Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots to get to you this morning.
Speaker 1: So additional Trump legal news, he is facing additional charges
Speaker 1: as we move towards potentially more indictments. We are certainly
Speaker 1: on watched for that. This week's they'll break all of
Speaker 1: that down for You've also got a bunch of political news,
Speaker 1: a bunch of candidates who were in Iowa. Trump out
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail around Santis. How's it going for
Speaker 1: him as the donor class seems to turn against him
Speaker 1: and he is increasingly under fire from black Republicans over
Speaker 1: that black history curriculum in the States. So will break
Speaker 1: all of that down for You've got some bombshell revelations
Speaker 1: about the Biden administration attempting to censor Facebook, so we
Speaker 1: will get into all of that. And also a story
Speaker 1: that we covered previously about the Biden family and Joe
Speaker 1: Biden himself refusing to acknowledge Hunter's youngest child, Navy, and
Speaker 1: there is a development there They are now I guess, basically.
Speaker 4: Shamed into acknowledging her.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about it. Yes, we will, so all
Speaker 1: of that to get to. But before we do any
Speaker 1: of that, what died to remind everybody. We're getting more
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Speaker 2: I said, so, thank you all very much. But Trump indictment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have a new superseding indictment in that
Speaker 1: Trump document's case.
Speaker 4: What that means is they've added.
Speaker 1: An additional charge for Trump with regards to that, you know,
Speaker 1: the document that he's on audio recording waving around that
Speaker 1: we were told had something to do with Iran military plans.
Speaker 1: They've now apparently found that document. They're now charging him
Speaker 1: in addition with having that holding on to that document.
Speaker 1: We also though, and this is potentially even more significant,
Speaker 1: we have another Trump employee who was included and is
Speaker 1: now charged in this indictment as well, and you have
Speaker 1: some conversations with him relates to the potential obstruction in
Speaker 1: terms of Trump trying to hide exactly what he had
Speaker 1: from the government. This was considered so significant that even
Speaker 1: Fox News in their coverage of this development, had to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that this was a bad situation for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Let's say listen to a little bit of what they
Speaker 4: had to say.
Speaker 5: There's electronic evidence involved here, right, they're talking about deletion
Speaker 5: of digital evidence and et cetera. That's the kind of
Speaker 5: stuff that can be tracked that's right, black and white
Speaker 5: to a jury. So this day and age, with the
Speaker 5: CSI effect, that kind.
Speaker 3: Of stuff goes over well.
Speaker 5: So they've gained some ground here in the case against
Speaker 5: mister Trump. It's not entirely duplicative of what they had.
Speaker 5: It is a superseding indictment, and it does, you know,
Speaker 5: unfortunately for the president, adds.
Speaker 3: Some substance really quickly.
Speaker 6: You said, the goal is to flip Carlos de ela Verra,
Speaker 6: to turn him into a witness against President Trump. There's
Speaker 6: been some suggestion that that's already been attempted for months.
Speaker 6: They've been trying to get him to flip on President Trump,
Speaker 6: and that doesn't appear to have yet been a comp.
Speaker 5: So this is the hammer, right in any case like this,
Speaker 5: if you're trying to cajole a witness and to come
Speaker 5: on over to your side, especially one that really seems
Speaker 5: to know the inner workings. Your last card to play
Speaker 5: is what they've done, which is in ditem.
Speaker 1: This is the hammer that lawyer says in terms of
Speaker 1: trying to get a Trump employee to flip. We have
Speaker 1: some additional news this morning that we may have another
Speaker 1: Trump employee who has already flipped. But before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let me give you some of the additional
Speaker 1: details about what's in the superseding indictment. We can put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. So with regard to this
Speaker 1: new Trump employee, Oliviera, who has been charged, they say
Speaker 1: here they've got some electronic communications of him speaking with
Speaker 1: another Trump employee who they're just calling employee number four.
Speaker 1: They say they left the area of the IT office together,
Speaker 1: walk through a basement tunnel to Oliviera, who is the
Speaker 1: one who has been charged, took Trump employee for to
Speaker 1: a small room known as an audio closet. Once inside
Speaker 1: that closet, he told Trump employee for the following that
Speaker 1: their conversation should remain between the two of them. Then
Speaker 1: Oliviera asked Trump Employee number four how many days the
Speaker 1: server retained security footage. Trump Employee four responding believed it
Speaker 1: was approximately forty five days. De la Viera told Trump
Speaker 1: Employee four that quote. The boss that of course would
Speaker 1: be Trump wanted the server deleted. Trump employee for responded,
Speaker 1: he would not know how to do that, and then
Speaker 1: he did not believe he would have the rights to
Speaker 1: do that. Trump employee for told Olivia that he would
Speaker 1: have to reach out to another employer who was a
Speaker 1: supervisor of security for Trump's business organization. Dea Olivera then
Speaker 1: insisted to Trump employee for that quote the boss wanted
Speaker 1: the server deleted and asked, what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: So we have additional, you know, pretty direct conversation here
Speaker 1: between these two Trump employees, one of whom is now charged, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, alleging that they are involved in the cover
Speaker 1: up and trying to delete some of the security footage.
Speaker 1: This came right after the government had been requesting this
Speaker 1: very security and surveillance footage, so doesn't look too good.
Speaker 1: And then the other piece this morning saga is that
Speaker 1: it looks like Trump Employee number four may have flipped
Speaker 1: already and that may be where some of this additional
Speaker 1: information that is coming in the superseding indictment came from
Speaker 1: We've got a CNN report that you skilled Taveras Amar,
Speaker 1: a Lago employee who oversees the property surveillance cameras, received
Speaker 1: a target letter from federal prosecutors. So we got a
Speaker 1: letter from federal prosecutor saying, hey, you're a targeted in
Speaker 1: this investigation. But he hasn't been charged yet, and we
Speaker 1: know that he has been speaking with investigators. So when
Speaker 1: you put those two pieces together that they said, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you are targeting this investigation, and he appears to be
Speaker 1: speaking and potentially cooperating with investigators, this employee may have
Speaker 1: already flipped on Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is almost cartoonish in the way that it
Speaker 2: was described there.
Speaker 3: We literally were, you know, when you were reading.
Speaker 2: Crystal For those who are listening, that is directly from
Speaker 2: the indictment of the Department of Justice, also showing the
Speaker 2: penetration that they have into the Trump staff. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just think and continue to believe that it's very
Speaker 2: important for everybody to analyze these cases. On their face,
Speaker 2: Some are silly, some are stretches of legal interpretation, not
Speaker 2: nearly enough standing. But on this one, I mean, they
Speaker 2: have it so cold in terms of the timeline in
Speaker 2: terms of the facts, in terms of the recordings which
Speaker 2: we've all been able to take a listen to about.
Speaker 2: I could have declassified it, I didn't declassify it. And
Speaker 2: then now in terms of the cover up, which is
Speaker 2: why he's really in trouble in the first place. That
Speaker 2: ultimately is what he just keep coming back to, is
Speaker 2: that this is a problem literally of his own making,
Speaker 2: where he had some ego maniacal attachment to documents and
Speaker 2: calling them quote my documents, regardless crystal of classification status.
Speaker 2: And then whenever the government came and tried to get
Speaker 2: it back, they continued to obfuscate, to obstruct, and to
Speaker 2: try and to keep it away. So this is not
Speaker 2: James Comy, this is not Muller, This is not any
Speaker 2: number of you know, walls are closing in. It's just
Speaker 2: like basic presentation of the facts. There's a reason that
Speaker 2: Fox News is not airing any counter you know theory
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I actually look, if.
Speaker 2: People are interested, go there's only one pushback to this
Speaker 2: entire thing, and that is vivik Ramaswami's theory of the
Speaker 2: case around the Presidential Records Act and the superseding of
Speaker 2: executive privilege and the DOJ. So if people want to
Speaker 2: go and watch that, we had an interview with Vivaki,
Speaker 2: Crystal and him went at it for what ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Or so, you can go and see.
Speaker 2: But that is pretty much it in terms of respected
Speaker 2: I guess theoretical legal way out of this particular case,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: It's fair to say that it is.
Speaker 1: There are people who would assert that that may apply
Speaker 1: in the circumstance and that maybe kind of get down
Speaker 1: a jail free card for Trump. I would say it's
Speaker 1: a fairly novel legal interpretation that is certainly not held
Speaker 1: by the majority of legal analysts that I've heard. I
Speaker 1: haven't even heard the Trump team really making any sort
Speaker 1: of a significant defense on that front. At this point.
Speaker 1: I really think Trump's plan is just he's got to
Speaker 1: get elected. He's got to get back in the White
Speaker 1: House in order to escape all of these charges, because
Speaker 1: every piece that's added looks increasingly more and more damning
Speaker 1: from him just to drill down on the other piece
Speaker 1: of this. So, like I said, probably the most significant pieces.
Speaker 1: You've got another Trump employee who is charged. You've got
Speaker 1: more communications that are directly related to the alleged obstruction,
Speaker 1: but you also did have a thirty second count of
Speaker 1: wilful retention of national defense information that was also added
Speaker 1: in this superseding indictment with regards to Trump. And this
Speaker 1: does have to do with that audio recording of Trump
Speaker 1: and his office talking. He's actually a Bedminster talking to
Speaker 1: a number of people, saying, hey, I have this document.
Speaker 4: Take a look at this, waving you.
Speaker 1: Hear the papers rustling in the background, and he says
Speaker 1: I could have declassified this when I was president, but
Speaker 1: now I can't, which again sort of takes off the table.
Speaker 1: One of the defenses that they had floated early the
Speaker 1: reporting had been that had this document had to do
Speaker 1: with military plans with regard to a run, that it
Speaker 1: was highly top secret. The reporting had also suggested that
Speaker 1: the government hadn't been able to find this document as
Speaker 1: of yet. Well, now apparently they have the document and
Speaker 1: they are charging him based on his wilful retention of
Speaker 1: this document. And it's described in the end as a
Speaker 1: quote presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country that
Speaker 1: was marked top secret no foreign No What does that mean?
Speaker 3: No foreign? No foreign? Remember I remember this from our discord.
Speaker 2: That means that you can't the discord leaks that you
Speaker 2: can't share it with Five Eyes Intelligence.
Speaker 4: Oh that's right, means yeah.
Speaker 3: Those were coded in some of the documents that we
Speaker 3: reported on.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's an indication that's a very high level,
Speaker 1: extremely secret document that Trump was waving around and bragging
Speaker 1: about apparently. So that's what we know thus far in
Speaker 1: terms of this superseding indictment. And as I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: we do also have indications this morning that another Trump
Speaker 1: employee has flipped and that's potentially with some of the
Speaker 1: new information is coming from. But just a reminder, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is far from the end of Trump's legal troubles,
Speaker 1: but this next piece up on the screen. We are
Speaker 1: certainly on indictment watch this week. We thought indictments may
Speaker 1: actually have come down last week. You had the Jacksmith
Speaker 1: related grand jury meeting last Thursday. They did not return
Speaker 1: an indictment on Thursday, unless under seal, which is a
Speaker 1: possibility but nothing that we know of. But this looks
Speaker 1: very much like it's coming to a close. The reason
Speaker 1: we know that is because Trump's lawyers actually met in
Speaker 1: DC with that team. That's usually an indication that things
Speaker 1: are wrapping up on that front. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: last ditch effort for them to be able to plead
Speaker 1: their case. You also have the grand jury down in
Speaker 1: Fulton County, Georgia that also looks like they are wrapping
Speaker 1: up their work. Fanny Willis has said that, you know,
Speaker 1: their investigation is complete. I'm also aware that they have
Speaker 1: actually erected security barriers outside of the federal courthouse there
Speaker 1: and anticipation of whatever is going to happen on that front.
