Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 4: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, welcome to Counterpoints. I wouldn't shout at like
Speaker 3: soccer does.
Speaker 6: When I tried my best, sob still fired up.
Speaker 7: Yes, super fired up. We actually do have an awesome
Speaker 7: show for you guys today. We're going to start by
Speaker 7: breaking down everything going on with the AI hearing from yesterday.
Speaker 7: There's so much to get into. We're going to talk
Speaker 7: about a big no no.
Speaker 6: Then we got elections from Turkey to Kentucky and everywhere
Speaker 6: in between. Some l's for Rond DeSantis, some wins and
Speaker 6: losses for Bernie Sanders, a couple of wins from Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 6: We'll get into the we'll get it of the whole
Speaker 6: thing there. We got an update on debt ceiling talks.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there was, there was. There were elections last night
Speaker 7: that were debt ceiling talks. Yesterday, We've got some crazy
Speaker 7: new allegations to talk about when it comes to Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk did an interview.
Speaker 7: On CNBC and is being subpoenaed by the Virgin Islands
Speaker 7: and the Epstein JP Morgan case. Ryan, you had a
Speaker 7: scoop this week that you're going to break down.
Speaker 3: For us on Turkey.
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, it's gonna be good. It's a wild one.
Speaker 7: And then I'll be breaking down the Durham Report. And
Speaker 7: then the one and only Ken Clipton.
Speaker 3: Seen us here.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: Ken has a new scoop on the kind of disinformation
Speaker 6: industrial complex and a new agency that he uncovered. He's
Speaker 6: finding like these are like mushrooms in a cowfield.
Speaker 4: He just keeps finding new ones.
Speaker 7: The easter egg hunt. Like Ken, just how many agencies
Speaker 7: can he find in the Pentagon. Well, we'll be talking
Speaker 7: to Ken about that for sure, and just a bit,
Speaker 7: but let's talk about yesterday is Congressional hearing on AI
Speaker 7: Generative AI. We should say we can put the first
Speaker 7: element the tear sheet up.
Speaker 3: You can see.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So this was Sam Moultman's first testimony before Congress.
Speaker 7: He is obviously the head of open Ai, which has
Speaker 7: chat GPT, so it's a big deal that he came
Speaker 7: and was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy
Speaker 7: and Technology.
Speaker 3: He had all kinds of.
Speaker 7: What I would probably describe as like juicy quotes, things
Speaker 7: that you know. This is why he's in front of
Speaker 7: the Senate testifying. So let's start with the first of those.
Speaker 7: We'll go with a one here.
Speaker 1: Look, we have tried to be very clear about the
Speaker 1: magnitude of the risks here. I think jobs and employment
Speaker 1: and what we're all going to do with our time
Speaker 1: really matters. I agree that when we get to very
Speaker 1: powerful systems, the landscape will change. I think I'm just
Speaker 1: more optimistic that we are incredibly creative and we find
Speaker 1: new things to do with better tools, and that will
Speaker 1: keep happening. My worst fears are that we cause significant
Speaker 1: we the field, the technology, the industry, caused significant harm
Speaker 1: to the world. I think that could happen in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways. It's why we started the company.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of why I'm here today and
Speaker 1: why we've been here in the past and I've been
Speaker 1: able to spend some time with you. I think if
Speaker 1: this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, and
Speaker 1: we want to be vocal about that. We want to
Speaker 1: work with the government to prevent that from happening, but
Speaker 1: we try to be very clear eyed about what the
Speaker 1: downside case is and the work that we have to
Speaker 1: do to mitigate that.
Speaker 3: My worst fear is just that we destroy the world.
Speaker 6: And this is someone who describes himself as an optimist
Speaker 6: when it comes to this stuff. So I'm curious just
Speaker 6: to frame and set the conversation. Where do you put
Speaker 6: yourself on the alarmist spectrum when it comes to AI.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I'm very alarmist about AI. What
Speaker 3: about you?
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm alarmist about everything. So it's like, what
Speaker 6: do you got I'll be alarmed about it?
Speaker 7: Well, no, but I think for good reason, because we
Speaker 7: live in an era where things change really really quickly,
Speaker 7: and it's like almost exponential technological advancements, and so yeah,
Speaker 7: we have to be sort of alarmist about all kinds
Speaker 7: of things. But that is a good question because yes,
Speaker 7: in full disclosure, I think both of us are like
Speaker 7: extremely concerned about rapid changes in AI. That doesn't mean
Speaker 7: that it can't be harnessed for good, but it does
Speaker 7: mean that our.
Speaker 3: Government needs to catch up.
Speaker 7: And that's something we've heard from a lot of people
Speaker 7: in the tech industry.
Speaker 3: It's just Ton Harris, et cetera. That we do.
Speaker 7: Not have the capability as the government right now to
Speaker 7: properly regulate generative AI large language models because Congress just
Speaker 7: can't adapt quickly enough. I think that's very clear, and
Speaker 7: so that's cause for alarm, whether or not you think
Speaker 7: AI is ultimately good or bad. I get all of
Speaker 7: the concerns about hampering our ability to be competitive in
Speaker 7: this space when you have China putting lots of work
Speaker 7: into AI, lots of regulation into it too, and this
Speaker 7: potentially becoming a weapon of war. Absolutely understand that we
Speaker 7: don't want to handicap our industry. At the same time,
Speaker 7: we don't want to destroy civilization, right.
Speaker 6: And yeah, And my struggle with AI is that civilization
Speaker 6: has always been this kind of contest between the good
Speaker 6: and evil within all of us, and the evil is
Speaker 6: often so much more.
Speaker 4: Motivated than the goodness in us.
Speaker 6: Every new technology that comes out, the pioneers in it
Speaker 6: are often the scammers like, how can I use this
Speaker 6: to either extract money from people, to crush my internal
Speaker 6: rivals within a country, to crush external rivals in another country.
Speaker 6: And then eventually the world kind of freaks out at
Speaker 6: that and puts in place regulations and norms to try
Speaker 6: to control things. But if it comes too quickly, then
Speaker 6: we might not have an opportunity for that. But here,
Speaker 6: so let's roll Sam Altman again from one of his
Speaker 6: other clips.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: I believe that there will be far greater jobs on
Speaker 1: the other side of this, and that the jobs of
Speaker 1: today will get better. I think it's important. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to understand and think about GPT
Speaker 1: four as a tool, not a creature which is easy
Speaker 1: to get confused. And it's a tool that people have
Speaker 1: a great deal of control over and how they use it.
Speaker 1: And second, GPT four and things other systems like it
Speaker 1: are good at doing tasks, not jobs, And so you
Speaker 1: see already people that are using GPT four to do
Speaker 1: their job much more efficiently by helping them with tasks. Now,
Speaker 1: GPT four will, I think, entirely automate away some jobs,
Speaker 1: and it will create new ones that we believe will
Speaker 1: be much better this happens again. My understanding of the
Speaker 1: history of technology is one long technological revolution, not a
Speaker 1: bunch of different ones put together.
Speaker 7: It's kind of insane by the way that he is
Speaker 7: the CEO of open AI and GPT has been integrated
Speaker 7: into all of these different products. This is his first
Speaker 7: time in front of Congress having to explain some of
Speaker 7: this in public.
Speaker 3: That's outrageous.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a great example already of how our government
Speaker 7: is not adapted quickly enough to technology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, that's like okay.
Speaker 6: Basically they had to launch it and people in offices
Speaker 6: had to start using it and flag it for the
Speaker 6: lawmakers be like, this is kind of revolutionary, we might
Speaker 6: want to talk about this now. I come down on
Speaker 6: the side of it's actually okay if really bad jobs
Speaker 6: go away, like.
Speaker 3: The BuzzFeed aggregator jobs.
Speaker 6: Those jobs most actually like most jobs. And what I
Speaker 6: mean by that is, if you think back to the
Speaker 6: nineteenth century and you think about what most of the
Speaker 6: jobs were at that point, you've got right now in
Speaker 6: Kentucky there's fewer than four thousand people working in the mines,
Speaker 6: working in the mind sucks automating that or even better,
Speaker 6: getting that from the sun or the wind or nuclear
Speaker 6: power or whatever is better than going down into those
Speaker 6: filthy minds all the typists, you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 6: of typists around the country. Typing sucks, No, he wants
Speaker 6: to do. Like the fact that you can automate typing.
Speaker 6: It's good if But if people are as a result
Speaker 6: thrown out of work and all the wealth flows up
Speaker 6: to the top, that's a problem. But that's not a
Speaker 6: technology problem. That's a social problem and a political problem
Speaker 6: that we need to sort out. So if you know,
Speaker 6: fast food jobs are mostly automated away, most people didn't.
Speaker 4: Like working in fast food places to begin with.
Speaker 6: If those people can do something more enriching and rewarding
Speaker 6: with their time, that makes the world a better place.
Speaker 6: If those people are a miserated and thrown into poverty
Speaker 6: and made vassals of some techno state, then that makes
Speaker 6: things worse.
Speaker 4: But that isn't the fault of the AI. That would
Speaker 4: be the.
Speaker 7: Fault of us well, Or it can be the fault
Speaker 7: of AI for moving too quickly. Sure, yeah, right, So
Speaker 7: that's him on jobs, speaking of moving too quickly, that's
Speaker 7: him on jobs. By the way, after people's jobs have
Speaker 7: already been lost to AI. Again, this is his first
Speaker 7: time in front of Congress, and these jobs have already
Speaker 7: been affected. Let's hear what he has to say about elections.
Speaker 7: We can go and roll the next element.
Speaker 8: Mister Altman, maybe you can help me understand here what
Speaker 8: some of the significance of this is. Should we be
Speaker 8: concerned about models that can large language, models that can
Speaker 8: predict survey opinion and then can help organizations into these
Speaker 8: fine tuned strategies to elicit behaviors from voters. Should we
Speaker 8: be worried about this for our elections?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you Senator Holly for the question. It's one
Speaker 1: of my areas of greatest concern, the more general ability
Speaker 1: of these models to manipulate and to persuade, to provide
Speaker 1: sort of one on one interactive disinformation. I think that's
Speaker 1: like a broader version of what you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: giving that we're going to face an election next year
Speaker 1: and these models are getting better, I think this is
Speaker 1: a significant area of concern. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: there's a lot of policies that companies can voluntarily adopt,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to talk about what we do there.
Speaker 1: I do think some regulation would be quite wise on
Speaker 1: this topic.
Speaker 4: Some regulation be nice.
Speaker 6: So you know what he's talking about here, Basically, imagine
Speaker 6: a bot program that you can deploy at scale and
Speaker 6: that appears to be real people. We have seen attempts
Speaker 6: at that, you know, for years, whether it's like from
Speaker 6: that little Russian agency like you know, trying to like
Speaker 6: mess with Bernie Sanders supporters in a Facebook thread. What
Speaker 6: he's saying is, you know, exponentially advance that tool place
Speaker 6: where people believe it. And I think that that means
Speaker 6: basically the end of social media, like the end of
Speaker 6: mass social media. I think you'll have discord servers, smaller
Speaker 6: social media sites where you're interacting with people who you
Speaker 6: know are real.
Speaker 4: But the idea of a global town square.
Speaker 6: When everybody suspects that every single one of their critics
Speaker 6: is a bot, and they are correct ninety percent of
Speaker 6: the time, you can't have a conversation anymore, and any
Speaker 6: attempt at a conversation and will only then be manipulated
Speaker 6: by whoever can afford the best bots, and most of
Speaker 6: the conversations will be bots arguing with other bots. And
Speaker 6: I was just kind of watching, or hopefully not watching,
Speaker 6: and returning more to human to human interactions like actual community,
Speaker 6: actual friends meeting up face to face, because at some
Speaker 6: point even zoom isn't going to be ultimately persuasive. I
Speaker 6: think it'll be years until they can fake that. But
Speaker 6: you're going to need to kind of look in the
Speaker 6: eye of another person to know that you're having an
Speaker 6: actual conversation with a person, right.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, and that's where also you get into this
Speaker 7: question of trust. So even if there are all of
Speaker 7: these lingering suspicions, I mean, it's somewhat interesting to think
Speaker 7: that in twenty sixteen there were suspicions that not suspicions,
Speaker 7: i should say, outright accusations from the leading Democratic candidate,
Speaker 7: Hillary Clinton herself, that bots had somehow swayed the election
Speaker 7: for Donald Trump. Well, that suspicion, that lack of true
Speaker 7: us in and of itself, is the social breakdown that
Speaker 7: can start to happen because of AI. So yeah, this
Speaker 7: stuff is a really big deal as soon as those
Speaker 7: seeds are planted in our minds as human beings, whether
Speaker 7: it's person to person, elect person to election, person to
Speaker 7: their democracy.
