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Speaker 2: Happy Friday, All, how's everybody doing this morning?
Speaker 3: Great, We're on you.
Speaker 4: Glad to see you guys.
Speaker 2: Good to say you guys do A bunch of stuff
Speaker 2: that was breaking right after our show yesterday, A bunch
Speaker 2: of moves. Mike Waltz out at NSA and Ryan, I
Speaker 2: think you have a scoop with regard to some of
Speaker 2: his last acts in that position.
Speaker 5: Correct, Yeah, thanks to the tech.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: People thought that he was caught using signal on the
Speaker 6: day that he was fired for right, is poor signal use,
Speaker 6: But it turns out he was using an.
Speaker 4: Israeli tech firm's version of Signal.
Speaker 5: Oh, that sounds even better because.
Speaker 6: That tech firm, that tech firm kind of makes a
Speaker 6: copy of everybody's messages so you could keep it so
Speaker 6: it might comply with record keeping rules in the federal government.
Speaker 6: But it also means that the Israeli tech firm would
Speaker 6: plausibly who and which is made up of former Israeli
Speaker 6: intel officials, would have access to these potentially would have
Speaker 6: access to all of these messages set by our national
Speaker 6: security team.
Speaker 3: Right? Is this because people saw the Reuter's picture of
Speaker 3: him in the cabinet meeting. Was he using the app?
Speaker 3: Then that was the Israeli Tech Firms app?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And if you if you look close enough, and
Speaker 6: we have a story over at drop site that people
Speaker 6: can read if you look close enough at it, it's
Speaker 6: not the Signal app.
Speaker 4: It's this Israelly Tech Firms app.
Speaker 5: All right, So we'll get into that.
Speaker 2: We got more details on the Ukraine minerals deal Emily
Speaker 2: and I covered the outlines of it.
Speaker 5: ESGM.
Speaker 2: Curious to get Ryan's take on that and where we
Speaker 2: are with regard to ending hopefully one day the Ukraine
Speaker 2: Russia War. We had this also, we kind of previewed
Speaker 2: yesterday Emily, a Trump appointed judge has now blocked his
Speaker 2: invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and we were just
Speaker 2: saying yesterday that we expected that to come at some point,
Speaker 2: and then lo and behold, basically after we finished the show,
Speaker 2: you get exactly that ruling. We've got also a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff that's going to be in the premium section,
Speaker 2: including a really interesting clip of Tucker and Matt Walshin,
Speaker 2: Tucker kind of calling him out with regard to Israel,
Speaker 2: sort of casually calling him out on that, and a
Speaker 2: really horrific new development there drones attacking and aid flotilla
Speaker 2: that was headed to Gaza. Also Trump weigh in on
Speaker 2: virgins because that's something we all wanted, and Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 2: wanting all of us to have more robot friends. So
Speaker 2: things are going good, guys, Things are going good.
Speaker 3: And maybe questions as well if we have time for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we put on a post for premium subscribers.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a few questions at the end
Speaker 2: from the comments you guys submitted. So again, you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to do a bunch of stuff for the
Speaker 2: free show, and then we'll have some bonus content for
Speaker 2: premium subscribers, including those questions. If you guys want to
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber, go to Breakingpoints dot com and
Speaker 2: appreciate all of you guys for making the show possible.
Speaker 2: You know, an expansion at this moment of economic uncertainty
Speaker 2: is a bit of a risk, but you guys make
Speaker 2: it so that we're able to do it. So shall
Speaker 2: we go ahead and dive in here, guys? Sue all right,
Speaker 2: So Mike Waltz out at nssay he is being given
Speaker 2: the consolation prize of you an ambassador, which the administration
Speaker 2: is trying to spin is like, oh, that's definitely not
Speaker 2: a demotion. That's like totally the same level of prestige
Speaker 2: and import as an essay director. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: pull up this this element, but first, just guys weigh
Speaker 2: in on that piece, which is kind of preposterous Nicky
Speaker 2: Haley's old job.
Speaker 3: In other words, Yeah, jd Vance has tried to say,
Speaker 3: you can plausibly make it. I think you said you
Speaker 3: can make a good faith argument that it's a promotion,
Speaker 3: which is a really funny way of saying, well, if
Speaker 3: you kind of stretch and squint. You can see how
Speaker 3: maybe this would look kind of like a promotion. Of course,
Speaker 3: it's not. The amount of power that you wield as
Speaker 3: NSA is significantly more than the amount of power you
Speaker 3: wield as a UN ambassador, where you're largely a figurehead,
Speaker 3: an important figurehead. Nonetheless, something to be said for that.
Speaker 3: But I think it was Trump's way of not completely
Speaker 3: capitulating to the media firestorm over Walls while also you know,
Speaker 3: getting him out of his his tight inner circle.
Speaker 6: Yeah, go ahead, Ryan, Right, Yeah, the reporting was all
Speaker 6: that Trump did not want to look like he was
Speaker 6: the chaos agent of Trump won. He really regretted, you know,
Speaker 6: all the people that he fired within you know, the
Speaker 6: first several even weeks of his administration. And so he
Speaker 6: was like, I'm not firing this guy under pressure because
Speaker 6: I don't want to. I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 6: So he waited and then sort of didn't fire him,
Speaker 6: just moved him, but did fire him.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I want to say, yeah, well, no, I
Speaker 3: mean there's something like from just a last time around,
Speaker 3: you could get someone fired if you were inside the
Speaker 3: administration with strategic leaks, and it created just from like
Speaker 3: a management perspective, an impossible situation because people were constantly
Speaker 3: they realized the power of their leaking. They could sideline people.
Speaker 3: It was just like straight up hunger games and so.
Speaker 4: Be done by Laura Lumer.
Speaker 2: Yes, now you have they've consolidated the firing power.
Speaker 3: Yes, so it's a much more efficient process.
Speaker 2: Let me go ahead play this because we do have
Speaker 2: video of like, this is this is really this is
Speaker 2: really cool. We have video of him like getting the
Speaker 2: news he's gonna board Air Force one and then someone
Speaker 2: comes over to him and is like, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 2: not going to be on this trip, and then he's
Speaker 2: like escorted off the tarmac. Let me go ahead and
Speaker 2: play this for you guys, so we can we can
Speaker 2: see the moment that it all went down and well
Speaker 2: traveled marine touch two point oh but a little too
Speaker 2: early for that.
Speaker 5: Here we go.
Speaker 7: That's his figure. He does not get on Air Force one.
Speaker 7: It's only about a ten minute flight. So it's extremely
Speaker 7: odd to take the helicopter flight and then not actually
Speaker 7: go on the trip.
Speaker 3: I was told he was not supposed to.
Speaker 7: Go on the trip, and so people raised questions about
Speaker 7: what this moment meant. So we've been asking White House
Speaker 7: officials about it, and essentially just got to a point
Speaker 7: where he didn't have a lot of confidence, not of
Speaker 7: the President, not of his senior staff. And he was told,
Speaker 7: I was told earlier this week that his time as
Speaker 7: the National Security Advisor had come to an end and
Speaker 7: it was time for him to leave. And now we
Speaker 7: are told that he will be departing and so will
Speaker 7: his end life.
Speaker 3: So he took so he took Marine one to drink
Speaker 3: Base Andrews. So what they're saying and didn't get on
Speaker 3: Air Force one. That's brutal. That's mean girls type stuff.
Speaker 6: Also, it's so obnoxious that all of these guys take
Speaker 6: helicopters to Andrews Like.
Speaker 5: It's like five, we're right there.
Speaker 4: Take take an uber, guys.
Speaker 5: I mean, in fairness, the traffic in DC can be
Speaker 5: really bad.
Speaker 6: It's true, that's true. Yeah, but he can he can
Speaker 6: work from his phone.
Speaker 4: So what's it? What's it matter?
Speaker 6: But yes, to like get turned around on that is
Speaker 6: I mean, you sign up to work for Trump, you
Speaker 6: know you are most likely it's like life, You're signing
Speaker 6: up for a brutal end. It's just going to come
Speaker 6: a lot faster and it's going to be even more brutal.
Speaker 6: And you know what do you get he got How
Speaker 6: many scaramouchies did he get?
Speaker 4: Maybe eight? But now he has to be un ambassador.
Speaker 4: So that'll be cool, that's not bad.
Speaker 6: Somebody you can go to restaurants and he'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Imagine being a least staphonic right now. Seriously, who okay,
Speaker 2: just what people recall she was supposed to be you
Speaker 2: an ambassador. She's in Congress, she's supposed to be you
Speaker 2: an ambassador. But they picked uh, well, they pulled Matt Gates.
Speaker 2: You know, they were going to make him a g
Speaker 2: and then he ends up pulling himself out of contention.
Speaker 5: But that's one House seat. Then you've got Mike.
Speaker 2: Waltz is pulled, and then isn't there one more that
Speaker 2: they pulled out of the House into the administration And
Speaker 2: they basically with Stefani, I'm sorry, I know you're in
Speaker 2: like a R plus twenty district, but we're not all
Speaker 2: that confident that you're going to be able to we're
Speaker 2: going to be able to put a Republican in that
Speaker 2: seat after you, so you have to stay. So now
Speaker 2: she not only has to deal with the like the
Speaker 2: sting of she thought she was going to be you ambassador,
Speaker 2: but she's not, but now so also the degradation of
Speaker 2: like them using this as some sort of a consolation
Speaker 2: prize for Mike Waltz was her colleague in the House
Speaker 2: as well, like that's that's a rough hand that one.
