Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. All right,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Counterpoints. I'm Ryan Graham here with Emily Jashinski.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Emily, Good morning, Ryan. How are you. I'm good.
Speaker 1: We've got some job numbers out. So the economy added
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty six thousand jobs, which is less
Speaker 1: than people were hoping for, And so CNBC and the
Speaker 1: Fed and all these people are celebrating. But to put
Speaker 1: that in context, if they were expecting four hundred thousand jobs,
Speaker 1: then about one hundred and fifty thousand people that were
Speaker 1: that applied for job and we're hoping to get it
Speaker 1: didn't get it. Or or companies who felt like they
Speaker 1: were growing at a particular pace now have realized that
Speaker 1: they're not growing as much as they were, so they
Speaker 1: actually pulled that job opening, So lots of misery spreading
Speaker 1: throughout the economy. So congratulations to the fed into Wall Street.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, there are human beings behind
Speaker 1: those metrics, and in this case, tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: them affected by it. There's also new Title nine regulations,
Speaker 1: a proposed new rule in Title nine that we'll get
Speaker 1: to actually next week. It's like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pages long, and this is around transgender transgender competition sports. Right.
Speaker 1: It had nothing to do with the kind of kangaroo
Speaker 1: court question of how sexual assault claims are adjudicated, but
Speaker 1: around transgender sport participation. It's really long, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that we had the best take on
Speaker 1: it possible and not Russian to judgment. So we'll certainly
Speaker 1: cover that next week. I hope. Meanwhile, we've got a
Speaker 1: war breaking out. You had, so if you've been following
Speaker 1: the conflict in Israel, you had Israeli forces raided the
Speaker 1: Aloxa Mosque several times, might have seen the visuals of
Speaker 1: the beatings of people during Ramadan prayers there. You've had
Speaker 1: so far, I think Summer League, Corey Bush and Rashida
Speaker 1: Talib have denounced it, but that's kind of it out
Speaker 1: of the United States Congress. Since then, Lebanon launched a
Speaker 1: couple of strikes towards Israel. Seems like they were all intercepted.
Speaker 1: Israel responded not just by striking Lebanon, but I also
Speaker 1: bombing Gaza, which is like, wait, how does that work?
Speaker 1: Lebanon sends missiles your way and you are going to
Speaker 1: bomb Gaza as a result. So that's where we are now.
Speaker 1: We're probably going to see some retaliation now from Gaza,
Speaker 1: if I can imagine. We've also seen more Palestinians killed
Speaker 1: in the occupied territories in the first four months than
Speaker 1: we've seen in decades. Big escalation this week. And on
Speaker 1: that note, we have big news out of Ukraine as well.
Speaker 1: We're going to get to that in just a bit.
Speaker 1: We're going to really dive into some breaking news that
Speaker 1: transpired yesterday. But before we do that, we wanted to
Speaker 1: take a look at feud that's brewing between Meddi Hassen
Speaker 1: and Matt Taibi Ran. Did you get a chance to
Speaker 1: sort of pick through this? Yeah, and so my rule
Speaker 1: for life is always do not debate Meddi, and that
Speaker 1: rule remains undefeated. But we can get into some of
Speaker 1: the nuances of it. Let's so basically Matt ty So
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, Meddi went after Matt Tayibi saying, look,
Speaker 1: look what Elon Musk's Twitter is doing to critics of
Speaker 1: Modi in India. Why won't you speak out on that?
Speaker 1: Tayebe responded, why don't you have me on the show
Speaker 1: and we'll hash this out. So it was a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. So now Tayibi went on Meddi's show.
Speaker 1: So let's play a couple of clips from from that exchange.
Speaker 1: You said the EP was founded in response to the
Speaker 1: government dropping its proposal for disinformation governments with there you are,
Speaker 1: were quoting you on screen. It wasn't It was formed
Speaker 1: two years earlier. You suggested it was government funded, even
Speaker 1: though during the twenty election twenty twenty election that you're covering,
Speaker 1: it wasn't you say they labeled twenty two million tweets
Speaker 1: as misinformation in the run up to the twenty twenty vote.
Speaker 1: They didn't. They got They flagged three thousand election misinformation
Speaker 1: tweets for labeling. So you were only twenty one million,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and ninety seven thousand off You also claim
Speaker 1: the ep was partnered with the government Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Speaker 1: Agency SISSA to sensor Twitter, But you mix up SISSA, CISA,
Speaker 1: a homeland security agency with the Center for Internet Security,
Speaker 1: the CIS, which is a nonprofit And it's just error
Speaker 1: after error map on just this one hundred, but the
Speaker 1: other the other ones aren't. No, No, twenty two million
Speaker 1: from their own report. Yeah, it came from a report
Speaker 1: in March. Twitter. Do you know what twenty two million
Speaker 1: number is? Mat Can you tell me? Because we checked.
Speaker 1: Twenty two million is the number of tweets about election
Speaker 1: misinformation that were just that they just mapped. How many
Speaker 1: tweets were they the ones they actually flagged to Twitter
Speaker 1: before the election? Twenty two million came after the election.
Speaker 1: It wasn't in the runoup They flagged three thousand, So
Speaker 1: you were off by twenty one million, nine hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety seven a lot of things. I stand by my story,
Speaker 1: you stand by what's do you stand by? Twenty two
Speaker 1: million were flagged in the run up to the election,
Speaker 1: even though that number came in March twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: which was after the election. No, that's this came in
Speaker 1: there report after the election. Okay, so Matt responded on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I think we have some of that that we can
Speaker 1: put up on the screen here. But someone told him
Speaker 1: to take the L. And this is a different quote.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, part of the job is facing critics,
Speaker 1: and I went on medi's show today and basically I
Speaker 1: was open to the criticism. I made corrections where they
Speaker 1: were warranted. He also said, no, I will not take
Speaker 1: the L. A misplaced acronym and a wrong date don't
Speaker 1: invalidate the months of important work. Nearly doesnen journalists, including
Speaker 1: Michael Schellenberger, Bery Wiss myself put in so that the
Speaker 1: public could see the breadth of state censorship, of the
Speaker 1: state censorship program. Reaction to that exchange, Yes, the whole
Speaker 1: thing's kind of disappointing on so many different levels because
Speaker 1: they don't end up having a conversation about the substance.
Speaker 1: Like it's people just moving into their camps and they're
Speaker 1: still kind of fighting about this twenty two million. Matt
Speaker 1: has said, no, my reading of this is that there
Speaker 1: was twenty two that were flagged before the election. The
Speaker 1: folks who did the report have said no, that you're
Speaker 1: misreading it. It was the twenty two million, we flagged
Speaker 1: after the election. But even if that, even if that's true,
Speaker 1: three thousand is also a lot. Yes, it's a little.
Speaker 1: Thousand is a ton, and flagging twenty two million after
Speaker 1: the election shows you what they want to do in
Speaker 1: the next election, right, right, So it would be nice
Speaker 1: if they would kind of debate the substance, like is
Speaker 1: this how we want various government agencies interacting with social
Speaker 1: media organizations or not? And to Matt's credit, on the
Speaker 1: other two pieces where Mehdi caught him with errors, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to correct those errors. Those are errors, but
Speaker 1: they don't they kind of even change the fundamental thrust
Speaker 1: of the story. The other disappointing thing was that Matt
Speaker 1: actually hadn't read up on the Modi thing. I thought
Speaker 1: that was interesting, which was like that was the reason
Speaker 1: that he said, invite me on the show and I'll
Speaker 1: talk about it, right, And he had two weeks to
Speaker 1: talk about to brush up on it. It looked like,
Speaker 1: and I do this all the time. You go on
Speaker 1: a show, You're like, oh God, I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: on this show thirty seconds like that is that's the
Speaker 1: only way I appear on shows, including this one. I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: I know ahead of time when I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: on this one, It's like Maddy'll be like, Hey, can
Speaker 1: you come on and talk about this thing? Sure? And
Speaker 1: then I'm always asking the producers what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: So and it felt that way. It's like, oh, but
Speaker 1: it's like, because Matt had said, I'll come on the
Speaker 1: show to talk about this, right, then at least check
Speaker 1: into what Musk is doing in India. And it would
Speaker 1: be so easy to be like, you know what, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I do. Musk is not my employee. I am
Speaker 1: not Musk's employee. I disagree with Musk's decision on this
Speaker 1: particular issue, or I agree with Musk's decision on this
Speaker 1: particular issue, It's fine, Like it's not going to hurt
Speaker 1: him one way or the other. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we could We'll reach out to him and see what
Speaker 1: his take is when he gets a chance to actually
Speaker 1: look into the and my read my read on this
Speaker 1: was a little different in that I think what Matt
Speaker 1: was trying to do is make a point that I'm
Speaker 1: not playing this game. That's my assumption of what he
Speaker 1: was doing. Because what Matti's doing is nitpicking errors. A
Speaker 1: couple of them were actual errors. I think one of
Speaker 1: them is definitely more questionable, and Matt was happy to
Speaker 1: correct them. The breadth of what he's been doing with
Speaker 1: the Twitter files, I mean it is it's a lot
Speaker 1: of reporting and a lot of writing, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: of course there are mistakes in there. As much as
Speaker 1: he may try to mitigate them, and I'm sure he does,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to be corrected, knowing the whole world is
Speaker 1: out there and every you know, established center of power
Speaker 1: is out there looking to discredit you. So I mean
Speaker 1: it's in his own interest to mitigate the errors. That said,
Speaker 1: Matti is nitpicking instead of really dealing with the central
Speaker 1: question of state censorship. To your point, like, why are
Speaker 1: we debating threeenty twenty two million the date? You know
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely worth a correction, but why are we
Speaker 1: getting hung up and yelling at each other over that
Speaker 1: when Matt has exposed rightfully, is this huge operation to
Speaker 1: censor and target heterodox American thought. That's a real problem.
Speaker 1: And the way I read him was, I'm not getting
Speaker 1: into this. I don't know. Maybe this is a charitable
Speaker 1: read on the situation, but I'm not getting into this
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to play the game where you
Speaker 1: deflect from this much larger question. Even if that wasn't
Speaker 1: his intention, I think that was the most disappointing part
Speaker 1: of this is the deflection from the larger question. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's there's a journalistic high ground or a
Speaker 1: moral high ground in deflecting on that point. I wish
Speaker 1: matt had an answer to the Modi question, and maybe
Speaker 1: you will. I'm sure you'll check in with him on that.
Speaker 1: But this is the bigger question here is obvious, right,
Speaker 1: and it gives the kind of anti Musk and anti
Speaker 1: Twitter files although I'm kind I'm kind of like Twitter
Speaker 1: files and anti Musk weird kind of Uh, there's no
Speaker 1: overlap other than me in that in that category. But
Speaker 1: it gives people who want to dismiss it. They now
Speaker 1: they're going to say, oh, that was debunked by Mattie. Yes.
