Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today,
Speaker 1: extra amazing bro show. People live for the pound there.
Speaker 1: It's good to see Ryan.
Speaker 2: Going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's going to be amazing. It's Crystal is
Speaker 1: off today, but we still have an amazing array of topics.
Speaker 1: I got to do the tough part. I actually got
Speaker 1: to set up this damn show. So what are we
Speaker 1: covering today? TikTok. So the House passed a piece of
Speaker 1: legislation that we either force a sale or band TikTok
Speaker 1: if their parent company, Bike Dance does not agree to
Speaker 1: sell it. We're going to talk about that. What exactly
Speaker 1: is in the bill? Who is for it, who is
Speaker 1: against it? We're going to present all sides. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a debate here. State of
Speaker 1: Georgia also throwing out some very critical charges on Donald
Speaker 1: Trump case down there, specifically actually related to that quote.
Speaker 1: Perfect phone call with Brad Roeckensberger. So excited to break
Speaker 1: some of that down. RFK Junior making waves, possibly announcing
Speaker 1: his vice definitely announcing his vice prosesential candidate next week.
Speaker 1: Some interesting names there on the list, Aaron Rodgers, Jesse Ventura,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different folks. Ben Shapiro, by his own admission,
Speaker 1: lighting the Internet on fire, coming out against social security
Speaker 1: and the retirement age. Let's just say interesting to say
Speaker 1: the least Ryan particular is going to break that one down.
Speaker 1: And then Don Lemon dropping an or doing an interview
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk and unceremoniously being fired by Elon with
Speaker 1: his new partnership on Twitter before it even began, so
Speaker 1: hilarity ensued for every party involved. And then Ryan, you've
Speaker 1: got a great guest for us today. His name is
Speaker 1: Dan Fuk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the envoy to Haiti who resigned it.
Speaker 3: That's protest a couple of years ago. If you read
Speaker 3: his resignation letter, what he said would happen as a
Speaker 3: result of Biden's policy towards Haiti.
Speaker 2: It's precisely what is unfiled for the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited to talk so well, you in particularly
Speaker 1: have been such a fantastic resource on Haiti. So I'm
Speaker 1: really really glad that we could have you in the
Speaker 1: chair today. So all right, let's go ahead and start
Speaker 1: with tick. Oh before I get to that. Of course,
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Speaker 1: that is coming down the pipeline. Just had a meeting
Speaker 1: about it yesterday. I can't give away too much, can't
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Speaker 2: You become a premium subscriber.
Speaker 1: It's not going to ask, right, and that's right unless
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Speaker 1: the first to know about it as always. So let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and start with TikTok. So there was a
Speaker 1: major legislation past the House of Representatives yesterday. Let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. How each
Speaker 1: House member voted on the bill that could ban TikTok. Overall,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty overwhelming majority that went ahead and passed.
Speaker 1: You had three hundred and fifty two votes that supported,
Speaker 1: you had sixty five votes that opposed. In terms of
Speaker 1: the breakdown, one hundred and fifty five Democrats voted yes GOP,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety seven fifty Democrats voted no, fifteen
Speaker 1: Republicans voted no. There were fourteen overall who did not vote,
Speaker 1: and only one person who voted at present. That one
Speaker 1: person is Yasmina Crockett. I wonder what her objection or
Speaker 1: not objection to the bill was, but anyway, so that's
Speaker 1: the overall breakdown in terms of the people who voted no,
Speaker 1: and who are Republicans, I think this is pretty noteworthy.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are Freedom Caucus more libertarian types.
Speaker 1: We have Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Warren Davidson, Matt Gates,
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green, Klay Higgins, and let's see Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: Thomas Massey, Tom McClintock, Alex Mooney, Barrymore, Scott Perry, David Schweiker,
Speaker 1: and Greg Stuby, So disproportionately kind of the dissident right
Speaker 1: more MAGA libertarian Freedom Caucus exactly a pretty bipartisan I
Speaker 1: would say in terms of the support. Now, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion on what the hell is in
Speaker 1: this bill or not We're going to break that down,
Speaker 1: but I thought it would be useful for everyone to
Speaker 1: present the cases for and against by kind of the
Speaker 1: two major legislative champions on either side. First, he's going
Speaker 1: to be Congressman Mike Gallagher, who co sponsored and authored
Speaker 1: the legislation. Here's what he had to say in his
Speaker 1: case for the bill.
Speaker 4: TikTok is a threat to our national security because it
Speaker 4: is owned by byte Dance, which does the bidding of
Speaker 4: the Chinese Communist Party. We know this because Byteedance leadership
Speaker 4: says so, and because Chinese law requires it. This bill
Speaker 4: therefore forces TikTok to break up with the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 4: It does not apply to American companies. It only applies
Speaker 4: to companies subject to the control of foreign adversaries defined
Speaker 4: by Congress. It says nothing about election interference and cannot
Speaker 4: be turned against any American social media platform. It does
Speaker 4: not impact websites in general. The only impacted sites are
Speaker 4: those associated with foreign adversary apps, such as TikTok dot com.
Speaker 4: It can never be used to penalize individuals. The text
Speaker 4: explicitly prohibits that, and it cannot cannot be used to
Speaker 4: censor speech. It takes no position at all on the
Speaker 4: content of speech. Only foreign adversary control. Foreign adversary control
Speaker 4: of what is becoming the dominant news platform for Americans
Speaker 4: under thirty.
Speaker 1: Hang on to that foreign adversary. That's going to be
Speaker 1: a line of contention. Let's hear from Congressman Thomas Massey,
Speaker 1: who laid out the case against the bill. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 5: They've described the TikTok application as a trojan horse. But
Speaker 5: there's some of us who feel that, either intentionally or unintentionally,
Speaker 5: this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a trojan horse.
Speaker 5: Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment
Speaker 5: implications here. Americans have the right to view information. We
Speaker 5: don't need to be protected by the government from information.
Speaker 5: Some of us just don't want the president picking which
Speaker 5: apps we can put on our phones or which websites
Speaker 5: that we can visit.
Speaker 2: We don't think that's appropriate.
Speaker 5: We also think it's dangerous to give the president that
Speaker 5: kind of power, to give him the power to decide
Speaker 5: what Americans can see on their phones and their computers.
Speaker 5: To give him that sort of discretion, we also think
Speaker 5: is dangerous. Now people say that this TikTok band will
Speaker 5: only apply to TikTok or maybe another company that pops
Speaker 5: up just like TikTok. But the bill is written so
Speaker 5: broadly that the president could abuse that discretion and include
Speaker 5: other companies that aren't just social media companies.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's where it is, right. I've talked a
Speaker 1: lot here, So give us your reaction.
Speaker 3: What do you think I mean, I've got a couple
Speaker 3: of different reactions. One I think you can't even respond to,
Speaker 3: which is that Okay, I can understand why no country
Speaker 3: would want a different country controlling its news environment, Like, well,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't want kind of Russia owning NBC.
Speaker 2: News or whatever.
Speaker 1: Take rush out of it. Let's just say any China,
Speaker 1: Japan country, fine, even in neutral Brazil love Rezila.
Speaker 6: Like.
Speaker 3: From the perspective of US national security interests, I can
Speaker 3: see the argument I don't care, like I'm not a
Speaker 3: part of US national security interests, and I think most
Speaker 3: people who use TikTok also don't care. And I think,
Speaker 3: particularly with what the US has done with its hegemony
Speaker 3: around the world since World War Two. It has not
Speaker 3: earned the kind of moral credit among a lot of
Speaker 3: Americans to say, you know what, so you say, you
Speaker 3: need these extraordinary powers to crack down on my social
Speaker 3: media apps so that you can continue to do what
Speaker 3: you've been doing for the last fifty to seventy years
Speaker 3: around the world. Yeah, no, thanks, Lets chairman, she have
Speaker 3: a shot.
Speaker 1: So here's what I would say in response, Ryan, is
Speaker 1: that take national security out of it. I believe very
Speaker 1: strongly in US markets and in our principle of sovereignty
Speaker 1: and reciprocal trade. So, for example, President Biden yesterday came
Speaker 1: out against the acquisition of US steal by Nippon Steel. Well,
Speaker 1: Japan is our one of our great allies. I mean,
Speaker 1: unlike the Europeans, they actually produce things and you know,
Speaker 1: are important to the global economy. And they you know,
Speaker 1: also are willing to defend ourselves if we ever give
Speaker 1: them the ability. So there's a lot going on for Japan.
Speaker 1: I love Japan. I don't see any force, any problem
Speaker 1: in the future from a national security perspective. That said,
Speaker 1: we can't allow a Japanese company to own US steel.
Speaker 1: US steel. We recognize one hundred percent as critical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: and I wonder where you draw the line. So for example, Huawei,
Speaker 1: Huawei which was banned by the Trump administration from critical
Speaker 1: access to telecom. So in that scenario, like I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems to makes sense to me, we have critical
Speaker 1: infrastructure the wirings literally of US communications. Well, there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be all that much of a substantive difference
Speaker 1: between the two. And really, when it comes down to again,
Speaker 1: even taking national security out of it, baseline fairness level,
Speaker 1: American companies can't do business in China. Even if you
Speaker 1: want to do business in China, you have to have
Speaker 1: a Chinese subsidiary that owns fifty one percent. Our tech
Speaker 1: companies are completely banned over there. You may not like
Speaker 1: the tech companies. I don't, but they're at least under
Speaker 1: our jurisdiction. They're US citizens, they're subject to US law.
Speaker 1: TikTok and ByteDance are not subject to any of that.
Speaker 1: I will give the countercase, and I would like for
Speaker 1: you to expound on some of this. Michael Tree, I
Speaker 1: think has done the best job of overlaying some of
Speaker 1: the biggest concerns within the bill. Let's go put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. He says, here are some
Speaker 1: of the extensive points that I have raised about this
Speaker 1: bill itself. The bill goes well beyond banning TikTok, targeting
Speaker 1: any quote website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or
Speaker 1: immersive technology application claimed to be a quote foreign adversary
Speaker 1: controlled that includes China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. He says,
Speaker 1: I agree with Congressman Warren Davidson, who pointed out in
Speaker 1: his floor speech at the wide arranging definition of application
Speaker 1: could be attempt future attempts to prohibit other widely used
Speaker 1: apps like telegram. The bill authorizes the future expulsion actions
Speaker 1: to be taken unilaterally by the President, provided that he
Speaker 1: determines that an application provided tickets significant threat to national
Speaker 1: curity of the US. He says, talk specifically about the
Speaker 1: president possibly making unilateral determination. I quibble actually with Michael's
Speaker 1: definition here, and he says, I don't support handing radical
Speaker 1: new speech of bridging powers to either Biden or to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump go ahead of Ryan.
Speaker 3: So the broader point that Michael is making is one
Speaker 3: that you need to take into serious consideration, which is,
Speaker 3: be careful what power you give to the United States government.
Speaker 3: I agree whenever Congress, uh, you know, says like look,
Speaker 3: I promise this is this is all we'll care about,
Speaker 3: just this, just this one little thing, because what you're
Speaker 3: saying is reasonable. Like every country should you know, be
Speaker 3: able to have sovereignty over its critical infrastructure.
Speaker 2: If if you don't, you don't really.
Speaker 3: Have democracy because I'm a country, you know, yeah, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have a country because you know, as a democratic public,
Speaker 3: you elect representatives who then are going to execute the
Speaker 3: expression of the will of that public. But if they
Speaker 3: can't actually do that, if they don't have the levers
Speaker 3: because some other country has the levers, yeah, then you
Speaker 3: don't have then you don't have a country anymore. So fine,
Speaker 3: I get now, setting aside whether I support the US
Speaker 3: being a country and like, given everything is done around
Speaker 3: the world, Yeah, okay, fine, that makes sense from a
Speaker 3: kind of basic level. But as Michael is saying, what
Speaker 3: else does this allow the government to do? And do
Speaker 3: we trust the government to stay within the lines? So,
Speaker 3: for instance, is telegram next telegram founded by a Russian
Speaker 3: who now has I think he fled Russian twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: I think he now has dual French and Amaraatei citizenship.
