 14: the Russian side in a way. Now we have a
Speaker 14: full block where the US has put its foot down
Speaker 14: and every word you hear from Western European politicians is yes, NATO, yes, NATO, Yes,
Speaker 14: United States. But it wasn't like that in the early
Speaker 14: two thousands. So things got worse and worse overtime.
Speaker 6: And before you go, I wanted to get you to
Speaker 6: respond to the left wing critique of your time as
Speaker 6: an economists, both in Bolivia, Poland and beyond. Shock therapy
Speaker 6: became the name for this kind of series of neoliberal
Speaker 6: reforms that were applied to kind of run hyper countries
Speaker 6: that were facing hyper inflation. The argument being was too harsh,
Speaker 6: that it cut out too many government subsidies, that it
Speaker 6: broke the backs of kind of the stability that people
Speaker 6: needed and fueled inequality. That's the kind of Naomi Klein
Speaker 6: critique of shock therapy would be along those lines. What's
Speaker 6: your response? What was response at the time, how do
Speaker 6: you look back on it now?
Speaker 14: Well, my response at the time was, and it's fun
Speaker 14: for me to look back to an interview that I gave.
Speaker 9: To Lawrence Weschler Ran Weschler.
Speaker 14: In the New Yorker in nineteen eighty nine when I
Speaker 14: was advising Poland, and he asked me, you know, what
Speaker 14: are your views? I said, look, you know my favorite country, Sweden.
Speaker 14: I'm a social democrat. I have been a social democrat
Speaker 14: all along. So just to understand where I come from
Speaker 14: and what I advocate and what I believe today, I'm
Speaker 14: a kind of center left social democrat in the Scandinavian style.
Speaker 14: That's always been my economic approach and economic philosophy, and
Speaker 14: it was true then. I'm a specialist, was then and
Speaker 14: had some good results in ending hyperinflations. You don't end
Speaker 14: a hyperinflation by going from twenty four thousand percent this
Speaker 14: year to twelve thousand percent next year, to six thousand
Speaker 14: percent the year after, to three thousand percent.
Speaker 9: The year after.
Speaker 14: You actually it immediately, by the way, and not because
Speaker 14: it's draconian. Actually ending the hyperinflation is the basis for
Speaker 14: the society surviving. So by the time I got to Bolivia,
Speaker 14: there had been six years of utter chaos, and in
Speaker 14: the twelve months preceding my arrival, the inflation rate was
Speaker 14: twenty four thousand percent, which at the time was the
Speaker 14: seventh highest hyperinflation in world history. And I helped to
Speaker 14: end it, not by brutal means, but actually by the
Speaker 14: most normal way within a week, simply stopping a shambolic,
Speaker 14: disastrous mispricing of their one government resource, oil which was
Speaker 14: being given away to rich people, which was being exported
Speaker 14: on barges across Lake Titakaka, and the hyperinflation came to
Speaker 14: an end immediately. And to show you my philosophy and
Speaker 14: my belief, they had defaulted on their debt. This was
Speaker 14: a completely bankrupt country and the IMF said, okay, now
Speaker 14: you start paying your debts.
Speaker 9: And that's where I said.
Speaker 14: No way, this country is going to get debt cancelation.
Speaker 14: This is a poor country. It needs help urgently. This
Speaker 14: is not neoliberalism, excuse me. This is trying to help
Speaker 14: save a country that had fallen into one of the
Speaker 14: worst deepest crises.
Speaker 9: Of peacetime in history. And it worked.
Speaker 14: By the way they got the debts canceled. I will
Speaker 14: pat myself on the back to an important extent on that.
Speaker 14: And if you look at afterwards, I told them, you'll
Speaker 14: go from an impoverished country in disarray and hyperinflation to
Speaker 14: just an impoverished country, and then you have to start
Speaker 14: economic development after that. But that's the first step, is
Speaker 14: get out of this complete chaos. And in Poland, I
Speaker 14: was truly a social democrat in that they had and
Speaker 14: I expected afterwards they would have a more public health
Speaker 14: system than the United States, they would have a more
Speaker 14: public education system than the United States, they would have
Speaker 14: more social protection.