Speaker 1: Reporting to Metti would say, May would say no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't debunk the entire thing. What I did is
Speaker 1: I identified some errors. It brought them to his attention,
Speaker 1: and he has agreed to correct those errors. But he's
Speaker 1: not going to say that the entire thing was as
Speaker 1: a result debunked. But the viewers are going to take
Speaker 1: that away. The viewer. You'll watch watch Matt's mentions and
Speaker 1: replies on Twitter over the next couple of weeks, It'll
Speaker 1: just be people throwing like the medi interview Adam saying,
Speaker 1: is the whole, the whole Twitter the whole Twitter file
Speaker 1: thing is completely discredited now, which is just a way
Speaker 1: for people to not kind of grapple with these these
Speaker 1: issues and instead do the easier thing, which is retreat
Speaker 1: into tribes. Yeah. I agree, And my big takeaway from it,
Speaker 1: honestly was how hard it is to have good faith
Speaker 1: conversations in the cable format. It's interesting because you're looking
Speaker 1: at the screen and you see Matt with his podcast
Speaker 1: Mike because he's got his SM seven B, and you
Speaker 1: see Mehdi in the Tony MSNBC studio, and it's just
Speaker 1: like such a perfect juxtaposition of Matt, who I think
Speaker 1: is more used to these days the podcast format because MSNBC,
Speaker 1: as he explained on his substat last night, stopped having
Speaker 1: him after he threw some cold water on like Malcolm
Speaker 1: Nance's weird rantings and ratings about Russia collusion. But it's
Speaker 1: just really hard to have a good faith exchange and
Speaker 1: not retreat into camps and to really get to the substance.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to do that in the cable news setting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why people, especially younger people, are
Speaker 1: pulling away from it. Yeah. Right, there's so much more
Speaker 1: time to breathe than to think. Right, Although if I
Speaker 1: wonder if if Matt had strategically gone in and been like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm with you on MODI, if that would have opened
Speaker 1: up space for that conversation to breathe more. It's interesting
Speaker 1: maybe not like Meddi is a knife fighter's like I
Speaker 1: interviewed him for my podcast a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: his career in debating. He's just an absolutely extraordinary debater,
Speaker 1: even if he's wrong. Like I've said, I wouldn't debate
Speaker 1: him about whether the world is round. It's too dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: forget it. I'd come out and be like, maybe it's flat.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say. Who can say. Well, big news
Speaker 1: out of Ukraine Yesterday The New York Times revealed that
Speaker 1: classified war documents. This is per their report detailing secret
Speaker 1: American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military
Speaker 1: ahead of a planned offensive against Russia, were posted on
Speaker 1: social media channels. According to senior Biden administration officials, the
Speaker 1: Pentagon doesn't know who's behind the leak of this document.
Speaker 1: The New York Times was reporting that military analysts look
Speaker 1: at it. They say the documents seem to have been
Speaker 1: modified in certain parts, overstating American estimates of how many
Speaker 1: Ukrainians have died, and then understating our estimates of how
Speaker 1: many Russian troops have been killed. Now that they say
Speaker 1: could point to this being a disinformation effort on behalf
Speaker 1: of Russia. Ryan, what do you make of this? Ukraine
Speaker 1: was already hesitant to share intelligence with the United States,
Speaker 1: to the point where some of our military officials were
Speaker 1: saying we would know more about Russia's battle plans than
Speaker 1: Ukraine's at certain points in this war. This has to
Speaker 1: almost totally disrupt that once again. Yeah, and so even
Speaker 1: though there are some figures that they're saying are inaccurate
Speaker 1: in here, the US intelligence is also clearly basically authenticating
Speaker 1: what's out there circulating mostly on telegram at this point.
Speaker 1: And what's important for Russia in there is that it's
Speaker 1: given a lot of details about American and Ukrainian capacity
Speaker 1: that they didn't have before. For instance, it lists, according
Speaker 1: to the Times, how long it takes basically a Hymar's
Speaker 1: unit to get worn down. That these are those missiles
Speaker 1: that you see that are quite mobile and good at
Speaker 1: hitting those AMMO depots or other locations, and then they
Speaker 1: could quickly move around. Russia didn't know how long, how
Speaker 1: long they would last, how quickly they could be replenished.
Speaker 1: Now they have that kind of information, They have information
Speaker 1: on the size of the trained battalions that are going
Speaker 1: to be coming. It looks like something like sixty thousand,
Speaker 1: mostly US trained Ukrainian troops will be ready, half of
Speaker 1: them roughly by March first, the other half by like
Speaker 1: April towards the end of April, sorry April first or
Speaker 1: the end of April, which also then gives a signal
Speaker 1: that this offensive that they've been talking about launching is
Speaker 1: coming that or at least certainly the equipment, material and
Speaker 1: the manpower is going to be delivered there. So it
Speaker 1: does give Russia some advantage, and it gives, like you said,
Speaker 1: some psychological advantage because it'll end up disrupting intelligence sharing
Speaker 1: further between Ukraine Russia, Ukraine and the United States. But
Speaker 1: it does seem like we are looking for another expansion
Speaker 1: acceleration of the war over the next coming weeks and months. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And to your point, timetables for the delivery of weapons
Speaker 1: and troops according to the Times Ukrainian troop build up numbers.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, this is a snapshot of intelligence
Speaker 1: from a few weeks ago in March first, so things
Speaker 1: obviously could have changed. But military analysts and military officials
Speaker 1: are obviously nervous about this. That's the implication of their
Speaker 1: reaction is authenticating. Essentially, they've essentially authenticated it by their reaction,
Speaker 1: and they've also telegraphed I think some real concerns about
Speaker 1: the potential here. I wanted to ask you, in this
Speaker 1: broader context of how we've been expecting an offensive this spring,
Speaker 1: what does this look like in terms of how that
Speaker 1: now might play out. Does this, you know, is this
Speaker 1: really like severely hampering what the United States and NATO
Speaker 1: was expecting to be an offensive that could put putin
Speaker 1: on his heels and change the trajectory of the war.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, because this has been a war
Speaker 1: where much much has been out in the open. Now
Speaker 1: there's also been a lot of deflection. Like with the
Speaker 1: last offensive that Ukraine successfully pulled off, they had been
Speaker 1: signaling that they were headed toward a particular spot down south.
Speaker 1: Instead they went up Hire and caught Russia off guard there. So,
Speaker 1: but everybody knew there was an offensive that was brewing.
Speaker 1: So that's still own. That's still all that. You basically
Speaker 1: know that there is a there is a very well equipped,
Speaker 1: well trained offensive that's going to be on its way.
Speaker 1: But anybody reading the New York Times, you know, could
Speaker 1: have told you that or just following what's going on
Speaker 1: in Congress, like those billions of dollars are going somewhere,
Speaker 1: like the all the weapons that were shipping over there
Speaker 1: are for a purpose. And you could also look at
Speaker 1: the United States reactions to like China floating a peace
Speaker 1: plan like like absolutely not. And so if if there
Speaker 1: wasn't some type offensive planned, which were publicly saying there is,
Speaker 1: they would have embraced peace plans. So yeah, I the
Speaker 1: I think the best hope that people can have at
Speaker 1: this point is that this offensive will be the last one.
Speaker 1: What's the so it says this is from the Times.
Speaker 1: The modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow,
Speaker 1: the analyst said, But the disclosures in the original documents,
Speaker 1: which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries,
Speaker 1: troop and battalion strengths, and other plans, represents a significant
Speaker 1: breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine
Speaker 1: when these get posted online with those alleged Russian modifications,
Speaker 1: other than some of the obvious things we've already listed,
Speaker 1: you know, psychological disruption of the intelligence relationship between the
Speaker 1: United States and Ukraine. What is if it's Russia, what
Speaker 1: is the benefit of posting this to telegram and other
Speaker 1: social media channels. But that's a that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good question. I would I would say that it is
Speaker 1: kind of morale at this point. They they presumably real
Speaker 1: knew that the United States was aware of the breach.
Speaker 1: You know, it's March first, it happened, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: by now people have figured that out, and so the
Speaker 1: intel had been so one sided on this war that
Speaker 1: I think Russia was kind of embarrassed and felt like
Speaker 1: a JV power. And they've been called the JV power repeatedly,
Speaker 1: and the United States calling their shot like saying like, look,
Speaker 1: you're going to remember there were The US was like,
Speaker 1: you're going to invade on February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and they're saying this in Lake January or something or December,
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, we're not. These are just training exercises.
Speaker 1: And then they moved there like invasion date by like
Speaker 1: twelve hours, so that the US wouldn't have like nailed
Speaker 1: the exact date that they invaded. Plus they keep locating
Speaker 1: these generals that then get blown up along with all
Speaker 1: sorts of other intelligence coups that the United States then
Speaker 1: very kind of subtly sort of takes credit for, but
Speaker 1: not really. And so I would guess that after they
Speaker 1: had kind of sopped up as much of the intelligence
Speaker 1: as they could, the goal was then to kind of
Speaker 1: embarrass the United States and show that Russia is actually
Speaker 1: still in the game. They're still able to purloin some
Speaker 1: some classified information out of this. And also you want
Speaker 1: Ukraine and this may be the best reason. You want
Speaker 1: Ukraine United States to know publicly that you had somebody
Speaker 1: in there, so that it creates the animosity and the suspicion,
Speaker 1: like that's you know, the benefit of a mole inside
Speaker 1: an organization is almost you know, the benefit is blowing
Speaker 1: the organization up and getting everybody pointing fingers at each
Speaker 1: other almost more than it is getting the information out.
Speaker 1: And so this will lead to a lot of finger
Speaker 1: pointing and probably yeah, it probably already did before we realized.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, over in France. Yeah, another
Speaker 1: part of Europe. Yeah, black Rock getting its headquarters. Sack,
Speaker 1: I should be laughing at the barricade. It's let's put
Speaker 1: this u V one up here. Yeah, that's Blackrock headquarters.
Speaker 1: I can I so I'm telling me if this is
Speaker 1: this is correct. But I'm imagining the right pack in
Speaker 1: the United States being like, see the French are with
Speaker 1: us on woke capitalism and ESG. They're furious about whatever
Speaker 1: the French Blackrock is doing when it comes to like
Speaker 1: it's it's like DEI programming and they're burning it down
Speaker 1: just like we would. Was that the reaction among the
Speaker 1: right here when they saw Blackrock. Blackrock is not going
Speaker 1: up in flames. It's kind of some deceptive reporting there
Speaker 1: because you see the flames, you see black Rock headquarters.
