Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at.
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Speaker 1: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. It's a
Speaker 1: great show for everyone today, it's Tuesday. It's especially great
Speaker 1: because you have Brian Graeme in the house. Good to
Speaker 1: see my friend.
Speaker 3: Going to be an amazing show, always amazing.
Speaker 1: I guess all my line it's a bro show, so
Speaker 1: it's okay, I will allow it.
Speaker 3: We've got a great bunch of great topics today. We're
Speaker 3: gonna go. I came up with amazing on my own.
Speaker 3: Have you've said that before?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my cash. Yeah, all right, let's see. We
Speaker 1: got Israel. We are going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what's going on in terms of the latest with
Speaker 1: Netsan Yahu. What the IDF claims of their control over Gaza.
Speaker 1: They say have total control of the Gaza strip Ryan
Speaker 1: is going to break down for us some of the
Speaker 1: things that are going on inside of Israel, some of
Speaker 1: the domestic consternation, and some we're crackdown on terms of
Speaker 1: civil disobedience inside of the country. We are also going
Speaker 1: to preview for everybody probably the single most important meeting
Speaker 1: in the world happening tomorrow, President Biden sitting down with
Speaker 1: Si Shengping.
Speaker 3: There's a lot to discuss.
Speaker 1: There also is an interesting moment though, because President Biden
Speaker 1: will be meeting she in the city of San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which overnight has become clean, and there's a lot to
Speaker 1: say about that. I think next, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about two very important stories. I know many of the
Speaker 1: people who watch the show are in California, and actually
Speaker 1: a lot in the city of Los Angeles. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the closure of the I ten, part
Speaker 1: of some of the reasons possibly behind a fire that
Speaker 1: has shut down this major highway. And in addition to
Speaker 1: that story, very near and dear to Ryan's heart, Oregon
Speaker 1: having a little bit of second thoughts about total decriminalization
Speaker 1: of all drugs. We are going to talk about the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court which is released a new ethics code and format.
Speaker 1: Ryan actually read through the entire thing, so I'll be
Speaker 1: asking him a lot about that President Biden as well.
Speaker 3: Lots of concerns.
Speaker 1: Media is waking up, you know now at this point
Speaker 1: they're like, oh my god, this man is so old.
Speaker 3: How the hell do we drag him across the finish line?
Speaker 1: And then ran for now You're going to be our
Speaker 1: resident Spanish extra. What the hell is going on in Spain?
Speaker 1: Tucker's on the ground. What's going on there? Ryan will
Speaker 1: explain all of it to us. So before we get
Speaker 1: any of that, Ryan, you want to plug the book?
Speaker 1: Ye here, Okay, it's the Squad Squad all right, and
Speaker 1: it is a AOC in the Hope of the Political Revolution.
Speaker 1: You guys are going to be hearing a lot about it.
Speaker 1: It's an excellent book. And we will also have a
Speaker 1: link down in the description. It helps him with the
Speaker 1: pre order links and all that. But don't worry order
Speaker 1: hear about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And a week and a half or so right
Speaker 4: after Thanksgiving, if you're in DC, I'll be at Politics
Speaker 4: and Pros with Crystal.
Speaker 1: That's right, So Chris will be interviewing in Politics and Pros.
Speaker 1: Said last time, that's how you truly have made it.
Speaker 3: You go, you get the.
Speaker 1: Politics and pros thing, the flagship, you're guaranteed right next
Speaker 1: to the sex child sex traffick in pizza place. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, I forgot about that. I've actually been there.
Speaker 1: I looked around of the basement. There was nothing. There's
Speaker 1: actually not a basis. All right, anyway, all right, we
Speaker 1: could have too much fun here. Let's start with Israel.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and get to our first element here
Speaker 1: in terms of what is actually happening on the ground
Speaker 1: and also in terms of who controls what. President Biden
Speaker 1: weighing in about the current attacks on the hospital where
Speaker 1: Israel claims that this is a Hamas center, the people
Speaker 1: in the hospital, the doctors disputing that.
Speaker 3: Here's what President Biden had to say.
Speaker 5: Have you expressed any specific concerns to Israel?
Speaker 3: Answer?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, I am not from reluctant, and especially
Speaker 6: my concern's going on and is my hope and expectation
Speaker 6: that there will be uh less intrusive action relative in
Speaker 6: the hospital. We're in contact and we're with the israelis Also,
Speaker 6: there is an effort to take this pause to deal
Speaker 6: with the release of prisoners, and that's being negotiated as
Speaker 6: well with cutteries are engaged, and so I've made somewhat
Speaker 6: hopeful the hospital must be protected.
Speaker 1: So this is a big question around what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Ryan part of the reasons that we need to protect
Speaker 1: the hospital. There was some reporting last night, very very
Speaker 1: late last night. I wanted to get your take on
Speaker 1: also update the audience. David Ignatius, who's basically like an
Speaker 1: employee of the CIA, has to work over at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. He claims that a forthcoming five day ceasefire
Speaker 1: is going to happen imminently and that there will also
Speaker 1: be a release of the majority of the hostages from
Speaker 1: Hamas and then also the release of Palestindians being held
Speaker 1: in Israeli prison. But it's one of those where we
Speaker 1: don't know the exact details. As I said, this is
Speaker 1: ignacious who was saying, and it's possible that materialize.
Speaker 3: I did want to flag it for the audience. He's
Speaker 3: also possibly get any of your reaction.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, So he was sourcing that to an
Speaker 4: Israeli official. But because as you said, because this is
Speaker 4: David Ignatious, he's not running anything without running it by
Speaker 4: his He's very well sourced in the deep state, so
Speaker 4: he's running This is what I heard. This follows a
Speaker 4: scoop from Reuters, which actually I think was just based
Speaker 4: on Hamas's telegraph channel, which if you're in Israeli you
Speaker 4: are not allowed to read, and we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 4: That's said that Hamas was ready to release seventy women
Speaker 4: and children in exchange for women and children being released
Speaker 4: from Palace from administrative detentionion got it in Israel, and
Speaker 4: so this builds on that you saw Biden sort of
Speaker 4: mentioned a pause that he's been pushing and they've been
Speaker 4: pushing back on They can only put Israel can only
Speaker 4: push back on the US for so long, Like it's
Speaker 4: not really up to them. They can drag it out.
Speaker 4: But we really are doing all of this.
Speaker 3: This is important. It looks like it's happening.
Speaker 1: This is an important point. It actually kind of ties
Speaker 1: into the security situations. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 1: there on the This was a pretty important release from
Speaker 1: the Defense minister.
Speaker 3: This is from the Times of Israel correspondent.
Speaker 1: He says that according to their Defense Minister quote, Hamas
Speaker 1: has now lost control of the Gaza strip as the
Speaker 1: IDF moves to capture Gaza City. There is no force
Speaker 1: of Hamas capable of now stopping the IDF. The IDF
Speaker 1: is advancing to every point Hamas organization has lost control
Speaker 1: of Gaza. Terrorists or fleeing South civilians are looting Hamas
Speaker 1: basis they have no confidence in the government. As of
Speaker 1: Israeli forces, he says, according to plans and carry out
Speaker 1: the task exactly elitely for advancing, and that they have
Speaker 1: now intensified activity against the tunnels in the recent days.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of reading this in a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways. Ryan, there was a very fascinating comment from
Speaker 1: the Israeli Foreign Minister yesterday and he said Israel has
Speaker 1: enough international legitimacy for maybe two to three weeks. So
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this entire military operation really in
Speaker 1: the context of the Iraq War. So during Iraq, there
Speaker 1: are multiple phases of the US occupation and of the war.
Speaker 1: Phase one, the easiest phase in retrospect, was just destroying
Speaker 1: the Iraqi army and taking Baghdad. That was a conventional
Speaker 1: military basically had no trouble doing it. It took three weeks.
Speaker 1: President Bush marks the occasion mission accomplished, and all of
Speaker 1: that it turns out that the war really began the
Speaker 1: day after mission accomplished, and that's where we had to
Speaker 1: deal with counterinsurgency. Who the hell is going to govern
Speaker 1: this mess? Who do we decide is legitimate? That's when
Speaker 1: the attacks on US forces start to trickle up and
Speaker 1: then eventually explode, and next thing you know, we have
Speaker 1: a full blown civil war. America is in charge, We
Speaker 1: have these fake elections and all this stuff going on
Speaker 1: as total chaos, and it descends into what we think
Speaker 1: of the conflict today. So I really believe that they
Speaker 1: are in the phase one sort of the conflict. They've
Speaker 1: got the US support at this point militarily. I mean
Speaker 1: I just checked this morning. Their official number of IDF
Speaker 1: who have been killed in action is forty seven. It's nothing,
Speaker 1: but it's not particularly high death toll. However, they are
Speaker 1: getting to the phase now where they claim Hamas has
Speaker 1: lost control of the Gaza strip, which leads to the
Speaker 1: now what question. We spend a lot of time yesterday
Speaker 1: talking about the Palastini authority bbnscha, now you rejecting it
Speaker 1: around what the prospect of who the hell is going
Speaker 1: to govern this space post Hamas and all that even
Speaker 1: if they can't accomplish their objective.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 4: Of all of that, and I would add it even
Speaker 4: a phase one A to I think what is a
Speaker 4: good analogy, and phase one A would be the shock
Speaker 4: and awe campaign, right and Israel, the IDF has done
Speaker 4: its and continues its own shot and all campaign. The
Speaker 4: difference here is that, Okay, you have reduced northern Gaza
Speaker 4: and almost all of Gaza City to rubble, and Hamas
Speaker 4: has gone out through its tunnels down into southern Gaza strip.
Speaker 4: I guess congratulations, mission accomplished. But I think anybody could
Speaker 4: predict that if you drop more bombs as we know
Speaker 4: that they now have on Gaza in the last month,
Speaker 4: then the US dropped on Afghanistan like the entire time,
Speaker 4: then yes, you're going to get the twenty to thirty
Speaker 4: thousand people who are under arms under Hama US to
Speaker 4: flee south like yes, okay, But then it goes to
Speaker 4: your point, now what and then Yahoo has said, well,
Speaker 4: we'll figure that out afterwards.
Speaker 3: We're not gonna worry about that.
Speaker 4: Now he has also said, well, we're gonna occupy it indefinitely.
Speaker 4: US is like, no, you're not we're not doing you're
Speaker 4: not doing that. He's like, okay, well we're not gonna
Speaker 4: let the Palestinian authority back in, and US and Arab
Speaker 4: countries like, what do you mean You're not gonna live?
Speaker 3: Soho? So who, yes, who's gonna run? It's not you.
Speaker 4: If it's not them, who's which leads then a lot
Speaker 4: of people say, wait a minute, do you plan?
Speaker 3: And they're not being people there. Well, the big question too,
Speaker 3: is who the hell's gonna run the election? You say
Speaker 3: you're gonna have an election.
Speaker 1: I mean America ran into this problem where we were like,
Speaker 1: we had to decide basically who was allowed to run
Speaker 1: and who's not. Oh, it turns out that didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of democratic legitimacy with the Iraqi people, and
Speaker 1: it took decades in order for that to actually material
Speaker 1: if it even does materialize.
Speaker 4: And in two thousand and six, when George W. Bush
Speaker 4: oversaw that election, Hillary Clinton famously publicly sem publicly was like,
Speaker 4: would you an idiot? You would hold an election and
Speaker 4: not be able to rig the outcome?
Speaker 3: Right, Which, when you.
Speaker 4: Step back a second and think about who's saying that,
Speaker 4: it's kind of about kind of an amusing thing to
Speaker 4: have expressed publicly about elections that they're really just theater
Speaker 4: to put in place who we want to run.
Speaker 3: She was livid.
Speaker 4: She's like, how, as you know, a custodian of the
Speaker 4: American Empire, could you hold an election which allows an
Speaker 4: adversary of in a certain point.
Speaker 1: She's not wrong if you're going to militarily occupy a country,
Speaker 1: and then of course you're going to try and rig
Speaker 1: the election in the you know, in the direction that
Speaker 1: you want. And in fact, the irony of all of
Speaker 1: this is, this is why we have to spend so
Speaker 1: much time on I Rock. Is that the two thousand
Speaker 1: and five like Israeli deoccupation or whatever of Gaza, removal
Speaker 1: of settlers, and then the subsequent election was entirely done
Speaker 1: at the best of President Bush because it was an
Speaker 1: all part of his second inaugural address, the two thousand
Speaker 1: and five democracy promotion nonsense, which eventually led to the
Speaker 1: collection of Hamas.
Speaker 3: And that's literally to where we are right now exactly.
Speaker 1: And then we had a coup in a civil war
Speaker 1: and it's completely failed because it turns out we can't
Speaker 1: do ninety eight thousand, We can't even do three things
Speaker 1: at once.
Speaker 3: Let alone, like I didn't do coups any what we
Speaker 3: were trying to do at that time.
Speaker 1: So the point though, is that much of this also
Speaker 1: roots back to that time period. It's why it's very
Speaker 1: instructive and why we spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: and thinking about it. It also is in the context
Speaker 1: of what the blowback on America is going to look like.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: This was actually a map that was compiled over by
Speaker 1: Fox News. I actually thought they did a pretty good job. Well,
Speaker 1: you can see here are now the fifty two attacks
Speaker 1: on US military forces since October seventeenth. Note the date
Speaker 1: October seventeen, because there were still many more before that.
Speaker 1: It's only this is the number that we have. They
Speaker 1: span and run the gamut all across of Syria and
Speaker 1: all across Iraq as well, from the Bagdad Diplomatic Center
Speaker 1: where the green zone infamous Green Zone, all the way
Speaker 1: to Airbil in the north, and as well the Alasad
Speaker 1: Air Base where we have so many Iraqi and US
Speaker 1: forces that are stationed there. Then we have the altanof
Speaker 1: Garrison in Syria and the number of US Special operations
Speaker 1: bases forward operating bases that are all across Syria that
Speaker 1: are ostensibly there for an anti Isis mission. But these
Speaker 1: guys really are you know, just sitting ducks at a
Speaker 1: certain point because they don't have a huge amount of
Speaker 1: force protection on the base because these are smaller locations,
Speaker 1: so they're just sitting there. I mean, they have a
Speaker 1: limited amount of protection, and it's just we're in a
Speaker 1: tit for tat game with these Iranian proxy forces. Yesterday
Speaker 1: we brought everyone the news Ryan in terms of what
Speaker 1: it looks like right now for the prospect of a
Speaker 1: Lebanon Israel war and with Hesbola now for now and
Speaker 1: hopefully you know, things are not escalating, but the escalation
Speaker 1: ladder is being climbed, so we don't know if total
Speaker 1: war is going to emerge. I don't think anybody actually
Speaker 1: wants that. The US doesn't want it, you know. The
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense called the Israeli Defense Minister and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you better be cutting this out, like we are not.