Speaker 3: So Amaradis are currently our friends or the French right.
Speaker 1: So neither would qualify under the bill.
Speaker 2: But he is Russian, he's got a Russian name.
Speaker 1: Well, he is about to ipo his company, and so
Speaker 1: that means it would be publicly traded, which means it
Speaker 1: actually wouldn't even be subject to this, And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what it gets.
Speaker 2: So if Tiktoko's public, then then it's.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, well, okay, that's up to byte dance. You
Speaker 1: know by dance. Hey, if you're you are welcome to
Speaker 1: actually publicly trade here on the New York Stock Exchange
Speaker 1: and bring your company into full compliance with US law.
Speaker 1: Guess what they will never do that because they're controlled
Speaker 1: again and owned by the Chinese. And I don't even
Speaker 1: care about that. You you run your country the way
Speaker 1: you want. I'm not saying we should democratize China or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't care what the Chinese want to do in
Speaker 1: their own country. Point is only that if you look
Speaker 1: at this from basic level, and even with the bill,
Speaker 1: I completely understand. Look. I came out for example, Restrict Act.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that one the restrict actors The previous
Speaker 1: iteration is the previous iteration of the TikTok ban. It
Speaker 1: would have given broad authority of the US government to
Speaker 1: basically designate the president solely to unilaterally declare any application
Speaker 1: as a threat to US national security. Absolutely, no way. However,
Speaker 1: I have read this bill. It's only twelve pages long,
Speaker 1: and I actually I'm going to ask my team. We're
Speaker 1: going to put a link to the bill in the description.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to go and read it for them.
Speaker 3: In twelve pages tiny because they only use the page.
Speaker 1: It's really not big, like it's not like triple space
Speaker 1: only you know what, maybe a thousand words. My monologues
Speaker 1: are longer than the stand bill. It's not hard to understand.
Speaker 1: Friend of mine, Brendan Carr, he's an FCC commissioner. He
Speaker 1: put together kind of a rebuttal to some of these arguments.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there, and I'm going to read
Speaker 1: from some of them. He says, quote, if you are
Speaker 1: an individual user, this bill confers zero authority. I think
Speaker 1: that's very important because you're not going after TikTok users
Speaker 1: specific Second, this bill applies only to applications controlled by
Speaker 1: one of four foreign adversary governments. Previously codified into law
Speaker 1: by Congress China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. The bill
Speaker 1: is clear that it is not enough to simply waive
Speaker 1: operations there or to do business there. It must be
Speaker 1: controlled by one of those foreign governments. I want to
Speaker 1: really spend a lot of time on this, because this
Speaker 1: is where I think Michael gets it completely wrong. One
Speaker 1: of for foreign adversary governments, as again codified into law
Speaker 1: by Congress. The bill does not say so. For example,
Speaker 1: if President Biden wanted to, let's make up a country, Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1: If President Biden wanted to just say Zimbabwe is now
Speaker 1: a threat to national security, it would require Congress to
Speaker 1: actually codify into law that Zimbabwe is now a foreign
Speaker 1: as foreign adversary control government. Now do I trust Congress
Speaker 1: one hundred percent? No, I don't trust Congress. Do I
Speaker 1: trust the President Trump Biden? Are them absolutely not? My
Speaker 1: point though, is that it is not unilateral in the
Speaker 1: way that the Restrict Act was, and it would require
Speaker 1: at least theoretically democratic agreement to confer foreign adversary status.
Speaker 1: This is where I've seen a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are like, well, Rumble and Twitter are next. It's like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: first of all, Rumble is a publicly traded company. You
Speaker 1: can go and look who owns their shares or not.
Speaker 1: I actually looked it up right before we went. Guess what,
Speaker 1: It's not twenty percent controlled, which is the threshold for
Speaker 1: foreign ownership. That's number one. Number two. Saudi Arabia, for example,
Speaker 1: owns I forget some small stake in Elon's Twitter. Well, first,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabis on that list. Second, even if they were,
Speaker 1: it's not up to twenty percent. And my other take
Speaker 1: here would be, well, an any company that I think
Speaker 1: is even remotely important, I don't really think a twenty
Speaker 1: percent ownership should be had by a foreign government period.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a radical on that, but you can
Speaker 1: argue with me if you would like. I'm just coming
Speaker 1: back to the fact that, look, I understand the concerns
Speaker 1: about overreach, and I extend people are like, oh, Patriot
Speaker 1: Act two point zero. The Patriot Act was what three
Speaker 1: hundred hundred and fifty pages. This is not the Patriot Act.
Speaker 1: It's not even remotely the same. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of things in here which have a lot more onerous control.
Speaker 1: He also Brendan points out it is only after a
Speaker 1: public process and Congress has been reported to and then
Speaker 1: codify this new thing. Could even this specific national security
Speaker 1: threat then come in, and then finally, every single one
Speaker 1: of these hoops must be cleared and met. More So,
Speaker 1: what everybody is ignoring and if you will see too,
Speaker 1: if you were happy to read in the bill, is
Speaker 1: that any company that is subject to any of this
Speaker 1: legislation enforcement then has a one hundred and eighty day
Speaker 1: period to actually challenge this and have their day in court.
Speaker 1: Bike Dance, TikTok and others fully would be able to
Speaker 1: bring a challenge in the US District Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: in the District of Columbia, and then if they want to,
Speaker 1: they could kick it up to the Supreme Court and
Speaker 1: they can rule on the constitutionality of this legislation. But
Speaker 1: having read it and all of that, I don't think
Speaker 1: if violence the constitution from a basic trade reciprocal perspective,
Speaker 1: and you know, given the fact that you have access
Speaker 1: to the US court system, you have a pretty onerous process.
Speaker 1: I mean, when's the last time trying to Congress agreed
Speaker 1: on anything other than Ukraine, on what is a foreign
Speaker 1: adversary or whatever. There's look, I would just I would
Speaker 1: just ask you to at least admit this. It's not
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act two points so it's can you can
Speaker 1: oppose this and say and at least admit it is
Speaker 1: not Patriot.
Speaker 2: No, it's definitely not the Patriot Act two point zero.
Speaker 3: And I think one thing that annoys me about how
Speaker 3: this is unfolded, and it doesn't really undermine your point,
Speaker 3: but I think it's an important context is that the
Speaker 3: US allowed this to happen by empowering our kind of
Speaker 3: tech oligarchs. Yes, and then the Obama administration, then Trump
Speaker 3: allowing all sorts of mergers and then allowing this like
Speaker 3: catch and kill, where you know, anytime there was a
Speaker 3: decent app that was about to take off, Facebook or
Speaker 3: Google or somebody else would like buy it up and
Speaker 3: then just kill it, so that our crappy little apps
Speaker 3: and social media companies continued to be the only ones
Speaker 3: thinking that the world had no alternative, no way to
Speaker 3: challenge them, because they.
Speaker 2: Would just come in and beat them.
Speaker 3: But then and then TikTok comes along and does something
Speaker 3: very well that people like more, and it caught our
Speaker 3: you know, protected industry, protected by our kind of monopoly
Speaker 3: anti failure to enforce anti trust policy them caught them sleeping,
Speaker 3: and at the same time, we were working hand in
Speaker 3: glove with these tech companies spying on Americans, spying on
Speaker 3: everybody around the world, and allowing them to just hoover
Speaker 3: up everybody's.
Speaker 2: Data so that we could have a little backdoor to it.
Speaker 3: And so it's a failure to take any responsibility for
Speaker 3: doing your own industrial policy, for guiding your own kind
Speaker 3: of social media policy, for protecting the civil liberties of
Speaker 3: your own population. And so when they then come crying
Speaker 3: about TikTok, it just lands on.
Speaker 1: I get that. And you know what my response would be.
Speaker 1: You know what, Luckily for you and me, we live
Speaker 1: in a democratic country and we can vote. And Lena
Speaker 1: Khan is, yeah, exactly we you know our government. We
Speaker 1: elected Joe Biden, he appointed Lena Khan. She is currently
Speaker 1: sticking it to big business and to these tech companies.
Speaker 1: I would also say Joe Biden has actually had a
Speaker 1: significant number of executive orders that have impact on data
Speaker 1: transfer to China.
Speaker 7: All of that.
Speaker 1: So look, I mean at that. For me, a lot
Speaker 1: of this comes back to it's just like then you
Speaker 1: don't believe in the government at all, and if you.
Speaker 2: Don't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's like, but then just be a libertarian, like I
Speaker 1: don't know what to say, you know, then be Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro would come out against an income tax. Like. It's like,
Speaker 1: I believe in the government. I believe in the American
Speaker 1: and I believe in the concept of government, not the
Speaker 1: current government. I believe in the American people. I believe
Speaker 1: that representative democracy on a long enough timeline eventually does
Speaker 1: deliver roughly what some people want. It's not always easy,
Speaker 1: and it's not nearly as what actionable as it should be.
Speaker 1: And I would like to return to that. That said,
Speaker 1: it's not China, And like, when I look at this,
Speaker 1: it is very obvious that a forced sale again, not
Speaker 1: a ban. A forced sale is the most elegant option.
Speaker 1: You force them to sell it. They get to get
Speaker 1: all these TikTokers and all these content creators. I don't
Speaker 1: want them to lose it. Listen, I don't like TikTok.
Speaker 1: I don't use TikTok, but it's in free country. You
Speaker 1: can use it. You want to rot your brain seventy
Speaker 1: five what is it? Seventy five minutes a day on
Speaker 1: social media? Be it Twitter, TikTok, or everybody else. That's
Speaker 1: your business. You know, you can do it each other.
Speaker 2: They're saying they're not going to sell it. Do you
Speaker 2: believe them?
Speaker 1: I don't believe them. Well, okay, we'll put it.
Speaker 3: Two ways to explain to people that the bill forces
Speaker 3: a sale within one hundred and eighty b dance by
Speaker 3: byt dance to American or I guess they could go
Speaker 3: public too, and if they don't do that, then it is.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 3: And so the head of TikTok is saying we're not
Speaker 3: going to sell it.
Speaker 2: It will be banned.
Speaker 1: Well, I think as a negotiating position because what they
Speaker 1: want to say this and they want to get all
Speaker 1: these TikTokers come out and lobby against Congress, which by
Speaker 1: the way, is actually a massively backfired hilariously enough. But
Speaker 1: I mean, at the end of the day, it's really
Speaker 1: up to bike dance. Are you going to say no to?
Speaker 1: I mean, the sale price of TikTok is probably going
Speaker 1: to be nearly a trillion bucks, like it's going to
Speaker 1: be eight nine hundred billion. There's already multiple US investors
Speaker 1: that have lined up and let me head that off too.
Speaker 1: Because Crystal brought this up She's like, well, Sam Oltman
Speaker 1: an open a Eye have said they're going to buy it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't agree with that. And Luckily
Speaker 1: for me, I live in the United States of America,
Speaker 1: where our court system can block that we want to. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: regulators have a say over who gets to buy it,
Speaker 1: buy it or not. Unfortunately, the real thing that could
Speaker 1: happen is this could become a geopolitical football. And don't
Speaker 1: forget because Bike Dance doesn't get to run its own business.