Speaker 1: But actually it was a couple hundred Union people were
Speaker 1: able to get into the building and led some chance
Speaker 1: and then basically left. So they did not burn down
Speaker 1: black Rocks. No, they actually yeah, they didn't actually even
Speaker 1: not yet. Right, they didn't even get to Blackrock're lobby
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right. And it's funny because in the Reuters report,
Speaker 1: Reuters had to disclose the like we have an office,
Speaker 1: same building. That's how we broke this news. Yeah, really
Speaker 1: looked down in the lobby, like, oh, well, to your
Speaker 1: point though, about black Rock becoming this absolute lightning rod
Speaker 1: in the realignment that's happening in the West. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the the kind of new right looks at
Speaker 1: this and says, it's not just about de I and ESG,
Speaker 1: it's about austerity combined with DEI and ESG. And that's
Speaker 1: actually you know, when you have JD. Vance and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump saying we're not touching entitlements, we're not touching Medica,
Speaker 1: we're not touching Medicaid, we're not touching you know, social
Speaker 1: security in the near future, that's that actually goes kind
Speaker 1: of perfectly with what they're seeing unfold in France right now.
Speaker 1: Two year retirement age bump very very unpopular and polling
Speaker 1: I saw one that was like fifty eight percent of
Speaker 1: people disapproved of I think it was mccrone's move to
Speaker 1: sort of jam it through. That's also bypassed the legislature
Speaker 1: because he didn't have the votes. Yeah, that's part of
Speaker 1: what's extremely contentious in this entire question is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't have the votes. He bypassed the legislator legislature. We're
Speaker 1: expecting a decision from the courts in France next week,
Speaker 1: I think on the fourteenth. Who will say whether or
Speaker 1: not what Macron did was what constitutional? Is that the
Speaker 1: right word in They have like one hundred constitutions, right,
Speaker 1: they do a new constitution every couple of years. And
Speaker 1: this is so yesterday it was like the eleventh day
Speaker 1: of the protests. This is all about Macron's proposal to
Speaker 1: go from sixty two to sixty four. He lost his
Speaker 1: majority in parliament last year, so as part of the
Speaker 1: reason he did campaign on all of this. It's not
Speaker 1: like this was a secret plan of his, but wasn't
Speaker 1: able to get it through the legislature. And so I
Speaker 1: think when you combine the potential for Blackrock and it's
Speaker 1: been going on for years. You can go and read
Speaker 1: reports for years the suspicion that Blackrock is going to
Speaker 1: capitalize on something like and actually in one second, we'll
Speaker 1: play the clip, but that Blackrock is going to capitalize
Speaker 1: on privaization of pensions, that you have this American company
Speaker 1: that's going to implement that American austerity and not the
Speaker 1: robust protection system that France hasn't really proud of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in America. When you combine it with the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, this is a company that is led by elites,
Speaker 1: cultural leftist elites, it's a recipe for getting the right
Speaker 1: on board with leaving pensions alone. There you go, all right,
Speaker 1: let's leave alone. Yeah, let's play this, uh, this clip
Speaker 1: that we've got from more Perfect Union. So my favorite
Speaker 1: sign in the protests so far explaining why they were
Speaker 1: protesting the increase in the retirement age was we're French
Speaker 1: for a reason, which to me, actually that's perfect, that
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Like you're fighting for a way of life.
Speaker 1: You are French for a reason, and so why why
Speaker 1: give that up? If you if you want to be German,
Speaker 1: be German. If you want to be something else, be
Speaker 1: something else. But they're French and they're fighting for their
Speaker 1: identity and it's weird also to see the push towards
Speaker 1: austerity and towards working longer hours and working longer in
Speaker 1: your life at the same time that we have all
Speaker 1: this talk about UBI and the productivity gains that are
Speaker 1: going to come from AI, and they're going to just
Speaker 1: lead to this apocaly job apocalypse that's going to put
Speaker 1: everybody out of work. So which is it, like we are,
Speaker 1: do we have too few jobs or do we not
Speaker 1: have old people working long enough like we need to.
Speaker 1: We need to line up which way we're headed. And
Speaker 1: to me, if we're going to have fewer jobs in
Speaker 1: the future because the robots are going to take them all,
Speaker 1: then what do we need these old frenchmen and French women,
Speaker 1: you know, working until their sixty three years old. Let
Speaker 1: them have their French retirement. That sounds like a Wes
Speaker 1: Anderson movie. But the French retirement. Yeah, let somebody enjoy
Speaker 1: this life, you know. That's the thing also Occurren said,
Speaker 1: you know the proposal. I think at some point he
Speaker 1: wants to be able to have carve outs for people
Speaker 1: who can't work until they're sixty four something like that.
Speaker 1: And again, it's just this idea that you have firms
Speaker 1: like Blackrock, that have an obscene amount of capital and
Speaker 1: that are exploiting it by the way, that are exploiting people,
Speaker 1: and all of these myriad fashions around the world, not
Speaker 1: just in America, not just in France, that you would
Speaker 1: not be able to have a sixty two year old
Speaker 1: retirement when you're in a country that prides itself on
Speaker 1: having that net and working towards that net. It's very different,
Speaker 1: I think than in the United States, where we have
Speaker 1: a different culture, and the question of whether that's moral
Speaker 1: or not is different, but the culture is a different place,
Speaker 1: and that's part of what they're Part of why black
Speaker 1: Rock is a lightning rod in France is because of that,
Speaker 1: is because they see it as this exportation of American
Speaker 1: values on individualism, and it's definitely different. And good for them,
Speaker 1: I mean, you are French for a reason. Not good
Speaker 1: for them storming the headquarters, good for them, Good for
Speaker 1: them doing that, I met. I'm good for them for
Speaker 1: saying we're French for a reason, because I think that's
Speaker 1: a really healthy way to have consensus on what your
Speaker 1: country stands for and what your laws should reflect. And
Speaker 1: if you don't have that's one of the biggest problems
Speaker 1: we have in America right now, as we don't have
Speaker 1: consensus on the values our laws should reflect, and that's
Speaker 1: a huge problem for any country. So over in Tennessee, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: just a wild night last night in the legislature. We
Speaker 1: could put up C one here, so for people who
Speaker 1: haven't been following along here. Basically, three Democrats in the
Speaker 1: Tennessee House participated in a protest inside the capital for
Speaker 1: gun legislation. The Democratic lawmakers kind of chanted along with
Speaker 1: the protesters who had come in. Some of them were leading.
Speaker 1: They have megaphones and we're leading the clients and so right,
Speaker 1: and the charge that they're getting hit with is speaking
Speaker 1: from the floor without recognition basically. And so the Republicans
Speaker 1: said that they're going to go ahead and expel these
Speaker 1: three Democrats. They held the votes, they expelled two of them.
Speaker 1: They did not have the votes to expel the third one.
Speaker 1: I will let the viewers guess which ones of those
Speaker 1: are black, which ones of those are white. She hung
Speaker 1: on by one vote is I think they had sixty
Speaker 1: six and she gets sixty five. Yeah, And so that
Speaker 1: was Gloria Johnson who survived. I think we have a
Speaker 1: clip of her. Here's Gloria, who's still representative Johnson right here? Actually, yes,
Speaker 1: and we're going to fight hard to get him back.
Speaker 1: I will answer your question. I might have to do
Speaker 1: with the color of our skin. And so let's roll
Speaker 1: one more clip too. Here. This is from Phil Lewis,
Speaker 1: my old colleague at huff posts on from his Twitter feed,
Speaker 1: Role C three here after that vote was held, but
Speaker 1: before the Johnson and Pearson votes. So what's your reaction
Speaker 1: to this? Yeah, it's interesting because I think on the
Speaker 1: right there's a lot of conversation now about whether to
Speaker 1: fight fire with fire, and then you get into this
Speaker 1: hole like who started it checking her egg, conversation about
Speaker 1: who actually ratched it up, who broke the norm first?
Speaker 1: And I don't know that there's really any satisfying answer
Speaker 1: to that question in different cases. But the right has
Speaker 1: I think, been cheering this expulsion, saying you would do
Speaker 1: it to us. We all know how the media would
Speaker 1: react if a bunch of conservatives, you know, in opposition
Speaker 1: to abortion did that. We all know how the media
Speaker 1: would depict it. So get them the heck out of here.
Speaker 1: And I mean, sixty five people voted to expel Gloria
Speaker 1: Johnson too. I mean, that's not a small number. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of votes for expulsion of three people, and
Speaker 1: they actually all had different final tallies of how many
Speaker 1: people voted to expel them. The argument is that the
Speaker 1: two gentlemen were using megaphones, they're part of the people.
Speaker 1: I've seen that argument circulated by Tennessee Republicans, that they
Speaker 1: were the people that were actually leading chance with megaphones
Speaker 1: and extra disruptive. That said, I never liked the idea
Speaker 1: of finding fire with fire. It's never don't. I don't
Speaker 1: love it constitutionally, and you know I don't love it
Speaker 1: legally in the system. I'm not a huge fan of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my objection is that it's not the same fire.
Speaker 1: So I've seen a lot of people saying like these
Speaker 1: are insurrectionists and therefore you know they need to be
Speaker 1: expelled clearly making January sixth references. But no members of
Speaker 1: Congress were expelled as a result of January sixth. No
Speaker 1: members of Congress faced even a center vote. Although members
Speaker 1: of Congress weren't leading January six I mean, like the
Speaker 1: picture of Josh Hawley even is completely misleading. It was
Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't like out there with megaphones, And
Speaker 1: there's a complete argument that it was ginned up by
Speaker 1: reckless statements by members of Congress. I'm not disputing that,
Speaker 1: but I think it's different. Granted, I agree with you
Speaker 1: it's not apples to apples, but it is different when
Speaker 1: you're leading what is a disruptive protest. I don't think
Speaker 1: what happened in the Tennessee State House was an insurrection,
Speaker 1: right because so, and to back up a little bit,
Speaker 1: I remember when January sixth happened, thinking that this was
Speaker 1: going to change the way that protest was going to
Speaker 1: be either done or responded to around the US Capitol
Speaker 1: and other state capitals. Because you know, you and I
Speaker 1: covered the response to the Kavanaugh hearings. You had the
Speaker 1: Heart Building, which is one of the Senate office buildings
Speaker 1: right down the street from here, just completely filled with
Speaker 1: protesters every single day. And those protesters would go into
Speaker 1: the hallways and they would kind of buttonhole members of
Speaker 1: Congress and sometimes yell at them it's civil disobedience. Yes,
Speaker 1: And there was that viral moment with Jeff Flake where
Speaker 1: he's like they're basically blocking his elevator from leaving and
Speaker 1: pouring their hearts out about these sexual assaults that they
Speaker 1: had gone through the two women, and you can see
Speaker 1: Flake listening to them. It was this really this moment
Speaker 1: where civil disobedience had kind of transformed itself into civil society,
Speaker 1: into an actual conversation. And then Flake goes to the
Speaker 1: hearing and says, I'm not actually ready to vote for Kavanaugh.