Speaker 3: We are not getting embroiled into this. You need to
Speaker 3: cool it.
Speaker 1: Why are you having these long range strikes all the
Speaker 1: way deep in their territory at the same time, like
Speaker 1: the Israelis are like, well, has Bola has been firing
Speaker 1: anti tank missiles at US? They've killed a number of
Speaker 1: IDF soldiers. I believe a Raeli citizen at an electrical
Speaker 1: plant was actually killed by one of these missiles just
Speaker 1: two days ago. So you know, everybody is a tit
Speaker 1: for tat motions that we are right now, and the
Speaker 1: US is actually telegraphing part of the reason why it
Speaker 1: doesn't want this to happen in a very subtle way.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there please on the screen. The
Speaker 1: US Central Command, which is the area of operations for
Speaker 1: the Middle East, tweeted out quote for the third time
Speaker 1: in eight days, B one lancers have conducted missions in
Speaker 1: the US Sentcom area of responsibility, demonstrating the ability to
Speaker 1: rapidly project combat power. Now, why, why, Ryan, would you
Speaker 1: be tweeting out pictures of a heavy strategic bomber which
Speaker 1: was built to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with Gaza,
Speaker 1: And honestly, even Lebanon and Hesbola, there's only one target
Speaker 1: that that message was telegraphed to.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you've got a sexy b one like that,
Speaker 4: I mean, let's just share those selfies, right, Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 3: You just can't help it.
Speaker 4: There was a kind of there was a statement from
Speaker 4: a Hamas spokesperson out of Lebanon yesterday that sounded a
Speaker 4: little bit like cope that goes to this question of Hesbola,
Speaker 4: where they said Hesbela's red line is if Hamas is
Speaker 4: completely eliminated from Gaza and Gaza is flattened. So it
Speaker 4: was Hamask trying to explain to the broader Middle East
Speaker 4: why Hesbela hasn't gotten more aggressively into the war against
Speaker 4: Israel because Hamas very early on was sending signals that
Speaker 4: they were hoping that this would create more of a
Speaker 4: regional conflagration. But those four attacks that we saw since
Speaker 4: the US strikes on Iranian proxies suggest that this kind
Speaker 4: of counterintuitive strat the US has of de escalation through escalation.
Speaker 4: They're like, if we keep attacking, that will prevent them
Speaker 4: from further attacks. Shows that's not working and it doesn't
Speaker 4: make any sense to begin with, and it's also not working.
Speaker 4: The more we attack, then the more they fire back,
Speaker 4: and the big fear is like, as you were pointing out,
Speaker 4: these bases are not terribly well guarded that you could
Speaker 4: have some Bengazi situation.
Speaker 1: Of course, I mean that's always the nightmare scenario. It's
Speaker 1: like you just never know, and it just takes a
Speaker 1: single instance of one person who didn't plan exactly the
Speaker 1: right way and things are popping off at the same time.
Speaker 3: Ryan, you flag something you wanted to discuss.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there please on the screen, this
Speaker 1: internal State Department memo which was actually blasting Biden in
Speaker 1: US policy.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit about it.
Speaker 4: So, the State Department has what's called a dissent channel,
Speaker 4: and the State Department officials at the top brag about
Speaker 4: how proud they are of this, that it allows people
Speaker 4: to air their grievances and to and that that's the
Speaker 4: way that you get to kind of the right decision.
Speaker 4: At the end, you hear from all sides. In reality,
Speaker 4: they're not so pleased that this descent channel exists. They're
Speaker 4: super not pleased when this channel leaks into the public.
Speaker 4: This one, the ones that have been coming out recently
Speaker 4: have been just extraordinarily aggressive. This one from State Department
Speaker 4: officials hits Biden for what they say accurately spreading misinformation
Speaker 4: about the gods of death toll and they use the
Speaker 4: phrase misinformation, which is pretty ironic given the way that
Speaker 4: like the Department of Health, the Department of Holme Security
Speaker 4: was talking about criminalizing yeah at some point, and so
Speaker 4: in their worldview, they're accusing him of an impeachable offense.
Speaker 4: But this goes back to his claim that he made
Speaker 4: to Laura Beron Lopez and that presser that you can't
Speaker 4: trust the gods of health ministries death tolls.
Speaker 3: Since then and.
Speaker 4: Before then, everybody understood, from Israel to human rights organizations,
Speaker 4: that these numbers are accurate. Like if you go back
Speaker 4: and look the IDF estimates about around civilian casualties or
Speaker 4: around casualties, I should say, are the same as roughly
Speaker 4: the same as the Ministry of Health was always coming
Speaker 4: up with, and the State Department knew that, and the
Speaker 4: administration knew that because the administrator was all in the state'smartent.
Speaker 3: We're always relying on these numbers.
Speaker 4: And so to have Biden say that we don't know
Speaker 4: whether the pal scenes are telling the truth about these
Speaker 4: sent a signal that there would be no consequences for
Speaker 4: civilian casualties because you could just deny them and so
Speaker 4: the State Department pushed back on that. There's there's now
Speaker 4: a letter coming out from i think in the New
Speaker 4: York Times from like four hundred Biden staffers. Put part
Speaker 4: of this trend of staffers and lower level official pushing letters.
Speaker 3: Pushing back at the intercept.
Speaker 4: Today we have a letter from about one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty Obama staffers to Obama saying, come on get tougher.
Speaker 4: Interesting on Biden kind of reaction to one another letter
Speaker 4: that's going out. So there is a lot of dissent
Speaker 4: going on because you can only deny this, you know,
Speaker 4: for so long.
Speaker 1: And then actually all of that kind of flies in
Speaker 1: the face though of how the official Democratic Party is operating.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen. This is important.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about what you have here? It
Speaker 1: says that the House of Representatives has organized bipartisan member
Speaker 1: transportation to the rally tomorrow to support Israel. It's being
Speaker 1: run by the Democratic Minority leader, Jakim Jeffrey. So there
Speaker 1: is a protest or whatever, a march, gigantic march today,
Speaker 1: March today in support of Israel. And you're saying House Democrats,
Speaker 1: the leader actually is organizing transportation for members to go
Speaker 1: into this march for support of Israel.
Speaker 4: The organizers are expecting two to three hundred thousand people
Speaker 4: just because the six just as bigaus of that one.
Speaker 4: I think, you know you're going to have buses from
Speaker 4: all over the country coming to DC.
Speaker 3: It's there is a small peace.
Speaker 4: Block that is that is part of it that wanted
Speaker 4: to say I stand against anti Semitism, I also stand
Speaker 4: against war, but most of it is just generally supportive
Speaker 4: of Israel's war effort. And so to have the House
Speaker 4: of Representatives making by partners and travel rangeents, first of all,
Speaker 4: just walk.
Speaker 3: I mean it's from yes, yeah, thank you. We're talking
Speaker 3: like ten blocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well less that's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: But so the letter that I obtained says, if you
Speaker 4: if you're a member of Congress that wants to go
Speaker 4: to this rally, we have a range transportation and RSVP
Speaker 4: to Keem Jeffries. Basically this is later today the House
Speaker 4: Foreign Affairs Committee, I also reported this yesterday, will be
Speaker 4: streaming that Hamas atrocity video that the IDEA has been
Speaker 4: screening around.
Speaker 3: You know, two journalists throughout Israel and else.
Speaker 4: They did it in New York and then you hear
Speaker 4: from people who've come out of it. And so if
Speaker 4: you are a Palestinian, you know, watching this as you
Speaker 4: know the death Holls, who knows, maybe it's pushing thirty thousand.
Speaker 4: You know, the ministry official who was in charge of
Speaker 4: the count was at Al Shifa hospital. So how is
Speaker 4: that how.
Speaker 3: We can now?
Speaker 4: I agree with Biden that we might not be able
Speaker 4: to rely on these numbers as much anymore, but in
Speaker 4: the wrong direction, it might be actually much worse than
Speaker 4: we understand. So if you're somebody in gods at watching this,
Speaker 4: you're you're not seeing the United States as a kind
Speaker 4: of interlockert or who's trying to bring people together to
Speaker 4: end this. Yes, you're seeing them just one squarely.
Speaker 1: That's what I think, you know has to be squared here,
Speaker 1: And it's just obvious, like the democratic entire democratic leadership
Speaker 1: from the president on down, like there's yes, there's maybe
Speaker 1: twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: Or whatever, eighteen to twenty. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, And that's why I just think people
Speaker 1: also need to be very real about where the US
Speaker 1: political system is right now, whether it is reflective of
Speaker 1: actual like small d democratic concern I don't think So
Speaker 1: although I do still think people underrate, you know, just
Speaker 1: how pro Israel a lot of the American population is.
Speaker 1: We'll see and you know a reflection of that is
Speaker 1: going to be. We had a big ceasefire protest was
Speaker 1: here in the US where I'm a massive protest here
Speaker 1: Austin yesterday.
Speaker 4: I had said ten thousand, but you look at the
Speaker 4: drone footage, it's like the whole It's like, yeah, city was.
Speaker 3: Out this as London.
Speaker 1: Actually, we'll probably cover it on Thursday, just some of
Speaker 1: the outbreaks.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest in British history.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I think since two thousand
Speaker 1: and three might be the largest protests to actually take
Speaker 1: place there. So big stuff is happening. Let's move on
Speaker 1: now to Israel and what's happening on the ground. So
Speaker 1: Bib Nasannah, who took to the US air waves as
Speaker 1: he did all in English, of course, in order to
Speaker 1: telegraph directly to you. He was actually asked though, He's like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you ever going to take responsibility for what happened
Speaker 1: on October seven?
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen. I know you say the time
Speaker 3: for that will come after the war. Why won't you
Speaker 3: take responsibility now, I've.
Speaker 7: Already addressed that many times, and I said, this whole
Speaker 7: question will be addressed after the war, just as people
Speaker 7: would ask, well, did people ask Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl
Speaker 7: Harbor that question? Did people ask George Bush after the
Speaker 7: surprise attack of November eleventh. Look, it's a question that
Speaker 7: needs to be asked.
Speaker 3: This question will asked, and I've.
Speaker 7: Said and I've said, I've said that one thing that
Speaker 7: is important, and I've said, We're going to answer all
Speaker 7: these questions, including me. I'm going to be asked tough
Speaker 7: questions right now. I think what we have to do
Speaker 7: is unite the country for one purpose, one purpose alone,
Speaker 7: and that is to achieve victory. That's what I did.
Speaker 7: We formed a unity government. The country is united as
Speaker 7: never before, and I think that's what we have to pursue.
Speaker 7: And what the people expect me to do right now
Speaker 7: is two things. One, achieve this victory and bring the
Speaker 7: hostages back and second, assure that Gaza never becomes And two.
Speaker 5: Israelis who are disappointed that you still won't take responsibility.
Speaker 3: You say, well, I.
Speaker 7: Said that I'm going to answer all the questions that
Speaker 7: are required, including the questions of responsibility. There will be
Speaker 7: enough time for that after the war. Let's focus on victory.
Speaker 7: That's my responsibility.
Speaker 1: So this is especially ironic comment the nine to eleven one.
Speaker 1: Would we have been better off if we did not
Speaker 1: immediately rally around the flag and instead asked Georgia were like,
Speaker 1: hey man, how exactly does this happen on your watch?
Speaker 1: You had a briefing on what was it, August ninth
Speaker 1: or something like that. Bin Laden determined to attack the
Speaker 1: United States. So what happened there? Wait, the FBI and
Speaker 1: the CIA were like screwing with each other and they
Speaker 1: just happened to miss you know, the Saudi agents that
Speaker 1: were all across America. He even had the twentieth hijacker
Speaker 1: in custody. And you had another guy who was involved
Speaker 1: in the World Trade Center bomb or no in the
Speaker 1: two thousand Millennium bombing, and he actually recognized ZACHARISMASAUI, but
Speaker 1: he didn't show him a photo until after nine eleven.
Speaker 1: You could have prevented it. Or actually, the CIA had
Speaker 1: scans of their US visas and knew they were coming here.
Speaker 3: And nobody was able to put that out together.
Speaker 1: Now, let me ask whether we would have been better
Speaker 1: off asking all those questions. We didn't find out any
Speaker 1: of the facts I just laid out. We probably didn't
Speaker 1: find out till what two thousand and five, two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. Well, by that time, we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of a dam insurgency in Iraq, and you know, even
Speaker 1: the FDR example, there is a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: happened inside the State Department where America would have been
Speaker 1: very much better off. We had asked a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: but hey, who the hell was running the East Asia
Speaker 1: Desk and decided to just cut Japan off on an
Speaker 1: oil embargo and not think about what the consequences of
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be. So, yeah, actually you are better
Speaker 1: off in the immediate aftermath being like, yes, how exactly
Speaker 1: did this happen? Not only prevent it never happen again,
Speaker 1: but prevent us from using the war to you know,
Speaker 1: different political purposes, as Bebe is doing, to actually address
Speaker 1: the core problem that the majority of his Israelis feel,
Speaker 1: you know, want the hostages back and they WoT Amas
Speaker 1: to pay a price. Those are totally legitimate, but Bbe's
Speaker 1: direct like long term interest do not align with what
Speaker 1: they want, and at least for them, the Israelis, I'll
Speaker 1: give them this.
Speaker 3: They're smart enough where they understand that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're much smarter than we were after nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: where we were just like rah rah oh my god,
Speaker 1: George W.
Speaker 3: Bush through out a pitch at Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 4: And to the Israeli public's great credit on this particular question,
Speaker 4: they have not let him, yes, sweep these questions under
Speaker 4: the rug because the answers are all obvious and none
Speaker 4: of them are useful for Beebe. And we've talked about
Speaker 4: this before. One of the answers, or two of them.
Speaker 4: One is his attempt to take over the judiciary to
Speaker 4: stay out of jail like that. Kind of the public
Speaker 4: Israeli public sees that as part of the kind of
Speaker 4: a distraction that kind of weakened the country ahead of
Speaker 4: ahead of this, and secondly, empowering these settlers in the
Speaker 4: West Bank to just run rough shot over Palestinians over
Speaker 4: the last year to kill two hundred plus of them.
Speaker 4: Clearing out entire neighborhoods required the moving of a lot
Speaker 4: of military assets from the Neck of Desert up to
Speaker 4: the West Bank.
