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Speaker 2: So let's stake to some of the details about what
Speaker 2: Elon is up to. And you know the disasters I
Speaker 2: think they are recording. So Trump has repeated, I mean,
Speaker 2: Trump really positioned himself as like a different kind of
Speaker 2: Republican who's not going to be like the.
Speaker 3: Tea Party, austerity.
Speaker 2: Obsessed, deficit hawk, and he separated himself from the Republican primary,
Speaker 2: you know, positioning himself as a populace who wouldn't touch
Speaker 2: Social Security or Medicare in particular. And now you've got
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, who is has been granted by Trump all
Speaker 2: of this power within the administration.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say that much more of the direction.
Speaker 2: Of the administration has been Elon's ideology than Trump's ideology.
Speaker 2: And Elon went on Joe Rogan's podcast for a lengthy
Speaker 2: conversation and as part of that reiterated his attacks on
Speaker 2: Social Security.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, the govern's one big permit scheme. If
Speaker 4: you ask me, yeah, well you can tell me social
Speaker 4: Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
Speaker 5: Well, I explain that, oh.
Speaker 4: So, well, people pay into social Security and the money
Speaker 4: goes out of Social Security immediately, but the obligation for
Speaker 4: social Security is your entire retirement career. So you're you're paying,
Speaker 4: uh with you you're paying like like, if you look
Speaker 4: at the future obligations of social Security, it far exceeds
Speaker 4: the tax revenue far. If you ever looked at the debt,
Speaker 4: the debt clock, Yes, okay, there's there's our present day debt,
Speaker 4: but then there's a future obligations. So when you look
Speaker 4: at the future obligations of social Security, the actual national
Speaker 4: debt is like double what people think it is because
Speaker 4: of the future obligations. So basically, people are living way
Speaker 4: longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born,
Speaker 4: so you have more people who are retired and get
Speaker 4: that live for a long time and get retirement payments,
Speaker 4: so the future obligations. So how a bad the financial
Speaker 4: situation is right now for the federal government, it will
Speaker 4: be much worse in the future.
Speaker 2: Simple fis you lift the cap so that rich people
Speaker 2: have to pay more into social Security and it doesn't
Speaker 2: just cut off at one five and then you would
Speaker 2: be good to go with regard to social Security. But
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, this is Elon's ideology. He I
Speaker 2: think it is accurate to say as an archo capitalist.
Speaker 2: That means that he actually thinks every function of government
Speaker 2: should be privatized. That's why he talks about things like
Speaker 2: I think every government employee should take what he describes
Speaker 2: as a more productive job in the private sector. As
Speaker 2: Liz Franzac said on Twitter, though you have to love
Speaker 2: the ideology in which social security is a Ponzi scheme
Speaker 2: and meme coins our strategic asset.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's what's insane about this is you have
Speaker 6: a multi multi billionaire. Obviously, I mean, arguably the most
Speaker 6: powerful person to walk the face of the earth right now.
Speaker 6: Sure in a teacher on a podcast laughing at social
Speaker 6: security as a Ponzi scheme, and it gets to what
Speaker 6: we were just talking about in the last block but reversed,
Speaker 6: which is social security does have problems like this is
Speaker 6: a quote from a Cato Institute analysis.
Speaker 5: So obviously Cato Institute's.
Speaker 6: Probably much more sympathetic with the anarcho capitalist than Milton
Speaker 6: Friedman famously is called had called social security a Ponzi
Speaker 6: scheme for decades, but in nineteen fifty there are about
Speaker 6: sixteen workers paying into social caurit for every retiree. Today
Speaker 6: that numbers dwindled to just two point seven workers per
Speaker 6: retireing and it's projected to fall further to two point
Speaker 6: four workers per retiree by twenty thirty five. So this
Speaker 6: is a from a Cato Institute blog saying social security
Speaker 6: is a legal Ponzi scheme, which is where people like
Speaker 6: Elon Musk get really comfortable tossing that around because it's
Speaker 6: an ideological formulation of the right for.
Speaker 2: Decades since the advent yes of social security.
Speaker 6: And Milton Friedman again was like he's very much popularized
Speaker 6: thinking of Social Security in this way, and there are
Speaker 6: significant structural problems with social Security, But talking about it
Speaker 6: on a podcast so flippantly, a multi multi billionaire, extremely
Speaker 6: powerful person talking about it where he's almost giggling, is
Speaker 6: not it? Like that is not the politics that Donald
Speaker 6: Trump wants to advance for MAGA, Like that's like if
Speaker 6: Steve Bannon were here watching this with us.
Speaker 3: What, Yeah, yes, I would think so.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially they're going to pass a four trillion
Speaker 2: dollar tax cut for people like Elon Musko already. You know,
Speaker 2: TESLA had multiple years where they paid zero dollar.
Speaker 6: It's their top priority right now, Yes, at tax it
Speaker 6: is their top priority.
Speaker 3: As it was in the first administration.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and I mean in that way there's an
Speaker 2: ideological carryover but from the first administration. But hey, if
Speaker 2: you just took that four trillion dollars and put it
Speaker 2: into the Social Security Trust Fund, I think would be
Speaker 2: in good shape. But Bernie made, you know, a similar
Speaker 2: point to what I was making, and put this up
Speaker 2: on the screen just to lay on some of the
Speaker 2: numbers here he says, wrong, Elon social Security has paid
Speaker 2: every benefit ode to every eligible American for eighty six years,
Speaker 2: we can make it, solve it for the next seventy
Speaker 2: five years, and expand benefits by scrapping the cap that
Speaker 2: allows billionaires like you to pay the same amount into
Speaker 2: Social Security as a truck driver. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: the specter of having this man who aspires to be
Speaker 2: the first trillionaire, who, as you said, is probably the
Speaker 2: most powerful person who ever walked the face of the planet,
Speaker 2: steering at the most successful social safety net program and
Speaker 2: the most popular social safety net program in the history
Speaker 2: of America that has lifted literally millions and tens of
Speaker 2: millions of people out of poverty, is just I mean, it.
Speaker 3: Is just disgusting.
Speaker 2: It is just disgusting, And nobody needs me to tell
Speaker 2: them that.
Speaker 3: Like, there is a visceral reaction.
Speaker 2: To seeing this all gark plutocrat who is plundering the
Speaker 2: government saying we don't have money. We've got money for,
Speaker 2: you know, endless wars, We've got money for my four
Speaker 2: trillion dollar tax cut, but we don't have money for
Speaker 2: grammar social Security check.
Speaker 3: Like, get out in here.
Speaker 6: With that super bad I mean, just the super bad politics.
Speaker 6: And they're about to I think see that more and
Speaker 6: more show up and polling, and the more that Elon
Speaker 6: goes out and talks like this, it's going to be
Speaker 6: genuinely problematic for them because they've actually really tried. We
Speaker 6: were talking yesterday as were prepping for the show, like
Speaker 6: what did Project twenty twenty five have to say about
Speaker 6: social security? And went back and looked because I remembered
Speaker 6: vaguely in my mind being like they had done something
Speaker 6: that was sort of new right e meaning like not
Speaker 6: old school con inc And I went back and looked
Speaker 6: in The reason I remembered that is because it basically
Speaker 6: doesn't talk about social security. Talks about social security in
Speaker 6: a couple of different programs like in the through the
Speaker 6: lens of abortion, and that's sort of thing, but there's
Speaker 6: no like big plan for social security, which is fascinating
Speaker 6: because if this were still Paul Ryan's Republican Party, that
Speaker 6: would have been a focal point Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 6: But the reason that it wasn't is that people on
Speaker 6: the right have said, you're allowed to still believe this stuff,
Speaker 6: like that's just turn the volume down, like let's see,
Speaker 6: you know, like we're we may have to do all
Speaker 6: of these tweaks to social security at some point and
Speaker 6: I'm of the perspective that, like, they're desperately structural changes
Speaker 6: that have to happen in Social Security, but politically Trump
Speaker 6: world has said, like, you guys got to turn down
Speaker 6: the volume on that. We cannot be out here talking
Speaker 6: about it. You can do that in ten or fifteen years,
Speaker 6: you can't do it right now. And then you have
Speaker 6: Elon Musk going out on Rogan and Big like it's
Speaker 6: a Ponzi scheme. And then you can't explain why it's
Speaker 6: a Ponzi scheme with any like persuasive answer that would
Speaker 6: resonate with average Americans, who, to your point, are going
Speaker 6: to see Grandma's Social Security cut or are going.
Speaker 5: To worry about that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's good luck well and the worries are
Speaker 2: already here. I can put this up on the screens.
Speaker 2: Do is just making massive cuts to Social Security administration.
Speaker 2: They're saying they planned to cut some seven thousand jobs.
Speaker 2: The number I saw was that this was like roughly
Speaker 2: half the workforce that they're planning on cutting. Some of
Speaker 2: those cuts have already come. Ryan actually tweeted on a
Speaker 2: list of some of the people who have already been fired,
Speaker 2: and they have names like Regional commissioner for New York,
Speaker 2: Deputy Regional commissioner for Kansas City, Assistant deputy commissioner for Ohio.
Speaker 6: So and Ryan confirmed that they actually were fired because
Speaker 6: the administration was saying that we've mutually agreed to like
Speaker 6: sort of part ways. Yeah, but Ryan confirmed with his
Speaker 6: sources that this was like an actual purge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And you know, I saw a bunch of local newspapers
Speaker 2: across the country that are covering the fact that their
Speaker 2: local Social Security offices are being shuttered. And you know,
Speaker 2: these are really important resources for if you have some
Speaker 2: sort of an issue with Social Security and you know
Speaker 2: you need to go to the office, then you know
Speaker 2: that's your local resource that you go to. And to
Speaker 2: see those shuttered again to your point about how these
Speaker 2: cuts are not just being felt in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: Among like some you know Ukraine flag.
Speaker 3: Liberals or whatever.
Speaker 2: These are really across the country in critical ways that
Speaker 2: are going to show up in every community in some
Speaker 2: way across the country. And you know, people like to
Speaker 2: be able to go to their Social Security office. They
Speaker 2: like that they have a regional commissioner so that things
Speaker 2: can be taken care of, and I also think you
Speaker 2: are courting disaster to think. Listen, we know when Elon
Speaker 2: came in and slashed and burn Twitter, things broke, things
Speaker 2: still bring. I can't my dms aren't working on my
Speaker 2: fricking phone right now, right now, And when it's Twitter,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh well, whatever, I'll just get them later,
Speaker 2: I'll do it on my laptop, et cetera. When it's
Speaker 2: your Social Security check, it's a little bit more important,
Speaker 2: or when it's airplanes falling out of the sky, it's
Speaker 2: a little more important.