Speaker 3: It's extremely problematic.
Speaker 7: And now, actually let's roll this clip from NYU professor
Speaker 7: Gary Marcus, who also testified during the Senate hearing, and
Speaker 7: just I think laid out it did a very good job. Like, yeah,
Speaker 7: here's some more good alarmism from Gary Marcus.
Speaker 2: Open ai released chat gpt plugins, which quickly led others
Speaker 2: to develop something called autogpt. With direct access to the Internet,
Speaker 2: the ability to write source code, and increased powers of automation.
Speaker 2: This may well have drastic and difficult to predict security consequences.
Speaker 2: What criminals are going to do here is to create
Speaker 2: counterfeit people. It's hard to even envision the consequences of that.
Speaker 2: We have built machines that are like bulls in a
Speaker 2: china shop, powerful, reckless, and diffaul cult to control.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that goes to the point that Sam Altman
Speaker 6: was making earlier, where he was saying, think of these
Speaker 6: as tools and tools that are accomplishing tasks, not as
Speaker 6: jobs or things in themselves that are kind of thinking
Speaker 6: like people and developing ideas and strategies.
Speaker 4: And the question that is how much do we believe him?
Speaker 4: How much do we.
Speaker 6: Believe that the Bold and China Shop might have its
Speaker 6: own ideas about how it feels like this China shop
Speaker 6: ought to be arranged.
Speaker 7: I mean, NBC's did a segment last week then not
Speaker 7: a lot of other media coverage followed about how artificial
Speaker 7: intelligence in a study decoded brain activity into dialogue recently,
Speaker 7: so it can take your brain activity and decoded into
Speaker 7: di I mean, this stuff is happening at a rapid
Speaker 7: rapid clip, and I just think it's worth mentioning while
Speaker 7: we're on the subject, that these companies are pouring millions
Speaker 7: and millions of dollars here into Washington, DC. Yeah, you
Speaker 7: can see this on ASEX. Open Secrets did a really
Speaker 7: excellent breakdown of all of the lobbying how opening here
Speaker 7: in Washington in the first three months of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 7: They wrote one hundred and twenty three companies, universities, and
Speaker 7: trade associations lobby the federal government on issues relating to AI.
Speaker 3: They collectively spent roughly.
Speaker 7: Ninety four million dollars lobbying on AI and other issues
Speaker 7: just from January until March. Now, it's hard to say
Speaker 7: how much of that was just about AI because these
Speaker 7: are big tech companies. So you have Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Alphabet, IBM, Meta,
Speaker 7: some really big ones, and you can break down, for instance,
Speaker 7: that Oracle spent specifically three point one million on AI
Speaker 7: and machine learning policy lobbying just in general on those.
Speaker 7: Amazon has been lobbying in this space of five million
Speaker 7: to lobby Congress and just those first three months on
Speaker 7: issues that include AI.
Speaker 6: Amazon really gets a pass in this whole conversation too.
Speaker 6: You don't hear much from Amazon, but watch Amazon will
Speaker 6: be the one that ends up just dominating this space
Speaker 6: because they can dominate everything else once they add AI
Speaker 6: to their matrix.
Speaker 7: Yeah, look out well, and so General Motors, there's some
Speaker 7: other people in the space that are doing AI lobbying
Speaker 7: that might not be exactly expected. So General Motors obviously
Speaker 7: that makes sense because the autonomous vehicles and all of that.
Speaker 7: The Chamber of Commerce obviously makes sense as well. But
Speaker 7: nineteen million dollars lobbying just in that first quarter, and
Speaker 7: some of that did include lobbying on AI. Also, State
Speaker 7: Farm Insurance, interestingly enough, and some other insurance companies have
Speaker 7: been lobbying in this space. So there's just millions of
Speaker 7: dollars pouring into Capitol Hill right now. It is great
Speaker 7: that they finally hauled Sam Altman after his technology has
Speaker 7: already caused some damage to testify in front of Congress.
Speaker 3: This is technology, by the way.
Speaker 7: That you know, whether you're an alarmist or not, it
Speaker 7: has massive potential. If you're not an alarmist, you love
Speaker 7: it because you're like, this has massive potential. Either way,
Speaker 7: you agree that it has massive potential. So it's great
Speaker 7: that Congress finally hauled him in, but he had a
Speaker 7: private dinner with members of the House the night before.
Speaker 7: Some of this is going to be cozying in the
Speaker 7: same way that we saw Facebook and Twitter do that
Speaker 7: in the sort of early Obama era.
Speaker 3: This is not just going to be Congress like getting
Speaker 3: tough on open AI.
Speaker 7: There's going to be a cozy relationship to some extent.
Speaker 7: So just encourage people to keep an eye on that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is one of those classic Washington arrangements
Speaker 6: where you have concentrated power behind one side of the
Speaker 6: issue and one company basically in one company, and then
Speaker 6: diffuse opposition or diffuse skepticism very much. Take ethanol being
Speaker 6: like the very classic example where you have some ethanol
Speaker 6: producers in the Midwest who like really really really care
Speaker 6: about ethanol, like that's the only thing that they care about.
Speaker 6: They spend all of their time, energy, and money lobbying
Speaker 6: Congress on ethanol. The rest of the public is like,
Speaker 6: this seems like not worth doing. But you know what,
Speaker 6: I have so many other things to do with my
Speaker 6: day that I'm not going to turn myself into an
Speaker 6: anti ethanol lobbyist. And so they just steamroll their way through.
Speaker 6: And so you have a version of that because there
Speaker 6: isn't really.
Speaker 4: A kind of cent traded opposition.
Speaker 6: It's whereas everybody is kind of opposed, right and kind
Speaker 6: of nervous, but they're not collected. They're not aggregated together
Speaker 6: in a way they can in a way they can
Speaker 6: push back. There's also a huge irony moving to the
Speaker 6: next block here in what we're actually talking about in
Speaker 6: our politics compared to what the future would look.
Speaker 4: Like under AI.
Speaker 6: The entire debt ceiling debate so far has come down
Speaker 6: to the question of work requirements for food stamp recipients. So,
Speaker 6: on the one hand, we're hearing from Congress that most
Speaker 6: jobs might just be wiped out within a decade by AI.
Speaker 6: Congress's response to that is, let's make sure people who
Speaker 6: are getting food stamps are doing meaningless make work in
Speaker 6: order to get those food stamps. And I'm really curious
Speaker 6: from your so we could put b one up here.
Speaker 6: This is Kevin McCarthy saying that this is a red
Speaker 6: line for him. Like if take to pretend that he's
Speaker 6: serious for a second, he'd be saying that you have
Speaker 6: to increase work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries or else he
Speaker 6: will default. He will drive the government into default and
Speaker 6: drive the global economy into a crisis. Now that doesn't
Speaker 6: seem credible to me because the threat and the demand
Speaker 6: don't seem.
Speaker 4: To line up to me.
Speaker 6: But pretend he's pretend that the word's coming out of
Speaker 6: his mouth are honest ones.
Speaker 4: Just for giggles.
Speaker 6: Why are they claiming to be drawing this red line
Speaker 6: when just a couple of years ago you and I
Speaker 6: are talking about how you've got this new energy on
Speaker 6: the right around being more generous to working families and
Speaker 6: more generous to the poor and pushing for you know,
Speaker 6: child child credits, other and other credits so that families
Speaker 6: can kind of, you know, make it through the difficult times.
Speaker 6: How do we how did we get back to the
Speaker 6: Paul Ryan Eira all of a sudden, Well, you know.
Speaker 7: That that was always paired Interestingly enough, if you read
Speaker 7: some of like Marco Rubio's speeches where he was making
Speaker 7: that argument that the conservative movement needed to like shift
Speaker 7: its focus to individuals over like the free market. The
Speaker 7: market exists to serve families. As the line that a
Speaker 7: lot of sort of new right people will use, it
Speaker 7: was always coupled with this intense focus on the dignity
Speaker 7: of work, that you cannot just disrupt people's lives with
Speaker 7: all of these different like programs that are hard to
Speaker 7: get off of and create, you know, all kinds of
Speaker 7: different community based issues, and then this is the argument
Speaker 7: that's made and then expect everyone to be happy. So
Speaker 7: it was always coupled with that. And I'm not surprised
Speaker 7: at all that McCarthy is referring to it as a
Speaker 7: red line because in a way, I think what happened yesterday,
Speaker 7: Kevin McCarthy obviously met with President Biden, Truck Schumer, Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 7: What happened yesterday, I think, despite what the media is saying,
Speaker 7: was a really big win for Kevin McCarthy and Republicans
Speaker 7: and an L that Biden and took. I think the
Speaker 7: White House knew that they were taking an L. I
Speaker 7: don't think they were caught off guard by this, but
Speaker 7: Biden said he was not negotiating period. He said there
Speaker 7: will be no conditions on a debt ceiling increase.
Speaker 3: That is his red line.
Speaker 7: He said that for months, which is why these conversations
Speaker 7: are just happening now, by the way, when we have
Speaker 7: like days to go until a potential default. And that
Speaker 7: turned out to not be the case because here Biden
Speaker 7: has actually appointed negotiators. And that's like a big, big,
Speaker 7: big loss for Biden because he said that was never
Speaker 7: going to happen. We've talked before about why Biden strategically
Speaker 7: it didn't have to happen.
Speaker 3: He doesn't have to be doing any of this.
Speaker 7: Republicans have the losing hand here in the battle of
Speaker 7: public relations. But I think that's why Kevin McCarthy is
Speaker 7: saying this is his red line, because he feels like
Speaker 7: he's in a stronger negotiating position right now so he
Speaker 7: can say, you know, something that obviously is out of
Speaker 7: whack proportionately is his red line.
Speaker 3: I think it.
Speaker 7: Reflects actually that he feels like he suddenly has the
Speaker 7: upper hand.
Speaker 6: Yeah, complete clown show from the House because on the
Speaker 6: one hand, they said we are absolutely not negotiating on
Speaker 6: lifting the debt ceiling. And on the other hand, they said,
Speaker 6: we're not going to take any creative action in order
Speaker 6: to push past the debt ceiling if we get to it,
Speaker 6: like we're not going to look at looking and looking
Speaker 6: at look into minting the coin.
Speaker 4: Where we're not going to explore the fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 6: That would be a constitutional crisis, although he started hinting
Speaker 6: at it more recently but earlier to have taken those
Speaker 6: all off the table.
Speaker 4: Said well, then your only option is to work with
Speaker 4: the House.
Speaker 6: If you're not going to negotiate and you're not going
Speaker 6: to do anything creative, then all you can do is
Speaker 6: just rubber stamp the house built, which you're not going
Speaker 6: to do. So it is a completely incoherent response from
Speaker 6: the White House the way they're trying to pretend that
Speaker 6: they're not negotiating if but they keep slipping a little
Speaker 6: bit as they say, we're negotiating the upcoming budget deal.
Speaker 4: And also there's this debt.
Speaker 6: Ceiling thing on the side, which we assume that once
Speaker 6: we reach a budget deal, they will agree to lift
Speaker 6: the debt ceiling, but they will be doing that on
Speaker 6: their own, not any result of any negotiations. But then
Speaker 6: Biden in shorthand will refer to it as like death
Speaker 6: ceiling negotiations or something close to that.
Speaker 4: So it's like nice, nice try there.
Speaker 6: So here's here's Kevin McCarthy by the way outside of
Speaker 6: the White House after the meeting yesterday.
Speaker 4: This is B two.
Speaker 9: The great thing about that question is we've already had
Speaker 9: taken developed off the table because the House Republicans passed
Speaker 9: a bill that raised the debt ceiling, limited our future spending,
Speaker 9: saved taxpayers money by being able to pull back unspent
Speaker 9: money and waste, and actually grow our economy by making
Speaker 9: our economy stronger and helping lifting people out of poverty
Speaker 9: into work. And so those are the parameters we'll talk about.