Speaker 1: The CEO Jiang Jiming, even if he does want to
Speaker 1: sell it to you know, whoever, somebody here in America,
Speaker 1: some investor, conglomerate or something like that, he would still
Speaker 1: have to get sign off from Chinese regulator. So I
Speaker 1: don't think it's actually a matter of whether Xiang Xiuming
Speaker 1: or the by Dance wants to sell it. This is
Speaker 1: all in the Sheing's court, whether it's really up to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, just yesterday the Chinese Ministry of Affairs came
Speaker 1: out and said they came out and said it is
Speaker 1: unfair and goes against the principles of market fairness. And
Speaker 1: this is what drives me nuts. I'm like, Okay, name
Speaker 1: one US tech company that gets to do business in China, one,
Speaker 1: just one. The only one that comes in even remotely
Speaker 1: close is Tesla, and there's a lot of problems with
Speaker 1: Eylon's relationship right now. With that, so any final thoughts
Speaker 1: before we move on.
Speaker 3: I just also find it wild that the American politicians
Speaker 3: basically blame TikTok for young people being against genocide and gaza.
Speaker 3: I think that seems to be the thing that really
Speaker 3: pushed them over the top.
Speaker 1: I think you were right, and that is a fair concern,
Speaker 1: And if I were you, I would bring up the
Speaker 1: exact same thing. What is the impetus the action of why?
Speaker 1: I unfortunately do think that Israel and all that did
Speaker 1: play a significant thing. And if it was a band,
Speaker 1: I think I would speak out against it at this
Speaker 1: point because I don't think that that's right.
Speaker 3: But given the fact, what happens if it does get banned, Well,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the thing like let's say that we
Speaker 3: were bluffing in some ways. Yeah, let's say they call
Speaker 3: our bluff and actually just not like take it down.
Speaker 1: I think it would be unfortunate. But I think that
Speaker 1: the principle of reciprocal trade is too important. And I
Speaker 1: would also say I blame Trump a huge part of this.
Speaker 1: He should have finished the job in twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 1: people can go roll the tape. I've been talking about
Speaker 1: this guy since two thousand.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you believing in the idea of government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is things.
Speaker 2: It's just this.
Speaker 1: I do believe that the government can and has worked
Speaker 1: in the past. If were relatively recently, it's really totally
Speaker 1: gone off the rails, you know, since what the post
Speaker 1: nine to eleven security state. But you know, we've been
Speaker 1: through very dark periods. That doesn't mean that we can't
Speaker 1: reclaim it. I believe very much in democracy in the
Speaker 1: American project government. Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: And that's why we are very lucky. I think to
Speaker 1: be live in a country we actually get to vote,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a literal dictatorship which is completely controlled
Speaker 1: by this this company.
Speaker 3: And if this brought about genuine self government, yeah, and
Speaker 3: actually representative.
Speaker 1: Hey, let's put about it this way. And I would
Speaker 1: say this is what I would say to Crystal too.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, young people will rise up. Good, Okay.
Speaker 1: If people are pissed off and that's the other thing. Look,
Speaker 1: this is my opinion, this is my voice. If enough
Speaker 1: young people or whomever TikTok users, because not just young
Speaker 1: people get pissed off about this, you are welcome to
Speaker 1: have a campaign and to vote and to extract a
Speaker 1: promise from the from your legislature and from Joe Biden
Speaker 1: or Donald Trump, whoever would be the next president, and
Speaker 1: you can use, luckily, you know, again your voice to
Speaker 1: overturn this. You be my guest. I would fight against it,
Speaker 1: but I believe very much in their ability to try
Speaker 1: and to campaign against it, so that kind of brings
Speaker 1: it kind of the core principles I think that are
Speaker 1: in the debate. You know, even though my I think
Speaker 1: my opinion is strong, like I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: you got your voice in and also to voice Thomas
Speaker 1: Massey's opinion, Michael Tracy, I highly recommend, though you know,
Speaker 1: I have great respect for those two individuals, so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tarnish them or anything. I think
Speaker 1: they have a legitimate point of view, and we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens.
Speaker 3: And Ben Franklin say, we have made a sticky algorithmic app.
Speaker 2: If you can keep it.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1: In terms of the future, I don't know where this
Speaker 1: is going to go from what I have heard. I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you think it. At the very least, it's
Speaker 1: gonna take a while in the Senate if it ever does. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm dubious that it passes it all personally, just because
Speaker 1: you got Democrats who control the chamber. Do they really
Speaker 1: want to be on the you know, let's say the
Speaker 1: app does get ban, that they really want to get
Speaker 1: screwed by something like that. I don't think they're wanting
Speaker 1: to take that rest.
Speaker 3: So there's not enough weed that you could legalize to
Speaker 3: earn back the numbers that you're going to lose from panning.
Speaker 2: TikTok.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll see. All right, let's move on to the
Speaker 1: next part. This is Georgia. Major news out of there.
Speaker 6: Ryan.
Speaker 1: I'm actually very curious for your take. I'll just set
Speaker 1: up the details. Let's put this up there please on
Speaker 1: the screen. The judge who is currently overseeing that twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election interference case involving Trump has actually thrown out
Speaker 1: six separate charges, quashing the six counts in the indictment,
Speaker 1: three actually against Trump. The judge has left in place
Speaker 1: ten other counts that Trump faces, and the prosecutors are
Speaker 1: now saying they're going to try and seek a new
Speaker 1: indictment to reinstate the ones that he had dismissed. This
Speaker 1: is the Associated Press. Ruling is a blow for Fulton
Speaker 1: County DA Fanny Willis, who already is facing an effort
Speaker 1: to have her removed from the prosecution over her romantic
Speaker 1: relationship with the colleague. We will get to that. It
Speaker 1: is the first time, actually that any charges against Trump
Speaker 1: in any of his criminal cases have been dismissed, and
Speaker 1: much of this traces back to the use of a
Speaker 1: Georgia Rico law, which was associated previously with mobsters, that
Speaker 1: was then used to go after Trump in this particular case.
Speaker 1: The defense attorneys obviously said that this was the correct decision,
Speaker 1: But the reason why this is especially big is that
Speaker 1: one of these counts stems from that quote perfect phone
Speaker 1: call where Trump told Brad Rathensberger to quote find eleven
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eighty votes. The reason that it was
Speaker 1: dismissed again has something to do with the complicated like
Speaker 1: minutia over Rico. But considering how that was such a
Speaker 1: flagship public part of the case against Trump. Ryan, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what you think about this in terms of thees.
Speaker 3: Basically, what the judge so to step back, what prosecutors had,
Speaker 3: What prosecutors had to do in order to make this
Speaker 3: case was to kind of lay on a set of
Speaker 3: facts onto a series of laws that were not really
Speaker 3: written with this specific thing in mind. Like when Georgia
Speaker 3: sat down and wrote its election laws, they were not
Speaker 3: thinking in the back of their mind that the actual
Speaker 3: president of the United States would be putting pressure on lawmakers,
Speaker 3: on the governor, on election officials, on regular poll workers
Speaker 3: to find the.
Speaker 2: Votes to flip the vote.
Speaker 3: So because they didn't have that in the back of
Speaker 3: their mind, they didn't, you know, specifically say the President
Speaker 3: of the United States shall not use his office to
Speaker 3: pressure poll workers to find eleven thousand votes. And so
Speaker 3: what they had to do is take other laws that
Speaker 3: are that that are written around the idea of protecting
Speaker 3: election infrastructure and protecting protecting the integrity of elections, and
Speaker 3: they've just basically took every law that they could find
Speaker 3: and slapped it into the indictment. And what the judge
Speaker 3: ruled here is that you didn't you didn't make your
Speaker 3: case about how these specific actions actually tie specifically to
Speaker 3: these laws. And so now what the prosecutors are saying
Speaker 3: are like, okay, well we consider these to be edits
Speaker 3: and red lines. We're going to send you a new
Speaker 3: indictment that actually does spell out with, you know, with
Speaker 3: more clarity on why we think that these laws actually
Speaker 3: do apply to the perfect phone call, or to the
Speaker 3: or to the other, or or to the other elements
Speaker 3: of what they say as a crime. So I think
Speaker 3: that's the that's the problem that we're having. It wasn't
Speaker 3: designed with this in mind, and so they're trying to
Speaker 3: shoot horn in laws that do exist because they're like, well.
Speaker 2: This must be illegal.
Speaker 3: Now let's go Now, let's go find the laws that
Speaker 3: show that it's Illeger excellent point.
Speaker 1: The other really noteworthy thing to me about this was
Speaker 1: that the timeline just got pushed out. So, for example,
Speaker 1: now the judge has granted actually a six month window
Speaker 1: to have to resubmit this case to the grand jury. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what date is it. It's March fourteen, So now you
Speaker 1: got six months. I mean, who knows. You know, look,
Speaker 1: especially with all this other nonsense going on in that office,
Speaker 1: can you imagine how difficult it must be to actually
Speaker 1: get some work done. And who's the lawyer who's going
Speaker 1: to be doing it, because it ain't going to be
Speaker 1: Nathan Wade. Well, he has or she has to then
Speaker 1: find a new prosecutor. They have to redo the case.
Speaker 1: They have to re grand jury the case. Don't forget
Speaker 1: the last time we did grand jury this case was
Speaker 1: what over a year ago. Now at this point, this
Speaker 1: stuff takes a long time. So they've got to drop
Speaker 1: new charges, then go to the grand jury, then go
Speaker 1: through legal review. They're running out of time. Thing, out
Speaker 1: of time. I mean, how are they going to try
Speaker 1: and try this case? But November, I just go with
Speaker 1: the charges you've got. But they can't because they need
Speaker 1: that phone call charge. They because it's such a critical
Speaker 1: phone exact, because the phone call charge is such a
Speaker 1: critical piece of the public case against Trump. It's one
Speaker 1: of the things that people and everybody's the thing, the
Speaker 1: thing that publicly and let's be honest, like this isn't
Speaker 1: just about application of the law, right like a lot
Speaker 1: of this is political. Well within that, then they need
Speaker 1: this particular thing unless they do come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that they do want to try and have the trial
Speaker 1: beforehand and move ahead. But that's not what they've at
Speaker 1: least said for now. So that brings us to a
Speaker 1: couple of the other criminal cases right now, the only
Speaker 1: criminal case going forward against Trump before the election, almost
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, is that dumbass Stormy Daniels case in
Speaker 1: New York State, which does nobody cares, which.
Speaker 2: He can get convicted of and pay a fine.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think it's like probation or whatever, but
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 2: I want to see him doing community service.
Speaker 1: Right And even then, I think rich people can buy
Speaker 1: their way out of community service. Isn't that true? Like
Speaker 1: the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing you can use your nonprofit
Speaker 1: or what. That's actually a crazy loophole in the justice system.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other Yes, and judges can try to
Speaker 3: stop that if they're either being petty or just which
Speaker 3: whichever way you want to say it. Yeah, yes, okay,
Speaker 3: like they're going to sign specific stuff. Okay, that's good,
Speaker 3: but that it gets enough, then it gets then it
Speaker 3: gets into the hands of the social right the other side,
Speaker 3: and they can buy their way out of it.
Speaker 2: So you're right, You're definitely right.
Speaker 1: Being rich in this country is always a favor. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the next part in terms of the Hill,
Speaker 1: please put that up there on the screen where they
Speaker 1: talk about the disqualification trial that's actually coming up. It's
Speaker 1: a hearing, so a Georgia judge, the same judge is
Speaker 1: expected now to actually hear this week argument as to
Speaker 1: whether Fanny Willis herself should be booted from this entire
Speaker 1: case the office that being brought then by the Trump team.
Speaker 1: So obviously this goes back to the torrid affair between
Speaker 1: her and mister Nathan Wade. And then there's psychotic and
Speaker 1: insane divorce case proceedings which are broadcast live for everyone
Speaker 1: to see. She claims that she reimbursed him hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in cash, with no records, no withdrawal
Speaker 1: receipts or others. Maybe you see if you can believe her,
Speaker 1: there's no way to prove what she's saying. And Ryan,
Speaker 1: as you've laid out previously, we don't care about the affair.