Speaker 3: When it's food.
Speaker 2: Safety and we don't have the regulators to be able
Speaker 2: to make sure that the standards are being upheld, or
Speaker 2: baby formula where we've already had issue in the past,
Speaker 2: these things are more consequential and there is not the
Speaker 2: same margin for error of like, oh oops, are Ron
Speaker 2: de Santis spaces was a total and complete disaster, but
Speaker 2: no one's going to die from that.
Speaker 6: To be fair, your Twitter dms they're probably hacked by Masade,
Speaker 6: is probably not El's.
Speaker 3: Fault, although they are.
Speaker 2: Also I read that some doge Shaffer is like figuring
Speaker 2: out ways to download everybody's dms as well, and I
Speaker 2: probably run some AI program through it, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So it could be that too.
Speaker 5: Who it seems perfectly legal. What is the very legal?
Speaker 5: Very cool? That's how Trump described something once.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, very cool, That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: I was mentioning the FA some of the you know,
Speaker 2: air safety pieces. Let's just put this X piece up
Speaker 2: on the screen. To the point of the self dealing
Speaker 2: that has been going on. So last week I talked
Speaker 2: about how Elon's SpaceX people had gone in and were like,
Speaker 2: you know, this two point one billion dollar contract that
Speaker 2: was going to Horizon, it's going to go to Starlink. Now,
Speaker 2: well they apparently that hasn't been made official yet, but
Speaker 2: they are already ordering staff to root around to find
Speaker 2: millions of dollars in funding for Elon's Starlink. So, you know,
Speaker 2: tens of millions of dollars they say, for a Starlink
Speaker 2: deal according to sources here with the with Rolling Stone,
Speaker 2: and you know again, I think people have two ways
Speaker 2: they can look at billionaires, and I wish people just
Speaker 2: had an auto like negative on billionaires, but they don't.
Speaker 3: They have two ways they can look at it.
Speaker 2: One is like, oh, he's so brilliant and he's such
Speaker 2: so successful and he's such a genius. We're so lucky
Speaker 2: to have him, and you know, rooting around in the government.
Speaker 2: The other is that you know, this is an arrogant
Speaker 2: prick who is just self interested and is a robber barren.
Speaker 2: And the reason he's so rich is because he steals
Speaker 2: things for himself. And when you have situations like this unfolding,
Speaker 2: it is clear the way that people are going to
Speaker 2: if they don't already view Elon Musk in the context
Speaker 2: of all the power he has in our government.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, you described him earlier in the show
Speaker 6: as an anarcho capitalist, and I think that's how he
Speaker 6: sees himself. But the better way to describe it that
Speaker 6: as a crony capitalist, because he doesn't believe in the
Speaker 6: anarcho part of that. He still believes that there should
Speaker 6: be a government to give him contracts.
Speaker 5: That's the coerce.
Speaker 3: That is a really important priority.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean the thing with it's I think
Speaker 6: two things to be true. He can be brilliant on
Speaker 6: the one hand and also be a robber baron. And
Speaker 6: that's the interesting thing about Ela Musk is that Republicans
Speaker 6: for a long time had I mean, he had a
Speaker 6: decent bit of pop cultural credibility, like bakedin before he
Speaker 6: started like going full Doge, and we're starting to see
Speaker 6: that sort of crumble to an extent. Republicans were not
Speaker 6: used to having someone from Silicon Valley, where they'd been
Speaker 6: really cozy with Democrats since the Obama administration.
Speaker 5: They were not used to.
Speaker 6: Having somebody that had pop cultural cachet and from Silicon
Speaker 6: Valley and lots of lots of money be so nice
Speaker 6: to them. Yeah, and that was very exciting, and he
Speaker 6: could go in Joe Rogan and talk about all these
Speaker 6: things of the government that are broken. But that has
Speaker 6: a flip side, and that is increasingly becoming very fair,
Speaker 6: very clear that there's another side of this coin politically
Speaker 6: at least. So I mean, it's similar to what we
Speaker 6: were saying with Democrats and Doge. And one of the
Speaker 6: things I feel with Democrats and Doge is that they
Speaker 6: need to have a better answer, because if the public
Speaker 6: is asked to say the government is inefficient?
Speaker 5: Is the government inefficient? And like are you going to
Speaker 5: vote based on this?
Speaker 6: You may have some people genuinely continuing to vote Republican
Speaker 6: even if they're upset with those and feel like some
Speaker 6: of this stuff isn't going well because Democrats answer is
Speaker 6: USA idea is wonderful and there's never been any problems
Speaker 6: with it, and just shut up if you're talking about
Speaker 6: this like you're wrong. They need to have a better answer.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, Republicans need to have a better answer.
Speaker 6: You keetch just an Elon Musk out to talk about
Speaker 6: how special Security is a Ponzi scheme. You have to
Speaker 6: It's like repeal and replace. The politics of repeal and
Speaker 6: replace fell apart when they didn't have a good replacement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things Democrats could do is
Speaker 2: just insist on the return of Inspectors General, who job
Speaker 2: it is to look into waste rodden abuse and to
Speaker 2: not cut the GAO, which is the you know, government office,
Speaker 2: and to beef those things up. But you know, you're
Speaker 2: absolutely like and going beyond like the plan for Government
Speaker 2: Efficiency or whatever, which I do think the conception of
Speaker 2: trying to run government like a business is just it
Speaker 2: doesn't make ideological sense because the goal of government isn't
Speaker 2: to turn a profit.
Speaker 3: The goal of government is to.
Speaker 2: You know, do things like protect our food and protect
Speaker 2: our children, and you know, make sure that the airplanes
Speaker 2: aren't crashing out of the sky, and make sure that
Speaker 2: Grandma's able to eat and not be you know, eating
Speaker 2: cat food or whatever. But I think more broadly, they
Speaker 2: need to have an explanation of.
Speaker 3: The world of what went wrong, of what.
Speaker 2: Led people to feel so stressed and be truly so stressed,
Speaker 2: and you know how prices have gotten so out of control.
Speaker 2: Like they need to be able to point their finger
Speaker 2: at villains, the oligarchs and billionaires of the world who
Speaker 2: even before Doze were sort of robbing us all blind
Speaker 2: but and perhaps more subtle ways. And they can't really
Speaker 2: do that until they write, until they clean up their
Speaker 2: own house in that regard, and that we'll talk more
Speaker 2: about that once we get into the block about what
Speaker 2: the Democrats are up to and what they are thinking
Speaker 2: and complaining about, et cetera. Just a real quickly through
Speaker 2: the last two updates with regard to Doze before we
Speaker 2: get to this crypto mess.
Speaker 3: So put the next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: We have a new iteration of the what did you
Speaker 2: do last week TPS report email? This time hag Seth
Speaker 2: is saying, Okay, no, actually, I do want everybody to
Speaker 2: respond to this thing with I guess looming potential firing.
Speaker 3: If you don't.
Speaker 2: You know, this has been obviously huge back and forth.
Speaker 2: Elon put this thing out. A bunch of agency heads
Speaker 2: including hag Seth resisted, and Rubio and RFK sort of
Speaker 2: said yes, respond and then said don't respond. Now this
Speaker 2: email is supposed to be going out today and DoD civilians,
Speaker 2: of which there are millions. That's the largest employer in
Speaker 2: the workforce.
Speaker 3: You said, like thirty.
Speaker 2: Percent of the federal government civilian workforce are under Department
Speaker 2: of Defense, So this is extremely consequential in terms of
Speaker 2: that workforce. And then the last piece is a legal
Speaker 2: update here we have I mentioned the Inspectors General that
Speaker 2: had been fired, puts the six up on the screen.
Speaker 2: We had a judge rule that it is constitutional for
Speaker 2: the Office of Special Counsel to assert independence from the president,
Speaker 2: is legitimate authority to act free of removal by the
Speaker 2: president without causue rules next upscotis So this is one
Speaker 2: of the court battles that's playing out over who can
Speaker 2: be fired under what circumstances because there are laws that
Speaker 2: govern you know, with some of these individuals, there has
Speaker 2: to be you know, a time period. Congress has to
Speaker 2: be alerted. It has to be for cause. It can't
Speaker 2: just be capricious because we feel like it. And so
Speaker 2: this one is likely headed up to the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: for a consequential ruling about whether the executive has total
Speaker 2: and complete control over hirings and firings, or whether Congress
Speaker 2: can say no for things like inspectors general. You have
Speaker 2: to give us a reason why you're getting rid of them,
Speaker 2: because you can see, you know, you could see how
Speaker 2: this could be used in a bad woe. This person
Speaker 2: was investigating me in a way to like now they're gone,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So they try to insulate them from those
Speaker 2: sorts of political pressures.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just one of those decisions where the Trump administration
Speaker 6: would say, maybe facially it's against the statute, but the
Speaker 6: statute is unconstitutional.
Speaker 5: So they're trying to we's talked about this.
Speaker 6: They're trying to push it into the Supreme Court to
Speaker 6: get decisions that would centralize power essentially with the executive
Speaker 6: because they don't want bureaucrats to be able to subvert
Speaker 6: the executive. It's an interesting ideological conversation, but this is a.
Speaker 5: Part of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll see that one's headed up to the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, so we'll see what direction they go into
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 3: All right, let's get to the show.
Speaker 2: Part of the show that I'm most interested in talking about,
Speaker 2: which is this frikin crypto reserve. What's put the Trump
Speaker 2: truth up here on the screen. He announces a US
Speaker 2: crypto reserve that will elevate this critical industry after years
Speaker 2: of corrupt attax by the Biden administration, which is why
Speaker 2: my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working
Speaker 2: Group to move forward on a crypto Strategic Reserve that
Speaker 2: includes XRP, SOOL, and eightya. I will make sure the
Speaker 2: US is the crypto capital of the world. We are
Speaker 2: making America great again. He followed that up emily with
Speaker 2: another one, saying, oh, obviously bitcoin and ethereum, other valuable
Speaker 2: cryptocurrencies will be the heart of the reserve. I also
Speaker 2: love bitcoin and ethereum, So we've got five different crypto
Speaker 2: assets here that so he's this has been floated for
Speaker 2: a while by Trump, and now he's actualizing it and
Speaker 2: announcing which particular coins are going to be are going
Speaker 2: to benefit from US taxpayer dollars or funding being used
Speaker 2: to pump up the prices of these things to be
Speaker 2: held in a crypto asset reserve. Basically the problem for
Speaker 2: a bunch of crypto billionaires is that they're holding these
Speaker 2: quote assets and there isn't enough liquidity for them to
Speaker 2: cash out their bag.