Speaker 3: And she gave up her leadership post to accept this
Speaker 3: nomination to be you on ambassador, and so now she's
Speaker 3: back in Congress and it's sort of put them at
Speaker 3: a loss because they're trying to figure out how to
Speaker 3: let Alista find it come back into Congress heat it's
Speaker 3: a leadership post or in a post that makes her
Speaker 3: feel like she's leadership adjacent. So it's been a really
Speaker 3: brutal few months for her. She's she's sacrificed for the
Speaker 3: cause and is not getting rewarded for it.
Speaker 2: And then the other piece of this, so Waltz is
Speaker 2: over to the the UN and then the person who
Speaker 2: at least for now is replacing him is Marco Rubio,
Speaker 2: who already is wearing a bunch of different hats, so
Speaker 2: he is already obviously Secretary of State, now Usaid Administrator,
Speaker 2: US archivist. I didn't even I didn't even know this one.
Speaker 2: Apparently he's also the head of the US Archives and
Speaker 2: now also National Security Advisor, So I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's going to stay in definitely as NSA, but that's
Speaker 2: where who has been filled in right now, So you know,
Speaker 2: to the the ideological piece, Rubio is also a ha.
Speaker 2: I mean, Waltz is a hawk. That's, you know, part
Speaker 2: of why Lumer and others wanted him out of there.
Speaker 2: I certainly wanted him out of there as well. Rubio
Speaker 2: is not really an improvement, though he's reconstructed.
Speaker 4: Though Emily give us the pro Rubio case.
Speaker 3: Well, I was going to say, Waltz is an unreconstructed
Speaker 3: neo kan who packages himself as a reconstructed neokon. But
Speaker 3: Rubio is sincerely a reconstructed neokon. Not that he is.
Speaker 3: To be very clear, he does not have the foreign
Speaker 3: policy of someone like JD. Vance or Tucker Carlson. He's
Speaker 3: still fairly hawkish against China, but he's definitely shifted significantly
Speaker 3: in very sincere ways. He's it's but the question is,
Speaker 3: you know, does that do your ambitions also allow you
Speaker 3: to be co opted by the unreconstructed conservatives who do
Speaker 3: still work in these high level positions and the foreign
Speaker 3: policy establishment, because you also kind of came in with
Speaker 3: the residue of new Conservatism. So it's not like we're
Speaker 3: putting Tucker Carlson in these positions.
Speaker 2: To be very clear, my impression of Rubio is he's
Speaker 2: reconstructed is just like a total and complete Trump Sika fan.
Speaker 2: Like whatever Trump's ideology is, to say, that's what margat
Speaker 2: Rubio's ideology is going to be that. I mean, we
Speaker 2: saw that on full display at that grotesque North Korea
Speaker 2: style cabinet meeting this week, which is just I mean, really,
Speaker 2: this is one of the key characteristics of Trump two
Speaker 2: point zero. Not to say it wasn't there in Trump
Speaker 2: one point zero, but the levels of just dear leader,
Speaker 2: you know, boot licking are off the charts. They have
Speaker 2: reached grotesque new levels. And you know to that point too.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys saw the news that
Speaker 2: Trump is planning on throwing himself this giant military parade
Speaker 2: in DC.
Speaker 5: For his birthday.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this shit is incredibly disturbing to me,
Speaker 2: Like just disturbing.
Speaker 3: Isn't it also like the anniversary of the army or
Speaker 3: something like that. I have to pull the article back up.
Speaker 3: It's an ap story and it's it happens the fall
Speaker 3: on his birthday. But it's also like the army is
Speaker 3: that they.
Speaker 4: Always finds something that falls on your birthday.
Speaker 3: Every day is a holiday? Is a holiday?
Speaker 5: Very true.
Speaker 2: All right, let's let's get to this signal Israeli signal story. Ryan,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you could pull up the drop
Speaker 2: site thing, but let me first pull up.
Speaker 5: Let me pull up this real quick.
Speaker 2: So here's the image that this is pulled from that
Speaker 2: cabinet meeting, the North Korea cabinet meeting, where this is
Speaker 2: Mike Waltz. I mean, you can fully read a text
Speaker 2: here from the Vice President of the United States. You
Speaker 2: can see Tulsi Gabbard's in there, you can see wit Cough,
Speaker 2: you can see Rubio. I'm not sure who that other
Speaker 2: the one above Gabbard is. Maybe Emily knows, but in
Speaker 2: any case, everyone was looking at this and like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, you know here he is using signal in
Speaker 2: the middle of the cabinet meeting, and you can read
Speaker 2: some of the text messages just from the photography. And
Speaker 2: then this guy points out, actually, no, it appears they're
Speaker 2: using it as rarely firm's archive wrapper app called tele Message.
Speaker 2: Hence the TM signal in the pin pop up means
Speaker 2: they're attempting to archive to comply with federal records laws.
Speaker 2: But I'm skeptical of security implications. And then Ryan, why
Speaker 2: don't you pick up with your reporting?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it popped up because because of this thing
Speaker 6: right here, whereas verify your TM SGNL PIN. I remember
Speaker 6: I saw that too, and I was like, that's not
Speaker 6: that's as you I'm sure you guys noticed too, that's
Speaker 6: not Signal, Like you know, Signal says verify your signal pin.
Speaker 6: So this is a firm called tele Message and they
Speaker 6: have this software called Signal Capture. So Signal is is
Speaker 6: open source, but you need a license to use it.
Speaker 6: Signal would not confirm that they had given us a
Speaker 6: license or that that they had given this israelly firm
Speaker 6: a license. But let's let me find this quote. We
Speaker 6: did get a quote from them where they say we
Speaker 6: cannot guarantee the privacy or security properties of unofficial versions
Speaker 6: of Signal. So this is an unofficial version of Signal.
Speaker 6: Like basically, what it's doing is using the signal base.
Speaker 6: So the messages should be secure, uh, you know, end
Speaker 6: to end. But then it makes a copy of them
Speaker 6: and it puts it somewhere and we don't know where.
Speaker 6: We don't is it is it putting the copy in
Speaker 6: some White House server? Is it putting it in some
Speaker 6: server that this is really firm controls but then licenses
Speaker 6: back to the to the White House.
Speaker 4: Uh, this was something that was put together on the fly.
Speaker 6: You had Carolyn Levitt say recently that the administration was
Speaker 6: working to solve the problem of transparency and of record
Speaker 6: keeping because you know, under the record Keeping Act, you're
Speaker 6: required to keep you know, official communications between between members
Speaker 6: and signal disappears messages. So this seems to be the
Speaker 6: answer to what Caroline Levitt was saying was the solution
Speaker 6: that they were coming up with. But okay, that's a
Speaker 6: it's a good thing that you would do that. But
Speaker 6: because they slapped it together so quickly, they just went
Speaker 6: out and got this israelly firm.
Speaker 4: And so the firm is just completely stocked.
Speaker 6: Its top two its top two officials are former Israeli
Speaker 6: intelligence officials. A lot of you know, and a lot
Speaker 6: of the engineers and other people who work for. It
Speaker 6: also came out of Israeli intelligence, and the kind of
Speaker 6: profile of the the people that work there is similar
Speaker 6: to all of the Israeli spyware and surveillance companies.
Speaker 4: And I'll just read this part.
Speaker 6: Tech professionals have moved between companies like Telemessage and some
Speaker 6: of the leading Israeli spyware firms. For example, a Loan Fallaw,
Speaker 6: a technical support manager at Telemessage until twenty twenty one,
Speaker 6: left the company a joint NSO Group. According to his
Speaker 6: LinkedIn profile, NSO Group is the one that does Pegasus.
Speaker 6: Pegasus is the no click penetration software. Will you don't
Speaker 6: even have to click on anything, and it will get
Speaker 6: into your get into your phone. The US has alternately,
Speaker 6: like if supported it and even tried to sanction it
Speaker 6: at times because it's so dangerous. Another employee joined Telemessage
Speaker 6: last year after a stint at Celebrate, maker of hardware
Speaker 6: and software widely used by law enforcement to extract data
Speaker 6: from smartphones.
Speaker 2: So, and the thing with Pegasus is all you need
Speaker 2: to know is the person's phone number. Right, And another
Speaker 2: thing we learned about was it.
Speaker 4: Walter heggs hesth but probably also well probably I.
Speaker 2: Mean that their numbers were just like freely available online,
Speaker 2: easily obtainable. So I sort of assumed that the Israelis
Speaker 2: and probably a bunch of other foreign nations as well,
Speaker 2: already had access to all of these all of these messages,
Speaker 2: because yeah, that that Pegasus program allows you just to
Speaker 2: be able to get into someone's phone and all you
Speaker 2: need to know is the phone number, which is terrifying.
Speaker 6: Although if you if you have your phone on lockdown
Speaker 6: mode and if there aren't any new exploits, it's difficult.
