Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 2: we have personal?
Speaker 4: Indeed, we do.
Speaker 1: Palestime protests have now hit graduation ceremonies, we have massive
Speaker 1: political reaction, we have total media freak out.
Speaker 4: We've got all the highlights and low lights from that.
Speaker 1: Also, big news while we were all sleeping, Israel has
Speaker 1: started the evacuation or forceful displacement of Rafa. They also
Speaker 1: are bombing that city. It appears that that ground invasion
Speaker 1: is imminent. As these fire talks breakdown, we will bring
Speaker 1: you all of those very grim details. Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman
Speaker 1: Henry Quaar that Nancy Pelosi and other moved heaven and
Speaker 1: earth to save He had a very close primary challenge
Speaker 1: only one by three hundred votes. Oh, he's been indicted.
Speaker 1: He's been indicted for corruption him and his wife. Very
Speaker 1: similar honestly to the Bob Menendez thing, although they have
Speaker 1: not located any.
Speaker 4: Gold bars as yet that we know about.
Speaker 1: But incredibly impactful because you have very narrow house majority
Speaker 1: on the Republican side. If Democrats managed to pick up
Speaker 1: a few seats, this could be very consequential. So break
Speaker 1: that down for you've also got a big political debate
Speaker 1: over lab grown meat. Sager and I will both weigh in.
Speaker 1: I think we have different views on this one, so
Speaker 1: it should be a fun one. Christy Noham, who was
Speaker 1: at least a top potential Trump vpeepic, caught lying flagrantly
Speaker 1: in her book about a meeting with Kim Jong un
Speaker 1: that apparently never happened. I don't know why you would
Speaker 1: lie about such a thing, but she did. So we'll
Speaker 1: show you that. We also are taking a look on
Speaker 1: taking a look in my monologue about Kent State, any
Speaker 1: lessons that were learned apparently not, and whether we are
Speaker 1: courting another version of that national catastrophe, and that Stiller
Speaker 1: is going to join us to break down what is
Speaker 1: truly a massive scandal that had a.
Speaker 4: Direct impact on you and your wallet.
Speaker 1: Some quarter of the inflation during the height of the
Speaker 1: worst period of inflation likely came from a price fixing scandal.
Speaker 4: Still, Earn himself helped to.
Speaker 1: Do some of the journalistic uncovering of this scandal, so
Speaker 1: he'll talk to us about what the hell happened and
Speaker 1: what it all means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, real media they would actually cover it,
Speaker 3: but here it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, domestically, it's one of the biggest stories in
Speaker 1: the country, no question, and you probably I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think they covered it all on the Sunday shows.
Speaker 1: Like we're talking thousands of dollars that came out of
Speaker 1: your pockets because of this price fixing scandal.
Speaker 4: So it is really.
Speaker 2: As he has the receipt, it's not even a journalistic story.
Speaker 2: It's the ftc getting involved. So he'll break that down
Speaker 2: for us. I'm really excited to talk to him before
Speaker 2: we get started, though, thank you to everybody who watched
Speaker 2: Counterpoint's latest debate. They've got another one, awesome one that
Speaker 2: is set for this Friday, so as a reminder, you
Speaker 2: can watch it early and you can support that work
Speaker 2: here Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: Their show has been doing incredibly well.
Speaker 2: They've made record downloads, a lot of views on their
Speaker 2: last one on Israel Palestine. The next one, I think,
Speaker 2: in particular, is gonna set. There's gonna be some feathers
Speaker 2: that are ruffled and some familiar personalities.
Speaker 3: That's all we can say.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this moment, you guys its debate, Let's just
Speaker 2: put it there. Yeah, well, we'll leave it there and
Speaker 2: you can decide who it might be participating. So go
Speaker 2: ahead and support us at Breakingpoints dot Com so we
Speaker 2: can continue to have this brand new show for everybody.
Speaker 2: I know everybody's been really enjoying it, at least that's
Speaker 2: what the ratings tell us. So thank you all very much.
Speaker 2: We appreciate you. Let's get started, like Crystal said, with
Speaker 2: the protests. So there's been the political reaction. President Biden
Speaker 2: taking the White House podium to react to the campus protest.
Speaker 2: These were his first words in reaction after Columbia University.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: So let me be clear, peaceful protest in America. Violent
Speaker 6: protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is it's against the
Speaker 6: law of violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest,
Speaker 6: it's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses,
Speaker 6: forcing the cancelation of classes and graduations. None of this
Speaker 6: is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fairing
Speaker 6: people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. The
Speaker 6: scent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead
Speaker 6: to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so
Speaker 6: students can finish the semester and their college education. Look,
Speaker 6: it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of
Speaker 6: what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the
Speaker 6: right to cause.
Speaker 7: Chaos the protest force, Did you reconsider any of the
Speaker 7: policies with regard to the region.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 2: So the two questions that were asked there at the
Speaker 2: end were have the protest forced you to reconsider any
Speaker 2: of your policies in the region? President Biden Know? Do
Speaker 2: you think the National Guard should intervene? President Biden know
Speaker 2: before he was then exited the room. So President Biden
Speaker 2: then definitively speaking on the matter there, Crystal, what do you.
Speaker 4: Think descent must never lead to disorder?
Speaker 1: I think the founding fathers would like to have a
Speaker 1: word with you about that conception of protest. I think
Speaker 1: the civil rights leaders, I think the abolitionists, I think
Speaker 1: the suffragettes, I think the Vietnam War protesters would like
Speaker 1: to have a word with you about all of that.
Speaker 4: I mean disorder.
Speaker 1: The whole point of the media's mirroring of these protesters,
Speaker 1: the political class mirroring of these protesters, is they don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with the central claim. They don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with the central issue. And the reality is,
Speaker 1: and Zacer and I were talking about this before this started,
Speaker 1: and we have an element we'll get to in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but ninety nine percent of these protests have
Speaker 1: been peaceful in terms of a mass, nationwide, student driven
Speaker 1: protest movement. I don't know that there has ever been
Speaker 1: a more peaceful protest movement.
Speaker 4: So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 1: Many people contrasted these comments and this approach with the
Speaker 1: very different and much more nuanced commentary from Biden, specifically
Speaker 1: when it came to Black Lives Matter protests. He made
Speaker 1: short a center the actual core of the claims and
Speaker 1: the demands that were being made there, and said, listen,
Speaker 1: you know, the violence here doesn't speak for the majority
Speaker 1: of the protesters who are peaceful. Now, I supported many
Speaker 1: of the calls and demands and those protests in general,
Speaker 1: and they were majority peaceful. But there was much more violence,
Speaker 1: including property damage, during the Black Lives Matter protests. So
Speaker 1: it is blatantly hypocritical his approach here versus his approach
Speaker 1: and his commentary with regards to Black Lives Matter, it's just.
Speaker 4: And then the final.
Speaker 1: Piece that I'll add here is than he sasked, you know,
Speaker 1: is this changing your mind? He says, no, it's actually
Speaker 1: a lie because no, he doesn't care about Palestinian lives. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's still committed. Zionis wants to do everything to support Israel.
Speaker 1: He's clearly sober feeling the pressure. And we're going to
Speaker 1: get to some of this in terms of the Israel segment. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: he was trying very aggressively to secure some sort of
Speaker 1: a ceasefire deal that appears to have fallen through. No,
Speaker 1: he's not really willing to use leverage to compel Israel
Speaker 1: to actually fall in line. But there's no doubt they
Speaker 1: realize this is a massive political problem for them. And
Speaker 1: guess what. The only reason that it is a political
Speaker 1: problem for them is because of the size of the movement,
Speaker 1: because of the persistence of the movement, and because it's
Speaker 1: not just staying in the confines of something that is
Speaker 1: nice and decorous and can just be easily hand waved
Speaker 1: away and dismissed. That's what him I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about Mika Brazinski today, Peggy.
Speaker 4: Noonan in my monologue.
Speaker 1: What they want is a protest that is so meek,
Speaker 1: so timid, so decorous that it can just be vanished erased,
Speaker 1: that they don't have to actually grap with it, because
Speaker 1: to actually grapple with it is to deal with the
Speaker 1: fact that this country has been complicit in carpet bombing babies,
Speaker 1: starving them to death. Cindy McCain, head of the World
Speaker 1: Food program says, now there is a full blown famine
Speaker 1: in northern gaz that is rapidly moving south. That sort
Speaker 1: of protest that is stays within the confines of oh,
Speaker 1: write a letter to your congressman if you feel upset
Speaker 1: and can easily be ignored is what they want. Because
Speaker 1: this type of protest that's in their face, that shows
Speaker 1: up at every Biden rally, that's President graduation ceremonies, that's President,
Speaker 1: not just to Ivy League colleges, but colleges across the
Speaker 1: entire country.
Speaker 4: That's much harder to dismiss. It's much harder to ignore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the thing is with President Biden is
Speaker 2: trying to make a political calculation where he doesn't believe
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. I mean he believes
Speaker 2: basically in the silent majority bet of the Nixon administration,
Speaker 2: or in some sort of like Sista Soldia distancing hearkening
Speaker 2: back to the nineteen ninety two campaign. Well, honestly, we'll see.
Speaker 2: I have no idea. Tomorrow, we're actually going to be
Speaker 2: talking a lot about the polling. In terms of the
Speaker 2: reaction to the campus protest, It's difficult to gauge. There's
Speaker 2: no real way to know. On the one hand, we've
Speaker 2: talked about the margins. On the other hand, we have
Speaker 2: talked about Biden basically trying to solidify the suburban white majority,
Speaker 2: especially amongst young.
Speaker 3: You know, like women and adultsy go.
Speaker 4: You say something about that though he already has the
Speaker 4: suburban white majority.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so women who are voting on a borge,
Speaker 1: they're already in the Democratic Party camp. That's number one,
Speaker 1: number two before what has given the appearance nationwide of
Speaker 1: this like campus chaos and violence and all of you know,
Speaker 1: all of that, which I agree is not a great
Speaker 1: vibe for Biden because you know, his whole thing was
Speaker 1: like restore calm, and it's not going to be chaos,
Speaker 1: and Trump is chaos.
Speaker 4: What created the chaos was the police cracked out.
Speaker 1: These protests have been going on at many college campuses
Speaker 1: since very soon after October seventh, and it hasn't been
Speaker 1: oh my god chaos.
Speaker 4: It's because of.
Speaker 1: And he greenlit with his commentary this police response. So
Speaker 1: I think he is putting himself in the worst of
Speaker 1: all worlds where of course young people absolute hate his guts.
Speaker 1: There's no way that a young person for whom this
Speaker 1: issue is important and sees the president smearing them as
Speaker 1: violent anti semites, is going to want to vote for
Speaker 1: this dude.
Speaker 4: So that's a disaster. He needs to win young people.
Speaker 1: And then if you're the person who's like once the
Speaker 1: law and order candidate, do you think Joe Biden's going.
Speaker 4: To be your guy?
Speaker 1: No, You've got a more aggressive, more hardcore, authoritarian law
Speaker 1: and order dude on the ballot. So once again, I mean,
Speaker 1: it reminds me sort of his immigration positioning right where
Speaker 1: it's like, let me just accept the right wing framing
Speaker 1: of this. No, if people, if you're buying into the
Speaker 1: right wing framing, they're not going to just go with
Speaker 1: like the the lesser of the right wing of framing.
Speaker 4: They'll go with the guy who's all in on that.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a political disaster all the way
Speaker 1: across the board.
Speaker 2: But it's a question of young people and their priority.
Speaker 2: So yes, we can go look at our poll. There
Speaker 2: were some young people who said they wouldn't necessarily vote
Speaker 2: for Biden, But there was a later poll that just
Speaker 2: came out a couple of days ago, Harvard Harris where
Speaker 2: they had Israel Gaza as number fifteen out of sixteen
Speaker 2: for priorities. I mean, I do think there is a
Speaker 2: danger that this is just an elite movement, and the
Speaker 2: truth is that most people, even if they do care
Speaker 2: about Israel, palistine. I'll say this for myself, it's not
Speaker 2: my number one, not even my top five issue. I
Speaker 2: care much more about our country and policies that affect here.
Speaker 2: I don't think that that's necessarily a moral thing to say.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I'm not going to tell people
Speaker 2: what to do. If that wants to be your top priority,
Speaker 2: you BEU. I think that's fine. But the question does
Speaker 2: come for is this an elite driven concern? And I
Speaker 2: don't even meet necessarily in terms of left, I would
Speaker 2: say right too, I mean, how much of our national
Speaker 2: discourse is captured by Israel and Palestine when the truth
Speaker 2: is the vast majority of people like don't particularly care
Speaker 2: all that much. And in fact, if you look at
Speaker 2: the uninformed issue, a lot of people don't know very
Speaker 2: much about the conflict because they just don't leaders don't care,
Speaker 2: or they're not consuming a lot of media and they
Speaker 2: decided to turn out.
Speaker 1: I think it is fair to raise the question of like, okay,
Speaker 1: is this a bubble?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I think just think I think that's entirely fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea I very much dissent from the idea. It's
Speaker 1: a quote unquote elite driven discourse. I know the focus
Speaker 1: is on like Colombian other Ivy League institutions. This is
Speaker 1: I mean City College, which is famously a working class institution.
Speaker 4: New York City also saw protests.
Speaker 1: You have protests at state schools, all sorts of institutions
Speaker 1: across the country.
Speaker 4: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two is you know, okay, It's one thing when
Speaker 1: people are ordering their priorities and responding to a poll.
Speaker 1: It's another thing when you look at the poll numbers
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden with young voters.
Speaker 2: That's true, but I mean, is how much of that
Speaker 2: is Israel Gaza? How much of it is is that
Speaker 2: shit is just way too expected?
Speaker 1: Some of that is definitely the case, and we saw
Speaker 1: the fall off with young voters begin prior to Israel Gaza.
Speaker 1: It is accelerated. I mean, the fact that you now
Speaker 1: have Joe Biden losing to Donald Trump by eleven points
Speaker 1: is astonishing and certainly like smearing. If you look at
Speaker 1: young sentiment about Israel and pousing obviously very divergent from
Speaker 1: older voters. And then if you see the present the
Speaker 1: United States basically smearing your entire generation as anti violent,
Speaker 1: anti Semites, I have to think that that's probably going
Speaker 1: to have a negative impact for people that this issue
Speaker 1: is a real priority. Listen, it only takes a few
Speaker 1: percentage points where like this is their thing and there's
Speaker 1: no recovering from it for it to be, you know,
Speaker 1: a completely game changing type of political event. This is
Speaker 1: what you see frequently, you know, even with even with
Speaker 1: like abortion, Okay, abortion is not the number one issue
Speaker 1: for the like if you look for.
Speaker 4: Some people, it is just like Lizerald Mouse, I buy it.
Speaker 1: But it's not just how many people rank this as
Speaker 1: their number one, but how strong is the emotion and
Speaker 1: is this like a single issue for some percentage of
Speaker 1: young people? At this point, it's a single issue, and
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any recovery at this point for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden on this issue. So you know, we'll see.
Speaker 1: But I think that because the policy, it really ultimately
Speaker 1: comes down to, like the policy is really bad.
Speaker 4: Now you have the specter of him.
Speaker 1: Spearing effectively an entire generation is like, you know, racist,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's going to help them.
Speaker 3: But this is I don't think that's going to hire generation.
Speaker 2: Like half the people in this most people who are
Speaker 2: young don't even go to college, so they're not even
Speaker 2: tangentially involved, like how do they feel about this issue?
Speaker 2: They may feel in some way, but they are not
Speaker 2: necessarily I as.
Speaker 4: Seem as a protests are only on college campuses, which they're.