Speaker 3: And now the US tax payer will.
Speaker 2: Backstop those assets so that these crypto billionaires can cash in.
Speaker 2: And the guy who is you know, has been in
Speaker 2: charge of putting this together is a guy named David
Speaker 2: Sachs who's a billionaire. He's one of the billionaires who
Speaker 2: you know was involved in Silicon Valley Bank and cried
Speaker 2: to the federal government that they needed bail out. Well,
Speaker 2: that was on the verge of collapse, and has you know,
Speaker 2: definite conflict of interest here in terms of which coins
Speaker 2: are being selected. So first let's put C eight up
Speaker 2: on the screen and you can see the way that
Speaker 2: these crypto coins have. You know, of course they went
Speaker 2: through the roof. They soared after Trump revealed which coins
Speaker 2: were going to be part of this. And then with
Speaker 2: regard to David Sachs and the reported conflicts of interest here,
Speaker 2: which is a really fancy way for just saying that
Speaker 2: he's you know, completely enriching himself.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This individual, Derek Martin, I checked all of this, by
Speaker 2: the way, and accurate, has a massive conflict of interest
Speaker 2: with this announcement. Folks, should you where of a new
Speaker 2: level of corruption. Put the next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: His company Craft Ventures has invested in a startup called
Speaker 2: Bitwise invest since at least twenty seventeen. He's listed as
Speaker 2: the primary investor, and just so happens that the main
Speaker 2: crypto coins going into the Crypto Strategic Reserve Fund just
Speaker 2: so happened to match Bitwise's top five crypto holdings. So
Speaker 2: incredible self dealing here, I mean, corruption really doesn't begin
Speaker 2: to describe this digital asset reserve of even putting David
Speaker 2: zax aside.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is just a heist. It's just theft.
Speaker 2: It's just robbing the treasury to elevate the price of
Speaker 2: these completely bullshit meaningless like I mean, talk about a
Speaker 2: Ponzi scheme, like crypto is the ultimate Ponzi scheme. There's
Speaker 2: not even a pretense of these things have value in
Speaker 2: and of themselves, and yet we're using federal government resources
Speaker 2: to backstop the price.
Speaker 3: Of these tokens.
Speaker 2: So that you know, insiders can cash in, which that
Speaker 2: already appears like that is happening, and so that a
Speaker 2: bunch of billionaires can cash on their holdings. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a classic pump and dump, but using you know,
Speaker 2: federal garment resources in order to do that, and coming
Speaker 2: at the same time is they're like, we got to
Speaker 2: cut Social Security. Like it's just it's totally insane. I
Speaker 2: almost don't have words for it.
Speaker 6: This is a genuine problem for Sacks, and one that
Speaker 6: he anticipated because he says he divested all of his
Speaker 6: crypto holdings before taking government office. But what's interesting about that?
Speaker 6: And Ryan pointed this out and asked him about it
Speaker 6: on X and I'm curious what you make of this,
Speaker 6: because I mean, it seems like if you were someone
Speaker 6: who's been into crypto for years and you're a major
Speaker 6: stakeholder in the crypto world, you would probably have the
Speaker 6: investments that you just outlined, Like it's not it's not
Speaker 6: surprising that that's where Trump went with the Reserve, and
Speaker 6: that's somebody who isn't like, you know what I mean,
Speaker 6: it seems to me like that genuinely coincidence wouldn't be
Speaker 6: the right word. Just sort of it's a logical place
Speaker 6: where your money would be parked. And I think that
Speaker 6: speaks to the bigger problem with having a cryptos are
Speaker 6: is that his companies, right and correct me, like this
Speaker 6: is I know you're more into this than im, but
Speaker 6: he's companies where the companies are invested obviously in crypto
Speaker 6: doesn't matter if you divest, but if your companies are
Speaker 6: invested in crypto, and we don't know that he's divested
Speaker 6: from those companies, I sort of.
Speaker 5: Doubt he's divested from this company. Correct. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 5: like a huge, huge problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And then I mean, also the other problem is that
Speaker 2: who knew in advance which coins were going to be
Speaker 2: pumped up by this thing? And you know, someone noted
Speaker 2: there was a position that was taken fifty times leverage
Speaker 2: the tune of two hundred million dollar long, and I
Speaker 2: think it was a Theoreum and bitcoin.
Speaker 6: Well, to me, it seems fairly obvious that the reserves
Speaker 6: would be ethereum bitcoin like some of the ones that
Speaker 6: are in there, which sort of but it's like.
Speaker 2: The timing exactly, so this position was taken a day
Speaker 2: before the announcement and fifty times leverage means that if
Speaker 2: there was a two percent drop, all of those millions
Speaker 2: gone wiped down, two hundred million dollar loss. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you're telling me that person didn't know, Like, come on,
Speaker 2: and it's not just this like this is unbelievably naked.
Speaker 3: Just theft of the public resources.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, there's zero strategic reason why we need
Speaker 2: to hold these important, meaningless Ponzi scheme quote unquote assets, right,
Speaker 2: zero justification for that whatsoever, Nothing that makes sense at all.
Speaker 2: But you also have a situation where you know, one
Speaker 2: individual who was being investigated by the SEC bought a
Speaker 2: bunch of Trump shit coin posted publicly about it too.
Speaker 2: I think it was the largest you know, purchase of
Speaker 2: these tokens and investment in this in his like crypto scam.
Speaker 2: And then oh lo and behold that scene, seed drop
Speaker 2: their investigation the vehicle to just outright bribe Trump through
Speaker 2: his crypto coin. I mean, this is listen, a politicis
Speaker 2: has been corrupt since the beginning of time, nothing new
Speaker 2: about that. But this is a world historic level of
Speaker 2: theft and graft and just brazen pay to play corruption
Speaker 2: that has been enabled by crypto And this is just
Speaker 2: like the latest iteration of that who puts C ten
Speaker 2: up on the screen that has the details about this
Speaker 2: Chinese crypto entrepreneur guy named Justin Sun. So they halted
Speaker 2: the fraud prosecution of this Chinese national who sent Trump
Speaker 2: millions and bragged about it, so that to make sure
Speaker 2: he knew that he had invested thirty million dollars in
Speaker 2: these crypto tokens, so I was.
Speaker 3: Paying off for him.
Speaker 2: CEO of Coinbase also benefited the SECS, dismissing their lawsuit.
Speaker 2: That move came after Coinbase boosted Trump's crypto meme coin,
Speaker 2: donated seventy five million to a pro Trump superpack, and
Speaker 2: chipped in a million dollars to Trump's inauguration celebration. So
Speaker 2: presidency just completely for sale by these Robert barons.
Speaker 6: Well, and I think in the corruption front, I was
Speaker 6: going to say this earlier about Elon Muskin Starlink. Part
Speaker 6: of the problem with all of this right now is
Speaker 6: that there's this They do have a sincere ideological not
Speaker 6: always sincere like Trump's.
Speaker 5: I don't think it is sincere.
Speaker 6: I don't think he sincerely gives a damn about crypto
Speaker 6: because he said it was a scam and then it
Speaker 6: could undermine the US dollar and you have to is
Speaker 6: the same thing with him in TikTok, right, Like it
Speaker 6: was pretty nakedly transactional. Now his opinion on it flipped.
Speaker 6: Elon Musk has a sincere ideological belief. We were talking
Speaker 6: about his sort of like anarcho capitalism flirtation before in crypto,
Speaker 6: like he really does believe in it, and so then
Speaker 6: and David Sack certainly does legitimately believe in crypto, and
Speaker 6: so then you have this You're just sort of being
Speaker 6: asked to trust that this is all for the good
Speaker 6: of this like ideological argument and not self dealing. And
Speaker 6: with starlink gets interesting because starlink is a very cool technology.
Speaker 6: It's an awesome product, and it may be the best
Speaker 6: for the FAA. We don't know though, that it's because
Speaker 6: it has the best It has the best argument to
Speaker 6: the FAA forgetting this contract. In the same way that like, well,
Speaker 6: how is anyone supposed to believe that this is genuinely
Speaker 6: the right move for the strategic reserve and not self dealing?
Speaker 6: You then just have to put your trust in Trump
Speaker 6: Elon in this case, David Sacks and David Sachs will
Speaker 6: will have this ideological reasoning give all these explanations, but
Speaker 6: it's really hard. You're just asking the public to say, yes,
Speaker 6: I trust that this was not about your portfolio, even
Speaker 6: though the public has seen that happen for decades. And
Speaker 6: that's what Trump is a response to, Yeah, seeing that
Speaker 6: happen for he said, I alone know the system.
Speaker 5: I think the system, and Ilon contix it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Trump and Elon have a lot of like theoretical
Speaker 2: ideological divergences. The way that Trump positioned himself certainly in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen but somewhat at this time as well, and
Speaker 2: the way Elon, you know.
Speaker 3: Portrays his ideology.
Speaker 2: But in just their commitment to theft of the public verse,
Speaker 2: they are completely united. And I do think that that
Speaker 2: is one of the most important like operating ideological commitments
Speaker 2: that you can see throughout this administration. Elon's primary goal,
Speaker 2: I think he wants to be the world's for australionaire,
Speaker 2: and he wants to use government money, our public taxpayer
Speaker 2: dollars to fund SpaceX so he can.
Speaker 3: Get to Mars.
Speaker 5: Like he wants to go to Mars.
Speaker 2: He wants to plunder the government so he can go
Speaker 2: to Mars. That's that's his primary operative goal. And if
Speaker 2: that means Grandma's going to starve, and that means kids
Speaker 2: in Africa and doesn't matter, that's his goal. Okay, just
Speaker 2: braisen theft of the public government, public purse so that
Speaker 2: he can go to Mars. Trump wants to be wealthy
Speaker 2: on the tune of like an Elon Musk. I mean,
Speaker 2: Trump is obviously incredibly rich guy, but he's not like
Speaker 2: Elon Musk to Peter Teel right, well.
Speaker 6: And that was debated too. I mean, what Trump's actual
Speaker 6: network was before these these coins, as you did a
Speaker 6: great tik talk on how there's a few whales who
Speaker 6: are at least as the time you did that TikTok,
Speaker 6: we're holding the Trump coin. That's another example of like
Speaker 6: we legitimately do not know if he knows who they are, Like,
Speaker 6: we don't know who they are. We know the like
Speaker 6: one or two of them are, but we don't know
Speaker 6: who they are. We don't know anything about that, and
Speaker 6: we don't know if he knows who they are. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so then you're just being asked to trust that Trump's
Speaker 6: net worth was jacked up as he was entering office
Speaker 6: anonymously by people who were just trying to make money,
Speaker 6: and it was like a baseball card deal.