Speaker 6: You know, pegasust requires your phone either to like you
Speaker 6: have not been updated, you know, since the latest hack,
Speaker 6: and especially if you have it on lockdown mode, pegasusts
Speaker 6: can't really get in. And also apparently it costs something
Speaker 6: like a million dollars a shot. It's extremely expensive. So,
Speaker 6: like it reminds me of who was at Chris Rock
Speaker 6: who was saying, we don't need gun control, we need
Speaker 6: bullet control, Like make the bullets you know, cost twenty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars and you're going to reduce crime. And so
Speaker 6: if it costs a million dollars to fire off a
Speaker 6: hacking attempt at say hag Seth, you're gonna be careful
Speaker 6: about how many times you do that. Whereas if Mike
Speaker 6: Watas and Haseth and all these others who were using
Speaker 6: Signal just went to the app store and downrote, downloaded
Speaker 6: this Israeli app boom like they're in.
Speaker 3: Well, Ryan, do we have an indication of when they
Speaker 3: did that? Is, do we know that it happened after
Speaker 3: Signal game or could it? Is it plausible that they
Speaker 3: were already using this and are they using both versions
Speaker 3: of Signal? Because I'm wondering how contacts work, Like the
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Goldberg thing, how he just get quote unquote sucked
Speaker 3: in the reporting is that it came straight from Waltz's contact,
Speaker 3: where like Apple Intelligence had saved Goldberg's phone number because
Speaker 3: his aid sent it, and when he was going to
Speaker 3: save his aid's number, it sucked in Goldberg's number. So
Speaker 3: I'm just wondering, like what the what that might mean.
Speaker 6: I mean, we don't know when they started using it.
Speaker 6: It would stand to reason that they started using it
Speaker 6: after they got busted using regular Signal, and and we're told, hey,
Speaker 6: f yi, this is a this is a violation of
Speaker 6: the Record Keeping Act. So we need we need to
Speaker 6: figure out a solution, and so then they're then they're like, okay, well,
Speaker 6: what kind of app can we get that uses Signal
Speaker 6: as its base but also makes a copy. And the
Speaker 6: way that Signal is vulnerable is the exact way that
Speaker 6: Jeffrey Goldberg got in there user error, uh you know,
Speaker 6: user error, and the device itself, like, because it's end
Speaker 6: to end encrypted, you can't get in unless you're in
Speaker 6: the person's device where they accidentally send you something. So
Speaker 6: what this app does is it creates extra vulnerabilities because
Speaker 6: it's taking the data, the messages that are on Mike
Speaker 6: Waltz's phone and copying them onto another device somewhere, like
Speaker 6: we don't know where, like some serve for somewhere. So
Speaker 6: then now you have two points of vulnerability where a
Speaker 6: hacker could get in, or an intelligence company again in
Speaker 6: if the intelligence officials have access to that separate that
Speaker 6: second server, because they set it up, you know, through
Speaker 6: this bywear farm, you know, or through this Israeli tech farm,
Speaker 6: then they would just be able to read right into it.
Speaker 3: And this is really low hanging fruit. But I just
Speaker 3: want to say you can see in that picture that
Speaker 3: you guys use and drop site from Reuters he has
Speaker 3: a reporters behind him. So he's sitting at the table
Speaker 3: and he is openly on his signal. He's not like
Speaker 3: covering the screen. He doesn't have a screen protector. He
Speaker 3: has a message from the Vice President of the United
Speaker 3: States up on his screen, including also Marco Rubio. He
Speaker 3: has a call from Telsea Gabbart that just came in.
Speaker 3: But there is a message that you can read from
Speaker 3: jd Vance something about his counterpart. We don't know where,
Speaker 3: We don't have all of the context. But if you
Speaker 3: are a reporter sitting behind him. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of foreign reporters, by the way, that are in the
Speaker 3: White House press pool, and so it is just low
Speaker 3: hanging fruit, but so enormously stupid for him to be
Speaker 3: at a cabinet meeting with the press directly behind his shoulder.
Speaker 3: Men have long lens cameras. Yeah, of course, but like
Speaker 3: also they're standing five feet behind you. I cannot wrap
Speaker 3: my head around the stupidity of voice.
Speaker 6: Last point on this, if people think that I'm being
Speaker 6: unfair and suggesting that Israel might actually have the motivation
Speaker 6: to spy on the United States, there's a paragraph in
Speaker 6: the story that sums it up well. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 6: Israel was identified by the National Counter Intelligence Center to
Speaker 6: be on the Department of Energy Sensitive Country List. In
Speaker 6: a two thousand report, NCIIC listed Israel as one of
Speaker 6: the quote most active collectors of intelligence against the private
Speaker 6: sector unquote. In twenty nineteen, the US government determined that
Speaker 6: Israel had most likely planted stingray surveillance devices that mimics
Speaker 6: cell phone towers around the White House, if you remember
Speaker 6: that scandal, intending to spy on President Donald Trump in
Speaker 6: his top aids. According to a Politico report, Israel denied
Speaker 6: those allegations with their in mind with many other stories
Speaker 6: that we've heard from decades.
Speaker 2: We know, we know that they have great interest in
Speaker 2: what we're going to do visa vi Ran, so they
Speaker 2: have every incentive to know what you know. Pete hagg
Speaker 2: Saith and Mike Waltz and all of these other characters
Speaker 2: are saying to each other in signal, I mean, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, I'm a little surprised that they
Speaker 2: reacted at all to the revelation that, like, hey, using
Speaker 2: signal like this is actually illegal because you are not
Speaker 2: complying with Foyer requirements. I'm actually a little bit shocked
Speaker 2: that they cared at all about that, and we're't just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're just.
Speaker 5: Going to keep doing it. We really want there for
Speaker 5: you basically, you know.
Speaker 2: So here Spencer, Yeah, just to go back to the
Speaker 2: Laura Lumer piece of this. You know, Emily, what do
Speaker 2: we know about or Ryan either one of you? What
Speaker 2: do we know about her involvement? Because we know she
Speaker 2: went to the White House the other a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks back, and she got some other officials fired, but
Speaker 2: not Mike Waltz. And also, by the way, it was
Speaker 2: what his like cheep of staff or his like top
Speaker 2: eight also was shown the door here and Walts of
Speaker 2: course to be technically correct, being moved over to U
Speaker 2: an ambassador book anyway, and she had indicated she had
Speaker 2: some video that was going to be very damaging to
Speaker 2: Waltz as well. So I mean, what do we know
Speaker 2: about her involvement? I did see an Axios report that
Speaker 2: also said that people just kind of didn't like Waltz,
Speaker 2: like outside of an ideological bassist like Jade Vance had
Speaker 2: pulled him aside on the Greenland trip and was trying
Speaker 2: to explain to him, you have to work better with people.
Speaker 2: Apparently he treated Susie Wilds poorly, which seems like about
Speaker 2: the dumbest thing you could possibly do.
Speaker 3: Doing right, So it's about as dumb as using signal
Speaker 3: to talk to the Vice president front of reporters.
Speaker 6: Front of reporters, right, so really tech firm version of signal.
Speaker 2: I feel like there was a coalescing, a sort of
Speaker 2: horseshoe between an ideological distaste for Mike Waltz and just
Speaker 2: a this guy's an idiot, he doesn't know what he's doing,
Speaker 2: and we don't like him and we don't want him
Speaker 2: around anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bear in mind, this is the National Security Advisor,
Speaker 3: so he's like, can't even protect his own security, let
Speaker 3: alone the nation's security as national security advisor. But yes,
Speaker 3: there's reporting that Susie wils thought he had been quote
Speaker 3: too big for his breeches. And so I assume when
Speaker 3: the President of the United States is taking meetings with
Speaker 3: Laura Lumer, who is floating the possibility of some deeply
Speaker 3: damaging video, the guy has already embarrassed the administration had
Speaker 3: the weakest appearance on primetime Fox News that you could
Speaker 3: possibly conjure, and he was already he came into the
Speaker 3: administration with a massive trust deficit with people that are
Speaker 3: in the more realist foreign policy circles, the like America
Speaker 3: First MAGA. Foreign policy circles have always been suspicious of
Speaker 3: Mike Waltz and definitely of the people he surrounds himself with.
Speaker 3: So it's not insignificant that Laura Lumer in that White
Speaker 3: House meeting seems to have named Alex Wong, who was
Speaker 3: a top advisor to Mike Waltz, who was actually out
Speaker 3: the door yesterday, somebody who does have Now Laura Lumer
Speaker 3: is constantly invoking that he's Chinese and invokes his wife's
Speaker 3: ties to the foreign policy establishment. So that's sort of
Speaker 3: in the air about, you know, the conversation, or it's
Speaker 3: part of the conversation that's been had about Alex Wog.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what the validity of all of
Speaker 3: the accusations against him are, but his pedigree is from
Speaker 3: the foreign policy establishment, and that's exactly why people have
Speaker 3: not always trusted Mike Waltz. And Ryan you actually might
Speaker 3: even know more about the lumour of it all.
Speaker 6: She said she would come on the show next week
Speaker 6: so we can ask her then. But yeah, she she
Speaker 6: she was hitting Alex Wong with like really not even
Speaker 6: veiled kind of you know, like going after his Chinese
Speaker 6: ethnicity and saying he was like had like secret links
Speaker 6: to the CCP and like.
Speaker 4: A little much.
Speaker 6: So we can ask her about that next week looking forward.
Speaker 6: But yes, she came in.
Speaker 3: So how I suspect you have secret links to the IRA?
Speaker 4: They could, That's why we had.