Speaker 7: So, yeah, the McCarthy quoters, when you're talking about work requirements,
Speaker 7: remember what we're talking about, able bodied people with no dependents.
Speaker 3: It's twenty hours.
Speaker 7: Biden says, quote, I voted for tougher aid problems. That's
Speaker 7: in the law now, But for Medicaid it's a different story.
Speaker 7: And so I'm waiting to hear what their exact proposal is.
Speaker 7: Then the White House comes in with a tweet that
Speaker 7: says the House Republican wish list would put a million
Speaker 7: older adults at risk of losing their food asys since
Speaker 7: in going hungry, rather than push Americans into poverty, we
Speaker 7: should reduce the deficit by making sure the wealthy and
Speaker 7: large corporations pay their fair share and taxes. So you
Speaker 7: can see how the White House kind of steps in
Speaker 7: to say we're not negotiating on this. John Fetterman then
Speaker 7: sweeps in as well.
Speaker 6: Yes, so I think I want to play this Fetterman cloaks.
Speaker 6: I think people should see it. I think Fetterman has
Speaker 6: a brilliant idea for a question to these Silicon Valley
Speaker 6: bank people. But his disability as a result of his
Speaker 6: stroke is still quite quite noticeable, even if you're completely
Speaker 6: supportive of the question that he's firing at these bank executives.
Speaker 6: Let's let's roll Fetterman here.
Speaker 10: The Republicans want to give a work requirement for snap,
Speaker 10: you know, for a hungry family has to have these
Speaker 10: this kind of penalties. Are these some kinds of word
Speaker 10: working requirements? Shouldn't you have a working requirement after we
Speaker 10: sail your bank billions or your bank because they see
Speaker 10: me we're preoccupied, then SNAP and requirements for works for
Speaker 10: a hundred people, but not about protecting the tax papers
Speaker 10: you know that will bail no matter whatever does about
Speaker 10: a bank to crash it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I love the idea, but you have to
Speaker 6: kind of like lice through there to kind of get
Speaker 6: to the idea. But basically, as you can tell, I
Speaker 6: think from that, he's saying, why don't the rich have
Speaker 6: to suffer the same indignities as the poor?
Speaker 4: Do that?
Speaker 6: And I think that that that's a great idea that
Speaker 6: if you want to kind of maintain some of your
Speaker 6: income from crashing a bank after you get bailed out,
Speaker 6: then once a week you have to walk down to
Speaker 6: the Social Security office and you have to piss in
Speaker 6: a cup, and you have to otherwise be humiliated in
Speaker 6: all the ways that they humiliate the poor in the
Speaker 6: working class for their very meager benefits. But clearly, you know,
Speaker 6: Fetterman's you know, still got a ways to go in
Speaker 6: his recovery.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: No, it's tough to watch, but I love question and
Speaker 7: I'm all for it. It's you know, I think what
Speaker 7: happened in a way sticks with a lot of Americans still,
Speaker 7: and the more we c SVP and all of these
Speaker 7: different things happening the more that I think that's going
Speaker 7: to be on people's minds.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Elizabeth Warren and some other senators might have
Speaker 6: been bipartisan, had introduced a bill yesterday that would claw
Speaker 6: back basically all income from bank executives, or maybe not
Speaker 6: all income, but all income above a certain threshold within
Speaker 6: five years of a bank collapse, which is to me
Speaker 6: should be a no brainer.
Speaker 4: Is a great way to reset incentives.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, that's exactly it.
Speaker 7: The incentive system is shattered, especially when you have JP
Speaker 7: Morgan just acting as our national bank.
Speaker 3: And swallowing up different things.
Speaker 7: There are no incentives basically, and there have to be incentives.
Speaker 7: So those conversations about guardrails I.
Speaker 3: Think are important.
Speaker 6: You actually would not even necessarily need legislation. And Gary Gensler,
Speaker 6: I know he loves to watch counterpoints, so if he's
Speaker 6: watching now or if his staff is watching, Dodd Frank
Speaker 6: Act says that there can be no bank compensation that
Speaker 6: produces instability in the markets, and so that can easily
Speaker 6: be read as if you incentivize reckless behavior on the
Speaker 6: part of bank executives, that can be banned through SEC rulemaking,
Speaker 6: And so you could easily then say, and you could
Speaker 6: hit private equity with this too.
Speaker 4: Say, if your entire pay.
Speaker 6: Is based on a huge share of profits that you
Speaker 6: took from massive layoffs, you can't have that money now
Speaker 6: the company. If you think that that's the right decision
Speaker 6: for the company, fine, go ahead. We're not going to
Speaker 6: tell you how to run your company, but we're going
Speaker 6: to say you can't take that worker's money. You can't
Speaker 6: take the pench of money and put it in your
Speaker 6: own pocket. And so then if you want to make
Speaker 6: the decision for the benefit of the company, okay, let's see.
Speaker 6: Now we're in the free market, go for it. But
Speaker 6: you can't just loot the company.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm these are like completely reasonable discussions anti looting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anti looting. There you go.
Speaker 7: Well, just we'll put the last element up here. Just
Speaker 7: to kind of put a cherry on top of all
Speaker 7: of this, The White House did confirm that Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 7: is going to be negotiating with two top Biden officials,
Speaker 7: Steve and Silanda will represent us in talking with McCarthy
Speaker 7: about the budget and with the goal of reaching a
Speaker 7: bipartisan product that can pass both houses.
Speaker 6: That's about the budget, not the debt ceiling. Don't don't
Speaker 6: confuse these for debt ceiling talks. These are budget talks.
Speaker 7: Exactly to Ryan's point, they're trying to say budget, but
Speaker 7: you can see right there they are negotiating period. They
Speaker 7: said they wouldn't. It's not just about the budget. It's
Speaker 7: about the dea'st something. Everybody knows that. But that's a
Speaker 7: that's an L for the White House. And I think
Speaker 7: if you're on the left of the right you can
Speaker 7: you can see it. I don't think they were taken
Speaker 7: aback by the fact that they had to take that oult,
Speaker 7: but they clearly did.
Speaker 6: And it's also an L for our imperial power projection
Speaker 6: because Biden had been at a long standing to Australia.
Speaker 6: Australians have been begging the United States to get into
Speaker 6: a kind of a tighter alliance with them as they're
Speaker 6: trying to counteract China and you know, get get all.
Speaker 4: Get all tough in that region.
Speaker 6: And Biden is now canceling the trip to Australia, which
Speaker 6: the biggest news in Australia for a long time.
Speaker 4: Biden's coming, the United States President's coming.
Speaker 6: We're going to do this, We're gonna show them that
Speaker 6: we're gonna you know, it's going to be amazing New Guinea.
Speaker 3: It was very much anticipating trip.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely and necessary four our kind of imperial ambitions
Speaker 6: in the region. He's still going to do the G
Speaker 6: seven trip over the weekend, which Republicans were pressuring him
Speaker 6: to cancel, saying we have more important things to do
Speaker 6: at home. It's like, no, there's nothing more important for
Speaker 6: the empire than like secting the resident out there to
Speaker 6: project power like that's there's a there's a real disconnect
Speaker 6: in what it is that allows us to run the
Speaker 6: deficits that we run.
Speaker 7: Yeah, let's move on to elections. Believe it or not,
Speaker 7: there were elections on Tuesday. We're getting into primary season,
Speaker 7: actually from Kentucky to Pennsylvania. Ryan, you were paying attention
Speaker 7: to some of these races pretty closely. There's some interesting
Speaker 7: implications for the left. We can throw see one up
Speaker 7: on the screen here. Five thirty eight did an article
Speaker 7: just saying, you know, here are some of the races
Speaker 7: to watch. They were looking at, did the Jacksonville mayor's race,
Speaker 7: looking at the Kentucky Republican gubernatorial primary, which did have
Speaker 7: some interesting results. And then you have the modern progressive Democrats,
Speaker 7: as five to thirty eight puts it facing off the
Speaker 7: latest skirmish of their nationwide war for big city city halls.
Speaker 6: To do Democrats or Republicans first, I thought, we do Democrats.
Speaker 4: That's to the Democrats for us.
Speaker 6: So the partisan race was a special election in Delaware County,
Speaker 6: which outside of Philadelphia, to decide control of the Pennsylvania
Speaker 6: State House of Representatives. Whoever won it was going to
Speaker 6: control the House. It's a blue leaning seat, but it
Speaker 6: was a competitive race. Heather Boyd, who's a Democrat, was
Speaker 6: even endorsed by Biden. Like that's how significant became. It's
Speaker 6: unusual for the president to come in and endorse in
Speaker 6: a state house election. Republicans were threatening that if they
Speaker 6: won that seat, and which would give them control of
Speaker 6: both the State House and the State Senate, that they
Speaker 6: were going to then put an abortion van on an
Speaker 6: amendment on the ballot, which in Pennsylvania I think that loses.
Speaker 6: There's Pennsylvanians who think that it actually carries. It's not
Speaker 6: clear exactly how that would have gone. Instead, she ended
Speaker 6: up winning in basically a landslide, something like sixty to
Speaker 6: forty and so Democrats will maintain control of the House.
Speaker 6: They also have the governor's managers that'll give them an
Speaker 6: advantage as they go into these deaths of talk.
Speaker 4: So that's the part is in Red Blue one.
Speaker 6: In the intrademocratic stuff, you had basically three key races
Speaker 6: in Pennsylvania. You had a prosecutor race in Allegheny County,
Speaker 6: which is Pittsburgh. It was between kind of a tough
Speaker 6: on crime prosecutor and a criminal justice reformer, a very
Speaker 6: reform minded person the whole with the whole debate being
Speaker 6: about rising crime and trying to pin that on the
Speaker 6: left and defund the police. And the reform candidate wins
Speaker 6: like one in a blowout, knocked out the incumbent Chago prosecutor. Yes,
Speaker 6: a Chicago style win in Pittsburgh. You then had the
Speaker 6: basically the most powerful position in Pittsburgh is the Allegheny
Speaker 6: County executive, something like a three billion dollar budget. That
Speaker 6: race was won by a DSA member, a former DSA
Speaker 6: member at least Sarah Imamorado was endorsed by Bernie Sanders
Speaker 6: And who rose to prominence in Pennsylvania in twenty eighteen
Speaker 6: running as a kind of co DSA person with Summer
Speaker 6: Lease Summerly running for the state Senate in Mamorado running
Speaker 6: for the state House. Both of them won these kind
Speaker 6: of shocking upsets that were overshadowed at the time by
Speaker 6: AOC and the rest of the squad winning their congressional races.
Speaker 6: But at the state level, I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 6: here's some up and coming energy coming out of the
Speaker 6: Bernie Sanders campaign. And now one of those is in
Speaker 6: Congress Summer Lea, and the other is on her way
Speaker 6: to becoming count executive. Because whoever wins the primary in
Speaker 6: Alleghany County is going to win. Whatever Democrat wins is
Speaker 6: going to win the general. Over in Philadelphia, the left
Speaker 6: took a significant loss.
Speaker 3: So that's interesting just on the other corner of the
Speaker 3: state right.
Speaker 6: And this was also a race that was heavily about crime.
Speaker 6: You had Helen gimm running as the kind of left candidate.
Speaker 6: She had sort of quasi endorsed Minnesota's what do you
Speaker 6: call it, recreation of its police force that went to
Speaker 6: the ballot after the George Floyd protests. So you have
Speaker 6: a serious reformer running up running against a basically Eric
Speaker 6: Adams style candidate who said she was going to hire
Speaker 6: more police officers, and she was going to she's going
Speaker 6: to bring into effect what they call what she was
Speaker 6: calling constitutional stop and frisk. So extremely clear contrast, Now
Speaker 6: she had the backing of the building trades unions, which
Speaker 6: are extraordinarily powerful in Philadelphia, there was an enormous amount
Speaker 6: of super pack spending attack ads against Helen Gim, and
Speaker 6: so the combination of those things had her finished in
Speaker 6: third place, even she didn't even finish in first place.
Speaker 6: But I also think it shows the limits in some
Speaker 6: ways of the left when it's unable to bring in
Speaker 6: black working class voters. And Brandon Johnson was very much
Speaker 6: able to do that in Chicago. Helen Gim, who's not black,
Speaker 6: was not able to do that. Like you if you
Speaker 6: look at the if you look at where she lost
Speaker 6: in heavily black neighborhoods, because she was kind of wiped out.