Speaker 1: We care about the in kind gifts because mister Wade
Speaker 1: was paid upwards of what seven hundred thousand dollars by
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia. And obviously if he's both profiting
Speaker 1: from the state and then giving possibly in kind gifts
Speaker 1: to his lover and girlfriend with state money. That is
Speaker 1: a blatant violation of Georgia.
Speaker 3: That's the reason not to hire your girlfriend or your
Speaker 3: boyfriend with public money, because then you need to have
Speaker 3: an accounting of every time you go on a date
Speaker 3: or a vacation.
Speaker 2: Otherwise you're in violation of these kickback laws.
Speaker 3: But obviously you can't have a paper trail or a
Speaker 3: public accounting if it's an affair.
Speaker 2: So those those two things are in direct conflict.
Speaker 3: Keeping your romantic relationship the secret and documenting it is
Speaker 3: going to undermine the whole point of having an affair.
Speaker 2: So therefore you probably shouldn't hire.
Speaker 1: Your Yeah, that's that's the pro tips out right. Not
Speaker 1: really sure why even needs to be said, but the
Speaker 1: ladies on the view will defend her. But as I
Speaker 1: pointed out in terms of how this would come, this
Speaker 1: week we'll find out whether she gets to stay on
Speaker 1: the case or not. Then if she doesn't get to
Speaker 1: stay on the case, then there actually could be a
Speaker 1: new prosecuting office which would delay the case even further.
Speaker 1: And it says that currently any delay would be then
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the appeal of that decision by the current
Speaker 1: attorney's office. So if there is a ruling in this,
Speaker 1: it is going to drag this thing out, even the
Speaker 1: four months he's.
Speaker 3: Got the bozo down in Florida that he appointed that
Speaker 3: it is delaying that trial. Right, you got the Alvin
Speaker 3: Bragg thing, which nobody cares about it. You've got this
Speaker 3: punted past the election.
Speaker 1: Bingo.
Speaker 3: What about the one to be Elliot and Nesk guy,
Speaker 3: how's that one going?
Speaker 1: I'm actually not one hundred percent sure. So okay, the
Speaker 1: Document's case, that was another one. I think that's been
Speaker 1: pushed January twenty January sixth, So yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: real issue. My other favorite part of this is that
Speaker 1: even if she is upheld by the judge, then Trump
Speaker 1: gets to appeal this decision about Fanny Willis could then
Speaker 1: could immediately take it either post trial or pre trial,
Speaker 1: depending on how.
Speaker 2: They post presidency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the defense would then have to request discretionary review
Speaker 1: by the appellate court according to the according to the
Speaker 1: Georgia judicial system, and if they do, then that would
Speaker 1: take another ten business days.
Speaker 3: The dangerous thing that this sets up is a situation
Speaker 3: where Trump is president and then has all of these
Speaker 3: criminal cases, is that's the most likely not hanging over him,
Speaker 3: which we've seen how that works with net and Yaho,
Speaker 3: so net Yah, who has these criminal cases waiting for
Speaker 3: him once he's finally out of power, and so he
Speaker 3: just does everything he like, there's already a will to
Speaker 3: cling to power. And all of these politicians you add,
Speaker 3: oh and by the way, you're going to jail if
Speaker 3: you leave office, then they are willing to just do
Speaker 3: anything to stay in power.
Speaker 2: That's not that's not what you want with Trump.
Speaker 3: Now, I don't think he can stay in power because
Speaker 3: he doesn't have I don't think the Supreme Court would
Speaker 3: side with him trying to get another term, and I
Speaker 3: don't think the military would do it. So I don't
Speaker 3: think he has There's no path like for him doing
Speaker 3: more than four years, Like the system is ready to
Speaker 3: spit him out, but he will be he will have
Speaker 3: an intense incentive to stay if he's got those cases
Speaker 3: hanging over him.
Speaker 1: Obviously, very very astute and correct, and it just sets.
Speaker 2: Just pardon him to mar A Lago.
Speaker 1: Well, what if he tries to pardon himself?
Speaker 3: Okay, good, actually, but it's a state case.
Speaker 1: Though, that's true, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that he can he can pardon the federal case.
Speaker 1: That would apply for both the federal cases, but it
Speaker 1: would not apply. It would also be a huge stress
Speaker 1: test to the Supreme Court. And I think of, what
Speaker 1: is it. There's some nineteen seventy three memo in the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. The president can't pardon himself.
Speaker 3: It goes back to what you don't even do with
Speaker 3: a memo. This would be fun.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I feel like law school clerks or law school
Speaker 1: teachers are having the time of their lives right now
Speaker 1: in terms of Supreme Court, constitutional law and all this.
Speaker 1: So I almost wish that I was in law school
Speaker 1: just so that I could study some stuff like this,
Speaker 1: because when I was in school, it was boring as hell.
Speaker 1: Some major shakeups by the RFK Junior campaign. Let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. A new
Speaker 1: list has come out of potential vice presidential picks from
Speaker 1: RFK Junior. So I'm going to go ahead and read
Speaker 1: some of these for you first, and what the biggest
Speaker 1: headline grabbing one is Aaron Rodgers, the current NFL quarterback.
Speaker 1: What is it for the new York Jets. Right for
Speaker 1: the Jets.
Speaker 2: Four downs for the Jets, four downs.
Speaker 1: For the Jets, I believe. Is he injured? Is he
Speaker 1: still on the roster?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he says he's coming back.
Speaker 1: Okay, he said he's coming back. Aaron Rodgers as big
Speaker 1: there on the list, obviously. Aaron Rodgers has spoken extensively
Speaker 1: about RFK Junior on the Joe Rogan experience and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: aligning with him, particularly on his views on vaccines, but
Speaker 1: in general kind of being a relative I guess what skeptic,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say of elites. The other person
Speaker 1: that really shot out to me was Jesse Ventura, which
Speaker 1: I actually think Ryan would be a smarter move. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think given his past political experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was literally the governor of the state
Speaker 1: of Minnesota. And look, you know, you can love, you
Speaker 1: can hate Jesse. I've kind of find him a frankly
Speaker 1: like inspirational figure, like this is a guy who used
Speaker 1: and had his He used and had his personal like
Speaker 1: popularity with his very anti establishment politics, gets himself elected
Speaker 1: governor and then becomes like a real voice and force
Speaker 1: against a lot of people the establishment kind of in
Speaker 1: the interim twenty years, it was strong on the Iraq
Speaker 1: War and all that, for example, So that would be
Speaker 1: an interesting case, and I think it would align more
Speaker 1: with rfk JR.
Speaker 2: He's very He's very rfk JR.
Speaker 3: I'd love to hear I'd love to hear their unvarnished
Speaker 3: conversations like we're we're only getting the stuff that that
Speaker 3: that they're willing to put out there. Venture is fascinating.
Speaker 3: He like went to move to Mexico basically and became
Speaker 3: a hermit down on the beach, like the kind of
Speaker 3: the kind of lifestyle that everybody.
Speaker 2: Dreams of, Like, I'm out of here.
Speaker 3: Man done the other ones they list ran Paul Hard
Speaker 3: to imagine him actually accepting that he's a Republican Tulca
Speaker 3: Gabbard that I could see.
Speaker 2: Andrew Yang was thrown out there, Mike rowe.
Speaker 1: Micro see micro Actually that'd be kind of smart.
Speaker 2: I think your guy Tony Robbins, so he is.
Speaker 1: Not my guy. Let's be made that said Tony Robbins.
Speaker 1: I think would be smart just because Tony Robbins is
Speaker 1: incredibly popular and famous and everybody knows who he is,
Speaker 1: so there is like a name id element to this.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about Tony Robbins, at least in
Speaker 1: the I feel like he was a big thing when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, like maybe twenty years ago. That's
Speaker 1: when his tapes and the CDs and all that were
Speaker 1: really taken over. I don't know how well his business
Speaker 1: is doing all this. I still pretty well.
Speaker 3: I still wonder what would have happened in the world
Speaker 3: where RFK Junior had Instead he just has this like reflexive,
Speaker 3: ultra hawkish approach to Israel that came out since October seventh,
Speaker 3: and that's and he's dug in on it like that.
Speaker 1: That's who That's who he is, That's who he is,
Speaker 1: that's what he believes.
Speaker 3: But you know, he flows out of you know, RFK
Speaker 3: Senior he ran as an anti war candidate in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight. What if instead of that position he had
Speaker 3: a different position where he was against the war and
Speaker 3: you combined his ability to pick up the Joe Rogan
Speaker 3: podcast world, which is tens of millions of people with
Speaker 3: the disaffected under thirty people, and he started having Bernie
Speaker 3: size rallies. That political coalition is a force that can
Speaker 3: get you to a third of the vote in states like,
Speaker 3: which makes you then a major party contender.
Speaker 1: I think the only explanation is he believes it right,
Speaker 1: He's not a stupid man.
Speaker 2: But let's say he did. Could you am I crazy?
Speaker 3: Is there a pal I think it right where he
Speaker 3: could get to thirty thirty five.
Speaker 1: What I think he would need to do is he
Speaker 1: doesn't even need to be like a full blown like
Speaker 1: left poster. He just needs to be like I would
Speaker 1: run the war differently, and I feel like that would
Speaker 1: be enough for a lot of these people. So if
Speaker 1: you were to co op, yeah, I mean think about Obama.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be honest, like he was anti war,
Speaker 1: but in the midst of those War eight campaign he
Speaker 1: wasn't really anti right, he had the whole good war
Speaker 1: rhetoric and then we all know how he ran. But
Speaker 1: enough people, even idiots like me, were like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hate the Iraq War, Like let's go. You know, I
Speaker 1: was like a teenager. Well, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people would be feeling exactly the same way the thing.
Speaker 1: So I want to just like spend time on Aaron
Speaker 1: Rodgers specifically, let's put this up there. Adam what is
Speaker 1: this man's name, Adam Schefter. I know Okay, NFL people,
Speaker 1: please don't judge me. I don't watch the NFL. I
Speaker 1: know this man is like a famous person in that world,
Speaker 1: he says. Aaron Rodgers is officially on the RFK junior
Speaker 1: short list to be his running mate on the Independent, Independent,
Speaker 1: Financial or presidential ticket, as he confirms in ESPN and
Speaker 1: first reported there by The New York Times, Aaron okay.
Speaker 1: From a pure political popularity perspective, I don't think it
Speaker 1: would be bad because NFL is the only thing that
Speaker 1: actually unites this country in terms of viewership. It's literally
Speaker 1: the only.
Speaker 2: Figure is though the NFL.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's my question is how many people are
Speaker 1: even familiar with his like Vaccine Epstein views on Pat
Speaker 1: McAfee as opposed to I mean, how old he's like
Speaker 1: forty years old, he's been a look, I don't watch
Speaker 1: the NFL, and I know who freaking Aaron Rodgers is,
Speaker 1: right like he is the level of pop culture name
Speaker 1: I d which is very very difficult to beat as
Speaker 1: opposed to all these other people on here. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you be a good vice president. I don't honestly
Speaker 1: know anything about him other than listening to him on
Speaker 1: the Joe Rogan experience. But if your goal is to
Speaker 1: just I mean get the bros out there, get an
Speaker 1: am id, you know, go viral and all of that,
Speaker 1: and just get awareness, I don't think it would be
Speaker 1: a bad move, honestly.
Speaker 3: I mean he did cause a lot of drama within
Speaker 3: the NFL and on his team with his refusal to
Speaker 3: take the vaccine and sort of like lying about it,
Speaker 3: and like, well.
Speaker 1: I don't okay, So this is the other thing. What
Speaker 1: did he say again? He said he was immunized, right,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: he says he has an allergy. I mean I believe him.
Speaker 3: So I would like at the time, even at the time,
Speaker 3: I was like, look, if the guy says he had COVID,
Speaker 3: Like what do you do?