Speaker 5: It was just really good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and by having this shitcoin, anyone, whether it's the
Speaker 2: you know, Chinese crypto dude or anyone else, can just
Speaker 2: funnel millions of dollars into it, some portion of which
Speaker 2: go directly into Trump's pocket to get their way with
Speaker 2: the government, right, so you know, he's robbing us. And
Speaker 2: then you know, the whole foreign policy direction of we're
Speaker 2: going to take Greenland, We're going to take Gaza, We're
Speaker 2: going to do you know, we're going to take half
Speaker 2: of Ukraine or whatever, like that's all about his you know,
Speaker 2: benefit for his family and Elon Musk as well, but
Speaker 2: a whole cadre of all dark billionaires who can you know,
Speaker 2: also rob those countries and benefit themselves as well. So
Speaker 2: it's a pretty consistent commitment across the government and certainly
Speaker 2: helps helps us to understand you know, all this wired
Speaker 2: Trump and Elon able to get along.
Speaker 3: So well, and why hasn't there.
Speaker 2: Been a falling out, like because they both have a
Speaker 2: commitment to you know, stripping the government for parts and
Speaker 2: exploiting whatever they can in order to enrich themselves and
Speaker 2: pursue their own goals.
Speaker 3: But I think their common commitment.
Speaker 2: To theft of the public purse is a bond that
Speaker 2: they share and part of what is keeping that relationship together.
Speaker 6: Oh, I think Trump's primary concern right now is his
Speaker 6: like historical legacy, and where those two things depart will
Speaker 6: be interesting.
Speaker 3: So do you think he cares?
Speaker 5: I think he.
Speaker 6: Cares that he will be looked at as like a
Speaker 6: great walking around having his people call himself, to call
Speaker 6: him the peacemaker in chief.
Speaker 5: Like I think he.
Speaker 6: Does at this point care about how history sees him,
Speaker 6: and that's dangerous because it gets to, you know, just posturing,
Speaker 6: and every president does that. But like to what extent
Speaker 6: is this going to just be a public real campaign?
Speaker 6: Like is the presidency going to be a public relations campaign.
Speaker 6: I think what he cared about first was leaving office
Speaker 6: with money so that he has that covered. You know,
Speaker 6: he doesn't want to go to prison, So there's that too.
Speaker 6: That could factor into the conversation about potential third term.
Speaker 6: As Bannon I think sadly is pushing, but I think
Speaker 6: he wants to be perceived as someone who healed the country.
Speaker 6: I think he desperately wants to be perceived that way,
Speaker 6: and I think where that departs with Elon Musk is
Speaker 6: going to be a problem for Trump.
Speaker 5: And but what we've.
Speaker 6: Seen so far is that it hasn't been to your
Speaker 6: point about the money, Yeah, So, I mean it's a
Speaker 6: he really cares about the optics. That's why he's obsessed
Speaker 6: with polling and obsessed with how he wont to mandate
Speaker 6: in the popular vote and all of that. So Elon
Speaker 6: could could potentially be a problem to that down the road.
Speaker 6: But you know, even even when we've seen breaks so
Speaker 6: far in public perception of Elon Musk, Trump is not
Speaker 6: this gets your theory right, Trump has not departed from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Former Biden House Press Secretary Korean Jean Pierre, out of
Speaker 6: that job for only about what a month now, was
Speaker 6: at the Harvard Institute of Politics last week and made
Speaker 6: some comments about the Democratic Party's push to oust Joe
Speaker 6: Biden from the ticket that have gone viral and are
Speaker 6: well worth getting Crystal's reaction too, and diving into some
Speaker 6: of the problems or how they speak to some of
Speaker 6: the broader problems that a Democratic Party is facing right now.
Speaker 6: So let's take a listen to Korean Jean Pierre again,
Speaker 6: this is from last Wednesday at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Speaker 7: Was a firing squad and I had never seen anything
Speaker 7: like it before. I'd never seen a party do that
Speaker 7: in the way that they did, and it was hurtful
Speaker 7: and sad to see that happening, A firing squad around
Speaker 7: a person who I believe was a true patriot, a
Speaker 7: person who I believe did everything that he can for
Speaker 7: this country, a person who I believe, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 7: has done more in his in one turn than most
Speaker 7: president had done in two term, historical things, and I
Speaker 7: was shocked.
Speaker 5: But what I was.
Speaker 6: Seeing, and Korean, you're just to clarify other Democrats coming
Speaker 6: out against Biden, yep, I.
Speaker 5: Had never seen anything like that.
Speaker 8: That was if you're asking me the thing that I
Speaker 8: saw in those three weeks, that was shocking, shocking, and
Speaker 8: instead of coming together to really be unified and trying
Speaker 8: to figure out how do we save our democracy, how
Speaker 8: do we fight back?
Speaker 5: That's what I was seeing, Chris.
Speaker 6: So I know you have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 6: I'm going to toss it to you. With just the
Speaker 6: response to Kurdin, Jean Pirez, that man. Do you know
Speaker 6: what I've never seen is a president who is basically
Speaker 6: dead continuing to try and run for president again. So
Speaker 6: to her saying, I've never seen anything like the firing squad.
Speaker 6: It was like he fell asleep during a debate. Practically
Speaker 6: he beat me Mediga Medica, I'm sorry, but nobody has
Speaker 6: ever seen what precipitated what you say you've never seen,
Speaker 6: so maybe it's not so crazy that we.
Speaker 5: Had never seen that level of firing squad before.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just I don't even know what to say, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know you were part of a historic scandal
Speaker 2: and cover up of this man's decline if you care
Speaker 2: so much, and I don't think that she really does.
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's part of it, Like if you
Speaker 2: actually cared about defeating Donald Trump and riding the ship,
Speaker 2: you should have been blowing the whistle and letting us
Speaker 2: in on the fact that this man could not function,
Speaker 2: that he was unable to put sentences together. That I mean,
Speaker 2: the things that are starting that have been coming out
Speaker 2: after the fact about how oblivious he was to the
Speaker 2: political reality as well, about how many donors who would
Speaker 2: just see him at one event and you were with him,
Speaker 2: you know, day in and day out, donors would see
Speaker 2: him at one event and be like, holy hell, this
Speaker 2: is worse than I thought. And so for you to
Speaker 2: sit here and play the victim and act like the
Speaker 2: people who were in the wrong were the ones that finally,
Speaker 2: at long last acknowledged reality and were like, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: this cannot go on is just insane to me. It's
Speaker 2: also insane to me, like I'm sorry to treat her
Speaker 2: with such kid gloves, like to host her and let
Speaker 2: her Oh my god, my feelings and it was so
Speaker 2: shocking and it was so terrible. Blah blah blah, Like
Speaker 2: she needs to be treated as someone who was part
Speaker 2: of a conspiracy against the American people.
Speaker 5: She's been touted out at Harvard.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, she was part of a conspiracy against
Speaker 2: the American people. They helped to, you know, block any
Speaker 2: sort of a democratic primary process from playing out. They hid,
Speaker 2: They went to great lengths that we are only beginning
Speaker 2: to scratch the surface of to hide the nature of
Speaker 2: his true condition. And that you feel no remorse or
Speaker 2: regret about that, your old concern, your only criticism is
Speaker 2: for again the people who very belatedly were like Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: we cannot hide from this reality anymore. Like that is
Speaker 2: so insane to me, And I do think it speaks
Speaker 2: to just like a deep lack of seriousness and a
Speaker 2: deep narcissism within some of these people, where it was
Speaker 2: more important about how her boss felt and the way
Speaker 2: he was treated and you know, his own ambitions than
Speaker 2: addressing what you know, you she probably would describe and
Speaker 2: what I certainly describe as a fascist.
Speaker 3: Threat to the country.
Speaker 2: So I just it's incredible to me that this is
Speaker 2: still the way that she's sort of like positioning herself. Oh,
Speaker 2: it was so heartful, hurtful, it was so shocking. Also,
Speaker 2: the whitewashing of Biden's record is should should not be
Speaker 2: unnoted as well. She says he accomplished historical things. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like you know, facilitating a genocide and Gaza as one
Speaker 2: example of those historical things that he was up to.
Speaker 2: And and I supported very much parts of that domestic agenda,
Speaker 2: especially in the early days of the Biden administration. But
Speaker 2: you also have to grapple with the reality that, you know,
Speaker 2: the economy took a turn, people were not happy, people
Speaker 2: were not satisfied with what you were able to accomplish
Speaker 2: even on the domestic front, putting aside foreign affairs and
Speaker 2: Biden's core promise that he ran on in twenty and
Speaker 2: twenty and was planning on running again in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: was defeating Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And on that measure, you failed.
Speaker 2: You handed the White House back to him on a
Speaker 2: silver platter. So you should be hanging your head in shame.
Speaker 2: And I know it's cliche to say, but with her,
Speaker 2: I really do feel like what happened to you? Because
Speaker 2: I knew her back at MSMB. She came out of
Speaker 2: the like move on activist, anti war world, and every
Speaker 2: day when I would see her up there justifying these atrocities.
Speaker 3: In Goz, it was just like, how does this occur?
Speaker 2: Like what is the path that you walked that led
Speaker 2: you to feel that this was not only just she
Speaker 2: thinks she has the moral high ground.
Speaker 3: She still thinks that she is.
Speaker 2: Like the more virtuous, morally correct one, and I just
Speaker 2: I just can't run my head around it, honestly.
Speaker 6: And it's first and foremost a rebuke of the crowd
Speaker 6: that she came out of. And that's a really interesting point.
Speaker 3: Actually, Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she she came out of like the activist community, right,
Speaker 2: And I think, I think once you start to justify, well,
Speaker 2: this is just what I have to do for my career,
Speaker 2: and if it wasn't me, it'd be somewhere one else,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, then you end up at the podium,
Speaker 2: you know, justifying war crimes and atrocities, and you end
Speaker 2: up here after the fact being upset that people pointed
Speaker 2: out the reality that the president was, you know, too
Speaker 2: old to be functional at this point, right.
Speaker 6: So it's this, It's it's how the It's very common.