Speaker 1: So Trump's legal troubles certainly seem to be mounting in severity, complexity,
Speaker 1: all of the above, and sagre. The The piece of
Speaker 1: this that I just I really can't wrap my head
Speaker 1: around is on the documents case. This trial is set
Speaker 1: from May twenty fourth, I think, so May of next year.
Speaker 1: The timing is basically like the Republican nomination will probably
Speaker 1: be so nub yeah, and so they will have I
Speaker 1: think limited options to get him out of being the nominee.
Speaker 1: And there's a very real possibility this man ends up
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 3: They're not going to drop him. They're there first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first of all, that is certainly possible, he said,
Speaker 2: And he keeps laying it the marker I think intentionally
Speaker 2: of I'm not dropping out regardless of what happens, if
Speaker 2: they convict me, if they throw me in prison, I'm
Speaker 2: still going to continue right to run for president. Now,
Speaker 2: in terms of the GOP, they have no choice. I mean,
Speaker 2: if he gets popularly selected with this hanging over his head,
Speaker 2: how can that would be the most undemocratic thing in
Speaker 2: the world to try and replace him, And there's no
Speaker 2: actual process for that, Crystal, Yeah, it doesn't require some
Speaker 2: serious like delegation chicanery. The only way is if he
Speaker 2: voluntarily drops out, which is just not going to happen
Speaker 2: based on everything that we know right now, based on
Speaker 2: his own statements, he says he's not going to drop it.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's possible.
Speaker 1: I mean it's on the Democratic side they have this,
Speaker 1: like what is a really undemocratic super delegate process. So
Speaker 1: if you had a similar situation unfold on the Democratic side,
Speaker 1: they might be able to pull some behind the scenes
Speaker 1: canery to oust whoever their you know, dude was that
Speaker 1: ended up in prison or for whatever reason. On the
Speaker 1: Republican side, they don't have the same mechanism, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this all feels very theoretical to people,
Speaker 1: But there's a very real possibility that former President Trump
Speaker 1: is at least facing prison time going into a general election,
Speaker 1: and I just like, I don't know what that means
Speaker 1: in terms of the country. I don't know what that
Speaker 1: means in terms of how people are going to react.
Speaker 1: I have to think that it's going to be pretty
Speaker 1: difficult for Republicans to win a presidential election if the
Speaker 1: guy that they're behind is in prison. But it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty wild to contemplate how this is
Speaker 1: all going to unfold, and there's just no way you
Speaker 1: can predict how this.
Speaker 4: Is all going to play out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, Okay, So at the same time, we have
Speaker 1: some additional news here that we wanted to get to
Speaker 1: about the way that Trump is paying for his legal bills.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen from Bloomberg. That's pretty
Speaker 1: wid I think those are reported for us by the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Trump's pack has spent more than forty
Speaker 1: million dollars on his legal defense, his legal costs, and
Speaker 1: also they are also paying for the legal costs of
Speaker 1: his employees here underfire as well, which you can understand
Speaker 1: because you know, they don't want them to flip and
Speaker 1: so by sort of keeping them close and paying their bills.
Speaker 1: They lessen the chance that those employees that have been
Speaker 1: charged are going to flip.
Speaker 4: And that's not all.
Speaker 1: You also have an indication that, you know, these legal bills,
Speaker 1: even for a wealthy guy who's able to raise a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money, that it is really putting a
Speaker 1: squeeze on him. The Pack had to request a refund
Speaker 1: on a sixty million dollar contribution that it made to
Speaker 1: another group that was supporting Trump, signaling they say, a
Speaker 1: potential money crisis for the campaign, originally reported by The
Speaker 1: New York Times. And the forty million dollars is not
Speaker 1: even the whole of what Trump has apparently spent on
Speaker 1: his legal defense and those of his aids. That's an
Speaker 1: addition to a sixteen million dollars that Save America spent
Speaker 1: in the previous two years on legal fees. So all
Speaker 1: these Trump supporters that are giving to his pack, all
Speaker 1: these donations that are coming in, a lot of it
Speaker 1: is not going to, you know, campaigning against Ron de
Speaker 1: Santis or campaigning against Joe Biden. It's going directly to
Speaker 1: paying Trump's legal bills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and us covering this will not diminish their fundraising. Whatsoever,
Speaker 2: because to them, I mean, it's clear Trump is the
Speaker 2: you know, everything that he's using the money for is
Speaker 2: the reason why they love him, right defense, the Biden
Speaker 2: administration is going after him. It's never his fault. It's
Speaker 2: always the establishment as always somebody else who's In some cases, listen,
Speaker 2: that is true, that's part of the problem. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: actually partially is true. And in some cases, like the
Speaker 2: Document's case, it's directly his fault. But forty million dollars
Speaker 2: in legal fees, Listen, folks, if you don'tate to the
Speaker 2: Trump say America pack like, that's where your actual money
Speaker 2: is going. And they're strapped enough that they have to
Speaker 2: issue the refund. And I personally just like that has
Speaker 2: bothered me from day one. I remember covering first on Rising,
Speaker 2: then here the January sixth case. How many times he said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to contest the election results and all this
Speaker 2: stuff for the people who believed in it. And guess what,
Speaker 2: not a single dollar of that actually went to any
Speaker 2: contesting of the legal results of the election. Instead, he
Speaker 2: put it in the bank, apparently so that he can
Speaker 2: dedicate it to his legal defense fund, you know, instead
Speaker 2: of doing what he said and once again, it's just
Speaker 2: like the NFT thing. For some reason, these people have
Speaker 2: a relationship to him where they are constantly willing to
Speaker 2: just frankly be builked and to just turn their money over.
Speaker 3: And it's a free country, you can do what you want.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just personally think it's really wrong whenever
Speaker 2: you're an elected official and you're using it to these purposes.
Speaker 2: But like I said, in many ways, the reason they're
Speaker 2: giving this so much, this money is exactly why this
Speaker 2: is all happening in the first place. They feel he's
Speaker 2: under threat, they feel he's being persecuted, they see him
Speaker 2: as presentative of them.
Speaker 3: It's just going to continue to go on this way.
Speaker 3: It's amaze.
Speaker 1: It may be true that some decent or very high
Speaker 1: percentage of those who gave money to the Save America
Speaker 1: pack are cool with it being used for his legal bills.
Speaker 4: That may be the case.
Speaker 1: It's also the case that it's definitely not what was
Speaker 1: represented in terms of when they were making these donations.
Speaker 1: I did see this morning that he is going to
Speaker 1: start a separate legal defense fund. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: also just a mind boggling amount of money, sixty five
Speaker 1: million dollars just on legal bills is really hard to
Speaker 1: wrap your head around. At the same time, Trump was
Speaker 1: out on the campaign trail, he was given a speech
Speaker 1: and he is calling on his opponents to drop out
Speaker 1: of the race and put their money towards what he
Speaker 1: describes as a ballot harvesting operational and signalis into that.
Speaker 7: I think it's time for Ron to Sanctimonious and so
Speaker 7: many of those other clowns on this story.
Speaker 3: Now you have to see Iowa.
Speaker 7: They're speaking to people that aren't even listening to talk.
Speaker 7: I'm the sanctimonious and so many others that are wasting
Speaker 7: hundreds of millions of dollars that Republicans should be using
Speaker 7: to build a massive vote gathering operation to take on
Speaker 7: Crooked Joe Biden and nov.
Speaker 1: But it's a bit of a turn about there, Sager
Speaker 1: on the whole mail in ballot and quote unquote ballot
Speaker 1: harvesting operation, which is the language that Republicans like to
Speaker 1: use to paint all democratic efforts to encourage people to
Speaker 1: vote mail in as like really nefarious, where you know,
Speaker 1: out drums just like, yeah, drop out and give all
Speaker 1: your money to our own ballot harvesting.
Speaker 2: Listen, if that's what it takes to get take mail
Speaker 2: in balloting. I'll just take it because it's so like
Speaker 2: the all the rhetorica around it is so stupid, it's
Speaker 2: so annoying. But increasingly I see Glenn Youngkin and other
Speaker 2: Republican politicians who are fully embracing mail in voting. You
Speaker 2: had that famous, the the big clip of Hannity pressing
Speaker 2: Trump repeatedly four separate times to embrace mail in balloting
Speaker 2: aka ballot harvest. Trump didn't want to do it, but eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, he seems to be a convinced now that
Speaker 2: this might be the only thing that he's doing. I
Speaker 2: actually think this is a smart play in terms of
Speaker 2: whenever he's up on DeSantis and the rest of his
Speaker 2: rivals this much, he's like, you are wasting money, you
Speaker 2: are wasting my time as the anointed one, as the
Speaker 2: representative of our base, and all that you need to
Speaker 2: drop out and ensure a Republican victory in twenty twenty four. Now,
Speaker 2: the only way that wouldn't work is if Republicans thought
Speaker 2: that the other candidates were more electable. But we now
Speaker 2: have reams of data, both polling and otherwise, to point
Speaker 2: to to say actually actual Republican GOP primary voters they
Speaker 2: think Trump is the most electable. Yeah, so to them,
Speaker 2: of course that's going to resonate. They're like, why are
Speaker 2: you wasting all of our time? You should be defending
Speaker 2: President Trump. That's that is you have to put yourself
Speaker 2: in the mind of some of these voters whenever you're
Speaker 2: looking at this.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't know that they're wrong about
Speaker 1: Trump being more electable than I kind of agree with you. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the obvious wild card is that mentioned before,
Speaker 1: you might be in prison, so there is that. But
Speaker 1: I was just looking at the polls this weekend in
Speaker 1: terms of real clear politics average in terms of the
Speaker 1: hypothetical head to head between Biden and Trump or Biden
Speaker 1: and DeSantis, and Trump is closer to Biden in that
Speaker 1: hypothetical head to head than DeSantis is at that this point.
Speaker 1: That was not the case previously. There's also reporting that
Speaker 1: even within the White House they've changed their opinion about
Speaker 1: who they would rather go up against. They now think
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis is actually the weaker candidate, and the Republican base,
Speaker 1: by the way, agrees with you. There's big New York
Speaker 1: Times pull out this morning. We may cover it tomorrow.