Speaker 6: What do you care?
Speaker 3: That's right, you do actually have just as much immunity
Speaker 3: from getting COVID. Then then take the vaccine. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a controversial procession. So that's that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Even though the NFL is the one thing that our
Speaker 3: monoculture is still like agreed upon. But the other the
Speaker 3: other fun part is I like this abut him. Apparently
Speaker 3: he's at an ayahuasca retreat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put that up there on the screen. It broke.
Speaker 1: The news broke of him being on the list while
Speaker 1: he was on an ayahuascar retreat Costa Rica. I believe
Speaker 1: this is his second, or at least not his first
Speaker 1: visit down to Costa Rica for his ayahuasca retreat, which
Speaker 1: he has spoken about publicly.
Speaker 3: He credits ayahuasca with kind of opening his opening his
Speaker 3: mind and changing the way that he sees the world,
Speaker 3: which I hope that doesn't discredit it to everybody else
Speaker 3: who's like he sees what sees where he's gone with it.
Speaker 2: I mean I do. I do love that he's, you know,
Speaker 2: as you called it, skeptical.
Speaker 3: The problem, the problem from from my perspective with people
Speaker 3: like Aaron Rodgers is that they're not actually skeptical. They
Speaker 3: just say, Okay, anything that this side says, I immediately
Speaker 3: believe the other side. And if and if you have
Speaker 3: a conspiracy theory for him, he's like, I'm in that's
Speaker 3: not skepticism, that's gullibility. I think you got to be
Speaker 3: skeptical across the board. However, I do love that he's,
Speaker 3: you know, searching for a soul down there, He's costa
Speaker 3: Rica and opening everybody should do iowas.
Speaker 1: So imagine this. If he did win, he'd be the
Speaker 1: only politician ever to pass the Graham Hancock test. So
Speaker 1: Graham Hancock, the famous what is ancient civilizations guy? I've
Speaker 1: heard him say this multiple times. He was like, I
Speaker 1: believe that every politician should have like ten nyahuasca journeys
Speaker 1: or experiences. So, I mean, I don't know what number
Speaker 1: Aaron is at, but he would be the only person
Speaker 1: actually to pass the Graham Hancock test. So maybe that's
Speaker 1: a reason to vote for him. Nonetheless, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the problem that rf K Junior has is he could
Speaker 1: very quickly fall into the it's a joke category where
Speaker 1: people who would seriously consider voting for him would see
Speaker 1: the Aaron Rodgers pick and would be like, Okay, come on,
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. I would much more think that somebody
Speaker 1: like Jesse vent Tura, Tulsea Gabbert, Andrew Yang, any of
Speaker 1: the folks we listen with genuine political experience, would be
Speaker 1: a lot better because they've got a relatively little you know,
Speaker 1: they got some more name I d they are, They've
Speaker 1: got name ID in terms of the political system. But
Speaker 1: these are like lawmakers or former presidential canons of actual experience,
Speaker 1: kind of within the system, and it would make him,
Speaker 1: i think, appear more legitimate if he were to pick
Speaker 1: those steps.
Speaker 3: It is telling about the way that our culture and
Speaker 3: our politics have shifted that he felt like this could
Speaker 3: be his list. In the past, when you've got a
Speaker 3: third party candidate who's trying to project legitimacy, they go
Speaker 3: and get some retired general who did ross pro get admiral.
Speaker 3: This was Admiral Stockdale, who had this funny line that
Speaker 3: went viral before there was social media in a vice
Speaker 3: presidential debate where he's like, who am I?
Speaker 2: Why am I here? And it really sounded like he
Speaker 2: was genuinely curious.
Speaker 1: Okay, but James Stockdale is also a hero. I mean,
Speaker 1: for exactly this is he's a metal lawner winner.
Speaker 3: This rock guy felt like he needed somebody to assure
Speaker 3: the American people that he would be a good shepherd
Speaker 3: of the National Security State and as Commander in chief.
Speaker 3: RFK Junior is like nah Me and Ann Rodgers got
Speaker 3: this and that it is I think indicative of the
Speaker 3: distrust that now exists between the America.
Speaker 1: You just gave me an idea he's too old because
Speaker 1: I just looked it up. Wesley Clark, I feel like
Speaker 1: it would have been a great pick.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: He's super skeptical of the US intelligence agencies of the security.
Speaker 1: He has that famous clip about the post Iraq discussions
Speaker 1: about invading Libya and all that. He really was a
Speaker 1: peacenick actually, but former four star general, a guy who really,
Speaker 1: you know, he's proven his anti war bona fides and
Speaker 1: he's somebody who legitimately has that type of experience. But
Speaker 1: he's seventy nine, so I think he's way too old.
Speaker 1: But that said, you wouldn't be a bad pick.
Speaker 2: He's like right in the middle of our I mean
Speaker 2: he is in.
Speaker 1: Terms of assuring people, you have a seventy two year old,
Speaker 1: and I think RFK seventy two and a seventy nine
Speaker 1: year old up against an eighty one year old, and
Speaker 1: what is a seventy eight years or eight year old
Speaker 1: not necessarily all that inspiring. But yeah, if Wesley Clark
Speaker 1: was younger, I feel like he would actually be a
Speaker 1: great pick. He could be Stockdale esque. So anyway, my
Speaker 1: advice to the campaign, not that they care or what
Speaker 1: I say or listen, would be to pick somebody with
Speaker 1: some political experiences to make yourself feel more legitimate instead
Speaker 1: of just a castaway protest about you don't want to
Speaker 1: fall into the joke category. You want to fall into
Speaker 1: the serious category. The media is already been trying to
Speaker 1: paint you as a joke as it is. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't pick a micro or an Aaron Rodgers. But well,
Speaker 1: Connie ro also wouldn't be the worst thing in the
Speaker 1: world for an AMID. So we'll see, and we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't see. Yeah, and what is Aaron Rodgers?
Speaker 3: Add everybody who likes Aaron Rodgers already likes RFKJU and your.
Speaker 1: Good point, great point. Actually that's right. It's not necessarily additive.
Speaker 3: Our man, Ben Shapiro, as he says in this clip
Speaker 3: we're about to play, he grew up the Internet by
Speaker 3: being a little towarp suggesting that old people need to
Speaker 3: work longer, and also coming after solid security, which comes
Speaker 3: after Donald Trump, you know, very stupidly, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: just pragmatically from a political perspective, suggested that actually, yes,
Speaker 3: he told cnbe yes, there are ways that we can
Speaker 3: cut social security and Medicare, which is CNBC has been
Speaker 3: slobbering for those cuts. And the thing that people liked
Speaker 3: about Trump was that he was willing to tell CNBC, no,
Speaker 3: you're actually you owe that to people, you're not taking
Speaker 3: away from them. So Ben Shapiro jumps in and sees
Speaker 3: an opportunity to go back to this old conservative canhard of.
Speaker 2: We're going to do this.
Speaker 1: Actually, we're finally going.
Speaker 3: To come for these entitlements. Let's play a little bit
Speaker 3: of our man, Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 8: So yesterday I apparently blew up the internet. I blew
Speaker 8: up the Internet because of something that I said on
Speaker 8: this show. What exactly did I say that blew up
Speaker 8: the internet? While I touched the political third rail, I
Speaker 8: talked about social security. Now, I know what you're thinking,
Speaker 8: what's so spicy about social security? And I will admit
Speaker 8: I was thinking the same thing because there are a
Speaker 8: few simple facts in the matter with regard to social security. One,
Speaker 8: we don't have the money for it, and it's a
Speaker 8: Ponzi scheme. And two, with regard to sort of the
Speaker 8: personal decision to retire, very often when people retire, they're
Speaker 8: making a bad decision. And let's be real, about this.
Speaker 8: It's insane that we haven't raised the retirement age in
Speaker 8: the United States. It's totally crazy Joe Biden. If that
Speaker 8: were the case, Joe Biden should not be running for president. Hey,
Speaker 8: Joe Biden is eighty one years old. The retirement age
Speaker 8: in the United States at which you start to receive
Speaker 8: Social Security and you are eligible for Medicare is sixty five.
Speaker 8: Joe Biden has technically been eligible for Social Security and
Speaker 8: Medicare for sixteen years, and he wants to continue in
Speaker 8: office until he is eighty six, which is nineteen years
Speaker 8: passed when he would be eligible for retirement. No one
Speaker 8: in the United States should be retiring at sixty five
Speaker 8: years old. Frankly, I think retirement itself is a stupid
Speaker 8: idea unless you have some sort of health problem. Everybody
Speaker 8: that I know who is who is elderly, who has
Speaker 8: retired is dead within five years. And if you talk
Speaker 8: to people who are elderly and they lose their purpose
Speaker 8: in life by losing their job and they stop working,
Speaker 8: things go to hell in a handbasket real quick. It
Speaker 8: was an attempt to get older workers off the payrolls
Speaker 8: to make womb for younger workers. The first full social
Speaker 8: security scheme was put in place by Otto von Bismarck
Speaker 8: in Germany and was a way of clearing the older
Speaker 8: payrolls of older workers because they weren't as effective, and
Speaker 8: in fact, older workers fought it all.
Speaker 1: Right, there's a lot going on there, Ryan, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And first of all, he could just have googled social
Speaker 3: security retirement age. It's sixty seven. They bumped it up.
Speaker 3: It's not sixty five. That's just a weird mistaken there. Secondly,
Speaker 3: and I think we can put you have the next
Speaker 3: community note element up here. Good good community note. One
Speaker 3: of the reasons that you have such low life expectancy
Speaker 3: from back in the day is infant mortality. You go
Speaker 3: back and look at like during the time of the
Speaker 3: founding of the country, life expects is like forty or something.
Speaker 2: Inside what how's that possible?
Speaker 3: So forty And then you're like, wait a minute, but
Speaker 3: Ben Franklin was like, oh, eighty years old, were you signing?
Speaker 2: How is this possible?
Speaker 3: And it turns out that when you read further, like
Speaker 3: they had ten children, only five lived past the age
Speaker 3: of three or four, And you're like, oh, I see,
Speaker 3: so the average is now if you make it into adulthood.
Speaker 3: Then your life expects the at the time was you know,
Speaker 3: close to six. Basically it hasn't risen much and actually
Speaker 3: life expectancy over the last couple of years is dipping
Speaker 3: back downwards. So you know he should actually adjust his
Speaker 3: talking clients.
Speaker 1: If let me add on this mction that often people
Speaker 1: will say that's because of COVID. That is absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: We've done multiple monologues here on the subject. It has
Speaker 1: been ticking down since twenty seventeen, and unfortunately it's actually fentanyl.
Speaker 3: Overdoses reasons because you're losing one hundred thousand people plus
Speaker 3: a year if you have the age of twenty year.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So you have fensanyl being the number one cause
Speaker 1: of or overdose being the number one cause of death
Speaker 1: for people who are what is like twenty to fifty
Speaker 1: five prime aged working years. On top of you have
Speaker 1: horrible chronic health conditions and obesity. So you put that
Speaker 1: all together, our society is on like a Soviet esque decline.
Speaker 2: But let's talk.
Speaker 3: About the lack of any imagination in the mind of
Speaker 3: Ben Shapiro. I think it's it is true that there
Speaker 3: are people who get their meaning through their routine of
Speaker 3: going to work and coming home in the weekends, and
Speaker 3: then they retire and they're and they're lost.
Speaker 1: Like I think it's probably more true for people like us, right, it's.
Speaker 3: Even even people who uh work manual jobs.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, though, that's kind of an important distinction, and
Speaker 1: I guess me to the hero element.
Speaker 3: But the answer to that is not to say, well,
Speaker 3: don't ever stop that routine and drive your drive yourself
Speaker 3: until you are.
Speaker 2: In the grave. It is, well, what's wrong with all
Speaker 2: of this?