Speaker 9: Than the United States.
Speaker 14: But they were in a collapse. So they needed debt cancelation,
Speaker 14: which I helped them arrange. They needed an emergency stabilization,
Speaker 14: they needed a way out of a completely collapsed economy.
Speaker 14: And if you look at the results over the thirty
Speaker 14: years from nineteen eighty nine onward, I was only involved
Speaker 14: for the first three or four years, but it set
Speaker 14: the stage for the fastest economic growth in the history
Speaker 14: of Poland. And essentially, if you want one measure of that,
Speaker 14: one basic measure, look at Poland's per capita income compared
Speaker 14: to Germany in nineteen eighty nine. Poland's per capita income
Speaker 14: was about one third of the German level. Now it's
Speaker 14: about seventy percent of the German level. In other words,
Speaker 14: it didn't close the gap with Germany, but it substantially
Speaker 14: closed the gap. That's what you want, That's what I said.
Speaker 14: That's what you could hope for in economic development, that
Speaker 14: you will not only have stability, but a normal economy.
Speaker 14: It is, by the way, essentially a social democratic economy
Speaker 14: because national income going to government outlays for social protection,
Speaker 14: for health, for education, so forth, and for other purposes.
Speaker 14: Around forty percent of GDP, higher than the United States.
Speaker 14: So this is not the things that were said. By
Speaker 14: the way, I like Naomi Client a lot. I admire
Speaker 14: her work a lot. And what she wrote about the
Speaker 14: shock doctrine of the US, which is we're going to
Speaker 14: run the world and we're going to run it our way,
Speaker 14: I think it's accurate. I don't think she understood exactly
Speaker 14: what I was saying in trying to do in terms
Speaker 14: of macroeconomics. So I never really very much liked the confusion,
Speaker 14: but I appreciate your asking about it gives me the
Speaker 14: chance to explain. But I explained it back in nineteen
Speaker 14: eighty nine, I'm a social democrat. Then I'm pretty stubborn.
Speaker 14: I'm still a social.
Speaker 6: Democrat nowt I know you got to run pretty soon matter. Emily,
Speaker 6: any final questions or thoughts.
Speaker 4: I was just going to ask.
Speaker 5: Matt, reflecting even on our initial conversation in which you
Speaker 5: were reflecting on your experiences with your own front row
Speaker 5: seat to a lot of this that was transpiring in
Speaker 5: the nineties, if you have any thoughts on what we've
Speaker 5: heard from doctor Sachs during this conversation.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I guess I just have a general question, because
Speaker 16: I mean, when I was there for the whole decade
Speaker 16: of the nineties, and by the end of it, I
Speaker 16: know a lot of people in the expat community journalists
Speaker 16: were saying, you know, this Seis policy towards Russia so strange.
Speaker 16: It's almost like they're trying to screw things up, or
Speaker 16: that they're trying to destabilize this country. But it sounds
Speaker 16: like that might have actually been a plan security wise,
Speaker 16: or at least that they were indifferent to the consequence
Speaker 16: of policies within Russia. I mean, do you think it's
Speaker 16: logical to draw a straight line between what's going on
Speaker 16: right now the complete tension between these two countries, and
Speaker 16: you know, us being essentially, you know, in a proxy
Speaker 16: war with Russia to the end of the Soviet Union
Speaker 16: when we decided we were going to adopt this posture
Speaker 16: towards Russia. I mean, was there at any time a
Speaker 16: moment where we were actually trying to bring them in
Speaker 16: And you know, as any kind of partner.
Speaker 14: At first, We're not in a proxy war with it.
Speaker 14: We're in a hot war. We're in a real war.