Speaker 1: That you know, they do their their bit. They spend
Speaker 1: a lot of money on these on these things, and
Speaker 1: they've got a President Trump, former President Trump at fifty
Speaker 1: four percent, Desantus at seventeen percent, and everyone else at
Speaker 1: three or two percent. So obviously, with Trump pulling in
Speaker 1: a majority of the vote, there, even if you have
Speaker 1: the you know, donor dream of everyone else dropping on
Speaker 1: everyone coalescing around one particular candidate, whether it's Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: Tim Scott, or someone else, still they are losing significantly
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump, so you know, it is certainly not
Speaker 1: breaking towards any of the contenders from President Trump had
Speaker 1: some interesting commentary about some of the phone calls he'd
Speaker 1: been receiving from former Rond De Santis donors at that
Speaker 1: same campaign rally.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that last week.
Speaker 7: I start getting phone calls two three, four weeks ago. Hi, President,
Speaker 7: I just called to say, hello, what are the big donors?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 7: I thought you were De Sanctis, No, weren't you with
Speaker 7: the Sanctis sometimes referred to as Dy Sanctimonius, never referred
Speaker 7: to as DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Never so talking there about the fact that some of
Speaker 1: the donors which were really, you know, the backbone of
Speaker 1: the Ronda Santis campaign, are starting to call it.
Speaker 4: Who knows if it's true or not.
Speaker 1: It's Donald Trump, but it certainly he's picking up on
Speaker 1: a vibe and some of the reporting that is out there.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and move on to this next part
Speaker 1: actually about ron de Santis, and put B two up
Speaker 1: on the screen because this dovetails with what we were
Speaker 1: just talking about. We have a affording from Politico that
Speaker 1: apparently a bunch of high level Republican elites at Bohemian
Speaker 1: Grove are now turning on DeSantis, they say, at the
Speaker 1: Bohemian Grove secretive conclave of men who gather in northern California.
Speaker 4: The attendance was a who's who.
Speaker 1: A pre Trump Republican's, a murder's row of bundlers and
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal editorial page favorites, including former House Speaker
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan ex Florida Governor Jeb Bush. With fear setting
Speaker 1: in about Trump's renomination, gathering became somewhat of a fantasy
Speaker 1: camp on how to avert that prospect, or at least
Speaker 1: confront it. You also had a lot of hand ringing
Speaker 1: over at the annual Aspen retreat for donors that for
Speaker 1: the Republican Governors Association there was a similar how do
Speaker 1: we stop him chowder? There much fretting about Governor run DeSantis'
Speaker 1: ailing candidacy. Two contenders showed up to work the donors
Speaker 1: and governors. That was Tim Scott and Mike Pence, but
Speaker 1: a candidate in waiting also received ample attention. Contributors buttonholed
Speaker 1: Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Tend told me with some asking
Speaker 1: if you'd run others skipping pleasantries and pushing him to
Speaker 1: get in the race. So the fact that the donor
Speaker 1: class is turning on to Santas is a big problem
Speaker 1: for him. And you know, I mean if they think
Speaker 1: that Glenn Youngkin or Tim Scott is going to be
Speaker 1: the Trump beater here, and I just wish them good luck.
Speaker 2: I just certainly agree with you. I also we were
Speaker 2: talking about this in our call Bahomie. How is Bohemian
Speaker 2: Grove still a thing? I am?
Speaker 3: After the Alex Jones exposam.
Speaker 4: I find another secret billionaire, another.
Speaker 2: Compound, like we have to worship the owl God. That's
Speaker 2: just this is the thing. It actually confirms something going
Speaker 2: on here because I'm like, clearly they would have ditched
Speaker 2: it now at this point, but apparently, you know, no,
Speaker 2: the owl is so important that you got to go
Speaker 2: and pay homage to the owl.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And you know, Paul, it's it's crazy to me.
Speaker 2: It's like Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush and all these
Speaker 2: billionaires and Glenn Youngkin and New Gingrich and all these
Speaker 2: people are Bollemian Grove. It's just it's insane that there's
Speaker 2: still a thing. But it is a perfect view. And
Speaker 2: apparently they allow this his journalists and they're due which,
Speaker 2: by the way, I want to know more about the owls.
Speaker 2: They give us a view into their thinking, which is
Speaker 2: that this is some First of all, that it's up
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 3: It's clearly not up to them.
Speaker 2: They have no control anymore the donor class in terms
Speaker 2: of like the actual base and their wants and their need.
Speaker 2: The best thing they could probably do is just back
Speaker 2: Trump and hope that you can do the exact same
Speaker 2: thing last time around, which is get your preferential tax legislation,
Speaker 2: but tasing his ass now whenever he's if he's president again. True,
Speaker 2: but then what's clear too is that they're focusing all
Speaker 2: on the wrong things like to them, they have a
Speaker 2: different view of electability, they have a different view of likability.
Speaker 3: They also have a different view of outcome.
Speaker 2: I mean, donors want an outcome about taxes, regulation. Of course,
Speaker 2: that's what elites want whenever they look at politics. But
Speaker 2: look at what voters are asking of their Republican elected officials.
Speaker 2: They want to punish the left and they want to
Speaker 2: piss off the media. That's it, I mean, and for that, like,
Speaker 2: how can you not vote for Trump? Like, that's obviously
Speaker 2: the person that you wouldn't want to vote for if
Speaker 2: you don't care about any underlying thing, which I think
Speaker 2: it's very clear now that that is what the populace,
Speaker 2: or at least the primary voters actually want whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to their politicians.
Speaker 1: The reason I think it's a problem that the Bohemian
Speaker 1: grove set is turning on DeSantis is because he obviously
Speaker 1: has some money issues. Yeah, I mean, he just laid
Speaker 1: off a third of his staff and there's all these
Speaker 1: horrific articles about how he laid off a third of
Speaker 1: his staff and then the very next morning takes off
Speaker 1: on a private jet And so he has really been
Speaker 1: reliant for fundraising support in particular on these large donors.
Speaker 1: He has one of the smallest percentages of small dollar
Speaker 1: grassroots fundraising base is one of the smallest percentages of anybody.
Speaker 1: Trump has the largest on the Republican side. And so
Speaker 1: the fact that they're chopping around that they're, according to Trump,
Speaker 1: giving Trump a call, that they're looking at Tim Scott,
Speaker 1: they're trying to push Glenn Youngkin in the race, etc.
Speaker 4: I mean, this means that he.
Speaker 1: Really could have the legs completely out from under him
Speaker 1: and have trouble even making it to the Iowa caucuses
Speaker 1: and the primaries after that. So that's why that's significant.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you know, he had an interesting
Speaker 1: exchange with Megan Kelly. She had a big sit down
Speaker 1: interview with him. Part of his new strategy reboot is
Speaker 1: he's got to do more interviews with a wider range
Speaker 1: of hosts because he had been very sort of sequestered
Speaker 1: in friendly territory. Now he's going out where he's going
Speaker 1: to take a few more tough questions and see how
Speaker 1: that works out for him. So, as part of that tour,
Speaker 1: went on Meghan Kelly's podcast and she really pressed him
Speaker 1: on his approach to Disney and his approach to bud Light.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that exchange.
Speaker 8: Much is the base is angry at these wild corporations,
Speaker 8: And I get it, and I know you get it.
Speaker 8: Aren't you doing the very thing to these companies that
Speaker 8: conservatives are mad at left wing leaders for doing, using
Speaker 8: government to punish citizens for political wrongthink.
Speaker 9: No, not at all. So taking an nyser bush, I mean,
Speaker 9: we're not punishing them. They departed from business practices by
Speaker 9: indulging in social activism that has caused a huge problem
Speaker 9: for their company, and their stock price has gone down. Well,
Speaker 9: our pension fund in Florida holds up Anheuser Busch InBev stock.
Speaker 9: So it's actually hurt teachers, it's hurt cops, it hurts
Speaker 9: firefighters who depend on that pension fund.
Speaker 8: And so can you support the boycott against them?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 9: I did, but that just as a personal thing. But
Speaker 9: I mean we didn't have like the state government, you know,
Speaker 9: necessarily you know, putting power about it. But as an American,
Speaker 9: I said, I'm not doing Anheuser, but I'm not doing
Speaker 9: bud like.
Speaker 8: So why can't Disney oppose your lay and why can't
Speaker 8: they promote this agenda in their view pains, they can't
Speaker 8: without being punished by the state.
Speaker 9: They're not being punished. We're just simply removing a special
Speaker 9: benefits that.
Speaker 10: They have had.
Speaker 4: It's not about intending.
Speaker 8: If I go to my boss and I say I
Speaker 8: use sexually harassed me, and then suddenly he reduces my
Speaker 8: salary from two hundred thousand to one hundred thousand, that's retaliation.
Speaker 8: I am worse off. And it's not a defense to say, well,
Speaker 8: everybody else of the company was getting one hundred thousand.
Speaker 8: You've reduced my circuit.
Speaker 4: You punished me.
Speaker 9: No, but that's that's a that's an employer employee relationship.
Speaker 9: But I think that that's much different.
Speaker 3: But the state taking a way of benefit.
Speaker 9: But your but your position is basically that Florida should
Speaker 9: be forced to subsidize Disney, regardless of how it's going
Speaker 9: to use those subsidies, so that they can weaponize the
Speaker 9: subsidies they get from the state and turn it against
Speaker 9: state policy. Why would we want to subsidize that behavioral.
Speaker 3: I get it, I get it right back.
Speaker 8: But I don't want a president Gavin Newsome doing this
Speaker 8: to conservative companies or companies who have a more conservative viewpoint.
Speaker 3: Well, here's what I would say.
Speaker 9: I don't think there's any arrangement in America that mirror
Speaker 9: the arrangement Disney had in Florida for many, many decades.
Speaker 9: I mean, I think it was a unique situation.
Speaker 4: What do you think of that exchange, Sacer?
Speaker 2: I actually think you should have owned it and be
Speaker 2: like yeah, I'm I mean, because here's when we're trying
Speaker 2: to legalize our way around, just say yeah, I'm the governor,
Speaker 2: I have the I have the power. I'm going to
Speaker 2: use my power to go after and hyser Budd. That's
Speaker 2: a more honest way. It actually reminds me of Supreme
Speaker 2: Court politics pre Trump. So this is crazy to think about,
Speaker 2: but pre Trump, nobody who was a Republican nominee would
Speaker 2: ever say I'm going to appoint pro life judges. There
Speaker 2: was always hiding under like originalism and I'm going to
Speaker 2: appoint judges that are hero of the constitute. There's like
Speaker 2: a wink wink, you know to the evangelical, but nobody
Speaker 2: ever wanted to just come out and say it.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: And then Trump shocked shocked Republican politics when he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna appoint pro life judge just gonna over.
Speaker 2: Everyone was like, what nobody's ever said that before. You
Speaker 2: have to just say the quiet There's a true there's
Speaker 2: power in just saying the quiet part out loud about
Speaker 2: what you're actually doing, and that's what people want to hear. Actually,
Speaker 2: the people who agree with the policy and the people
Speaker 2: who don't agree with the policy.
Speaker 3: What you think you can convinced.
Speaker 2: You think you can convince Bill Ackman that you're not
Speaker 2: punishing and heyser Busch.
Speaker 3: Right, but who are we kidding?
Speaker 4: I mean very clearly, Yeah, yeah, over just own it
Speaker 4: though a marketing decision that you didn't like, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but just own it like you do.
Speaker 1: If you put Trump in DeSantis is shoes and you
Speaker 1: imagine what his answer would be.