Speaker 2: Sure, but I mean, okay, they'd be like saying, you know,
Speaker 2: all millennials feel this and like you're smearing my generation
Speaker 2: for going after I don't know, the avocado toast thing, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't feel particularly that way. I'm more just saying
Speaker 2: like it's important than we try and segment this out
Speaker 2: for like, who are these protesters, Who are the people
Speaker 2: who feel affinity for them. I don't think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say it's smearing an entire generation, because not all
Speaker 2: young people do care about Israel and Gaza. I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to zoom out and really think about this politically,
Speaker 2: thinking about nineteen sixty eight and the eventual ramifications. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of truth to the fact that protest movement,
Speaker 2: I mean, we talked about this previously dramatically backfired and failed.
Speaker 2: The New Left as a project itself was a historic failure,
Speaker 2: specifically because the idea of mass mobilization. And there's also
Speaker 2: a question I think again of the silent majority, which
Speaker 2: became very relevant in BLM when it was the same
Speaker 2: thing where people were like, oh, all young people believe
Speaker 2: that there's like some mass violence of police against black people.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, not really, not actually true, especially if
Speaker 2: we look now and to what their overall reaction is
Speaker 2: But the question is also going to come to media
Speaker 2: and coverage of course, which we of course will focus on.
Speaker 2: There's been some more demonstrations that have been happening. Let's
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen and I can
Speaker 2: go ahead and narrate some of this. This is the
Speaker 2: University of Michigan, obviously a major nexus. There were walkouts
Speaker 2: during the graduation ceremony in support of Palestine. That you
Speaker 2: see a lot of flags, kefias and others who are
Speaker 2: walking out, who are disrupting the graduation ceremony. That Michigan
Speaker 2: one may be one of the most important because it's
Speaker 2: in that background. State here we have graduates at Northeastern
Speaker 2: calling out their university for complicity. They say, Northeastern has
Speaker 2: arrested me, Why don't you listen to your students, n
Speaker 2: eu folence genocide divests. Now here is that we have
Speaker 2: Georgia State students who are being a scored away for
Speaker 2: wearing kefias and for having Palestinian flags. So this is all,
Speaker 2: you know, again feeding into a vibe of chaos. The
Speaker 2: only question is kind of like which way and how
Speaker 2: to navigate this? Now you are correct Crystal on the
Speaker 2: violence runts I will give it to you very very
Speaker 2: different whenever it comes to the Black Lives Matter protest,
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there on the screen. This in
Speaker 2: particular was one that a lot of people focused on.
Speaker 2: I know, I think it was covered by Ryan and
Speaker 2: Emily and we covered a little bit on Thursday as well.
Speaker 3: This is from the New York Times.
Speaker 2: They say how the counter protesters at UCLA provoked violence
Speaker 2: and unchecked for hours. This in particular was a grievous
Speaker 2: case because you had the like rennecop camps, cops like
Speaker 2: lock themselves into a building and there was basically just
Speaker 2: like full on street violence that was just happening between
Speaker 2: these counter protesters who were like firing fireworks and others
Speaker 2: at the Palestinian encampment, and it happened for a period
Speaker 2: of almost three to four hours in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night. That was you know, fostering all over social media,
Speaker 2: and it took them till six am actually for the
Speaker 2: LAPD to come in. And it's obviously very blatantly hypocritical
Speaker 2: whenever you do look at some of the other police reactions.
Speaker 3: So I on this one, I'll absolutely give it to you.
Speaker 2: It was ridiculous that it even took so long for
Speaker 2: them to come in, and because look, you know, we
Speaker 2: believe in student safety, right, I believe that for all
Speaker 2: the students who are involved. If you got people who
Speaker 2: are coming there looking to start a brawl and then
Speaker 2: get that's part of the most worst things about mob
Speaker 2: violence is that it begets itself and it's you know,
Speaker 2: just keeps a vicious circle.
Speaker 3: And that's basically what happened at UCLA.
Speaker 1: Well, what happened is you had a peaceful encampment that
Speaker 1: was violently attacked and police stood by and let it
Speaker 1: happen for five frickin' hours. Five hours they were violently assaulted.
Speaker 1: LA Times student reporters now the New York Times all
Speaker 1: look at this and say this was entirely one sided,
Speaker 1: that this protest was entirely peaceful. And then these counter protesters,
Speaker 1: who were funded by the way by Bill Ackman and
Speaker 1: Jerry Seinfeld's wife, a bunch of other people came in
Speaker 1: and began assaulting and shooting fire were and sent significant
Speaker 1: numbers the numbers I saw originally to roughly two dozen
Speaker 1: students to the hospital and the police did nothing, nothing.
Speaker 1: And then when they did do something, did they arrest
Speaker 1: the violent people who were assaulting students. I thought we
Speaker 1: cared about student safety. No, they didn't arrest them. No
Speaker 1: arrests were made of the thugs that were violently assaulting
Speaker 1: the peaceful protesters. They got off scott free. No, the
Speaker 1: peaceful protesters got assaulted. So after night number one where
Speaker 1: they're violently beaten by these thugs funded by a billionaire,
Speaker 1: on night number two, the cops came in and did
Speaker 1: the violence themselves, and we're shooting rubber bullets.
Speaker 4: The image of.
Speaker 1: That and the you know, the violence inflicted against these students.
Speaker 1: The injuries from those arrests also quite significant. So it
Speaker 1: is outrageous. And this is the most significant incident of
Speaker 1: violence that we have had.
Speaker 4: It was as I said, entirely.
Speaker 1: And going back to Joe Biden's comments and the comments
Speaker 1: of all these other frickin people, have you condemned that?
Speaker 1: Are you calling for? You know, where's your concern about
Speaker 1: disorder here? Where's your concern about lawlessness here? Absolute silence?
Speaker 1: Where's your concern about Jewish students safety? Because guess what,
Speaker 1: there were many Jewish students in that encampment. Where is
Speaker 1: any of that concern when it's coming from the pro
Speaker 1: Israel Zionist agitator thugs coming into assault students in police
Speaker 1: standing by and letting it happen, and then doing it
Speaker 1: themselves the next day.
Speaker 3: No, I agree, I didn't hear any of that.
Speaker 2: I do think it is very hypocritical, and this is
Speaker 2: part of the issue when we all start taking size
Speaker 2: and we're all going to starting into street gangs, and
Speaker 2: it's like, no, that's not what we want here.
Speaker 3: That's actually the opposite of what I mean.
Speaker 2: If you do care about order and disorder and student safety,
Speaker 2: I actually do care about all those things, just not
Speaker 2: willing to say that words are violence, which is part
Speaker 2: of a segment that we'll get to, and that people
Speaker 2: being snowflakes and saying hearing dangerous chance is up setting. However,
Speaker 2: if you have people who are actually firing fireworks and
Speaker 2: are beating people up and then you allow that to happen, terrible, right,
Speaker 2: absolutely terrible, and you are absolutely correct. You don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of people in media even condemning or even
Speaker 2: frankly commenting on some of the stuff, which is just
Speaker 2: a ten that it doesn't exist, very very common amongst
Speaker 2: a lot of the Israel First crowd. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put this next part up here on the screen. There
Speaker 2: was a let's just say, a troubling incident that broke
Speaker 2: out over at ole Miss University. You had kind of
Speaker 2: frat brothers versus some of these Palestine protesters. Some people
Speaker 2: were saying that they were mocking this woman, this Palestinian protester,
Speaker 2: who is black, and they're calling him a racist. This
Speaker 2: man has already actually been expelled from his fraternity. So
Speaker 2: you've seen outbreak of kind of like fraternity versus Palestinian.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call violence per se, but I guess what
Speaker 2: clashes on campus people screaming at each other kind of
Speaker 2: like that, So I guess this is a former frat boy.
Speaker 2: Let me just say it all my brothers out there,
Speaker 2: don't ruin your life for the sake of you're literally
Speaker 2: getting expelled and trying to go viral on social media.
Speaker 2: I would just advise you not to do that and
Speaker 2: think about your future. As I had talked about previously.
Speaker 4: For poms, can we put that back up on the screen.
Speaker 4: Put that back up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Okay, because what you see here, you got these dudes,
Speaker 1: you know, mocking her, calling her lizzo.
Speaker 4: Right, all of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one thing. Then you have this guy who's
Speaker 1: making monkey noises and pretending like he's an ape at
Speaker 1: a black woman. And what you have here is a
Speaker 1: Republican member of Congress tweeting this video positively and saying,
Speaker 1: ole miss taking care of business.
Speaker 4: So it's not no.
Speaker 1: People weren't saying that they're making no, no, no. You
Speaker 1: have a man making literal monkey noises and gestures at
Speaker 1: a black woman.
Speaker 4: It is as textbook racist as you could possibly get.
Speaker 1: And this Republican member of Congress is like, yes, I
Speaker 1: like this, this.
Speaker 4: Is good for me.
Speaker 2: So I agree that we should call out the Republican congressman.
Speaker 2: But in the same way, Chris, we shouldn't elevate a
Speaker 2: single person from this thing and say that this is who.
Speaker 1: Well, here's why it's important, because when it's a single
Speaker 1: anyone associated with the you know, the ceasefire movement, with
Speaker 1: the anti war movement, then this is representative of the
Speaker 1: whole movement, right, And we have to get a presidential
Speaker 1: to create multiple presidential statements in a press conference about
Speaker 1: how they're vile anti semites. But when you have like
Speaker 1: the most racist shit imaginable, well that's just the one.
Speaker 2: That's one God, that's just a one off. The rest
Speaker 2: of the guys are there and they're just shouting out
Speaker 2: and that's fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 2: So mart I would say, is I think unfortunately there's
Speaker 2: been a bit of left hypocrisy here where everybody's like, no, see,
Speaker 2: like all these kids are racist.
Speaker 3: No. Here's what happened at UNC.
Speaker 2: Those Palestin protesters took down an American flag stupid idea,
Speaker 2: by the way, and then a bunch of UNC frappros
Speaker 2: surrounded and defended the American flag while they were pelted
Speaker 2: with trash. Again, explicitly aligning yourself against the US flag
Speaker 2: wouldn't advise it in the United States. Those people went
Speaker 2: viral and basically from then on, all frat brothers around
Speaker 2: the country are like, okay, we got to get involved
Speaker 2: in this. So again I would say to my brothers
Speaker 2: out there, please don't do this. Do not engage in
Speaker 2: racist mocking of protesters, because it's not going to work
Speaker 2: out well for you, as it worked out in this instance.
Speaker 2: But I do think it's important to say that just
Speaker 2: because one guy did it doesn't mean that all of
Speaker 2: them are racists for coming up and for shouting against them,
Speaker 2: and I don't I have seen, unfortunately, a lot of
Speaker 2: people use the same tactics, which I don't think is
Speaker 2: fair because it'd be like saying that all of that,
Speaker 2: all of the campus protesters are anti Semites because one
Speaker 2: guy who like barely even goes there said something about Jews,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, you know, that's not really what
Speaker 2: it's all about.
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to put that out there. So
Speaker 3: I don't think it's fair.
Speaker 4: But I think that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of hypocrisy on the
Speaker 1: other side, where As I said, one incident can be
Speaker 1: used to tar an entire movement as anti Semitic, whereas
Speaker 1: here this is not even acknowledged, and actually, to the
Speaker 1: extent it was acknowledged, it was celebrated, and the governor
Speaker 1: of the state also, you know, celebrating and lauding, saying
Speaker 1: warm is heart these individuals at ole miss. So fine,
Speaker 1: let's be fair minded and focus on what one side
Speaker 1: stands for and what the other side stands for. One
Speaker 1: side stands for stopping a genocide, the other side stands
Speaker 1: for stopping the kid.
Speaker 3: We're just pissed off because people have taken over what
Speaker 3: is the what's.
Speaker 4: Their movement about?
Speaker 2: What is their.
Speaker 1: Movement is about? But they're not continue slaughtering children. That's
Speaker 1: what the conflict is about. And so yeah, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. To focus on who are they and are
Speaker 1: they racist, what are they saying whatever, is to miss
Speaker 1: the point of what these protests and counter protests are about.
Speaker 1: The protests are about, let's stop a genocide. The counter
Speaker 1: protests are about let's continuing. So yes, okay, we let's
Speaker 1: have that conversation. I don't this is all a distraction
Speaker 1: from the real issue that these kids are out there
Speaker 1: protesting about.
Speaker 2: Well, we will have our real discussion, absolutely, But I'm
Speaker 2: saying I don't think it's fair to say that people
Speaker 2: who are annoyed about protesters are coming on their campus
Speaker 2: and who are screaming and shouting and are basically like
Speaker 2: going out there to mock them, like hey, please get
Speaker 2: out of here because we don't necessarily agree with you.
Speaker 2: I don't think that means that they're pro genocide. In fact,
Speaker 2: I didn't even see a single as really flag amongst
Speaker 2: a single one of those guys. I, like I said,
Speaker 2: it was a huge mistake for those unc idiots to
Speaker 2: take down the American flag.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they had to do it, but
Speaker 3: they decided to do it.
Speaker 2: And it's like, if you want to put yourself against America,
Speaker 2: you are going to get a lot of people who are.
Speaker 3: Coming out there.
Speaker 4: Why do such vitriol. There's a vitriol towards people.
Speaker 1: Who you know, took down a flag, but so much
Speaker 1: less to this man making monkey noises of a black woman,
Speaker 1: and you want to excuse him, and you want to
Speaker 1: call that an.
Speaker 2: Idiot using him. I think I said he was an idiot.
Speaker 2: I only because you're ruined your life for that. I
Speaker 2: absolutely don't condone what he did. What I'm saying, look,
Speaker 2: it's also about convincing people taking down the flag of
Speaker 2: your country in your own country is a dumb idea.
Speaker 2: I think it was huge, it was a backlash. There's
Speaker 2: a reason that it all went viral. I don't have
Speaker 2: vitriol for anybody. In fact, I'm just trying to analyze
Speaker 2: it in terms of like which one is going to
Speaker 2: be more popular. But I'm not in the business just
Speaker 2: as I'm not in the business of smearing counter or protesters,
Speaker 2: as tysmitic as a bunch of frat kids as racist,
Speaker 2: because I've seen this happen. You know, I was in
Speaker 2: a fraternity everybody know, a pro sexual assault and other
Speaker 2: so the bullshit, And I see a lot of the
Speaker 2: media basically participating and trying to cancel or use the
Speaker 2: same tactics that I think Phyzionists are using as the
Speaker 2: counter protesters, and I don't think that's appropriate. More, what
Speaker 2: I'm saying is that I don't look, I mean, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, I don't really believe in
Speaker 2: terms of that these guys are pro genocide. I think
Speaker 2: that they're participating in a social movement where for a
Speaker 2: lot of people in this country it is annoying to
Speaker 2: have this happen, and so they're coming out and they're
Speaker 2: like yelling, and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong
Speaker 2: with that. You can think that one side is more
Speaker 2: moral if you'd like, but for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: they either don't care or they're you know, they think
Speaker 2: this is something, this is worth to come out and
Speaker 2: just like make fun of people, which again is a
Speaker 2: fundamental American right.
Speaker 1: Look, I support their right to be assholes. That's part
Speaker 1: of what the First Amendment is but I think we
Speaker 1: should stay focused on what the actual issue is that
Speaker 1: is being protested. And sorry, I don't think one side
Speaker 1: is more moral than the other, one side is more
Speaker 1: moral than the other.
Speaker 4: I don't think that it could be.
Speaker 1: There could be an issue that is more clear cut
Speaker 1: at this point, when you have so many children slaughtered,
Speaker 1: you have We're going to cover this in the Israel segment.
Speaker 1: Every single child in Rafa right now is either malnourished, sick.