Speaker 6: And the left can't and really shouldn't be able to
Speaker 6: pull off victories in a way like because if you're not,
Speaker 6: if you're not pulling in that coalition, are you were
Speaker 6: then really able going to be able to bring.
Speaker 4: About fundamental change that you need.
Speaker 6: So that was a shot Helen him had been a
Speaker 6: council at large, so she had already run one city
Speaker 6: wide and so that was kind of Philadelphia Left's best shot,
Speaker 6: but came up significantly short.
Speaker 7: So I mixed back and it's kind of interesting. On
Speaker 7: the Republican side, the Kentucky gubernatorial primary and Republican primary
Speaker 7: in or in Kentucky had some interesting results. We actually
Speaker 7: have a little audio to play here. Let's roll that.
Speaker 7: This is Rhonda Santis, who jumped into the race actually
Speaker 7: really at the last minute, like twenty four hours before
Speaker 7: it was, before the race was over, to endorse and
Speaker 7: do some rope calls for one of the candidates, Kelly Kraft,
Speaker 7: who ultimately lost to Daniel Cameron. He may remember he
Speaker 7: gave a kind of barn burning RNC speech back in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty that got a lot of media attention that
Speaker 7: Republicans were really happy with.
Speaker 3: Here's what Desanta said on behalf of Kelly Craft.
Speaker 5: Hello, this is Governor Ron DeSantis coming to you from
Speaker 5: the Free state of Florida. You've had a woke liberal
Speaker 5: governor's put a radical agenda ahead of Kentuckians.
Speaker 4: The stakes couldn't be higher.
Speaker 5: I know what it takes to stand up for what's right,
Speaker 5: and Kelly Kraft's got it, She's proven it. I'm strongly
Speaker 5: encouraging you to go out and vote for my friend
Speaker 5: Kelly Kraft.
Speaker 7: Well, Kelly Craft lost to Daniel Cameron, who's the current Yeah,
Speaker 7: she was I believe Trump's un ambassador for a couple
Speaker 7: of years towards the end.
Speaker 3: Of his presidency.
Speaker 7: Daniel Cameron is the Attorney General of Kentucky, one of
Speaker 7: the most prominent I would say black Republicans in the country.
Speaker 7: He's sort of a McConnell protege, That's how the media
Speaker 7: likes to describe him. And he has.
Speaker 3: Cleared the the field. One of woned an.
Speaker 7: Easy victory, which I think people expected. I will say
Speaker 7: the reason I think I think it was Ted Cruz
Speaker 7: and Ronda Santis both got into this race. I'm almost
Speaker 7: certain it's because they share a consultant with Kelly Craft.
Speaker 7: I think Actium Strategies Jeff Row were probably involved in
Speaker 7: all of that, which is often how it happens. People say, like,
Speaker 7: why the heck is Ronda Santis wading into this weird
Speaker 7: like primary race at the last minute? What possible benefit
Speaker 7: is in it for rond De Santis? Well, I also
Speaker 7: pulled Kelly Craft's FEC record. She did donate to Ronda Santis,
Speaker 7: like ten grand to ron de Santis, maybe not in total,
Speaker 7: but she had at least one ten grand donation to
Speaker 7: a Desanta's pack, So there's that too. But I think
Speaker 7: it's more it's one of those things that was probably
Speaker 7: organized by about like consultant.
Speaker 4: Does that hurt the consultant?
Speaker 6: Like does when next time the consultant goes back to
Speaker 6: cruise and DeSantis I.
Speaker 4: Got a horse, I got a horse. You got to
Speaker 4: get behind.
Speaker 6: Or is it like, look, she's gonna lose by thirty points,
Speaker 6: but just do this favor for her and she'll give
Speaker 6: you money.
Speaker 7: You know. I think the DeSantis Trump feud right now
Speaker 7: is getting so bitter because normally I don't think it
Speaker 7: hurts the consultant at all, because that's just it's just
Speaker 7: it's just perceived as business as usual in Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: This is what you do.
Speaker 7: It's the horse trading, you know, it's just how things go.
Speaker 7: But I think in this case, because it's such a
Speaker 7: bitter feud, it could definitely come back and be like, well, what.
Speaker 3: Are we doing here?
Speaker 7: Why is Rond DeSantis extending his credibility in ways that
Speaker 7: he can't really afford to in such a tightly contested
Speaker 7: presidential race. Obviously around Santa is not formally in the
Speaker 7: race yet, but obviously is heading that direction. The other
Speaker 7: thing I think is worth mentioning is the Jacksonville mayor's race,
Speaker 7: which actually flipped from a Republican incumbent to now the
Speaker 7: first female mayor I think of Jacksonville, who is a Democrat.
Speaker 7: Jacksonville is in a county that Joe Biden did win,
Speaker 7: but DeSantis also won it, so it's a competitive area.
Speaker 7: DeSantis came in and endorsed as a law and order
Speaker 7: candidate the mayor or the Republican who is running in
Speaker 7: the mayor mayoral election to replace the Republican incumbent, but
Speaker 7: that person lost by about four points as it stands
Speaker 7: right now, to this new Democrat female mayor.
Speaker 3: And again that's.
Speaker 7: You know, it makes sense that DeSantis would obviously endorse
Speaker 7: the Republican candidate for Jacksonville is the largest city I
Speaker 7: think that had a Republican mayor, not a lot of
Speaker 7: Republican mayors and city. Even if you're in a red state,
Speaker 7: your city's probably blue. You probably don't have a Republican mayor.
Speaker 7: But this is one of the big cities that did
Speaker 7: have a Republican mayor, not anymore.
Speaker 6: And if you have a Republican mayor, the chances are
Speaker 6: that you are a wildly sprawling city. What's funny is
Speaker 6: that Oklahoma City is fort Worth one of them two.
Speaker 6: But Oklahoma City and Jacksonville are are the two biggest
Speaker 6: cities that consistently elect Republicans as their mayors.
Speaker 4: That's what made this such a big upset.
Speaker 6: But if you've ever been to either of those cities,
Speaker 6: they take like forty minutes to drive from one end
Speaker 6: to the other, and.
Speaker 4: You're like, when do I get into the city?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: And the downtown is like one block and then the
Speaker 6: rest of it is just forty minutes of sprawl that
Speaker 6: is aggregated together and called a city. And so because
Speaker 6: you end up then getting the same kind of political
Speaker 6: dynamics of a suburb more or less.
Speaker 3: Right and Fort Worth, you're right, does have a Republican.
Speaker 4: Mianes in Fort Worth.
Speaker 6: I haven't been to Fort Worth, but if I had
Speaker 6: to guess based on my own.
Speaker 3: You are right. See, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 7: Let's move on to the allegations against Rudy Giuliani. Very
Speaker 7: serious allegations against Rudy Giuliani. I'm reading from a Politico
Speaker 7: article here a former employee of Juliani's assuming him for
Speaker 7: ten million dollars over allegations of sexual assault and harassment,
Speaker 7: wage theft, and quote other misconduct, including several instances that
Speaker 7: were recorded. According to a complaint filed Monday, Noel Dunfeed,
Speaker 7: the employee bringing the lawsuit, was hired by Juliani in
Speaker 7: January of twenty nineteen. She said it was an opportunity
Speaker 7: that was quote too good to pass up, but then
Speaker 7: that the offers were quote a sham motivated by Giuliani's
Speaker 7: desire to quote pursue a sexual relationship with Dunfie, and
Speaker 7: the abuse began quote almost immediately, she alleges.
Speaker 3: This is a seventy page filing.
Speaker 7: It has multiple accusations of sexual harassment sexual assault, including,
Speaker 7: as Politico says, accusations that Giuliani forced Dunfee to perform
Speaker 7: oral sex on him in his Upper East Side apartment and.
Speaker 3: While he took phone calls.
Speaker 7: Giuliani aggressively pursued a sexual relationship with Dunfee, the filing says,
Speaker 7: and made clear that satisfying his sexual demands was a
Speaker 7: requirement of her job. He continually pressured her into sex
Speaker 7: and was unconcerned about whether Dunfee had given consent, the complaint,
Speaker 7: says Politico goes on. Giuliani did not respond to requests
Speaker 7: for comment, but a spokesperson told the AP that the
Speaker 7: former marya quote vehemently denied the allegations. Now, I think
Speaker 7: I want to also mention that all with all of
Speaker 7: the sexual stuff, he also in the filing is accused
Speaker 7: of going on quote, alcohol drenched rants that included sexist, racist,
Speaker 7: and any semitic records remarks, And there are recordings of
Speaker 7: those accordings.
Speaker 6: And the recordings are the podcasts and the TV shows
Speaker 6: where he would do those live. I believe that there
Speaker 6: are recordings of those.
Speaker 4: They're on YouTube probably well.
Speaker 7: If you see them in public, imagine in private what
Speaker 7: those recordings potentially private.
Speaker 6: Like the lawsuit included footage from that Boride film where
Speaker 6: he's everybody's seen this one, I'm sure, where he's lying
Speaker 6: on a bed and just saying that this is basically
Speaker 6: a recreation of what he was doing with her on.
Speaker 4: A regular basis.
Speaker 6: The big debate that I've seen about this is is
Speaker 6: Juliani more wretched than people thought? Or is this expected
Speaker 6: from Giuliani? Like that's that seems to me to be
Speaker 6: the only questionquestion that's left open by a lot of this,
Speaker 6: a lot of this stuff except for the kind of
Speaker 6: sideways allegation of a major crime that involves President Trump
Speaker 6: that hasn't gotten much attention, which I think says a
Speaker 6: lot about our politics as well. She alleges that Rudy
Speaker 6: Giuliani and Trump were selling pardons for two million dollars
Speaker 6: and that they were splitting the money, and he said
Speaker 6: to her, if you know anybody that needs a pardon,
Speaker 6: that's what it costs, send them directly to me. Obviously,
Speaker 6: do not go through the pardon office because that creates
Speaker 6: a paper trail. We're just going to do this back channel.
Speaker 6: And the thing here is a that's the most believable
Speaker 6: allegation you could ever possibly called would be Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 6: is the least credible witness in any case. Is he
Speaker 6: just saying something because he thinks it's, you know, going
Speaker 6: to impress his assistant, or is this a real thing.
Speaker 6: If it is, it seems like it would be the
Speaker 6: easiest thing to prove. All you have to do is
Speaker 6: find million dollar transactions to two million dollar transactions moving
Speaker 6: around between Giuliani and Trump and people who got pardoned,
Speaker 6: because we know who got parted.
Speaker 7: I think that's the thing is with Rudy Giuliani, especially
Speaker 7: if he's going on what's the exact quote here, alcohol
Speaker 7: drenched rants?
Speaker 3: Is he spinning his wheels on his own?
Speaker 7: It seems unlikely to me that Donald Trump, whatever you
Speaker 7: think of him, would be dumb enough to put a
Speaker 7: two million dollar price tag on a bribe and then say, Rudy,
Speaker 7: go sell these. It sounds more plausible to me that
Speaker 7: Rudy was just selling these because he's clearly been I think.
Speaker 3: Impaired by Trump too.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, yeah, I think he's like clearly been impaired
Speaker 7: by the disease of alcoholism. You can see it pretty plainly.
Speaker 7: It appears that way. You know, we don't know him,
Speaker 7: we're not in his head, we're not personal acquaintances or
Speaker 7: friends of Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 4: Obviously probably call him and ask him.
Speaker 7: You could definitely ask him, but you can see it
Speaker 7: pretty plainly in public what what appears to be constant,
Speaker 7: you know, impairment from alcohol in public spaces and to
Speaker 7: the extent where he doesn't have a lot of control
Speaker 7: over what he's saying. I think Rudigiani has undergone a
Speaker 7: pretty tragic arc.
Speaker 4: What incredible arc?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, just an incredibly tragic arc happening before the public.
Speaker 7: And now other people apparently are were caught up and
Speaker 7: are damage collateral damage in that journey that Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 7: has been on. And so as this goes to court,
Speaker 7: as this is litigated, I expect we will learn more
Speaker 7: and more about these allegations. I expect we'll have pretty
Speaker 7: good if there are recordings, we'll have a you know,
Speaker 7: the boor At recording is actually kind of interesting because
Speaker 7: the media took some out of context framing that was
Speaker 7: served up to it on a silver platter by Amazon,
Speaker 7: and then when you watch the full thing, it was like,
Speaker 7: I mean, Rudy Gilani is clearly not in a good
Speaker 7: state of mind, but what you're saying it is isn't
Speaker 7: exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: So who knows what the deal is with these recordings.