Speaker 3: He'd just be like, yeah, they need to be punished.
Speaker 1: I mean you know, and everyone was like yeah, and
Speaker 1: even you know all the nuance of I've talked about that,
Speaker 1: We've talked about the Disney thing here. I mean, he
Speaker 1: is right that they get these special privileges, that they
Speaker 1: have way too much power in this like that is correct,
Speaker 1: but it was also correct that he was fine with that.
Speaker 4: He was totally cool with that.
Speaker 1: Until he decided that you know, he didn't like this
Speaker 1: political move that they made, and he was going to
Speaker 1: punish that. Like it's very clear. The Budweiser thing, it's
Speaker 1: just obvious, like virtue signaling to the Republican base, same
Speaker 1: kind of deal. They didn't like this marketing decision that
Speaker 1: they made to send an influencer can or whatever to
Speaker 1: transactivists Dylan Mulmany. So he's trying to lean into that
Speaker 1: and you know, get the right people mad at him
Speaker 1: again or whatever. But by dancing around it and trying
Speaker 1: to act like this is some noble, principled stand on
Speaker 1: behalf of Florida tax bearers, it just doesn't pass.
Speaker 2: That's why it links to the original thing about bohemian growth,
Speaker 2: which is guess who this may the most mad the donor.
Speaker 2: The donors are the most angry about this. And Kelly
Speaker 2: does have a point. I mean, first of all, there
Speaker 2: is no such thing as a conservative company anymore, at
Speaker 2: least in terms like I don't think I exist at
Speaker 2: least in.
Speaker 4: Like wildly disagree with that.
Speaker 1: If you look at the union busting, and you look
Speaker 1: at the lobbying on tax legislation, maybe on the surface
Speaker 1: level to them, maybe on the surface level cultural stuff, yes,
Speaker 1: but in terms of how they actually operate in America
Speaker 1: and the fact they have it is definitely concerned.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree, but that I mean by that definition
Speaker 2: like Amazon is a conservative company.
Speaker 4: I agree with that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I agree with that you're looking at the actual metrics.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about the wig code.
Speaker 1: Lapping Black Lives Matter on your website does not make
Speaker 1: you it's a left leaning I have always believe.
Speaker 2: I know I'm saying only in the way that the
Speaker 2: culture actually like imbibes this stuff. I don't think there's
Speaker 2: any there's nobody out there like putting MAGA hats on
Speaker 2: at a Fortune five hundred level. So that's why I
Speaker 2: think that the Gavin Newsome example doesn't really work. That said,
Speaker 2: that already is kind of happening. So it's one of
Speaker 2: those where we're in a mutually assured destruction like we
Speaker 2: had the whole MLB situation Georgia. You know, the Anheuser
Speaker 2: Bush is just basically the liberal version of that. So
Speaker 2: you know, just be like, look, they did it first,
Speaker 2: Now this is what we're going to do. You have
Speaker 2: to own the decision. But he doesn't have the confidence,
Speaker 2: I think enough in his in his decision to actually
Speaker 2: just sit there and to own it in the only
Speaker 2: honest way that you.
Speaker 3: Can justify the policy.
Speaker 2: That was my problem with the answer, which is you're
Speaker 2: trying to have it both ways. Where the CEOs and
Speaker 2: the free market libertarian types, specifically the Fortune five hundred CEOs,
Speaker 2: people like Ken Griffin and others who love to say it,
Speaker 2: they hated his decision, and so he's got to try
Speaker 2: and like use some shareholder effectively. What he's advocating is
Speaker 2: shareholder activism and a government level, which I have all
Speaker 2: kinds of problems with shareholderism and activism and all of that,
Speaker 2: but he's trying to have effectively a dishonest critique of
Speaker 2: the what he's doing instead of just saying, yeah, it's political,
Speaker 2: I did it for, you know, for political reasons. He's like,
Speaker 2: I had the lever, that's what my voters wanted to see,
Speaker 2: so I did it, and that's what Trump would have done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just keep coming back to that. The actual honesty is
Speaker 2: what connects so much with a lot of voters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a sense on the Republican conservative
Speaker 1: right wing side that we're losing at the cultural level
Speaker 1: and so there's a comfort with using state power to
Speaker 1: enforce the cultural outcomes that.
Speaker 4: They would like to see.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, that's where DeSantis is where
Speaker 1: a lot of his legislation comes from, where certainly this
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Budweiser for a marketing decision comes from. Where
Speaker 1: the you know, the direction with Disney comes from.
Speaker 4: All of that.
Speaker 1: But it really gets to the fundamental tension in his
Speaker 1: campaign of the type of coalition that he has to
Speaker 1: be able to stitch together in order to attempt to
Speaker 1: defeat Trump. And a key part of that coalition for
Speaker 1: him is donors who absolutely despise this direction. I mean,
Speaker 1: they do not want Florida or any other state to
Speaker 1: be able to sue them over decisions that you know,
Speaker 1: companies are making about their marketing spend or their budget
Speaker 1: or what they're doing privately, whatever. So they hate this
Speaker 1: direction for Ron DeSantis, and you know, I do think
Speaker 1: it is a part of the reason why they're shopping
Speaker 1: around for other candidates. And at the same time he's
Speaker 1: trying to he understands that the moves may be popular
Speaker 1: with the base, so trying to do this wink and
Speaker 1: they're not at the base. But also give comfort to
Speaker 1: the donor class and it just ends up kind of
Speaker 1: a mess.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: The funniest thing is it's not like you know, conservatives
Speaker 2: needed them to.
Speaker 3: You know, Budwisers just late.
Speaker 2: Anheuser Bush is laid off like several hundred people, all
Speaker 2: the marketing people involved in it.
Speaker 3: Like they were punished.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's one of those where it's like.
Speaker 2: They don't need you to sue them, like their their
Speaker 2: punishment is long standing. Go to a grocery store and
Speaker 2: say which bud light is still on the shelves. It's
Speaker 2: like it's one of those where this almost never happens,
Speaker 2: but it's actual organic pushback but genuinely materialized in the marketplace.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, in a certain way, I'm almost like,
Speaker 2: did you really need to do this, because now you're
Speaker 2: getting all downside and you didn't even need to actually
Speaker 2: do it to tip the scales or whatever you're trying
Speaker 2: to virtue signal, and now it's actually kind of backfiring away.
Speaker 1: And she kind of got them there when she like
Speaker 1: you supported the boycott though, right, yeah, because if you're
Speaker 1: real concern, I mean, Megan's a great interviewer. She's just
Speaker 1: like you know, I think top notch in these situations.
Speaker 1: But if your real concern is the harm to Florida
Speaker 1: you know, pensioners, then you wouldn't have been endorsing a
Speaker 1: boycott that hurt the stock price, like you were complicit
Speaker 1: in that. So she kind of got him and exposed
Speaker 1: the real reasons that he was shaking on this fight.
Speaker 3: That's right, Okay, let's go to the next party.
Speaker 2: Or actually very much connects to what you were Absolutely
Speaker 2: so Ron DeSantis obviously had we talked a little bit
Speaker 2: about it before. He has the new curriculum for American
Speaker 2: history and history books specifically around slavery, where there's a
Speaker 2: section within that actual curriculum, this specifically for middle schoolers
Speaker 2: about whether slaves benefited or not from slaves. Now, in
Speaker 2: terms of the benefit language, it was basically built as
Speaker 2: like in some cases they learned trades which were later
Speaker 2: on useful to them. So this obviously has exploded in
Speaker 2: terms of political controversy. DeSantis himself not backing down at all.
Speaker 2: He gave a very bearded defense of it at a
Speaker 2: press conference. Here's what he had to say, Well, you.
Speaker 9: Should talk to them about I mean, I didn't do
Speaker 9: it and I wasn't involved in it, but I think
Speaker 9: I think what they're doing is I think that they're
Speaker 9: probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed,
Speaker 9: you know, being a blacksmith into into doing things later
Speaker 9: later in life. But the reality is all of that
Speaker 9: is rooted in whatever is factual. They listed everything out
Speaker 9: and if you have any questions about it, just asked
Speaker 9: the Department of Education. You can talk about those folks.
Speaker 9: But I mean, these were scholars who put that together.
Speaker 3: So crystal.
Speaker 2: Since this has come to light, it has now become
Speaker 2: a major controversy, not just in actually the liberal media,
Speaker 2: but many black MAGA Republicans specifically some also non MAGA.
Speaker 2: One of them is a Senator Tim Scott running for president,
Speaker 2: who called out Ron DeSantis on the campaign trail.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 11: There's no silver lining in freedom and slavery. But seriously,
Speaker 11: there's anything you can learn that any benefits that people
Speaker 11: suggests that you had Joe slavery, you would have had
Speaker 11: a free person. Well, slavery was was really about separating
Speaker 11: fat works, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives.
Speaker 11: It was just devastating, So I would hope that every
Speaker 11: person in our country, and certainly money for president, would
Speaker 11: appreciate that. And I said, people have bad days. Sometimes
Speaker 11: they regret what they say, and we should ask them
Speaker 11: again to clarify their positions.
Speaker 2: Ask them again to clarify their position. Interestingly enough, now
Speaker 2: I I alluded to, this has also become a major
Speaker 2: thing amongst black Maga Republicans. So let's go and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. So we've got two
Speaker 2: individuals here. One is Congressman Byron Donald's. Interestingly enough, he's
Speaker 2: from Florida. So he says, quote, the new African American
Speaker 2: standards in Florida are good, robust, and accurate. That being said,
Speaker 2: the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is
Speaker 2: wrong and needs to be adjusted. That obviously wasn't the goal,
Speaker 2: and I have faith that the Florida Department of Education
Speaker 2: will correct this. Then John James, who actually ran for
Speaker 2: Senate in Michigan, now he's a congressman. He says, quote
Speaker 2: non DeSantis. Number one, slavery was not CTE. Nothing about
Speaker 2: four hundred years of evil was quote a net benefit
Speaker 2: to my ancestors. Number two, there were only five black
Speaker 2: Republicans in Congress, you are attacking two of them. My
Speaker 2: brother in christ if you find yourself in a deep hole,
Speaker 2: put the shovel down. You are now so far from
Speaker 2: the Party of Lincoln. Your ed board is rewriting history.
Speaker 2: You're personally attacking conservatives like Tim Scott and Byron Donald's
Speaker 2: on the topic of slavery.
Speaker 3: You have gone too far.
Speaker 2: Stop And also from a campaign, the thing is is
Speaker 2: that the campaign too is also not holding a back Crystal,
Speaker 2: the one of the when she's a spokesperson, a member
Speaker 2: of the Tampa campaign, Christina Pushaw is attacking now Tim Scott,
Speaker 2: Byron Donalds and John James as repeating Kamala Harris' talking points.
Speaker 2: So things are getting vicious here. Yeah, there's some interesting
Speaker 2: valances actually to the entire fight.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a few things.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I think the comments from
Speaker 1: Tim Scott and Byron Donalds, by the way, we're so mild.
Speaker 4: His critique there so mild.
Speaker 3: Good, robust, And well there's this what he said, you.