Speaker 3: So that was a choice that was made that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was also very hostile to the south of
Speaker 4: Israel because, as we talked about right afterwards, a lot
Speaker 4: of lefties that lived down there, and so all of
Speaker 4: these different moves he made, along with allegedly having the
Speaker 4: most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in world history and missing it,
Speaker 4: all of those things combined to create an opening for
Speaker 4: Hamas that appears to have shocked Hamas as well, you know,
Speaker 4: as well as the Israeli defenses, like they did not
Speaker 4: expect that they would be kind of rampaging for days.
Speaker 4: You know, I think this was, as we understand what
Speaker 4: they're thinking, what this was a hit these military outposts,
Speaker 4: grab as many hostages as possible and then go back
Speaker 4: to Gaza and then do a hostage exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Speaker 4: But they overran the defenses so thoroughly that they just
Speaker 4: then just called an audible and kept going.
Speaker 3: Well, congratulations to them.
Speaker 1: They're certainly very smart people, who, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: would never have anticipated that taking hostages of children and
Speaker 1: all that wouldn't invite a massive military response.
Speaker 3: Ryan, you did flag.
Speaker 1: However, there's some stuff going on inside of Israel that
Speaker 1: I want you to be able to break down for us.
Speaker 1: We can go and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: guys about Israeli civilian and human rights inside of the
Speaker 1: country right now and some acts of protests and others.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us about some examples about what
Speaker 1: you're seeing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, the the Kanessea has passed legislation since October
Speaker 4: seventh that criminal that criminalizes effectively criticizing the war effort,
Speaker 4: criminalizes any support of that, anything that could be remotely
Speaker 4: understood to be uh support of Palestinians broadly. Uh, and
Speaker 4: even criminalizes particular news consumption, not just the Hamas kind
Speaker 4: of telegraph you channel, the telegram channel that's.
Speaker 3: That that is like definitely going to get you arrested.
Speaker 4: Interesting, But you can't be on different WhatsApp groups that
Speaker 4: are sharing news from God from reporters in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: There have been people that have been arrested for just
Speaker 4: sharing the kind of handles of Oh here's some good
Speaker 4: people to follow on Instagram. Sure like that that has
Speaker 4: gotten you arrested. This weekend, there were two there, Uh,
Speaker 4: there were two Israeli leaders here in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: One is a Israeli Jewish labor leader. The other is
Speaker 4: the only female Palestinian member of the Kanesset. They found
Speaker 4: an organization called Standing Together and they're kind of doing
Speaker 4: an American tour.
Speaker 3: I saw them over the weekend. They said.
Speaker 4: One of the things that organization did right after October
Speaker 4: seventh is they set up a hotline for people who
Speaker 4: were either arrested or fired for making public comments that
Speaker 4: ran a foul of these new laws. And they are
Speaker 4: in the high thousands. This is not like a couple
Speaker 4: of cases here of a teacher, because you've seen some
Speaker 4: high profile cases of a teacher who got arrested for
Speaker 4: posting the names of Palestinian children who were killed with
Speaker 4: gods like that's it, not saying, you know, maybe they
Speaker 4: even supported it, just posting the names.
Speaker 3: They said. They're in the high thousands.
Speaker 4: There's a viral video that's gone around of a Palestinian
Speaker 4: woman who's an Israeli citizens wat you saw that. The
Speaker 4: cops show up and they're like, you are supporting terror,
Speaker 4: and she's like, and you can tell in her eyes
Speaker 4: that she did not, like she she knew she didn't
Speaker 4: even post anything. And they said on her what's app
Speaker 4: status had said basically, may God grant them courage and
Speaker 4: victory or something like that. And she's like I was
Speaker 4: referring to Israel. Huh, I mean is really citizen? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm rooting for Like, she's probably already taking a lot
Speaker 4: of flak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, owned community.
Speaker 4: And you can tell, you can just tell from her
Speaker 4: body language she's telling the truth, but you can also
Speaker 4: see in her eyes that she feels like she's on
Speaker 4: the precipice of getting sucked into this, the abyss of this,
Speaker 4: of this system, of which she may never emerge.
Speaker 1: My question to you was going to be so WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: for example, they brag about anten encryption and all that.
Speaker 3: So how do the Israelis even have visibility into this?
Speaker 3: Is it? Is it like cooperation with meta they own?
Speaker 4: No, I would I would work well if it's if
Speaker 4: it's your WhatsApp status's public, right, Yeah, So a lot
Speaker 4: of this is a lot of this is public, and
Speaker 4: a lot of these WhatsApp groups, you know they're public.
Speaker 4: You'd have you know, like a public people sort of
Speaker 4: like a public Facebook page. So I think, as far
Speaker 4: as we understand, if you're doing encrypted messages back and forth,
Speaker 4: you might be okay, but you might Pegasus might be
Speaker 4: able to get into your WhatsApp messages as well, like
Speaker 4: it's not, as far as we understand, signal is stronger
Speaker 4: than Facebook because then you know, Facebook goings WhatsApp because
Speaker 4: of some of the backdoors that are available to what's app.
Speaker 4: But in general, we're talking about just public stuff like
Speaker 4: putting on. There was there was a case of somebody
Speaker 4: who said something like there is no God but God
Speaker 4: was arrested and interrogated and and said, my aunt just died.
Speaker 4: That all that had nothing to do with the war. Well,
Speaker 4: and they made the person produce there is no God,
Speaker 4: but yeah, they made they made the person. They made
Speaker 4: the person produce the death certificate. And when a produce
Speaker 4: a dance death certificate, they're like, okay, fine, but make
Speaker 4: sure you better not be grieving about anybody in Gaza.
Speaker 4: If we find out that you're grieving about anybody in Gaza,
Speaker 4: we're coming back.
Speaker 3: That's pretty crazy, all right.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of stuff going on inside of that.
Speaker 1: And you also, you guys wrote this up over at
Speaker 1: the intercept. You can break this out. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of our viewers actually will be interested in this.
Speaker 1: The Anti Defamation League, the ADL, has now mapped Jewish
Speaker 1: peace rallies with quote anti Semitic attacks. So this is
Speaker 1: almost too much of a parody, but give us the details, Ryan.
Speaker 4: This is the kind of the logical, kind of endpoint
Speaker 4: of what you were seeing over the last several weeks
Speaker 4: of all of these different commentators posting images of you know,
Speaker 4: one hundred two hundred thousand people marching in London or
Speaker 4: New York City and saying, you know, look at all
Speaker 4: of these anti Semites.
Speaker 3: I fear for myself.
Speaker 4: But that's but the actual marches are saying we want
Speaker 4: to cease fire in the war. Like it's it's not
Speaker 4: a it's an anti Semitic march. It is an anti
Speaker 4: Israel war march. And so it makes sense that then
Speaker 4: the Anti DeafNation League, which has been pushing for a
Speaker 4: long time to say that criticism of Israel is the
Speaker 4: same thing as anti Semitism, for them to say, all right,
Speaker 4: if you attend one of these marches, that's a hate
Speaker 4: march and you're anti Semitic, and you're going on you're
Speaker 4: going on the list.
Speaker 3: So even if you're Jewish, it's not even if Semitic, especially.
Speaker 4: Ok oh, okay, especially then because that's more of a threat.
Speaker 1: So they say, well, the ADL told the intercepted does
Speaker 1: not consider Ceespire protests anti Semitic, just anti Israel. It's
Speaker 1: CEO Jonathan Greenblad has now said otherwise. After thousands of
Speaker 1: Jews called for a ceasefire, ADL DC released a statement
Speaker 1: equating anti Zionism with anti Semitism. Greenback piled on, calling
Speaker 1: the groups that organized the protest Jewish Voice for Peace
Speaker 1: hate groups. Roughly five hundred Jews, including twenty five rabbis,
Speaker 1: were then arrested at that Capital protest. It is important
Speaker 1: to note these are radical, fringe Jewish organization and being
Speaker 1: Jewish does not exempt an organization or a person from
Speaker 1: being anti Semitic.
Speaker 4: So basically, so basically imagine that that ideology is in
Speaker 4: power in Israel. Yes, because here we can be like
Speaker 4: John green Blatt going, you know, doing his thing where
Speaker 4: he you know, he's calling.
Speaker 3: He can say whatever.
Speaker 1: It could be annoying because you could sub tweet it
Speaker 1: or something like that lead to a boycott or something.
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, like we're not
Speaker 3: going to like, you know, go to jail for it.
Speaker 4: But if in Israel you and I you know, might
Speaker 4: you know be facing cops on the other side of
Speaker 4: the door, and you'd be.
Speaker 3: Like, no, it was him.
Speaker 4: He's a guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've almost made They would review it.
Speaker 4: They'd be like, how did you respond when he said
Speaker 4: that thing?
Speaker 1: Interesting, Well, they can roll the tape, they could go
Speaker 1: ahead and they could see how it is. So that's
Speaker 1: that was an important thing that we wanted to highlight
Speaker 1: for everybody. Just a couple of different fragments I think to,
Speaker 1: you know, tie a blow on this for inside of
Speaker 1: Israeli society. Like number one is that Netanyahu himself has
Speaker 1: a direct interest in drawing this thing out as long
Speaker 1: as possible. Too, that his coalition, the people who are
Speaker 1: in charge, actively are kind of pushing him to a
Speaker 1: position where he has to defend some of the most
Speaker 1: indefensible actions. And at the same time, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like a datante between the two of them, because they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe you get to stay in power, but you have
Speaker 1: to defend everything that we do and otherwise we won't
Speaker 1: be asking questions about October seven. And the cover of
Speaker 1: all of that is the crackdown inside of Israeli society.
Speaker 4: And underlying all this, for the people who have been
Speaker 4: following along is he's been facing all of these corruption
Speaker 4: charges that he can get out of as long as
Speaker 4: he's in office. Yes, so the entire world is held hostage.
Speaker 4: I've wondered if they could just come up with a
Speaker 4: deal and be like, it's fine, you're not I prosecute
Speaker 4: you and your wife for these corruption charges.
Speaker 3: I have said this before.
Speaker 1: I genuinely think he's a villainous figure no matter what
Speaker 1: is actually especially if you support the state of Israel.
Speaker 1: I think the most patriotic thing you can do is
Speaker 1: if you're a controversial person and you know, we should
Speaker 1: look to British history for things like this. Chamberlain like,
Speaker 1: whenever he knew he was going to lose a vote
Speaker 1: of no confidence, he didn't want to leave. He was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm out. The public will and support me form a
Speaker 1: coalition government.
Speaker 3: I'm done. And a lot of people have had to
Speaker 3: make that choice in the past. It's brutal. It's not
Speaker 3: like history treated him all that well.
Speaker 1: He died of cancer very shortly afterwards, and he's probably
Speaker 1: still considered Chamberlain. Yeah, he's like one of the worst
Speaker 1: pms in British history, and yet he did the honorable
Speaker 1: thing at the time there was a I forget I
Speaker 1: think it was hh Asquith. Same thing in the middle
Speaker 1: of World War One. He lost power and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm done, and he had to turn over power to
Speaker 1: somebody who we genuinely hated. That's how it goes sometimes
Speaker 1: whenever you're actually a patriot. Herbert Hoover, he certainly didn't
Speaker 1: want to turn things over to FDR, but he did.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those where people, if you really
Speaker 1: support the country, you should be able to put yourself
Speaker 1: past it.
Speaker 3: You should put the country above you and your own
Speaker 3: personal interest.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, Nea I was chosen not to make that decision.
Speaker 1: I genuinely think it may be one of the worst
Speaker 1: things that's happened to Israel as a result of this,
Speaker 1: and has guided so many of their worst decisions, which
Speaker 1: will remain perilous. I think in the many years to come,
Speaker 1: it'll fall out. Okay, move on to the next part.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Xijingping and President Biden, arguably,
Speaker 1: as I said, the most important meeting in the entire world.
Speaker 1: So let's go and put this up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: just a preview everyone for what exactly is happening. Well,
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot going on behind the scenes, Ryan
Speaker 1: where the APEC meeting, which is obviously the Asian Pacific
Speaker 1: Cooperation Organization, they're all coming together. There's eighteen different nations,
Speaker 1: but the two figures that everybody wants to see are
Speaker 1: Biden and She. And the biggest thing that is actually
Speaker 1: dividing the Biden administration in the Chinese right now is
Speaker 1: the lack of military to military communication. These were really
Speaker 1: important channels that happen for deconfliction purposes with all the
Speaker 1: US forces not only in the South China see but
Speaker 1: all across the Asia Pacific.
Speaker 3: And it really basically amounts to.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, we're gonna do an exercise over here,
Speaker 1: so don't shoot at us. It sounds stupid, but this
Speaker 1: is very basic but important military to military stuff that's
Speaker 1: supposed to go beyond the diplomacy and just make sure
Speaker 1: no accidents.
Speaker 3: They had cut off that channel after.
Speaker 1: The shooting down of the Chinese spy balloon back in February,
Speaker 1: so they have resumed some of that. The other thing
Speaker 1: that's going to happen is that at the APEC conference,
Speaker 1: and it actually stands for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation I
Speaker 1: apologize for missaying it earlier. The point though, is that
Speaker 1: the economic piece of this is actually really key. There
Speaker 1: was a presumption that some trade agreements and other things
Speaker 1: may be announced that doesn't yet appear to have materialized
Speaker 1: into anything formal. Of course, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion around Taiwan. But the big thing that
Speaker 1: overlays all of this is that China is probably coming
Speaker 1: into this position both in the weakest economic picture that
Speaker 1: they've ever had and also the strongest military. So they
Speaker 1: have the strongest military that they've ever had, and they've
Speaker 1: got all these ambitions, they have all these things that
Speaker 1: they want, and then at the same time, the Chinese
Speaker 1: dream and all that people had been talking about for
Speaker 1: over twenty years now that kind of belies the every
Speaker 1: US China.
Speaker 3: Meeting that's not the same.
Speaker 1: You know, China's economic slump right now is probably one
Speaker 1: of the biggest news. They have a huge real estate bubble,
Speaker 1: their overall consumption and economy is really hurting. Zero COVID
Speaker 1: really hurt them badly. They've had problems restarting manufacturing. They
Speaker 1: have real energy problems as well. Cole and even they
Speaker 1: had rolling blackouts for time across the country kind of
Speaker 1: shook the foundation of the CCP's control over it. And
Speaker 1: then at the same time you've got she who is
Speaker 1: probably the most dictatorial Chinese premier since Malagay Dong. And
Speaker 1: combining all of that, you have this meeting between these
Speaker 1: two great superpowers and their leaders and how long it's
Speaker 1: going to be. What are exactly are they going to know?
Speaker 1: Can they accomplish anything. There's been a lot of pre
Speaker 1: work and all of that behind the scenes, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you want to flag anything in particularly they're
Speaker 1: gonna get it.