Speaker 1: I want a one week delay so that the FBI
Speaker 1: can investigate this. This really really historic moment of people
Speaker 1: pressuring the Senate. And I remember thinking, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any sincerity behind that decision, but yes, no, but
Speaker 1: like he felt pressure, definitely does. And so after January sixth,
Speaker 1: I was I started thinking, like that type of thing
Speaker 1: is going to be treated much differently because nobody, none
Speaker 1: of the Capitol police I spoke to, none of the senators,
Speaker 1: thought that any of the people that were protesting Kavanaugh
Speaker 1: were going to hurt anybody, or we're going to kind
Speaker 1: of disobey the Capitol police like they would often get arrested,
Speaker 1: but it would be that be that kind of ceremonial
Speaker 1: arrest where it's like, all right, everybody line up and
Speaker 1: do your civil disobedience arrest now, and they would all
Speaker 1: put their hands behind their back or they would get
Speaker 1: carried out. But you didn't have people swinging giant American flags.
Speaker 1: You didn't have people who had bare spray. You didn't
Speaker 1: have people you know, poke, you know, poking with ba
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the bats were not flying, and
Speaker 1: and you know, the January sixth protesters were not like
Speaker 1: there to commit civil disobedience to make a point. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah it was a riot. Yes, yeah it was a riot.
Speaker 1: But I assume that I think Tennessee shows that they're
Speaker 1: going to respond to even civil disobedience protests as if
Speaker 1: they're insurrections. Well that's a really interesting point because one
Speaker 1: of the arguments here is that they had censure available,
Speaker 1: they could have shared all of these lawmakers, and they
Speaker 1: broke the rules, broke the korum, shouldn't have done this.
Speaker 1: You have a center vote like that, they're exactly and
Speaker 1: you even kick them off committees, like there are things
Speaker 1: you can do short of telling this these voters that
Speaker 1: your person can no longer represent you, you know. And
Speaker 1: the thing that with civil disobedience is that it is
Speaker 1: always this idea that you're going to get punished, you
Speaker 1: expect to get punished when the laws are broken, because
Speaker 1: we do have the rule of law, and when people
Speaker 1: break laws even in pursuit of a righteous cause. It's
Speaker 1: not as though people are in every case of civil disipate.
Speaker 1: There's some cases where people don't deserve to be arrested,
Speaker 1: so they're not actually breaking laws. But in cases where
Speaker 1: you do actually break laws, even in pursuit of a
Speaker 1: noble cause, you expect the rule of law to be
Speaker 1: applied to. That's why you you a letter from the
Speaker 1: Birmingham jail and not letter from the hotel room I
Speaker 1: went to after the protest was over, and that's what
Speaker 1: you use, that particular mechanism of protest, and that's one thing.
Speaker 1: So the pundament. Then there's this question of whether the
Speaker 1: punishment fits the crime. The expulsion pundament punishment fits the
Speaker 1: breach of deporum when there's a censure option available. I
Speaker 1: just think right now we're at a time when we're
Speaker 1: all like people. I mean, I'm on the right, people
Speaker 1: are right now absolutely furious by the way that they
Speaker 1: are treated. There was a really interesting exchange between one
Speaker 1: of the guys that got expelled and one of the
Speaker 1: Republican members of the House who said you called me
Speaker 1: a brown face to one of the guys that ended
Speaker 1: up getting expelled, and he said, well, I said you
Speaker 1: put a brown face, a brown mask or something on
Speaker 1: white supremacy. This is really nasty. I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: level of that is an accusation that I think you
Speaker 1: can understand why it is pushing so deep and pushing
Speaker 1: on people so deeply. And that is a really vitriolic
Speaker 1: and nasty thing to say. And I'm not saying it
Speaker 1: doesn't come from both sides. I am those saying that
Speaker 1: the I think sympathy for people who are also behaving
Speaker 1: in really I think abhorrent ways in certain cases that
Speaker 1: I don't like. And that's the double standard is exactly
Speaker 1: what has pushed Republicans to the point where they're like, script,
Speaker 1: we're expelling them. And the tit for that, tit for
Speaker 1: tat then raises the question of well, what else should
Speaker 1: people be expelled for? And you've got Representative Jones here
Speaker 1: making this speech, which stick around for the end of
Speaker 1: this one. You're going to be shocked where it goes
Speaker 1: for years. One of your colleagues, who with an admitted
Speaker 1: child molestor sat in this chamber No expulsion. One member
Speaker 1: sits in this chamber was bound guilty of domestic violence,
Speaker 1: no expulsion. We had a former speaker sit in this
Speaker 1: chamber who is now under federal investigation, no expulsion. We
Speaker 1: have a member still under federal investigation, no expulsion. We
Speaker 1: had a member pee in another member's chair in this chamber,
Speaker 1: no expulsion. In fact, they're in leadership. Yeah, so if
Speaker 1: you've got to talk about decorum and the rules of
Speaker 1: the House floor, maybe they never bothered to write down
Speaker 1: you cannot pee in another member's chair. It's not enumerated,
Speaker 1: but I think that it is understood. It's common a
Speaker 1: common rule you shouldn't do. But you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: And this was Republican on Republican violence, it turned out
Speaker 1: I researched this incident. You shouldn't be expelled for doing that.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of yes, But his point is they weren't,
Speaker 1: and you you have because Republicans control the House right now,
Speaker 1: or control the legislature right now, right And then he
Speaker 1: also mentions domestic violence, the pedophilia, et cetera, and those
Speaker 1: You know, you could go to the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: You've got a guy who's just completely made up everything
Speaker 1: about himself not expelled. So that raises a question who
Speaker 1: gets expelled, why and when? And I still think though
Speaker 1: that the question, Yeah, I don't I don't obviously disagree
Speaker 1: with any of that. If you pee in someone's chair,
Speaker 1: you should be expelled. That's so obvious. And that rule
Speaker 1: applies to both of us, Ryan, and to you Sager.
Speaker 1: Warning you first, you first, you get a warn, you
Speaker 1: get three strikes. I was gonna just finish the I say.
Speaker 1: The double standard thing is a real problem, not just
Speaker 1: for the right but also for the left, because it's
Speaker 1: what creates more. And this is a serious point, it's
Speaker 1: what creates more January six is people feel like they're
Speaker 1: just getting trampled on over and over again. They're going
Speaker 1: to start justifying their protes of bad behavior. They're going
Speaker 1: to start justifying bad behavior as a protest of bad behavior.
Speaker 1: And you can go all the way down, and you
Speaker 1: can always pull back more layers and do the chicken
Speaker 1: and egg thing. This person started it, Well, it goes
Speaker 1: back to New Gingrich. No, it goes back to Barry Goldwater. No,
Speaker 1: it goes back to FDR. Like you can keep saying,
Speaker 1: who broke the first norm? It goes back to Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1: You know, they might keep going, but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you're just going to get more bad
Speaker 1: behavior the more that we're incapable of controlling ourselves. So
Speaker 1: I think that applies in both cases here, and this
Speaker 1: is an over now. In order to fill these seats,
Speaker 1: the people who are responsible for filling them have reportedly
Speaker 1: are going to send back Representatives Pearson and Jones as
Speaker 1: the yes special election. Well, I think the first there'll
Speaker 1: be appointments. We'll see exactly what the details are. But
Speaker 1: certain like you haven't heard the last of these guys,
Speaker 1: Like you can kick them out, but the voters and
Speaker 1: the local officials can send them back. And Republicans just
Speaker 1: elevated their profile to the next level. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are now national political figures because of all of those right,
Speaker 1: and they elevated him to hero status. People will remember
Speaker 1: that legendary and horrifying story where Preston Brooks, the South
Speaker 1: Carolina congressman, almost beat Charles Sumner abolitionist, to death, broke
Speaker 1: his cane. A bunch of people mailed him canes. He
Speaker 1: gets they were about to boot him out of Congress.
Speaker 1: He quit. They held a special election. He ran for
Speaker 1: that special election, and he won. Voters sent him back
Speaker 1: to Congress. There you go. It doesn't end. No, speaking
Speaker 1: of people lashing out at the establishment with increasingly questionable
Speaker 1: means that are nevertheless somewhat understandable. Robert F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 1: has announced that he is a candidate. He actually filed
Speaker 1: papers to run for the Democratic nomination for presidency in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. He joins Maryan Williamson and President Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in that race. So three declared candidates now, two
Speaker 1: of whom are RFK Junior and Marianne Williamson. Now, RFK
Speaker 1: Junior has really always been a figure of the kind
Speaker 1: of fringe left, I would say, And by the way,
Speaker 1: if what happened to my if what happened to him
Speaker 1: happened to my family, I'd probably be on the fringes
Speaker 1: of politics. You would have zero, zero trust of anybody
Speaker 1: or anything. That said, he's really always been a figure
Speaker 1: of the left. He's made a lot of relationships with
Speaker 1: more people on the right, and I guess the right
Speaker 1: and maybe sort of the establishment center to the extent
Speaker 1: that exists over vaccines, over COVID, over all of that.
Speaker 1: But he's sort of new to those circles. I imagine
Speaker 1: you followed him for a while because he is he
Speaker 1: has been a figure of the left. What do you
Speaker 1: make of this? And he kind of represents the evolution
Speaker 1: of the left to the right or a giant segment
Speaker 1: of the left that has gone the hippie to Q pipeline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hippie to Q pipeline. Absolutely, he is kind of
Speaker 1: the personification of the hippie to Q pipeline. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you said, he in the in the two thousands
Speaker 1: he became kind of a leading kind of anti vaxxer
Speaker 1: but also environmentalist. Oh you know that. That's the thing
Speaker 1: with with rfk Jr. You were always going to get
Speaker 1: a ton of a ton of great positions and then
Speaker 1: a ton of ones where you're just like, whoa, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what. He's not cute? Where'd he come up? Where
Speaker 1: did he come up with that one? No, he's not
Speaker 1: c Although although his brother is not his brother, his
Speaker 1: cousin jfk Jr. Is right, isn't Isn't he the guy
Speaker 1: at the center, like he's going to come back to
Speaker 1: life or something. They believe. There are still Q theories
Speaker 1: that he is still alive. Yeah, well then Q is
Speaker 1: going to be there. I'm sure they're going to be
Speaker 1: all over the fact that he's running for president, that
Speaker 1: his cousin's running for president. I don't know, maybe they're like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: maybe we were wrong. It wasn't JFK Jr. Was R
Speaker 1: that's going to come back and save the country. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like there was that there was that left wing anti
Speaker 1: vaccine movement back in the two thousands. Yeah, that, uh,
Speaker 1: and you know he like you said, his father assassinated.
Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't believe sarahin and did it. And
Speaker 1: there's plenty of people, you know who who agree with
Speaker 1: him and think that this was that there was a
Speaker 1: conspiracy around that. Obviously there was some type of conspiracy
Speaker 1: around his uncle getting killed. And so to watch that,
Speaker 1: to live to live with that, and also all of
Speaker 1: the trauma that that a Kennedy goes through, Like there's
Speaker 1: so many his cousin died in the plan, so many
Speaker 1: Kennedy's you know, dying before his own wife. The time, brutal,
Speaker 1: But he kind of gone around the bend at this
Speaker 1: point to the point where when he's right, you're like,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. He's right, but then you're like, is he
Speaker 1: right because he got lucky this time because the other
Speaker 1: Because in order to embrace him when he's right, you
Speaker 1: have to really work hard to ignore a lot of
Speaker 1: the things where he's so obviously wrong that stuff. I
Speaker 1: wonder if this actually really gets establishment democrats nervous now
Speaker 1: that you have both Mary Williamson and RFK Junior, people
Speaker 1: who are charismatic and interesting who staked out populist positions.
Speaker 1: I think in really it's sometimes very interesting ways. That's
Speaker 1: to your point about RFK Junior, sometimes just so horribly
Speaker 1: off base, other times really on target, and like with
Speaker 1: research that you aren't going to read anywhere else, and
Speaker 1: eventually some people will cover it, but you really have
Speaker 1: a hard time finding a lot of that information. And
Speaker 1: that's not to say it's always right, but sometimes it's
Speaker 1: definitely worth taking a look at. And I wonder then
Speaker 1: if Joe Biden, when instead of Careine Jean Pierre, you know,
Speaker 1: laughing off Mary and Williamson with her condescending crystal ball thing,
Speaker 1: I wonder if they start to say, hey, these people
Speaker 1: are going to be traveling around South Carolina and New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: does that make our life easier, or does that make
Speaker 1: the president really have to start answering some some tougher
Speaker 1: questions than he'd like. I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: I think it is still early, because he just filed
Speaker 1: papers yesterday. I was really surprised that he filed papers.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he's I was actually a surprised
Speaker 1: he filed as a Democrat. Were you like when I mean,
Speaker 1: even though the Counties are obviously the most democratic family
Speaker 1: in the country. When I heard he was running, I
Speaker 1: was like, which party it would have made? It would
Speaker 1: have made a lot more sense to me if he
Speaker 1: was going if he did the Tulsi where he came over.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The
Speaker 1: Democratic Party left me kind of thing. He might be
Speaker 1: less of a Democrat than Tulsi at this point he
Speaker 1: probably is, Yet he's running the Democratic prime And and
Speaker 1: I actually think that that hurts Maryanne Williamson because she
Speaker 1: she's going to get lumped in with him. That's true,
Speaker 1: as these like two loopy people. What he's kind of
Speaker 1: a loopy dude. She's not right, Like she gets mocked
Speaker 1: like that by the White House and buy a lot
Speaker 1: of them a lot of the corporate media, But if
Speaker 1: you actually listen to what she's saying, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that appeals to like eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: country and it is not actually the kind of orbs
Speaker 1: and crystal stuff that is her caricature. But having RFK
Speaker 1: in the race is going to further allow the media
Speaker 1: to paint like the opponents of Biden as these as
Speaker 1: these circus people, anti vac crazy people, right, but mean,
Speaker 1: which she isn't though, but right, although I think she
Speaker 1: was skeptical in the two thousands, right, like I we'll
Speaker 1: look that up, but that will be the Biden line
Speaker 1: no matter what that'll be that you're absolutely right, they'll
Speaker 1: just try to But again, like I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's entirely helpful for them to just because RFK Jr.
Speaker 1: Is going to get media, Mary Anne is getting media, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be entirely helpful for them to
Speaker 1: just brush it all aside. And the other question is
Speaker 1: is it is it good for for Mary and Williamson
Speaker 1: and for RFK Junior that they're both in the race,
Speaker 1: because does that force Biden to debate now that there's
Speaker 1: two of them and one of them, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a Kennedy. I don't know it, Like, if they
Speaker 1: can get to the debate stage, they're not. I mean there,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is going to be the nominee unless he
Speaker 1: drops out. But if they get he'll skip the debates
Speaker 1: unless he's under a lot of pressure. And exactly Williamson
Speaker 1: is if you if you look at poles among when
Speaker 1: I was talking to Crystal about this the other day,
Speaker 1: if you look at poles among young people, she's doing
Speaker 1: extraordinarily well. And is it insanely popular on TikTok? Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: she really is. Yeah, Like if the election were held
Speaker 1: on TikTok, should beat Biden two to one. That's why
Speaker 1: I think it, Like, yeah, if I were Biden, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be on a debate stage if I
Speaker 1: don't have to run the sitting president, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to put up with us. From a tactical perspective,
Speaker 1: it's not it's always going to be more helpful to
Speaker 1: not confront criticism publicly. Just from a strictly strategic perspective.
Speaker 1: That said, at a certain point, if people start really
Speaker 1: catching traction, because nobody is into Joe Biden and that's true.
Speaker 1: It's not like people are like, oh, I can't wait
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden's second term. Like Democratic voters are just
Speaker 1: super stoked about Joe Biden's second term. Then there's energy
Speaker 1: out there that can be captured by people who are
Speaker 1: putting in the time and going to different states, talking
Speaker 1: to different voters and talking about issues that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: doesn't want to talk about. Yeah, and so I just googled,
Speaker 1: and you know, so she was not at all a
Speaker 1: kind of anti vax campaign or back in the two thousands,
Speaker 1: but CNN had found in twenty twelve she had said
Speaker 1: she could see both sides of the issue and agonized
Speaker 1: as a mother over the decision to vaccinate her children.
Speaker 1: Her guests said she knew a lot of people who
Speaker 1: had vaccinated and then gotten all, which she said, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that was a big debate back in the two thousands
Speaker 1: among and you read so much about it, You heard
Speaker 1: so much about it that there were a lot of
Speaker 1: parents who were like, who were genuinely concerned, like is
Speaker 1: this something I should worry about? So much so that
Speaker 1: the Pediatric Association actually created this kind of timetable instead
Speaker 1: of giving people, you know, giving kids back all the
Speaker 1: vaccines like at these certain times they would stretch them out,
Speaker 1: And the Pediatric Association was basically, we don't have any
Speaker 1: evidence that this is necessary, but there's so much skepticism
Speaker 1: among parents that we're doing this to make them feel
Speaker 1: better about it. See that is a great place to
Speaker 1: camp out on in this point, because nobody would do
Speaker 1: that today. It is today they would just be dug in.
Speaker 1: If you're you're crazy, right nuts, get all your jabs
Speaker 1: right now. And there's less trust and media now, and
Speaker 1: there's less trust in institutions now. And so I like,
Speaker 1: both of us are vaccinated, and I've always said I
Speaker 1: hope my family gets vaccinated too, But people may disagree
Speaker 1: with that. The point is if you live in a
Speaker 1: low trust environment and you just lump everybody in and
Speaker 1: say I'm not dealing with you because you're a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: you're a crazy person. When they have good faith questions
Speaker 1: that they just want answers to, and instead of meeting
Speaker 1: them where they are and saying we're going to work
Speaker 1: this out, how can we make you feel more comfortable,
Speaker 1: it's just you're an idiot. You should be ostracized from
Speaker 1: society and that has really pushed us to dangerous places,
Speaker 1: and I think now we're more likely to see that
Speaker 1: dynamic play out in the Democratic primer. Well, let's check
Speaker 1: in on speaker Kevin McCarthy. That's right on his way in.
Speaker 1: He was saying he was going to do just like
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi did. He's going to parachute into Taiwan if
Speaker 1: he had to, and he's going to meet with the
Speaker 1: Taiwanese leader. China freaked out and said, you better not.
Speaker 1: So what do we what do you do? So? What
Speaker 1: do we have instead? Yeah, So he ended up doing
Speaker 1: a meeting one at the Reagan Library with the Taiwanese
Speaker 1: president instead of actually going to Taiwan. Now there's an
Speaker 1: argument that that's actually a really smart move because the
Speaker 1: threat of escalation has mounted since Pelosi took her visit
Speaker 1: to Taiwan, which was already quite risky. You know, I'm,
Speaker 1: of course somebody who thinks we need to be much
Speaker 1: tougher in China that the threat to Taiwan is greater
Speaker 1: and more immediate than most of the media is telling
Speaker 1: us or is willing to admit, even though the media
Speaker 1: is generally in favor of military intervention in this case,
Speaker 1: the China connections I think are a complicating factor. But
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi then comes out and says she supports Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy's meeting at the Reagan Library with the Taiwanese president,
Speaker 1: who's made some different stops in the United States on
Speaker 1: this trip. I think it was at the Hudson Institute
Speaker 1: here in the district and then went out to the
Speaker 1: Reagan Library and had this meeting with Kevin McCarthy. It
Speaker 1: pretty much proceeded as you would expect it to, but
Speaker 1: there's an interesting note by partisanship when you have Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi actually offering active support to Kevin McCarthy. And we
Speaker 1: saw a similar measure by partisanship when it came to
Speaker 1: the TikTok hearings against China. By partisanship against China, we're
Speaker 1: starting to see this coalescing of bipartisan anger directed at China,
Speaker 1: and that could be channeled in some really bad ways.
Speaker 1: That could be channeled in some potentially important ways, but
Speaker 1: it could definitely be channeled in bad ways. We've already
Speaker 1: seen an example of this with the restrict Act that
Speaker 1: we covered here last week, a bill with support from
Speaker 1: Mark Warner and ten other Democrats along with eleven Republicans,
Speaker 1: including John Thune. That is just an incredible Patriot Act
Speaker 1: style power grab in the interest of curtailing TikTok's influence,
Speaker 1: but doesn't actually mention TikTok once in the bill, and
Speaker 1: that was proposed and started gaining traction just the fact
Speaker 1: that there were a couple of clean TikTok band bills
Speaker 1: actually on the floor. And so we see where some
Speaker 1: of that bipartisan stuff can start to snowball. As this
Speaker 1: starts to as people start to coalesce in their opposition
Speaker 1: to China for different reasons, you can start going in
Speaker 1: some really counterproductive directions. Now, this is one layer of
Speaker 1: a dynamic that's playing out on Capitol Hill right now
Speaker 1: that is really really interesting. This is one layer of
Speaker 1: sort of establishment by partisanship. Let's turn to the anti
Speaker 1: establishment bipartisanship that's coalescing right now as well. Politico has
Speaker 1: a super interesting article out this week. He too here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a good article about how
Speaker 1: the Freedom Caucus and Justice Dems are starting to talk
Speaker 1: more about the war power, curtailing war powers, get rid
Speaker 1: of getting rid of the AMF. But it doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's really important about this political article.
Speaker 1: It's really framed as the right left. It says it
Speaker 1: right there on the screen, the right left alliance on
Speaker 1: a rock war powers. And then they go on to say,
Speaker 1: but House liberals and conservatives are linking up on other
Speaker 1: issues too. That's an important point. It's not just war powers.