Speaker 6: To Lumer's credit, she came in to the Oval office
Speaker 6: with Mike Waltz present and ripped him to shreds, like
Speaker 6: in front of him. And now he's fired like that,
Speaker 6: you get like tip of the hat to Lumer for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean remember during the campaign, Susie Wilds
Speaker 2: had Lumor kicked off the campaign plane before she had
Speaker 2: been with Trump before the first debate, and then after
Speaker 2: that they Susie Wiles said, you cannot be around this
Speaker 2: woman anymore. So when you have the the partnership between
Speaker 2: Lumor and Susie Wiles, they come together to you know,
Speaker 2: to get you out of there, then I think you're
Speaker 2: probably you're probably done unstable combination.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna guess what if she'strategically brought.
Speaker 6: Lumer back, and I think there's no question, there's no
Speaker 6: question that is exactly what happened.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 6: You do not f with Susie Wilds Amazing, Like are
Speaker 6: you crazy? Like yees, she absolutely ushered him in, ushered
Speaker 6: her in and was like go to town, Laura.
Speaker 2: They said he treated her like she was a staffer
Speaker 2: to him and which also I mean to me.
Speaker 6: I'll show you what a stafford is thirty minutes in
Speaker 6: the Oval with Laura Lumer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like, we'll see how this goes for you.
Speaker 2: Yes, I wanted to get to this Ukraine minerals deal
Speaker 2: that has now been signed. We now have more details
Speaker 2: than yesterday when Emily and I were talking about it.
Speaker 2: Plus I wanted to get Ryan's reaction to this. So
Speaker 2: you guys, remember this minerals deal was sort of Zelensky
Speaker 2: had this ideal, Lindsey Graham had this idea, and there
Speaker 2: were some Trumpeline billionaires who also had this idea, basically
Speaker 2: a way to pitch a transactional relationship to Trump visa
Speaker 2: the Ukraine that would keep him invested in the conflict.
Speaker 2: And this deal was subject to you know, this was
Speaker 2: what Zelenski had come to the US for before when
Speaker 2: they had that big blow up in the Oval Office.
Speaker 2: And now some of the details here have changed. It's
Speaker 2: actually become much more favorable towards Ukraine. It's still basically like,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of economic exploitation, but it's not
Speaker 2: quite as exploitative as the original deal had been. And
Speaker 2: so we've got a threat here from Michael Tracy, who
Speaker 2: read all the details and has a breakdown here. He
Speaker 2: says the text the minerals deal that was signed yesterday
Speaker 2: is substantially different from earlier drafts. For one, it says
Speaker 2: that future US military assistants to Ukraine, not past assistants,
Speaker 2: will constitute capital contributions to the newly established Joint Investment Fund.
Speaker 2: This can now be presented as the US in some
Speaker 2: sense getting quote unquote paid for continuing to armed Ukraine,
Speaker 2: which could be a useful political argument for continuing to
Speaker 2: armed Ukraine. But with a more profitable deal. He goes on,
Speaker 2: the agreement contemplates that Ukraine could or will receive reparations
Speaker 2: for the invasion from Russia. This makeup as news to Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: good luck, but that one compared to pass drafts US
Speaker 2: ownership of Ukraine's physical infrastructure, it pears to have been
Speaker 2: watered down with legal lease, but the US receives fifty
Speaker 2: percent of the revenues from a large variety of natural resources,
Speaker 2: including oil and natural gas. The agreement is purported to
Speaker 2: strengthen the strategic partnership between the US and Ukraine, establish
Speaker 2: a long term strategic alignment between the US and Ukraine,
Speaker 2: including support for quote Ukraine's security, And that was kind
Speaker 2: of the idea here, is that by having US investment
Speaker 2: in Ukrainian minerals and US capitalists profiting off of Ukrainian minerals,
Speaker 2: that would serve as a sort of like de facto
Speaker 2: security guarantee for Ukraine, because we wouldn't want the Russians
Speaker 2: messing with our capitalist stuff. One oddity would be people
Speaker 2: who cast to get Ukraine for corruption and denounce the
Speaker 2: Biden family for profiting from Ukraine related graft. Sharing this
Speaker 2: sweeping economic and security integration between the US and Ukraine
Speaker 2: without regard for whatever graft, it's likely to induce a
Speaker 2: point that our own Emily Kashinski made yesterday as well.
Speaker 2: So what is your reaction to this development and the
Speaker 2: signing of this Ukrainian minerals deal, what it means for
Speaker 2: this war going forward?
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, it's it's there, hold my beer moment, Like you,
Speaker 6: what's this, like, Penny Anti fifty thousand dollars a month retainer?
Speaker 6: Corruption you're doing with this energy company? Now just extort
Speaker 6: and exploit the entire country.
Speaker 3: Let's do lithium.
Speaker 6: I noticed on the screen there that Big Balls is
Speaker 6: trending to I don't like what is Big Balls still doing.
Speaker 6: I thought Doge was wrapping things up.
Speaker 2: But they did some interview with Jesse Waters I think yesterday,
Speaker 2: so that's probably, Oh.
Speaker 4: My goodness, okay.
Speaker 6: I mean every every country is claiming to have these
Speaker 6: rare earths, and the real problem is the is the
Speaker 6: refinement ability, like can you can you get them out
Speaker 6: and can you turn them into the products that are
Speaker 6: then needed? And that's that's the real problem. The rare
Speaker 6: earths are not actually that rare. So yeah, this is
Speaker 6: this seems like just a gimmick to try to which
Speaker 6: Lindsey Graham like said publicly it was a gimmick. Like
Speaker 6: he rolled out this map and he said, look, I
Speaker 6: know you're not into the war, you don't like all
Speaker 6: the killing, but look at this map. This is all
Speaker 6: money underneath the ground here. Wouldn't this be amazing if
Speaker 6: we could just have all this money we're getting ripped off.
Speaker 6: We're giving them all this for nothing. Binds an idiot.
Speaker 6: You can be a genius and have all these things.
Speaker 6: And he took it hook line and sinker.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I was gonna say, there's reporting that Chevron and
Speaker 3: Shell have tried to do big business like lots of like,
Speaker 3: like they have really tried to make money in Ukraine
Speaker 3: in recent years, and the corruption has been a significant
Speaker 3: impediment to that. And if it's too corrupt for Chevron
Speaker 3: and Shell to be able to feel comfortable making money,
Speaker 3: you can see the just enormous rats mess that the
Speaker 3: United States has just injected itself. And now, what are
Speaker 3: the significant differences that's worth mentioning, of course, between like
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden and general Ukrainian American corruption here is that
Speaker 3: this is in the service of hopefully putting us on
Speaker 3: a glide path to ending the slaughter.
Speaker 6: But isn't it isn't the attempt here to keep the
Speaker 6: slaughter going.
Speaker 3: Kind of And definitely it does feel to me like
Speaker 3: something that makes it much more And I think Tracy
Speaker 3: just made this point. It makes it. It doesn't come
Speaker 3: up with a long term solution to the conflict. If anything,
Speaker 3: it feels like it's going into slow burned territory.
Speaker 4: That's like the stated goal of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because the idea is this obligates the US
Speaker 2: to Ukraine in perpetuity. Now we have this locked in relationship.
Speaker 2: I had a quote in the show yesterday from somebody
Speaker 2: from the Council on Foreign Relations where they're basically like,
Speaker 2: you know, our investment in their geology is the is
Speaker 2: a de facto security guarantee.
Speaker 5: And that's that's the idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why Zelensky immediately, uh, you know, being
Speaker 2: a savvy political operator, as soon as Biden loses, he
Speaker 2: switches the language from preserving democracy and we're in this
Speaker 2: fight against a their authoritarianism whatever, switches it to let's
Speaker 2: make a deal. And he had allies from Lindsey Graham,
Speaker 2: who also Emily and I covered yesterday, is now out
Speaker 2: with some big like let's sanction Russia somehow even harder
Speaker 2: than we were before, which appears to have very likely
Speaker 2: a veto proof majority in the Senate. We'll see if
Speaker 2: it comes up for a vote or not. But you
Speaker 2: know that is the idea is, effectively, this would enable
Speaker 2: Ukraine to continue receiving weapons just in exchange for selling
Speaker 2: the country's geology out from under the people of the country.
Speaker 2: And it's also interesting to me, I'm curious what both
Speaker 2: of you guys think about this, that the terms of
Speaker 2: the deal have gotten much more favorable towards Ukraine since
Speaker 2: that Oval Office blow up meeting, when a lot of
Speaker 2: the reaction was like, oh, you know, Trump's done with
Speaker 2: the LENSCA and it's over for him, and they're just gonna,
Speaker 2: you know, they're going to cut off communications all together
Speaker 2: and he's screwed, etc. And in the meantime from that
Speaker 2: interaction to now, actually he won some significant concessions. They
Speaker 2: don't have to give up all their port infrastructure. The
Speaker 2: previous deal is basically like we're taking half your country
Speaker 2: and that's it, end of story. This one is still
Speaker 2: again very exploitaive, don't get me wrong, but it's not
Speaker 2: as bad as the first one. And then the really
Speaker 2: significant concession is you'll recall Trump was really adamant about
Speaker 2: we want to get paid back for what we've already
Speaker 2: given you, what we've already shipped, and this agreement says no.