Speaker 7: But if they are coming out so aggressively in this
Speaker 7: filing and they say that the recordings exist, that leads
Speaker 7: me to believe that they probably have something there. So
Speaker 7: this could go in a pretty bad direction for Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 6: Yet in two years he could be best friends with
Speaker 6: the President of the United States.
Speaker 7: And remember he's at the center of the Hunter Briden
Speaker 7: laptop story. And so there's all kinds of implications not
Speaker 7: just for Trump but for like American politics period. As
Speaker 7: we get closer to whatever the truth is about Rudy
Speaker 7: juli is both personal and professional life here, there's a
Speaker 7: lot of stuff actually on the line, whether it's bribes in,
Speaker 7: more allegations about what it was like being in Trump's orbit,
Speaker 7: more allegations about somebody who was in Trump's orbit, perhaps
Speaker 7: acting on behalf of the president or not, but perhaps
Speaker 7: acting on behalf of the president doing saying ridiculous things.
Speaker 7: And Rudy, what's the timeline, how does it mash up
Speaker 7: with the laptop timeline? Because Rudy Giuliani is the guy
Speaker 7: who had the laptop.
Speaker 4: Sure was?
Speaker 6: Yeah, all right, so we got some some more conspiracy fun.
Speaker 7: Right, Let's talk about Elon Musk and conspiracies that Elon
Speaker 7: Musk is once at the same time dispelling and then dispensing.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk actually just this week, we can put E
Speaker 7: one up on the screen. He's been subpoenaed in the
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Epstein suit that is being brought by the Virgin Islands.
Speaker 7: So if you haven't been following this, basically, the Virgin
Speaker 7: Islands is in a lawsuit against JP Morgan because they
Speaker 7: believe JP Morgan was enabling the Epstein sex trafficking operation.
Speaker 7: Essentially that JP Morgan knew that the bank knew he
Speaker 7: was in engaged in this kind of in this kind
Speaker 7: of conduct, and was enabling it by giving him access
Speaker 7: to the banking services.
Speaker 3: They deny. JP Morgan denies that it.
Speaker 7: Had any knowledge of Epstein's crime, but the Virgin Island
Speaker 7: is basically saying, as Reuters puts it, that they missed
Speaker 7: red flags about Epstein's abuse of women. Now, a Monday
Speaker 7: filing in US District Court in Manhattan hit Musk and
Speaker 7: said that he may have been referred to JP Morgan
Speaker 7: by Epstein, so they subpoenaed him for records.
Speaker 3: Related to this.
Speaker 7: Musk says, quote that Cretan referring to Epstein never advised
Speaker 7: me on anything whatsoever. He put out this tweet. You
Speaker 7: can see it on the screen. We just read that
Speaker 7: part of it. The notion that I would need to,
Speaker 7: would need to or listen to financial advice from a
Speaker 7: dumb crook is absurd. JP Morgan let Tesla down ten
Speaker 7: years ago despite having Tesla's global commercial banking business, which
Speaker 7: we then withdrew. I have never forgiven them. The tweet
Speaker 7: ends Ryan, what do you make of Musk's reply here?
Speaker 7: And what do you make of the move by the
Speaker 7: Virgin Islands to subpoena him.
Speaker 6: I mean, it does seem like a fishing expedition on
Speaker 6: the part of the Virgin Islands, but there's plenty of
Speaker 6: evidence that they did know each other and go around
Speaker 6: in similar circles. If you remember, back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: it was reported that Epstein was trying to get close
Speaker 6: to Elon Musk, and to do so he set his
Speaker 6: brother up Musk's brother with Epstein's former girlfriend and also
Speaker 6: was given a tour of Tesla the SpaceX facility out
Speaker 6: in Hawthorne, California in twenty twelve. So that's Epstein after
Speaker 6: his conviction touring a SpaceX facility. He also had some
Speaker 6: type of Musk went to his mansion at one point,
Speaker 6: but Musk claimed that he there only for like a
Speaker 6: half an hour in the middle of the day because
Speaker 6: his then wife wanted to wanted to do research for
Speaker 6: a novel. Musk said that he was quote obviously a
Speaker 6: creep of Epstein. He also had I think he attended
Speaker 6: a dinner organized by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Reid Hoffman,
Speaker 6: who helped finance Eugene Carroll's lawsuit against Trump, a big
Speaker 6: Democratic donor, it was quote was at his house. Oh,
Speaker 6: was at his house in Manhattan for about thirty minutes
Speaker 6: in the midle of an afternoon. But he said that
Speaker 6: dinner was organized by Reid Hoffman and that Musk didn't
Speaker 6: have anything to do other than kind of accepting.
Speaker 4: The dinner invitation.
Speaker 6: So, you know, some significant points of contact between Musk
Speaker 6: and Epstein there, And certainly Epstein would would want to
Speaker 6: get close to somebody with with Musk's global connections and
Speaker 6: his wealth, and it took.
Speaker 3: So logical to do that chnological interests.
Speaker 9: Ye.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So while it's a fishing expedition, you know, sometimes
Speaker 6: you catch fish if you go to the right place
Speaker 6: with the right bait.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I mean, like it just totally hypothetically. Even
Speaker 7: people who recognized Epstein as a creep who did come
Speaker 7: into contact with him may have valuable information about that,
Speaker 7: especially if they were in that like ven diagram with
Speaker 7: JP Morgan. So it's not I think the idea that
Speaker 7: Musk is implicated in wrongdoing is what he's responding to,
Speaker 7: because it's not fun to get headlines like that you've
Speaker 7: been subpoenaed by the Virgin Islands in the Epstein lawsuit
Speaker 7: with JP Morgan. But yeah, I doubt this leads to
Speaker 7: anything significant about Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 7: He did sit for an interview on CNBC yesterday. We
Speaker 7: have one clip here. There were a lot of sort
Speaker 7: of tidbits that came out of it. He kind of
Speaker 7: per usual talked about everything. But let's roll this clip
Speaker 7: right here.
Speaker 3: This is E three.
Speaker 11: I mean when you when you when you link to
Speaker 11: somebody who's talking about the guy who killed children in
Speaker 11: a mall in Allen, Texas, you say something like it
Speaker 11: might be a bad psyop.
Speaker 4: I'm not quite sure what you meant, but.
Speaker 12: Oh, in that particular case, there was a somehow that
Speaker 12: that's not not not that the that the people were killed,
Speaker 12: but the it was I think incorrectly ascribed to be
Speaker 12: a white supremacist action, and the evidence for that was
Speaker 12: some obscure Russian website that no one's ever heard of
Speaker 12: that had no followers. And the company that found this
Speaker 12: is belling Cat And do you know what bella cat does.
Speaker 4: Ops.
Speaker 11: I couldn't really even follow exactly what it was you
Speaker 11: were trying to express there, So that's part why I
Speaker 11: was curious.
Speaker 12: But I'm saying that I thought that the ascribing it
Speaker 12: to white supremacy here was bullshit.
Speaker 7: I'm I mean, first of all, he just got Bellancat
Speaker 7: as a SiGe up on CNBC, so major props to
Speaker 7: him for that, because he's mostly correct on that point.
Speaker 7: On the white supremacy point, that's a different question, I
Speaker 7: think it's obvious.
Speaker 3: I mean, the police have.
Speaker 7: Confirmed that the shooter whose name we won't repeat, had
Speaker 7: white power tattoos, despite the fact that he was Hispanic,
Speaker 7: and has made this argument. Sager and I talked about
Speaker 7: this last week, and you can go check out that
Speaker 7: video because Scager wanted to talk about this, this question
Speaker 7: of cand of Hispanic be a white nationalist.
Speaker 3: Well, his ideology was one of white nationalism. From what
Speaker 3: we know.
Speaker 7: He was like actually explicitly making that argument. So whether
Speaker 7: or not you think think it makes sense is another question.
Speaker 7: The shooter himself thought it did make.
Speaker 6: Sense, right, And there are also white Hispanic people, like
Speaker 6: that's that's a thing, like there's there's enormous amounts of
Speaker 6: racism within the Hispanic community, so that is, you know,
Speaker 6: certainly could fit too. But this seems to glombed onto
Speaker 6: more of an American version of it. But right, so,
Speaker 6: I think what's interesting about this is Musk is disgusted
Speaker 6: that there could be some conspiracy theory about him when
Speaker 6: it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, but is willing to throw
Speaker 6: out a much much more ludicrous conspiracy theory that Belling
Speaker 6: so to try to explain what he's saying there because
Speaker 6: the interviewer was clearly deeply confused.
Speaker 7: Well, and I think Musk was sort of confused too,
Speaker 7: because I feel like he shoots from the hip. Like,
Speaker 7: first of all, every time we talk about a Musk clip,
Speaker 7: I think it's the same thing.
Speaker 3: Like the guy seems.
Speaker 7: Completely like overworked and overtired, shooting from the hip, Like
Speaker 7: he tweets about so much stuff every single day that
Speaker 7: there's no way he could be like completely versed in
Speaker 7: every story that he's weighing in on with this like
Speaker 7: massively influential profile. And I feel like he himself had
Speaker 7: incomplete information about this theory that he's positing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or selectively incomplete up where we can't know. But
Speaker 6: so belling it's not at all surprising that Belling Cat
Speaker 6: would be the one that would surface this guy's information.
Speaker 6: What they are one of the most sophisticated kind of
Speaker 6: private intelligence companies around the world that works for a
Speaker 6: variety of corporate clients, NATO like, they have all sorts
Speaker 6: of different clients. What they do is they surf the
Speaker 6: entire Internet. They do it in lots of different languages.
Speaker 6: They're very good at it and there and it's not
Speaker 6: surprising that they would be the ones that first would
Speaker 6: land on this guy's profile. If you give somebody at Bellencats,
Speaker 6: say like just a handle, like here's a guy's handle
Speaker 6: that he was using on Instagram, with a couple of clues,
Speaker 6: they'll be around the world quickly. And the idea that
Speaker 6: a complete loaner nut job was using a Russian based
Speaker 6: forum should not at all be surprising. So that's the
Speaker 6: thing where Musk is saying, this doesn't make sense. Therefore
Speaker 6: there must be a conspiracy, like this loaner was using
Speaker 6: this obscure for to post his racist rants. That to me,
Speaker 6: a melon musk, that doesn't make sense. You should be
Speaker 6: postings as a loaner, your racist rants on four Chan
Speaker 6: or whatever, like it's outside of that, then it's a
Speaker 6: frame up job. And then it gets even crazier because
Speaker 6: if you draw out what he's actually alleging, and what
Speaker 6: was being alleged at the time, is that this guy
Speaker 6: was not a white supremacist, but that the FEDS were
Speaker 6: framing him up as one, were planting his rantings on
Speaker 6: obscure Russian sites so that they could then elevate the
Speaker 6: specter of white supremacy and use it to crush domestic
Speaker 6: descent and take away everybody's guns. Like that is the
Speaker 6: conspiracy that he is alleging happened, and still alleging it
Speaker 6: after the police have said, no, we have his body.
Speaker 4: It's covered in white supremacist tattoos.
Speaker 6: And you even had some people thankfully mustn't engage in
Speaker 6: this saying, boy, those are really fresh looking tattoos.
Speaker 4: It's like, whoa, you guys have lost your minds.
Speaker 6: And finally, if you want to take the entire conspiracy theories. Seriously,
Speaker 6: this is like the four hundredth mass shooting of the year.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm pulling that number from thin air. We've
Speaker 6: had dozens and dozens of mass shootings and we have not,
Speaker 6: as a result, taken away the guns of anybody. Plenty
Speaker 6: of those shootings have been by actual white supremacists that
Speaker 6: nobody denies the white supremacist. So why on earth would
Speaker 6: the FEDS think that all what we need is one
Speaker 6: more orchestrated We're going to orchestrate a mass shooting because
Speaker 6: the last four hundred haven't allowed us to take anybody's
Speaker 6: guns away, but this one, we just need one more.
Speaker 7: It's one of those conspiracy theories that's predicated on an
Speaker 7: often unspoken truth about Belling Cat. Right, that doesn't because
Speaker 7: that is unspoken and true that they I mean, they
Speaker 7: do get informed. They get funding from the National Endowment
Speaker 7: for Democracy basically functions as the C. Yeah, like it's
Speaker 7: sort of like what the CIA or like the OSS.