Speaker 1: Know, he's like, I got this a little bit. Overall,
Speaker 1: it's fine, right, And what caused this really to blow
Speaker 1: up was Christina Pouscha and other Desanti's team members who
Speaker 1: were viciously attacking Donald's and Trump supporters getting into this
Speaker 1: whole messy online fight. And then that's what causes John
Speaker 1: James to come and be like, hold on a second,
Speaker 1: let's be clear about what's going on here. So they're
Speaker 1: creating this issue for themselves in their incredibly thin skinned
Speaker 1: like reaction to what was going on here. And then
Speaker 1: of course let's go and put the last ELEMENTC five
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Of course, the Trump campaign can't
Speaker 1: resist getting in on this as well. This is a
Speaker 1: statement from Jason Miller, and you know, they it's interesting
Speaker 1: the way they frame this because they don't directly address
Speaker 1: in this statement the you know, personal benefit to slavery
Speaker 1: situation directly, but they say Congress and Byron Donald's is
Speaker 1: a conservative hero. The Republic Party's lucky to have as leader.
Speaker 1: President Trump's honored to have his endorsement. If he thinks
Speaker 1: something is bs, he'll tell you that's why we like
Speaker 1: him so much.
Speaker 4: For the official.
Speaker 1: Office of the governor, and what's left of Ron De
Speaker 1: Santis's presidential campaign to attempt to smear Congress and Donald's
Speaker 1: like this is a disgrace. It's indicative of why DeSantis
Speaker 1: has plummeted faster than any presidential candidate in history. DeSantis
Speaker 1: needs to look in the mirror recognize that at his
Speaker 1: current trajectory, it's not just twenty twenty four that's dead
Speaker 1: for him, but twenty twenty eight as well. DeSantis has
Speaker 1: continued misguided attacks are only helping Joe Biden, and if
Speaker 1: that's his goal, Desantas should just get out of the race.
Speaker 1: So I mean Trump, of course taking full advantage of this,
Speaker 1: and now we're hearing this manch or repeated multiple times
Speaker 1: from him that listen, it's over, guys, get out of
Speaker 1: the race, and let's all come together to defeat Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: But to me, there's three things here soccer. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think DeSantis completely mishandled this curriculum.
Speaker 1: He should have known it would have been under intense scrutiny,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just the slavery situation. You also have
Speaker 1: them like both sizing of race massacres where white people
Speaker 1: lynched black people and being like, let's all talk about
Speaker 1: the violence from the black people too. So you have
Speaker 1: that piece, you have him mishandling the issue itself. You
Speaker 1: have this overly online, you know, freak out over some
Speaker 1: incredibly mild critique from Tim Scott and Byron Donald, and
Speaker 1: then you also have what we were discussing before. How
Speaker 1: do you think the donors who have been behind him,
Speaker 1: how do you think that they are going to feel
Speaker 1: about this whole flap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, I have complicated feelings.
Speaker 2: I personally would have handled it in a more confident
Speaker 2: manner and I would have said, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: take lectures on slavery from people who mischaracterize the sixteen
Speaker 2: nineteen project and said that the American Revolution was about slavery.
Speaker 2: And I would have just ended it there. That's what
Speaker 2: I would have sucked to. But they decided to litigate it.
Speaker 2: And when I heard a joke once, it's like, anytime
Speaker 2: you're trying to add a butt to the end of slavery,
Speaker 2: she should just stop this slay.
Speaker 3: And I think it's true.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we can sit here and we can
Speaker 2: have a long discussion around curriculum.
Speaker 3: I actually would love to do that.
Speaker 2: So I have a couple of books if anybody's interested
Speaker 2: in podcasts, so people who want if you actually want
Speaker 2: to learn I would listen to The Day and Carlin
Speaker 2: most recent history on specifically chattel African slavery. They're Hugh
Speaker 2: Thomas book again on the history of African slavery. Both
Speaker 2: are incredible, They're deep historical texts if you really want
Speaker 2: to know what happened. Those are the books I would
Speaker 2: read if you want to know about the American context
Speaker 2: and specifically the end of slavery. Battle Cry Freedom is
Speaker 2: the best one volume book that actually exists on the
Speaker 2: American Civil War. And then there's also Partying the Waters,
Speaker 2: the three part series about the Civil Rights era. So anyway,
Speaker 2: those are actual historical texts, that's what I would recommend.
Speaker 2: Those are all accepted, at least at one time, were
Speaker 2: by left and by right. But it does come back
Speaker 2: to you, Look, it's complicated issue politically, valance in terms
Speaker 2: of like the way that you're going to attack it.
Speaker 2: If you were going to do it in the way
Speaker 2: that they did, I think it should have come back
Speaker 2: to confidence. But instead you're getting a bit of a
Speaker 2: whiny kind of back and forth that DeSantis is engaging. Here,
Speaker 2: we have some video from the campaign trail that illustrates
Speaker 2: f I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, were there beneficial aspects to slavery?
Speaker 9: That's not what the curriculum says.
Speaker 11: What are you doing?
Speaker 9: What the correct No, there's no, it's not and the
Speaker 9: curriculum is very clear. You have I think it's like
Speaker 9: two hundred plus pages of all kinds of stuff that
Speaker 9: you can't read that have you read it? So what's
Speaker 9: your Have you read it? But you haven't read it?
Speaker 9: So I'm just making that clear. That makes it very
Speaker 9: clear about the injustices of slavery in vivid detail. So
Speaker 9: anyone that actually read that and then listens to Kamala
Speaker 9: would know that she's lying and that particular provision about
Speaker 9: the skills that was in spite of slavery, not because
Speaker 9: of the EIGHTP course has made that same point.
Speaker 2: So, like I said, you know you're gonna sit there
Speaker 2: and you're gonna litigate with the butts. I just think
Speaker 2: you're in more of a losing position. I will say,
Speaker 2: at least on this, I think Byron Donald's and John
Speaker 2: James are being dishonest because these are straight up maga
Speaker 2: guys who we all, by the way, go look at
Speaker 2: what they've said about Trump or whatever. On Charlott's felt
Speaker 2: there is a huge element of just attacking Dessantis to
Speaker 2: try to get it out of the race. So look,
Speaker 2: you could call me racist if you want. I personally
Speaker 2: just doubt sometimes the sincerity of these like ultra maga politicians, yeah,
Speaker 2: who clearly I think are being weaponized in order to
Speaker 2: go after DeSantis on a political level.
Speaker 3: And do they believe it or not. I don't know.
Speaker 2: The reason I think Tim Scott is being sincere is
Speaker 2: a Scott has never coded himself like maga or whatever.
Speaker 2: He's running for president, but he has always kind of
Speaker 2: been a dissenting voice on racial politics with true the GOP.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna I'm not gonna say that about him.
Speaker 2: But the other two, having watched them kissed Trump's ass
Speaker 2: like repeatedly, and also seeing the way that the Trump
Speaker 2: campaign was like using their statements in order to validate criticism,
Speaker 2: I just I can't help. But maybe it's serious, maybe
Speaker 2: it's not, But I do think that has to be.
Speaker 3: Thrown out there.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to listen.
Speaker 1: I have no idea about their sincerity on this because
Speaker 1: the other way that you could read it, and I
Speaker 1: actually think this is perhaps more in what I'm inclined
Speaker 1: to believe is the fact that they feel comfortable voicing
Speaker 1: this kind of descent with Ron De Santis and they
Speaker 1: did not feel comfortable voicing this kind of descent with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It just shows you what a stronger figure
Speaker 1: he is within the Republican Party, because I mean, listen again, though,
Speaker 1: I want to say with Byron Donald's initial comments, they
Speaker 1: were so mild, and if the DeSantis campaign had said
Speaker 1: nothing about them, honestly, this.
Speaker 4: All probably would be over now.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing the media wants to cover more and
Speaker 1: that you know, is more like actually significant to the race.
Speaker 1: Then this big blow up between Ron De Santis and
Speaker 1: now three out of five of the black elected Republicans
Speaker 1: at the national level. So what I looked at this
Speaker 1: and thought is like, if Trump did the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: remember he had his like patriotic education initial or whatever
Speaker 1: the hell it was. If he did the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: maybe Tim Scott would have spoken of there would have
Speaker 1: been very little descent from it. There would have been
Speaker 1: much more rallying around it, there would not have been
Speaker 1: this whole blow because he just can get away with
Speaker 1: things that other candidates cannot get away with. And so
Speaker 1: to me, the fact that you do have this whole, ugly,
Speaker 1: messy intra Republican fight breaking out into the public around DeSantis'
Speaker 1: history curriculum in the state of Florida. It's another sign
Speaker 1: of his weakness within the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: That there is no disputing that whatsoever. Let's go to
Speaker 2: the next part here on the Facebook files. This was
Speaker 2: actually released by Congressman Jim Jordan as a result of
Speaker 2: some requests from the House Oversight Committee and other things
Speaker 2: that were uncovered emails directly between Facebook aka Meta and
Speaker 2: the Biden White House. Let's go and put up some
Speaker 2: examples of what we learned, he says, quote Facebook files
Speaker 2: Part one, smoking gun docs prove Facebook censored Americans because
Speaker 2: of the Biden White House pressure. Let's go to the
Speaker 2: next one here, guys, please, they say, quote, what did
Speaker 2: the Biden White House want removed a meme? That's right,
Speaker 2: Even memes were not spared from the Biden Whitehouse's censorship efforts.
Speaker 2: One of those is that you can see here is
Speaker 2: the meme from shared on Facebook April fourth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Ten years from now, you will be watching TV and
Speaker 2: you will hear quote, did you or a loved one
Speaker 2: take the COVID vaccine, you may be entitled. So that's
Speaker 2: including the Leo DiCaprio meme from Once upon a Time
Speaker 2: in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next one.
Speaker 2: In terms of what was removed, they say, quote to
Speaker 2: appease the Biden Whitehouse talking points were actually drafted for
Speaker 2: Nick Clegg, that's senior vice president of government relations at
Speaker 2: Facebook or Meta. They say Facebook was ready to tell
Speaker 2: the White House it had demoted a video posted by
Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson fifty percent actually in response to White House demands,
Speaker 2: even though that post did not violate any policies. The
Speaker 2: fascinating part about this is they actually draft in this
Speaker 2: talking point while we remove content that explicitly directs people
Speaker 2: not to get the vaccine, as well as content that
Speaker 2: it contains explicit misreputations around vaccines. We reviewed this content
Speaker 2: in detail. It does not violate these policies. However, they
Speaker 2: say that the video is receiving fifty percent demotion for
Speaker 2: seven days, that is in the queue to be quote
Speaker 2: fact checked. Let's go to the next part here as well.
Speaker 2: It says, and this is from Michael Shallenberger, they show
Speaker 2: you specifically one around the lab Leak, and this was
Speaker 2: an email saying, quote, can someone quickly remind me why
Speaker 2: we were removing claims that COVID is man made? And
Speaker 2: here is a direct response from email, quote we were
Speaker 2: under pressure from the administration and others to do more.