Speaker 14: We are not only providing the weapons, the financing, the munitions,
Speaker 14: the targeting, the intelligence, but we have we have our
Speaker 14: personnel in Russia and Ukraine fighting this war also, not
Speaker 14: the soldiers in the uniforms and the boots on the ground,
Speaker 14: but there are a lot of US weapons systems that
Speaker 14: have the US support. We're in this war. The Russians
Speaker 14: know it. They say so every day.
Speaker 9: It is a terrible risk for the world that this
Speaker 9: is the case. It is so.
Speaker 14: Wrongheaded, unnecessary, and threatening that the United States is provoking
Speaker 14: directly militarily with attacks, a war with the only other
Speaker 14: nuclear superpower. The only thing that can threaten the United
Speaker 14: States and its security is nuclear war, which can end
Speaker 14: everything and everybody and we should understand respect some red
Speaker 14: lines of your nuclear superpower counterpart. So we don't get
Speaker 14: that until today. We're still playing chicken. We're still playing games,
Speaker 14: We're still making lies. Now, what was the US intent?
Speaker 14: Us intent was not per se to destabilize Russia. The
Speaker 14: US intent was US unipolarity. That the US will be
Speaker 14: the most powerful country in the world. It will have
Speaker 14: no rivals, it will have only essentially obedience to the
Speaker 14: US demands.
Speaker 9: That was the goal. It was thought through.
Speaker 14: Already by Cheney and Wolfowitz in the Defense documents of
Speaker 14: early nineteen ninety two, and it never really changed. The
Speaker 14: idea is full spectrum dominance, unipolarity, liberal hegemony terrible term
Speaker 14: because nothing liberal about it. Hegemony by the United States.
Speaker 14: So Russia, okay, maybe divided. I'm pretty convinced that the
Speaker 14: US has supported Chechen rebels, for example, to eat away
Speaker 14: at the Russian soft underbelly in the late nineteen nineties
Speaker 14: and early two thousands. The Russian say so, and I
Speaker 14: see a lot of evidence for it, because we had
Speaker 14: a lot of fancy people who were on the Czechshnia Committee.
Speaker 14: What do they know about Czechnia, Nothing except that they
Speaker 14: know that it is against Russia, and so we played
Speaker 14: a lot of dangerous games, mainly for what Brashinsky wanted,
Speaker 14: which was for Russia to be a second rate country,
Speaker 14: to stop being a superpower. And that was the gambit
Speaker 14: all along, because the United States in this so called
Speaker 14: unipolar moment, wants to rule alone. It's a madness and
Speaker 14: it's a delusion when you're talking about huge, powerful countries
Speaker 14: with thousands of nuclear warheads. But the US wanted its way,
Speaker 14: that's the point. It wanted to do what it wants
Speaker 14: to put its military, where it wants to get the resources,
Speaker 14: where it wants to be able to dictate foreign policy
Speaker 14: as it wants. And that is the whole story, from
Speaker 14: beginning to end. It did not want the nukes going off,
Speaker 14: It didn't want to bring Russia into such disarray that
Speaker 14: there would be disaster. But it did not want a
Speaker 14: strong competitor. It wanted a unipolar world.
Speaker 6: Well, Jeffrey Sachs, Matt Tayib, fascinating conversation. Thank you so
Speaker 6: much for joining us, and thank you, I just I
Speaker 6: for reaching out and for writing little.
Speaker 14: You guys do such great work. I'm really delighted to
Speaker 14: be together with you and we'll.
Speaker 5: Be able to read that in Dropsite and Racket and Racket,
Speaker 5: which Matt Tayeb's outly you'll be able to catch that
Speaker 5: at both of those.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for joining us. We'll see
Speaker 3: you next time.
Speaker 9: Thank you to be with you.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 3: I feel like I need a cigarette after that.
Speaker 4: I don't even smoke what you think you feel like
Speaker 4: any ten cigarettes? After that? It was Sager's nicotine gum
Speaker 4: under here.
Speaker 3: That was interesting stuff, just.