Speaker 2: I mean that was always like sort of a preposterous demand,
Speaker 2: but this agreement says no, you know, this is just
Speaker 2: going to be on a moving forward basis. So what
Speaker 2: do you guys make of that? Of that shift in
Speaker 2: the agreement and Zelenski seemingly getting some significant concessions here.
Speaker 3: I think there are a couple of things behind it. First,
Speaker 3: Trump is now over his one hundred day mark and
Speaker 3: has not secured a ceasefire in a conflict he said
Speaker 3: he could end on day one as president. He understands
Speaker 3: how significant for his voter's foreign policy is in a
Speaker 3: way that the media often doesn't understand. I mean, he
Speaker 3: has a lot of support and areas that are super
Speaker 3: war weary because they don't like they're very, very very
Speaker 3: cautious of entanglements that might end up with US boots
Speaker 3: on the ground. And it's a personal sensitive issue for
Speaker 3: a lot of the places where he gets support from.
Speaker 3: And I think he understands that about his own voters
Speaker 3: in a way that media doesn't understand that about his
Speaker 3: own voters. So I think on the one hand, he's
Speaker 3: very aware of how weak it makes him look if
Speaker 3: he's not able to secure an end to the or
Speaker 3: secure a ceasefire, because you guys are right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't think this is an end to the conflict
Speaker 3: over the Dawnbass or over crimea by any means an end.
Speaker 3: Hopefully as step towards an end to the daily slaughter,
Speaker 3: we will see that is to be determined. But on
Speaker 3: the other hand, I also think Donald Trump really is
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to say this without sounding like insulting,
Speaker 3: but he really is as simple as you think, like.
Speaker 3: He wants to look strong, he wants to look like
Speaker 3: he has made deals, and he wants to look like
Speaker 3: people have come crawling back to him. And as soon
Speaker 3: as people realize that, I mean, we talk a lot
Speaker 3: about the difference between Claudia Scheinbaum and Justin Trudeau and
Speaker 3: maybe now Mark Carney, but as soon as people realize
Speaker 3: that there is a very simple way to deal with
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, they can get gains. And I think Zelensky
Speaker 3: was sufficiently sort of chastened by even Lindsay Graham freaking
Speaker 3: out after that Oval Office meeting that he realized he
Speaker 3: went on Ben Shapiro's show, he was talking to the
Speaker 3: press about how much he loves the United States, and
Speaker 3: they had that little conversation at the Vatican literally in
Speaker 3: the Basilica. And so I think Donald Trump, on the
Speaker 3: one hand, is getting more eager, even more eager to
Speaker 3: look like he has a political win on his hands
Speaker 3: and he's getting closer to ceasefire. And then on the
Speaker 3: other hand, I feel like he thinks that he looks
Speaker 3: strong because Zolensky has come back to him to get
Speaker 3: the deal. Now, whether or not that's true because the
Speaker 3: deal is now even more sweet for Ukraine is a
Speaker 3: different question. But I think that's what Donald Trump saw,
Speaker 3: what he wanted to see from Zelensky, and it made
Speaker 3: him comfortable moving forward.
Speaker 6: The whole thing just seems kind of fake to me,
Speaker 6: like in the sense that it's going to be overtaken
Speaker 6: by events. Like it's like Ukraine is, as Trump very
Speaker 6: correctly said in the Oval Office, doesn't have any cards
Speaker 6: to play yet. Now Trump is like spending all his
Speaker 6: time playing cards with them.
Speaker 4: What are you doing?
Speaker 6: You take their chips? They don't have any chips, like
Speaker 6: Russia's taking their chips. So the whole so it feels
Speaker 6: like a total distraction from the reality on the ground.
Speaker 2: Let me go out and play. Let this last piece
Speaker 2: for you guys. This was Scott Bessett. It's another Michael
Speaker 2: Tracy pulled this this clip, and this is Scott Bessett saying, basically,
Speaker 2: we're fully and completely on the same page. There's no
Speaker 2: daylight between US and Ukraine at this point. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen to that.
Speaker 4: It's good for America.
Speaker 8: It's good for you Ukraine, I believe also for Europe
Speaker 8: in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: And tell us the details of that.
Speaker 8: Showing it. It's a great deal. Thanks for having me
Speaker 8: on tonight. And look that this is President Trump's deal,
Speaker 8: that he's done trade deals, tax deals, and now we've
Speaker 8: got this Ukrainian American economic partnership deal. And it's win
Speaker 8: when it is a way to show that there's no
Speaker 8: daylight between Ukraine and US. As President Trump presses to
Speaker 8: end this horrible war, he wants both sides to come
Speaker 8: to the table now. By showing that the US has
Speaker 8: an economic interest in Ukraine, it's a signal to the
Speaker 8: Russian leadership. It's also a signal to the American people
Speaker 8: that we have a chance to participate, get some of
Speaker 8: the funding and the weapons compensation for those and be
Speaker 8: partners with the success of the Ukraine people. Bring American
Speaker 8: know how best practices to the rebuilt Ukraine. But the
Speaker 8: rebuilding can't stop until this war ends, and President Trump
Speaker 8: is committed to that.
Speaker 5: So what do you guys make of that?
Speaker 2: And I do think, you know, I mean, a lot
Speaker 2: of the Republican base that is animated by the Ukraine
Speaker 2: War they have come to just outright hate Zelenski outright right,
Speaker 2: you know, have distaste for Ukraine. And so I think
Speaker 2: this is this is a very different approach and tactic
Speaker 2: certainly than what they were expecting. What they were expecting
Speaker 2: was more like what the Oval Office blow up, like
Speaker 2: the Magarite freaking love that they ate it up right,
Speaker 2: They thought it was great. You know, have you ever
Speaker 2: said thank you once? Et cetera, et cetera, And now
Speaker 2: here you are back to this deal that really doesn't
Speaker 2: look all that different from the Biden administration's approach of
Speaker 2: just sort of like maintaining a status and continuing to
Speaker 2: ship weapons and letting this thing drive on in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I mean in a non great way
Speaker 3: that this actually is sort of a security guarantee and
Speaker 3: that's kind of thee Yeah, and I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: the Biden administration didn't actually even really go that far.
Speaker 3: I get what they're doing right, that it's sort of
Speaker 3: they're trying to have it both ways, that it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like a security guarantee, and then it is a
Speaker 3: security guarantee, like they're using it intentionally as sort of
Speaker 3: a roorshosh test, like if Ukraine wants it to be
Speaker 3: a security guarantee, it is, But in like pragmatic terms,
Speaker 3: it obviously could very much function as a security guarantee.
Speaker 3: It's not NATO membership. But what does this mean for
Speaker 3: how many Americans will regularly be on the ground, and
Speaker 3: you like, we don't really know what that's going to
Speaker 3: look like in a way that I think is quite concerning.
Speaker 3: But what was important from Trump's perspective, I really think
Speaker 3: it was making it look like Zelenski kissed the ring
Speaker 3: and came back to the table for a similar deal.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, I think that's a really good point. Christal, like,
Speaker 3: what is Maga thinking now? I think maybe the best thing,
Speaker 3: the best way that they're spinning it is this was
Speaker 3: a big win for Trump. He had Zelenski come crawling back,
Speaker 3: But it's not clear that that's actually what happened.
Speaker 6: To me, it flows from the same error that Trump
Speaker 6: made with with tariffs. Like he has he's identified, he's
Speaker 6: correctly identified a problem in both cases, and then he
Speaker 6: in his mind has identified a solution on the When
Speaker 6: it comes to you know, manufacturing the working class, his
Speaker 6: solution is, somebody do big, beautiful tariffs. When it comes
Speaker 6: to this war is bad, He's going to just end
Speaker 6: the war.
Speaker 4: Like he kept.
Speaker 6: He never he never expounded upon why he was going
Speaker 6: to be able to do that. All he would say
Speaker 6: is that if he if the election hadn't been stolen
Speaker 6: from him, the invasion never would have happened. And when
Speaker 6: I get in, the war is going to end. So
Speaker 6: was his plan a but without any you know, skitched
Speaker 6: sketch behind it. And when that didn't work, now he's
Speaker 6: just flailing. So I think it's similar to how he
Speaker 6: approaches most things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the gaps are being filled in by people
Speaker 2: who do have an idea, a logic, who do have
Speaker 2: ideology and do have a plan. And that would be
Speaker 2: like the Lindsay Grahams of the world, who you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: pushing this minerals deal, and like I said before, has
Speaker 2: a plan to even more aggressively sanctioned Russia because that's
Speaker 2: definitely totally worked so far.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what we need a few more sanctions.
Speaker 2: Last point on this, this is just like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Michael Tracy Ukraine segment, but I forgot it was
Speaker 2: actually him that did this interview with Bannon. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to play it, but I'll just pull it up.
Speaker 2: You remember he asked Bannon about this proposed minerals deal
Speaker 2: and Bannon being kind of the emblem of the you know,
Speaker 2: MAGA nationalist America first, right, his reaction was walk the
Speaker 2: fuck away. He warns that the US needs to stop
Speaker 2: entangling itself with quote that cursed part of the world.
Speaker 2: To get a flavor of how you know this person,
Speaker 2: who certainly is in a lot of ways a leader
Speaker 2: of the MAGA, right, how he feels about this direction.
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 2: Do I think he'll be like super critical of it
Speaker 2: now that Trump is inked it and it's done.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I won't hold my breath. But that
Speaker 5: was his reaction initially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great point I forgot about. That was
Speaker 3: a sea pack and we'll see how Bannon reacts now.