Speaker 3: Like, let's let's let's find more spiritual value, and spiritual
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be religious at all. Let's just find
Speaker 3: more meaning in our daily lives and our social relations
Speaker 3: in the way that we not just work but also play,
Speaker 3: and the way that we kind of love each other
Speaker 3: as a community, as a family, etcetera.
Speaker 2: Like, let's let's have better lives our entire lives.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why I think retirement age is
Speaker 1: so or sorry, retirement, social security and all that is
Speaker 1: so imperative is that we have a huge manual labor
Speaker 1: underclass in this country of which their body literally gets
Speaker 1: broken down. And if you look at some of the
Speaker 1: poverty statistics, from the nineteen thirties. It is horrifying. I
Speaker 1: know that in AMMI and all of those, it's like
Speaker 1: it's it kind of popularizes this image that it was
Speaker 1: working age people who were in Hooverville's and that is
Speaker 1: certainly true to some extent, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who were starving to death and dying, they weren't
Speaker 1: just old. Yes, they're pensioners, I mean, but I mean
Speaker 1: that they got they went broke, They're bank were gone.
Speaker 1: And these people guys, they died of literal starvation because
Speaker 1: they were so poor and they could not go or
Speaker 1: even qualify under this. And then finally, there's a basic
Speaker 1: aspect of fairness. I've been paying in this damn program
Speaker 1: my entire life. Every time I look at my paycheck,
Speaker 1: I said, I remember the very first time I get
Speaker 1: I got rid of I said, what the is this
Speaker 1: fight as shit? You know? And then I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's Social Security. I'm like, okay, but that's part of
Speaker 1: the thing is that every American who works in this country,
Speaker 1: we have paid into this system, fairly or not. You know,
Speaker 1: you can say reform, etc. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you took my you took a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of my money over the year, not even close to
Speaker 1: what I'm going to get back out of it. At
Speaker 1: the very least, I'm going to get something. So the
Speaker 1: idea that it's going to get abolished is completely outrageous.
Speaker 3: And the idea that it's a Ponzi scheme is also
Speaker 3: just factually incorrect. Like ask Ben Shapiro, name another Ponzi
Speaker 3: scheme that hasn't missed a payment in eighty one years.
Speaker 2: Like, it's a sustainable program.
Speaker 3: Right because and you know how I can say that
Speaker 3: we have sustained it for eighty one years. We can
Speaker 3: we can continue to sustain it if you need to
Speaker 3: make some tweaks. And Ben Shapiro has to pay a
Speaker 3: little bit more into it to help some other people
Speaker 3: find that's different. But to your point, there is still
Speaker 3: a word kind of in our vernacular that that comes
Speaker 3: from the period before Social Security, and the word is
Speaker 3: the poorhouse.
Speaker 2: Yes, you would hear it from your parents and your grandparents.
Speaker 2: You're going to put me in the poorhouse.
Speaker 3: The poorhouse was an actual thing, and it was basically
Speaker 3: a charitable run organization. Sometimes it would get a little
Speaker 3: bit of money from the town or from the city
Speaker 3: of the state where when elderly people could no longer
Speaker 3: longer make income, they would just get put in the poorhouse.
Speaker 3: These were the most decrepit, disgusting, degrading, undignified places that
Speaker 3: you could put elderly people and the other place. And
Speaker 3: I interviewed Dingle about this, whose father was the author
Speaker 3: of the Social Security Act. He said, when he was
Speaker 3: a kid, his house was filled with Dingles and other
Speaker 3: Polish relatives. What would happen is everybody would just move
Speaker 3: into a house that had a little bit of room.
Speaker 2: That was it. You had the poor house, and you had.
Speaker 3: Elderly people moving in with whatever cousins, nephews, nieces or
Speaker 3: grandchildren or anybody else that could take them in. If
Speaker 3: that's how you want to do it, Like if you
Speaker 3: want to have.
Speaker 2: A multi generational home.
Speaker 3: Where you know the people the like the mom and
Speaker 3: the dad are supporting the children and the grandparents, go ahead,
Speaker 3: you should do that.
Speaker 2: If you want to do it. They were. Everybody was
Speaker 2: forced to do it.
Speaker 3: Social Security is around the world the greatest poverty reduction
Speaker 3: program that has ever existed in human history.
Speaker 1: Let me get on Spatok specifically to that forty point
Speaker 1: two percent of people who are older and eligible for
Speaker 1: Social Security their only income is social Security.
Speaker 2: Those people are a retire warehouse.
Speaker 1: It'd be I mean there do they're going to die?
Speaker 1: Like they literally going to die without Social Security and medicare. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, that's not a good situation.
Speaker 1: And if you are my age or you know your age, Ryan,
Speaker 1: please stay for retirement.
Speaker 6: Please.
Speaker 1: I'm begging you because you don't want to be in
Speaker 1: this position. That said forty percent of the country is
Speaker 1: so clearly we're screwing up, and we've done a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot wrong in terms of setting and financially
Speaker 1: educating people. But it is what it is when you
Speaker 1: need to let these people just die, you know, in
Speaker 1: a complete in obscurity poverty.
Speaker 3: You cut a couple hundred dollars from them just to
Speaker 3: save Ben Shapiro money on his taxes. The choices that
Speaker 3: they then have to make are just brutals, devastating, and
Speaker 3: Ben Ben would never have any idea about that type
Speaker 3: of a choice.
Speaker 1: The other thing that they point out is that so
Speaker 1: forty percent, but truly more than fifty percent of people
Speaker 1: sixty five or older received at least fifty percent. Then
Speaker 1: of their income after age sixty seven from social Security.
Speaker 1: So then now imagine that as you just said, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple cut one hundred bucks five percent doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a lot to you or I. When the price
Speaker 1: of vegas goes up by twenty Yeah, it actually does
Speaker 1: make a huge difference. A lot of these people also
Speaker 1: live by themselves or you know, in a sole household.
Speaker 1: You couple that with a lot of these nursing homes
Speaker 1: and you know the medicare fraud and all that stuff
Speaker 1: that goes on. You know, it's not an easy life
Speaker 1: to just be living purely on the government. Again, why
Speaker 1: I'm begging you please take some responsibility and try and
Speaker 1: say for retirement. But if you do find yourself in.
Speaker 2: This after you've paid for your breaking points stuff though, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: Of course I would never advise that, But say, first,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be in this position, and I
Speaker 1: really hope that nobody is. I wouldn't wish it on anybody,
Speaker 1: But we have to deal with reality. Forty fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the country is living in this position. Well, now
Speaker 1: what I think we haven't Look, we have a well
Speaker 1: defined program here and again all those people, at least
Speaker 1: you know the way the programs is done. They paid
Speaker 1: into it, We're all paying into it. It would be
Speaker 1: outrageous to rob us of the similar thing. It also
Speaker 1: comes to a matter of emphasis, which is what Mike
Speaker 1: Cernovitch kind of put and I really love this framing.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen. He says. Reminder,
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro advocated for every war in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: When the rich kids of DC America can't afford FOURGN
Speaker 1: eight and foreign wars, then we can maybe talk about
Speaker 1: making Grandma Star. Until then, no thanks, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: You want to save money. The Biden administration just put
Speaker 1: out a defense budget of eight hundred and forty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars eight hundred and forty two billion. That would
Speaker 1: be almost nearly one hundred billion dollar increase in what
Speaker 1: just five years. That's a lot of money, a lot
Speaker 1: of money. It seems easy to cut, there, isn't it.
Speaker 1: And if Biden were smart and he would lean into this.
Speaker 3: And you are seeing the Biden campaign hitting Trump on this,
Speaker 3: and you've actually seen the Trump campaign. One of their
Speaker 3: responses was they tweeted out an article of mind that
Speaker 3: I wrote in twenty twenty that said that said that
Speaker 3: Joe Biden has been trying to cut Social Security for
Speaker 3: forty years, and it's true he was, but he is
Speaker 3: a politician. He saw which way the wind is blowing.
Speaker 3: There are now about two hundred and ten Democrats who
Speaker 3: have signed on to a Social Security expansion bill in
Speaker 3: the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi kept it off the
Speaker 3: floor because she is at heart and Austerian and wouldn't
Speaker 3: it Probably would have passed if she would just put
Speaker 3: it on the floor. John Larson's bill, that's political gold
Speaker 3: for Democrats.
Speaker 1: No, not only we kind of expansion. What does it do?
Speaker 3: It means like on the lower end fifty percent and
Speaker 3: below would get actually more Social Security in their checks.
Speaker 3: And then it closes some of the tax loopholes in
Speaker 3: order to make and it makes it sustainable for like
Speaker 3: another fifty seventy five years. But people like Ben Shapiro
Speaker 3: would have to pay more in and so people like
Speaker 3: Ben Shapiro would rather be cut and you just keep working.
Speaker 3: But he trying to pretend he's actually doing it for
Speaker 3: your own good because spiritually and psychically he's just nervous
Speaker 3: about your soul.
Speaker 1: Well, this is crazy. So I didn't even realize this.
Speaker 1: The average solid security benefit in twenty twenty three is
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't even know he's to riv we're even
Speaker 2: going to get yeah, right, where can you.
Speaker 1: Even pay rent on seventeen nards? I mean I get
Speaker 1: in a medium to high cost of living area. That's
Speaker 1: going to be stretching it. That's really tough. You better
Speaker 1: live in a rural place if you want to make it.
Speaker 2: Which then it's hard to get around. Yeah. The whole
Speaker 2: thing is people are screwed.
Speaker 1: You can't. There's no way you're making a car payment
Speaker 1: on seventeen hundred dollars with all those other things too.
Speaker 1: That's another thing. Let me just advocate or buy your house,
Speaker 1: make sure you pay off your mortgage, just make sure
Speaker 1: you have retirement.
Speaker 2: It's another.
Speaker 3: And this is something that doesn't get talked about enough
Speaker 3: in the squeeze on the economy. So many people our
Speaker 3: age are helping their parents out.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's really unfortunate. Well, look as you can
Speaker 1: see you do it because you know we're not talking
Speaker 1: about the right thing to do. But it hurts these
Speaker 1: people are I'm not living a large what is it
Speaker 1: high on the hog is that they're not living high
Speaker 1: on the hog. Here we're talking about seventeen eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: bucks for an average check. Let's say a married household,
Speaker 1: that's still only thirty six hundred. I mean, that's thirty
Speaker 1: What is that thirty six hundred, it's like forty grand
Speaker 1: or something like that after tax. That's below the average
Speaker 1: income actually for a household in the United States. So
Speaker 1: just reminder, you know, and remember what realist program is,
Speaker 1: what the implications of all of that would look like.
Speaker 1: I understand, you know, you know, people don't want to
Speaker 1: pay or think it's unfair and all that, And I
Speaker 1: think there's still a lot we could do in terms
Speaker 1: of making the Social Security benefits actually go a lot
Speaker 1: farther and gives people some optionality. But the program itself
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent gold and it should stay where
Speaker 1: it is. This has got to be the funniest story
Speaker 1: of all time because everyone involved looks terrible, which is
Speaker 1: why basic So we'd previously brought everybody the news. Don
Speaker 1: Lemon fired by CNN for what did he say? That women?
Speaker 1: Women aren't in their prime like in terms of their
Speaker 1: worthy He said women are only in prime during their
Speaker 1: birthing name. Oh yeah, something only a gay man could
Speaker 1: ever think to.
Speaker 2: Say, get the final straw for him.
Speaker 1: After years of just psychotic behavior there over at CNN, well,
Speaker 1: he decided to sign a program, sign a deal with
Speaker 1: X with Elon Musk side where well, get to that say,
Speaker 1: agreed to a program where he would broadcast in partnership
Speaker 1: on X formerly known as Twitter the way that Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson does right now, while also simultaneously posting elsewhere. He
Speaker 1: was going to get paid tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: As the broadcast actually was set to debut on March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: he decided his first interview would be with Elon Musk. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly what happened in the interview, but
Speaker 1: we do know that immediately after the interview, Elon canceled
Speaker 1: his entire contract. Here's what Don had to say immediately afterwards.