Speaker 6: It's not just on the left. But you see the
Speaker 6: ends justify the means, meaning to a certain extent, you
Speaker 6: start believing in the means, like it's right. So it's
Speaker 6: one thing to be like, you know X. But there
Speaker 6: was never any cracks in the foundation when it came
Speaker 6: to her, apparently, like when we didn't see anything leaked,
Speaker 6: she didn't indicate there was any daylight between herself and
Speaker 6: the present. She was a real loyal foot soldier to
Speaker 6: the point where it seems like she was in the
Speaker 6: camp of like now, agreeing with the means, not just
Speaker 6: that the means justify the end. But we have to
Speaker 6: talk about this sort of glimmer of hope. I think
Speaker 6: for Democrats. Governor of Minnesota, Governor Tim Waltz, who is
Speaker 6: a slightly more compelling politician than he was allowed to
Speaker 6: be on the campaign trail, significantly more so.
Speaker 5: He goes on Malli Jong Fast podcast.
Speaker 6: It starts to talk about Man, I'm really eager to
Speaker 6: talk about this because it reminds me a lot of
Speaker 6: what Republicans have dealt with over the last ten years.
Speaker 6: Crystal about single payer healthcare. Yeah, let's roll this clip
Speaker 6: of Tim Waalts on Mallijrong Fast podcast. It's a full
Speaker 6: recollection of sort of went wrong or reconsideration of what
Speaker 6: went wrong in twenty twenty four. But here's what he
Speaker 6: had to say, particularly about healthcare.
Speaker 9: I hear the thing out there is is that when
Speaker 9: we get back, which we will fight, I'll tell you
Speaker 9: what people are going to expect is they're not going
Speaker 9: to expect us to tinkle around the edge with the ACA.
Speaker 9: They're going to expect universal health care. And if there's
Speaker 9: a lesson here, I always said this, we had a
Speaker 9: one vote majority in Minnesota. When we move clean energy,
Speaker 9: we move reproductive rights, we moved. We moved a whole
Speaker 9: slew of progressive, very popular including things around guns and
Speaker 9: gun safety, very popular things. We moved it with a
Speaker 9: one vote majority, and people ask, well, what do you
Speaker 9: call a one vote majority? A majority?
Speaker 6: Exactly what happened with the Tea Party, Crystal, except in reverse.
Speaker 6: They did not expect Republicans to just tinker around the
Speaker 6: edges of the ACA. They wanted a full repeal, but
Speaker 6: when Republicans had nothing to replace it with, they lost
Speaker 6: the permission structure. From as you know, people have pointed
Speaker 6: out a lot of like populist conservatives who rely on
Speaker 6: the government for some of their health insurance, veterans, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And so when you.
Speaker 6: Have these populist movements spring up for good reason, your
Speaker 6: response can't the crony capitalism and corporate bullshit. Yeah, And
Speaker 6: I think that's the point that Walts is making here.
Speaker 2: I think he has better instincts political instincts than the
Speaker 2: vast majority of democratic politicians. And you're absolutely right that
Speaker 2: he was really sort of stifled on the campaign. I
Speaker 2: think there was a fear maybe of him overshadowing Kamala.
Speaker 2: He did very poorly. Also in the JD vance debate,
Speaker 2: like we have to say he you know, this was
Speaker 2: way too accommodating. I mean, it just was not the
Speaker 2: not the way to go. In fairness, he did say
Speaker 2: going in like debating is not my things though that's
Speaker 2: apparently a weakness for him. But you know, he auditioned
Speaker 2: for the campaign on cable dues, where he was fantastic.
Speaker 2: He had a real instinct of how to characterize the
Speaker 2: Trump administration as like abnormal versus reaching for the high
Speaker 2: moralistic language of their fascists, et cetera, which obviously I
Speaker 2: agree that they are, but I do think that politically
Speaker 2: his way of just saying, like, these people are strange,
Speaker 2: they're outside of the mainstream, like this is not the
Speaker 2: direction we should be going in, I think was probably
Speaker 2: the better direction. And he just was a very effective
Speaker 2: and relatable messenger when he was allowed to do so.
Speaker 2: And I think his instinct here is precisely correct and
Speaker 2: speaks to what you were saying, Emily, which is, like,
Speaker 2: you know, Democrats have always supported if you ask Democrats,
Speaker 2: overwhelming majority supports single pairer like this has always been
Speaker 2: what Democratic base voters have wanted. In that twenty twenty primary,
Speaker 2: when in whether it was Mississippi or Nevada. When you
Speaker 2: ask Democratic primary voters do you prefer to, you know,
Speaker 2: a public option or some other variation of healthcare reform
Speaker 2: versus single pairer, they backed Bernie Sanders Medicare for all.
Speaker 3: And at this point it's like, Okay, well, we tried
Speaker 3: it your way.
Speaker 2: We did the Joe Biden thing, we did the Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris thing, and you were wrong that this was the
Speaker 2: way to defeat Donald Trump. You were wrong that this
Speaker 2: was the way to stop the country from sliding into
Speaker 2: you know, oligarchy and authoritarianism. So we're not going to
Speaker 2: listen to you anymore. Like this time, we have our
Speaker 2: own ideas about how we want to approach things. And
Speaker 2: I think his instinct that a more sort of passionate
Speaker 2: and someone who is more of a fighter and who
Speaker 2: is more willing to embrace those kind of universalist programs
Speaker 2: that are really popular, things that are popular among the
Speaker 2: Democratic base are going to be in a much better
Speaker 2: position next time around.
Speaker 6: Now this is where it gets even more interesting, because
Speaker 6: I think's Third Way selectively leaked to this document to Politico.
Speaker 6: But Politico got its hands on a document from a
Speaker 6: third Way retreat that happened out in Louding County. Obviously,
Speaker 6: if you're not familiar with Third Way, they're openly center left.
Speaker 6: They're not trying to be the activist the representation of
Speaker 6: like the Democratic activist grassroots. In fact, they're openly sort
Speaker 6: of rejecting the direction of the party of the activist grassroots.
Speaker 6: But we can put the next element up on the screen.
Speaker 6: This is a document that was leaked to Politico from
Speaker 6: that retreat about how Democrats can regain working class trust
Speaker 6: quote and reconnect with voters culturally. They laid out twenty
Speaker 6: solutions and crystal. It's so fascinating because some of this
Speaker 6: is right on the mark, it was right on the target,
Speaker 6: like the quote faculty lounge program, but some of it
Speaker 6: is so incoherent, like their prescriptions on the faculty lounge
Speaker 6: problem are incoherent with their point about economic concerns, because
Speaker 6: you'll have much better thoughts on this than I do.
Speaker 6: But just as I'm thinking about some of these prescriptions,
Speaker 6: it's very heavily about the problems with identity politics, which
Speaker 6: is again funny from the center left, which completely encouraged,
Speaker 6: I mean, all of the corporate sponsorships of identity politics
Speaker 6: and you go back over the last ten years.
Speaker 5: So it's amusing right now. Now.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, though, they are talking about how
Speaker 6: democracy again like re emphasize the economy, like tone down
Speaker 6: the volume on the cultural issues, turn up the volume
Speaker 6: on the economy. But they're also talking about isolating the
Speaker 6: far left. And this is the problem, as I see,
Speaker 6: if your Democrats, the far left economics are more appealing
Speaker 6: than the center left's economics. So if you alienate the
Speaker 6: quote unquote far left, which actually does represent where the
Speaker 6: public is and a lot of economic.
Speaker 5: Issues social security is one really good examples.
Speaker 6: We were talking about earlier, healthcare another good example.
Speaker 5: If you alienate the quote.
Speaker 6: Far left because of the cultural messaging, you are left
Speaker 6: with what like Obamanomics, which is also not popular. So
Speaker 6: like what do you in this documents has reduce far
Speaker 6: left influence and infrastructure.
Speaker 5: That's one of the bullet points.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you're going to be screwed on your economics
Speaker 6: if you do that because you were center quote center
Speaker 6: left economics are not popular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think that's those are those are good points.
Speaker 2: I mean, they really give away the game here when
Speaker 2: they say that the goal should be to move away
Speaker 2: from the dominance of small dollar donors whose preferences may
Speaker 2: not align with the broader electorate.
Speaker 3: You think the big.
Speaker 2: Donors preferences are aligned with the broader electorate, Like tax
Speaker 2: cuts for the rich and you know, cutting Social Security
Speaker 2: A and union busting, those are the priorities of the
Speaker 2: big dollar donors, or you know, backing Israel's war crimes
Speaker 2: from here until eternity. You think that's what's aligned with
Speaker 2: the broader electorate. I mean, that's what really gives up
Speaker 2: the game here. Because it's all well and good, all
Speaker 2: week should focus on economic solutions. What economic solutions like
Speaker 2: you know, salt tax type of bulshit exactly because I
Speaker 2: promise you they don't mean expanding social security and single
Speaker 2: payer healthcare and you know, union jobs and living wages.
Speaker 3: They don't mean that.
Speaker 2: So the other piece of this that is just maddening
Speaker 2: to me is again it pretends like the Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: left has been in control of this party.
Speaker 3: They're not.
Speaker 2: They have very limited power, very limited power in this party.
Speaker 2: And that is precisely the problem. Like there was a
Speaker 2: populist left answer to trump Ism that made sense to
Speaker 2: people that appealed to the very bros who have now
Speaker 2: drifted to the right that appealed even to Joe Rogan,
Speaker 2: that appealed massively. I mean, Bernie Sanders was king among
Speaker 2: working class Latinos. Again, the same groups that have drifted
Speaker 2: to the right that had a narrative that the Sanders
Speaker 2: left populist movement had a narrative and a class focus
Speaker 2: that made sense to people because it was true and
Speaker 2: it was real, and it offered actual solutions. And your
Speaker 2: efforts over these years, this group, in particular, efforts over
Speaker 2: the years to crush and sideline that movement is one
Speaker 2: of the key reasons why Democrats find themselves in the
Speaker 2: place that they are now. So to act like you
Speaker 2: haven't been in control of this party while you're running,
Speaker 2: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is to me so utterly insane
Speaker 2: and dishonest that it's crazy. But like I said, even
Speaker 2: if you you know, might agree with their sort of
Speaker 2: vague generalities about like oh, they need to get out
Speaker 2: into real communities, which is funny to me that those
Speaker 2: real communities include gunshops.
Speaker 6: Like hell yeah, also good luck, I mean seriously good.
Speaker 2: Luck, right, Like yeah, I don't think you're going to
Speaker 2: be winning a lot of voters of the gun show.