Speaker 4: Or injured.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, there is a morality gap between the
Speaker 1: two sides, and I agree with you. It's not fair
Speaker 1: to take one individual and say this is reflective of
Speaker 1: an entire movement. But that is what's been done to
Speaker 1: the pro Palestinian students. And suddenly when it's these kids,
Speaker 1: or when it's the UCLA counter protesters, who were the
Speaker 1: ones who are one hundred percent violent, that's just it's
Speaker 1: either completely erased or they're actively celebrated.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm upsetting.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you.
Speaker 2: And look, I mean we can't we can't control with
Speaker 2: the rest of the media does. We can only try
Speaker 2: and you know, cover it the way that we can
Speaker 2: here and I don't think, you know, we're trying to
Speaker 2: erase any horrors or any of the others. We have
Speaker 2: plenty of stuff about that in our shown. I do
Speaker 2: think if you were on the Palestinian side, you should
Speaker 2: be upset about the way that the media has treated you,
Speaker 2: specifically MSNBC and so called like fellow travelers, I'm with you.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I was on this side'd be furious
Speaker 2: about the way that they covered BLM or others. I'm
Speaker 2: only saying, well, it's not to send, you know, fight
Speaker 2: fire with fire or any of that, because I don't
Speaker 2: think it will get us to a particularly good place
Speaker 2: and if anything, history shows you will probably backfire. So
Speaker 2: I think that's a decent enough lesson. Let's go to
Speaker 2: the next part here, when we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: the campus protesters themselves. It's time to save some of
Speaker 2: our fire for the snowflakes on campus. And the snowflakes,
Speaker 2: it seems, have taken to Fox News, once the place
Speaker 2: where they would make fun of snowflakes and people who
Speaker 2: were against violent words, and there was no such thing
Speaker 2: as hate speech and safe spaces and all of that.
Speaker 2: Now they have convened a panel of a bunch of
Speaker 2: people who are saying that they feel unsafe, that actually
Speaker 2: hate speech is not free speech.
Speaker 3: So let's take a listen to that. I think that
Speaker 3: one of the.
Speaker 9: Main issues is just the way that speech is being promoted,
Speaker 9: because although I do believe that free speech should be
Speaker 9: allowed of course in America, I think that a lot
Speaker 9: of this speech is not being is not actual free
Speaker 9: speech and should not be classified as such. And I
Speaker 9: think that there's also something to be said about the
Speaker 9: lack of speech. That Jewish students are being silenced. We
Speaker 9: aren't allowed to talk, we aren't allowed to speak. I
Speaker 9: walk past these protests and I'm scared I can't say
Speaker 9: anything to them.
Speaker 10: I just want to say something that's been incredibly frustrating
Speaker 10: in my eyes, and I'm sure a lot of them
Speaker 10: will agree. There are these token Jews, that's what I
Speaker 10: like to call him, who basically renounced their Judaism, don't
Speaker 10: associate with Judaism in the slightest bit, even to me.
Speaker 3: They've renounced their Judaism.
Speaker 10: I was at a tabling event earlier this year for
Speaker 10: mis Rockley Heritage Month, and this kid who's like the
Speaker 10: prominent face of JVP told me I renounced my Juju
Speaker 10: JAVP Jewish Voices for Peace got it anyway, So he
Speaker 10: told me himself that he renounces his Judaism.
Speaker 3: But then you know, the second CNN comes.
Speaker 10: He puts on a tallest he puts on his kipa
Speaker 10: and he sits in the middle of the kill and
Speaker 10: leaves a satyr. And was really frustrating there is that
Speaker 10: there are guys like Mark Ruffalo from the outside, who
Speaker 10: are you know, hopping in from their high horse saying
Speaker 10: there's no anti semitism, Mark Rofflo. I understand that you're famous,
Speaker 10: but you're not on campus. Also there's Professor Howley, the
Speaker 10: Jewish professor who I've never seen associate with Jewish community
Speaker 10: once come in and say they're teaching about anti Semitism here,
Speaker 10: so clearly there's no antisemitism. While Professor Holly, the same
Speaker 10: kids who are teaching about anti Semitism are also the
Speaker 10: modern day Nazis. They're the ones saying, what's globalizing, it's
Speaker 10: a fault it, let's target Jews. They're the ones who
Speaker 10: are encouraging harassment against Jews. So is really frustrating when
Speaker 10: these token Jews step in act like they understand what's
Speaker 10: happening and then kind of make it as if were
Speaker 10: weaponizing anti Semitism, So.
Speaker 3: What's anti semitic?
Speaker 2: Saying token Jews because Jews aren't acting like Jews that
Speaker 2: you should like, you're basically defining Judaism for everybody else.
Speaker 2: I would never dream of doing that for somebody who
Speaker 2: is Indian American or trying to define that for others.
Speaker 2: And then my personal favorite is that she feels unsafe
Speaker 2: because she quote can't she doesn't even try to speak
Speaker 2: to the count to the protesters.
Speaker 3: Right whenever he DA's on our campus.
Speaker 2: And apparently that means that hate speech is actually not
Speaker 2: free speech.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're right back to where we started. This
Speaker 3: is war on.
Speaker 2: Terror crap, you know this is this might as well
Speaker 2: be Fox News in two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: It's like we're basically right back to where we were.
Speaker 1: It's actually more unhinged War onto it is because think
Speaker 1: about Okay, so Fox News, this is not a one off,
Speaker 1: like they're just constantly bringing on these college kids to.
Speaker 4: Well, I need my safe space and I'm.
Speaker 1: Words are violence and all the stuff that they mocked
Speaker 1: right just justly in my opinion that they mocked like
Speaker 1: you know, overly woke college students for in the past.
Speaker 1: Now suddenly, oh they're all in on the freaking safe
Speaker 1: spaces and words are violence.
Speaker 4: That's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, that dude so anti semitic to think you
Speaker 1: get to define who's a real Jew and who's.
Speaker 4: A quote unquote token Jew.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I'm glad he said it, because
Speaker 1: this is exactly the line of thinking that's used to
Speaker 1: dismiss Jewish voices for peace and the other Jewish pro testers.
Speaker 1: Usually it's done more quietly. This kid comes out and
Speaker 1: says it, Basically, if you don't support Israel in the
Speaker 1: way I think you should, you're not a real Jew.
Speaker 1: And that's the way that Benjamin Netanyahu thinks about it,
Speaker 1: that's the way that many of the sort of like
Speaker 1: hardcore zion Is, that's the way they view it. And
Speaker 1: to conflate Jewish identity with one particular nation state that's
Speaker 1: actually in the definition of anti semitism.
Speaker 4: That just cut combine.
Speaker 1: So to my point about how this is more insane
Speaker 1: than the war on Terror, you not only have this
Speaker 1: media totally manufactured outrage, panic free count etc. Complete with
Speaker 1: presidential statements and members of Congress calling for the FBI
Speaker 1: to get involved. I mean, they're not even doing covertly anymore.
Speaker 1: They're just like blatantly calling for the FBI to infiltrate
Speaker 1: these protests. And then you have multiple pieces of legislation
Speaker 1: that are passing that are codifying anti semitism as basically
Speaker 1: you can't criticisize Israel and you have a TikTok ban,
Speaker 1: which Soccer and I disagree about whether or not there
Speaker 1: should be a TikTok ban, but we do not agree
Speaker 1: on the fact that it was one hundred percent sparked
Speaker 1: at this time by this panic freak out manufactured crisis
Speaker 1: over anti semitism. In fact, Romney was just talking to
Speaker 1: Tony Blincoln and so the same crap. I mean a minute,
Speaker 1: it's straight out we have to think about that. We
Speaker 1: have to ban an entire your social media platform because
Speaker 1: we don't like the information that these kids have access
Speaker 1: to there, and we don't like the things that are
Speaker 1: being said there.
Speaker 4: We didn't even in the height of the War.
Speaker 1: On Terror, we didn't get to that level of censorship insanity.
Speaker 1: Now we're banning entire social media platforms. And Romney even
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate like that might not be the only one,
Speaker 1: because we saw in our poll the numbers are wildly
Speaker 1: different in terms of how people view this conflict depending
Speaker 1: on whether they're social media news consumers, podcast news consumers,
Speaker 1: or cable news. Cable news viewers, they're the ones that
Speaker 1: maybe need to be shut down. They're the ones being
Speaker 1: brain with all this fake anti semitism stories.
Speaker 2: Now are you starting to speak my language, Perystal? Now,
Speaker 2: now we're starting to actually get somewhere. Let's ban cable
Speaker 2: news for the good of the country, speaking of war
Speaker 2: on terror idiocy.
Speaker 3: Here we have the the NYPD has really found its roots, Crystal.
Speaker 2: We're right back to the two thousand and two panics
Speaker 2: as well. Here you have an officer who holds up
Speaker 2: a book on terrorism and is like.
Speaker 3: This is what was found amongst the protests. Let's take
Speaker 3: a lesson. Somebody's behind this, somebody's funding this. There's probably
Speaker 3: bigger in New York City. Bigger in New York City.
Speaker 3: Police devombit. We got to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 12: So it sounds like what you're saying is this raises
Speaker 12: your level of alert even higher here in New York City.
Speaker 12: But this could mean that as you said, it's a
Speaker 12: national issue that then could involve potentially the FBI and
Speaker 12: CIA really trying to track down, as you said, who's
Speaker 12: funding this.
Speaker 11: Let's talk about Columbia, Let's talk about Hamilton Whole right,
Speaker 11: a book on terrorism. Wow, And I've said it before
Speaker 11: that there's somebody, whether it's paid not paid, but they
Speaker 11: are radicalizing our students.
Speaker 2: Christal as a recipient of a National security master's degree
Speaker 2: from Georgetown, I hope the FBI never raids my house
Speaker 2: because I have a lot more in s indiar shit
Speaker 2: than that. Do you know why, Because that's what we
Speaker 2: studied in school. The school is called terrorism. A very
Speaker 2: short introduction by Charles Townsend. The book is quote a
Speaker 2: very short series introduction from the Oxford University Press that
Speaker 2: contains hundreds of titles in every subject area and as
Speaker 2: they put it here, discusses the emergence of ISIS and
Speaker 2: an upsurgeon individual suicide action explores the issues involved in
Speaker 2: a proportionate response to the threat they present, particularly by
Speaker 2: liberal democratic societies. This is basically, you know what, you
Speaker 2: know why the book was probably there because somebody who
Speaker 2: was studying first school for.
Speaker 4: Going on right now, it's like we.
Speaker 3: Can you know, have a what is happening here?
Speaker 2: This is that is quite for those who are too young,
Speaker 2: and there's a decent chunk of our audience who was
Speaker 2: actually too young to remember what a lot of this
Speaker 2: like this is. I was coming of the age, like
Speaker 2: beginning to watch the news. This is what I most
Speaker 2: remember about the War on Terror era. It was like
Speaker 2: they found one book in there, or one guy tweeted
Speaker 2: one bad thing, and that's why he's doing twenty five
Speaker 2: to life, you know, in a federal prison today because
Speaker 2: the FBI entrapped and ensnared him. Like we're on that
Speaker 2: level of type of craziness, and they basically we've been
Speaker 2: talking a lot about the sixties.
Speaker 3: I've in talking about some of the backlash.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that we don't study enough
Speaker 2: is the full on police state infiltration of a lot
Speaker 2: of these leftists, which is probably one of the most
Speaker 2: insane anti First Amendment things that has happened in the
Speaker 2: history of this country. It seems like they want to
Speaker 2: recreate it. This is like McCarthyism two point zero, except
Speaker 2: there's zero here as opposed to like ten percent here.
Speaker 4: It's it's just insane.
Speaker 1: It's like a freaking textbook intellectual history of an understanding.
Speaker 1: Like you said, someone was probably using it to study
Speaker 1: for their class, just like the remember the chain they brought.
Speaker 4: All these are the tools of professional agitators. It's a
Speaker 4: bike lock. Okay, guess what.
Speaker 1: There are textbooks and bikelocks on a college campus. You
Speaker 1: don't have to get the counter terror unit involved. And
Speaker 1: I just I can lose in my mind over this
Speaker 1: because it actually reminded me of at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this whole post October seventh conversation, remember when the bin
Speaker 1: laden letter oh yes was going viral on TikTok, and
Speaker 1: there was a whole thing about that too, like god
Speaker 1: forbid that people read some like relevant historical document and
Speaker 1: have a different idea.
Speaker 4: But like it was that level panic.
Speaker 1: But this is even more insane because it's literally one
Speaker 1: book found in one place. It also reminded me of
Speaker 1: remember there were a number of instances where the IDF
Speaker 1: would go in and claim like we found a copy
Speaker 1: of Mind Come for Whatever in some house somewhere in Gaza,
Speaker 1: or some other material that they claimed was really malicious, etc.
Speaker 1: It's you know, people still read mindkomfy the way for
Speaker 1: historical perspectives as part of being a literate intellectual who
Speaker 1: understands history. Just like you know, we watch Russian propaganda
Speaker 1: sometimes you understand that they like anyway, that's that's what
Speaker 1: we're talking about about here and New York City too.
Speaker 1: We can go back to a five because this just
Speaker 1: shows you the level of the like, you know, monsters,
Speaker 1: rhetoric and total freak out here. This is a councilwoman
Speaker 1: in New York City who says the NYPD confirms that
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of arrests at NYU were in dude students,
Speaker 1: not outside agitators, which was very inconvenient for their narrative
Speaker 1: by the way. They were going hard on the outside
Speaker 1: agitators thing. So she goes, continues, the sad reality is
Speaker 1: that our schools are producing monsters and it's now our
Speaker 1: job to slay them. Simple as that producing monsters and
Speaker 1: that's now our job to slay them. So you know,
Speaker 1: words aren't literal violence. But I would ask you which
Speaker 1: whose words are more important? Those of you know, some
Speaker 1: random student at Columbia University or you know, a politician
Speaker 1: and a position of power who's saying that we need
Speaker 1: to slay our college kids because they're monsters like it's
Speaker 1: just and based again on like some terrorism textbook or
Speaker 1: a bikelock or whatever that was about.
Speaker 2: And finally, in terms of our war on Terrort series,
Speaker 2: here we have Alan Dershowitz back.
Speaker 3: He's fully back this time, guys.
Speaker 2: He has now started a new organization to launch quote
Speaker 2: massive offensive lawfair against anybody who they deem being anti Semitic.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 13: We are going to be engaging in massive defensive and
Speaker 13: offensive lawfair against biggots, anti Semites and potential violent terrorists.
Speaker 3: We're going to take many, many kinds of legal actions.
Speaker 14: We're starting a group called her did Jew We Sue you,
Speaker 14: in which if you send us the name of a
Speaker 14: Jewish kid, it could be a Christian Zionist too, who
Speaker 14: was hurt by one of these big We will sue them,
Speaker 14: and we will get their dorm rooms taken away, and
Speaker 14: we will take their cars in their boomboxes, and we'll
Speaker 14: bankrupt them. We will do whatever is necessary under the
Speaker 14: law in order to bring these lawsuits, bring them successfully
Speaker 14: and deter October seventh.
Speaker 13: Remember there are people out there who have promised they
Speaker 13: will bring ten thousand October seventh, that's genocide. Ten thousand
Speaker 13: October sevens is the end of the Jewish people.
Speaker 3: That's genocide.
Speaker 2: That's Hitler in a sign that it is definitely two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, Alan still thinks that young people have boomboxes, Crystal.
Speaker 3: Apparently, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: That Jeffrey Epstein's close associate has weighed into the conversation here,
Speaker 1: very telling moment when he says, like, if you've been
Speaker 1: if you're a Jew has been.