Speaker 3: Be interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, indeed, we can ask Laura Lumer to next week
Speaker 5: ran right.
Speaker 4: Yes, indeed, all.
Speaker 2: Right, let's get to the latest on the Alien Enemies Act.
Speaker 2: So this is pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 5: We now have a.
Speaker 2: Trump appointed judge who has barred the administration from removing
Speaker 2: migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, saying that his invocation
Speaker 2: of that law in the context of trender Aragua was illegal.
Speaker 2: So this isn't saying like, you know, you did it
Speaker 2: wrong with this this person in particular, you can't apport
Speaker 2: that particular person. This is saying, no, no, no, on
Speaker 2: the merits, your invocation of this law was illegal. So
Speaker 2: everyone who has been deported under this invocation of the
Speaker 2: Alien Enemies Act according to this again, Trump appoint a
Speaker 2: judge that was all done, you know, under illegal auspices.
Speaker 2: And if you read I read through the relevant portions
Speaker 2: of this of this ruling, and it's exactly it says
Speaker 2: exactly what you would think that it would say, which
Speaker 2: is basically like, we're not at war. We're not at
Speaker 2: war with Venezuela. This is not an invasion. Venezuela is
Speaker 2: not behind trend or Agua. It's just you know, goes
Speaker 2: to the merits of Alien Enemies Act has been used
Speaker 2: three times. It's really historically, the meaning of what war
Speaker 2: and invasion is has been really clear, and what you're
Speaker 2: doing here doesn't meet any of that standards, any of
Speaker 2: those standards. So here is a portion they say as
Speaker 2: to that question. The historical record renders clear the presence
Speaker 2: invocation of the AEA through the proclamation exceeds the scope
Speaker 2: of the statute, and it's contrary to the plain ordinary
Speaker 2: meaning of the statute's terms. As a result, the Court
Speaker 2: concludes that, as a matter of law, the executive branch
Speaker 2: cannot rely on the AA. And then he goes on
Speaker 2: from here. This is Kyle Cheneyish's Politico's Court reporter just now.
Speaker 2: Judge Rodrigoz also denied effort by the Trump administration a
Speaker 2: hurriedly to port today one of those AEA targets Daniel
Speaker 2: Zacharias Mattos under other immigration authorities. He wants briefing on
Speaker 2: the matter, needs to consider a jurisdiction, and a Trump
Speaker 2: appointed judge says the present's use of the AEA was
Speaker 2: unlawful because there's no evidence Trender Orwagwa, as harmful as
Speaker 2: the gang is is literally invading the US as the
Speaker 2: law requires. So Emily, let me get your reaction to
Speaker 2: this because I thought that this would come at some point,
Speaker 2: but I was sort of wondering, like, when are we
Speaker 2: going to get to actually determining whether the use of
Speaker 2: this law at all, not just in these individual habeas petitions,
Speaker 2: but whether this use of this law at all is
Speaker 2: And it seems that we have arrived to fully expect,
Speaker 2: pee lightfully expect, probably end up before the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: But the fact it's a trumpet pointed judge is certainly
Speaker 2: not a good sign for the administration.
Speaker 3: No, and but actually we talked about this yesterday. They
Speaker 3: aren't really this is not something that they were not expecting,
Speaker 3: like to that was double negative, like they were expecting
Speaker 3: all of this. They knew that this would happen, and
Speaker 3: that's why they assumed that this was likely to happen.
Speaker 3: And that's why they're trying to go with a floodles zone,
Speaker 3: throw everything at the wall, see what sticks legal strategy, uh,
Speaker 3: and to do as much of it as quickly as
Speaker 3: they possibly can, because they're very consciously concocting or they
Speaker 3: already did. They spent the last four years concocting these
Speaker 3: sort of novel legal theories in order to get people
Speaker 3: out of the country as fast as possible to keep
Speaker 3: up with the pace of how many people came into
Speaker 3: the country under the Biden presidency, which is a lot.
Speaker 3: According to the New York Times, some eight million nets.
Speaker 3: So that's and some people think it's higher. But anyway,
Speaker 3: all that is to say, they are are sort of
Speaker 3: aware that they were skating on thin ice with this.
Speaker 3: And I mean, it would be great to see a
Speaker 3: judge find the entire Alien Enemies Act unconstitutional. That's like
Speaker 3: the ideal situation, but they sort of knew that they
Speaker 3: were stretching. It was kind of like, ah, look what
Speaker 3: we can do. We can say that Trende Ragua is
Speaker 3: an invasion like galaxy brain, and that's one way that
Speaker 3: we could just get everyone the hell out of here.
Speaker 3: So's it's definitely a set back because that was one
Speaker 3: of the ways they would be able to get as
Speaker 3: many people as they possibly could out really quickly. And obviously,
Speaker 3: you know that wasn't going as well as they probably hoped.
Speaker 3: But they also kind of knew that this was going
Speaker 3: to be a problem. It just gives them an opportunity,
Speaker 3: I guess, to rage on judges. But this is a
Speaker 3: trumpet pointed judge, So it was a little harder in
Speaker 3: that case.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't understand Emily why they don't just go
Speaker 6: to Congress, Like and if they don't like the laws
Speaker 6: that are on the books and they think the political
Speaker 6: wind is at their back when it comes to masterportations,
Speaker 6: why don't they just get Steven Miller in these other
Speaker 6: you know, lawyers that he's got to draft legislation and
Speaker 6: send it to Congress and change change the laws? Is
Speaker 6: it really the parliamentarian? Like, are we back to the
Speaker 6: parliamentarian because they can't do it without sixty votes?
Speaker 3: Like, well, the parliamentarian shouldn't even need to be a
Speaker 3: problem in this case. They can write up new legislation.
Speaker 4: It doesn't happen it would need sixty votes unless they can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could do it through reconciliation, but you probably
Speaker 2: have to ignore the ruling of the parliamentarian, which they've
Speaker 2: already basically said that they plan to do for other
Speaker 2: things as well.
Speaker 6: So why not just do Like what is what are
Speaker 6: they so afraid of when it comes to writing new laws?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what they would do, and like
Speaker 3: I honestly I'm trying to think of what type of
Speaker 3: law that they could come up with, because what they
Speaker 3: really could do, and Glenn Greenwald, who's guest hosting on Monday,
Speaker 3: made this point recently, is that you actually can do
Speaker 3: these things pretty quickly in immigration courts. You probably need
Speaker 3: a lot more immigration judges. You'd probably need to beef
Speaker 3: that up significantly, and.
Speaker 4: We have a lot of unemployed lawyers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's right. But that's what I'm just going
Speaker 3: to say is I think maybe they don't trust that process,
Speaker 3: that they are sort of concerned that putting more people
Speaker 3: through that legal process means a lot of people will
Speaker 3: just be given like permanent status, permanent legal status, or
Speaker 3: be on the glide path to citizenship. They're also concerned
Speaker 3: that and this one I do think is a real
Speaker 3: concern is that it becomes a carrot. It becomes a
Speaker 3: draw for people to come in if you can get
Speaker 3: processed really quickly.
Speaker 2: But I think that's I think it's the opposite because
Speaker 2: the reason it's a draw right now is because you
Speaker 2: know you can come in and it's going to take
Speaker 2: years for your silent claim to be adjudicated. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the loophole that you know, Listen, I think I
Speaker 2: personally am in support of a large number of legal
Speaker 2: migrants into this country. But that's that's the real problem.
Speaker 2: If you want to expedite the deportation of people who
Speaker 2: are here, you have to allow them to adjudicate their
Speaker 2: claims and yes, go through a process. And quite on
Speaker 2: the contrary, they've been firing immigration judges, so going in
Speaker 2: exactly the opposite direction. Another round of firing hits immigration
Speaker 2: course in Massachusetts, California, Louisiana, even as the Trump administration
Speaker 2: continues its efforts up downsizing the government but also increasing
Speaker 2: immigration related arrests. At least eight immigration judges received notices
Speaker 2: they be put on leave their employment be terminated on
Speaker 2: April twenty second. So you know, I personally think that
Speaker 2: there's some other things going on here. I mean number one,
Speaker 2: as we talked about yesterday, Emily, like Stephen Miller explicitly
Speaker 2: as part of his ideology, he wants there to be
Speaker 2: a display of outrageous cruelty in hopes that that will
Speaker 2: cause people to self deport and so shipping people off
Speaker 2: either to go on tonam obay, which they also do,
Speaker 2: or to this torture dungeon for life. Yeah, that's going
Speaker 2: to scare the shit out of a lot of immigrants,
Speaker 2: especially in that sense. Yeah, especially when you learned like, oh,
Speaker 2: actually these aren't the quote unquote worst of the worst.
Speaker 2: This is a makeup artist with mom and dad tattoos
Speaker 2: and a soccer player who has an autism awareness tattoo.
Speaker 2: Like the vast majorities, youll have no criminal record, so
Speaker 2: you start if you're here, even if you did everything right,
Speaker 2: because we also know that you know, uh, kill mar
Speaker 2: Brego Garcia. He was removed even though there was an
Speaker 2: order saying you cannot remove him to this particular country.
Speaker 2: We know that others had come in via the CBP
Speaker 2: one app followed the procedure. We're showing up for their hearings.