Speaker 2: But whatever, go to the gun show. That's fine if
Speaker 2: you want to. But even if you agree with these
Speaker 2: sort of like vague generalities, when they're talking about getting
Speaker 2: in touch with economic issues, they are not talking about
Speaker 2: the actual economics that would deliver for people that the
Speaker 2: quote unquote far left has been offering for years and years.
Speaker 2: They're talking about an elite agenda backed by big money politics,
Speaker 2: which is precisely why Democrats had no trust with the
Speaker 2: voters when they claim to be the party of the
Speaker 2: working class.
Speaker 6: It's really disgusting to see how elite Dems and massive
Speaker 6: corporations that were funding elite Dems got behind the identity
Speaker 6: politics agenda when it was convenient for them, and are
Speaker 6: now taking these issues and just completely discarding them. It's
Speaker 6: a great example of how people are like toys.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: It's like we're on the Truman Show and they're running everything.
Speaker 6: It's a big experiment on us, and they're just like
Speaker 6: pulling the puppet strings. Like from my perspective as a conservative,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, okay, so you guys did all of
Speaker 6: this bullshit to girls' sports, and now you're taking a
Speaker 6: step back and being like, hey, no, no, no, we
Speaker 6: gotta we got to get our power back. And it's like,
Speaker 6: give me a break. You were just your It's just
Speaker 6: we're all players in your fun little game. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: you'll you'll give all this money.
Speaker 5: And you'll call people bigots, and you will.
Speaker 6: It's like when there's that famous moment at a Bernie
Speaker 6: Sanders rally in twenty sixteen where a BLM group overtook
Speaker 6: the stage and started protesting him. And what we saw
Speaker 6: after that was the Hillary Clinton campaign start weaponizing this
Speaker 6: as a wedge issue and going after the Bernie bros
Speaker 6: And saying people were bigoted form backing Bernie, they were
Speaker 6: just sexists and just completely weaponizing it, and it became
Speaker 6: the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party and now they
Speaker 6: just want to get rid of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for growing us all.
Speaker 2: You were not the ones who originated this as a
Speaker 2: way to pretend like Bernie Sanders was a racist and
Speaker 2: a sexist and pop like you were the real.
Speaker 6: Programs and his supporters were racists and sex That's right,
Speaker 6: And the same thing with Trump supporters were necessarily all
Speaker 6: racists and sexists. They played this game with the country
Speaker 6: where they poured gasoline on the fire of the culture war,
Speaker 6: and now they're acting like as it burns, they're like,
Speaker 6: oh man, wa, you guys are really bad. Can you
Speaker 6: guys deal with putting those flames out?
Speaker 5: It's such bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you can also see the nakedness
Speaker 2: of it with the way that all these corporations, whether's
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, like, you know, they adopted
Speaker 2: the the like liberal identity framing when that was the
Speaker 2: power that they thought was ascendant, and now that they
Speaker 2: feel like the right wing is ascendant, well they'll just
Speaker 2: ditch that and they'll adopt the right wing cultural totems
Speaker 2: to also cover for what is fundamentally a pro oligarchic agenda.
Speaker 2: I mean that's Mark Andresen going on with Joe Rogan
Speaker 2: being like the CFPB is canceling, you know, conservatives blah
Speaker 2: blah blah and just making stuff up to try to
Speaker 2: use a trojan horse of these cultural issues to usher
Speaker 2: in a pro oligarch agenda. And it was groups like
Speaker 2: Third Way and the you know, Hillary Clinton neo liberals
Speaker 2: who originated that in the Democratic Party. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: but the just coming out and saying like we got
Speaker 2: to get rid of these small dollar donors is so insane.
Speaker 2: I mean, when Bernie ran and he is the most successful,
Speaker 2: and this is the other thing that gives away the game.
Speaker 2: He is the most successful small dollar donor candidate probably
Speaker 2: in history.
Speaker 5: And Trump is really successful too, but not.
Speaker 3: As successful as Bernie.
Speaker 2: And this time around, actually Trump didn't do all that
Speaker 2: well with grassroots jonors. But you're right, but with Bernie,
Speaker 2: you know, you would go and look at the top
Speaker 2: professions and it was like Walmart workers and Amazon workers
Speaker 2: and Starbucks workers, and I think, though, you think those
Speaker 2: are the people that are out of touch with the
Speaker 2: priorities of the broader electorate. But you're like, you know,
Speaker 2: la Silicon Valley Wall Street donors, those are the ones
Speaker 2: that are going to get us back in touch with
Speaker 2: the working class of America. Like they can't believe that,
Speaker 2: they can't actually believe that. It's so dishonest and so insane.
Speaker 5: Hmm, yeah, I don't know if they believe it.
Speaker 6: I mean some of them probably doing some of them
Speaker 6: are probably like, we know this is insane and stupid.
Speaker 2: But that's their Yeah, you're right, they're in such a
Speaker 2: bubble that perhaps they do actually think because that's all
Speaker 2: viewpoint that surrounds the Bill, right, they're like, oh, these
Speaker 2: rich donors in Silicon Valley, or they're the ones that
Speaker 2: really get the pulse of the country.
Speaker 3: M hmm.
Speaker 6: Let's move on to the brewing feud between Bill Burr
Speaker 6: and Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 3: This is a fun one, all right.
Speaker 6: So Ben Shapiro has said that we can put element
Speaker 6: one up on the screen. This is the quote he
Speaker 6: said recently that Bill Burr quote has become woke over time.
Speaker 6: I think he became embarrassed that many people in the
Speaker 6: right thought he was very funny, so he decided he
Speaker 6: was going to go woke. Bur openly cheered the murder
Speaker 6: of the United Healthcare executive because he says ceo should
Speaker 6: live in fear if they don't act in the way
Speaker 6: that he would have them act in a system that
Speaker 6: he has no fixes for. By the way, now let's
Speaker 6: go to the second one. He called Burr's comments about
Speaker 6: the killing of the United Healthcare CEO quote truly evil
Speaker 6: and said he's saying you should live in fear if
Speaker 6: you're the CEO of a company that does things that
Speaker 6: Burr deems to be bad or wrong.
Speaker 5: Now, Bill Burr.
Speaker 6: Did an interview where he was asked by The New
Speaker 6: York Times because he's doing it, actually, this is actually
Speaker 6: kind of cool. He's doing a Glengarry Glenn Ross adaptation,
Speaker 6: which is interesting because David mammott is has long been
Speaker 6: sort of affiliated with the right though Glengarry Glenn Ross
Speaker 6: is a critique of capitalism. So let's put E three
Speaker 6: on the screen. Bill Burr responds and says, all Shapiro
Speaker 6: knew is if he put quote woke on what I said,
Speaker 6: he would make more money. I don't know who he is,
Speaker 6: but that guy is jerk off. Now let's go back
Speaker 6: to how Bill Burr has been talking about Brian Johnson
Speaker 6: and Luigi So this is a clip from Bill Burr
Speaker 6: on December ninth of last year.
Speaker 5: We can go ahead and roll this element.
Speaker 10: You know what's annoying me about this, this kid who
Speaker 10: killed this CEO is none of these news programs are
Speaker 10: talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general
Speaker 10: public about this because of how these insurance companies treat
Speaker 10: people when they are at their most vulnerable, after we've
Speaker 10: all given them our money every fucking month, and now
Speaker 10: we finally need you, and all you do is deny us.
Speaker 10: And then these pussies and all of these things are
Speaker 10: taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know,
Speaker 10: I gotta be honest with you, Okay, I love that
Speaker 10: the fucking CEOs are fucking afraid right now. You should be,
Speaker 10: by and large, You're all a bunch of selfish, greedy,
Speaker 10: fucking pieces of shit, and a lot of you are
Speaker 10: mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. That's why
Speaker 10: it looks clean. That's why these people look, oh my god,
Speaker 10: Oh he was just you know, walking into a hotel.
Speaker 10: It's like, okay, but what was his job?
Speaker 5: What did he do?
Speaker 10: What was the results of it?
Speaker 1: All?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: So there's a lot to say about this, Crystal, because
Speaker 6: Bill Burr has been on a tear about Brian Johnson
Speaker 6: and Luigimianngioni essentially since this happened, so for several months,
Speaker 6: and I think, you know, Shapiro wouldn't claim to be
Speaker 6: a sort of avatar of trump Ism. He has a
Speaker 6: lot of his own complaints with populism. He's a fairly
Speaker 6: anti populist pundit. That's kind of what got him in
Speaker 6: trouble originally with with Trump world. He's always sort of
Speaker 6: been honest about his opposition to like anti corporate populism
Speaker 6: as it's risen on the right. But Bill Burr, I
Speaker 6: guess I don't understand why Bill Burr is supposed to
Speaker 6: have a fix to the healthcare problem if he's going
Speaker 6: to spout off about Brian Johnson.
Speaker 2: He's a comedian, really, but the one that's actually funny
Speaker 2: and actually stands up to power, you know, and if
Speaker 2: Democrats want to win again, take notes from Bill Burr
Speaker 2: like this is actually the type of energy that you
Speaker 2: need to buy. I when he says a lot of
Speaker 2: these CEOs or mass murders, they just don't pull the
Speaker 2: trigger like you want to talk about the kind of
Speaker 2: populist left energy that could win.
Speaker 3: This is how people feel.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's why there was such an outpouring of
Speaker 2: enter of emotion around Luigi Mangioni. And so for Bill
Speaker 2: Burr to say, like, hey, aren't we going to talk
Speaker 2: about where that comes from? And then Shapiro is like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can you know this is truly evil blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: I also, I think what was the smartest thing that
Speaker 2: Bill Bert said in all of this would speak to
Speaker 2: what we were just talking about about using cultural issues
Speaker 2: to usher in an oligarch agenda. He said, all Shapiro
Speaker 2: knows is if he put woke on what I said,
Speaker 2: he'd make more money. And that is I mean, again,
Speaker 2: a lot of oligarchs on the right are using an
Speaker 2: anti woke, you know.
Speaker 3: A woke backlash.
Speaker 2: You know, the energy around anti woke is use whatever DEI,
Speaker 2: whatever cultural totems exist that are important to conservatives and
Speaker 2: putting that across whatever their agenda is, and you know,
Speaker 2: trying to usher in Trojan Horse in this pro oligarch movement,
Speaker 2: and it's being very successful. And so I think the
Speaker 2: way Bilberr like immediately picks up on that, I think
Speaker 2: is honestly very impressive. It's also hilarious that he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know he is, but he's a jerk, right Yeah.