Speaker 4: Hurt by one of these bigots.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, Christian Zionists would be fine too,
Speaker 1: because guess what. I could refer you to some Jews
Speaker 1: who were hurt by aggressive agitators at UCLA, but they're
Speaker 1: not Zionists, so you don't care. You don't care about
Speaker 1: those particular Jewish people. You probably think like that, you know,
Speaker 1: do that they interviewed on Fox News their quote unquote
Speaker 1: token Jews because they aren't Zionists and so in your
Speaker 1: mind they don't count. And it's listen, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to say about this, but the idea of
Speaker 1: aggressively weaponizing the law against college students for you know,
Speaker 1: your own political purposes, and just that you feel open
Speaker 1: to admit that outly allowed is pretty disgusting, not to
Speaker 1: mention his own questionable past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good point. Last thing that we had to put
Speaker 2: in here. Actually, I'm curious what you think about this.
Speaker 2: I'll put this up there on the screen. This is
Speaker 2: from the Washington Post. They say university endowments show a
Speaker 2: few signs of direct Israel and defense holdings.
Speaker 3: But he has an idea.
Speaker 2: This gentleman who wrote this column, Todd Frankly says student
Speaker 2: protesters could try a different tactic, one that does not
Speaker 2: seem to have found any traction amid these volig demands.
Speaker 2: They could instead become investors in defense contractors or other
Speaker 2: companies that they want to influence. That would then allow
Speaker 2: them to become activist investors and push for the changes
Speaker 2: that they want to see from the inside.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 2: Marciano said, So, I know he was being dunked on.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a.
Speaker 3: Terrible idea, Sager. No, I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: Because that's basically what divestment is, is that they're asking
Speaker 2: their school endowments to act quote unquote as active investors
Speaker 2: and to divest from these defense contracting companies by becoming
Speaker 2: an investor you would get an active say in company,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: How much money you had to invest in stocks when
Speaker 1: you were a college student. But it doesn't I doubt
Speaker 1: that it's going to match the like multiple billion dollar
Speaker 1: investments the stock set.
Speaker 4: Glad to mention the idea.
Speaker 1: Of like we're gonna instead of divestment, we're actually going
Speaker 1: to invest. We're going to like bolster the stock of
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin or Boeing or whatever.
Speaker 3: What's the most not a bad investment.
Speaker 1: It's the most neoliberal idea I have ever heard of,
Speaker 1: not to mention being one of the stupidest ideas I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of, because again, we're not talking about Bill
Speaker 1: Ackman here.
Speaker 4: We're talking about like, you know, Susie.
Speaker 1: Who can barely afford her meal plan, or like is struggling.
Speaker 2: To be looking up the market cap. Yeah, so market
Speaker 2: cap of Lockied Martin is one hundred and ten billions.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they'll be really.
Speaker 1: Difficulty, They'll be able to really make a dent. They'll
Speaker 1: be able with their activists investing to you know, make
Speaker 1: sure that Lockied Martin does their bidding just the most rate.
Speaker 3: Theeon market cap is one hundred and thirty four billions.
Speaker 4: It's one thing for it's one thing for someone to have.
Speaker 1: A stupid idea, okay, but then for the Washington Post
Speaker 1: to publish this is like, hey, here's something to think about.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just like throw your weight around in
Speaker 1: the in the stock market and see how that years
Speaker 1: are Instead of having all this disruption, which is so uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: why don't you just play with money like all the
Speaker 1: people on Wall Street.
Speaker 2: I'll defend the students there in that in that because
Speaker 2: their universities have become hedge funds, you know, pressuring their
Speaker 2: hedge funds with actual power to make an investment, it's
Speaker 2: not a bad idea. Part of the thing is that,
Speaker 2: for example, in Texas and a couple of other states,
Speaker 2: they've actually passed laws that either force or will go after.
Speaker 3: Companies that invest in ESG.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons that they're able to throw
Speaker 2: their weight around is not through the states banks. It's
Speaker 2: through the endowments, like for the University of Texas or
Speaker 2: the University of Texas, A and M and love.
Speaker 3: I think it's Texas Tech as well.
Speaker 2: Now, by the way, I don't think any of these
Speaker 2: dowment should evening exists period. But if they are going
Speaker 2: to exist, you might as well pressure them in order
Speaker 2: to do something.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is part of what these students have
Speaker 1: exposed is the way that these universities are like hedge
Speaker 1: funds first.
Speaker 4: It's true, before educational institution and trying to say.
Speaker 3: You have to ask us out.
Speaker 1: Because there are a few places that have said okay,
Speaker 1: not even some of them. It wasn't even will divest,
Speaker 1: it was we'll have a vote on it. And guess
Speaker 1: what the students were like, Okay, that's that's sufficient. We'll
Speaker 1: accept that and we'll you know, we'll disband, we'll like
Speaker 1: dismantle our protests whatever. You don't have to call in
Speaker 1: the cops. You just have to actually negotiate in good
Speaker 1: faith with them. And there are a few places that
Speaker 1: took steps towards divestment because you have to ask yourself, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's Columbia University. I'm sure this president of
Speaker 1: Columbia is not enjoying this. Why are these investment in
Speaker 1: Lockey Martin.
Speaker 3: Or what like?
Speaker 4: Why are they so dear to.
Speaker 1: You that that's completely off the table to even consider,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider the fact there was a vote
Speaker 1: at Columbia Barnard and the students are overwhelmingly in favor
Speaker 1: of divestment. So student body is overwhelming favorite, the faculty
Speaker 1: is overwhelmingly in favor of it. So it's not like
Speaker 1: you're capitulating to this very small liver minority demand. It's
Speaker 1: like very broadly supported. So when you look at this,
Speaker 1: you're like, why is this so important to you that
Speaker 1: you're willing to die on this hill.
Speaker 3: That's because of all the donors who donate to university,
Speaker 3: the students.
Speaker 4: Students, Robert Kraft.
Speaker 2: Robert Kraft is the actual guy who runs that university.
Speaker 2: I also looked it up. It makes sense, Brown's Universities
Speaker 2: and dowmin It's only six.
Speaker 3: Point six billion. It's like nothing. You know, Colombia is
Speaker 3: like almost fifteen.
Speaker 1: Billis and Brown is the one that said they'd have
Speaker 1: a vote on divestment. And the other schools that I
Speaker 1: saw that were willing to negotiate were by and large
Speaker 1: like smaller schools.
Speaker 2: For example, University of Texas Austin ten point eight billion.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, Harvard University. Harvard University's endowment is
Speaker 2: larger than the GDP of many small African nations. That
Speaker 2: is the level of insanity that we currently live in,
Speaker 2: and that's why we need an endowment tax.
Speaker 4: So other things you could invest in, you know, there's
Speaker 4: lots of others.
Speaker 2: One thing you could invest in your students so they
Speaker 2: don't have to pay eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: How about that?
Speaker 3: But that's not possible.
Speaker 2: How about that Columbia. Actually I did a whole monologue
Speaker 2: on this back in the day. Princeton University just on
Speaker 2: the like four percent withdrawal rule could pay tuition for
Speaker 2: every single student that they have, just on the interest
Speaker 2: of the capital that they already have in their endowment,
Speaker 2: except they continue to increase tuition. So they're criminals in
Speaker 2: a different regard to And I wish that this would
Speaker 2: spark a conversation about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, let's move on to the very
Speaker 1: latest out of Israel because we have some big breaking
Speaker 1: news this morning. So we have some very grim news
Speaker 1: to report out of Israeli Gaza strip this morning.
Speaker 4: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Evacuation orders have been issued for over one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Palestinians in Rafa. Bombing of Rafa, which had already begun
Speaker 1: in a sort of sporadic manner seemed to escalate as well.
Speaker 1: Let me read you a little bit of this from
Speaker 1: Reuter's headline, is Israel begins evacuating part of Rafa Hamas
Speaker 1: to CRY's dangerous escalation. Israel's military carried out airstrikes on Monday,
Speaker 1: residents said, hours after they told Palestinians to evacuate parts
Speaker 1: of the southern Gaza city, where more than a million
Speaker 1: people uprooted by the war have been sheltering. Fears are
Speaker 1: growing of a full blown assault in Rafa, long threatened
Speaker 1: by Israel against holdowns of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Speaker 1: As ceasefire talks in Cairo stall, instructed by Arabic text messages,
Speaker 1: phone calls and flyers to move to what the Israeli
Speaker 1: military called an expanded humanitarian zone about seven miles away.
Speaker 1: Some Palestinian families began trundling away under Chili spring rain.
Speaker 1: Some piled children in possessions onto donkey carts, others left
Speaker 1: by pickup or on foot through muddy streets. One refugee
Speaker 1: Abu Raid told Reuters via a chat app quote, it
Speaker 1: has been raining heavily.
Speaker 4: We don't know where to go. I've been worried that
Speaker 4: this day may come.
Speaker 1: And as a reference before, there was an overnight aerial
Speaker 1: assault on Rafa. Israeli planes hit around ten houses, killing
Speaker 1: somewhere around twenty people and wounding several more according to
Speaker 1: medical officials.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot to say about this.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, keep in mind Rafa, why
Speaker 1: is it so significant? You have over a million people
Speaker 1: who have been already forcibly displaced, who are sheltering there
Speaker 1: right up along the border with Egypt. The US has
Speaker 1: been warning against a Rafa invasion because the results are
Speaker 1: inevitably going to be catastrophic on a humanitarian level. So
Speaker 1: the fact that you now have more than one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people who are being once again forcibly displaced, some people,
Speaker 1: some of these individuals will this will be their third
Speaker 1: fourth displacement at this point, it indicates that that long
Speaker 1: feared Rafa invasion is set to begin. And as I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, you also already have air strikes occurring. So Sager,
Speaker 1: it's a very it's a very dire situation that we're
Speaker 1: watching unfold this morning.
Speaker 3: It's going to be major geopolitical developments. Everybody, brace yourselves.
Speaker 2: What we're seeing here is that the evacuation notice delivered
Speaker 2: by text messages, phone calls, flyers broadcasts in Arabic. That's
Speaker 2: almost usual. That's actually what the IDF IS bragged about
Speaker 2: in the past. We're the most more alarming because we
Speaker 2: warned people before we're coming in there, so previously we knew.
Speaker 2: There are one million Palestinians currently sheltering in Rafa, the
Speaker 2: only city which hasn't been subject to the ground invasion.
Speaker 2: The unfortunate thing, Crystal is that the area which they're
Speaker 2: being told to move to has apparently already been overcrowded
Speaker 2: with tents. There's also a major question as to whether
Speaker 2: a military age men are going to be allowed to leave.
Speaker 2: Previously we've brought in everybody the report that they were not.
Speaker 2: But this puts the Israel on a major standoff with
Speaker 2: the United States, which has been telling them that they
Speaker 2: do not desire this. And it also is a major
Speaker 2: dip somatic failure for Joe Biden. I mean, because at
Speaker 2: a certain point, you know, you if you were going
Speaker 2: to say, what for the last three months, we don't
Speaker 2: want to see a rapha invasion, and then it happens anyway,
Speaker 2: and you have exerted the full might of your superpower
Speaker 2: to prevent that, then you just look like an idiot.
Speaker 2: And that's really a lot of what we're seeing right here,
Speaker 2: although there may be some policy developments, and I'm curious
Speaker 2: to hear what you think about this AML thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put this up on the screen, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it is really clear. I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to make clear we didn't use the full might
Speaker 1: of our superpower status. We use some you know, rhetorical
Speaker 1: public warnings, allegedly, some tough conversations.
Speaker 4: We now have.
Speaker 1: This report that I don't know if I believe that
Speaker 1: claims the US put a hold on an ammunition shipment
Speaker 1: to Israel. The Israelis were concerned because it's the first
Speaker 1: time since October seventy the US had stopped a weapon
Speaker 1: shipment intended for the Israeli military. The Biden administration, according
Speaker 1: to two Israeli officials, put a whole on a shipment
Speaker 1: of US made ammo. So it's not saying it's not
Speaker 1: going there, claiming that there's a hold on it. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true or not, but according
Speaker 1: to this report, every serious concerns inside the Israeli government
Speaker 1: set official scrambling to understand why the shipment was held,
Speaker 1: and they put it in the context of this concern
Speaker 1: over Rafa invasion from the Biden administration. You had US
Speaker 1: Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln visiting Israel last week and
Speaker 1: having a tough conversation with net Nyaho regarding a possible
Speaker 1: Israeli operation in Rafa. Blincn told Net Yahoo that a
Speaker 1: major military operation would lead to the US publicly opposing
Speaker 1: it and would negatively impact US Israel relations. A day later,
Speaker 1: John Kirby, White House spokesman, told reporters that Israeli leaders
Speaker 1: understand President Biden is sincere when he talks about the
Speaker 1: possibility of changes to US policy regarding the God's War
Speaker 1: should they move ahead with a ground operation in Rafa
Speaker 1: that doesn't take into account the Refugee's National Security Advisor
Speaker 1: Jake Sullivan also said a Financial Times conference on Saturday,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration made clear to Israel the way it
Speaker 1: will conduct an operation in Rafa will influence US policy
Speaker 1: towards the Gaza War. So what you hear in all
Speaker 1: of that is no firm threats. There's if we don't
Speaker 1: like the It's not even like you can't do a
Speaker 1: ground invasion of Rafa. It's if you conduct it in
Speaker 1: a way that we don't like, that doesn't at least
Speaker 1: give us some kind of ass covering because we're under
Speaker 1: a lot of political pressure here at home, then maybe
Speaker 1: we might possibly in some unspecified way, change our policy
Speaker 1: visa VI Israel. And I think, you know, BB is
Speaker 1: basically calling the bluff because many other times there have
Speaker 1: been concerns raised about this or that in tough conversations
Speaker 1: that were happening, and Israel did whatever the hell they
Speaker 1: wanted and there was absolutely no price to pay. So
Speaker 1: I think there once again betting that is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen again.
Speaker 2: The alternative explanation I want to put forward is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of ammunition exp's out there who don't even
Speaker 2: think this had anything to do with Israel. They just
Speaker 2: think that they probably had to send the AMMO to
Speaker 2: Ukraine because Ukraine is so hard up for ammunition.
Speaker 15: Right now.
Speaker 3: Just shows us also that it's a choice to supply both.
Speaker 2: Of these nations not particularly important to us, and all
Speaker 2: of these wars for what purpose exactly. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put the next one up there on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is important to highlight. They say that Israeli officials confirmed
Speaker 2: that the US had told Israel that any uncoordinated operation
Speaker 2: would lead to delays in weaponshipments and possible restrictions on
Speaker 2: US US weapons significant This is from an Israeli media report. Again,
Speaker 2: it's a hypothetical and the one of the reasons I
Speaker 2: don't necessarily believe it given the fact that these AMMO
Speaker 2: might have been held.
Speaker 3: For Ukraine purposes.
Speaker 2: Is Biden is on tape saying that there are no
Speaker 2: conditions whenever it comes to Israel. So then why would
Speaker 2: he now all of a sudden just decide to put
Speaker 2: it in practice, Like there's no real military Let's be honest,
Speaker 2: no actual difference between the military's conduct in Rafa or
Speaker 2: will be so far from the previous execute of the war.
Speaker 2: So what makes this particular one so much worse? Like
Speaker 2: if you've stuck with them throughout all of this, Like
Speaker 2: if we're going to draw lines, we should have drawn
Speaker 2: it a long time ago, or we should have set
Speaker 2: very clear diplomatic standoff, or like if this goes on,
Speaker 2: you will lose aid. There will be a major political
Speaker 2: reaction here in the United States. We will allow X
Speaker 2: Y and Z to go through, you know, at the
Speaker 2: United Nations. But very clearly Beebe does not believe. He
Speaker 2: either believes that's not going to happen, or he believes
Speaker 2: if it does happen, he'll be totally fine. And I
Speaker 2: think he's right, you know, in both respects.
Speaker 4: I think he's right too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's no track record of them actually paying
Speaker 1: a price, with Joe Biden for any of their actions,
Speaker 1: including you know, murdering an American aid worker, there were
Speaker 1: no consequences to that.
Speaker 4: There haven't been any real consequences for.