Speaker 4: It feels to me like they're going through a period
Speaker 4: similar to ours. You know, we had the mid post
Speaker 4: World War two era up through up through the seventies.
Speaker 4: Every generation I felt like the next generation was going
Speaker 4: to do better, like that was the and you can
Speaker 4: even run it back before with the blip and the
Speaker 4: depression that kind of.
Speaker 3: Produced the American dream. To go back to your point
Speaker 3: about the Chinese dream.
Speaker 4: Yes, that was the thing that allowed so many people
Speaker 4: to accept a lot of the indignities that come with
Speaker 4: contemporary life that Okay, this sucks, but things are better
Speaker 4: for me than they were for my parents, And I'm
Speaker 4: going to make them better for my kids than they
Speaker 4: were for yours. And what we learned in the between
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties and the financial crisis of two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight is that when you pull that rug out
Speaker 4: from under people, the indignities that they're suffering start to
Speaker 4: sting a lot more and they start to get pretty frustrated.
Speaker 4: And you saw this populist anger that was channeled to
Speaker 4: the right as a result of all that. And I
Speaker 4: think you just have to be seeing some of that
Speaker 4: in China at the same time, because you're finally seeing
Speaker 4: every generation felt like their children were going to do
Speaker 4: better because they you know, the CCP too, it's great
Speaker 4: cred has overseen the greatest, you know, collapse in poverty.
Speaker 1: Right Well, I think America's trade are going to I
Speaker 1: think America's trade policies had a lot more to do
Speaker 1: with that than the CCP. But I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you can't you can't blame them for taking advantage of
Speaker 1: stupid people.
Speaker 3: I mean, we did trade.
Speaker 4: We did trade policies in South and Central America, we
Speaker 4: did trade policies in Africa, we did trade policies in Vietnam.
Speaker 4: And it's China that's like, you know, kicking everybody's but they.
Speaker 1: Were, they were the best equipped to take advantage of
Speaker 1: US stupidity. The thing that I would really say is
Speaker 1: the economic peace to this is pretty much baked in
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: This is when you can't deny with Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, the trade war is probably the single most
Speaker 1: bipartisan accomplishment that he had. He destroyed at least the
Speaker 1: public trade consensus. Behind the scenes, there's many Republicans and
Speaker 1: Democrats who want to return, but.
Speaker 3: There's no there's no announcement coming in this meeting.
Speaker 1: Of oh, we're going to get rid of the three
Speaker 1: one tariffs, the national security tariffs. There's no way that
Speaker 1: even Biden, you know, could try and do something like that.
Speaker 1: At best, they could only try and you know, bring
Speaker 1: back TPP through another name. But even from what we've
Speaker 1: seen so far, that's not really what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I think Taiwan and the military is going to dominate
Speaker 1: probably the entire conversation. Which is why it's interesting because
Speaker 1: the other thing that's been rarely rankling the Chinese is
Speaker 1: that our relations with China have basically had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with China.
Speaker 3: Recently.
Speaker 1: Everything has been about Oh, China's supporting Russia in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Oh China refuses to condemn what's going on in Gaza,
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, okay, but maybe we should just
Speaker 1: talk about, like, you know, US and China, which has
Speaker 1: to do with Asia and our largest trading partner outside
Speaker 1: of Canada and Mexico, and how are we going to
Speaker 1: figure this out? And what you know, what are our
Speaker 1: actual redlines in the region, and is cooperation even possible?
Speaker 3: What can you know?
Speaker 1: All these things look like it's but my biggest critique
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration's foreign policy is that they refuse
Speaker 1: to conduct foreign policy honest for US interests and in
Speaker 1: whichever country that we're dealing with. You know, our relations
Speaker 1: with India really took a massive beating over Ukraine because
Speaker 1: they continue to buy Russian oil. And it's like, what
Speaker 1: the hell does it have to do with US and
Speaker 1: India relations. This is the largest now population on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should just talk about what the two of
Speaker 1: us have in common. And so with China, I think
Speaker 1: very much so it's been to their benefit. Actually, the
Speaker 1: more that US relations and everything is distracted on Gaza
Speaker 1: and on Ukraine, the less time you're spending on Taiwan, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a country that actually matters to
Speaker 1: the US economy. I believe it's number six in terms
Speaker 1: of our global trading partner and arguably, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of high tech and all that the single most
Speaker 1: important trading partner that the United States have. So that's
Speaker 1: going to be interesting. Also behind the scenes, just wanted
Speaker 1: to preview for everybody what she actually says in Chinese.
Speaker 1: Whenever he thinks that we're not listening, let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up there on the screen. They point out,
Speaker 1: you know, behind public assurances, Shei Chingping has spread quote
Speaker 1: grim views of the US speeches by the Chinese leaders
Speaker 1: show how he was bracing for intensifying rivalry with the
Speaker 1: United States from very early on in his rule. And
Speaker 1: who wants to guess, Ryan, who the chief cheerleader for
Speaker 1: relations with g will be fine and actually he's a
Speaker 1: cool guy and we can get along.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden. Biden, I remember this.
Speaker 1: I remember the very last speech he gave as vice president,
Speaker 1: the last policy speech, and he still uses it to
Speaker 1: this day, although it's less cogent and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody has spent more time with Shi Shinping than me.
Speaker 1: I've sat across the table from him, you know, I've
Speaker 1: looked him in the eye and all this stuff. This
Speaker 1: is a man you can work with. And that was
Speaker 1: the line for so many years from Biden. Obviously that
Speaker 1: is ludicrous on its face, but I still think he
Speaker 1: does cling to that vision of a you know before times,
Speaker 1: of pre Trump times that the Chinese desperately want to
Speaker 1: return to.
Speaker 3: So, as we said, there's just a lot going. There's
Speaker 3: a lot headed into this meeting.
Speaker 1: You know, there's, of course there's gonna be ramifications on Ukraine,
Speaker 1: There's gonna be ramifications on Goza and all of that.
Speaker 1: But the single question is like, how are we going
Speaker 1: to conduct relations between our two states? What is our
Speaker 1: military red lines and others? What is going to be
Speaker 1: communicated by President Biden directly to she's face, And how
Speaker 1: the hell can we even continue to trade and coexist
Speaker 1: in this world as we move forward?
Speaker 4: And what she has said, you know, semi privately, And
Speaker 4: it's funny what counts We're so out of the loop
Speaker 4: when it comes to China that it's funny what counts
Speaker 4: as private because it's like the speech is given to
Speaker 4: you know, millions of y sometimes even millions, but it
Speaker 4: gives them been Chinese, so they're secret of One of
Speaker 4: his themes is that he does not trust the United
Speaker 4: States because he thinks the United States is trying to
Speaker 4: undermine other powers throughout the world.
Speaker 3: That he believes, as The.
Speaker 4: Times puts it, he agrees with putin on that the
Speaker 4: US likes to orchestrate quote unquote color revolutions around the world.
Speaker 4: And one reason that he believes that is because we
Speaker 4: do like to do that. And it also puts into
Speaker 4: context the kind of weaker genocide, the cultural genocide carried
Speaker 4: out in the western part of China. You know, he
Speaker 4: suspected and not completely unfairly, that the US is constantly
Speaker 4: playing games in that region that is constantly fueling Like
Speaker 4: one thing that we do is we like to fuel
Speaker 4: little Kiny insurgency, is to destabilize our rivals, just to
Speaker 4: destabilize them, and we that's been one of our tricks
Speaker 4: that we that's one of the been one of the
Speaker 4: cars that we've played for decades. And so he sees
Speaker 4: that and he's like, you know what, just gonna no
Speaker 4: such thing as we ors anymore.
Speaker 1: This is my thing with China is. I just think
Speaker 1: that the best thing that they've got against us is
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you guys talk about Demi And I've had,
Speaker 1: you know, one of my old professors in graduate school,
Speaker 1: this guy spent a lot of time in Taiwan. He
Speaker 1: was even I won't go into much of his background
Speaker 1: because I'm not sure exactly whether it's classified or not,
Speaker 1: but the point is that he spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time across the table from very very senior people in China,
Speaker 1: and we would ask him about it and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it really hit home to me how big
Speaker 1: of mistake Iraq was because we would say, hey, you
Speaker 1: guys should let up on free speech, and he said.
Speaker 3: How much free speech do they have in Iraq?
Speaker 1: And then we would say you know, oh, you guys
Speaker 1: should do this, and they're like, well, we don't want
Speaker 1: to hear about democracy promotion from the people who took
Speaker 1: over Iraq. And then we would be like, hey, can
Speaker 1: you get Kim Jong un to relax? And they would say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you guys, he's not going to listen to
Speaker 1: you because you killed Saddam Hussein and Kadafi and it
Speaker 1: was the regurgitation from their point the Kadafi thing was
Speaker 1: a massive.
Speaker 4: Because he gave up his exact weapons, and that's what
Speaker 4: they bring that up.
Speaker 3: He's like, why would we trust you?
Speaker 1: You took him, You literally bombed him, and he had
Speaker 1: a rod shoved up his ass because he gave up
Speaker 1: his nukes.
Speaker 3: He's like, you think we're going to give up our nukes?
Speaker 1: You think we're even going to take you seriously after
Speaker 1: you've done something like that. Never And they literally laugh
Speaker 1: at America's face. And part of the thing is is
Speaker 1: and I've always advocated for on the show. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: I'm basically like a realist and that is a pejorative
Speaker 1: term in many cases, but I mean it in terms
Speaker 1: of like the international relations case of Look, it's like China,
Speaker 1: you're our biggest trading partner. Taiwan is the single most
Speaker 1: probably important country outside of Canada and Mexico to the
Speaker 1: US economy. That's why we care about it. Nobody cares
Speaker 1: about democracy. We have a lot of non democratic allies
Speaker 1: all across the world. What are we doing here? Like,
Speaker 1: and you you're threatening our allies South Korea and Japan
Speaker 1: to vital countries through the US economy under the US
Speaker 1: nuclear umbrella with tens of thousands of American troops that
Speaker 1: are there, and deep cultural and economic ties between us.
Speaker 3: They deeply matter to us. They can't stand you. You
Speaker 3: want to take them over.
Speaker 1: You have all hated each other for the last two
Speaker 1: thousand years, and we're finding ourselves in the middle.
Speaker 7: List.
Speaker 1: When you talk like that, I think we can all
Speaker 1: be honest, you know that, then we can really just
Speaker 1: we can actually say like, here's why we care, here's
Speaker 1: what we want, and all that. But for decades, you know,
Speaker 1: American foreign policy has been all about you know, like
Speaker 1: even trade liberalization with China. It was never honest that
Speaker 1: it would just make big business and corporations rich. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to make sure that you know that we're
Speaker 1: going to have a thriving middle class in China that
Speaker 1: believes in democracy, and then the opposite happened.
Speaker 3: It's just been ridiculous.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: The net effect has actually been importing Chinese autocracy to America,
Speaker 1: where big business hears about what the CCP thinks as
Speaker 1: opposed to a more democratic China.
Speaker 3: It's just been a ridiculous policy, I think.
Speaker 4: And that's before you even get to our like number
Speaker 4: one body the Kingdom of Saudi.
Speaker 3: Ira exactly literal kingdom. They know.
Speaker 1: That's why they laugh at us, and honestly they should
Speaker 1: laugh whenever people are so naive to talk this way.
Speaker 3: Belying all of this.
Speaker 1: The APEC conference being held in the city of San
Speaker 1: Francisco is a sudden and miraculous cleanup that has happened
Speaker 1: across the city, where many people have asked, hey, this
Speaker 1: has been you know, let's all be honest.
Speaker 3: I love San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Nobody loves California more than I do, even just as
Speaker 1: a visitor.
Speaker 3: I think he is the most beautiful state in the country.
Speaker 1: Barnunn that said, let's be real about San Francisco, Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and the level of just like street crime and
Speaker 1: just like public disarray, use fent and all homelessness, et cetera,
Speaker 1: public defecation, et cetera.
Speaker 3: It's not a fun place to live.
Speaker 4: I am curious for people in the comments section.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can they clean up the smell?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 4: I know they can clean everything up, all right, A
Speaker 4: lot of San Francisco stinks, all right, Californians know, but
Speaker 4: the point still smelling.
Speaker 1: Pe Somebody ask Alf Gaven Newson, like, hey, are you
Speaker 1: only cleaning this up because the president or the premiere
Speaker 1: of China is coming. And he was like, yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm really not making this up. Take a listen to
Speaker 1: what he said.
Speaker 2: Anytime you put on an event, by definition, you know,
Speaker 2: you have people over your house, you're going to clean
Speaker 2: up the house. You have twenty one the world leaders,
Speaker 2: you got tens of thousands of people coming from all
Speaker 2: around the globe. What an opportunity is showcase the world's
Speaker 2: most extraordinary place.
Speaker 3: San Francisco.
Speaker 8: Folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because
Speaker 8: all those fancy leaders are coming into town. That's true,
Speaker 8: because it's true, But it's also true for months and
Speaker 8: months and months prior to APEC have in different conversations
Speaker 8: that's true.
Speaker 3: Because true, that's true. You can't make this up.
Speaker 1: And I actually thought Peter Doucy over at Fox asked
Speaker 1: the White House a great question, and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: why does does the president care more about what she
Speaker 1: shinpin things of San Francisco than people who live in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And they're like, oh, we just totally rejected
Speaker 1: the premise of your question and all of that, and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you know, with the cold Gavin K.
Speaker 3: Newsome thing.
Speaker 1: It's not that they don't have a point Ryan that cities,
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't spruce something up nicer whenever somebody's visiting.
Speaker 1: But I think that the drastic comparison from where things
Speaker 1: were to how things are today is why a lot
Speaker 1: of people who live in these cities are pissed off
Speaker 1: about it, because they're like, wait, so you could have
Speaker 1: done this the entire time. It's just that we lost
Speaker 1: what net three hundred thousand people from our state, that
Speaker 1: we've had mass property crime that you know, so many
Speaker 1: people I know in San Francisco they had to leave,
Speaker 1: including people in my own family, just because they straight
Speaker 1: up didn't feel safe, just like the very basics of
Speaker 1: their day to day life. And that actually really comes
Speaker 1: through in a local news report from San Francisco with
Speaker 1: some residents and interviews.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 9: While San Francisco is in the spotlight for the Asia
Speaker 9: Pacific Economic Conference, city leaders are making sure the city shines.
Speaker 10: Tourism is our business here in San Francisco, and we
Speaker 10: need to focus on making sure that the tourist dollars
Speaker 10: still come back.