Speaker 7: You go back, it's sort of like they kind of
Speaker 7: do that stuff, and so they have funded Belling Cat.
Speaker 7: But that being true and being also unspoken, does not
Speaker 7: mean that there's this broader conspiracy theory and that Belling
Speaker 7: Cat because they were the first to you know, make
Speaker 7: this connection to white supremacy that they were it was
Speaker 7: a setup for to increase surveillance powers. Like listen, they're
Speaker 7: proud right now to say that they're increasing surveillance powers.
Speaker 7: They don't need any more predicates like they they have
Speaker 7: every they talk about January six every single day as
Speaker 7: a predicate for increasing surveillance powers on average Americans. So yes, Like,
Speaker 7: just because it's predicated on something that is unspoken and
Speaker 7: is also true, which is Bellingcas's connection to the intelligence
Speaker 7: community and things like the national dominant for democracy doesn't
Speaker 7: mean that, you know, that type of the iceberg, doesn't
Speaker 7: mean there's everything else under the water. Well, Ryan, what
Speaker 7: you described in our show planning group text message as
Speaker 7: a quote little scoop, But.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a little scoopy. You've wreck some
Speaker 3: good news this week.
Speaker 7: Or some big news I should say, this week with
Speaker 7: a great story break it.
Speaker 3: Down for us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we put this first tear sheet up.
Speaker 6: This is a story that I wrote over at the
Speaker 6: Intercept so based so on Sunday, Turkish.
Speaker 4: Voters went to the polls and it was the closest.
Speaker 6: Contest that tie up Air Towan has faced in the
Speaker 6: twenty years that he's been in power in Turkey, because
Speaker 6: you finally had a coalition that was able to bring
Speaker 6: together kind of the basically most elements of the Kurdish
Speaker 6: opposition with the Turkish opposition that that oftentimes had been
Speaker 6: at odds and unwilling to kind of unite to confront
Speaker 6: Air to Wan. There's a parallel in some ways over
Speaker 6: in Israel, where oftentimes you have the kind of Jewish
Speaker 6: opposition to the right unwilling or unable to link up
Speaker 6: with the Arab opposition, and so a splintered then opposition
Speaker 6: isn't able to contest. This time in Turkey, they were
Speaker 6: able to put it together, and so about a dozen
Speaker 6: international officials, elected officials, and civil society representatives went to
Speaker 6: the Kurdish region.
Speaker 4: To observe the election. I spoke with.
Speaker 6: One of them yesterday. The full interview will be in
Speaker 6: my Intercept podcast. But basically what happened is in the morning,
Speaker 6: the Turkish police come by and just start rounding up
Speaker 6: these officials and taking them to the local police station.
Speaker 6: They discovered that the rest of the officials were back
Speaker 6: at a hotel. They went to the hotel, rounded them
Speaker 6: up to brought them to the station where they were
Speaker 6: then held.
Speaker 4: Throughout the night.
Speaker 6: And we're talking about two basic members of congress it's
Speaker 6: called deputies over in Spain and a Spanish senator on
Speaker 6: top of other kind of civil society folks. Finally, at
Speaker 6: around seven am the next day after the election, they
Speaker 6: said to them, look, if you guys leave the country,
Speaker 6: we will will free you. And so they agreed, Okay,
Speaker 6: well election's over anyway, and so they were given a
Speaker 6: police escort to the airport and throughout Monday and into
Speaker 6: Monday night and Tuesday morning, flown back to Spain and
Speaker 6: basically expelled from the country just rather kind of a
Speaker 6: doing it because I can do it type of situation
Speaker 6: from air Towan. Just just a real flex of his power.
Speaker 6: And I don't think it's at all a coincidence that
Speaker 6: this happened in the Kurdish region, which is you know,
Speaker 6: which the deputy told me they were still seeing checkpoints
Speaker 6: everywhere as they're going through. It's like, it's not it's
Speaker 6: not the type of kind of free society that you
Speaker 6: and I would think of when we think of like
Speaker 6: a NATO country.
Speaker 4: So yeah, complete mess.
Speaker 6: But I also wanted to talk about what's going on
Speaker 6: in Yemen because I don't think there's a.
Speaker 4: Whole lot to talk about with Arawon. You know, he
Speaker 4: is what he is.
Speaker 6: By the way, he fell under fifty percent. He outperformed polls,
Speaker 6: but he did fall under fifty percent. So there'll be
Speaker 6: a runoff election on May twenty eighth. He's favored to
Speaker 6: win that one because this guy that got four percent
Speaker 6: is a hard right wing nationalist and most of his
Speaker 6: people will probably go with air Towan. But we'll keep
Speaker 6: following that and it has his losing would have significant
Speaker 6: implications for the EU, for NATO, for the war in Ukraine,
Speaker 6: and for other things. But so I want to go
Speaker 6: over to Yemen talk about this one for a little bit.
Speaker 6: So over there, as you guys know, because we've been
Speaker 6: covering this, the Iranian backed Houthis and the Saudi led
Speaker 6: coalition that have been battling them have paused hostilities for
Speaker 6: more than a year now and after a daytime between
Speaker 6: Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is broken by China, peace
Speaker 6: talks have been making real progress, meaning a real end
Speaker 6: to the war is in sight. But the biggest risks
Speaker 6: to those peace talks continue to be the United States,
Speaker 6: which has staked out a position that says the Houthis
Speaker 6: should give up more territory and more concessions than they're
Speaker 6: currently offering. The US diplomatic term for that is inclusive government.
Speaker 6: All we want, we say, is an inclusive government, and
Speaker 6: by inclusive they mean significant power for the Saudi and
Speaker 6: US proxies that have been thoroughly beaten on the battlefield.
Speaker 6: An inclusive government, apparently to the victor, goes just a
Speaker 6: little bit of the spoils. No victor, of course, would
Speaker 6: agree to that. So the US plan appears to be
Speaker 6: to jam up negotiations for as long as possible in
Speaker 6: the hope that hostilities reasons zoom, the Houthis launch attacks
Speaker 6: across the border at Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia responds with
Speaker 6: a devastating route of bombing, and then the US gets
Speaker 6: a nice chunk of territory in peace talks when they
Speaker 6: start up again amid all the rubble. Now, that's not
Speaker 6: only quite obviously evil, but it might not even work
Speaker 6: if the Saudi bombing campaign can't inflict the kind of
Speaker 6: damage it would need to to set the Huthis back.
Speaker 6: After all, the war is now eight years old, so
Speaker 6: it's unclear why another year of killing Yameny's would obviously
Speaker 6: change the calculus. Today, more than forty Democrats or perhaps tomorrow,
Speaker 6: led by Rashida Talib, are going to send a letter
Speaker 6: to the White House urging the administration to tell Saudi
Speaker 6: Arabia that if hostilities resume, there will be no US
Speaker 6: assistance in the bombing, according to people who've seen the letter. Now, sadly,
Speaker 6: this whole dynamic is probably a window into how difficult
Speaker 6: it will be to end the war in Ukraine and
Speaker 6: how unhelpful the United States will be in those negotiations,
Speaker 6: since we seem to believe that our negotiating position can
Speaker 6: always be improved with just a little bit more killing,
Speaker 6: just a little bit more bombing. Making a piece deal
Speaker 6: requires painful concessions, and to both the Huthis and the
Speaker 6: Saudi's credit, they've been able to do that so far,
Speaker 6: and some of that has involved seed in territory to
Speaker 6: the Houthis that they seized by force. You can believe
Speaker 6: that's an unfortunate outcome where it sets a bad precedent,
Speaker 6: but That's also how wars end. The US posture as
Speaker 6: usual requires other people to take risks for US. The
Speaker 6: calculation for the Saudis now is how much risk they're
Speaker 6: willing to take for potentially no benefit. Have the Houthis
Speaker 6: capabilities improved over the last year, Will they light up
Speaker 6: a refinery again, strike deeper into Saudi Arabia, cancel some
Speaker 6: glitzy affair with Davos types who don't like the sound
Speaker 6: of explosions nearby?
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia is.
Speaker 6: Trying to transform itself into a leader on the global
Speaker 6: stage and wants to put this war behind it. And
Speaker 6: if they do launch a new bombing campaign, how much
Speaker 6: will the US actually help. You may have noticed our
Speaker 6: intelligence forces and weapons makers are kind of busy lately,
Speaker 6: and so as I was thinking about this, it feels
Speaker 6: have you seen dirty Harry?
Speaker 2: You know that?
Speaker 4: What's your point today?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to break down the Durham Report now.
Speaker 7: A lot of people, if you haven't been following this closely,
Speaker 7: I completely understand. I personally don't like love this story.
Speaker 7: It's just so convoluted and complicated. That Trump Rushia stuff
Speaker 7: is essential and very very important, but there's so many
Speaker 7: different loos ends, and when people start talking about George
Speaker 7: Papadopolis and Carter Page, my eyes admittedly.
Speaker 3: Glaze over a little bit. But it's an.
Speaker 7: Essential storyline to follow because it says so much about
Speaker 7: our government, It says so much about the elite perspective
Speaker 7: on average Americans. There's so many different things wrapped up
Speaker 7: in this one storyline. So if we could start by
Speaker 7: just putting the first element up on the screen, I
Speaker 7: really like this tweet from Lefong. He says FBI informants
Speaker 7: were unethically deployed post nine eleven to entrap and ruin
Speaker 7: the lives of ordinary Muslim Americans. The extreme partisan abuse
Speaker 7: of FBI informants and the Trump Russia inquiry continues that trend.
Speaker 7: If Congress wasn't so broken slash polarized, the potential for
Speaker 7: reform is clear. That's really critical. That's actually I think
Speaker 7: the crux of all of this that at this point
Speaker 7: you have even the FBI putting out a tweet after
Speaker 7: the Durham report came out saying we have already, because
Speaker 7: of the problems identified in the report, taken corrective measures
Speaker 7: to ensure that some of the problems raised by John
Speaker 7: Durham wouldn't happen again. That's a concession of wrongdoing pretty obviously.
Speaker 3: And the Durham Report.
Speaker 7: That came out this week essentially lays out the extent
Speaker 7: of that wrongdoing, the scope of that wrongdoing, and all
Speaker 7: of the nuances of that wrongdoing. But note it's very
Speaker 7: important right now that even the FBI, which is defended vigorously,
Speaker 7: I should say hysterically really by people on MSNBC and CNN,
Speaker 7: where Andy McCabe is a contributor, and you're going to
Speaker 7: get Frank Figluzzi on, you know, immediately to break down
Speaker 7: Andrew I spent immediately on to break down all of
Speaker 7: the problems in the Durham report. Even the FBI is
Speaker 7: acknowledging that there were serious problems. And if you haven't
Speaker 7: been following the storyline closely, because like me or I
Speaker 7: sort of glaze over when people start to talk about Curent.
Speaker 3: Page and George Bapadopolis.
Speaker 7: Back in October of twenty twenty, John Durham was appointed
Speaker 7: by William Barr, who was then Bill Barr, who was
Speaker 7: then the Attorney General in the Trump administration, as Special
Speaker 7: Counsel on the Order of investigating the FBI's opening of
Speaker 7: crossfire hurricanes. So that's the investigation into Donald Trump's potential
Speaker 7: collusion with the Russian government, his potential his campaign's potential collusion,
Speaker 7: potential connections to the Russian government at that time. Now,
Speaker 7: John Durham, he's a longtime prosecutor in New England, has
Speaker 7: done some stuff with the mobs, with the mob. He's
Speaker 7: a registered Republican, but somebody who even at that time,
Speaker 7: you have Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. He told CNN that
Speaker 7: Durham has reputation for being quote a political and fair.
Speaker 7: He actually backed Donald Trump's decision to choose Durham as
Speaker 7: the US attorney for that region. This is more from
Speaker 7: Chris Murphy. He's been a prosecutor in Connecticut forever. He's
Speaker 7: a law and order guy, tough nose, well respected. If
Speaker 7: I were him, I wouldn't have taken this job.
Speaker 3: But he's got a.