Speaker 1: Anything that Israel has done, whether it's dropping two thousand
Speaker 1: pound bombs on refugee camps, you know, destroying the entire
Speaker 1: medical system, completely annihilating most of Gaza, there have been
Speaker 1: no consequences. So of course he's pretty justified in thinking
Speaker 1: there's not going to be a consequence for this either.
Speaker 1: It's just more empty words. I think that is likely
Speaker 1: a very safe bet. Just to back up a little
Speaker 1: bit and give a little bit more of the context here,
Speaker 1: this new apparent development with regard to RAFFA and the
Speaker 1: evacuation or an apparent imminent ground invasion, and you know,
Speaker 1: increased already airstrikes on Rafa. This comes immediately after those
Speaker 1: ceasefire talks that were ongoing and that supposedly the US
Speaker 1: was really pressing for which I think I actually think
Speaker 1: that they were because I think Biden realizes what political
Speaker 1: trouble he's in right now, those.
Speaker 4: Talks have collapsed.
Speaker 1: So we could put this up on the screen because
Speaker 1: I don't want you guys to get hoodwinked by the
Speaker 1: way the media is definitely going to frame this. So
Speaker 1: this is from Haretz. This was a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: They said report Hamas accepts Gaza ceasefire deal, but Israeli
Speaker 1: officials reject the prospect of the war ending. So without
Speaker 1: getting into all the details here about phase one, phase two,
Speaker 1: phase three, what they were negotiating, what the framework looked like, etc.
Speaker 4: Because it looks like this is.
Speaker 1: All now Nolan void Hamas agreed to return all of
Speaker 1: the hostages and all of the you know, human remains
Speaker 1: of the hostages who had died or been killed in
Speaker 1: order to end the war. Okay, We've been hearing this
Speaker 1: line from israel defenders for however long, like, if Hamas
Speaker 1: just returns to the hostages, then the war will end. Well,
Speaker 1: Hamas says, okay, we'll return all the hostages, but the
Speaker 1: war has to end, and Israel said no. They rejected
Speaker 1: that Phoebe does not want the war to end, and
Speaker 1: we all know why. And this is over, by the way,
Speaker 1: the objections of Israeli society, who you know, they're not
Speaker 1: worried about the humanity of Palestinians, but.
Speaker 4: They're very worried about the hostages.
Speaker 1: And it's very clear that Biebe would rather keep the
Speaker 1: war going than actually rescue the hostages. There have been
Speaker 1: huge protests in Israel, tens of thousands of people coming out.
Speaker 1: We covered the polling that even right wing voters want
Speaker 1: the hostages back if even if it means, you know,
Speaker 1: an end to the war and a calling of elections.
Speaker 4: Bibi doesn't want that.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen, because once
Speaker 1: again Harets really put it quite clear. This is ken Roth,
Speaker 1: who's quoting from a piece that was in Haretz.
Speaker 4: He says net.
Speaker 1: Now, who hoped Hamas would reject the ceasefire offer. When
Speaker 1: it didn't, he turned to sabotage by saying he would
Speaker 1: invader Rafa whether or not there was a deal with Hamas,
Speaker 1: torpedoing Israel's last and best chance at bringing the hostages home.
Speaker 1: Bibi had hoped. They write in this piece that the
Speaker 1: Egyptian proposal, which was more far reaching than anything he'd
Speaker 1: been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected
Speaker 1: by Hamas. But when the negotiations took a positive turn,
Speaker 1: he found himself in distress, as was expressed by his
Speaker 1: flurry of statements. Given our familiarity, they go on to
Speaker 1: take some shots at his quote unquote pampered son on
Speaker 1: the front in Miami. His fright is indeed understandable if
Speaker 1: Hamas says yes, and even if it adds a butt
Speaker 1: in one form or another. Net Now, who will have
Speaker 1: no choice but to carry through what he agreed with
Speaker 1: Egypt in the US? Doing so could lead his kahanas
Speaker 1: those are the hard right flank to bring down the government.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, of his attempts at sabotage succeed,
Speaker 1: the National Union could pull out of the government, and
Speaker 1: its leaders, who still have the trust of a large
Speaker 1: section of the public, would join the growing calls for
Speaker 1: early elections.
Speaker 4: Is it any wonder.
Speaker 1: He is hysterical? So that's basically what happened. He wanted
Speaker 1: to have these sham negotiations. He wanted to put a
Speaker 1: deal out that he thought Hamas would reject. When Hamas
Speaker 1: was like, actually, we're open to that, we'll give you
Speaker 1: all the hostages back, but you have to end the war.
Speaker 1: He had to do something to sabotage this deal because
Speaker 1: it is overwhelmingly popular in Israeli society to have some
Speaker 1: sort of a deal to end the war. He can't
Speaker 1: do that for his own, you know, holding on to
Speaker 1: power purposes.
Speaker 3: So very tragic.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, and the other piece of context
Speaker 1: I want to add in here too, which is highly
Speaker 1: relevant to the imminent ground invasion of Rath and evacuation orders,
Speaker 1: et cetera, is they have now officially banned Al Jazeera
Speaker 1: in Israel, shutter the offices, et cetera. So a huge
Speaker 1: crackdown on any sort of dissenting media coming immediately before
Speaker 1: this escalation as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Crystal.
Speaker 2: It's actually very tragic because it seemed like it was
Speaker 2: on the horizon. We were prepared to do a segment
Speaker 2: to Conde's Clears. It just completely fell apart at the
Speaker 2: last minute. The key part is that the youth, and
Speaker 2: this is where I do believe the reporting about the
Speaker 2: US where they basically told Tomas, They're like, listen, if
Speaker 2: they agree to this, we're going to end the war.
Speaker 2: Like it's not going to happen. Well, eventually, yeah, there's
Speaker 2: forty days. We're going to give you our personal assurance.
Speaker 2: But it appears that that personal assurance was enough for
Speaker 2: the Israeli is to just say, Okay, if you really
Speaker 2: want us to commit to any war, it's not going
Speaker 2: to happen, and we're just going to go into the
Speaker 2: RAFA and we're going to you know, quote unquote finish
Speaker 2: the job. So good luck to them, because you know
Speaker 2: this is going to this is just going to be
Speaker 2: like the previous iterations of the war, but honestly on
Speaker 2: steroids now at this point, because at this point, there
Speaker 2: really is nowhere else to go for a lot of
Speaker 2: these people, and the conditions are so much worse that
Speaker 2: mass death is only even more likely at a worse scale.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. There is nowhere left to go.
Speaker 1: There is nowhere left that hasn't been completely devastated. There
Speaker 1: has been multiple reports from entirely mainstream outlets like The
Speaker 1: New York Times and NPR and wherever about how the
Speaker 1: quote unquote safe zones. None of them have been safe,
Speaker 1: none of them have been you know, excluded from bombing campaigns.
Speaker 1: And by the way, as Sagera was mentioning before, the
Speaker 1: place they're telling people to flee to.
Speaker 4: It's already jam packed.
Speaker 1: It's already in crisis in terms of you know, lack
Speaker 1: of sanitation, lack of water, illness running, rampant malnourishment of children,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So it's a horrific situation that
Speaker 1: appears set to get even worse in you know, with
Speaker 1: regard to that, some extraordinary comments made from Cindy McCain.
Speaker 1: She is the director of the UN's World Food Program.
Speaker 1: She was on NBC's Meet the Press, and she indicated
Speaker 1: to them that northern Gaza is no longer on the
Speaker 1: brink of or on the verge of et cetera. It
Speaker 1: is in full blown famine, and that famine is rapidly
Speaker 1: expanding to the south. Let's take a listen to what
Speaker 1: she had to say.
Speaker 16: Famine happens, and so what I can explain to you
Speaker 16: is is that there is famine, full blown famine in
Speaker 16: the north and it's moving its way south, and so
Speaker 16: with what we're asking for and what we continually asked for,
Speaker 16: is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access
Speaker 16: to get in safe and unfettered access to get into
Speaker 16: the into gost At various ports and various various gay crossings.
Speaker 17: I just want to be very clear because what you're
Speaker 17: saying is significant, and I believe it's the first time
Speaker 17: we've heard it. You're saying there is full blown famine. Yes,
Speaker 17: in northern gossips Am.
Speaker 16: Yes, I am.
Speaker 17: And there has not been an official declaration that there
Speaker 17: is femine but you are saying not based on what.
Speaker 15: You've seen, Yes, it is based on what we've seen
Speaker 15: and what we've experienced from the ground. Yes, which is
Speaker 15: it's it's harror, it's you know, it's it's so hard
Speaker 15: to look at and it's so hard to hear.
Speaker 4: Also so horrific, absolutely horrific.
Speaker 1: And you know, for all of Israel's child or increasing
Speaker 1: humanitarian aid, it's wildly, wildly insufficient to deal with this
Speaker 1: increase in malnourishment, in hunger, absolute starvation. And you know,
Speaker 1: moving to the south, an invasion of Rafa is only
Speaker 1: going to make the situation worse, and we have some
Speaker 1: more indications of the humanitarian crisis, in particular facing children.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Catherine Russell is the executive director of the United Nations
Speaker 1: Children Fund UNISAF, said the war has already taken an
Speaker 1: unimaginable toll. In a major military operation against the Krowda
Speaker 1: southern Gaza city would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe
Speaker 1: for children. She said, quote, nearly all of the six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand children now crammed into Rafa are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized,
Speaker 1: or living with disabilities. All of the six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: kids in Raffa, I mean, you can only imagine what
Speaker 1: they're going to be dealing with. Injuries, loss of family members,
Speaker 1: just unbelievable levels of trauma.
Speaker 4: For the entire rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: That's already been done, and god knows how much worse
Speaker 1: it's going to get.
Speaker 2: No, it's very tragic and clearly a major failure of
Speaker 2: US policy. It could be posturing, possibly to get a
Speaker 2: cease fire deal, but I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I think we're probably just at the point where the.
Speaker 2: Domestic popular I mean, BB's going to put up her
Speaker 2: shut up moment, and Biden is also really in a
Speaker 2: put up her shut up moment too. He's basically allowed
Speaker 2: this to happen. And it does seem like this is
Speaker 2: the most the most likely scenario given these really military actions,
Speaker 2: the one hundred thousand people evacuation order, you know, doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like anything else is possible at this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: So, in a very Bob Menendez esque situation, Congressman Henry
Speaker 1: quay Are, Democrat, probably the most conservative Democrat in the House,
Speaker 1: has been indicted on foreign corruption charges him and his wife, again,
Speaker 1: very much like Bob Menendez. Let's put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. This was the press release issued by the DOJ. Headline,
Speaker 1: here are US Congressman Henry Quayar and his wife charged
Speaker 1: with briber unlawful foreign influence and money laundering the schemes.
Speaker 1: I'll read you a little bit of the details here
Speaker 1: they say. According to court documents, beginning and at least
Speaker 1: December twenty fourteen and continuing through at least November twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Kuair and his wife accepted allegedly approximately six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars in bribes from two foreign entities, an
Speaker 1: oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the
Speaker 1: government of Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: The bribe payments were allegedly laundered pursued to sham consulting
Speaker 1: contracts through a series of front companies and middlemen into
Speaker 1: shell companies owned by the wife, Amelda Kwayar, who performed
Speaker 1: little to no legitimate work under the contracts. In exchange
Speaker 1: for the bribes paid by the Azerbaijani oil and gas company,
Speaker 1: Kyerson Quayar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence
Speaker 1: US foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan. In exchange for
Speaker 1: the bribes paid by the Mexican bank, Congerson Quayar allegedly
Speaker 1: agreed to influence legislative activity and to advise and pressure
Speaker 1: high ranking US Executive Branch officials regarding measures beneficial to
Speaker 1: the bank. I won't go through all the charges here,
Speaker 1: but the potential prison time is quite significant because you know,
Speaker 1: you not only have these, you know conspiracy to commit
Speaker 1: briber of a federal official and to have a public
Speaker 1: official act as an agent of a federal of a
Speaker 1: foreign principle. You've got bribery, you've got wire fraud, you've
Speaker 1: got money laundering. I mean, just the money laundering is
Speaker 1: twenty years in prison on each count, and there are
Speaker 1: five counts of money laundering. So this is no little
Speaker 1: upsie slap on the wrist. If he's found guilty, and
Speaker 1: if his wife is found guilty, you're talking about potentially
Speaker 1: significant prison sentences. And you know, listen, this is obviously,
Speaker 1: on its face, an important story. A member of Congress
Speaker 1: saying charged allegedly taking money from a foreign government, basically
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, I'm going to use my position of
Speaker 1: power here to do your bidding. And Quayar as relatively senior,
Speaker 1: he was co chair, I think of the Azerbaijani which
Speaker 1: is apparently a thing in Congress. But also worth recalling
Speaker 1: that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership moved heaven
Speaker 1: and earth to keep this man in office, even though
Speaker 1: the FBI had already rated his home. So it's not
Speaker 1: like this came out of nowhere. We knew for years
Speaker 1: that Quaar was being looked at by the FBI, and
Speaker 1: yet we can put this up on the screen. So
Speaker 1: Quaar was challenged by a progressive Duscus ssnaros very close
Speaker 1: and hard fought race. Pelosi came out and aggressively supported him, saying,
Speaker 1: I'm supporting Henry Quaar. He's a valued member of our caucus.
Speaker 1: The FBI has said he's not under investigation or really,
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to take it to choice
Speaker 1: or something, which is a reference to the fact that
Speaker 1: he's also not pro choice.
Speaker 4: Yes, he is pro life.
Speaker 1: He's like one of the only Democrats left in the
Speaker 1: House who is conservative on abortion. And he's also like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's okay. That's one thing. He's also a
Speaker 1: total corporate seller. I mean, he's pretty conservative across the board,
Speaker 1: and especially noteworthy given the post stops climate and how
Speaker 1: important choice has become. It's like the saving grace of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party or their fig leaf or whatever they're
Speaker 1: holding onto, grasping onto with their fingertips. So she overlooked
Speaker 1: his anti choice positioning and overlooked the FBI raid which
Speaker 1: we can put up on the screen C four, which
Speaker 1: happened back in twenty twenty two. So this was all
Speaker 1: this was all well known in order to keep this
Speaker 1: guy in power. So this is back from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two FBI raid on House Democrats Home related to Azerbaijan probe,
Speaker 1: so a lot of this was already known. She stuck
Speaker 1: by him anyway, and the end result was put C
Speaker 1: three up on the screen descus Asnaris, his progressive opponent,
Speaker 1: lost by only some three hundred votes. So there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that the you know, weighing in of Pelosi and
Speaker 1: the money that flowed into Quaar et cetera to keep
Speaker 1: him in this position was definitely the reason. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was a determinative factor in jusice, the snare is failing,
Speaker 1: and now you've got this dude who's indicted, right, congratulations
Speaker 1: out picking him out.
Speaker 2: They kicked out George Santos. So now what Honestly the
Speaker 2: should care. Yeah, they really should. But what we have
Speaker 2: here is, I mean, some of the again, the details,
Speaker 2: just to go back, are so Tunish wife was paid
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty grand Congressman emails in Azerbaijani diplomat
Speaker 2: and says, I'm planning to give this speech on the
Speaker 2: floor of the House of Representatives. A year later, texts
Speaker 2: and him to say, is introduced legislation favoring of Azerbaijan.