Speaker 9: Caltrans repaving major roadways like the Harrison Street off ramp
Speaker 9: from the I eighty bart doubling down by deep cleaning
Speaker 9: their stations overnight.
Speaker 10: More often the city had gotten a little bit dingy
Speaker 10: over time.
Speaker 9: Scrubbing and powerwashing is happening all over the city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bottom of shoes look clean.
Speaker 9: It's noticeable how clear the streets look, and how few
Speaker 9: homeless encampments there are on major thoroughfares.
Speaker 4: Having been a long time resident in the BA area,
Speaker 4: you just naturally starting to wonder if like houseless folks
Speaker 4: being displaced.
Speaker 9: Public Works is installing decorative crosswalks in North Beach and Chinatown,
Speaker 9: and the Webster Street pedestrian bridge and Japantown was recently
Speaker 9: repainted the year of Buenna. Gardens at the Moscone Center
Speaker 9: are decked out with new colorful landscaping and murals, paid
Speaker 9: for by the Clean California Grant, just in time for
Speaker 9: the twenty thousand high profile CEOs and heads of state
Speaker 9: coming into town next week.
Speaker 1: Must be nice. It looks like a beautiful city, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Not the one I remember though from the last couple
Speaker 1: of years.
Speaker 4: Seok, it looks clean, but once the company leaves, you
Speaker 4: look under the bed, you open the closet, all the
Speaker 4: crap poores out. You didn't really clean it, you just
Speaker 4: shoveled everything away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I asked, But then my question was like, well,
Speaker 3: what the hell happened?
Speaker 1: And then also my big one is the city and
Speaker 1: Gaven News And this is where I really want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about the city and gavenusome. And this
Speaker 1: really extends to what we're going to about to talk
Speaker 1: about next about the ien in California or in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles is have claimed now for years, they're like, we
Speaker 1: can't do anything about this. The Ninth Circuit has tied
Speaker 1: our hands. We're not allowed to clean up homeless encampments
Speaker 1: because of this specific judicial w Well, how what that's
Speaker 1: not congruent with the fact that they just did it,
Speaker 1: So they either just violated federal law or they were
Speaker 1: lying the entire time. I'm gonna come down on lying
Speaker 1: because I don't see any lawsuits or any of that
Speaker 1: going on, or injunctions being passed down by federal judges.
Speaker 1: So then it's a question of, well, what was the
Speaker 1: democratic impulse to do this when it's very clear that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people in these cities, from business
Speaker 1: leaders to all the way down to residents have been
Speaker 1: screaming and crying about this now for probably a decade
Speaker 1: at least in the case of San Francisco, but especially
Speaker 1: in the last three years. And it takes freaking shishing
Speaker 1: ping and leaders from Japan to come here before we
Speaker 1: actually do anything about it.
Speaker 3: That's outrageous to me.
Speaker 4: Also, they'll still find it to be filthy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course, you're right, especially if you're coming
Speaker 1: from Japan. What the hell is sing later on the
Speaker 1: road you call this?
Speaker 3: Clean this up for us? Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: We spent last month.
Speaker 4: But it's possible they had some type of informal budget
Speaker 4: for lawsuits, so it's you know, it may be that,
Speaker 4: you know, once in a while you're like, you know what,
Speaker 4: we're just going to break the law and we're going
Speaker 4: to let these people so us and we'll figure it
Speaker 4: out after company leaves.
Speaker 1: I just think it's one of those where the local
Speaker 1: people in San Francisco should really be demanding answers on that, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I mean, and I actually, I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I believed some of the leaders. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they weren't doing enough, but they were like, there truly is.
Speaker 3: Nothing we can do about the homeless encampments, and I
Speaker 3: was like wow.
Speaker 1: And so I was reading about it and seeing this
Speaker 1: Ninth Circuit ruling, and it all relates back to the
Speaker 1: idea that you could it's a violation or to clean
Speaker 1: up homeless encampments and all that about displacement has to
Speaker 1: do with shelter rights in the California state law as well.
Speaker 1: And it genuinely did seem like a Gordon not that
Speaker 1: was completely unable to be untied. But then they actually
Speaker 1: did it, and you're like, well, wait a second here,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand how that's even possible because that
Speaker 1: completely flies in the face not only that, but the
Speaker 1: city of Public with the public works aspect to all
Speaker 1: of that, with the pedestrian walkways and all these other things.
Speaker 3: It's the same question of like, well, why was this
Speaker 3: not done.
Speaker 1: Previously as part of a post COVID vitalization, Like don't
Speaker 1: you want to make money?
Speaker 3: Do you want people to stop leaving?
Speaker 1: There's a you know, a lot of viral posts about
Speaker 1: San Francisco, but on some of the saddest ones are
Speaker 1: like here's a condo that somebody bought in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: for one point five million, and they're selling it for
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty six thousand. I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: funny at a certain point, but it's also like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's somebody out there who's out seven hundred grand and
Speaker 1: it's probably upside down on their mortgage and near the deal,
Speaker 1: you know, near bankruptcy.
Speaker 3: That's actually not funny at all.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people who are like that,
Speaker 1: you know, probably middle class folks who are on the
Speaker 1: outskirts or are dependent on that for jobs. So it's
Speaker 1: not always just the big tech people who are paying
Speaker 1: the price. And look, I mean, I'm only saying this
Speaker 1: because out of love, truly. I'm not just one of
Speaker 1: those people from Kansas who's like, screw San Francisco who's
Speaker 1: never even been. I love that city. I think it's
Speaker 1: awesome and all of these places. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a tragedy in my opinion that it took so long.
Speaker 1: The real question is like how long is it going
Speaker 1: to stay and will they return back to their old
Speaker 1: ways or not. This relates very much to our next
Speaker 1: block here about public safety. This is a one I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to talk about with Ryan. We're going to
Speaker 1: start with the actual news first, though, which is that
Speaker 1: the I ten, a major part of the highway in
Speaker 1: the city of Los Angeles, specifically around town downtown, was
Speaker 1: actually caught fire and has now been shut down for
Speaker 1: an indefinite period of time as they resume construction and
Speaker 1: they have to rebuild critical parts of it. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to some of the news from there.
Speaker 5: I started early yesterday morning in an industrial area near
Speaker 5: fourteenth Street in Alameda, so intense that melted fences and
Speaker 5: guardrails along the ten freeway and caused chunks of concrete
Speaker 5: on the freeway's columns to break away. Two fire trucks
Speaker 5: were damaged, and cars, palettes, shipping containers, and more, and
Speaker 5: the storage yards burned. Took more than one hundred and
Speaker 5: sixty firefighters hours to dost the flames. Crews were monitoring
Speaker 5: hotspots into yesterday evening. There was a homeless encampment underneath
Speaker 5: the freeway that sent me people running for safety when
Speaker 5: the fire broke out. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and
Speaker 5: the city is helping those that lost their belongings and
Speaker 5: who made shelter. As for the cause of the fire
Speaker 5: that is still under investigation.
Speaker 1: So let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is really no joke about what's happened. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason we wanted to cover it is that California
Speaker 1: news is very often criminally ignored here in Washington. And
Speaker 1: the thing is ryan is that three hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: take this road or this section of the road every
Speaker 1: single day, and now it's going to be shut down
Speaker 1: for an indefinite period of time. And not only that,
Speaker 1: it is going to snarl traffic in a place that
Speaker 1: is famously how shall we say, some of the worst
Speaker 1: traffic in the entire country. So I can't even imagine
Speaker 1: what that is going to look like. They are talking
Speaker 1: about how various different parts of Los.
Speaker 3: Angeles the one oh one.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I don't live in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: so if I'm saying anything incorrectly, please forget me.
Speaker 3: I'm doing you people with favor.
Speaker 1: State Route sixty two hundred thousand vehicles a day will
Speaker 1: be added one will have one hundred and nine thousand
Speaker 1: vehicles per day added, and the closed section currently averages
Speaker 1: two hundred ninety two thousand. So an additional between intertain
Speaker 1: five State Route sixty and US one oh one is
Speaker 1: going to have to pick up a significant chunk of
Speaker 1: the number of cars that usually move through this heavily
Speaker 1: clogged highway. The reason why I think it kind of
Speaker 1: fit with this is that there's a ton a ton
Speaker 1: of speculation Ryan that some of the fire, which they
Speaker 1: claim is arson. However, I'm not exactly sure what the
Speaker 1: technicalities behind that are might have been sparked because of
Speaker 1: this homeless encampment that was beneath it. Homeless encampment fires
Speaker 1: have been a huge problem all across Oregon and Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: in particular where homeless encampments are I know, Dud, I
Speaker 1: think it's more than a dozen fires in California just
Speaker 1: in the last two years that have occurred largely as
Speaker 1: a result of like propaid tanks, other unused safe, unsafe
Speaker 1: use of grills and other things in the area. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think about this. You know, in
Speaker 1: the context of now that there's a major fire that's
Speaker 1: broken out declared a state of emergency, they're discombined with
Speaker 1: the whole San Francisco thing, could actually, I think, kind
Speaker 1: of change California politics in a way.
Speaker 3: They think about these issues it.
Speaker 4: Could be part of It depends on how quickly they
Speaker 4: get this fixed. Like if we're talking about weeks or months,
Speaker 4: this is you know, this is going to bring It's
Speaker 4: so politically toxic that it's hard to even find the
Speaker 4: words for it. Philadelphia had half of ninety five we
Speaker 4: call it just ninety five over here on the East
Speaker 4: Coast not done ninety five. So we had half of
Speaker 4: the ninety five that was incapacitaty thing was hit by
Speaker 4: a truck or something. And they whip that thing together
Speaker 4: in like a week.
Speaker 3: That was a big deal for Governor Josh Shapiro.
Speaker 4: He was like, this is the only thing I care
Speaker 4: about until this is done, because it's not just Philadelphia traffic,
Speaker 4: it's also the artery connecting DC and New York. And
Speaker 4: so they moved quickly and it was up so fast.
Speaker 4: I don't know how long it's going to take them
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, but I can't imagine that a political
Speaker 4: animal like Newsom is going to make sure that it moves.
Speaker 3: As quickly as possible.
Speaker 4: But this thing, you know, the California Democratic Party is
Speaker 4: a complete mess.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. Also, you're going to be able to actually
Speaker 3: do it yeah, and.
Speaker 1: I think this is a huge test for Karen Bass,
Speaker 1: for Governor Newsom and others.
Speaker 3: So the details of this.
Speaker 1: Some furthermore that we have is that of the one
Speaker 1: hundred columns along the swath of the freeway that were damaged,
Speaker 1: nine or ten were actually damaged severely, which means that
Speaker 1: they will have to do some infrastructure tests and if not,
Speaker 1: if they do have to be redone, the entire overpass
Speaker 1: may have to be torn down and refitted or retrofitted,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, that's a month long construction project,
Speaker 1: and it really again just highlights that you have a
Speaker 1: significant impact here also from COVID, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Palettes of sanitizer had been accumulated during the height of
Speaker 1: COVID and we're stored underneath the overpass, which obviously these
Speaker 1: things are like pure alcohol and help fuel the flames.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason apparently that it was burning so hot.
Speaker 1: So the current state Fire Marshal is asking for people
Speaker 1: to come forward for anonymous tips and they're going through
Speaker 1: all of that, But the big, the big, you know,
Speaker 1: question for all of that right now is how are
Speaker 1: we going to figure this out? They say this is
Speaker 1: probably the single most the single biggest challenge that California
Speaker 1: and LA commuters have faced in years, and that the
Speaker 1: follow on effects from lost time of productivity and traffic
Speaker 1: for the follow on effects of lost logistical support and
Speaker 1: others that everyone relied on this for is going to
Speaker 1: scramble the city and it's also even going to change
Speaker 1: the way that some people do business. So there could
Speaker 1: be a pretty significant impact actually on downtown Los Angeles
Speaker 1: as a result of this, even though they didn't do
Speaker 1: anything wrong, just from you know, some people saying it's
Speaker 1: not then I'm not even going to go in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for sure, you don't want to sit in
Speaker 4: that hand sanitizer palettes.
Speaker 3: Come on, what are you guys doing while you got
Speaker 3: a storage somewhere? I don't know. Also, does this not
Speaker 3: even work against covid' that's the other thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's probably, yeah, it's and it's anyway, we don't
Speaker 4: need to go into all that.
Speaker 3: We certainly don't.
Speaker 1: Only to say for Californias and LA people who watch
Speaker 1: the show, we feel for you and we think it's
Speaker 1: a tragedy about what's happened.
Speaker 4: There more time to listen to breaking points, that's right, Far.
Speaker 3: More time to listen to VP in your car. So
Speaker 3: this you know, let's let's look on the bright side.
Speaker 1: Okay, moving on to the next part here, something I
Speaker 1: really wanted to talk about with Ryan.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there, please on the screen.
Speaker 1: New report from the Wall Street Journal with a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting little tidbits. Headline, Oregon decriminalized hard drugs. It
Speaker 1: isn't working. Majority of voters now want to undo a
Speaker 1: pioneering change as public drug use has become rampant, so
Speaker 1: they say. Nearly three years ago into the experiment, the
Speaker 1: proponents hope would spark nationwide relaxation of drug laws. Many
Speaker 1: an Oregon have now turned against decriminalization, known as Measure
Speaker 1: one to ten, which passed at that time with fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent support. People are sprawled out on sidewalks using
Speaker 1: fentanyl with no fear of consequence have become a common
Speaker 1: sight in cities such as Eugene and in Portland.
Speaker 3: Business owners and.
Speaker 1: Local leaders are upset liberal voters who hope decriminalization would
Speaker 1: lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug
Speaker 1: users have taken advantage of a new state funded rehabilitation program.
Speaker 1: Quote change appears likely a coalition of city leaders, police
Speaker 1: chiefs district attorneys have called on the state legislature to
Speaker 1: recriminalize hard drugs. A measure to do so in works
Speaker 1: on the next year's ballot, and a new poll finds
Speaker 1: the majority of Orgonians support the idea. So, Ryan, you
Speaker 1: literally wrote the book on drugs, on drug legalization. You've
Speaker 1: been kind of a leader in the what decriminalized movement
Speaker 1: and all of that for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: So what do you make then, of what's happened in Oregon?
Speaker 1: Did they just not do it the right way? What
Speaker 1: do you think of the results of what's happened?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, So my book came out in two thousand
Speaker 4: and nine, and it made I think several points that
Speaker 4: are quite relevant to this debate. One is that drug
Speaker 4: policy does not exist in a vacuum. That drug policy
Speaker 4: is kind of the last thing that matters for drug policy.
Speaker 4: What matters more for it is economic policy for.
Speaker 3: The most part.