Speaker 1: You're seeing this anti establishment by partisanship coalesce in opposition
Speaker 1: to things like the restrict Act, like these heavy handed
Speaker 1: efforts to delegate tons of power over the Commerce and
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Commerce in an effort allegedly to ban TikTok,
Speaker 1: which is about so much more than banning TikTok. And
Speaker 1: also it gets super interesting, I believe you should. Talib
Speaker 1: is working with some Republicans on surveillance and that is
Speaker 1: we've covered that here a couple of times. There's a
Speaker 1: reauthorization that will be coming up. It's later this year,
Speaker 1: right Ryan, It's like December September or something like that.
Speaker 1: Reauthorization of surveillance powers that absolutely demands from the perspective
Speaker 1: of a conservative attention from republicans. It's a very easy
Speaker 1: case from progressives. And so when you see that happening.
Speaker 1: If you're Kevin McCarthy, you're going to be really nervous
Speaker 1: about that slim, slim majority that you have and the
Speaker 1: slim majority of support that you were able to get
Speaker 1: among your Republican colleagues, precisely because if they have the
Speaker 1: numbers to stick together with Justice Democrats and with progressives
Speaker 1: in the House, they can throw their weight around in
Speaker 1: a way that makes Kevin McCarthy, for instance, change his
Speaker 1: position and give way in the establishment position on war powers,
Speaker 1: to give way in the establishment position on surveillance. There
Speaker 1: are some really big issues, and this is the democracy
Speaker 1: and action that so many people claim to champion. They
Speaker 1: love democracy, Well, this is it, this is actual. This
Speaker 1: is the beauty of our design. Is that when you
Speaker 1: have divide a government like this, you are finding reasons
Speaker 1: to collaborate. And that's going to put a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on Kevin McCarthy. And I don't think he's blind
Speaker 1: to that. I think he understands completely that he now
Speaker 1: has a lot of pressure. I'm sure this Politico article
Speaker 1: circulated in McCarthy's office because it makes a really serious
Speaker 1: point that in the months ahead, he could find himself
Speaker 1: really negotiating playing hardball with people who don't have much
Speaker 1: incentive to get along with him after a certain point
Speaker 1: and have more incentive, for instance, on an issue like
Speaker 1: there are rock war powers that are still in the books,
Speaker 1: and an issue like surveillance that's extremely easy to take
Speaker 1: to Republican voters and talk a populist narrative to and
Speaker 1: rightfully so, because these are bad policies, they have a
Speaker 1: lot of insight, they've no incentive to just settle down
Speaker 1: and cooperate and collaborate. Now, Kevin McCarthy is very skilled
Speaker 1: at negotiating with people that he may sort of ideologically
Speaker 1: be on the other side of in his own party.
Speaker 1: This makes life, I think, really difficult for him. Ran
Speaker 1: you may know more about what's happening or what could
Speaker 1: happen on the left in this issue, and I know
Speaker 1: just we sort of swerved from the point on Taiwan.
Speaker 1: But I think it's an interesting sort of combination here
Speaker 1: we have the establishment bipartisanship and the anti establishment bi
Speaker 1: partisanship crossing each other kind of at the same time.
Speaker 1: I was really surprised in the political article that some
Speaker 1: justice stems were saying, hey, we can agree on things,
Speaker 1: because for a while, both on the left and the right,
Speaker 1: it was toxic to even acknowledge that you might have
Speaker 1: things to work together on. And it represents a thaw
Speaker 1: that's set in on January sixth, that they were the
Speaker 1: kind left, the activists who had been trying to create
Speaker 1: some of these coalitions over the last several years, and
Speaker 1: had successfully created them on, like you said, some civil
Speaker 1: liberties issues, some surveillance stuff, some more powers issues, were
Speaker 1: deeply nervous that in the wake of January sixth, most
Speaker 1: of their interlocertors that they've been effectively able to work
Speaker 1: with on say war powers or civil liberties also were
Speaker 1: the ones who are the most vocal or among the
Speaker 1: most vocal that stopped the steal and voting or at
Speaker 1: least not certifying right vote and voting not to certify
Speaker 1: the election, and which, by the way, is something that
Speaker 1: sort of fringe people have. It's always it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a tradition in the last twenty years, like you
Speaker 1: have Jamie Raskin doing it in twenty sixteen, and so
Speaker 1: I think Republicans didn't realize how serious what they were doing,
Speaker 1: that's true, But the vote was held after the riot.
Speaker 1: At that point they can be like, Okay, we're stepping
Speaker 1: over blood and glass to get to the chamber. We
Speaker 1: could not cast this vote. But politics were what they were,
Speaker 1: and they did what they did, and that made it
Speaker 1: so that it was very difficult to get any Democrats
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, yes, I'll co sponsor a bill with
Speaker 1: this guy. But the fact that they're able to do
Speaker 1: it now, I think represents the distance that we've come
Speaker 1: since January sixth, and that people are now able to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I disagreed with that strongly, as strongly
Speaker 1: as you could possibly disagree with anything, but we agree
Speaker 1: on this particular issue and sore that's more important and
Speaker 1: we're going to push ahead on it. And Roy put
Speaker 1: it well in this political article. He says, this is
Speaker 1: Chip Roy from a Texas Freedom Caucus member. He says,
Speaker 1: sometimes the political spectrum is more of a circle than
Speaker 1: a line. At some point, you might have sometimes differing
Speaker 1: motives or different ranges, but you end up at the
Speaker 1: same conclusion and that's okay. That's kind of how our
Speaker 1: system works. And if you can get back to that,
Speaker 1: then yes, that can create headaches for McCarthy, especially when
Speaker 1: he has just a couple vote margin, these headaches would
Speaker 1: be good for the American people. So that's the positive news.
Speaker 1: This is a good headaches. All right, Ryan, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about China and Saudi Arabia. What have you got? Yes,
Speaker 1: and we've got we actually have some breaking news out
Speaker 1: of out of this entire so yes. So yesterday China
Speaker 1: and nowounced that they had reached a further deal with
Speaker 1: Saudi and Iran embassies are opening up. Uh. There there
Speaker 1: was a press conference with the kind of Saudi foreign
Speaker 1: minister and the Iranian foreign minister in China where they
Speaker 1: invited each other. They're opening up direct flights now between
Speaker 1: ryod And and Tehran. It's a real step forward. And
Speaker 1: at the same time that they were making these announcement,
Speaker 1: you started hearing word that there that there was going
Speaker 1: to be a ceasefire extended in the in the Yemen War.
Speaker 1: And this is all tied in because the Houthis are
Speaker 1: talked about in the US media as basically a cat's
Speaker 1: paw for Iran, but they're not. They're they're an independent actor,
Speaker 1: but they're only independent in the sense that they could
Speaker 1: continue to get you weapons and supplies mostly from Iran.
Speaker 1: And so if Iran were to cut that off, that
Speaker 1: has an influence over the Houthis. So Iran can influence
Speaker 1: the Hoothis even though they can't basically order them around.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the Saudi's Uh and the and
Speaker 1: the Amoradies are basically running the war on on the
Speaker 1: other side of that. Now there has been there a
Speaker 1: cease fire kind of collapsed or expired in October of
Speaker 1: last year, but hostilities hadn't hadn't picked up again. The
Speaker 1: reporting that we were getting yesterday and now now breaking
Speaker 1: news is that the war may actually be coming to
Speaker 1: an end, which would uh be, would just be a
Speaker 1: huge kind of gift to humanity. Uh next would be
Speaker 1: the rebuilding of Yemen. But you know, the people of
Speaker 1: Yemen have faced just unspeakable horrors over the over the
Speaker 1: last seven years or so since Saudi Uh Saudi Rabi
Speaker 1: launched launched this war after the Houthis took over Sana.
Speaker 1: But so this is this is from the u Or
Speaker 1: news organization Al al Maya Dean, which is basically a
Speaker 1: kind of Lebanese pro Hothy organization. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: and we can put this Wall Street Journal clip up here.
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal was reporting that there was that Saudi
Speaker 1: officials were saying that they were going to extend the
Speaker 1: cease fire to the end of twenty twenty three. Hoo.
Speaker 1: The officials in this article were denying that that was
Speaker 1: the case, but you could see that things were moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction. So to have a pro hoy
Speaker 1: organization putting this news up now is extraordinarily hopeful. And
Speaker 1: so at the same time that you're you're having the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal report that you're there there, the blockade
Speaker 1: is going to be lifted, You're going to be able
Speaker 1: to get they simply said, batteries, fertilizer, like the basics
Speaker 1: of life, like light, life in Sanaw, life across the
Speaker 1: controlled Yemut has just been mad style because of the
Speaker 1: inability to import basic goods, just just a horrifying existence.
Speaker 1: And so like to see this lifted and then to
Speaker 1: see kind of a pro Hoothy news outlet to say
Speaker 1: that yes, there actually is almost an agreement UH to
Speaker 1: end the war UH represents a huge step forward. And
Speaker 1: it is truly remarkable that the United States is only
Speaker 1: involved in this in the sense that it's been supporting
Speaker 1: Saudia's war effort like China comes out of this as
Speaker 1: as the peacemaker, as as the one who is who
Speaker 1: is responsible for finally finishing this off. And the United
Speaker 1: States couldn't because they were such a part as in
Speaker 1: belligerent in the war. They can't. How are they going
Speaker 1: to take a role in kind of in kind of
Speaker 1: mediating this situation, And so great news if it holds,
Speaker 1: that's that's great news, but also a real kind of
Speaker 1: chink in the in the US imperial armor. If China
Speaker 1: is starting to be seen around the world as somebody
Speaker 1: that can end conflicts and and end conflicts that are
Speaker 1: fueled by the United States, this is huge. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it is absolutely huge in that question of the
Speaker 1: geopolitical positioning of the United States. Obviously the first and
Speaker 1: foremost concerns for the people of Yemen, as you say,
Speaker 1: have suffered immensely, But second to that the geopolitical positioning
Speaker 1: of the United States is China knows exactly what If
Speaker 1: you listen to the way Hi Jinping talks about his
Speaker 1: ambitions for China's role in the world stage, this is
Speaker 1: exactly it. This is exactly what they want to do
Speaker 1: is replace the United States as the global leader, as
Speaker 1: the one nation that everybody is looking to for leadership
Speaker 1: and guidance on the world stage because of our obviously
Speaker 1: our military and our money and our economy and all
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, I mean, that's when you have them
Speaker 1: stepping into the vacuum that we are now leaving in
Speaker 1: the way that I mean Afghanistan was huge news in
Speaker 1: the White House briefing room yesterday. What happened in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is because we no longer can do basic tasks of governing,
Speaker 1: whether it's in the military, whether it's in social services.