Speaker 2: The diplomat replies, you are the best l He fe
Speaker 2: like he's like a mafia boss or something. Around the
Speaker 2: same time, he is entering into a series of corrupt
Speaker 2: deals with a bank in Mexico, and then in March
Speaker 2: of twenty fifteen, the congressman expresses concerns that the arrangement
Speaker 2: would be discovered and asks a bank at the ask
Speaker 2: a bank official to quote create a middleman to disguise
Speaker 2: the payments. He literally said, quote, we need to find
Speaker 2: another scheme. The cartoonish corruption some of the people who
Speaker 2: are in power here is just so on itspace you
Speaker 2: almost don't even want to believe that somebody so so
Speaker 2: stupid could be elected to Congress so many times from
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. But idiocracy is real life. So
Speaker 2: these people are just as corrupt, you know, as anybody
Speaker 2: would think. He's up there in terms of cartoon level
Speaker 2: villain as Bob Menendez. And let's see if he pulls
Speaker 2: his Menendez defense and says that it was his wife's
Speaker 2: wamp the entire time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always think of that too. Is he gonna
Speaker 4: because what Menandez was.
Speaker 1: Able to do is his lawyers were able to get
Speaker 1: his trial separate from his wife.
Speaker 3: Right because of health issues. I think for his wife's
Speaker 3: health issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she has some sort of a surgery as something
Speaker 1: was going on with her. I don't really know exactly what,
Speaker 1: but anyway, they were able to use that to get
Speaker 1: those trials separated and those cases separated, and then we
Speaker 1: reported on the fact that he's apparently planning to just
Speaker 1: like throw her under the bus in hopes of getting
Speaker 1: himself off scott free. So we'll see what happens if
Speaker 1: Quaar follows a similar path year. But I mean, you
Speaker 1: probably know more about this district soccer than I do
Speaker 1: since it's in Texas, But this is there's one that
Speaker 1: it's not a gimmy for Democrats if he's out to
Speaker 1: be able to hold onto because you guys know the
Speaker 1: way that Latinos have been, especially Latino men, have been
Speaker 1: increasingly identifying with the Republican Party moving to the right.
Speaker 1: I think this part of Texas is, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the hotbeds of that type of party switching. So
Speaker 1: the fact that he is, you know, facing these these
Speaker 1: bribery charges could really be significant, especially given the type
Speaker 1: margin in the house and how you know closely fought
Speaker 1: all of this is so this could end up being
Speaker 1: really significant politically in terms of control of the House.
Speaker 2: Right, So this is the Texas twenty eighth district. And
Speaker 2: the thing about the twenty eighth district of where he
Speaker 2: is is that he is very popular there. But it
Speaker 2: did have some of those large swings towards Republicans back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, so very likely that it could happen.
Speaker 3: It doesn't. I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: This is the congressman who represents like Nuevo Laredo, which
Speaker 2: is across from Laredo and in Mexico. And it's not
Speaker 2: much of a surprise. It's like, oh, you're telling me
Speaker 2: the guy who's on the cartel district is involved with
Speaker 2: banks in Mexico. It's like shocking, and it's deeply corrupt.
Speaker 2: This has long been known about Henry Quay. Are people
Speaker 2: who have been whispering it for years in Texas. This
Speaker 2: is just a confirmation. This happened again. This happened in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, So there's been whisperings about him
Speaker 2: for quite a long time. But that's part of the
Speaker 2: reason why the Democratic establishment has always tried to save
Speaker 2: him is he backs them up basically on everything. The
Speaker 2: reason that Pelosi loves him is that, yeah, even though
Speaker 2: he's pro life like he is, you know, a reliable vote,
Speaker 2: reliable fundraiser, knows a lot of oil guys, been around
Speaker 2: there for a long time, and they think he's like
Speaker 2: a checkbox in terms of diversity too. So he's a
Speaker 2: long time enforcer for the Democratic establishment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you know, it's it's one thing, listen,
Speaker 1: Sometimes voters are complex. Sometimes they're like, hey, he's a
Speaker 1: little corrupt, but you know he's delivering for our district.
Speaker 4: We still like the guy.
Speaker 3: Right, quite common down where he is.
Speaker 1: It's quite common in all kinds of places to be
Speaker 1: honest with you where you're like, ah, but I know,
Speaker 1: and now what are you going to do?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 1: Wasn't the case though, is Bob Menendez the minute those
Speaker 1: charges came out, plumited in the polls. But the fact
Speaker 1: that he narrowly won his Democratic primary I think indicates
Speaker 1: that wasn't really the case with him in this district.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a you know, challenger coming
Speaker 1: in coming within three hundred votes and it's taking the
Speaker 1: Democratic leadership, you know, moving heaven and earth in order
Speaker 1: to keep your grip on that seat. I think that
Speaker 1: tells you that there wasn't like an overwhelming love for
Speaker 1: this individual in this district at this point in time.
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine that these revelation of these charges
Speaker 1: they are going to help his political standing or the
Speaker 1: political standing of the Democrats. So congratulation, guys, well done here,
Speaker 1: good point.
Speaker 4: All right, guys.
Speaker 1: So originally we had planned to have a little lab
Speaker 1: grown meat debate, but we've been talking too much, so
Speaker 1: we're going to put that in the show tomorrow. You
Speaker 1: can look forward to that, and we're going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and move on to the doings of one Christi
Speaker 1: Nome Sagar.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Our eye are bigger than our stomachs whenever it came
Speaker 2: to the meat segment. Let's go ahead and start with Chirstynome.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how to transition to this. I've
Speaker 2: seen somebody implode. They're already a middling career, faster than Kirsty. No,
Speaker 2: but she's definitely trying as hard as anybody can. Here
Speaker 2: she is on CBS News Face the Nation, getting exposed
Speaker 2: for claiming in her book that she then wrote and
Speaker 2: read in an audiobook that she had met with North
Speaker 2: Korean leader Kim Jong un, even though that literally never happened.
Speaker 3: Let's take a.
Speaker 18: Listen talk about meeting some world leaders and one specific
Speaker 18: one quote. I remember when I met with North Korean
Speaker 18: dictator Kim Jung un. I'm sure he underestimated me, having
Speaker 18: no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've
Speaker 18: been a children's pastor, after all, did you meet Kim
Speaker 18: Jong un?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to
Speaker 7: my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at
Speaker 7: this passage, and I've met with many, many world leaders.
Speaker 19: I've traveled around the world.
Speaker 7: As soon as it was to my attention, we went
Speaker 7: forward and have made some edits. So I'm glad that
Speaker 7: this book is being released in a couple of days
Speaker 7: and that those edits will be in place, and that
Speaker 7: people will will have the updated version.
Speaker 18: So you did not meet with Kim Jong un, that's
Speaker 18: what you're saying.
Speaker 7: No, I met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders.
Speaker 19: I've traveled around the world.
Speaker 7: I think I've talked extensively in this book about my
Speaker 7: time serving in Congress, my time as governor before governor,
Speaker 7: some of the travels that I've had I'm not going
Speaker 7: to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.
Speaker 19: I'm just not going to do that.
Speaker 2: As soon it was brought to my attention when I
Speaker 2: read the audio book.
Speaker 3: She read the audiobook, so, bitch, you didn't read it.
Speaker 2: You obviously didn't read or write your own book. And
Speaker 2: to a certain excise, I sympathize you, know you were
Speaker 2: not well. No, you and I had to read off
Speaker 2: teleprompters before, right, and you kind of lose it. You
Speaker 2: don't even know really what you're saying. But it's like
Speaker 2: you clearly you didn't read your own book, like you
Speaker 2: did not write this book. I hope there's a ghost
Speaker 2: ride credit on there, because that person deserves all the
Speaker 2: money there is. Now the book company has put out
Speaker 2: a statement being like, we've decided to remove this relevant
Speaker 2: passage at the request of Governor. No, but what an
Speaker 2: insane situation. She won't even stay straight up. I met
Speaker 2: with many world leaders, yeah, but not with Kim Jong now.
Speaker 1: And then I like how she gets on our high
Speaker 1: horse and she's like, I'm just I'm not going to
Speaker 1: talk about my meetings with world leaders. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: just like it was in your book. It was in
Speaker 1: your book. I mean, I just this is one of these.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like when we were talking about
Speaker 1: George Santo's. Yeah, like it just doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: be what did you think you were really going to
Speaker 1: gain from lying about this? Because if it had been true,
Speaker 1: no one would have even noticed this passage on the book.
Speaker 1: By the way, no one would have even noticed this
Speaker 1: book even existed if you hadn't bragged about murdering a
Speaker 1: puppy and a goat.
Speaker 4: Okay to that. So, yeah, so that's step number one.
Speaker 1: But like, that's what makes it feel pathological is when
Speaker 1: you lie about something where there's really no reason to
Speaker 1: lie about it. There's nothing to be gay from lying
Speaker 1: about it, and then on top of that, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to find out that you are lying about it.
Speaker 4: So what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: And okay, so there's I guess a few possibilities. She
Speaker 1: lied to the ghostwriter, the ghostwriter puts it in, the
Speaker 1: ghostwriter misunderstood something, it gets put in. But to your point,
Speaker 1: if okay, if you read the audio book and you
Speaker 1: knew this was in here, you can't just make up
Speaker 1: a meeting with Kim Jong wun that didn't happen. You
Speaker 1: have to put on the brakes, say this, we got guys,
Speaker 1: we got a crisis. We got to change this. I
Speaker 1: don't know why they thought this happened. It didn't happen,
Speaker 1: and you change it.
Speaker 4: I don't know it.
Speaker 1: Just like I said, it almost feels pathological. It makes
Speaker 1: me call into question whether the puppy story was actually true,
Speaker 1: or whether she's so psychotic that she thought bragging about
Speaker 1: murdering a puppy would like be good for her brand
Speaker 1: or something. It just you can't obviously, if you're going
Speaker 1: to make up something like this that is so weird
Speaker 1: and so inconsequential ultimately in terms of how people perceive you,
Speaker 1: nothing for you to.
Speaker 4: Lie about it is really off the table.
Speaker 2: As we well, when she's sticking with a dog story,
Speaker 2: not only saying that she killed her own dog, whether
Speaker 2: she would have killed President Biden's dog, let's take a
Speaker 2: listen to that.
Speaker 18: You talk multiple times about it. In fact, at the
Speaker 18: end of the book you say the very first thing
Speaker 18: you would do if you got to the White House
Speaker 18: that was different from Joe Biden is you'd make sure
Speaker 18: Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds. Commander say
Speaker 18: hello to cricket. Are you doing this to try to
Speaker 18: look tough? Do you still think that you have a
Speaker 18: shot at being a VP?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 7: Number one, Joe Biden's dog has attacked twenty four Secret
Speaker 7: Service people? So how many people is enough people to
Speaker 7: be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision
Speaker 7: on a dog?
Speaker 19: And what he's not living at the house.
Speaker 7: That's the question that the president should be held accountable to.
Speaker 7: You're saying he should be sure that the president should
Speaker 7: be accountable to is what is?
Speaker 19: What is the number?
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, she is saying he should be shot.
Speaker 2: That's wild, just defending murdering this goat murdering dog and
Speaker 2: how she wants to kill Bidens dog.
Speaker 1: This is quite political blit. Like you remember how Emily
Speaker 1: tweeted like she's got a double down, Yeah you got
Speaker 1: him kill another puppy. This is like the political equivalent
Speaker 1: of this. She's like, what other dogs can I mark
Speaker 1: for murder? And listen, I'm flat the handling of commander
Speaker 1: at the White We covered it like it was the
Speaker 1: dog rageous completely. I didn't imagine this situation for this
Speaker 1: dog was incredibly stressful. They should have removed him from
Speaker 1: the White House immediately, and this was clearly not a
Speaker 1: good situation for the dog. Okay, Biden has all the
Speaker 1: resources in the world to put the dog in a
Speaker 1: better situation that's going to be better for the dog,
Speaker 1: and make sure also, yes, that the people around the
Speaker 1: dog are now safe and not in danger.
Speaker 4: That, like you said, that's on Biden.
Speaker 1: But for you to now be like you know, making
Speaker 1: life or deaf decisions about other people's dogs and pets
Speaker 1: as well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But this lady away from my pets, man, I don't
Speaker 3: even know. This is wild stuff. Just like out there
Speaker 3: by the way I talked to him.
Speaker 1: I've never seen someone flub like an Ana Dyne politician
Speaker 1: books as astonishingly as this lady.
Speaker 2: Most of these books are just like you know, paper
Speaker 2: mill fodder. They end up in you know, those little
Speaker 2: free libraries. That's where I go and stick on my
Speaker 2: political books.
Speaker 1: Give them an excuse to like, you know, get booked
Speaker 1: on a show and talk a adulo book tour. Gives
Speaker 1: them excuses and wait for them to like you know,
Speaker 1: make some speaking money or whatever. But there's never anything
Speaker 1: that's actually interesting or controversial, as the whole point of
Speaker 1: these books is for them to be a Santadeyna's possible.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. We never we don't talk enough
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: Politicians have a book exception where they're allowed to have
Speaker 2: speaking fees and to accept book royalties. One of the
Speaker 2: ways that politicians become millionaires and do a workaround while
Speaker 2: being elected is through books.
Speaker 3: So we should close the book loophole.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't think you should be able to
Speaker 2: profit like millions and million take speaking fees for some
Speaker 2: bs book talk, you know, while you're out there shilling,
Speaker 2: but separate conversation. Clearly what she intended. Hopefully this thing
Speaker 2: doesn't sell all that well because she doesn't deserve it.
Speaker 1: Do you think she's still a possible Trump VP pick
Speaker 1: or do I never thought she really? I thought she was.
Speaker 1: I did think she was. But to me, probably the
Speaker 1: biggest problem for her was the thing that was reported
Speaker 1: previously about how he's looking at any governor from a
Speaker 1: state that has like a heartbeat bill or like really
Speaker 1: extreme abortion laws is like, I don't want that person
Speaker 1: on my ticket. To me, that's probably the biggest problem
Speaker 1: for her. I can't imagine Trump being like too upset
Speaker 1: about oh you made up some Kim Jaron thing.
Speaker 2: Well, he also hates dogs, So apparently Trump famously hates dogs.
Speaker 2: He didn't even like being Remember that dog that like
Speaker 2: bit altback Daddy. He didn't even want to be around it,
Speaker 2: Like at the White House. They had to convince him
Speaker 2: to bring the Really, yeah, I know, they had to
Speaker 2: convince them to bring the dog that bit back Daddy
Speaker 2: to the White House. He like barely, he was like
Speaker 2: very far away from it. Famously does not does not
Speaker 2: like dogs. There was some speculation that maybe she was
Speaker 2: trying to brag about killing a dog to endear herself
Speaker 2: to Trump. You know, I mean, think about how he
Speaker 2: always talks to me. He's like, like a dog, Get
Speaker 2: the sky out of here.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 2: That's true in the rhetoric, Crystal, what do you take
Speaker 2: a look at?
Speaker 8: Wow? I wonder if you would give a your view
Speaker 8: of the state of the American society and where it's heading. Well,
Speaker 8: that would require rather extended answer. Briefly, this country is
Speaker 8: not headed for revolution. The very fact that we do
Speaker 8: have the safety valves of the right to dissent, The
Speaker 8: very fact that the President of the United States asked
Speaker 8: the District Commissioners to waive their rule for thirty days
Speaker 8: notice for a demonstration, and also asked that that demonstration
Speaker 8: occurred not just around the Washington Monument, but on the
Speaker 8: Ellipse where I could hear it, and you can hear
Speaker 8: it pretty well from there. I can assure you that
Speaker 8: fact is an indication that when you have that kind
Speaker 8: of safety valve, you're not going to have revolution, which
Speaker 8: comes from repression. Now, the second point, with regard to repression,
Speaker 8: that is nonsense. In my opinion, I do not see
Speaker 8: that the critics of my policies, our policies are repressed.
Speaker 8: I note from reading the press, from listening to television,
Speaker 8: that criticism is very vigorous, sometimes quite personal. It has
Speaker 8: every right to be. I had no complaints about it.