Speaker 4: But also, you know, broad broadly speaking, the things that
Speaker 4: are shaping the world and shaping the culture shape shape
Speaker 4: what drugs, you know, become kind of popular in a moment.
Speaker 4: In other words, Oregon's decriminalization law has probably less to
Speaker 4: do with the fentanyl than the fact that China is
Speaker 4: pumping fentanyl into the United States, Like you know your
Speaker 4: organ's law is going to move.
Speaker 3: The numbers underneath it all is it's a macro issue.
Speaker 3: Are the bigger macro issues.
Speaker 4: The other The other point that I made in the book,
Speaker 4: and so as I was publishing the book, kind of
Speaker 4: the the movement was kind of nascent, but it was
Speaker 4: the pendulum was swinging toward more liberal drug policies, and
Speaker 4: I warned that the history of drug policy in the
Speaker 4: United States is not a Martin Luther King type thing
Speaker 4: where it bends towards justice. It doesn't all move in
Speaker 4: one direction. It swings back and forth moments in the
Speaker 4: nineteenth century, moments in the twentieth century where you had
Speaker 4: quite liberal drug policies, either nationally or in particular cities,
Speaker 4: and then things would get wildly out of control. And
Speaker 4: you can try to kind of stitch just a racist
Speaker 4: drug war frame onto everything, but that doesn't answer the
Speaker 4: entire question. What you also get is just normal people
Speaker 4: who are like, this is a mess, and whether that's
Speaker 4: kind of cocaine or aladinum in the nineteenth century leading
Speaker 4: to then criminalization or what you're seeing now. I warned
Speaker 4: that if it's not done both responsibly and seriously, then
Speaker 4: you're going to get a lot of victories, but they're
Speaker 4: going to get reversed. And I think we're now we're
Speaker 4: now at that place. And so deep crim is kind
Speaker 4: of the worst of all worlds because it does nothing
Speaker 4: kind of for the economic problems that people are facing.
Speaker 4: It doesn't give people access to kind of clean drugs.
Speaker 4: You're still getting it from the street. The only difference
Speaker 4: is that if a cop says something to you, you know,
Speaker 4: you get you get a little ticket and you don't
Speaker 4: go to jail.
Speaker 3: I said, that's the only difference.
Speaker 4: But it still allows all of this public consumption which
Speaker 4: the public hates. Alcohol is legal, but we don't allow
Speaker 4: people to just be passed out all ox is not
Speaker 4: really acceptable or because that's because we have a we
Speaker 4: have an actually regulated system around this very addictive and
Speaker 4: dangerous drug.
Speaker 1: Alcohol and even smoking, if you think about it, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't just smoke anywhere in most of this country
Speaker 1: at least this point.
Speaker 4: But if we but if we just said, look, alcohol
Speaker 4: is illegal, but it's not criminal, so bootleggers can make it,
Speaker 4: people can drink it. Wherever they want and just get
Speaker 4: a little ticket and the treatment won't work. That's the
Speaker 4: third point. Our treatment system is this ancient alcoholics anonymous
Speaker 4: system that only really works for certain people. Insists on
Speaker 4: pure abstinence, pure sobriety, does not allow any medication assisted
Speaker 4: to treat method but yeah.
Speaker 3: It's certainly not methodone.
Speaker 4: But then to box oone and some other more recent
Speaker 4: less addictive medications that can help with opioids. We treat
Speaker 4: opioids just the same as we treat alcohol, and it's
Speaker 4: absurd and it's not working.
Speaker 1: See this is interesting though, because it kind of belies
Speaker 1: something that I've always insisted on is I read Michael
Speaker 1: Schellenberger's book and it's the only book that ever I
Speaker 1: was not for drug legalization a problem. I'm still think
Speaker 1: I'm complicated on it. That said, I was like, if
Speaker 1: I was ever for it, this is the way it
Speaker 1: would work, which is, yeah, you can do drugs, but
Speaker 1: if you're getting high on a public bench, you're going
Speaker 1: to jail or you're going to rehab.
Speaker 3: You have no choice.
Speaker 1: This middle ground where we're at right now, not as
Speaker 1: much in Washington, DC. We still have some of a problem,
Speaker 1: but not even close to the zombies of San Francisco
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles and to skid skid Row is honestly
Speaker 1: burned into my memory from twenty and twenty two. I
Speaker 1: had never seen I still have never seen anything like.
Speaker 1: I've been to some of the I've seen some of
Speaker 1: the worst slums in Mumbai, and I still think skid
Speaker 1: Row was ten times worse because it was just a
Speaker 1: complete like it was a war zone, it felt like
Speaker 1: for the people who were there, and it was just
Speaker 1: very clear for so many of them that they had
Speaker 1: absolutely no hope. I've checked out, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to interviews on the softwaree Underbelly channel, and then
Speaker 1: only even more convinced me so that I'm like, to me,
Speaker 1: and this is actually a big disagreement with Crystal, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't think housing has to do with any of this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, none of this seems to me as a
Speaker 1: housing problem. This all just seems like these people are
Speaker 1: straight up full blown drug addicts and the only way
Speaker 1: that you can really even begin to solve that problem
Speaker 1: is forcible rehabilitation or jail. Any of this public camping
Speaker 1: is deeply unsafe for them. They're just going to kill
Speaker 1: themselves already. Right now, the New York Times and others
Speaker 1: are reporting about the rise of so called super meth,
Speaker 1: about how people are injecting all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: are not only mixed with fentanyl, but fleshy, you know,
Speaker 1: flesh rotting substances and others that just lead to you know,
Speaker 1: it's just one way road to death. Like, let's be real,
Speaker 1: and it's not safe for them. It's not safe for
Speaker 1: a lot of the women. You know.
Speaker 3: One one report I read which is just so horrible.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of these women.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why when they're addicted to fentanyl
Speaker 1: is they've taken math so they can stay up all
Speaker 1: night so that they don't get robbed or raped in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night in some of these en camps.
Speaker 3: Sexual anybody.
Speaker 4: Sexual assault in these camps is absolutely rampant, right, And
Speaker 4: so you don't want to condemn people to that, of
Speaker 4: course not.
Speaker 1: It's like it's worse than prison almost in some cases.
Speaker 1: And so so anyway, so what I've looked at here
Speaker 1: with the enforcement mechanism is they say, quote, some six
Speaker 1: thousand tickets have now been issued for drug positions possessions
Speaker 1: as decriminalization and went into effect in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: but just ninety two people have called and completed their
Speaker 1: assessments needed to connect them to services, so voluntary services.
Speaker 1: It's clearly now we've had real world experimentation here.
Speaker 4: It's not going to happen because I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people know that there's nothing on the other end
Speaker 4: for them too. That those ninety two people, they'll sign
Speaker 4: up for what's called kind of a twenty eight day wonder, yes,
Speaker 4: where you go to this treatment center for twenty eight days,
Speaker 4: you read the big book, you sit around in your
Speaker 4: folding chair, you work, you color, you write, and then
Speaker 4: twenty eight days later you kind of kicked. You're kicked
Speaker 4: back out, and you probably have a long criminal record
Speaker 4: from the different nuisance stuff related to your addiction. And
Speaker 4: there's no moment where somebody can say, and this is
Speaker 4: what a lot of people who are you know, are
Speaker 4: homeless living with addiction will say that there's no moment
Speaker 4: I can't say, you know what I would like an
Speaker 4: apartment and a job right now, Okay, I'm ready for that.
Speaker 4: I have the will, I have the commitment. I'm going
Speaker 4: to put this behind me. Even if you go through treatment.
Speaker 4: It's it's that just doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: This work for you.
Speaker 4: Now, obviously some people can get there, but overwhelmingly people
Speaker 4: just don't see a way to get from here to there.
Speaker 3: Opiate recidivism rates are so high.
Speaker 1: I mean it depends on the drug like heroin versus
Speaker 1: fentanol and others, but even just based upon the people
Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, interviews and anecdotes and others for
Speaker 1: people who even who want to get clean and who
Speaker 1: have gone to multiple, you know, long treatment centers.
Speaker 3: As you're saying, I mean, one of the dangers.
Speaker 1: That I've actually had read a lot about was that
Speaker 1: in some in some cases these three week or four
Speaker 1: week centers, it's it almost leads and sometimes to.
Speaker 3: Worse verses because their.
Speaker 1: Tolerance is drawn down and they end up taking the
Speaker 1: similar amounts or chasing a short and high and it
Speaker 1: leads to an overdose, which puts you obviously in a
Speaker 1: really peralleuls situation. It literally could die. One thing, though,
Speaker 1: and this kind of I don't even know what to
Speaker 1: make of this. I wanted you to break it down
Speaker 1: for me. Let's put this please up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is from the organized from OPB and they actually
Speaker 1: show that drug decriminalization and organ did.
Speaker 3: Not cause more overdose deaths.
Speaker 1: So what are we to make of this, because, as
Speaker 1: you said, yeah, they're still getting street drugs, but it
Speaker 1: didn't lead to more overdoses. Is this indicative that drug
Speaker 1: use just stayed the same, that it didn't actually impact it,
Speaker 1: that it didn't that the only real impact it appears
Speaker 1: to have had is more public drug use? What does
Speaker 1: an overdose rate and death actually mean for drug policy?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How are we supposed to look Because the people were
Speaker 1: pointing it to me as a victory, But the more
Speaker 1: I was reading about it, and this is from the
Speaker 1: NYU public health study of what's going on in Oregon,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you can actually read this a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways for victory or honestly just stasis
Speaker 1: for what's happened.
Speaker 4: I mean, I would say that the more that you
Speaker 4: can take the criminal justice system out of out of
Speaker 4: drug policy, then the more you're bringing the public health
Speaker 4: system in. And while you're unlikely, like I said, to
Speaker 4: kind of eradicate the addiction crisis, because that's a much
Speaker 4: steeper hill to climb, and like we were just talking
Speaker 4: about so many of these treatment centers are actually just
Speaker 4: kind of medicaid scams that aren't.
Speaker 3: Serious about getting people sober.
Speaker 4: You can, however, keep people safer because you know, more
Speaker 4: people are going to be comfortable going to get going
Speaker 4: to the hospital, more people are going to be comfortable
Speaker 4: calling an ambulance. More may you probably have more access
Speaker 4: than ur can as a result, which is the kind
Speaker 4: of overdose antidote. So I think that that could you
Speaker 4: could explain it. You could explain it that way. And
Speaker 4: also for you know, forcing people into treatment who don't
Speaker 4: want treatment, keeping them sober for twenty eight days and
Speaker 4: then throwing them back out on the street like we
Speaker 4: just talked about, can increase overdoses and death.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think they should get a choice.
Speaker 1: It's like, listen, you can go to jail too, like
Speaker 1: you know, you have an option. I believe that's how
Speaker 1: Portugal does it. So Portugal has legal drugs, They even
Speaker 1: have what is it safe injection science and all that.
Speaker 1: That said, if you are publicly intoxicated, strung out, committing
Speaker 1: street crime and all of that as a result of
Speaker 1: your addiction, you only have two choices, which is rehabilitation.
Speaker 3: And or jail. But they're not going to tolerate, you know,
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that we see on the streets
Speaker 3: of California.
Speaker 4: That stick does give people an incentive that's also not ideal.
Speaker 4: If you can couple that with real training and education
Speaker 4: and also then economic opportunities on the other side, then
Speaker 4: people can say, then people have an actual choice, like, oh.
Speaker 3: Here is a good life I could have.
Speaker 4: That's an alternative right now For most people, that's not
Speaker 4: They don't realistically see that possibility.
Speaker 1: What non a rehabs have you seen be successful? It's
Speaker 1: an end for anybody.
Speaker 3: They call it pup and orphan.
Speaker 4: You could go back to read this piece I edited
Speaker 4: by Jason Cherkis at the Huffington Post called Dying to
Speaker 4: be Free. Just google that and it explains a lot
Speaker 4: of what we're talking about here. But suboxone and bupe
Speaker 4: and orphan are what they call medication assistant treatment. PUBE
Speaker 4: is the is the kind of generic name for it,
Speaker 4: and people say it gives you kind of like a
Speaker 4: coffee buzz, whereas methadone is more of a synthetic opioid
Speaker 4: that can create real you know, dependence, but also dependence
Speaker 4: is not that bad, like you can if you if
Speaker 4: you have diabetes, you're dependent on you know, treatment, you're
Speaker 4: dependent on coffee. Like, the question is it ruined? Is
Speaker 4: it ruining your quality of life? And is it is
Speaker 4: it damaging relationships? And is it making it impossible for
Speaker 4: you to do things safely? And you know suboxone bube
Speaker 4: does not do that, and so it's mostly a tab form.
Speaker 4: You get it prescribed and it both if you relapse,
Speaker 4: it counteracts and over dose and it also kind of
Speaker 4: undermines the kind of craving that that people have.
Speaker 3: But this is like, this is up against fentanyl.
Speaker 4: Which is kind of a new it's it's a kind
Speaker 4: of new, fearsome kind of level of of potency that's
Speaker 4: out there. So you know, this was designed for heroin
Speaker 4: and other opioids. It you know, so we're in a
Speaker 4: we're in a difficult spot, but that's what I would
Speaker 4: if you have people who are in those circumstances, you know,
Speaker 4: check out medications is the trigument.
Speaker 3: Well there you go.
Speaker 1: All right, So anybody struggling, go ahead and look into that.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the next part. Ryan,
Speaker 1: I'm going to lean on you for this one because
Speaker 1: you read and didn't the investigation for the audience. So
Speaker 1: we've obviously talked a lot here about the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: around all these crazy stories coming out about these justices
Speaker 1: going to speak at lavish conferences and flying for free
Speaker 1: and going on crazy vacations and getting gifted things and
Speaker 1: going places and getting their houses bought by billionaires and all.
Speaker 3: This other nonsense.
Speaker 4: So the Supreme Court, we keep saying, they, but there's
Speaker 4: kind of one guy that well, Claire.
Speaker 1: Thomas is the worst. But I will say, I mean
Speaker 1: the rest, like, what was it soda? My oar also
Speaker 1: spoke at some of these conversations there was a book
Speaker 1: problem that was going on there. So it's yes, it's
Speaker 1: definitely Colrace Thomas is on the bleeding edge. But a
Speaker 1: lot of these people, I think need a little well reminder,
Speaker 1: you know, slap on the wrist, just to say, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on here. The Senate Democrats and a lot
Speaker 1: of others had been pushing a congressionally imposed code of ethics.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court yesterday voluntarily adopted a code. We actually
Speaker 1: have it. We can put it up there. Ryan, you
Speaker 1: read through the whole thing, give us is it real?