Speaker 7: Reputation of being a political and serious So he was
Speaker 7: appointed to sort of look into this. It became a
Speaker 7: criminal investigation, which is where Bill Barr appoints him to
Speaker 7: then serve as the Special Council back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: So this has been going on for a really long time,
Speaker 7: about two and a half years. Durham has been looking
Speaker 7: into this. He recommended or he brought charges against three
Speaker 7: different individuals, one of whom actually did plead guilty. So
Speaker 7: you have Igor Denchenko, former Brookings Institute guy who was
Speaker 7: accused of lying to the FBI. He was acquitted, Michael
Speaker 7: Sussman brought up on similar charges, also acquitted, and Kevin
Speaker 7: Klinsmith who did actually plead guilty.
Speaker 3: Now, the fact that they were.
Speaker 7: Acquitted here in Washington d C, I think probably says
Speaker 7: a whole lot more about Washington d C. I was
Speaker 7: talking to someone the other day who said, you know,
Speaker 7: we should not probably not try things in the Federal
Speaker 7: district where so much of the government and special interests
Speaker 7: ets that are located, but farm those out to sort
Speaker 7: of random districts around the country. Because I think the
Speaker 7: wrongdoing on behalf of Danchenko insessment is pretty clear. Even
Speaker 7: if a jury didn't find it to be criminal, it
Speaker 7: was pretty clearly problematic at the very very least. But
Speaker 7: you don't have to take my word a conservative for
Speaker 7: it that the Durham report is damning. There are a
Speaker 7: lot of people like Lee, like Matt tayebe like Glenn
Speaker 7: Greenwald that have followed this story for a very long
Speaker 7: time from the left perspective, people who were on the
Speaker 7: right side of these questions during the Bush administration.
Speaker 3: When you know, I was a.
Speaker 7: Teenager at the very end of it, and an actual
Speaker 7: child in the beginning of it, so I wasn't really
Speaker 7: old enough to be hypocritical quite yet. That's probably lucky
Speaker 7: for me, because who knows where it would have been
Speaker 7: on those issues. But my side was on the wrong
Speaker 7: side of this for the most part, except for some
Speaker 7: of the civil libertarian type people. So some of those
Speaker 7: folks who've been following these stories since the nine to
Speaker 7: eleven era, of the post nine to eleven era, have
Speaker 7: been following the wrongdoing and the Trump administration. And here's
Speaker 7: from Susan Schmidt and Rackett, which is Tayebee's excellent publication.
Speaker 3: I'm going to read this quote. According to John Durham.
Speaker 7: The senior FBI officials who ordered the probe did not
Speaker 7: look at the bureau's intelligence databases or consult as experienced
Speaker 7: Russia analysts who could have told them that they had
Speaker 7: seen no information about Donald Trump being involved with Russian
Speaker 7: leadership officials. Nor did they seek such information about Trump
Speaker 7: and Russia from the CIA, the NSA, or the State Department.
Speaker 7: Neither US law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to
Speaker 7: have possessed any actual evidence of collusion when the investigation began.
Speaker 7: The report said, that is a really key sentence. You've
Speaker 7: seen some of the media pull out. Remember, neither US
Speaker 7: law enforcement nor the intelligent community appears to possess any
Speaker 7: actual evidence of collusion. And they opened Crossfire Hurricane, started
Speaker 7: leaking details of it to the media in order to
Speaker 7: condemn a presidential campaign because they had partisan opposition to
Speaker 7: the president. Further, the FBI opened a full scale investigation
Speaker 7: quote without ever having spoken to the persons who provided
Speaker 7: the information, Schmidt notes, So you can see there. Durham
Speaker 7: in his three hundred plus paid report actually contrasts the
Speaker 7: opening of Crossfire Hurricane with the way the FBI treated,
Speaker 7: for instance, investigations into Hillary Clinton. They were very cognizant
Speaker 7: that Clinton, as Peter Strek say, might be the next president,
Speaker 7: and she might not be distinguishing between something that's DOJ
Speaker 7: and FBI and might just be coming hard down on
Speaker 7: the coming down hard on the FBI. And so we
Speaker 7: can put up the second element here. This is some
Speaker 7: reporting in the Federalists. This is I think in the headline.
Speaker 3: You see it. Here's the headline.
Speaker 7: Here's everything the FBI deliberately ignored to get Trump and
Speaker 7: Russian collusion hoaks. According to Durham, a lot of the
Speaker 7: media coverage the Durham report that came out this week
Speaker 7: after two and a half years of Special Council investigation
Speaker 7: is has been downplaying the findings. They said he didn't
Speaker 7: get much. Two of his prosecutions failed in court. There's
Speaker 7: really nothing new here. But I think what's essential to
Speaker 7: know about the Durham Report and about his probe where
Speaker 7: it's sort of investigating the investigators back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 7: is that he is laying out what the FBI did
Speaker 7: not do. And you can see that in the quotes
Speaker 7: that Sudan Schmidt pulled out for racket. They did not
Speaker 7: possess any actual evidence of collusion. They did not seek
Speaker 7: out the Russia analysts or other intelligence information about Donald
Speaker 7: Trump's potential connections with Russia. They laundered essentially gossip from
Speaker 7: Christopher Steele's primary Subsorus Stanchenko. Christopher Steel himself put it
Speaker 7: in the dossier that was funded by the Clinton campaign.
Speaker 7: The FBI knew that, and they laundered that, and they
Speaker 7: turned it into you.
Speaker 3: Know, this this very credible information.
Speaker 7: They treated it like it was very credible information when
Speaker 7: it clearly, clearly clearly was not. They seemed to have
Speaker 7: known that at the time. And so I think, again,
Speaker 7: that's what's really essential to know about the Durham report
Speaker 7: is a lot of it is proving what the FBI
Speaker 7: did not do, and he has quotes from people saying,
Speaker 7: you know, oh, this is kind of thin, et cetera,
Speaker 7: et cetera, And so that's why, you know, I think
Speaker 7: it's this whole thing is really a bombshell. The media
Speaker 7: has compared it to Donald Trump saying it's the crime
Speaker 7: of the century, that Durham is going to find the
Speaker 7: crime of the century, and because they don't think it
Speaker 7: lives up to the crime of the century sort of stuff,
Speaker 7: that therefore it's it's nothing right, like this is there's
Speaker 7: nothing new here, blah blah blah. No, this is a
Speaker 7: lot of you know, information about what the FBI declined
Speaker 7: to do. So it's true that, you know, there's there's
Speaker 7: not tons of stuff about what the FBI did do,
Speaker 7: like active, et cetera, et cetera. It's a lot about
Speaker 7: what they did not do, and that stuff is huge
Speaker 7: even if it's not.
Speaker 3: You know, we've known about.
Speaker 7: A lot of this because he tried three people in court,
Speaker 7: so it's definitely useful to see the full three hundred
Speaker 7: plus page report. But because there were three trials, a
Speaker 7: lot of this has already come out and we know that.
Speaker 7: But you know, this is again another line for it
Speaker 7: or review found no indication that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators
Speaker 7: ever attempted to resolve the prior dan Chenko espionage matter
Speaker 7: before opening him as a paid confidential human source. They
Speaker 7: were paying Igor Denchenko. This is the subsource to the
Speaker 7: Steel Dassier without ever following up on intelligence that he
Speaker 7: may have been compromised. And that's again I think we
Speaker 7: put the third element up on here. A big takeaway
Speaker 7: from the Durham report is that here's another quote from
Speaker 7: Jerry Dunleavy's reporting and Washington Examiner. It's important, according to
Speaker 7: Durham that in not resolving dan Chenko's status visa the
Speaker 7: Russian intelligence services, it appears the FBI never gave appropriate
Speaker 7: consideration the possibility that the intelligence Dnchenko was providing two
Speaker 7: Christopher Steel was in whole or part Russian Diday disinformation.
Speaker 7: So this brings us full circle to the fact that
Speaker 7: the opponents of Russian disinformation, who were breathlessly, hysterically trying
Speaker 7: to take down Trump as a potential Russian agent, they
Speaker 7: said that over and over again, we may have a
Speaker 7: Russian asset, a Russian agent in the White House. If
Speaker 7: you go back and look at what was being said
Speaker 7: on MSNBC all the time, just really casually thrown around
Speaker 7: on Twitter, actually that in and of itself may have
Speaker 7: been Russian disinformation. It's like they're fighting fake Russian disinformation
Speaker 7: potentially with real Russian disinformation. And that is huge because
Speaker 7: it's not just a failure, it is partisan corruption.
Speaker 3: Of the FBI. We talked last week about.
Speaker 7: The CIA potentially or not potentially clearly having been used
Speaker 7: in a partisan fashion to shut down the Hunter Biden
Speaker 7: laptop story. In the signing of that fifty one intelligence
Speaker 7: former intelligence official letter, the CIA was, as we talked
Speaker 7: about last week, getting people, it appears, to sign that
Speaker 7: letter from their using their official capacity as the CIA
Speaker 7: to get people to sign that letter.
Speaker 3: That's insane.
Speaker 7: It's not without predicate or it's not without precedent in
Speaker 7: United States history. Obviously, the FBI building is literally named
Speaker 7: after j Edgar Hoovers, So it's probably no surprise that
Speaker 7: we see all the stuff coming out from the American
Speaker 7: intelligence community time and time and again. But to just
Speaker 7: again go back to the point that Lefong made in
Speaker 7: his tweet, there should be a real appetite for reform
Speaker 7: in Washington, d C. There certainly is among the public,
Speaker 7: but they're just we're not in the Church Committee era anymore.
Speaker 7: We look back on the wrongdoings that were uncovered by
Speaker 7: the Church Committee with a sense of consensus that this
Speaker 7: stuff was really bad. It's happening now before our eyes,
Speaker 7: and the media is actually cheerleading. They are actually cheerleading
Speaker 7: the intelligence community, helping the intelligence community, not just cheerleading them,
Speaker 7: but assisting the intelligence community by doing really sloppy and
Speaker 7: bad reporting and being openly partisan for the intelligence community
Speaker 7: over the dissenting individuals.
Speaker 3: Independent media.
Speaker 7: The FBI leave reported actually this week how they target
Speaker 7: vegan activists, but the media takes their side time and
Speaker 7: time again, and I think that's a really, really pessimistic,
Speaker 7: but rightfully pessimistic perspective. We are not in the Church
Speaker 7: Committee era, despite the fact that we are seeing very
Speaker 7: similar stuff come out of the intelligence community. And Ryan,
Speaker 7: I'll kick it over to you with that question.
Speaker 3: It just seems like.
Speaker 6: Joining us now is the Intercepts. Can Clipenstein to talk
Speaker 6: about his latest scoop? We can put this up here
Speaker 6: inside the Pentagon's new Perception Management Office to counter disinformation.
Speaker 6: So ken to start with, before we get into the
Speaker 6: details of this, how'd you come on this on this
Speaker 6: latest scoop?
Speaker 13: Well, you guys had me on recently for my last one,
Speaker 13: which is the establishment of the Foreign Malign Influence Center,
Speaker 13: establishing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which
Speaker 13: also was not disclosed to a multimillion dollar agency that
Speaker 13: established never you know, no press release telling the public
Speaker 13: that this thing exists. And so since reporting that I
Speaker 13: kind of alluded to this agency we're talking about now
Speaker 13: and I got it.
Speaker 4: Some people reached out to me. I sort of shook
Speaker 4: the trees.
Speaker 13: People inside the community reached out and said, oh, it's
Speaker 13: funny you just noticed that. Thanks for catching up with us, right,
Speaker 13: because it was they had established it last year actually, and.
Speaker 6: It's only public record was it was mentioned what in
Speaker 6: a list in a budget budget docs. It's like a
Speaker 6: line a line of like money for this office, but
Speaker 6: anyhing else.
Speaker 4: And not even the money. They didn't tell you how
Speaker 4: much money. They just meant this money for this thing.
Speaker 6: So I want to I want to read one one
Speaker 6: part of your story and gets you to unpack a
Speaker 6: little bit.
Speaker 4: And this is a.
Speaker 6: Document that you when you shook the trees. This is
Speaker 6: one of the documents that fell out. And so it's
Speaker 6: it's an interesting it's like kind of a university assignment.
Speaker 4: It's kind of weird interesting how it.
Speaker 13: Like, Yeah, they contract with these private institutions, and it's
Speaker 13: not entirely clear why to some extent when it concerned
Speaker 13: speech that helps them get around certain First Amendment protections
Speaker 13: because they're saying, oh, actually the private group is what's doing.