Speaker 1: That was President Richard Nixon responding to questions about the
Speaker 1: state of American society in the immediate aftermath of the
Speaker 1: Kent State massacre, in which National guardsmen opened fire on
Speaker 1: student protesters in Ohio, killing four and wounding another nine.
Speaker 1: That seminole American tragedy happened on May fourth, nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: That's almost exactly fifty four years ago, and the events
Speaker 1: around in Kent State have frankly never felt more relevant.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're learning how close Columbia came to being
Speaker 1: another Kent State. The NYPD has now confirmed that one
Speaker 1: of their officers fired a gun while clearing students who
Speaker 1: had occupied Hamilton Hall.
Speaker 4: How the hell did we get here?
Speaker 1: Clearly we never learned the lessons of Kent State, because
Speaker 1: while thank god, no students have yet been killed in
Speaker 1: the crackdown on their protests against America's Warren Gaza, they're
Speaker 1: nonetheless eerie echoes of the national political climate, the media,
Speaker 1: gas lighting, official lies and intolerance of dissent that characterized
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. Now, with the luxury of time and distance
Speaker 1: from the events, and national consensus is formed around.
Speaker 4: What happened at Kent State that day.
Speaker 1: It stands as a national cautionary tale of what happens
Speaker 1: when the overwhelming violence of state power is used to
Speaker 1: crack down on young protesters, a horrifying, militarized response in
Speaker 1: which the guns of the government were turned on our
Speaker 1: own children, A chilling tragedy to never be repeated. But
Speaker 1: the first thing to know about Ken State is that
Speaker 1: at the time, it was not remotely seen that.
Speaker 4: Way by the public.
Speaker 1: Publishers of the Gallup Poll asked respondents at that time
Speaker 1: who they thought was most responsible for the student deaths
Speaker 1: at Kent State. In the immediate aftermath of those killings.
Speaker 1: Only eleven percent blamed the National Guard. A majority fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent blamed the students themselves, and the remainder expressed
Speaker 1: no opinion. It seems incredible, doesn't it. How did so
Speaker 1: few blame the ones with the guns that did the
Speaker 1: kill it? But if you look back at the media
Speaker 1: coverage from the time, you can see exactly how it
Speaker 1: all happened. Here's an opinion column from the time explaining
Speaker 1: why really the students brought this all on themselves? After
Speaker 1: first blaming drugs for campus unrest and echo of the
Speaker 1: outside agitator's narrative that is being used now to paint
Speaker 1: campus protests as super scary and dangerous, this columnist wrote, quote, Certainly,
Speaker 1: if there had been no disorders on the campus, there
Speaker 1: would have been no necessity to call on the National Guard.
Speaker 1: So the sequence of events made it possible for the
Speaker 1: tragedy to happen. Maybe students themselves will discover they can
Speaker 1: better advance their cause if they publicize their protests by
Speaker 1: writing to their senators and representatives in the president of
Speaker 1: the United States, or by making their views known in
Speaker 1: the press. In the long run, this can accomplish more
Speaker 1: than demonstrations with reliance on disorders and tragic events to
Speaker 1: call attention to their.
Speaker 4: Point of view.
Speaker 1: Now, I can't read these words without thinking of mourning.
Speaker 1: Josmiker Brazinski recently saying something that was actually quite similar.
Speaker 1: Why can't these kids lodge their descent in a more
Speaker 1: decorous and less disrupt good fashionable Richard.
Speaker 20: To your point, I think that's where we've all that's
Speaker 20: the place we've all been sitting in watching this, going
Speaker 20: what the hell is going on? What are these universities doing?
Speaker 20: Why aren't they doing something? And I'll echo the horror
Speaker 20: that this does look like January sixth, what a terrible
Speaker 20: example for our students. At the same time, these are
Speaker 20: young adults, and the question is why do you choose
Speaker 20: to learn about the complexities of other situations around the world.
Speaker 20: But this one you want to set up an encampment.
Speaker 20: This one you want to scare people. This one you
Speaker 20: want to come to the edge of violence, or even
Speaker 20: go to violence. This one you live your future and
Speaker 20: your education for see.
Speaker 19: I think these college.
Speaker 20: Students obviously are missing the part where they need to
Speaker 20: see what's going on across the country with these protests,
Speaker 20: that it's now in the realm of violence, it's in
Speaker 20: the realm of hatred, whether some are peaceful or not.
Speaker 20: They need to watch the news and look at all
Speaker 20: the different arguments and be adults, or start learning to
Speaker 20: be adults and set up discussions and debates across college
Speaker 20: campuses or their colleges or universities are going to have
Speaker 20: no choice but to expel them and ruin their future
Speaker 20: the impact they want to have on the community, society,
Speaker 20: and the world at some point now.
Speaker 1: A variation of this argument can also be found in
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal columnists Peggy Nunan's horror that student protesters
Speaker 1: didn't want to engage with her as she planned her
Speaker 1: next columns smearing them. She even compared them negatively with
Speaker 1: the Vietnam era protesters like those at Kent State nowonon
Speaker 1: rights quote, the Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at
Speaker 1: relative peace with itself.
Speaker 4: And said wake up.
Speaker 1: The Hummas demonstrations come to a country that hasn't been
Speaker 1: at peace with itself.
Speaker 4: In a long time, it.
Speaker 1: Watched and thought more jarring hell from kids with blood
Speaker 1: in their eyes making demands. The people of my liberal
Speaker 1: left town were relieved to see the NYPD come in,
Speaker 1: drag the protesters away, restore order, and let peace will
Speaker 1: clean things up.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: It's sort of hilarious to hear this rewriting of history.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventies America would have likely been very surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that they were at peace with themselves during this
Speaker 1: famously tumultuous time, And the fact that Peggy Noonan's wealthy
Speaker 1: white neighbors are cheering the crackdown is no surprise or
Speaker 1: historical anomaly. When this demographic was pulled in the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights era, they were against lunch counter sitens, They sided
Speaker 1: with the National Guard that had just murdered unarmed college kids.
Speaker 1: They rejected the college protests against apartheid South Africa, and
Speaker 1: they smeared as anti American the Iraq War protesters. These
Speaker 1: are the white moderates that doctor M. L. K. Junior
Speaker 1: famously wrote about as the biggest obstacles to progress during
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights era in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Speaker 1: He wrote in April of nineteen sixty three quote. I
Speaker 1: have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great
Speaker 1: stumbling block and his strive towards freedom is not the
Speaker 1: white Citizens Counselor or the KKK, but the white moderate,
Speaker 1: who is more devoted to order than to justice, who
Speaker 1: prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension,
Speaker 1: to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice,
Speaker 1: who constantly says, I agree with you and the goal
Speaker 1: you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of
Speaker 1: direct action, who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable
Speaker 1: for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept
Speaker 1: of time, and who constantly advises the Negro to wait
Speaker 1: for a more convenient season. Shallow understanding from people of
Speaker 1: goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of
Speaker 1: ill will. This is King basically describing the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: iterations of Noonan, Brazinski and their well healed moderate social circles.
Speaker 1: Noonan joins with other media and political elites and gas
Speaker 1: lighting on history. In another way, though, too, the anti
Speaker 1: genocide protests of today are vastly more peaceful than the
Speaker 1: Vietnam era protests At Kent State. The days leading up
Speaker 1: to the May fourth massacre included significant property damage, including
Speaker 1: breaking of shop windows and the burning of the university's
Speaker 1: ROTC building to the ground. Here In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: a new report just found that ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: anti war protests have been entirely peaceful. The New York
Speaker 1: Times the La Times both reported that the one protest
Speaker 1: that did have significant actual violence was wholly one sided
Speaker 1: pro Israel counter protesters backed by billionaire Bill Ackman, assaulted
Speaker 1: peaceful anti war protesters as cops stood by and watched
Speaker 1: for hours. No word from Peggy noon In on this disorder.
Speaker 1: She's too busy recovering from the silent menace of students
Speaker 1: wearing masks and refusing to take the bait on her provocations.
Speaker 1: The truth is that these student protesters have been far
Speaker 1: more disciplined and far more intentional in their non violence
Speaker 1: and strategic in their messaging than those in the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War era. It hasn't stopped them, though, from being demonized
Speaker 1: in similar ways to the college protesters of the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies. In fact, Richard Nixon famously called college protesters
Speaker 1: quote bums two days before Ohio National guardsmen took matters
Speaker 1: into their own hands to murder these people, to president
Speaker 1: of the United States had casually derided. On May second,
Speaker 1: Nixon said, quote, see these bumps, you know, blowing up
Speaker 1: the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college
Speaker 1: campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going
Speaker 1: to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up
Speaker 1: the books, storming around about this issue.
Speaker 4: You name it.
Speaker 1: Get rid of the war, there will be another one.
Speaker 1: How much does that sound like the discourse today from
Speaker 1: Date Silver or Bill Maher about these privileged, narcissistic college
Speaker 1: kids today. They're so coddled, so self indulgent. They're out
Speaker 1: there protesting just to be cool and make friends. In
Speaker 1: other words, just a bunch of bums. And in the
Speaker 1: same waynx in rhetorically greenlit attacks on college students, Biden
Speaker 1: rhetorically gave the go ahead for violent crackdowns of today's
Speaker 1: student protesters, only what he called them was frankly worse
Speaker 1: than bumps. Biden smear protesters as violent anti semites, providing
Speaker 1: the intellectual rationale for a police response that has been
Speaker 1: seen nonviolent protesters seriously injured by rubber bullets, has seen
Speaker 1: live AMMO fired during the arrest of students whose most
Speaker 1: serious crime was breaking a window, and elderly professors assaulted
Speaker 1: as they at attempt in vain to protect their students
Speaker 1: in another eerie echo of history.
Speaker 4: Part of why public.
Speaker 1: Sentiment in nineteen seventy was so overwhelmingly on the side
Speaker 1: of the National Guard was because of official lies echoed
Speaker 1: and furthered by the media, which framed the protesters directly
Speaker 1: as the instigators. Now we remember the famous photos of
Speaker 1: kids in horror and shock at their classmates being gunned down.
Speaker 1: But here's the New York Times ride up of the
Speaker 1: slaughter the very next day. In it, they give credence
Speaker 1: to the National Guard lie that a mysterious sniper had
Speaker 1: fired on them. First quote in Columbus. Sylvester del Corso,
Speaker 1: the Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard, said in
Speaker 1: a statement that the guardsmen had been forced to shoot
Speaker 1: after a sniper open fire against the troops from a
Speaker 1: nearby rooftop and the crowd began to move to encircle
Speaker 1: the guardsmen. This was completely false on every level. There
Speaker 1: was no sniper, there was no encirclement. The worst that
Speaker 1: students had done that day was to throw rocks now here.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, how many lives and hoaxes have
Speaker 1: we seen spread by a credulous and complicit media. From
Speaker 1: the student provocateur who lied and said she was stabbed
Speaker 1: in the eye, to the insistence that rally chants are
Speaker 1: actually genocidal, to the claims that a run of the
Speaker 1: mill bikelock was a tool of professional agitators, to the
Speaker 1: presentation of a college textbook about terrorism as proof that students.
Speaker 4: Are actually terrorists.
Speaker 1: These lies have fomented the most insane media analysis I
Speaker 1: have ever seen, in which college students are being framed
Speaker 1: as literal Nazis by supposedly neutral CNN News anchored Dana
Speaker 1: bash In a near copy of the rhetoric of actual
Speaker 1: genicidal Nazi Benjamin net Yahoo. But history has largely forgotten
Speaker 1: these media lies. The public bloodluss, the controversial radical tactics
Speaker 1: deployed by anti Vietnam protests, all has largely collapsed down
Speaker 1: to one big takeaway about the actual conflict itself. The
Speaker 1: kids were right and the government was wrong. So it
Speaker 1: is with Vietnam, South Africa, with the Iraq War, civil
Speaker 1: rights eras remembered not only for this basic moral story,
Speaker 1: but for the disruptive tactics themselves that had been upheld
Speaker 1: as a model of successful non violence, from blocking traffic
Speaker 1: by marching across the Edmund Pettis Bridge to John Lewis's
Speaker 1: famous exhortation to get in quote good trouble now. History
Speaker 1: doesn't provide answers on whether these student protesters will achieve
Speaker 1: their goals. The Iraq War campus protesters of my college
Speaker 1: years failed. We invaded a rock on false pretenses. We
Speaker 1: still haven't completely left. The Occupy Wall Street protesters similarly failed.
Speaker 1: The banks were not broken up, bankers were not jailed.
Speaker 1: Our politicians are still bought and paid for. The protesters
Speaker 1: against South African apartheid, they succeeded as part of a
Speaker 1: global movement and internal struggle against that racist regime. The
Speaker 1: Civil Rights era protesters, of course, succeeded in large part,
Speaker 1: although the murder of MLK Junior stifled the progress on
Speaker 1: further demands for economic justice. The Vietnam War protesters eventually
Speaker 1: succeeded took many years of horror, though before that, bloody
Speaker 1: insanity was ultimately brought to an end. So to these protesters.
Speaker 1: A few things do seem guaranteed. First of all, you'll
Speaker 1: be smeared, You'll be vilified in real time. We see
Speaker 1: it now, you'll be judged correct by history. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime you are making Palestinians and Gaza feel seen
Speaker 1: and making American politicians squirm. The ultimate outcome, it's unfortunately
Speaker 1: not in your control and not in mind. One more thing, though,
Speaker 1: is guaranteed. Twenty years from now, when we do know
Speaker 1: how this chapter of American history ends, you will know
Speaker 1: that even when it was difficult, when it was risky,
Speaker 1: when the personal stakes were real, you had sufficient backbone
Speaker 1: and morality to stand for what is right. And I
Speaker 1: would dare say that counts for more than what Peggy
Speaker 1: Noonan's neighbors might think about your descent.
Speaker 4: The Kent State was thing was interesting and.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: So a massive scandal has been revealed, price fixing on
Speaker 1: an extraordinary level. We can put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen from Matt Stoler. He is helping to expose that
Speaker 1: there was an oil price fixing conspiracy that caused some
Speaker 1: twenty seven percent of all inflation increases in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: This is at his newsletter, which is called Big and
Speaker 1: Matt Stolar joins us now. He also works at the
Speaker 1: American Economic Liberties Project and as a partner here at
Speaker 1: Breaking Points.
Speaker 4: Great to see you, sir, Good to see man.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So actually, let's put that chart back up on the screen,
Speaker 1: and while we have that up, explain what we're looking
Speaker 1: at and explain what the hell happened here.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, So that chart is what happened in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one. When the rebound from COVID was an explosion
Speaker 5: of corporate profits, it was also an explosion of inflation
Speaker 5: and corporate profits. That increase in corporate profits about seven
Speaker 5: hundred billion dollars, and that was responsible for about sixty
Speaker 5: percent of the inflationary increases above normal. So you know,
Speaker 5: there's always a little bit of inflation, but like the
Speaker 5: extreme amount of inflation that new stuff, sixty percent of
Speaker 5: it is corporate profits.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 5: And so that's what that chart suggests, that's or shows.
Speaker 5: That's that's a chart that I published in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: And then of that and what this is what was
Speaker 5: just revealed about two hundred billion dollars, yes guesstimate, we
Speaker 5: don't know exactly, is just one conspiracy of price fixing
Speaker 5: in the oil industry.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 5: So that's a little over a quarter of that increase
Speaker 5: was from one price fixing conspiracy in the oil industry.
Speaker 5: And this is like the reason it matters from like
Speaker 5: a macro standpoint, because remember all the debate over green
Speaker 5: inflation and you know economy thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know. And as it turns out, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of reasons to think that that consolidation and price fixing
Speaker 5: is really what's driving a lot of the price increases.