Speaker 9: Hi, everyone, Elon Musk is mad at me, and I
Speaker 9: just put out a statement about what happened between him,
Speaker 9: me and the interview that he is apparently so upset about.
Speaker 9: So speaking of free speech, right, I thought the first
Speaker 9: person interview no brainer. Elon Musk, the man who calls
Speaker 9: himself a free speech absolutist.
Speaker 2: I asked him to do it. He willingly agreed to
Speaker 2: the interview.
Speaker 10: Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him that although
Speaker 10: it was tense at times, I thought it was good
Speaker 10: for people to see and hear our exchange and that
Speaker 10: they would learn from our conversation, learn more about him,
Speaker 10: learn more about me. But apparently Freespeech's absolutism doesn't apply
Speaker 10: when it comes to questions about him from people like me,
Speaker 10: What did we talk about?
Speaker 2: Why is he so upset?
Speaker 1: Oh? Interesting? So what did they talk about? It turns
Speaker 1: out Ryan some of this stems back to questions that
Speaker 1: Don asked Elon about ketamine drug use. He played some
Speaker 1: of these clips last night on CNN, ironically running to
Speaker 1: his former employer the moment that he needs a little
Speaker 1: bit of airtime. Let's take a listen. You talk about
Speaker 1: your kettemine use and depression hip.
Speaker 6: You also have said and.
Speaker 2: The reason I should say like like.
Speaker 11: The reason I mentioned the academic prescription on the X
Speaker 11: platform was because I thought maybe this is something that
Speaker 11: can help other people.
Speaker 6: That's why I mentioned it.
Speaker 11: I'm not a doctor, but I would say if someone
Speaker 11: has depression issues, they should consider talking to the doctor
Speaker 11: about academy instead of SSRIs.
Speaker 12: Do you believe that X and you have some responsibility
Speaker 12: to moderate hate speech on the platform, that you wouldn't
Speaker 12: have to answer these questions from reporters about the Great Replacement.
Speaker 6: Theory as a release.
Speaker 12: I don't have to answer this great Replacement theory as
Speaker 12: it relates to Jewish people.
Speaker 11: Do you think that I don't have to answer questions
Speaker 11: from requorters? The only reason I'm doing this interview is
Speaker 11: because you're on the X platform and you ask for it.
Speaker 11: Otherwise I would not.
Speaker 12: Do interview with this interview, So you don't think do
Speaker 12: you think that you wouldn't get in trouble or you
Speaker 12: wouldn't be.
Speaker 6: Criticized for these things criticized? Possibly I could care less.
Speaker 1: So that's it. That apparently that's what did it. Immediately
Speaker 1: after let's put this up there on the screen, immediately
Speaker 1: after Ryan of the conclusion of this interview, Elon texted
Speaker 1: Don Lemon's representatives and just simply said contract canceled. Don's
Speaker 1: lawyers have since responded saying that they will be suing
Speaker 1: X for the payments that he is due. They put
Speaker 1: out a statement, let's put that up there please, says
Speaker 1: they cancel the partnership, etc. Etc. The interview will still air,
Speaker 1: it'll be on YouTube, podcast, it'll still broadcast on X.
Speaker 1: But it turns out Ryan that there actually was no
Speaker 1: signed contract between Don Lemon and between Elon and any
Speaker 1: of this went up, and that it will be I
Speaker 1: mean again, if you only verbally agreed to something, you
Speaker 1: didn't sign anything. Elon does appear to be within his
Speaker 1: rights to cancel your ass. So what have we learned
Speaker 1: about this? Elon incredibly thin skinned, literally canceled somebody for
Speaker 1: a single interview, which is like, I mean, let's look,
Speaker 1: I hate down Lemon. That was not adversarial at all.
Speaker 1: I watch a full interview. We'll see. But if you
Speaker 1: really can't take that, come on dude, And then on Don,
Speaker 1: how did you ever expect this to play out? Bro? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like what did you think?
Speaker 3: Tara Swisher, who broke the news, said she told him
Speaker 3: we had old Don Lemon.
Speaker 2: Pick Kara Swishers sweet up her.
Speaker 3: She's like, look, I told Don Lemon this is exactly
Speaker 3: how this would end. He is the I mean, billionaires
Speaker 3: are all thin skinned, and something about being in a
Speaker 3: billionaire I think makes you more thin skin because you're
Speaker 3: just around people who are kissing up to you constantly
Speaker 3: because they want your access to your wealth. And so
Speaker 3: then when you get even this slightest whiff of somebody
Speaker 3: not kissing your butt, it you.
Speaker 2: Can't handle it anymore.
Speaker 3: And so I would assume I don't know if Elon's
Speaker 3: always been this thin skinned, but living the life he's
Speaker 3: lived for the last ten twenty years I think helps
Speaker 3: to produce that in people. But yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 3: whole the whole thing is is utterly hilarious. Although on
Speaker 3: both of those questions, I was kind of on Elon's side.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, I think his I think his drug
Speaker 3: use beyond ketamine is an interesting thing to explore for
Speaker 3: his investors and for other people.
Speaker 2: On the question of ketamine.
Speaker 3: If he's got a prescription for ketamine and he is
Speaker 3: telling people that if you're suffering from depression, anxiety, something else,
Speaker 3: ask your doctor about ketamine as an alternative SSR.
Speaker 2: Good for him, I think that is.
Speaker 3: And as he said, he's not a doctor, He's not
Speaker 3: prescribing anything.
Speaker 2: For you, but you should.
Speaker 3: You should be aware of this possibility that that SSRIs
Speaker 3: you know, might not be the path out of the
Speaker 3: whatever whatever problems you have at the moment, and that ketamine.
Speaker 2: Might be a better alternative. Talk to your doctor about it.
Speaker 3: Good for him that, Like, we'll see what the rest
Speaker 3: of the interview comes up with.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't that adversarial.
Speaker 3: But also from Elon's perspective, that's like, come on, this
Speaker 3: you can't you can't handle a tiny bit of that.
Speaker 3: We can let like I said, we let the contract
Speaker 3: one oh one people in the comment sections sort out
Speaker 3: whether that whether this is is binding, where it's binding,
Speaker 3: and like it seems like they're just hoping that the musk,
Speaker 3: that the musk will say, all right, here's here's a time,
Speaker 3: here's a percentage, like to end this in this court battle.
Speaker 1: May be right, I don't know. That said, he's a
Speaker 1: very rich man and he's also very petty. Right, I
Speaker 1: will earn the whole cost of earned, which, look, I
Speaker 1: will be honest. That would be the most hilarious outcome
Speaker 1: of all this is Lemon being broke and also Elon
Speaker 1: being revealed for who he is.
Speaker 2: But what was Elon thinking that?
Speaker 1: So we have Elon's response. Let's put Elon's response. He
Speaker 1: says his approach was basically just CNN but on social media,
Speaker 1: which doesn't work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN
Speaker 1: is dying, and instead of it being the real Don Lemon,
Speaker 1: it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so
Speaker 1: it lacked authenticity. All this said, Lemon and Zucker are
Speaker 1: of course welcome to build their viewership on this platform
Speaker 1: along with everyone else. I do see a little bit
Speaker 1: of a problem with this is if you thought Don
Speaker 1: Lemon was just Jeff Zucker thrucking drew down, then why
Speaker 1: did you hire him? He says, instead of being the
Speaker 1: real there's no real Don Lemon. He's a sociopath. He
Speaker 1: doesn't believe anything, as Crystal. Crystal was so so on
Speaker 1: point whenever she was like, he's gonna pivot back to
Speaker 1: being a right winger as he was. Remember he had
Speaker 1: that home monolog where he's like, what did he says
Speaker 1: like black men, pull up your pants? He's like active
Speaker 1: decorum or something like That's he doesn't believe anything. He
Speaker 1: was that guy. Then he was a resistant star, and
Speaker 1: then he was the morning show misogynist, and now he's
Speaker 1: a free speech Absolutely. Don doesn't believe in free speech.
Speaker 1: He advocated for trumping band off of Twitter in the
Speaker 1: first place. He's a chameleon like Chris Cuomo. All these
Speaker 1: guys want to be as relevant and rich and so
Speaker 1: obviously Elon should have seen him through that. But he's
Speaker 1: the one who wanted to pay him in the first place.
Speaker 1: And then apparently Ryan, they were touting the crap out
Speaker 1: of this deal to all of their advertisers, being like, see,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have Don Lemon here on the platform. It's
Speaker 1: not just yeah, not just bad people, not just Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: it's also Don and then boom, it's like, come on.
Speaker 2: What do we Yeah, there's two ways of putting it.
Speaker 3: Either there is no real Don Lemon or this is
Speaker 3: the real Don Lemon. And in either case, yeah, why
Speaker 3: would you come on? Elon Musk, Right, who did you
Speaker 3: think you were getting?
Speaker 2: This? Is you hired?
Speaker 1: You hired Don Lemon and you got Don Lemon? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well is that who did you think his audience was?
Speaker 3: Anyway, the deal never made sense from the beginning, like
Speaker 3: who are the Don Lemon stands?
Speaker 1: Like Don Lemon's ratings at near the end of his tenure,
Speaker 1: we're like four hundred thousand people in total.
Speaker 3: Maybe like they're all watching CNN and then watching Boom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, there's like maybe sixty k in the key demographic.
Speaker 1: It was just insanity that this was like a play
Speaker 1: in the first place. So look, yeah, it's hilarious. There's
Speaker 1: not much else to say, I think about it. Everybody
Speaker 1: involved just comes out looking bad, and uh it's We
Speaker 1: will continue to keep everybody updated on the contract machinations.
Speaker 1: We have a great guest standing by though, Ryan dan Foote.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about him and then we'll
Speaker 1: get to him.
Speaker 3: Dan foot was the Biden's envoy to Haiti and he
Speaker 3: resigned in protest a couple of years ago, and in
Speaker 3: his protest letter he forecast what would happen if Biden
Speaker 3: did not change course in Haiti, and basically he's predicted
Speaker 3: everything from that day till this day.
Speaker 1: Got it all right, Well, let's get to it. Let's
Speaker 1: hear from a man.
Speaker 3: The United States government is forming another government for Haiti
Speaker 3: in a hotel in Jamaica.
Speaker 2: We'll see how that works out.
Speaker 3: To talk about this, we're going to be joined by
Speaker 3: the Biden administration's former envoy to Haiti, Ambassador Daniel foot Ambassadorfoot,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us here.
Speaker 1: Good Cazir, good morning, thanks for having from me.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to start by getting your reaction to
Speaker 3: Secretary of State Anthony B. Lincoln's comments yesterday, which come
Speaker 3: after his effort to kind of put together this transitional
Speaker 3: government on behalf of the Haitian people, but for the
Speaker 3: Haitian people. Let's roll a little bit of the Secretary
Speaker 3: of State here.
Speaker 7: I was in Jamaica just a couple of days ago
Speaker 7: with all of the countries from the Caribbean, Cara COM
Speaker 7: with other partners, including Canada, including France, including Mexico, all
Speaker 7: of this in support of Haitian led efforts to find
Speaker 7: a political path forward, to get to a political transition.
Speaker 7: And that's exactly what was agreed the other day the
Speaker 7: Prime minister. Prime Minister already stepped down along with his government.
Speaker 7: A transitional Presidential Council or college as they call it.
Speaker 7: It's being stood up. It's inclusive. It brings together most
Speaker 7: of the major parties in Haiti, as well as other
Speaker 7: stakeholders like the private sector, like the interfaith community, to
Speaker 7: choose a new Prime minister and interim prime Minister, to
Speaker 7: establish a nas Security Council and to put in place
Speaker 7: an electoral commission that creates the pathway the transition to
Speaker 7: elections and to a constitutionally mandated government.