Speaker 1: We can't do it because we are hampered. And this
Speaker 1: is an argument by the way that China makes We
Speaker 1: are hampered by our divisions. Our divisions and our sort
Speaker 1: of corporate capture to your point about support for Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia make it really difficult for us to come in. Now.
Speaker 1: It's much easier for China to come in because they
Speaker 1: don't have some of these pre existing deals, relationships, et cetera,
Speaker 1: which is both a I think a blessing and a curse,
Speaker 1: but in some way makes it easier to just sort
Speaker 1: of step into that vacuum. That said, our differences are surmountable.
Speaker 1: We don't have to be this divided. We can come
Speaker 1: out of it. Think our divisions are much better than
Speaker 1: unity brought about by censorship in the countries that are
Speaker 1: purporting to have the moral high ground here, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking of course about China. I'd rather have our division
Speaker 1: than their censorship and ostensible unity behind that censorship regime.
Speaker 1: But I think if they start becoming they've also tried
Speaker 1: to negotiate peace deals in Ukraine. The more that this
Speaker 1: is successful, I mean, the more that this is successful,
Speaker 1: the more that the exact sort of plans of Shi
Speaker 1: Jinping are starting to really be set in motion. And
Speaker 1: so and we're still digesting exactly what this news means
Speaker 1: and will mean for Yemen. But just to read from
Speaker 1: a little bit of al ma Yudin and this is
Speaker 1: their this is their English versions. It's not perfect, but
Speaker 1: the sources pointed The sources pointed out that the Saudi
Speaker 1: vision for the solution welcomes extending the Truth in Yemen
Speaker 1: for another year in agreement with Sana, adding that the
Speaker 1: vision provides for extending the truce in exchange for handing
Speaker 1: over employee salaries, unifying the currency, and opening the port
Speaker 1: of alhu data completely. And those were the big sticking
Speaker 1: points that the who these wanted like they want their
Speaker 1: government officials to be able to be paid. The teachers
Speaker 1: have been going for years without without getting paid. The
Speaker 1: Saudi was saying, okay, fine, we'll do that, but we're
Speaker 1: not paying kind of your military and your police because
Speaker 1: we're at war with you. But our military and our
Speaker 1: police are are part of our government and this is
Speaker 1: our money. And so this seems to be a complete
Speaker 1: capitulation from Saudi Arabia, saying because I've seen elsewhere reported
Speaker 1: that military and police salaries would be included in this. Also,
Speaker 1: opening up this port completely is crucial. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the main port of entry into Yemen, and like with
Speaker 1: our baggage, we would not have been able to Oh no,
Speaker 1: no way, and it says the sources explained that an
Speaker 1: extension of the truce with these new conditions will be
Speaker 1: followed by an official Saudi announce of the end of
Speaker 1: the war and the cessation of its interference in Yemen,
Speaker 1: which means though that there will still be kind of
Speaker 1: some forces that Saudi Arabia had been supporting in Yemen
Speaker 1: that will likely continue to fight, what you know, where
Speaker 1: they're going to get the arms of the ammunition remains
Speaker 1: to be seen. How long that fight lasts also remains
Speaker 1: to be seen. There will have to be negotiations there
Speaker 1: to work that out. We'll see if the Amaradis want
Speaker 1: to get involved in that. So it's not completely over.
Speaker 1: But if Saudi Arabia gets out, that's like that's it,
Speaker 1: Like there's there isn't there is no path for this
Speaker 1: kind of rump faction that that Saudi was supporting without
Speaker 1: just Saudi Arabia constantly funneling money their way that there's
Speaker 1: like the official Yemeni government as recognized by Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: It's basically like in a hotel in Riad and so,
Speaker 1: and what Saudi Arabia is saying is like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: guys are no longer the government. We're done with this.
Speaker 1: I mean China, Iran, Russia. That is an alliance that
Speaker 1: I think is we're seeing in real time start to
Speaker 1: tighten and grow. And peace is great. There's just no
Speaker 1: If you're upset about this peace, that's a think well,
Speaker 1: you know, have a supper conversation about that. But peace
Speaker 1: is should be the ultimate goal of is the goal
Speaker 1: of international relations is peace. But you know behind this
Speaker 1: peace I think is a dark growing alliance that's not
Speaker 1: good for the world at large, right, which you know,
Speaker 1: if we didn't want the world turning against us, maybe
Speaker 1: we could have not been so you know, hostile and
Speaker 1: cynical towards the rest of the world. There's one one
Speaker 1: other line in this story I want to read because
Speaker 1: it's it shows just the fundamental lack of legitimacy of
Speaker 1: the quote unquote Many government that Saudi Arabia was supporting.
Speaker 1: They RTE. The sources stated that Saudi Arabia informed the
Speaker 1: Presidential Leadership Council. That's the fake kind of you Many
Speaker 1: government in Riod of its decision to end the war
Speaker 1: and and conclude the Many file permanently. So they walked
Speaker 1: over to the hotel. Yeah, the war's over and your
Speaker 1: files closed. Yeah. Check out to ten Ryan. We have
Speaker 1: a really good guest in this week, and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: be introducing the listeners to her and the viewers to
Speaker 1: her in just a little bit too. But maybe tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about what we're going to talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is exciting. Eliza Orleans will be joining us. She
Speaker 1: ran against Alvin Bragg as an aggressive man of the
Speaker 1: Week and as man of the week in the election,
Speaker 1: in which, you know, the big kind of campaign issue.
Speaker 1: One of the campaign issues was are you going to
Speaker 1: get Trump? How are you going to get Trump? Now?
Speaker 1: Because it was for the people who actually live in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: A lot of it was about crime and criminal justice reform,
Speaker 1: and you know who who is better on criminal justice reform.
Speaker 1: But so you know, Eliza's a public defender. She's still
Speaker 1: a public defender. She's you know, known Brag for a
Speaker 1: long time. Obviously, you know, got to know him pretty
Speaker 1: well during the campaigns. We're gonna ask her for her
Speaker 1: take on the charges. It's for her take on Brag
Speaker 1: and the As a side note, her previous career was
Speaker 1: as a reality TV star. People who were like my
Speaker 1: age would remember her from the early two thousands because
Speaker 1: she was like on the cover of all the magazines
Speaker 1: because she was like winning Survivor or like the Top
Speaker 1: and Survivor, and then she got brought back for like
Speaker 1: the Survivor Reunion or whatever. So if you're in if
Speaker 1: you were in that two thousands kind of reality world,
Speaker 1: you'll be like, do I recognize her? Like, yes, you do,
Speaker 1: you do recognize her. But so after her reality TV
Speaker 1: star turn, she went to become a public defender would
Speaker 1: have been quite wild if you had a former if
Speaker 1: she'd have won and you had a former reality TV
Speaker 1: star prosecuting a former reality TV star I was president,
Speaker 1: that would have been something. So stick around for Eliza next, Eliza,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. You're joining us from Italy? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Get taking a rare vacation? It is? What
Speaker 1: are week to be away? Huh? For sure? So what's
Speaker 1: it been like for you to follow to follow this case?
Speaker 1: As there's the anticipation. Let's start with the anticipation. What
Speaker 1: was your guess that the prosecutor Bragg was going to
Speaker 1: bring forward? And did what he actually brought forward kind
Speaker 1: of match with what you expected? Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think back to when he took office and palmerance
Speaker 1: and done very loudly quit that office because Alvin wasn't
Speaker 1: pursuing the Trump prosecution, I think if we're rewinding that
Speaker 1: far back, our anticipation a lot of us and myself included,
Speaker 1: was that Trump might not be prosecuting Donald Trump at all.
Speaker 1: So that was that was interesting. And then when it
Speaker 1: seemed as though he was starting to bring in witnesses,
Speaker 1: it really did seem as though this was all going
Speaker 1: to stem from the Stormy Daniels hush money payments by
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen, and so was surprising to see the Karen
Speaker 1: McDougall and Doorman incidents included within the falsefying business records
Speaker 1: in the first degree indictment. Remind us about that because
Speaker 1: that was that's sort of been memory hold a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I remember that incident that you know, some of
Speaker 1: the top prosecutors said, this guy is just not serious
Speaker 1: about going after Trump, so we're out of here. So
Speaker 1: were they wrong or did did he change his mind
Speaker 1: or did their quitting kind of pressure him? What's what's
Speaker 1: what's the sense among kind of the lawyer legal community
Speaker 1: in Manhattan about how you went from that moment to
Speaker 1: the moment that we saw this week. Well, I think
Speaker 1: people who know Mark Pomerance and what he did, it
Speaker 1: was pretty clear how sanctemonious and obnoxious and frankly racist
Speaker 1: he was being in his criticisms of Alvin, and he
Speaker 1: decided that if he didn't get to run the show,
Speaker 1: if anyone was going to have any oversight into what
Speaker 1: he was doing, especially a black man, he was not
Speaker 1: going to stand by and take that and then he
Speaker 1: basically decided to do this self promotional book tour, jeopardizing
Speaker 1: the investigation and now facing the repercussions of that in
Speaker 1: that he was just I believe and is going to
Speaker 1: have to deal with that. But I think that Alvin
Speaker 1: was always very serious about this. But he took the
Speaker 1: case very seriously and he wasn't going to rush into it.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, we may never know
Speaker 1: what the exactly had gone on prior to his taking
Speaker 1: office in terms of when Sybance was in charge, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem as though the prosecution was seriously going
Speaker 1: to go forward until Alvin book office. And so I
Speaker 1: think Alvin took his time, was measured and careful and
Speaker 1: really considered which charges he would be able to bring
Speaker 1: and prove the unreasonable doubt, And that is why we're
Speaker 1: seeing the indictment that we see. What do you make
Speaker 1: of how Bragg has sort of led all of this
Speaker 1: or like, as the leader of his office and as
Speaker 1: somebody who was looking into this office, who ran for
Speaker 1: this office. What do you make of how he's conducted
Speaker 1: himself as a leader over the course of the last
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, not just several days, but
Speaker 1: several weeks, several months. You know, do you think he's
Speaker 1: handled all of this well? Do you think you know
Speaker 1: there were unnecessarily do you think there were any blunders
Speaker 1: along the way, Like if you had to grade him
Speaker 1: in terms of the Trump indictment, where would you land. Well,
Speaker 1: if we're only talking about the Trump indictment, you know
Speaker 1: that I think remains to be seen. But I think
Speaker 1: he made some massive blunders in taking office and certainly
Speaker 1: has not run that office in the way that I
Speaker 1: would have. I think that the fact that he did
Speaker 1: not clean house at all, that the only people who
Speaker 1: have left that office are people who up and quit,
Speaker 1: and he did not fire a single person, means that
Speaker 1: if he even was serious about making real changes, he's
Speaker 1: had a really uphill battle in doing so, given that
Speaker 1: the entire administration has basically remained the same as it
Speaker 1: was under Sybans. So I have a lot of gripes
Speaker 1: with how Alvin is running that office, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: with regards to the Trump administration, and I mean the
Speaker 1: Trump prosecution. The Trump and Diamond has gotten come in
Speaker 1: for a lot of criticism from people who say that
Speaker 1: the attempt to raise it from a misdemeanor into a
Speaker 1: felony by saying that it's you know, in furtherance of
Speaker 1: an additional crime runs into all sorts of problems, one
Speaker 1: of them being that one of the crimes is you know,
Speaker 1: an FEC violation which wasn't actually charged. The other that
Speaker 1: it might not be even in the federal jurisdiction. And
Speaker 1: for people who really wanted to see Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: hit was something that was a slam dunk? Is this
Speaker 1: really the best that could have been done? Was you know,
Speaker 1: was there more criminal behavior from that that could have
Speaker 1: been charged? As you were running for office and you
Speaker 1: were contemplating like, Okay, how would I set up a prosecution?