Speaker 2: We're doing everything right, So none of that serves as
Speaker 2: a protection. That's exactly the message that Steven Miller wants
Speaker 2: to send, is that your entire life, like we can
Speaker 2: casually destroy your entire life and not just deport you,
Speaker 2: but we can send you and sentence you for life
Speaker 2: to this horrific you know, this horrific place where the
Speaker 2: Bekelly and his people say the only way you come
Speaker 2: out as in a casket. So I think that's part
Speaker 2: of it. I think the other part of it is
Speaker 2: that their narrative on immigration, and this is really one
Speaker 2: of the innovations of the Trump anti immigrant approach, at
Speaker 2: least in you know, with regard to the US context,
Speaker 2: is instead of primarily talking about challenge with immigration being
Speaker 2: about jobs or being about housing or economic issues, he
Speaker 2: talks about it almost exclusively as.
Speaker 5: Being about criminals.
Speaker 2: That these are all criminals, and they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: coming in and they're raping our women, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: murdering people. And that's why the Lake and Riley Act
Speaker 2: is the first thing they passed through Congress. And so
Speaker 2: if you go through a legal process, it is going
Speaker 2: to become quite apparent that overwhelmingly they are not criminals.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, there are criminals in the undocumented population,
Speaker 2: lower number than the native born population. And so you
Speaker 2: cannot keep up the farce of this is a group
Speaker 2: of horrible, you know, savages who are destroying our country
Speaker 2: and you know, are the worst of the worst, and
Speaker 2: they're terrible people, and they let out the from the
Speaker 2: insane asylums, as he always says, you cannot maintain that
Speaker 2: farce if you're actually going through some process and people
Speaker 2: have to interact with who these humans actually are and
Speaker 2: the reasons they came, and you know, the way they've
Speaker 2: been conducting themselves since they were here as well. So
Speaker 2: to me, that's the reason why they really have no
Speaker 2: interest in actually changing the law and going through some
Speaker 2: sort of semblance of a legal and constitutional process, because
Speaker 2: they want the cruelty and they also want to avoid
Speaker 2: the scrutiny of hey, you know, these are like people
Speaker 2: who often are good community members, are paying taxes and
Speaker 2: trying to do everything right.
Speaker 3: Branded did you want to jump in, Okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, I think I think part
Speaker 3: of it is the cruelty. Yes, I agree with that,
Speaker 3: and I think that's your point on the tactics is
Speaker 3: also right. The more that you send people through immigration judges,
Speaker 3: the more it becomes obvious that people who have much
Speaker 3: more sympathetic cases. Now they might be ones that I
Speaker 3: disagree with, but for the broader public, they're much more
Speaker 3: sympathetic than MS thirteen members or trendy Ragua members being
Speaker 3: booted out, because people, when they look around, realize in
Speaker 3: their daily lives that there are a whole lot of
Speaker 3: people who've been here for a very long time and
Speaker 3: even five years is a long time. You belt Kilmara
Speaker 3: Brego Garcia has been here since twenty twelve, He's got kids.
Speaker 3: That's the case with many, many people married to US citizens.
Speaker 3: And it's politically much even if there are a whole
Speaker 3: lot of people in the country who are like, I
Speaker 3: don't care, get them out, it's politically with the broader
Speaker 3: public a much more difficult case to make, There's no
Speaker 3: question about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the broader public rind was really sold
Speaker 2: on mess deportation from this idea of it's largely this
Speaker 2: is a largely criminal group. And we can already see
Speaker 2: as the broader public is interacting with the actual details
Speaker 2: of who these humans are and the Wave administration is
Speaker 2: approaching all of this, the numbers have shifted already quite dramatically,
Speaker 2: and so you can only imagine if you had, you know,
Speaker 2: legal process playing out, and you were you able to
Speaker 2: access more of these human details, that it would not
Speaker 2: be you know, the public would not maintain the same
Speaker 2: level of support for mass deportation as they did when
Speaker 2: they were theoretically thinking of like, oh, it's going to
Speaker 2: be the criminals and the worst of the worst that
Speaker 2: are that are first in.
Speaker 5: Line for this mass deportation.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I think the conservative media did an effective job
Speaker 6: at circulating a lot of you know, narratives about eating
Speaker 6: cats and you know, the weird stuff out of Springfield
Speaker 6: and the and the the mainstream media I think undermined
Speaker 6: itself by like ignoring that when you know, when trende
Speaker 6: a raqua took over basically took over that apartment complex
Speaker 6: and like Colorado Springs or wherever it was, and it
Speaker 6: didn't get you know, didn't get any attention. And then
Speaker 6: the and then the right wing media was able to
Speaker 6: like say, no, look, this is actually happening. And then
Speaker 6: it raises questions in people's minds, like is there a
Speaker 6: lot more of this happening that we're not being that
Speaker 6: we're not being told about.
Speaker 4: And I think the the.
Speaker 6: Like brutal increase in housing probably probably was strung together
Speaker 6: in people's mind with hostility to you know, mass migration,
Speaker 6: like all these people came in and now housing prices
Speaker 6: are out of control, which I understand, like why you
Speaker 6: would intuitively kind of make make that link when you know,
Speaker 6: in fact you actually need you know, labor to build
Speaker 6: the housing that we need. Like the problem is we're
Speaker 6: not building enough housing for a growing population. But certainly
Speaker 6: if there's more people then just supply and demand is
Speaker 6: going to put some pressure on housing prices. So I
Speaker 6: you know, I think you, like you saw in Europe,
Speaker 6: you can't really disconnect some of people's you know, frustrations
Speaker 6: that they're going to then take out on immigrant.
Speaker 2: Population, especially when the Democratic Party just just just got
Speaker 2: scared and we're like, yeah, they're right, we actually are
Speaker 2: going to be even to hover on the border. And
Speaker 2: so you have both parties basically, you know, putting the
Speaker 2: same narrative of this is an invasion, This is the
Speaker 2: number one problem. These are bad people. We need to
Speaker 2: you know, Kamala Harris up there, I'm the only one
Speaker 2: who's prosecuted transnational things, et cetera. And so yeah, if
Speaker 2: both parties seemingly agree that, you know, these are criminals
Speaker 2: and they need to they need to make it, but
Speaker 2: then it must be true. And so you know who
Speaker 2: we're gonna trust more to deal with that problem, Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris or Donald Trump. I don't think there's any doubt
Speaker 2: that if you are looking for who's going to be
Speaker 2: you know, toughest and most aggressive in dealing with this
Speaker 2: problem that both parties have now come to agree, as
Speaker 2: you know, is uh through a shared frame of course,
Speaker 2: you're gonna go in Donald Trump's direction with that one. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The last point on it is, I think that'll all
Speaker 3: contributed to it. I just think it's the simplest answer
Speaker 3: in the situation, which is that we hadn't seen immigration
Speaker 3: happen at a rate as fast as the as it
Speaker 3: was Daring Biden since Alice Island. And I think that's
Speaker 3: just like it just sort of a shock to the
Speaker 3: system that made people, you know, change from what they
Speaker 3: thought under the first administration when.
Speaker 4: And we shut it down after Ellis Island for like
Speaker 4: forty years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, true, all right.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get both you guys reaction to an
Speaker 2: interesting horseshoe moment here. Let me, I don't know that
Speaker 2: much about it, so I'm gonna let you guys kind
Speaker 2: of set this up. But David Dan was tweeting about
Speaker 2: this some good news. Jim Jordan and the gpgudiciary had
Speaker 2: a surprising change of heart, had a dangerous proposals shift
Speaker 2: the ftc ANTI trust capacity to the DJ big win.
Speaker 2: Great to see a representative Jayapaul and Beca is her
Speaker 2: last name. Balen I think take a strong stand, and
Speaker 2: David Dan said, bad people with terrible political instincts tried
Speaker 2: to make a thing and of Lena Kahan taking a
Speaker 2: picture with Steve Bannon for short term political advantage. Bannon
Speaker 2: was who pounded Jordan into submission on this proposal that
Speaker 2: picture might have saved a federal agency. Ryan, give us
Speaker 2: what's going on here?
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 6: Beca Ballant was my state senator when I lived in Vermont.
Speaker 6: She's now the congresswoman for the entire state of Vermont.
Speaker 6: So we have a story coming on this. It drops
Speaker 6: the news that I'm kind of sitting on. It's my fault.
Speaker 6: I haven't moved it. But basically, Jim Jordan, you know who,
Speaker 6: has been playing this and Emily can talk more about this,
Speaker 6: playing this double game for many years where you know,
Speaker 6: he bashes big tech on a cultural level and talks
Speaker 6: about how it's awful that they're trying to, you know,
Speaker 6: censor conservative speech. And meanwhile he hires a bunch of
Speaker 6: people from law firms that work for big tech or
Speaker 6: direct from big tech, or his people you know, go
Speaker 6: then work for big tech. He takes a ton of
Speaker 6: money from big Tech. They've taken well this will be
Speaker 6: in our story, but you know, enormous amounts of trips
Speaker 6: paid for by big Tech. His top tech aide left
Speaker 6: his office and then went to work for Melissa Holyoake,
Speaker 6: who is the most pro big tech FTC Commissioner. And
Speaker 6: so you know, he's been there, he's been the big
Speaker 6: tech's like best ally and as chair of the Judiciary
Speaker 6: Committee despite but he says publicly to the you know,
Speaker 6: his his MAGA base and his he put legislation out
Speaker 6: that would basically strip the FTC of all of its
Speaker 6: anti trust enforcement power a huge shot, and that that
Speaker 6: that swing was so big, like he fell out of
Speaker 6: his shoes, and it allowed it finally allowed Bannon and
Speaker 6: others to say, look, we've been telling you that this
Speaker 6: guy is actually a tody for big tech.