Speaker 3: Now, what struck me about the creation of this quote
Speaker 3: unquote transitional government that the US is creating in Jamaica
Speaker 3: for Haiti is that one of the requirements to be
Speaker 3: part of this transitional government is that they must agree
Speaker 3: to allow in a un quote unquote kind of peacekeeping
Speaker 3: force which would be made up of Kenyan mercenaries funded
Speaker 3: by the United States, which the United States then says,
Speaker 3: means that the troops are there at the invitation of
Speaker 3: the Haitian government, if you can follow that kind of
Speaker 3: NASCAR circular logic there for a moment. So what was
Speaker 3: your reaction to the Secretary of States remarks yesterday.
Speaker 13: I'm flabbergasted, Ryan, that the hypocrisy in the naive de
Speaker 13: tay continues, and it's startling.
Speaker 6: You just heard.
Speaker 13: Tony say that he mentioned what ten different countries there
Speaker 13: that were there figuring out the way forward. One country
Speaker 13: that was absent in that list is Haiti. And what
Speaker 13: they're doing is trying to pull a solution out of thing,
Speaker 13: but make it look like the Haitian led solution. The
Speaker 13: international community chose seven people representing seven sectors, including the
Speaker 13: failed government of the past fourteen years, which the Haitians
Speaker 13: won't accept, and then they want these seven people to
Speaker 13: name a government.
Speaker 6: They gave them twenty four hours.
Speaker 13: But it appears to be fungible because that's gone on
Speaker 13: about seventy two hours now. I quit thirty months ago
Speaker 13: to try and get the right solution for Haiti, to
Speaker 13: continue to work with the Haitians. I've been channeling the
Speaker 13: Haitians boys for a long time.
Speaker 6: And if the.
Speaker 13: US insists on pulling a solution out of thin air,
Speaker 13: saying it's a Haitian led solution and making the Haitians
Speaker 13: follow that, we haven't seen anything yet in Haiti. The
Speaker 13: people are not going to put up with this. And
Speaker 13: the violence or less ten days is just a little
Speaker 13: bit of a tease for what I have to see.
Speaker 3: Wow, for people who haven't been following this for that long,
Speaker 3: can you talk a little bit about you know why
Speaker 3: you resigned and under what conditions?
Speaker 6: Sure so, as most people know.
Speaker 13: In July twenty one, President Joel No Moys of Haiti
Speaker 13: was assassinated in his bedroom by foreigners, which kind of
Speaker 13: hurt the Haitians feelings. They're upset, they're embarrassed. Their sovereignty
Speaker 13: has been overcome many times throughout history. And ten days
Speaker 13: after that, so the guy who was the acting Prime
Speaker 13: minister at the time stepped forward said, okay, I'm in charge,
Speaker 13: despite the fact it was not constitutional. There was nothing
Speaker 13: constitutional or constitution bro the US and the international community.
Speaker 13: Ten days after the assassination named Ariel Enria the acting
Speaker 13: Prime minister via press conference. Despite my im the Haitians
Speaker 13: loud protestations and at the time said this will not
Speaker 13: work even if the guy manages to hold elections, that
Speaker 13: people won't accept them. Now we're at the same point.
Speaker 13: He aligned with the gangs, did nothing for two and
Speaker 13: a half years, hat he's gotten much worse, much worse
Speaker 13: the Americans and support them the whole time. Finally, the
Speaker 13: Haitians stood up when he went out of the country
Speaker 13: and the gangs were part of it, but the entire
Speaker 13: country is united and said no more of this guy.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't let him come back. At that point, the internationals panicked.
Speaker 13: Haiti's been a failed state and it hasn't been in
Speaker 13: the control of anybody for the last thirty two months.
Speaker 13: This guy can't get back in the country, and the
Speaker 13: US all of a sudden needs to jam a solution
Speaker 13: in the Haitian people's ear that includes a military intervention
Speaker 13: that they need. But it won't work unless it's in
Speaker 13: support of the Haitians way forward, not Tony Blincoln's and
Speaker 13: the Mexicans and the EU and Canada and blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: The Haitians.
Speaker 13: And this is just another example of the them meddling
Speaker 13: and installing white anointed government, a white conceived government, and
Speaker 13: it's going to fail.
Speaker 6: And I'm telling you that.
Speaker 13: Haitians have dealt with at least five US political interventions
Speaker 13: in the last one hundred and nine years.
Speaker 6: They're not going to put up with a six.
Speaker 13: And I'm telling you the violence you've seen is nothing
Speaker 13: compared to what you will see if they've tried to
Speaker 13: ram another prime minister that's illegitimate up the shorts of
Speaker 13: the Haitian peak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mister Inmvesador, maybe you could lay that out for us, sir,
Speaker 1: about some of the consequences we've already seen, like widespread
Speaker 1: gang violence. We previously had a guest on our show
Speaker 1: who said that some of that could be coming down
Speaker 1: as they anticipate maybe their potential roles in a future government.
Speaker 1: You seem to be predicting that this is not going
Speaker 1: to call that violence at all. Maybe lay some of
Speaker 1: that out for us.
Speaker 13: Everyone has sort of been united for the past thirty
Speaker 13: months that Henri can't do it. He needs to go. Hey,
Speaker 13: he needs somebody else. The gangs were kind of cool,
Speaker 13: you know. The gangs just went about their business for
Speaker 13: quite a period.
Speaker 6: Ariel was paying them, they were not doing stuff.
Speaker 13: He stopped paying them, He removed some feudal subsidies, which
Speaker 13: hurt their revenues. He left the country. The gangs turned
Speaker 13: against him. Now, I believe if the US just doesn't
Speaker 13: do anything stupid and gives Haitian society a little space,
Speaker 13: that they're going to come together and reach a similar
Speaker 13: political consensus as they had two years ago, which the
Speaker 13: US and international community ignored, upon which they can build
Speaker 13: a solid political foundation, and the Haitian people who will
Speaker 13: be represented in this may be able to trust eventual elections.
Speaker 6: That's the goal here, that.
Speaker 13: The Haitian people can trust eventual elections, not that we
Speaker 13: can hold elections.
Speaker 6: That's easy.
Speaker 13: They held them in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen and
Speaker 13: neither one work.
Speaker 6: So they need to.
Speaker 13: Trust the elections or we're rushing to failure. And that's
Speaker 13: exactly what we're doing. You see, Secretary blink And thinks
Speaker 13: elections is the magic pill, and it's not. If the
Speaker 13: Haesian people don't feel they're part of it and they
Speaker 13: don't accept the results of the election, we're going to
Speaker 13: be right where we are now and worse.
Speaker 3: The wild card here seems to be the figure of
Speaker 3: gif Philip, this extraordinarily controversial figure who was played a
Speaker 3: leading role in the ouster of Aristide in two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, later elected to the Senate. Before he could
Speaker 3: take off in the Senate, the US kind of renditioned
Speaker 3: him over here and locked him up for money laundering
Speaker 3: charges related to drug trafficking for about six years. Now
Speaker 3: he's back, and he seems to be on the ground
Speaker 3: in Haiti speaking this kind of revolutionary language, this language
Speaker 3: of kind of Haitian sovereignty and dignity that is resonating
Speaker 3: with people. I think a lot of people probably don't
Speaker 3: believe that he's necessarily earnest about the rhetoric that he's using,
Speaker 3: but at least he's saying it, and at least he's
Speaker 3: in Haiti. But I'm curious from your perspective, how popular
Speaker 3: is is g Philippe and is there a world that
Speaker 3: he actually ends up taking power as a result of
Speaker 3: the ability of the gangs and others to just keep
Speaker 3: out anybody who is installed kind of from Jamaica, because
Speaker 3: like getting from Jamaica to Haiti, you know, is still
Speaker 3: something that they have to pull off if they're going
Speaker 3: to install a government.
Speaker 13: Oh, don't worry about the Haitians. Weren't invited to Jamaica.
Speaker 13: They're still in Haiti. So if they set up the
Speaker 13: government are there. They weren't even invited to set.
Speaker 6: Up the.
Speaker 2: Right true, So what about the Philippe.
Speaker 13: Gee has always been able to mobilize a lot of
Speaker 13: people and hands pretty broad constituency in Haiti because people
Speaker 13: think he kind of tells the truth. He's been involved
Speaker 13: in heavy trafficking. He just completed a seven year sentence
Speaker 13: in the States for money laundering because they weren't unable
Speaker 13: to come up with the evidence to get them on
Speaker 13: what they really thought they had for and they sent
Speaker 13: him back. Part of me scratches my head and said
Speaker 13: is there a scheme going on? Why would they send
Speaker 13: him back at this point in time. But we'll just
Speaker 13: ignore that.
Speaker 6: And Ghee was.
Speaker 13: A member of the former Haitian army, which we forced
Speaker 13: to President Risty to dissolve in nineteen ninety four. There's
Speaker 13: still about four thousand of these old buggers running around
Speaker 13: the hill. Say hey, they have weapons, they can mobilize.
Speaker 6: They're old.
Speaker 13: The weapons are old. But if they align with the gangs,
Speaker 13: and Gi philipp and Moijean Charles, who is a communist
Speaker 13: politician from up north, is part of Gi Pheleiep's thing.
Speaker 13: If we're because of the anarchy that's going on now,
Speaker 13: if we inject another bonehead move puppet into the Haitian
Speaker 13: ronment right right now, it's very possible at Keith, Felipe, Moyjeon,
Speaker 13: Charles or Barbecue might wind up taking power. However, if
Speaker 13: we give them time and space, the gangs have already
Speaker 13: quieted down. You notice that haven't shaped Riel step down.
Speaker 13: They quiet down. They stopped breaking stuff because they were
Speaker 13: breaking stuff to tell Ril don't come back and tell
Speaker 13: the international community, don't put another puppet in. Well, Ril listens.
Speaker 13: So far, the internationals haven't so who knows what's going
Speaker 13: to come out of this. The key is it's Haitian led,
Speaker 13: and it's gonna be Haitian led one way or the other.
Speaker 13: If the US injects somebody in through this seven headed
Speaker 13: Hydra Presidential Council, the people will rise up and it'll
Speaker 13: be a Haitian led solution, or if we give them space,
Speaker 13: it'll be a Haitian led solution. And the revolutionary rhetoric
Speaker 13: is real. Gee is not coming up with that as
Speaker 13: the intellectual author. That's the feeling on the states, the fielder'
Speaker 13: on the streets, only on the street. Since we didn't
Speaker 13: finish the job in eighteen oh four, we've let the
Speaker 13: white people push us around the last two hundred and
Speaker 13: nine years, and at this point we're gonna finish the
Speaker 13: Haitian Revolution and be independent one way.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting, sir. We really appreciate your analysis and
Speaker 1: your expertise, so thank you so much for.
Speaker 6: Joining us anytime.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, absolutely, thank you guys so much for watching Ryan.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you man. Another revolution love, yeah, exactly, we need
Speaker 1: another revolution here, the last one. What are the best
Speaker 1: books you've ever read on Haitian Revolution?
Speaker 3: Black Spartacus was the most recent Dussan Lebatore biography. It's
Speaker 3: so much better than the previous ones, which painted him
Speaker 3: as like a megalomaniac, and like, you know, something did
Speaker 3: change in the in the historiography, in this or in
Speaker 3: the like the way the historians understood Tucsant that finally
Speaker 3: gives him some serious respect and dignity.
Speaker 2: So check out Black Spartacle.
Speaker 1: Here you go, all right, I'm gonna pick it up
Speaker 1: actually on your recommendation, So there you go, all right,
Speaker 1: We'll see you guys later.
Speaker 6: H