Speaker 2: So you have explicit examples here Crystal four separate ones
Speaker 2: that we just showed you of memes that were being
Speaker 2: taken down, videos that were being secretly demoted while they're
Speaker 2: being weighted to quote be fact checked. And then the
Speaker 2: lab leak one where I love that a guy inside
Speaker 2: the company's like, hey, why are we demoting this again?
Speaker 3: I thought it was true, isn't it true?
Speaker 2: And they're like, no, it's because we were under pressure
Speaker 2: from the administration. And you know, now that I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about it, it reminds me of an example I think
Speaker 2: believe Zuck was on Lex Friedman's podcast where he talked
Speaker 2: about how a lot of the pressure on his company
Speaker 2: to say COVID information ended up being true.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Specifically, he pointed to lab Leak and now we see
Speaker 2: the actual emails he was referring to that they were
Speaker 2: being lobbied by the White House, by the administration around this,
Speaker 2: and I mean The gross part about it is it
Speaker 2: all happened behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Where we're finding out that this freaking two.
Speaker 2: Something years is July thirty first, twenty twenty three, almost
Speaker 2: more than two years after some of these emails were
Speaker 2: actually sent to this company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you had no idea in real time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's right.
Speaker 1: That's why in some ways, the like demotion, that's the
Speaker 1: way whind the scenes is more to faeries Because the
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden laptop situation, we knew what they did at Twitter.
Speaker 1: It was clear there was an ability to have a
Speaker 1: public outcry and investigations whatever, Like, we didn't know that
Speaker 1: this content was being demoted by fifty percent for a
Speaker 1: period of seven days, et cetera. Because it all happens
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. So, you know, it's useful to see
Speaker 1: the way that this actually works. I thought, perhaps even
Speaker 1: more revealing where some of the exchanges about first of
Speaker 1: all Facebook actually worked, that suppressing or outright censoring vaccine
Speaker 1: hesitancy content would lead to a kind of a Strissian
Speaker 1: effect where people felt like, since they were being censored,
Speaker 1: what they're saying must be true, that there must be
Speaker 1: a government cover up to force them to take the
Speaker 1: vaccine that they were onto something, that they were being silenced,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 4: You had a draft memo.
Speaker 1: To Facebook leadership which said there may be risk of
Speaker 1: pushing them further toward hesidancy by suppressing their speech making
Speaker 1: them feel marginalized by large institutions, which I think ends
Speaker 1: up being pretty prescient. And then there was another piece
Speaker 1: where they were weighing how to respond to the administration's
Speaker 1: censorship requests, which they didn't really want to go along with,
Speaker 1: but they said, given the bigger fish we have to
Speaker 1: fry with the administration data flows, etc. That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: a great place for us to be. They're referring to
Speaker 1: them being at odds with the administration over censorship requests,
Speaker 1: so grateful for any further creative thinking on how we
Speaker 1: can be responsive to their concerns.
Speaker 4: So you see the way this works.
Speaker 1: Facebook had other things things that they wanted from the
Speaker 1: administration visa VI their business, and I think this had
Speaker 1: something to do with European data flows, and so they
Speaker 1: were kind of willing to like, all right, well, we
Speaker 1: got to throw them a bone on the censorship that
Speaker 1: they want so that we can get this other piece
Speaker 1: of our business and that's the way this works. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of the conversation we had with Jack Dorsey
Speaker 1: of You formerly of Twitter, who was talking about the
Speaker 1: intense pressure that not just our government but governments around
Speaker 1: the world are putting on Twitter all the time to
Speaker 1: have various content suppressed and outright band and how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to stand up to all of those requests.
Speaker 1: So this is not to like, you know, absolve Facebook
Speaker 1: or whatever at whatsoever, but you can see the way
Speaker 1: that this works and how the government throws their weight
Speaker 1: around to get what they want from these companies.
Speaker 2: What also disgusted me is there's actually a series within
Speaker 2: these about a discussion between then vice president of the
Speaker 2: company Cheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg after if we'll recall,
Speaker 2: President Biden publicly said in July of twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: that Facebook quote is killing people. That tongue lashing, not
Speaker 2: even a specific request, actually caused massive consternation within the
Speaker 2: company and an official re evaluation crystal of policies around
Speaker 2: COVID nineteen content, including from these officials like Nick Klegg,
Speaker 2: Cheryl Sandberg all the way up to the level of
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg. The simple fact that they were being criticized
Speaker 2: by the president for quote unquote killing people was enough
Speaker 2: for them to take an internal reevaluation. So it's not
Speaker 2: even just the pernicious remove this, remove that, remove this.
Speaker 2: It's when you directly put pressure like this on these companies,
Speaker 2: you are effectively asking for a total difference in policy.
Speaker 2: It's not illegal, but you're the full force of the government.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll never forget. And probably the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: moment censorship that's probably ever happened, you know, in the
Speaker 2: under the Biden administration, was Jensaki being like, I've been
Speaker 2: banned from.
Speaker 3: One platform, you should be banned from all.
Speaker 2: It's literally dictating content policy across everything. And you know
Speaker 2: the I can part there about the drafting talking points
Speaker 2: for the senior vice president of Facebook. That's crazy. Whenever
Speaker 2: they're talking about the emotion. I mean, and you know,
Speaker 2: in many ways validates so many things. You and I know, intuitively,
Speaker 2: you and I do a video about epscene, it gets
Speaker 2: like fifty thousand views and gets demonetized.
Speaker 3: You're like, well, I mean, it wasn't the day, like,
Speaker 3: was it not? You know, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Nobody knows it just it exists into the ether. And
Speaker 2: you're like, maybe it didn't hit that day. Maybe with
Speaker 2: something else going, maybe people didn't care. Certainly possible, but
Speaker 2: then a part of you has to think like no,
Speaker 2: but maybe you know, usually people do care. Actually, I
Speaker 2: know there's a lot of people care about the story.
Speaker 2: And you know, we don't care as much about views
Speaker 2: here for money or anything, but you know, it's nice
Speaker 2: to get exposure. And you're just you think, like, there's
Speaker 2: something odd that's happening right with the coverage of this,
Speaker 2: but you can never get it confirmed.
Speaker 4: Start to think you're a little crazy.
Speaker 3: You do start to think you're crazy. You're like, why
Speaker 3: is this happening?
Speaker 2: Why Overnight your subscribers you know on YouTube dropped from
Speaker 2: like hundreds a day to like five, and you're like
Speaker 2: what what And then you know they just tell you
Speaker 2: they're like, that's normal, it happens. I'm like, really, we've
Speaker 2: been doing this for four years and never seen it happen.
Speaker 2: Also happens around the time you're covering discord leaks. Who knows,
Speaker 2: you know, it's one of those where like, right, you
Speaker 2: just don't know whether it's real, whether it's not. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the most pernicious aspect of it all.
Speaker 4: I think that's right, and that's part of why.
Speaker 1: You know, if we had some rules around really clear transparency,
Speaker 1: that would be helpful, so you could at least have
Speaker 1: journalists digging into this company.
Speaker 4: Journalists was actually interested.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some in the independent brass so
Speaker 1: of course we'll be taking a look at that.
Speaker 4: That would be useful. You know, the fact that you
Speaker 4: had this.
Speaker 1: Federal judge go against the Biden administration and basically say, listen,
Speaker 1: you have to stop doing this, like you can't use
Speaker 1: your government power to try to censor the speech of
Speaker 1: American citizens.
Speaker 4: That's a good direction to go in.
Speaker 1: But you know, getting granular here on exactly how this works,
Speaker 1: and there's always two levels to it. On the one side,
Speaker 1: it's very dystopian and very nefarious and really clear cut
Speaker 1: on the issue of like lab leak, where even the
Speaker 1: Facebook employers are like, why were we doing this again
Speaker 1: this idea that it was you know, potentially man made.
Speaker 1: So it's very dystopian nefarious. And then it's also sort
Speaker 1: of ridiculous because they're trying to sensor like memes about
Speaker 1: vaccines that are pretty innocuous and probably not really you know,
Speaker 1: changing anyone's minds in particular, or in the case of Twitter,
Speaker 1: we know they were censoring these accounts that had like
Speaker 1: two followers and some tweet that got like one like
Speaker 1: on it, and it's like, why are you spending your
Speaker 1: time doing this? Don't you have bigger fish to fry.
Speaker 1: So a lot of that absurdity also comes down in these.
Speaker 2: Wa well and their censoring true information. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: and that's the problem on lably, even on vaccine. I mean, listen,
Speaker 2: you know, you can say, you know whatever you want,
Speaker 2: but like at the time, they were actively pushing to
Speaker 2: go against anybody who was like, it doesn't stop transmission.
Speaker 2: Remember that from Fauci, you know, the clip of him
Speaker 2: walking around. Guess what, that's false. It's just not true.
Speaker 2: And so you know, at the time, it definitely would
Speaker 2: have you should have aired on the side of actually
Speaker 2: free and open, because if we'd had that discussion, maybe
Speaker 2: they would have changed their vaccine, maybe they would have
Speaker 2: been more honest, you know, and maybe sure it may
Speaker 2: not have had the desired immediate effect, but that's not
Speaker 2: your job, and that's just not They refuse to come
Speaker 2: from a place of first principles, and instead they come
Speaker 2: from a place of immediate power, and what they want
Speaker 2: to try and hack the mind of the electorate. This
Speaker 2: is really what Fauci was a master at. And what
Speaker 2: they never really understood is that in a long enough
Speaker 2: timeline that the more that that happens, that you always
Speaker 2: come back to a default position, effectively of I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm being lied to and I'm not getting the
Speaker 2: full story, which means I don't trust you at all,
Speaker 2: even when you do say things which actually are true.
Speaker 2: That's the end result. I think that's where we're at now.
Speaker 2: That's why people don't believe anything that's being said here.
Speaker 2: I think that's right, all right, So let's go to
Speaker 2: the last part here, given, I guess an update on
Speaker 2: President Biden and his seventh grandchild, who he'd refused to
Speaker 2: acknowledge previously. In the past time honored Washington tradition, if
Speaker 2: you want something to just get lost in the ether,
Speaker 2: you got to do it on Friday afternoon. So Friday afternoon,
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere. For some reason, President Biden doesn't
Speaker 2: release his statement to the press, doesn't release a statement
Speaker 2: to everybody else. They somehow the White House calls up
Speaker 2: People magazine and issues a statement on their seventh grandchild,
Speaker 2: who they had previously refused to acknowledge. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen, they said, quote,
Speaker 2: this is not a political issue. It's a family matter.
Speaker 2: Jill and I only want what is best for all
Speaker 2: of our grandchildren, including Navy Hunter's daughter, the four year
Speaker 2: old with an Arkansas woman who Hunter met in a
Speaker 2: strip club and has sense actually contested multiple times legally
Speaker 2: on grounds of child support around grounds of whether she
Speaker 2: could take the Biden family name or not.
Speaker 3: And that is why.
Speaker 2: Look, some people gave him benefit of the doubt. Everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he was shamed by Maureen Dowd because of her column.
Speaker 2: And I actually do believe that is true. But we
Speaker 2: shouldn't just sit here and validate that this is somehow enough,
Speaker 2: because we can't forget what Hunter and presumably the Biden
Speaker 2: family did to this young girl of four years old
Speaker 2: and to her mother.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's put this up there on this.