Speaker 4: Now now look how obvious it is.
Speaker 6: He's he's stripping the FTC of all of its anti
Speaker 6: trust power. You know, Jordan was saying, oh, it'll go
Speaker 6: to DJ and it'll be better because of that. And
Speaker 6: the reason a lot of people don't buy that is
Speaker 6: like here you've got Steve Bannon, with the powerful and
Speaker 6: beloved FTC chair Lena Kah and so it reminds me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: like FTC does good things, and now here's Jim Jordan
Speaker 6: trying to take away its power while it's actively going
Speaker 6: after you know, still going after big tech. So I
Speaker 6: think Jordan has kind of been exposed by this and
Speaker 6: he now backed off under pressure from Bannon. Emily, anything
Speaker 6: you want to add about the game Jordan plays in DC.
Speaker 3: No, I just add to Dane's point that actually, if
Speaker 3: Bannon hadn't done it, other people would have. And I
Speaker 3: do think that's really interesting. I was at a big
Speaker 3: anti trust, conservative anti trust event last night on the Hill,
Speaker 3: and what's the problem is there aren't as many like
Speaker 3: hardcore anti trust conservative anti trust like intellects because they
Speaker 3: haven't been groomed over the course of decades to see
Speaker 3: the world through this like Neil Brandeisian lens, which is
Speaker 3: much more common on the left for obvious reasons because
Speaker 3: it's an embrasive government power. But that's slowly, slowly changing.
Speaker 3: So what we're just seeing is kind of a power
Speaker 3: struggle tug of war because those people have a very
Speaker 3: powerful ally in Steve Bannon, but they also have powerful
Speaker 3: allies like in Mago world more broadly, which is again
Speaker 3: it's not to say that they've won the party, not
Speaker 3: even close. The Jim Jordan's are still much more common.
Speaker 3: Big Tech used to give tons of money Conservatives. It
Speaker 3: used to be a very natural marriage. They're always at
Speaker 3: sea pack having like massive parties because they were the
Speaker 3: free market's success. So it's it's changing very slowly, but
Speaker 3: it's still an uphill battle, There's no question about it.
Speaker 3: I would just say it wouldn't have only been Bannon
Speaker 3: who was an uproar about it. He's a powerful ally,
Speaker 3: but people like Mike Davis Article three Project like they
Speaker 3: would have been firing off on this too, and he was.
Speaker 6: Mike Davis appeared on Bannon's podcast and ripped Jordan over
Speaker 6: it with a with a funny pun where he said,
Speaker 6: you know, Jim Jordan loves to go to the mat
Speaker 6: for big Tech.
Speaker 3: You did there, Mike Wrestler.
Speaker 5: Guys, get it.
Speaker 2: We should We should reveal to the audience that Emily
Speaker 2: actually changed our group chat picture to be that picture
Speaker 2: so good.
Speaker 9: And you know what, I shouldn't say this, but I
Speaker 9: have been I have my like glossy photo paper for
Speaker 9: my printer, and I have been thinking of just secretly
Speaker 9: putting a framed picture of that behind us on the set,
Speaker 9: but I keep forgetting to do.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we need that.
Speaker 5: That's a great idea.
Speaker 3: That's such a funny picture.
Speaker 2: This is like kind of related actually, But there's been
Speaker 2: pushback led by Rand Paul to the Trump tariffs on
Speaker 2: the right as well. And this is an interesting comment
Speaker 2: from him. So he met with Trump's trade rep. Is
Speaker 2: that Navarro that he's talking about. He said, it reminded
Speaker 2: me of a meeting on industrial policy in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: where you have to be nice to the tsar because
Speaker 2: if you're nice to the czar, they'll bequeath upon you
Speaker 2: exceptions to the iron fist. And I mean that to
Speaker 2: me is like the whole point of these terroriffts, by
Speaker 2: and large is that it does consolidate that kind of
Speaker 2: power with the executive. But there was also some preposterous,
Speaker 2: you know, pathetic situation that unfolded in the Senate where
Speaker 2: Rand Paul was trying to push the resolution that would
Speaker 2: have you know, reclaimed power to levy terrorist which is
Speaker 2: supposed to be with Congress anyway, and was at Sheldon
Speaker 2: white House, the Democrat who's like in Korea right now,
Speaker 2: So didn't get back in time for the vote, and
Speaker 2: the vote failed forty nine forty nine, they weren't able
Speaker 2: to get you know, one more vote.
Speaker 3: So the strongest anti corruption soldier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in any case, I thought I was I thought
Speaker 2: it was interesting Rand Paul, you know, specific like obviously
Speaker 2: this is right in his ideological wheelhouse, and this is
Speaker 2: a bridge too far for him to go.
Speaker 3: My sense is that so it was with Jamison Greer,
Speaker 3: I think is who he met, so the ustr OK
Speaker 3: and I think they.
Speaker 2: Are Borrow's official title. I don't know, it's like serious
Speaker 2: or something. Senior crank. What about what is the what
Speaker 2: is his pend of ron? What's the fake name?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, what's his official title?
Speaker 4: Is his name? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Somebody have to tell us in the comments because he's
Speaker 6: got a fake advisor that he pretends Vera.
Speaker 5: Isn't that it? I think that's it? Yeah.
Speaker 3: First of all, this is great news for you guys
Speaker 3: that the power is being consolidated in a dear leader
Speaker 3: communist type system. I think this is somebody them that
Speaker 3: you guys is going to do a great job, perhaps
Speaker 3: better than comrade Navarro. But though I think Greer is
Speaker 3: in a situation himself where his tariff policy, because everyone
Speaker 3: remembers the famous moment where he found out that Trump
Speaker 3: had instituted the pause while he was testifying. I think
Speaker 3: where Rand Paul is interpreting this from Greer is that
Speaker 3: Greer is interpreting this from his own boss, which is
Speaker 3: I'm the freaking boss. And so if you're James and Greer,
Speaker 3: and you have to be the intermediary between Congress, which
Speaker 3: are supposed to have this power, which is why you
Speaker 3: also have Rand Paul making the weirdest like horseshoe in
Speaker 3: the opposite direction ever, with like Susan Collins and Lisa
Speaker 3: Murkowski and Chruck Schumer. It's sort of amusing to see
Speaker 3: that happen. But you also then have Greer having to
Speaker 3: communicate the policy is just whatever Trump says the policy is,
Speaker 3: because that is ultimately what the policy is. So good luck.
Speaker 3: That sounds like fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we've already seen that, right, Like you know,
Speaker 2: the people who are giving money to the inauguration and
Speaker 2: paying to go down to mar A Lago and the
Speaker 2: Nvidia guy had you know, paid however many millions to
Speaker 2: get dinner with him, and then they get their car
Speaker 2: downd et cetera. So and apparently actually Gretchen Whitmer humiliating
Speaker 2: herself and ending up in these photoshoots with Trump has
Speaker 2: paid some benefits for her getting some of the auto
Speaker 2: teriffs rolled back, and that Sean Fain also being sort
Speaker 2: of favorable on the auto tariffs, I think has also
Speaker 2: given him an in to get some of these exemptions
Speaker 2: and rollbacks on the auto tariffs as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that is that is definitely the system that we have
Speaker 2: right now. You have to go and plead your case
Speaker 2: to the King if you're going to have any chance
Speaker 2: of survival, and of course, you know to go back
Speaker 2: to the monopoly point. Who's going to be able to
Speaker 2: do that? It's going to be the big companies. If
Speaker 2: you're smaller, medium sized business, you're not going to have
Speaker 2: that access. You're not gonna have the money to obtain
Speaker 2: that access. You're not going to have the lobbyist to
Speaker 2: be able to plead your case. You're not even going
Speaker 2: to have if you're a small business, you're not even
Speaker 2: gonna have the wherewithal to be able to all of
Speaker 2: the day to day changes in the tariff and regulatory regime,
Speaker 2: which that in and of itself puts you at risk
Speaker 2: because you are struggling to be able to comply with
Speaker 2: whatever the dictators of the day. So I do think
Speaker 2: one of the impacts of these tariffs is going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, a further consolidation among the big players at
Speaker 2: the expense of small and medium sized businesses who do
Speaker 2: not have the flexibility to adapt or the access to
Speaker 2: be able to get their car buns.
Speaker 6: And the irony, of course, is that the small and
Speaker 6: medium sized businesses are much more American, much more patriotic
Speaker 6: to an extent, because they have been an.
Speaker 2: Important Republican base. I mean that's like the Republican Party.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it has been, yes, since since the fifties or whatever, yes,
Speaker 6: even before that. And the big companies are multinational corporations
Speaker 6: with no real allegiance to the UNI estates. So I
Speaker 6: don't know what they think they're doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's all that is all well said.
Speaker 2: All right, I wanted to get you guys reaction to
Speaker 2: this kind of extraordinary moment with Tucker Carlson and Matt
Speaker 2: Walsh here. All right, guys, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: watching the free portion of the Friday Show. We're going
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