Speaker 3: Is it not?
Speaker 1: Is it actually enforceable. What are the consequences to all
Speaker 1: of this? Give us some of the details.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not really real what it And people
Speaker 4: if you're watching a pause and read the preamble there,
Speaker 4: which tells you everything you need to know about it
Speaker 4: in one sense, and I can read from one part.
Speaker 3: Basically, they say.
Speaker 4: That they were embarrassed that they didn't have a code.
Speaker 4: And they say, look, we do have a code. We
Speaker 4: call it a common law code. We do the right thing.
Speaker 4: There's laws, there's general ethics rules around here that we've
Speaker 4: all cobbled together to, you know, make sure that we're
Speaker 4: operating as ethically as possible. But we're super embarrassed that
Speaker 4: people keep saying the Supreme Court doesn't have an ethics code,
Speaker 4: whereas Congress does, the White House does, and the judiciary
Speaker 4: underneath the Supreme Court does, And that's embarrassing. So they
Speaker 4: write the absence of a code, however, has led in
Speaker 4: recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this Court,
Speaker 4: unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as
Speaker 4: unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we
Speaker 4: are issuing this code, which largely represents a codification of
Speaker 4: principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.
Speaker 4: So they're straight up saying, you guys have been complaining
Speaker 4: for a long time that we don't have a code
Speaker 4: till we wrote a code. But they are also saying
Speaker 4: the code doesn't do anything tighter than what we've already
Speaker 4: been doing. And so people are like, well, look, Clarence
Speaker 4: Thomas got a free RV from a guy who brings
Speaker 4: a bunch of business before the court. That RV costs
Speaker 4: like three hundred grand. That sounds unethical. You're not addressing
Speaker 4: that in this now, so they sort of. So they
Speaker 4: actually mentioned books in here, and they say that a
Speaker 4: justice should not speak at a fundraiser or an event
Speaker 4: that kind of raises money for an organization, but they
Speaker 4: can appear at a fundraiser, like they can be there,
Speaker 4: you eat the rubber chicken and like get introduced, thank
Speaker 4: you Justice for being here, and then mingle with people afterwards,
Speaker 4: which gets people to the fundraiser. And it also says
Speaker 4: they're allowed to be at events where their books are sold.
Speaker 4: So like that's the big grift that politicians and justices are.
Speaker 4: One of the few things that they specifically codified into
Speaker 4: their little code here that don't worry.
Speaker 3: Books are fine otherwise they the code.
Speaker 4: It's like fourteen pages long, but it basically boils down to, uh,
Speaker 4: don't do things that appear to be unethical. But then
Speaker 4: you're like, okay, well a lot of this stuff appears unethical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so are you doing an.
Speaker 1: Ask on the in terms of the specifics like what
Speaker 1: about the private jet travel some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: had not been disclosed any of that, so none of
Speaker 1: that is in there.
Speaker 4: Now, And it says you should like endeavor to be transparent,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't say like every six months you're going
Speaker 4: to submit to this authority that you know you're you're
Speaker 4: like the way that you know, the Senate and the
Speaker 4: House have disclosed your White House has like offices that
Speaker 4: like have paperwork where you submit your paperwork and.
Speaker 3: You say, here's here's my here's my holdings.
Speaker 4: Like that's how we know Joe Manchin owns a coal
Speaker 4: company interest.
Speaker 3: Because he had to disclose that.
Speaker 4: So they suggest you ought to do that, but they
Speaker 4: don't really necessarily, you know, they don't send any deadlines
Speaker 4: or any specifics about like, okay, how you're going to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: Let's put the ap article on there, because they also
Speaker 1: have some of this. They just say that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court says it's adopting the Code of Ethics but has
Speaker 1: no means of enforcement. So then my question is kind
Speaker 1: of around Democrats and should they retain control of the
Speaker 1: Senate or should they ever have unified government again under Biden?
Speaker 1: Would a Code of Ethics pass?
Speaker 3: Do you think?
Speaker 1: Or is it more of a rhetorical device now since
Speaker 1: the court is republican or conservative control.
Speaker 4: I think it could still pass because you saw people
Speaker 4: like Roe Connor are the ones that have made big
Speaker 4: stink about this.
Speaker 3: And he responded to this.
Speaker 4: By saying that this is this is ridiculous, like there's
Speaker 4: nothing really in here, like we should still codify this,
Speaker 4: and the point of there being no way to enforce
Speaker 4: it is both true but also kind of beside the
Speaker 4: point in the sense that it's the Supreme Court, Like
Speaker 4: who's going to enforce it?
Speaker 3: The super Supreme Court? Right?
Speaker 4: Our system is checks and balances, so other branches are
Speaker 4: the ones that have to check other branches. You know,
Speaker 4: who's going to the same with Congress like that. You
Speaker 4: can have a House ethics committee, but ultimate if the
Speaker 4: House votes to overrule that. That's what the House does. Like,
Speaker 4: that's the supreme authority. The House is the House, the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, or it is the Supreme Court. That's just
Speaker 4: so the House or the White House or and the
Speaker 4: Executive have to come in and check them if they
Speaker 4: want to. And so, yeah, I think that they would
Speaker 4: have to pass a code of conduct, an ethics code,
Speaker 4: have the White House signed into law and say no,
Speaker 4: every six months, this is what we want you. You
Speaker 4: can't take private jet flights with people who have you know,
Speaker 4: business before the court whatever, like however they want to
Speaker 4: spell it out. Otherwise, what you're going to get is
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court codifying or writing down in words that
Speaker 4: you know, you must be ethical, so that they don't
Speaker 4: have the embarrassment of not having this code. Now they say, look,
Speaker 4: we've got a code, what's your problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: So the Democratic bat ECUs Bill quote would require that
Speaker 1: justices provide more information about potential conflicts of interest and
Speaker 1: written explanations about their decisions not to accues. It would
Speaker 1: also seek to improve transparency around gifts received by justices.
Speaker 1: Currently has no prospect of becoming the law. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's true, and I think there
Speaker 1: were a lot of the Republican defense of this has
Speaker 1: really annoyed.
Speaker 3: Me because they'll say, well, this is just retribution.
Speaker 1: For row versus weight, and I'm like, yeah, that's probably true. Like,
Speaker 1: let's be real, that's true. That said, it's still not
Speaker 1: chill to be having your house be bought by a
Speaker 1: billionaire and be going on crazy vacations. And something I've
Speaker 1: personally observed with a lot of these people is that
Speaker 1: they're locked into jobs where they make three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: a year, but they're constantly socially in the room with
Speaker 1: people who are multimillionaires and or billionaires, and they get
Speaker 1: really envious. They're like, hey, I'm a Supreme Court Justice
Speaker 1: of the United States. I deserve to fly, you know,
Speaker 1: on a private jet and go on a yacht. And
Speaker 1: my response is, yeah.
Speaker 3: You can quit. You can probably go make millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But they want to have both the power and
Speaker 1: the prestige. It doesn't that seems to irk them at
Speaker 1: their core.
Speaker 3: And members of Congress face this too.
Speaker 4: Senators, you're especially where they're like, I have more power
Speaker 4: than this person, right, why does this person get to
Speaker 4: fly for free, get to fly, yeah, sane or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well they're not a senator. Yeah, it's like you can.
Speaker 3: You can do it too if you want, you know.
Speaker 1: I read an article actually about five senators in their eighties.
Speaker 1: All of them are multi millionaires. One of them's like
Speaker 1: sailing around the world. The other one's hanging Barbara Boxers
Speaker 1: hanging out a multi million dollar mansion. Tom Hard and yeah,
Speaker 1: Tom Hard did this, and I was like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know this, and a lot of people were dunking on it,
Speaker 1: but I said.
Speaker 3: No, this is a good thing. You should tell it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's life after leave. You should get out there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Tom Fleets, It's like, if that's what it takes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you being rich and old is fun.
Speaker 1: That's That's something I've learned from a lot of old people.
Speaker 1: So they should try it instead of just hanging out
Speaker 1: here for two.
Speaker 4: I guess Trking is when he retired, Democrats were so
Speaker 4: mad because they knew they were going to lose this
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: They knew they were going to lose that seat.
Speaker 4: And when we asked him in the hall, why are
Speaker 4: you retiring, He's like, I want to sail around the
Speaker 4: world with my wife.
Speaker 3: He actually did it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like, I don't want to do I don't
Speaker 4: want to do this anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, he made the recall. Good for you. You know.
Speaker 1: Now he's eight years old and he's living a good life.
Speaker 1: And who replaced him?
Speaker 3: I'm curious.
Speaker 1: Jony Ernst, Okay, well it didn't work out that well,
Speaker 1: but it worked out.
Speaker 3: No Democrats were right.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to Biden. Speaking of Democrats, some cope
Speaker 1: that's going on over there. There's the new panic in Washington.
Speaker 1: Biden is too old.
Speaker 3: He's too old. He's too old.
Speaker 1: What are we going to do about it? He's just
Speaker 1: so old. Let's go and put this up there. Nate
Speaker 1: Silver kind of really, I think has become a leading
Speaker 1: voice amongst the like the what center left commentariat, if
Speaker 1: you can even call on them, just to be like, no, guys,
Speaker 1: Biden actually is way too old and he really should
Speaker 1: step aside. His headline is just quote, if Biden cannot
Speaker 1: run a normal campaign, he should step aside. Democrats are
Speaker 1: taking a huge risk either way, but they should not
Speaker 1: have to get away with a rose garden campaign. He
Speaker 1: says it is inherently crazy. The American presidential campaigns take
Speaker 1: more than a year to run, but they do. Late
Speaker 1: entrances don't have a good track record. He goes into
Speaker 1: all of the reasons for why it is danger risk
Speaker 1: to replace Biden, but he says, quote, as Biden's polling
Speaker 1: gets worse, his approval ratings near their lowest ever number,
Speaker 1: I'm increasingly hedging on that Democrats will be taking a
Speaker 1: huge risk. But they're also taking a huge risk by
Speaker 1: nominating Biden. There is no getting out of this. And
Speaker 1: what he highlights specifically is a new report from Politico's
Speaker 1: Jonathan Martin. We can put this please up on the
Speaker 1: screen where some of the quotes in here are genuinely stunning.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: It's in part for they talk about the paragraph where
Speaker 1: well sourced this Royal Social Reporters talks about Biden, says
Speaker 1: refuses to accept his capacity to do the job. The
Speaker 1: oldest president in history when he first took the oath,
Speaker 1: Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in
Speaker 1: the manner of previous incumbents. He simply does not have
Speaker 1: the capacity to do so. His staff doesn't trust him
Speaker 1: to even try, as they make clear by blocking him
Speaker 1: from the press.
Speaker 3: Biden's bid will give new meaning to a.
Speaker 1: Rose Garden campaign, and it requires accommodation to that unavoidable
Speaker 1: fact of life, and Silver says it is not entirely
Speaker 1: obvious how to regard this claim. Martin is a fairly
Speaker 1: straight reporter. This is an opinion piece, but it is
Speaker 1: worth listening to because he's a well informed observer. And
Speaker 1: if that is a consensus view within the White House quote,
Speaker 1: it would be extremely foolish to nominate an eighty year
Speaker 1: old man who is not up to the rigors.
Speaker 3: Of a modern presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, on a certain point, it is crazy
Speaker 1: because you can see how the gambit could work. It
Speaker 1: certainly could work, but it's a lot like Hillary where
Speaker 1: but what if it doesn't work. Pretty good, there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance it may not work. I actually think
Speaker 1: Biden has a far higher chance of losing the Hillary ever,
Speaker 1: did you know in twenty and sixteen, and obviously Trump
Speaker 1: still won that election. I think it's absolutely coin toss.
Speaker 1: If anything, I'm giving the ads to Trump right now
Speaker 1: for where things stand, and Biden's age really does appear
Speaker 1: to be the single biggest problem for him going into
Speaker 1: this election. And it's like Democrats just don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it at all.
Speaker 4: And one way you can tell how how bleak it
Speaker 4: is for Democrats is the answers that Jonathan Martin comes
Speaker 4: up with and not his answers, not blaming him for them,
Speaker 4: but you know, he's collecting the quote unquote wisdom of
Speaker 4: the kind of conventional forces that make up whatever accounts
Speaker 4: as the Democratic Party today. And they basically say, you
Speaker 4: got to have roma Manuel come in and share your
Speaker 4: campaign because he curses a lot and he's got a
Speaker 4: lot of energy, and you should have Bill and Hillary
Speaker 4: Clinton go do Middley's Peace. Like those are kind of
Speaker 4: the too big and then the other stuff is just
Speaker 4: boiler plate that people say, well, you need to talk
Speaker 4: more about your accomplishments and stop doing the Bidenomics thing
Speaker 4: because people are not glowing onto that.
Speaker 3: But that's it, Like that's it.
Speaker 4: So let's say he actually implemented every scheme and he said,
Speaker 4: bring ron Klain to do some things because ron Klain's good,
Speaker 4: ron Klan's good, fine, bring him in. Let's say you
Speaker 4: do all of those things like that's it, Like that's
Speaker 4: that's your whole thing, and that that fundamentally shows you
Speaker 4: how brittle the whole operation is because you still have
Speaker 4: you know, Biden then and then Harris as your as
Speaker 4: your ticket going forward. Right, there's this There's been this
Speaker 4: huge kind of loud exclamation from Democrats in DC to
Speaker 4: say that only that you're not an adult if you
Speaker 4: think that you can replace the incumbent president with a
Speaker 4: different president. That it's just not something that can be
Speaker 4: remotely in the conversation. And throughout the year they effectively
Speaker 4: did kind of marginalize that conversation. But I think it's
Speaker 4: just flatly untrue because all you have to do to
Speaker 4: imagine a different world is to say what happens if
Speaker 4: Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries signed a
Speaker 4: joint statement that said, we think Biden should step aside
Speaker 4: like that, That is, those are three people who have
Speaker 4: free will, they have agency. There is a thing that
Speaker 4: is within their power to do. If they did that,
Speaker 4: What is the response from Washington? What's the response from me?
Speaker 4: Just and it's pretty easy to imagine that world. CNN, MSNBC,
Speaker 4: New York Times go absolutely bananas. They start talking about
Speaker 4: who else is going to challenge Biden. Biden's team freaks
Speaker 4: out and says that, how how dare you? We're not
Speaker 4: doing this serious people don't talk about replacing the president.
Speaker 3: Guess what, Chuck.
Speaker 4: Schumer, Dick derb and rakeem Jeffers, these are pretty serious people.
Speaker 4: So now you're over that hump and now you're into
Speaker 4: a primary.