Speaker 1: What kind of holes do you think you would have
Speaker 1: dug that might have been left here? Well, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about bringing forward to prosecution is that you're the
Speaker 1: person who has all of the evidence. So even when
Speaker 1: being asked about it, will campaigning, I could say, listen,
Speaker 1: if I believe Trump committed crimes in Manhattan, I will
Speaker 1: prosecute him. I will not be afraid to go after him,
Speaker 1: to cite his power and everything else. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that anyone aside from the people within that office,
Speaker 1: know what the exact evidence is at this point, So
Speaker 1: I think that are there other crimes that were committed.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe, but these are clearly the ones
Speaker 1: that Alvin feels are the strongest to go forward on.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that he would have gone forward
Speaker 1: on these charges if he didn't feel he had a
Speaker 1: very strong case because of how thoughtful and measured and
Speaker 1: cautious he is as a person. I think that in
Speaker 1: terms of whether or not there are some of these
Speaker 1: legal arguments that are being made by attorneys who've never
Speaker 1: practiced in New York State or who feel like weighing
Speaker 1: in on this, saying that, oh, well, some of the
Speaker 1: underlying crimes might be federal, he might have the preemption
Speaker 1: doctrine might apply. That is not at all fired me.
Speaker 1: I think that, first of all, Alvin hasn't had to
Speaker 1: nor has he said, exactly what those underlying crimes are.
Speaker 1: Could they be New York state tax offenses, yes. Could
Speaker 1: they be state election law violations yes? Could they be
Speaker 1: federal campaign finance violation also yes? And I don't think
Speaker 1: that there will be any issue having heard some of
Speaker 1: the arguments on the other side that those are valid
Speaker 1: underlying crimes to go forward on again. This will be
Speaker 1: up to a jury. This will be a question of
Speaker 1: fact for a jury to determine. And if the jurors
Speaker 1: feel that the misdemeanor conduct was proven but the underlying
Speaker 1: crime wasn't, they could still convict on what's called a
Speaker 1: lesser included offense, And so they could convict on the
Speaker 1: misdemeanor even though the top charges are felonies. The big
Speaker 1: thing that we've heard from the right and Emily might
Speaker 1: have more thoughts on this, has been around George Soros
Speaker 1: backed prosecutor. But I want to unpack that a little
Speaker 1: bit from the because as you remember, I covered this
Speaker 1: campaign as well, and I do remember when the Color
Speaker 1: of Change Pack was the that's the organization. I think
Speaker 1: it's spent about four million dollars in the entire year,
Speaker 1: and about a million of that was from Soros. They
Speaker 1: did eventually endorse Alvin brag they did spend on his behalf.
Speaker 1: So as as an opponent of him, what was your
Speaker 1: sense of a kind of how important was the Color
Speaker 1: of Change pack? And b did people understand that as oh,
Speaker 1: this is the Soros kind of world getting behind him,
Speaker 1: or was this Color of Change which had Soros some
Speaker 1: Sorows money. So if I remember correctly, all of that
Speaker 1: kind of happened at once. It was the New York
Speaker 1: Times endorsement, the Color of Change endorsement, which was going
Speaker 1: to include that pack spending, and a couple of other
Speaker 1: things that fell into Alvan's favor, and it felt like
Speaker 1: a domino effect. So it's hard to say that there
Speaker 1: was any one thing that really determined the course of
Speaker 1: the election. But I think that in that moment, when
Speaker 1: all of that perfect storm of endorsements raining down and
Speaker 1: therefore a ton of spending along with it, that it
Speaker 1: certainly helped Alvin get elected. But I don't really remember
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, this is Soros money. I think it
Speaker 1: was more okay, he got the Color of Change endorsement
Speaker 1: in the New York Times endorsement, and all these other
Speaker 1: things simultaneously. And I think that most of the attacks
Speaker 1: calling him this Sorows backed prosecutor are frankly anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: and we should disregard them as just completely disingenuous. So
Speaker 1: you have an op ed out in the Daily Beast
Speaker 1: this week called stopping Trump from running for office again
Speaker 1: is bad for democracy? Could you just sort of flesh
Speaker 1: out the argument you make. We've actually already touched on
Speaker 1: some of the points, but could you flesh out some
Speaker 1: of the points that you make in this this really
Speaker 1: interesting piece. Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: did not choose the headline, although it is something that
Speaker 1: I said in the piece. Basically I heard, i think,
Speaker 1: on MSNBC this week people saying, oh, well, if he's
Speaker 1: convicted of a felony, we should bar him from running
Speaker 1: for president. It should be a bar. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a bar on voting in many states, it should
Speaker 1: be a bar on running for office. And that led
Speaker 1: me to kind of just shooting off a tweet saying
Speaker 1: that this would be bad for democracy because of the
Speaker 1: way the criminal legal system operates, the way that it
Speaker 1: disenfranchises and marginalizes, you know, people of color, low income folks,
Speaker 1: you know, other marginalized groups. If we are to bar
Speaker 1: those people from running for office, preventing people with felony convictions,
Speaker 1: it would be very bad for democracy. It would be
Speaker 1: something that would be problematic. It would be you know,
Speaker 1: weaponizing something that is not that. It's not good. And so, yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are salivating at this over you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that it would apply to Trump, But the
Speaker 1: reality is we should be evaluating candidates based on their bios,
Speaker 1: their backgrounds, their histories, and individual voters should do that.
Speaker 1: And if they're convicted of a felony and that makes
Speaker 1: someone not want to vote for them, then that's fine.
Speaker 1: But due to the way our criminal legal system disproportionately
Speaker 1: disenfranchises and stigmatizes people of color and poor, vulnerable people,
Speaker 1: we should not be pushing for this as a overarching thing.
Speaker 1: If you had to put a number on it, what
Speaker 1: would you say? What portion of the campaign was about
Speaker 1: Trump and holding Trump accountable? And what portion of it
Speaker 1: was about local issues local to Manhattan voters. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I would say Trump came up in most of our
Speaker 1: forums or debates. It was certainly an issue that was
Speaker 1: brought up time and time again. There were pieces about
Speaker 1: what each of us had said with regards to a
Speaker 1: Trump prosecution, and so maybe I would say it encompassed
Speaker 1: twenty percent or less. I mean, I think the majority
Speaker 1: of the campaign was still about local issues, about bail,
Speaker 1: about criminal justice, about public safety, about other things that
Speaker 1: the DA's office would do. But I do think Trump
Speaker 1: was a huge a huge factor. How do you feel
Speaker 1: watching this unfolded? What's your portion of fomo and what's
Speaker 1: your portion of like, Man, I'm glad I'm not in
Speaker 1: the middle of this. It's funny. I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of people reach out to me saying, Hey, selfishly, I
Speaker 1: am glad that you are not the person doing this,
Speaker 1: because you would be the one getting these death threats.
Speaker 1: You would be the one whose family would be being
Speaker 1: put on blast, whose life would potentially be in danger
Speaker 1: from all of these people who are so angry about
Speaker 1: this prosecution. But that's not all how I feel. I
Speaker 1: certainly still very much wish that I were the person
Speaker 1: running the Manhattan DA's office, And yes, with regards to
Speaker 1: this one prosecution, but mostly with regards to how that
Speaker 1: office is still you know, destroying families, ruining lives, especially
Speaker 1: the lives of my clients. And so I see on
Speaker 1: a daily basis the ways in which my clients are
Speaker 1: hurt by that office, the way their prosecutions are still
Speaker 1: more of the same, and in many ways. Alvin is
Speaker 1: Cybance two point zero, and so I I very much
Speaker 1: regret not having won that election, right Sivan's two point zero,
Speaker 1: But prosecuted Trump like that seems to be kind of
Speaker 1: the distinction that we're exactly working with here. Uh well,
Speaker 1: Elizah Orleans, thank you so much for joining us. Really
Speaker 1: appreciate it, of course anytime. That was really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually thought your last question was one of the
Speaker 1: more interesting ones, just in that it was a It
Speaker 1: was a great interview. But when you at the end
Speaker 1: asked the question about whether she was more whether she
Speaker 1: had FOMO, that was a great answer just saying yes,
Speaker 1: because I think the office could be run better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love people who want to be in the ring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you're going to try to throw your hat
Speaker 1: in the ring, you've got to be you gotta want it.
Speaker 1: And the amount of misogyny that a former reality TV
Speaker 1: star like her would be dealing with, yeah, would be
Speaker 1: just absolutely extraordinary. Would it would? The country is having
Speaker 1: a difficult enough with the racism getting you know, thrown
Speaker 1: at Alvin Bragg as a result of this, It would.
Speaker 1: It would be such a spectacle, and it is such
Speaker 1: a spectacle. If we were destined for a spectacle, no
Speaker 1: matter what, that's the story of the United States of America.
Speaker 1: We're always destined for a spectacle. I hope she runs
Speaker 1: again for dad be interesting to follow him. And you know,
Speaker 1: if if this falls apart and Brag's hands, then certainly
Speaker 1: that makes it much more difficult for Brag to run
Speaker 1: for reelection. Yeah, and he's gotten a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: even just since we were on the air. At at
Speaker 1: the Federals, we published a list of twelve I think
Speaker 1: it was like liberals and anti Trump pundits who have
Speaker 1: questioned Bragg's indictment. And it goes from like Andy McCabe,
Speaker 1: Like Andy McCabe. A few people are like hungrier for
Speaker 1: you know, Trump to be in prison than him. Has
Speaker 1: anybody gotten Comy on the record? Comy tweeted, I think
Speaker 1: he tweeted like today is a good day, something stupid
Speaker 1: like that. I know, right, but yeah, Brag is really
Speaker 1: you know, there have been New York Times, New Yorker
Speaker 1: op eds and support of what he did, but then
Speaker 1: there's also been a chorus of establishment voices questioning it,
Speaker 1: which is when you're anti Trump, you're not used to that. No,
Speaker 1: the Great Brag Drag. Anyway, thanks everybody for joining us,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week.