Speaker 2: As part of the child support settlement that they had
Speaker 2: with Hunter Biden, she was not allowed to actually take
Speaker 2: the Biden family name.
Speaker 3: And that is one where you know, he says, quote.
Speaker 2: He also promised to discuss planning for college education fund
Speaker 2: with his child's mother, and even though that she had
Speaker 2: requested to change the last name to Biden dropped that
Speaker 2: request as part of the agreement. And that's why actually
Speaker 2: in the statement, you know, Biden refers to her as
Speaker 2: Navy and he doesn't refer to the last name that
Speaker 2: she has since taken I believe.
Speaker 3: Of her maternal grandfather.
Speaker 2: But you know, that is one where you can see
Speaker 2: that Hunter went out of his way to not pay,
Speaker 2: you know, and do his due diligence or sorry, his
Speaker 2: duty in terms of providing for them, and then also
Speaker 2: effectively treated her as like a political pawn his own child,
Speaker 2: and that for some reason, President Biden effectively deferred this
Speaker 2: disgraceful behavior to his son and just said I'm going
Speaker 2: to take his lead on it, which is why he
Speaker 2: refused to even acknowledge her exist existence until she was
Speaker 2: a four year old, which you know, we talked about
Speaker 2: this previously, Crystal, but genuinely might be one of the
Speaker 2: most personally disgraceful things that we've seen from President Biden
Speaker 2: that he has not received due criticism for.
Speaker 4: I one percent agree.
Speaker 1: And the way that you know, we played how the
Speaker 1: view is trying to cover for our feeling. Oh well,
Speaker 1: this is a Hunter issue. This is really not on Joe.
Speaker 1: It's like really, yeah, And it's very relevant when you're
Speaker 1: talking about a man who puts family front and center,
Speaker 1: and it's a core part of his political pitch is
Speaker 1: that he's this great family man and he talks about
Speaker 1: his family all the time, talks about his other grandchildren
Speaker 1: all the time. That they had to be shamed even
Speaker 1: into even acknowledging this child's existence. I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't care what you say at this point that
Speaker 1: Staine does not get removed and the real feelings come
Speaker 1: out in this child support arrangement where yeah, Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: first of all fought them tooth and nail, and second
Speaker 1: of all, as part of the agreement, made them accept
Speaker 1: that she could not have the Biden name because apparently
Speaker 1: they didn't want the Biden name tainted by some commoners
Speaker 1: from Arkansas. It is the height of elitist snobbery. It
Speaker 1: is heartless and yeah, no statement to People magazine is
Speaker 1: going to put that back in the box. The other
Speaker 1: thing I would say here, though, is you know, it
Speaker 1: does show you when the liberal paper of record decides
Speaker 1: to do any sort of scrutiny that it does have power.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they, you know, took this kind of critical
Speaker 1: lens to Biden, the Democrats more regularly, what sort of things,
Speaker 1: what sort of change might come from that? Because they
Speaker 1: were not going to They explicitly had told the Biden
Speaker 1: aids and everybody around him, like, we are not acknowledging
Speaker 1: this grandchild. He has six grandchildren, not seven. So this
Speaker 1: was explicit White House policy coming directly from Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and you know, a New York Times column had the
Speaker 1: power to at least shame them into acknowledging.
Speaker 4: This child's existence.
Speaker 1: You know, it's also worth recalling when Biden was first
Speaker 1: asked about this little girl what his response was, and
Speaker 1: you can see I think the tone and judge for
Speaker 1: yourself how he really feels about all of those takeisms.
Speaker 9: I'm wondering if you have a comment on this report
Speaker 9: and court filing out of Arkansas that your son Hunter
Speaker 9: just made you of grandfather.
Speaker 11: Against No, that's a private matter.
Speaker 12: I have no comments.
Speaker 3: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1: We have so just flashing out there, lashing out no comment.
Speaker 1: It's that, I mean, that was the first reaction, and
Speaker 1: it took four years and a New York Times shaming
Speaker 1: for them to even say that this child exists.
Speaker 2: What's classy asking the current presidential candidate whether he wants
Speaker 2: to acknowledge it or like, what's going on with his
Speaker 2: publicly like shameful son or you know, just refusing to
Speaker 2: acknowledge your fourth grandchild. And so she's four years old,
Speaker 2: cognitively functioning enough to know that her freaking grandfather as
Speaker 2: president of the United States. And then if you know that,
Speaker 2: then you also wonder why haven't they called me?
Speaker 3: How come nobody cares about? Yeah, why haven't I met?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I can see them on television, but nobody has the
Speaker 2: But I mean that can really screw you up as
Speaker 2: a kid.
Speaker 3: I said it last time.
Speaker 2: I believe Look, and this is the other thing about Hunter.
Speaker 2: I think you said this last time. So when Hunter
Speaker 2: decides to divorce his wife and date his dead brother's
Speaker 2: wife for some reason, they were willing to issue a
Speaker 2: statement of support, and they're willing to acknowledge that and
Speaker 2: be cool, you know, with his But why on this
Speaker 2: one were they not willing to just come out and
Speaker 2: be like, look, whatever is going on between her and Hunter?
Speaker 2: That's fine, you know, in terms of the mother. But
Speaker 2: we're not going to take this out on an innocent child.
Speaker 2: I also said this politically. How many people in this
Speaker 2: country grandma's grandparents are raising the kids of their son's daughters.
Speaker 2: You know, who fell into a bad situation because of drum,
Speaker 2: Millions of people are in the.
Speaker 3: Exact same situation.
Speaker 2: It would only make you more empathetic and connective to
Speaker 2: a lot of I think especially you know, white working
Speaker 2: class and poor voters who disproportionately have been affected by
Speaker 2: this exact same arrangement. And they would say, you know what,
Speaker 2: he's doing the right thing. You know, I was fifty
Speaker 2: five years old. I didn't want to step up. I
Speaker 2: had to do it. There's a lot of people in
Speaker 2: this country in that situation, and he could have stepped
Speaker 2: up in the same thing, but instead he chose the
Speaker 2: wrong way to go about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's all well said. All right, Tager,
Speaker 1: what are you looking at?
Speaker 2: The media in this town love to talk about democracy.
Speaker 2: Everything's an attack on it, it's under threat, it's going away.
Speaker 2: In a sense, they're right, but not for the right
Speaker 2: reasons for them. It's when they're usually talking about things
Speaker 2: that are bad for Democrats. Or are about Trump. They
Speaker 2: always fail to miss the actual picture. What does it
Speaker 2: look like for democracies that are in trouble. One of
Speaker 2: the first and important signs of one that is not
Speaker 2: doing well is a permanent elected class which does not
Speaker 2: respond to the wants of a dynamic pop sound familiar.
Speaker 2: It should, especially after this week, when the world really
Speaker 2: got to see how robust our democracy is. Our eighty
Speaker 2: one year old Senate minority leader, one of the most powerful,
Speaker 2: praid people in the entire country, freezes for twenty seconds
Speaker 2: on camera during a medical event, brushes it off, refuses
Speaker 2: to tell the public what the issue was, didn't even
Speaker 2: commit to stepping down. Twenty four hours later, the ninety
Speaker 2: one year old senior Senator from California, Diane Feinstein literally
Speaker 2: had to be scolded by her colleagues to quote, just
Speaker 2: vote I when she got confused as to where she was.
Speaker 3: If you haven't seen it, take a listen, Senor.
Speaker 10: Feinstein, pardon me, yeah, to say I would like to
Speaker 10: support a yes vote on this.
Speaker 13: It provides eight hundred and twenty three billion. That's an
Speaker 13: increase of twenty six billion for the Department of Defense,
Speaker 13: and it funds priorities submitted.
Speaker 10: Yeah just say okay, just.
Speaker 11: Hie, thank you.
Speaker 2: Presiding over that system is our eighty one year old
Speaker 2: president running for reelection, who is now forced to use
Speaker 2: the tiny stairs on air Force one to avoid tripping
Speaker 2: and falling.
Speaker 3: Because at his age he could actually die.
Speaker 2: When I say our democracy is dying, I almost mean
Speaker 2: it quite literally, considering that an actuarial table tells us
Speaker 2: one of these three individuals has a very high chance
Speaker 2: of dropping dead from natural causes in just the next
Speaker 2: twelve months. With the real problem with our garontocracy is
Speaker 2: not just those three individuals, it's the dying system that
Speaker 2: they represent. Our current Congress is the third oldest Congress
Speaker 2: since the Founding Fathers convened in seventeen eighty nine. The
Speaker 2: issue that we have, as you can see from the
Speaker 2: graphic in front of you, is not the six percent
Speaker 2: of the Congress that is currently in the silent generation,
Speaker 2: but to put it kindly, they're not exactly long for
Speaker 2: this world. The issue is the aging baby boomers that
Speaker 2: make up almost fifty percent of Congress that are fully
Speaker 2: internalized into this modern system where competitive primaries are basically dead.
Speaker 2: Social norms no longer force people to retire through any
Speaker 2: sense of duty to the public. And as you can
Speaker 2: see in front of you, the median age of Congress
Speaker 2: right now in both chambers is at an all time high.
Speaker 2: It's crazy to consider this, but there was a time
Speaker 2: in the early eighties where the median age of a
Speaker 2: senator was mid fifties. The median age of a representative
Speaker 2: in the House was in the forties. What happened, well,
Speaker 2: they stayed. They refuse to step down, not only from
Speaker 2: leadership but from their general seats. They've enjoyed the perks
Speaker 2: of office, nice fat stock market returns. They have taxpayer
Speaker 2: funded staffs that do everything for them. As the graphic
Speaker 2: in front of you here shows you, there have been
Speaker 2: two major breaking points in the history of the country
Speaker 2: from normalizing old people on Congress. The first time that
Speaker 2: the percentage of people over the age of seventy spiked
Speaker 2: above ten percent was nineteen forty six. That time period
Speaker 2: in Congress is very significant because it came upon the
Speaker 2: tail end of the absolute power that the South had
Speaker 2: built up through Jim Crow. Effectively, the way that it
Speaker 2: worked at that time was that Southern states became uniparty
Speaker 2: political machines. They sent the same man to Congress year
Speaker 2: after year, very few competitive primaries, and it enabled them
Speaker 2: both to stay until they died. But also because they
Speaker 2: amassed immense power through the seniority system. The entire Congress
Speaker 2: of that time ran only on senior privilege, where the
Speaker 2: chairman of the most powerful committees was not decided by
Speaker 2: party bosses, but entirely through how long you've been in office.
Speaker 2: So for those who have read one of my favorite books,
Speaker 2: Master of the Senate, you know that it took a
Speaker 2: singular force in American history to change all of that.
Speaker 3: Lyndon B.