Speaker 3: That's what it would take basically. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But so there's this there's this insistence that there are
Speaker 4: no adults that can do that, that there is no
Speaker 4: that the party is hollow, that a party can't decide anymore.
Speaker 4: There are individuals within the party who could they chose
Speaker 4: not to And if this goes in a direction looks
Speaker 4: like it's going in, they're going to make Ruth Bader
Speaker 4: Ginsberg's decision not to step off the Supreme Court look
Speaker 4: look modest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks interesting because it's one of those where
Speaker 1: again he really could win. And that's the most same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's why they're doing it is because it's just convenient.
Speaker 1: It's a gamble. But they don't want to take the
Speaker 1: downside of the bet. And really, what bothers me about
Speaker 1: them is they're a sheer arrogance. So, for example, Ron
Speaker 1: Klaine was attacking David Axelrod for pointing out that Biden
Speaker 1: is too old, and probably he called him a prick.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, it appears that, you know, the entire
Speaker 1: presidential team is like laughing in the face of any
Speaker 1: pundit that says otherwise. But they seem to forget that
Speaker 1: Biden actually is really freaking old, and that they're you know,
Speaker 1: even yesterday, I saw a White House aide who responded
Speaker 1: to these allegations if Biden does have a capacity to
Speaker 1: do so, and it was something like, I would love
Speaker 1: to see a member of the press grapple with President
Speaker 1: Biden in a policy briefing, who has so many sharp
Speaker 1: questions and knows these issues inside and out. And I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be like, hey, you don't let the
Speaker 1: press in there, so we can't see that for ourself.
Speaker 3: You would really love to see that guy. I would
Speaker 3: love to see too. Yeah, all of us would love
Speaker 3: to see it. If only somebody could make that happen.
Speaker 3: You can tell the press team let us in there,
Speaker 3: let him sit down. You know.
Speaker 1: What silver Even points out is that Biden has now
Speaker 1: the fewest presidential press conferences per year except for Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan and Richard Nixon, with not really good company that
Speaker 1: you want to be keeping there.
Speaker 4: And one guy was to mention the other like an alcoholic.
Speaker 3: Like well.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why that's even more important is
Speaker 1: that with these press conferences is that at least Reagan
Speaker 1: and Nixon would take questions in different formats, they would
Speaker 1: do sit down, actual interviews.
Speaker 3: Biden doesn't even do any of that.
Speaker 1: So the press conference or actually what we opened our
Speaker 1: show with, it's very rare actually for Biden to respond
Speaker 1: to shouted questions from the press. Usually his team will
Speaker 1: just hound you out of there immediately after taking a
Speaker 1: photo and he won't reply, you know, to shouted questions.
Speaker 1: Trump used to do stuff like that all the time,
Speaker 1: which is why at a certain extent, like his press
Speaker 1: conferences and all that didn't even matter just because he
Speaker 1: was on a.
Speaker 3: Day to day basis.
Speaker 1: When we were there, we had almost a guarantee if
Speaker 1: we were going to see Trump, we're going to hear
Speaker 1: from the president, you know, we can ask him at
Speaker 1: least something about what's going on. It's extraordinarily rare that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to say anything to the press. Biden
Speaker 1: is really just so inaccessible and it's not even me.
Speaker 1: I mean, he has had no sit down even with
Speaker 1: traditional majors. Every once in a while he'll do an interview,
Speaker 1: you know what was it? And when he went to Arizona,
Speaker 1: he did he sat down with the Weather Channel. They'll
Speaker 1: pick these complete like softballs. He was on a podcast.
Speaker 1: I think he went on a wellness podcast as well.
Speaker 1: But that's just giving people a taste of They try
Speaker 1: to cultivate this air of accessibility, but everyone in Washington
Speaker 1: knows he's probably the most inaccessible president in modern memory.
Speaker 3: I mean even George W. Bush was more And this
Speaker 3: is his first time. Can you imagine a second term?
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, and eighty three or something.
Speaker 4: When you do watch him take field a couple questions
Speaker 4: like we had at the top of the show. As human,
Speaker 4: you're kind of like holding your breath and rooting for
Speaker 4: him to like be able to finish the sentence, and
Speaker 4: that that's just like to deny that reality doesn't doesn't
Speaker 4: serve you as a pundit, even if you're just going
Speaker 4: to get like made fun of by the White House
Speaker 4: for saying that, but it's true. You're you're on the
Speaker 4: one hand, you're like, did his like meek and stumbling
Speaker 4: response to that question suggest some weakness around how he's
Speaker 4: responding to the Israel's like refusal to kind of listen
Speaker 4: to him because the question was about what are you
Speaker 4: going to do about you know, this civilian casualties and
Speaker 4: and this like attack on the hospital, or is it
Speaker 4: he just weak and old and like this is how
Speaker 4: he's answered because you have to sort through these different
Speaker 4: questions to try to figure out what you're what you're
Speaker 4: getting from from the president. And he still has a
Speaker 4: year ago and then four more years after that. And
Speaker 4: if that's his biggest problem, it's not the one that
Speaker 4: you can do anything about.
Speaker 3: Rama man. You can't make him younger. Yes, no, you're
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those where a lot of the
Speaker 1: advice in there was basically just keep a low profile,
Speaker 1: you know, keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3: And the thing is, I actually agree with all of that.
Speaker 3: If I was him, that's all I would do.
Speaker 1: I would He once made fun of Rudy Giuliani for
Speaker 1: saying all that came out of his mouth was a
Speaker 1: noun a verb in nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: If I was Biden, it would be a noun a.
Speaker 1: Verb and abortion That's all I would talk about all
Speaker 1: day long until election day for the limited times that
Speaker 1: I'm actually able to speak properly. However, that's a very
Speaker 1: risky gambit when you're going up it's against such a
Speaker 1: talented politician like Trump, and they're not even really having
Speaker 1: an open democratic process.
Speaker 3: So we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Speaking of democracy, Ryan, You're going to have to break
Speaker 1: this down for me, because I don't know what the
Speaker 1: hell is going on.
Speaker 3: You've had your eye on it.
Speaker 1: The only reason I'm even acquainted is because Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: apparently went from the UFC with Donald Trump and Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden and the next day is on the ground
Speaker 1: in Madrid immense significant protests. He spoke to some of
Speaker 1: the Spanish press while he was there, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get your reaction.
Speaker 3: On the other side, anybody who.
Speaker 11: Would violate your constitution, potentially use physical violence to end
Speaker 11: democracy is a tyrant, is a dictator, and it is
Speaker 11: happening in the middle of Europe.
Speaker 3: So we thought it just report covers that it's getting.
Speaker 11: Oh, if your government is allowing foreigners to commit and
Speaker 11: hurt you, they're committing war against you. You know, our
Speaker 11: news media doesn't report a lot of things, and in
Speaker 11: our time here. It's very obvious that the socialists in
Speaker 11: the Alliance and the separatists are trying to end the
Speaker 11: rule of QUN Spain.
Speaker 3: If you don't have freedom of speech, you don't have
Speaker 3: the freedom to defend yourself, and you can't vote your
Speaker 3: way out of it. The system is rigged. You're in
Speaker 3: real trouble, real trouble. So I'm really rooting for your
Speaker 3: success if.
Speaker 5: The we're actually seeing how important but it's happening here.
Speaker 3: No, the world is not seeing how important it is.
Speaker 3: But we hope to change that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you will, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: To you very much.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's he talking about a socialist revolution in Spain?
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound good. Civil wars great things that have
Speaker 3: finished that. Yeah, well it.
Speaker 1: Didn't work out so well, no Rank or with Franco
Speaker 1: did it. So tell us about what too, baby, tell
Speaker 1: us what's happening.
Speaker 3: Socialist will rise again. So I was there.
Speaker 4: I was there this summer as this was kicking off,
Speaker 4: and when I came back, I actually solved the Catalonian
Speaker 4: independence crisis here here on Counterpoints, people can go watch that.
Speaker 3: But so we saw this coming.
Speaker 4: Basically what happened is that there was an election. The
Speaker 4: far right was the plurality leader. Then came the socialists,
Speaker 4: but the right could not come up with enough to
Speaker 4: get over fifty percent to form a government.
Speaker 3: They've tried.
Speaker 4: Socialists have carectake here in power, waiting for the Right
Speaker 4: to figure out if they could actually get their act together.
Speaker 3: Here's the funniest part.
Speaker 4: In twenty seventeen, there were a bunch of illegal referenda
Speaker 4: held by the Catalonian independence movement, basically in Barcelona and
Speaker 4: around there, where they were going to vote on whether
Speaker 4: or not they would be independent and this, and the
Speaker 4: government said, you cannot vote on whether you're going to
Speaker 4: be independent, you can't be independent. They insisted they're going
Speaker 4: to have the vote anyway. People might remember from the
Speaker 4: time there was this violent crackdown on the referenda. They
Speaker 4: were chasing these wild scenes where they're chasing voters, you know, basically,
Speaker 4: you know, through middle schools and through stairwells, and they
Speaker 4: arrested a whole bunch of the separatist movement leaders. That
Speaker 4: the top leader was able to go from like safe
Speaker 4: house to safe house and get out of the country,
Speaker 4: and so he has been in exile. I think in
Speaker 4: Sweden or Switzerland, somewhere not maybe France, somewhere, not in Spain.
Speaker 4: He's out of there, and so but they still have
Speaker 4: a party. And so after the election results came in,
Speaker 4: it became clear that whoever could win the separatists vote
Speaker 4: in parliament would then be able to form a government,
Speaker 4: and so they had to negotiate with this guy who
Speaker 4: was in exile, and so both the right and the
Speaker 4: left are then kind of trying to win this guy
Speaker 4: over to their side. They're in an interesting position because
Speaker 4: they are kind of right wing, social conservative, Catholic leaders,
Speaker 4: but the base of the party is very progressive. But
Speaker 4: the number one thing they care about is independence, so
Speaker 4: they will vote for independence before they vote for their
Speaker 4: version of Medicare for all or whatever. But there's this
Speaker 4: split between the party leaders right wing party leaders, left
Speaker 4: wing base, with independence being the kind of little thread
Speaker 4: that kind of ties them together. So they don't actually
Speaker 4: ever want independence, because the second they get independence, they
Speaker 4: are then they're useless, like this leadership and the party
Speaker 4: becomes moves in a left direction. So anyway, they what
Speaker 4: do they really want? Do they want independence? No, they
Speaker 4: want amnesty for themselves. They don't want to be exiles anymore,
Speaker 4: and so the Socialists offered that, so they agreed, and
Speaker 4: they agreed, and so then the Separatists said, all right, good,
Speaker 4: we vote with the Socialists, we get our amnesty for
Speaker 4: our leadership, we can come back to Spain, and now
Speaker 4: the Socialists can form a government. And the Separatist Party
Speaker 4: is cool with that because they fundamentally are kind of
Speaker 4: center left, left wing, and they also want amnesty for
Speaker 4: their leaders. And so the right is like, we got
Speaker 4: a plurality of the vote. This is unfair, this is
Speaker 4: a takeover, this is a coup, and it's like, it's
Speaker 4: not a coup. They have more than fifty percent in
Speaker 4: the parliament, they're forming a government.
Speaker 3: So what would they say in response to.
Speaker 4: They would say it's illegal to like basically pardon criminals,
Speaker 4: because you are like, that's what they're doing. So there's
Speaker 4: some truth to it, Okay, Yeah, but the right would
Speaker 4: have done it too, So they say conservative and judges
Speaker 4: don't say that Socialist Leader Pact damages the rule of law.
Speaker 1: It does because it violates the amnesty deal, violates a
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen law that was passed inside of Spain Catalonia
Speaker 1: for the breakaway and the referendum says it will the
Speaker 1: previous leader had agreed not to defuse the conflict, and
Speaker 1: now the socialists will quote unquote take over the government.
Speaker 1: Now what are some of the other aim I mean
Speaker 1: is that the only thing that they're protesting, Like what
Speaker 1: percentage of the vote did the socialists get in the vote?
Speaker 7: A lot?
Speaker 4: I mean it was there's still number two yes, and
Speaker 4: they were the right was expected to win an outright
Speaker 4: majority with that, and they came in, they underperformed and
Speaker 4: the Socialists overperformed, so that they were already frustrated there
Speaker 4: and so now they're like, oh god, we need a
Speaker 4: couple more percentage points.
Speaker 3: Where are we going to get it?
Speaker 4: And it's like all these damn separatists and I think
Speaker 4: they felt like the right feels like the leaders betray
Speaker 4: them because they like are right wingers also, so like
Speaker 4: why aren't you with us?
Speaker 1: And so what they say is that quote fears of
Speaker 1: this is from the Financial Times. Fears of the amnesty
Speaker 1: law is opening away for Parliament to interfere in court
Speaker 1: decisions has prompted a statement from the Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: Spain which says a government changer a comment Chamber emphasize
Speaker 1: the need to guarantee judicial independence from all institutions and
Speaker 1: underscored the Court's duty to safeguard equality in the application
Speaker 1: of law. The proposed amnesty is now drawing condemnation from prosecutors, judges, lawyers,
Speaker 1: police officers, in Spain's main business lobby, and tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people are taking to the streets. The text
Speaker 1: of the amnesty law says that it will cover not
Speaker 1: only people who organize the referendum in twenty seventeen, but
Speaker 1: also those who committed crimes with a profound connection to
Speaker 1: the independent SPID.
Speaker 3: So this actually is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: They're not just saying it's like you helped organize a referendum,
Speaker 1: They're like, straight up like criminal terror. I mean, terrorists
Speaker 1: is a is a you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say the word whatever in Spain.
Speaker 3: In Spain they.
Speaker 1: Probably would, but I don't know enough in order to
Speaker 1: use the term and apply to them. But it seems
Speaker 1: to me like that is why it's such an emotional issue.
Speaker 4: It's like it'd be like if, in order to form
Speaker 4: a government in Israel, one of the coalitions said we're
Speaker 4: going to pardon, We're going to pass a law that
Speaker 4: says net ya, who's not guilty of any times?
Speaker 3: Wow, that's pretty wid It's that. It's that, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4: So they're not wrong to be upset, but you know
Speaker 4: the socialist are like to stay mad. Like you would
Speaker 4: have done the same thing if you could have gotten
Speaker 4: them to agree gotten yes.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, so we'll continue to track it.
Speaker 1: Spain always does pop off in terms of protests social
Speaker 1: listen to right wingers fighting in Spain. What could go wrong?
Speaker 1: It's not like it's ever happened before. Anyways, Ryan is
Speaker 1: a pleasure hosting with you. Hold the book up again.
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Speaker 1: You guys are gonna have a great counterpoint show for
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Speaker 5: M