Speaker 6: And this is probably not popular with a lot of
Speaker 6: our viewers, but I personally really like Ben. But what
Speaker 6: I would say if he was sitting here is that
Speaker 6: wokeness is not anti corporatism.
Speaker 5: That's there's nothing woke about Bill Burr.
Speaker 6: I mean, it might it might be coded as left,
Speaker 6: but it's the opposite of woke to that's right, anti
Speaker 6: corporate and I mean, obviously corporations were pushing wocism for
Speaker 6: a really long time. It did become the language of
Speaker 6: corporate America. But wocism and like being mad at CEO
Speaker 6: shouldn't be flated. That's a really dangerous I think conflation
Speaker 6: on the right because it pegs and bend to his credit,
Speaker 6: would be against both of these. He would be against
Speaker 6: populism and wokeism. But most of the right is not
Speaker 6: against populism, like most Republican voters are not against what
Speaker 6: Bilburgh is saying here.
Speaker 2: Well, and Ben isn't against wokeism when it comes to like.
Speaker 5: Well, that's very different. Yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 2: He's very in favor of affirmative action when it comes
Speaker 2: to his pet issue.
Speaker 5: Totally different like that.
Speaker 6: He would he would obviously argue if you were here
Speaker 6: that it's all I think he would conflate anti Israel
Speaker 6: sentiments with anti of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's yeah, So that's.
Speaker 2: A the whole I mean, but the whole thing of
Speaker 2: like wokeism was I mean, it's not that I agree,
Speaker 2: it's that anti black racism doesn't exist.
Speaker 5: Yep, it's over it's over stretching the.
Speaker 3: Terms, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so you know, when it comes to anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: suddenly he's the snowflake who's like, you know, these college
Speaker 2: kids said experienced micro Russian. You know, so he has
Speaker 2: his own flavor of wocism. But I think your point
Speaker 2: is a really important one, Emily, which is that, like
Speaker 2: the way that Bill Burr does left populism is actually
Speaker 2: the opposite of the woke liberal virtue signaling that people
Speaker 2: were justifiably upset about. So yeah, I think this, this energy,
Speaker 2: the Bill Burr energy, is the real winning. A third
Speaker 2: way should take some notes from this. Well, he care
Speaker 2: about winning, but they don't. They care about their agenda.
Speaker 6: He talks like a real person, Like he talks like
Speaker 6: a real guy. It talks a real it's it's it's
Speaker 6: actually sort of Trumpian, a rogan and Roganian in a way,
Speaker 6: because he just talks like this is why he's popular.
Speaker 6: He talks like a guy that you'd be talking to
Speaker 6: in real life at a like at a bar, at
Speaker 6: a barbecue or whatever.
Speaker 5: He's just a normal person.
Speaker 6: He's not trying to He wasn't endorsing people killing CEOs.
Speaker 6: He was saying, like he's been really deeply upset with
Speaker 6: the media coverage and his big thing about the killing
Speaker 6: of Brian Johnson is that the media has has martyrized
Speaker 6: Brian Johnson and and not talked about the broader problems
Speaker 6: of the industry. And we can have a debate about
Speaker 6: that or whatever, but it's driving Bill Burr crazy.
Speaker 5: I think he has a point.
Speaker 6: It's it's only he's only this like pure innocent victim,
Speaker 6: and you know, he just doesn't mean that he deserves
Speaker 6: to be killed. Yeah again, like it's it's sort of
Speaker 6: precious to conflate those two things true and to ignore
Speaker 6: I mean, all of these people and this isn't actually
Speaker 6: really Ben because he would say, you know, he actually
Speaker 6: does have like principled positions on what the healthcare system
Speaker 6: could be, even if we disagree with them.
Speaker 5: There's all of.
Speaker 6: These people that are in love with Luigi Mangioni. It's
Speaker 6: because they hate the healthcare system. It's not just because
Speaker 6: he's a funny meme. They're viscerally furious and we've talked
Speaker 6: about this, like many many times. They're viscerally angry at
Speaker 6: the healthcare system because it is screwing them over and
Speaker 6: people getting are getting.
Speaker 5: Rich off of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And so you cannot just wave that away as wokeness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it isn't.
Speaker 6: He represents a very significant chunk of the public that
Speaker 6: will that is an intense It's an intense sentiment. It's
Speaker 6: not just people disagreeing with the healthcare system. They're bitscerally
Speaker 6: angry about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I don't even think it's just the healthcare system.
Speaker 2: It's like the sense that this whole corporate America structure
Speaker 2: is growing and robbing us.
Speaker 5: Totally true.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's energy.
Speaker 2: I mean it is very like Occupy Wall Street kind
Speaker 2: of an energy I think, more potent.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the last thing I'll say about Bill Burr's like,
Speaker 2: I think comedy at its best is like cultural critique
Speaker 2: and punching up at the powerful. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 2: Bill Burr does that very well. And I mean he's
Speaker 2: the polar opposite of being like a woke snow of
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you can't say that.
Speaker 3: Like he says it. He goes there.
Speaker 2: And it's funny to see someone who claims to stand
Speaker 2: in opposition of that sort of like snowflake cancel culture thing,
Speaker 2: having a little bit of his own meltdown about all
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, if comedians have to have policy prescriptions
Speaker 6: for every political thing they joke about, we are in trouble.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go ahead and get you.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of developments with regard to Israel where
Speaker 2: they're completely out of the ceasefire deal, they are planning
Speaker 2: to completely block humanitarian aid. They're even threatening to cut
Speaker 2: off the water to Gaza. Trump administration playing into this
Speaker 2: as well. Jeremy Skahill is going to join us to
Speaker 2: talk about all of that. Very fortunate to be joined
Speaker 2: this morning by Jeremy Skatehill, who is co founder of
Speaker 2: drop site News, alongside our very own Ryan Graham.
Speaker 3: Great to see Jeremy.
Speaker 11: Thank you, Crystal Emily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course. So a lot of developments here.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and put the tweet up on the screen,
Speaker 2: so you talk about here how Natanyahu is announcing he's
Speaker 2: blocking once again all humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza
Speaker 2: strip after Hamas refused to alter the previous deal and
Speaker 2: release Israeli hostages. Bb is saying his decision was made
Speaker 2: in coordination with the Trump administration, and in addition, you know,
Speaker 2: the Israeli have just completely backed away from even a
Speaker 2: pretense of continuing into Phase two of the ceasefire deal,
Speaker 2: to the extent that the even ever had such a
Speaker 2: pretense since Netna who was always promising some of his
Speaker 2: coalition partners that it would never go beyond Phase one.
Speaker 2: So if you could, Jeremy, just bring us up to
Speaker 2: speed here a bit.
Speaker 11: Yeah, just to rewind a little bit. First of all,
Speaker 11: on February third, there was supposed to be the start
Speaker 11: of negotiations over the implementation of Phase two, who refused
Speaker 11: to ever send any negotiators. Instead, he goes to Washington,
Speaker 11: d C. And becomes the first foreign leader to meet
Speaker 11: with President Donald Trump and sits that meeting where Trump
Speaker 11: floated the Trump Gaza Riviera idea NETNYA who has just
Speaker 11: been systematically violating the ceasefire. They've killed upwards of one
Speaker 11: hundred and twenty Palestinians inside of Gaza. They've refused to
Speaker 11: allow almost any of the mobile homes. There were supposed
Speaker 11: to be sixty thousand mobile homes sent into Gaza. Almost
Speaker 11: none of them have entered two hundred thousand tents. While
Speaker 11: there has been food aid and other forms of humanitarian
Speaker 11: aid going in, it's been far less than was stipulated
Speaker 11: under the agreement. And so you know, when we look
Speaker 11: at what happened over the weekend, basically this is how
Speaker 11: it went down. Netan Yahoo and Israel took what was
Speaker 11: sort of a proposal paper from the American side, And
Speaker 11: everything I'm telling you is based on talking to sources
Speaker 11: involved with the negotiations. This happens where Egypt, or Kuta
Speaker 11: or the United States, they kind of float proposals as
Speaker 11: a starting point for discussions, and as the Israelis did
Speaker 11: repeatedly throughout the Biden Harris administration, they don't even give
Speaker 11: Hamas a chance to review the proposal or give a
Speaker 11: formal answer. Israel then announces Hamas has rejected an American
Speaker 11: proposal for extending Phase one of the ceasefire deal. What's
Speaker 11: interesting too, I spoke to a senior Hamas official who said,
Speaker 11: we hadn't even been given a chance to review the
Speaker 11: whole thing before we even read in the papers basically
Speaker 11: that Israel said that we had rejected the deal. What's
Speaker 11: interesting though, is Brian Hughes, Trump's National Security Council spokesperson.
Speaker 11: He was asked directly whether or not the Israeli version
Speaker 11: of events was true. Is this actually an American proposal?
Speaker 11: He ignored that question and then just kind of paid
Speaker 11: lip service to the idea. Israel has been negotiating in
Speaker 11: good faith for fifteen months. So what we're seeing here
Speaker 11: is Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly. Israel refused
Speaker 11: to send negotiators as stipulated under the contract. Israel is
Speaker 11: continuing to kill Palestinians inside of Gaza, and then Israel
Speaker 11: is continuing its multi decade arc of front running ceasefire
Speaker 11: negotiations with the Palestinians and then making announcements that make
Speaker 11: it appear that it is, in fact the other side
Speaker 11: that's hindering the deal, when in fact, anyone that's read
Speaker 11: the agreement that Trump promoted as kind of the beginning
Speaker 11: of the end of this war and peace in the
Speaker 11: Middle East, the Israelis are the ones violating it. What's
Speaker 11: going to be interesting is to see how Steve Whitcloth,
Speaker 11: Trump's Special envoy, response to this. He's an interesting guy.
Speaker 11: He's very different from Anthony Blinken, the way that Blinken
Speaker 11: handled these situations where the Israelis just blatantly lied about
Speaker 11: something that happened in the negotiation, was to openly co
Speaker 11: sign Israel's lie. I'm not sure wik Coof's going to
Speaker 11: go that path he could. My guess would be that
Speaker 11: he's going to sort of thread the needle, issue some
Speaker 11: kind of vague statement that defends Israel and calls on
Speaker 11: Hamas to come to the negotiating table. But everyone involved
Speaker 11: with this knows that Israel has been violating the ceasefire
Speaker 11: and now is blaming Hamas for something that actually Israel
Speaker 11: has done quite.
Speaker 6: Openly, Jamie, I was going to ask if you could
Speaker 6: talk to us a little bit more about that. Actually,
Speaker 6: such an interesting dynamic you mentioned Brian Hughes. But how
Speaker 6: has the Trump administration navigated this over the last several days.