Speaker 2: Johnson somehow slowly wrestled power away from the geriatric Southerners,
Speaker 2: slowly chipped away at the seniority system, and culminated eventually
Speaker 2: in the destruction of Jim Crow under his presidency and
Speaker 2: the Voting Rights Act. And wouldn't you know it, destroying
Speaker 2: the voting hold of power on Jim Crow overnight destroyed
Speaker 2: the percentage of people in the Senate over seventy. The
Speaker 2: previous high of people over seventy was eleven percent in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight. That fell to a near all time
Speaker 2: low four percent in nineteen eighty one. But as with
Speaker 2: all political changes, the new Guard seems a lot like
Speaker 2: the Old Guard. Slowly but surely, the Reagan Revolution turned
Speaker 2: into the Reagan Establishment between nineteen eighty one and the
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties. Suddenly we are right back to almost
Speaker 2: where we started. It was exactly during this period that
Speaker 2: some of the worst defenders in our politics entered the Chamber.
Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell eighty nine year old Chuck Grassley, Dianne Feinstein,
Speaker 2: Nancy Pelosi eighty six year old Representative Napolitano in the House,
Speaker 2: many many more. After two thousand and four, we were
Speaker 2: truly after the races. We broke the all time record
Speaker 2: of eleven percent, skyrocketed hire and hire every year since.
Speaker 2: We now stand at a stunning twenty five percent of
Speaker 2: the entire Chamber over the age of seventy. Little chance
Speaker 2: of change anytime soon. Take the Senate, for example, the
Speaker 2: two people who were standing behind Mitch McConnell during his
Speaker 2: health episode to potentially take his place, Senator John Thune
Speaker 2: and Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn, he's already seventy one. Thune,
Speaker 2: I guess he's a spring chicken. He's sixty two years old.
Speaker 2: On the other side of the aisle, Schumer is one
Speaker 2: of the most is one of the youngest most powerful
Speaker 2: people in Washington. He's seventy two. His number two Dick Durbin,
Speaker 2: he's seventy eight. We have an epidemic in Congress of
Speaker 2: not only extraordinarily old and infirm people hanging on at
Speaker 2: the top, but really of the median senator being much
Speaker 2: closer to nursing home age than at any time in
Speaker 2: modern history. No internal dynamics that forced these people from office. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: as we have all seen, public shame. It's not enough
Speaker 2: to get someone like Feinstein, who look at this point
Speaker 2: fully has lost her mind to step down. Shame doesn't
Speaker 2: work on people with that much ego and from a
Speaker 2: machine state like California. There's really only one solution in need,
Speaker 2: an age limit for all all federal bureaucrats and elected representatives.
Speaker 3: Call me ages if you want. I don't care.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, if you're a day old or seventy five,
Speaker 2: you gotta go.
Speaker 3: Just walk.
Speaker 2: Don't take it from me, Take it from Chuck Hagel,
Speaker 2: he's actually a former US senator. When he was asked
Speaker 2: about this, he's currently aged seventy seven, he said, quote,
Speaker 2: it's heartbreaking embarrassing, But it's up to the individual to
Speaker 2: come to grips with the reality. He's a former Nebraska
Speaker 2: senator who left office in two thousand and nine. The
Speaker 2: reality is quote, we are not going backwards. We are
Speaker 2: all getting older at seventy seven versus sixty two when
Speaker 2: I left the Senate, I have pains.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know that I should have take it
Speaker 3: from him.
Speaker 2: That's the thing, Crystal, I mean that quote, Christal, what
Speaker 2: are you ty going to look at?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, if you watched a Trump rally on the
Speaker 1: right wing outlet Newsmax recently, might have looked a.
Speaker 4: Little bit like this.
Speaker 1: You can see here you've got Trump on the left
Speaker 1: side doing his Trumpian thing, and the entire right side
Speaker 1: on the screen taken up by an ad for American
Speaker 1: Hartford gold Coins Trump speech special to add for offer
Speaker 1: details text Trump to this number.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: This ad was particularly intrusive and notable, but far from
Speaker 1: one off for Hartford or the entire sketchy world of
Speaker 1: gold iras. In this world, salesman hucksters try to shake
Speaker 1: down scared seniors and get them to shift their retirement
Speaker 1: from funds from their traditional iras and four oh one
Speaker 1: k's into gold coins that these companies sell at an
Speaker 1: exorbitant markup, according to analysis for The Washington Post Quote,
Speaker 1: since October twenty twenty, email newsletters distributed by newsmas have
Speaker 1: included more than eleven hundred ads for gold IRA companies,
Speaker 1: nearly a quarter of all NEWSMACS email ads reviewed by
Speaker 1: The Post at one thousand dollars of five thousand dollars each.
Speaker 1: According to Augusta financial records from twenty sixteen, also reviewed
Speaker 1: by the Post, the ads likely generate more than a
Speaker 1: million dollars a year in revenue for that company. Now,
Speaker 1: conservative influencers and politicians they also regularly haf these products.
Speaker 1: One email that went out from American Hertford that same company,
Speaker 1: and fluted endorsement from Bill O'Reilly. Ted Cruz's podcast has
Speaker 1: featured ads from the company. Rudy Juliani called Hertford quote
Speaker 1: the experts I trust. Most companies like Hartford prey on
Speaker 1: real economic anxiety triggered by both actual and hyperbolic claims
Speaker 1: to offer a supposed solution that in reality is just
Speaker 1: robbing seniors blind. The Post talked to one retiree named
Speaker 1: Ed de Santo, who was lured in by the ads
Speaker 1: he heard on some of his favorite channels and shows.
Speaker 1: He was persuaded to invest one hundred thousand dollars lump
Speaker 1: sum payment from his pension into a.
Speaker 4: Hartford Gold Ira.
Speaker 1: Little did he know gold and silver he was purchasing
Speaker 1: it been marked up ninety two percent. That means that
Speaker 1: his one hundred k only netted him fifty three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in actual value. In other words, they basically just
Speaker 1: stole about half of his money. A recent sec complaint
Speaker 1: against another similar company, red Rock Secured, reveals even more
Speaker 1: details about exactly how these scams work. According to a
Speaker 1: company email that was obtained by the government, red Rocks
Speaker 1: Secured specifically targeted people who were quote right wing conservative,
Speaker 1: fifty nine plus years of age, male and female, interest
Speaker 1: in retirement investments, owns a four h one K or
Speaker 1: I or right and anyone who works for the government
Speaker 1: and owns a thrift savings plan. This type of fraud
Speaker 1: targeting is called an affinity scam. You portray yourself and
Speaker 1: your company is having some sort of shared interests or
Speaker 1: belonging to a common group. In this instance, it's conservatives.
Speaker 1: You're opposed to Joe Biden democratic policies. Companies in the
Speaker 1: space use trusted right wing figures and networks for their advertising,
Speaker 1: places like Fox News News mex conservative podcast hosts. Affinity
Speaker 1: scams really prey on the natural human inclination to trust
Speaker 1: people who are in your in group, and allow political
Speaker 1: influencers to monetize their audience trust profiting up of scamming
Speaker 1: the very people who are most.
Speaker 4: Supportive of their careers.
Speaker 1: Given that mainstream advertisers increasingly steer clear of hard right content,
Speaker 1: the ad space is cheap and the audience of disproportionately
Speaker 1: elderly people ripe for scamming. In the specific case of
Speaker 1: red Rock Secured, the government alleges that the company outright
Speaker 1: lied to their customers. In one instance, they told a
Speaker 1: customer they would be charging him a mere one point
Speaker 1: eight three percent fee and that the customer would also
Speaker 1: be receiving fifteen percent in quote bonus medal. In reality,
Speaker 1: red Rock charged the customer a one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: percent markup and there was no bonus medal, whatever that is.
Speaker 1: The government also claims that, in order to establish credibility,
Speaker 1: a top Red Rock executive claimed he had a phing
Speaker 1: economics and a PhD in international markets, and he compelled
Speaker 1: other employees to refer to him as doctor Tony Spencer
Speaker 1: when transferring customer phone calls to his line. He also
Speaker 1: claimed that he had been working with clients for over
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Of course, in reality, he had no
Speaker 1: such degrees and had been working the space for at
Speaker 1: most eleven years, and that work appears to have mostly
Speaker 1: entailed scamming people. These goldbug scams go back a long time, though,
Speaker 1: and they significantly predate even the Biden era.
Speaker 4: Back in the heyday of Glenn.
Speaker 1: Beck's Fox News Show, following the financial collapse during the
Speaker 1: rise of the Tea Party, Beck leaned hard in to
Speaker 1: gold as a safe haven for troubled times. In an
Speaker 1: article that was written at that time, Mother Jones documented
Speaker 1: how his program, increasingly facing mainstream advertiser boycotts, would not
Speaker 1: only host goldbug ads, but would also feature entire segments
Speaker 1: dedicated to the importance of hoarding gold. As they wrote,
Speaker 1: quote tune into Glenbeck's Fox News Show or syndicated radio program,
Speaker 1: you'll soon learn about the precarious state of the US
Speaker 1: dollar currency on the verge of collapse due to runaway
Speaker 1: government spending. A ballooning national debt and imminent Zimbabwe style hyperinflation.
Speaker 1: To defend yourself against the coming financial holocaust, Beck explain
Speaker 1: on his radio show last November, you need to quote
Speaker 1: think like a German Jew in nineteen thirty four, maybe
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, and that means thinking about buying some gold.
Speaker 1: Intellectual framework for these scams, though, goes back even further
Speaker 1: more than one hundred years, to debates over the gold
Speaker 1: stand the association of gold with libertarian politics. The gold standard,
Speaker 1: in this ideological worldview, is meant to check the excesses
Speaker 1: of the progressive welfare state, gold being the pure store
Speaker 1: of value versus paper money, which can be corrupted by
Speaker 1: crooked politicians. So couple this ideological inclination with genuine economic procarity,
Speaker 1: partisan fear mongering, and sell it from the mouths of
Speaker 1: trusted figures. You've got a personal financial disaster just waiting
Speaker 1: to happen. No accident that these gold scams are back
Speaker 1: with vengeance at a time of massive anxiety among our
Speaker 1: elderly about how they're going to afford to live out
Speaker 1: their retirement, something many say they actually fear more than
Speaker 1: they fear death. According to a recent study, eighty percent
Speaker 1: of American households with older adults are either currently financially
Speaker 1: struggling or they are at risk. The rise of market
Speaker 1: base where retirement plans over defined benefit pensions, means that
Speaker 1: seniors genuinely do find themselves more at risk to the
Speaker 1: whims of the market and vulnerable to potential disaster and
Speaker 1: crash than previous generations. Desperation and fear, of course, breeds vulnerability.
Speaker 1: These influencers taking advertiser cash to scam their own audience
Speaker 1: without any scruples, they should be ashamed of themselves. The
Speaker 1: government needs to do a lot more to crack down
Speaker 1: on these scams, to protecting inns and more importantly, to
Speaker 1: ease the procarity that has left so many such easy prey.
Speaker 4: For all of you out there, just don't be an
Speaker 4: easy mark.
Speaker 1: Just because someone you like is selling something, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they have your best interests at heart. And these
Speaker 1: things SAGA have so proliferated. And what was amazing in
Speaker 1: that Washington Post.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: As a reminder, you can go ahead and sign up
Speaker 2: watch the full show on Spotify guaranteed ad free over
Speaker 2: there for right now, so Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, we'll see you.
Speaker 12: All tomorrow, b Stupi.