Speaker 6: This right, And so the document says, let's say DOOD
Speaker 6: wants to influence Countries a's leaders to stop purchasing a
Speaker 6: weapon system from Country B because we believe the continued
Speaker 6: purchasing might jeopardize DoD's military advantage in some way if
Speaker 6: the US ever had to engage in armed conflict with
Speaker 6: Country A. Assuming the IPMO has worked to establish the
Speaker 6: desired behavior change. How might key influencers be identified that
Speaker 6: have sway over these leaders thought processes, beliefs, motives, reasoning, etc.
Speaker 6: Including ascertaining their typical modes and methods of communication. Thereafter,
Speaker 6: assuming an influence strategy has developed, how might the DIE
Speaker 6: or IC determine if DoD's influence activities are working. Aside
Speaker 6: from waiting and watching, hopefully that country A eventually stops
Speaker 6: purchasing the weapon systems in question from country So translate that,
Speaker 6: what is this office tasking itself with?
Speaker 13: Yeah, so, as the name suggests, they're managing the perceptions
Speaker 13: of foreign governments and foreign nationals. But part of the
Speaker 13: concern is that in the age of the Internet, it's
Speaker 13: really hard to limit the public diplomacy is what they
Speaker 13: call it, but really it's propaganda. It's really hard to
Speaker 13: target that at a foreign audience and not have it
Speaker 13: blow back on domestic because the distinction has been completely
Speaker 13: dissolved between foreign domestic. In fact, the law was even
Speaker 13: changed to reflect that. We have a long standing law
Speaker 13: established after World War Two. Of course, there were tons
Speaker 13: of propaganda at the time, and so this law was
Speaker 13: created in response to It's called the Smith Month Act.
Speaker 13: It's supposed to limit public diplomacy that's targeted at domestic Americans. Well,
Speaker 13: there was a Smith Month it was called the Modernization Act,
Speaker 13: who was rolled into the NDAA several years ago. And
Speaker 13: what that did is it got rid of that protection.
Speaker 13: There's no longer that protection that once existed. And their
Speaker 13: rationale for was kind of interesting. I said, well, on
Speaker 13: the edge of the Internet, this stuff isn't really meaningful anyways.
Speaker 13: It's like, well, so that means we should take it
Speaker 13: extra seriously, right, But instead they just threw it out
Speaker 13: of the window entirely.
Speaker 7: Well, and the history of this was really interesting, not
Speaker 7: just with Smith Mund but with the term perception management
Speaker 7: going all the way back to the Contras.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit ken about the.
Speaker 7: Intelligence community's concept of perception perception management historically sort of
Speaker 7: what it evolved from.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so perception management is a term of art from
Speaker 13: as you said, the Reagan administration.
Speaker 4: It was what they used.
Speaker 13: He assigned CIA's top propaganda expert to the National Security
Speaker 13: Council at the time to perception managed to shape the
Speaker 13: narrative around the Contras because they were, you know, found
Speaker 13: responsible for all kinds of you know, horrible atrocities and
Speaker 13: really grizzly.
Speaker 4: Crimes, and so it became important.
Speaker 13: And they were coming out of the Iraq or sorry,
Speaker 13: they were coming out of the Vietnam War, and so
Speaker 13: the concern was, how do we kick the Vietnam syndrome,
Speaker 13: this idea that the public is just you know, averse
Speaker 13: to any sort of foreign policy of what they learned
Speaker 13: from Vietnam, and so that this was kind of their
Speaker 13: response to it, is we're going to shape the public
Speaker 13: narrative around these things, particularly in foreign press. But even
Speaker 13: then there were problems with that because as we know,
Speaker 13: you know, wire services like writers are based in other
Speaker 13: countries and so they have circulation within the United States.
Speaker 13: So there were always problems with this foreign versus domestic distinction.
Speaker 13: But now even the kind of paper thin wall that
Speaker 13: they had separating the two has been just completely removed.
Speaker 13: So that's sort of the historical context for it. And
Speaker 13: there's one more thing. And then during the Bush administration,
Speaker 13: Billy Mays. So during the Bush administration, there was another
Speaker 13: attempt under then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to stand up
Speaker 13: a perception Management office right after nine to eleven, but
Speaker 13: before the invasion of Iraq. And then when it became
Speaker 13: public that he had done this and that there was
Speaker 13: there were planning disinformation that was actually getting picked up
Speaker 13: by the American press and misinforming them about things that
Speaker 13: were going on in you know, the so called global
Speaker 13: war and terror. You know, there was enormous pressure to
Speaker 13: shut it down and ended up doing that. And so
Speaker 13: what's interesting is there's no attendant outrage now, perhaps because
Speaker 13: we're not in a you know, war climate or whatever,
Speaker 13: but it's the it's the same thing. It's not just
Speaker 13: a perception management efforts within DD, which is what happened
Speaker 13: during the Bush.
Speaker 7: A ministry under a Democratic president who was obviously an
Speaker 7: opponent of the Bush administration, right.
Speaker 6: And and as you write, uh, the New York Times
Speaker 6: is the one that kind of called out the Office
Speaker 6: of Strategic Influence as as Rumsfeld called it, uh and
Speaker 6: and pointed out that it encountering disinformation oftentimes they were
Speaker 6: like putting out their own disinformation to do that.
Speaker 4: And it's just so.
Speaker 6: Remarkable to think of the New York Times in the
Speaker 6: run up to the Iraq War complaining about the administration
Speaker 6: putting out disinformation like the dedicated on disinformation that the
Speaker 6: Bush administration was funneling through the New York Times.
Speaker 13: Well, that's kind of sleight of hand in all of
Speaker 13: this is they try to say, oh, you know, you know,
Speaker 13: as a senior defense official who works in the Siobs
Speaker 13: area told me, he was laughing at that I in
Speaker 13: my previous story just you know, kind of candidly said propaganda.
Speaker 13: He's like, you're not supposed to say that the monicles
Speaker 13: are going to be dropping all over Washington. He's like,
Speaker 13: it's called public diplomacy. Can And so that's the kind
Speaker 13: of the slide of hand they do, because they say, oh,
Speaker 13: we're actually countering.
Speaker 4: Falsehoods with the reality.
Speaker 13: But then when you break down the facts, it's like
Speaker 13: this stuff is politicized as anything because they have their
Speaker 13: own set of you know, political motives and interests. So
Speaker 13: that distinction between countering disinformation and propaganda is I think
Speaker 13: a lot thinner than people generally recognize.
Speaker 3: How many.
Speaker 7: Small, little, barely publicized offices in the Pentagon do you
Speaker 7: think you will uncover for the remainder of the year.
Speaker 13: I actually just got another one since publishing this story,
Speaker 13: and that will be my next story. But what's interesting
Speaker 13: about the Pentagon is that what's happening and with this
Speaker 13: office in the office I mentioned before, the Formal and
Speaker 13: Influence Center, these are highly classified efforts that exist on
Speaker 13: what's called the high side, so they have special skifts
Speaker 13: where they're talking about things.
Speaker 4: There's a culture of secrecy.
Speaker 13: When I reported initially on the Department of Homelan Security,
Speaker 13: most of that stuff is unclassified. So in DHS there's
Speaker 13: almost half a dozen counterdisinformation and it is established since
Speaker 13: twenty sixteen, So that gives you an idea.
Speaker 4: But this is just what we know from dd.
Speaker 13: I'm sure there are more, but it's a lot harder
Speaker 13: to find, and it's a lot harder to find specifics
Speaker 13: about what exactly it is that they're doing.
Speaker 6: And this is a kind of how government works type
Speaker 6: of situation too, because once something becomes the thing to
Speaker 6: do within the government, then everybody has to have their
Speaker 6: own office. Like remember how like you're like, wait, the
Speaker 6: post office has a counter terror operator. Yes, Count VI's
Speaker 6: post office, and the post offic was like, hey, there
Speaker 6: was anthrax in the mail, so we got to do
Speaker 6: our own right, And so if it becomes a thing
Speaker 6: that you think you can go to Congress and get
Speaker 6: more funding for and so what clearly I think what
Speaker 6: you're exposing here is is that there's so much momentum
Speaker 6: on this side that if you're a bureaucrat who wants
Speaker 6: more fund, actually that's redundant. All bureaucrats want more funding.
Speaker 6: Then the thing that you need to do is say,
Speaker 6: we're going to counter disinformation and we're going to do
Speaker 6: public diplomacy. And here's here's why we are uniquely capable
Speaker 6: of filling this role. And it's an outrageous that we
Speaker 6: do not yet have our own office that is directed
Speaker 6: in this fashion.
Speaker 7: Well, and if I could add on to that, turning
Speaker 7: it over to you Ken that this is all coming
Speaker 7: in the context.
Speaker 3: I mean just in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 7: We talked about the Durham Report earlier, which even the
Speaker 7: FBI has conceded in a tweet that it posted this
Speaker 7: week it already, you know, sort of handled the errors.
Speaker 7: That's their claim that were uncovered in the Durham Report.
Speaker 7: But basically it's a concession that things went wrong, that
Speaker 7: the intelligence was not handled properly. January sixth, The intelligence
Speaker 7: was not handled property properly, the CIA involvement in the
Speaker 7: fifty one officials of the Hunter Biden laptop letter that
Speaker 7: was false intelligence as well, that was intelligence spreading false information.
Speaker 7: And so they use all of these things. I'm assuming
Speaker 7: in your reporting you've realized this. It seems as though
Speaker 7: they're using all of these things to say, we need
Speaker 7: more power because things are you know, there's just such
Speaker 7: a need for strong intelligence. We need more resources, we
Speaker 7: need more offices, more bureaucrats, despite the fact that what
Speaker 7: we're seeing is actually just their system is broken.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's alway a quibono kind of thing, like when
Speaker 13: you have this sort of hysteria around things, you know
Speaker 13: who benefits, and it's often the national security state.
Speaker 4: They take full advantage of these things.
Speaker 13: I mean, the elevation of the of the idea of
Speaker 13: falsehoods to a new static disinformation.
Speaker 4: It is just falsehoods.
Speaker 13: Why do we need a special national securityized term for that?
Speaker 13: And I think we're seeing why because then they can
Speaker 13: go to Congress and say, well, we need to counter
Speaker 13: the national but an encounter the threat vicious cycles.
Speaker 6: As these offices proliferate, they're going to then be in
Speaker 6: competition with each other for Congression.
Speaker 4: That's why they're leaking. That's why they're leaking to.
Speaker 6: Me In power, and they're going to start, uh spreading
Speaker 6: disinformation about each other like they absolutely.
Speaker 4: So that's where we're at.
Speaker 13: The previous one, the fm I C that that I
Speaker 13: we're on came on to discuss with you guys what
Speaker 13: a week ago. That's just to orchestrate and coordinate between
Speaker 13: all the various They don't even handle anything internal. This
Speaker 13: is to this is like a top level effort to
Speaker 13: manage everything else. So it's like it never ends, you know,
Speaker 13: and the secrecy is just a windfall for them because
Speaker 13: we're in the context of this debate about like cutting
Speaker 13: food stamps and how we're going to save money, and
Speaker 13: there's these multimillion dollar agencies. Nobody, the DoD is completely
Speaker 13: exempt from this disc I mean we can have a
Speaker 13: discussion like if you you know, certain number of people
Speaker 13: want to reduce the size of government. Okay, it's like,
Speaker 13: but shouldn't we talk about this eight hundred billion dollar
Speaker 13: colossus and it is completely out of the discussion.
Speaker 3: That's a great point.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm sure we'll have came back next week to
Speaker 6: talk about it.
Speaker 7: They're just like popping up like eastere Ken, thank you
Speaker 7: so much. You can check out Ken's story obviously over
Speaker 7: on the intercept. We will be back next Wednesday with
Speaker 7: more counterpoints.
Speaker 3: We're really looking forward to the new studio.
Speaker 7: We keep seeing teasers of it from Mac and Griffin
Speaker 7: and man it looks cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be right over there.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be right over there. It's coming soon too, So.
Speaker 4: We'll keep the bricks for like the tours that we give.
Speaker 3: Right just for the nostalgia.
Speaker 7: Yeah, all right, well, we'll be back next week with
Speaker 7: more counterpoints. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll
Speaker 7: see you then.
Speaker 12: H