Speaker 6: I mean, we were talking about obviously Ukraine earlier in
Speaker 6: the show, and Zelensky has tried to sort of invoke
Speaker 6: Hamas interestingly enough, But so much attention has been on
Speaker 6: Ukraine in the last few days despite all of this
Speaker 6: unraveling in the Middle East. So what is the Trump
Speaker 6: administration how have they been responding to the developments.
Speaker 11: Well, you know, a week ago, Steve Whitcoff made the
Speaker 11: rounds on the Sunday talk shows, and at the time
Speaker 11: he was doing those interviews from Miami Beach in Florida,
Speaker 11: and he also for part of that visit was with
Speaker 11: Jared Kushner, who, even though he's not in an official
Speaker 11: position right now in the Trump administration, holds tremendous way
Speaker 11: over the events that are going to play out in
Speaker 11: the Middle East. Witkoff said that he was optimistic that
Speaker 11: we're going to make it into a formal phase two
Speaker 11: of the agreement, but he did say that there's going
Speaker 11: to have to be an extension of Phase one. There's
Speaker 11: another significant event happening this week, which is that the
Speaker 11: Arab Summit is convening and they're going to be discussing
Speaker 11: an Egyptian proposal that is seen as a counter proposal
Speaker 11: to Trump's Gaza riviera. And what's interesting about that, I've
Speaker 11: been talking to Palestinian analysts and they didn't have a
Speaker 11: kind of apocalyptic response to Trump's announcement when he was
Speaker 11: alongside BB about you taking over Gaza as a US
Speaker 11: property and building hotels. Some Palestinians I've talked to sort
Speaker 11: of saw it also as a jab toward Netan Yahoo.
Speaker 11: Trump didn't say We're going to turn it into the
Speaker 11: Israeli riviera. Trump said the American riviera. That was, you know,
Speaker 11: for people that are following this closely felt a bit
Speaker 11: like maybe a pushback on net Yahoo and something he
Speaker 11: wasn't entirely excited about. But the benefit for net Yahoo.
Speaker 11: And this happens with Trump all the time. He wants
Speaker 11: to talk about the border wall, he wants to talk
Speaker 11: about you know, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden's laptop, that sets
Speaker 11: the agenda. What was the agenda that was set there
Speaker 11: that NETNYAHUO liked the idea that Palestinians should be removed
Speaker 11: from Gaza. So it was a mixed sort of message
Speaker 11: that is certainly genocidal in its kind of overarching intent.
Speaker 11: But we're in the middle of negotiations here. You know,
Speaker 11: wik Koff himself has shown that he's willing to poke
Speaker 11: Net Yahoo. He certainly is a militant supporter of Israel.
Speaker 11: He certainly is a Zionist, He certainly is very anti Hamas,
Speaker 11: but he also has spoken with a diplomatic language that
Speaker 11: you didn't often hear from Antony Blincoln. And you know,
Speaker 11: Wikkoff also visited Gaza and saw the devastation that was there.
Speaker 11: That narrative was not actually all that great for NETANYAHUO.
Speaker 11: Maybe some of the really rabid, you know, kind of
Speaker 11: bloodthirsty people within Israeli societies were happy about it, but
Speaker 11: Wikoff also managed to give a fairly accurate assessment of
Speaker 11: just how horrifying the destruction was in Gaza. So while
Speaker 11: I'm not, like, you know, beaming with hope that Wickkoff
Speaker 11: is going to save the day and that the Palestinians
Speaker 11: are going to get liberation, I do think that we're
Speaker 11: in a strange situation where potentially Trump could accidentally do
Speaker 11: something that would have been better than if things were
Speaker 11: left to Biden and Harris and just one I'm not
Speaker 11: really a political journalist, but one political note, I find
Speaker 11: it disgusting to watch these kind of blue maga partisan
Speaker 11: democrats who never made a peep about Joe Biden and
Speaker 11: Kamala Harris facilitating a genocide now up in arms about
Speaker 11: Trump's AI video when they had nothing to say when
Speaker 11: their candidates were actually the ones creating the situation that
Speaker 11: now died Trump is presiding over as president. I mean,
Speaker 11: it just shows the rot at the center of some
Speaker 11: of our politics that partisan considerations are more important than
Speaker 11: what are your principles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, on the other side, you had, you know,
Speaker 2: people who were claiming to be anti war who are
Speaker 2: not perfectly fine with the Hey, let's just go ahead
Speaker 2: and ethnically glens the whole thing and take it for ourselves,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 11: I mean there's there's a deep sickness on the other
Speaker 11: side of this as well. And you know, my favorite
Speaker 11: people are the ones that have both the you know,
Speaker 11: the Ukrainian and the Israeli flags and their sort of
Speaker 11: you know, Twitter bios. But absolutely and that extends crystal
Speaker 11: to the free speech thing. Like jade Vans when he
Speaker 11: went to the Munich Security Conference, he said things that
Speaker 11: are absolutely true about Europe's approach to free speech. But
Speaker 11: perhaps the most pervasive and serious violation of free speech
Speaker 11: in Germany, for instance, is the criminalization of speech opposing
Speaker 11: Israel's genocidal war. Where you have not just Arabs in
Speaker 11: Germany being hit with criminal violations, but Israeli Jews who
Speaker 11: live in Israel are being given criminal violations for using
Speaker 11: the term genocide to describe what Israel is doing. And
Speaker 11: you don't hear the Barry Weiss's of the world rallying
Speaker 11: for you know, the free speech protection of people in
Speaker 11: Europe who are opposing Israel's war. It just shows how
Speaker 11: kind of opportunistic and non principled so many of these
Speaker 11: voices are both among partisan Democrats and among many people
Speaker 11: within the Maga movement or the so called anti cancel
Speaker 11: culture movement.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, of course you wouldn't want to bring that up
Speaker 2: because they're bringing that same criminalization right here domestically, investigating
Speaker 2: you know, Columbia University in these other places and threatening
Speaker 2: pro Palestine protesters with deportation. So you know that I
Speaker 2: think that would be a little uncomfortable for them to
Speaker 2: bring those pieces up, not to mention that they're aligned
Speaker 2: with that particular censorship, they're just opposed to censorship that
Speaker 2: happens to go against their own political ideological valance.
Speaker 3: Jeremy, just to go back to.
Speaker 2: This feel like, what are the moving pieces now? What
Speaker 2: do you think is going to happen next? And also,
Speaker 2: you guys have been doing such a great job covering
Speaker 2: what's happening in the occupied West Bank, Israel bombing Damascus
Speaker 2: and just being like, hey, you know, we're just going.
Speaker 3: To take over parts of Syria.
Speaker 2: Oh, and by the way, you know, I know we
Speaker 2: said as part of our Ceasfire deal, we're going to
Speaker 2: withdraw from Lebanon. We're not going to do that. We're
Speaker 2: just going to occupy Lebanon as well. It really looks
Speaker 2: like if you had listened to, you know, the most
Speaker 2: hardcore lefties or the most insane ZIONUS settlers at the
Speaker 2: beginning of this conflict of what was likely to happen
Speaker 2: and what their ultimate goals were, you would be much
Speaker 2: better served and have a much clearer understanding of the
Speaker 2: direction things we're heading in versus trying to glean these
Speaker 2: things from certainly the mainstream press.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, look Benjamin Etnah, who is without a
Speaker 11: doubt a US backed arsonist running around the Middle East.
Speaker 11: And in the case of Syria, we're talking about Israel
Speaker 11: saying that the Syrian military cannot have any presence just
Speaker 11: south of Damascus, the capital of the country. And then
Speaker 11: when you look at the broader picture, ninety percent of
Speaker 11: the not just the refugee camp of Janine, but the
Speaker 11: broader Janine area have been forcibly removed from their homes.
Speaker 11: Israel is going through systematically knocking down houses bulldozing up
Speaker 11: the roads, causing a sort of sense of terror to
Speaker 11: just emanate all throughout the West Bank. At a time
Speaker 11: when then Secretary of State Marco Rubio bypasses Congress issues
Speaker 11: an emergency authorization to transfer four billion roughly four billion
Speaker 11: dollars worth of American bombs, guidance systems, armored bulldozers to
Speaker 11: go to Israel, at a time when Netnyahu is contemplating
Speaker 11: possibly ratcheting up military attacks on Iran again, when Israel
Speaker 11: is continuing to occupy five positions within Lebanon, when Israel
Speaker 11: is threatening all out war on parts of Syria, when
Speaker 11: Israel is trying to formally annex and tear orze the
Speaker 11: Palestinians of the West Bank, when Israel is threatening to
Speaker 11: cut off electricity and water supplies right now to the
Speaker 11: Palestinians of Gaza, just as Ramadan is beginning, and while
Speaker 11: Netanyahu and his people are continuing to try to use
Speaker 11: the stamp of legitimacy of the United States to lie
Speaker 11: about who's actually violating the ceasefire. The question is going
Speaker 11: to be called very very soon on what Donald Trump's
Speaker 11: agenda actually looks like for the Middle East, and it's
Speaker 11: pathetic that we sort of have to hope that he
Speaker 11: accidentally stumbles into something less than a continuation of the
Speaker 11: genocidal war. Such is the reality that we find because
Speaker 11: of a failure to stop this war when Joe Biden
Speaker 11: and Kamala Harris were president.
Speaker 2: Jeremy, so great to have you, And I was saying
Speaker 2: to Emily earlier, it's just incredible what you and Ryan
Speaker 2: have done at drop site and how indispensable you've become
Speaker 2: so quickly. Not that any of us are surprised by that,
Speaker 2: but kudos to you for your work because it's been
Speaker 2: so important.
Speaker 11: But the Breaking Points Counterpoints community has been just an
Speaker 11: incredible boost for us, and we'll always be deeply grateful
Speaker 11: for the work that you all do.
Speaker 3: That's really kind of you to say.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jeremy, and great to see you
Speaker 2: you too. All right, guys, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: hanging out with us today. As a reminder, we will
Speaker 2: not have a regular show tomorrow. They are doing the
Speaker 2: Joint Address to Congress or whatever it's called, the State
Speaker 2: of the Union that is happening tomorrow evening. We will
Speaker 2: be here at eight pm, all four of us at
Speaker 2: the desk, so we can assess things that happen during
Speaker 2: the day and also give you live coverage of that event.
Speaker 3: So have a great day, guys.
Speaker 2: We'll see you back here tomorrow evening