Speaker 5: Casual anecdotes about what he was telling Boris Yeltz in the
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety New One. Incredible, incredible, I mean, such a
Speaker 5: window into history.
Speaker 3: We threatened to.
Speaker 6: The Russian people were starving to death, literally and the
Speaker 6: only thing they were surviving on was the humanitarian aid
Speaker 6: and getting sent in, and we threatened to turn the
Speaker 6: ships around unless they paid every dollar of their debt financing,
Speaker 6: which all macroeconomics economists understood at that time was the
Speaker 6: wrong thing to do in that circumstance, even from the
Speaker 6: US's perspective, like the shock therapy that the US wanted
Speaker 6: to apply to Poland, to Bolivia and or elsewhere around
Speaker 6: Latin America, but not.
Speaker 3: Even that for Russia.
Speaker 5: But you know, what was really interesting to me is
Speaker 5: that as we're having this conversation about malign actors with
Speaker 5: I think lacking lacking long term consequence and lacking a
Speaker 5: view of potential long term consequences, are failing to take
Speaker 5: seriously what we are now looking back at. You had
Speaker 5: people like Jeffrey Sachs. You had other people. If we
Speaker 5: had more time, I wanted to ask him about this,
Speaker 5: who were sincere, Who were you know, maybe talking to
Speaker 5: people like Yeltsin and actually were there to do what
Speaker 5: they thought was who.
Speaker 6: Had read the economic consequences of the piece by Kain's right,
Speaker 6: the forecast that if you.
Speaker 3: Do this treaty, you're going to get World War two out.
Speaker 4: Of it, right.
Speaker 5: And so there are people who are on the ground,
Speaker 5: representing the West, representing American interests, who genuinely wanted to
Speaker 5: have this partnership for the best of both countries, for
Speaker 5: the best of both the United States and Russia and
Speaker 5: the West and these former Ukraine, these former Soviet block countries,
Speaker 5: and they were learning the lessons of history and trying
Speaker 5: to implement them. It's that there are people behind the scenes.
Speaker 5: And one question I would have for him going forward
Speaker 5: is what the breakdown was, you know.
Speaker 14: Is.
Speaker 5: Because he's basically then acting as a tool of these
Speaker 5: malign interests, is what he's saying in retrospect, So how
Speaker 5: many people were also in that same position, because it
Speaker 5: just gets the duality of the United States that like,
Speaker 5: in the aftermath of the Cold War and the aftermath
Speaker 5: of actually, I should just say in the aftermath of
Speaker 5: World War Two, there are a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: actual small l liberals who worked genuinely had the values
Speaker 5: of decency, trying to use the power and the muscle
Speaker 5: of the United States for good and in some ways
Speaker 5: that turned out to be foolish, but in some ways
Speaker 5: that were genuine and could have borne better fruit if
Speaker 5: they hadn't been undermined by people who had, you know,
Speaker 5: no interest in other powers potentially rising to challenge the
Speaker 5: United States. So it's sort of an enduring mystery of
Speaker 5: American history. I guess we'll probably never have the answer
Speaker 5: to it. But there are a lot of There's been
Speaker 5: a lot of good and there have been a lot
Speaker 5: of good actors in the United States.
Speaker 4: It's just they've been undermined by bad actors.
Speaker 6: Yeah, quite a history, dark timeline we're on By the way,
Speaker 6: no Friday show this week, but consider that your Friday show,
Speaker 6: this long form. Rewatch it on Friday, because this is
Speaker 6: the kind of thing I'll rewatch because I bet there's
Speaker 6: a bunch in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot to absorb.
Speaker 5: Also, the question about track therapy and Bolivia, I mean
Speaker 5: interesting stuff. It's so interesting, especially in light of Melee
Speaker 5: and everything going on now, so that.
Speaker 4: That's got to count as a Friday show.
Speaker 6: There you go, exactly all right, So I'm back for
Speaker 6: Breaking Points tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll see you guys next week.