Speaker 5: But to have just one alleged conspiracy, I should say
Speaker 5: alleged alleged conspiracy drives so much of it is kind
Speaker 5: of overwhelming and interesting.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 2: And so what you write about is that this has
Speaker 2: been released from evidence by the ft see, which was
Speaker 2: banning the Pioneer CEO of being on the board of
Speaker 2: Exon in a merder. So can you explain the evidence
Speaker 2: that we was released in some of this case?
Speaker 5: Sure? So the gist of what happened is, you know,
Speaker 5: in the oil industry you have Opek, right, which is
Speaker 5: the organization of petroleum exporting countries. It's a global cartel
Speaker 5: run by Saudi Arabia, and they control roughly fifty percent
Speaker 5: of the global oil reserves and the price of oil. Well,
Speaker 5: what happened is in the US in the mid two
Speaker 5: thousands is the discovery of a new technique for getting oil,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, shale drilling, fracking, and the fracking
Speaker 5: is kind of you can spin up a well pretty quickly,
Speaker 5: so it's as close to oil on demand as we have.
Speaker 5: And what that means is that it kind of broke
Speaker 5: the leadership of OPEK, because Saudi Arabia controls OPEK by
Speaker 5: flooding the market with oil. If anybody produces more than
Speaker 5: they should, well, all of a sudden, you have these
Speaker 5: shale producers in the US who can do the same thing.
Speaker 5: When there are oil spikes or oil oil declines, they
Speaker 5: can increase or reduced production. And that broke the cartel.
Speaker 5: And so from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen you had
Speaker 5: this vicious price war, and oil was around forty to
Speaker 5: sixty dollars a barrel. The shale oil producers in the
Speaker 5: US and OPEK got tired of a low price now
Speaker 5: here's what's important. OPEK is a cartel, which ordinarily would
Speaker 5: be illegal, but because it's foreign governments that the law
Speaker 5: doesn't apply to governments. It only applies to firms. However,
Speaker 5: US shale producers are corporations and so antitrust price fixing
Speaker 5: law does apply to them, so they're not allowed to
Speaker 5: collude with OPEK even if they wanted to, but that
Speaker 5: didn't stop them. So the theory, and this is from
Speaker 5: a class action firm, and I wrote about this a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks ago, and then this is that the
Speaker 5: evidence is the FTC came out with confirmed. This theory
Speaker 5: is that in starting in twenty seventeen, the shale producers
Speaker 5: and OPEK started getting together at these dinners in Texas
Speaker 5: and then through multiple communications saying you know what, we're
Speaker 5: not so different. You and I, let's collaborate on and
Speaker 5: share information on investment, on drilling, on plans, maybe pricing
Speaker 5: and investment which is really the key to oil production
Speaker 5: started going down, and you know, the price went up
Speaker 5: a little bit, and starting in twenty seventeen to twenty
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen, but it was it really didn't change that much.
Speaker 5: But in twenty twenty one, when oil just skyrocketed because
Speaker 5: of the post COVID restraints were lifted. You would think
Speaker 5: that the oil producers would say, hey, this is a
Speaker 5: great opportunity to take market share, prices are really high.
Speaker 5: But they were all like no, and they were public
Speaker 5: They were like, we are absolutely not investing anyone who invests.
Speaker 5: Were going to punish, and so the price skyrocketed. And
Speaker 5: you might remember there was a lot of fights, public
Speaker 5: spats between the Biden administration and the oil producers in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one twenty twenty two about the price of
Speaker 5: oil and they were like, oh, you're not letting us
Speaker 5: drill enough on public land or whatever.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 5: Well, as it turns out what the FTC just released
Speaker 5: in there were a bunch of these shell producers wanted
Speaker 5: to merge, and so the FTC did a lot of investigation,
Speaker 5: and that means you look through emails, you look through
Speaker 5: text messages of executives and whatnot. And what they found
Speaker 5: is that the CEO of one of the big big
Speaker 5: shell producers, which is Pioneer, was sending hundreds of WhatsApp
Speaker 5: messages and emails and text messages to OPEC officials and
Speaker 5: colluding on on our coordinating on investment on drilling potentially pricing.
Speaker 5: A lot of the complaint is redacted unfortunately, so we
Speaker 5: can't see the details. But he has public statements where
Speaker 5: he says that they're doing this and at a certain
Speaker 5: point he's like, you know, I think that about in
Speaker 5: about ninety days, opek is going to make a surprise cut.
Speaker 5: And then eighty seven days later they did.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Right, And so it's this guy's name is Scott Sheffield. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the FTC allowed the Exon to buy Pioneer about sixty
Speaker 5: billion dollars, but they said Scott Sheffield can't serve on
Speaker 5: the board and can't be an advisor, and so they
Speaker 5: banned him from the industry. So big is controversial the
Speaker 5: fracking industry. They're all like what, I can't believe somebody
Speaker 5: got punished. And there's a lot of like, you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of people are very upset that there are
Speaker 5: allegations of price fixing by the frackers. But that's the story.
Speaker 1: So I have from your piece some of these text
Speaker 1: messages you write Pierneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, leader
Speaker 1: in the fracking field, exchanged hundreds of text messages with
Speaker 1: OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing,
Speaker 1: and output. He was explicit about his goal, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC
Speaker 1: to cut production.
Speaker 4: Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow.
Speaker 1: That was our plan, he said, adding I was using
Speaker 1: the tactics of OPEC plus to get a bigger OPECH
Speaker 1: plus done. He talked to shareholders publicly throatened rivals ultimately
Speaker 1: achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price.
Speaker 4: And you know, Matt, I remember some of this discord.
Speaker 4: We talked about it some on the.
Speaker 1: Show about all these theories of okay, prices are really high,
Speaker 1: why aren't they.
Speaker 4: Investing, Why aren't they expanding production?
Speaker 1: What were the excuses that they were using publicly for
Speaker 1: why it made the sense for them to keep production
Speaker 1: low at this point outside of, you know, excuses to
Speaker 1: avoid the obvious implication that they were colluding.
Speaker 5: You know, it's kind of funny. So some of the
Speaker 5: excuses were, oh, those environmentalists, right, they're always cascade annoying.
Speaker 5: But in many cases they weren't making excuses. They were
Speaker 5: just saying, we're going to pay our shareholders back, we're
Speaker 5: going to pay dividends, We're not gonna we're not going
Speaker 5: to invest Like they weren't making excuses. It was like
Speaker 5: it was pretty open what they were doing. Some of
Speaker 5: the quotes from the from the complaints that I relied
Speaker 5: on were public right where he was like threatened. He
Speaker 5: was saying, we're going to go to your shareholders and
Speaker 5: punish you. And so what was really going on is
Speaker 5: that a lot of economists were saying that it's crazy
Speaker 5: to assume that there is any sort of games or
Speaker 5: price fixing going on here, because there's just an increase
Speaker 5: in demand and that's what happens in commodity markets. Even
Speaker 5: as the oil CEOs were like, we're literally saying we're
Speaker 5: not investing, like we're going to be disciplined. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's kind of the whole story with inflation. I don't
Speaker 5: you know, a significant percentage I think is just price
Speaker 5: fixing or various forms of price gouging, and CEOs are
Speaker 5: fairly explicit on investor calls, right they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're all going to be disciplined. We're going to raise prices.
Speaker 5: We think there's more margin that we can get. You know,
Speaker 5: they use all these like it's not that subtle, right,
Speaker 5: They don't say we're going to violate the Sherman Acts
Speaker 5: Section one, but they're not subtle about it. And it's
Speaker 5: the economists who come in and say, you're crazy if
Speaker 5: you think that those CEOs are telling the truth to
Speaker 5: their investors. It's really weird. It's like a really weird thing.
Speaker 3: I have it in front of it.
Speaker 2: I forgot that this was Scott Sheffield who said on
Speaker 2: camera that they wouldn't even shale and drill more if
Speaker 2: there was two hundred dollars a barrel. And I remember
Speaker 2: that because I was like, what, yeah, talking about this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was one of the topics that came up
Speaker 1: in that Bill maher appearance that I saw, that's right,
Speaker 1: and I was treated they acted like I was insane
Speaker 1: for suggesting that this was part of what was going on.
Speaker 1: So I remember this discourse very clearly, but I mean,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't make light of me, because this was we're
Speaker 1: talking how what was the economic impact to like individuals,
Speaker 1: how much more money was coming out of their pockets,
Speaker 1: which is not just about what they're paying at the
Speaker 1: gas pump, but I mean this has massive cascading impacts
Speaker 1: throughout the economy.
Speaker 5: Right, Oh, it's just oil.
Speaker 2: I mean whatever, Right, it's not that important, right in
Speaker 2: an elastic product, right, you have to buy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that many.
Speaker 1: Wars have been over and like completely determined geopology.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So Scott Sheffield said that it was about twenty to
Speaker 5: thirty dollars. The frackers took twenty to thirty dollars a
Speaker 5: barrel off the price of oil in the last ten years.
Speaker 5: I just used that number. I said, Okay, it's twenty
Speaker 5: thirty dollars barrel. I guess it's probably more during spikes, right,
Speaker 5: that's like, you know, the dynamics are spikes matter more.
Speaker 5: But if it's twenty to thirty dollars, we consume about
Speaker 5: seven billion barrels of oily year, So you know that's
Speaker 5: between five hundred, four hundred to two one thousand dollars
Speaker 5: per person per year I direct and indirect costs. That's
Speaker 5: what you pay at the pump, plus all of the things,
Speaker 5: like you know, it goes into potato chips, it goes
Speaker 5: into you know, all everything gets moved on trucks and
Speaker 5: plastics and YadA, YadA, YadA. So that's a lot of money, right,
Speaker 5: that's for a family of four, that's between two to
Speaker 5: four thousand dollars right in twenty twenty per year. Right,
Speaker 5: And that's just a direct transfer from consumers to and
Speaker 5: consumers being businesses too.
Speaker 15: Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not just it's not just you know, you
Speaker 5: and me, it's it's it's firms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trucking groceries, its input costs.
Speaker 4: Everyone, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then I think there's also probably this dynamic where
Speaker 5: the spike in oil kind of kind of revved up
Speaker 5: the engine and a lot of corporations were like, oh,
Speaker 5: if they're raising prices, we can raise we So it
Speaker 5: probably had like a little bit of a cascading effect.
Speaker 2: Well, we can't forget about the Federal Reserve too, right,
Speaker 2: you know, the implication for high interest rates was also
Speaker 2: done in response to something that's a even borrowing cost
Speaker 2: now or sky high mortgages and everything all because of
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 5: Of this, right, And yeah, it's an interesting dynamic with
Speaker 5: the Federal Reserve because they raised they raised interest rates
Speaker 5: because they thought, well, prices are going up because our
Speaker 5: models tell us that people are asking for higher wages,
Speaker 5: and they don't have models that look at commodity price hikes.
Speaker 5: Or price fixing. They just don't have models, and so
Speaker 5: they're like, well, of course we're going to have to
Speaker 5: raise interest rates to throw lots of people out of work.
Speaker 5: Can you remember Larry Summers, Yeah, who said that allegations
Speaker 5: of price fixing or antitrust being a fix for inflation,
Speaker 5: that was he called it science denial, right.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, you remember, called it science.
Speaker 5: Style, and he said to deal with inflation, we're going
Speaker 5: to have to have a massive recession, five ten percent unemployment,
Speaker 5: because that's the way that they think about that's the
Speaker 5: way economists and macrocondoms to the people that run the
Speaker 5: FED think about the economy because it's too difficult to
Speaker 5: consider power, and so they're just like, let's just throw
Speaker 5: a bunch of people out of work and then people
Speaker 5: won't have money and that will sort of gradually bring
Speaker 5: down prices instead of and so that's why borrowing costs
Speaker 5: our way up. That's why the price of oil and
Speaker 5: these these increases in profits and price fixing convinces the
Speaker 5: FED to raise borrowing costs. It's insane, it's totally insane.
Speaker 5: But like, yeah, I mean that we're not the crazy ones. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the emperor really has no clothes.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the other thing that I can't wrap my
Speaker 1: head around. This is a massive scandal. These villains were
Speaker 1: robbing literally every American, every American, they were robbing all
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 4: And yet I have yet to see this covered really
Speaker 4: at all.
Speaker 1: And I don't hear the White House talking about it
Speaker 1: like I would think for them politically, this is like, look, guys, it.
Speaker 4: Wasn't our fault.
Speaker 1: These people were trying to take them and we were
Speaker 1: trying to tell you it wasn't our environmental regulations or whatever.
Speaker 4: The deal it was these assholes. So where is that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's in the business press, right, And that's
Speaker 5: the things that Wall Street Journal wrote, you know FT right,
Speaker 5: So you know, you know, the trade journals are all
Speaker 5: over it, you know. So so if you're in the industry,
Speaker 5: you know about it. The FTC apparently has has issued
Speaker 5: a criminal referral to the DOJ. Right, because this is
Speaker 5: this is crime. And but the but the Biden White House,
Speaker 5: you know, the Press Secretary was asked about this, this
Speaker 5: excell on Pioneer deal and she said no comment, right,
Speaker 5: And it's just kind of like, what, like, what's going on?
Speaker 5: You have a massive scandal here, and you know, the
Speaker 5: I think the Senate Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans are
Speaker 5: very into oil, so they're you know, and and particularly
Speaker 5: they're into the oil companies, so they're going to be
Speaker 5: they want to attack the environmentalists and they they're not
Speaker 5: going to do anything about this, or they're gonna look,
Speaker 5: they're gonna lie about it. The Democrats, I think, are
Speaker 5: kind of like may. They may slowly notice it, and
Speaker 5: they may slowly start to make a big deal. I
Speaker 5: don't know, but I don't know what motivates these people.
Speaker 5: I don't know why they don't talk about this kind
Speaker 5: of thing. It makes no sense to me. Everyone is
Speaker 5: mad about the price of groceries, about the price of gas,
Speaker 5: about the price of rent, about the you know, the
Speaker 5: price of f and you have allegations of price fixing
Speaker 5: and you actually have litigation right the DOJ and FTC
Speaker 5: are going after price fixing in meat, in rent, in
Speaker 5: a whole series of areas, vegetables, and they don't talk
Speaker 5: about it. And it's really weird to me. I don't
Speaker 5: get it. It's like, this stuff is really compelling, and
Speaker 5: they just like, you know.
Speaker 4: And I think the public I remember seeing some polling
Speaker 4: a while ago.
Speaker 1: Even as they're being gassed by the larious in the
Speaker 1: world and whatever, they really felt like there was something
Speaker 1: nefarious here, like they were directly being price gouged and screwed.
Speaker 1: So it's not like for your average American, this is
Speaker 1: a crazy story to tell. Corporate greed is very easy
Speaker 1: to understand, something that everyone has some like personal experience with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well said, yeah, no, I mean they were saying
Speaker 5: it to investors, right. Everybody seems to know about it
Speaker 5: except the economists and the politicians who listen to them.
Speaker 5: And so it's really it's like, you know, so Urines,
Speaker 5: you get on, you get on Bill Maher, you say, hey,
Speaker 5: there's you know, Scott Sheffield is saying that he likes
Speaker 5: to steal money, like it's it's nice he likes to
Speaker 5: have that, and everyone's like, you're crazy, right, and but
Speaker 5: order everybody knows this is going on, Like this is
Speaker 5: not everybody, as you noted, has experienced. We all noticed
Speaker 5: that people are getting richer. So like, clearly things get
Speaker 5: more expensive and other people get richer. It's like, where's
Speaker 5: the money going?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, I can't figure it out. It's weird.
Speaker 2: Actual like people are much smarter than economists. We're running
Speaker 2: out of time in your map, but we just want
Speaker 2: to say thank you very much. We appreciate you, sir.
Speaker 2: Great job, and we'll have a link to the newsletter
Speaker 2: in the description massive Scandal.
Speaker 4: Thank you for helping us understand it. Great to see Matt,
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me our pleasure.
Speaker 3: See you guys later.