Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 3: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: When do we have crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do more chaos in Lebanon. This time we
Speaker 1: had exploding walkie talkies with more deaths and injuries, so
Speaker 1: we'll break down that. We also have some more information
Speaker 1: on how the hell this happened. How Israel was able
Speaker 1: to penetrate the supply chain and get these exploding devices
Speaker 1: in the hands of Tedula operatives.
Speaker 4: It is a crazy story.
Speaker 1: So we'll track all of that and of course what
Speaker 1: it means for us and for a broader Middle East war. Big,
Speaker 1: big economic news. This is something that has been much anticipated.
Speaker 1: The FED significantly cutting rates yesterday. Obviously that is meant
Speaker 1: to have an important economic impact also may have an
Speaker 1: important political impact Trump is reacting to that. We also
Speaker 1: have some more details about the direction Trump is going
Speaker 1: in with his economic plans or concepts of a plan,
Speaker 1: I guess, so I'll break that down for you as well.
Speaker 1: Teamsters Union decided not to endorse at all in this
Speaker 1: presidential race. You know, Republicans are excited about this, and
Speaker 1: it's not endorsement of them, at least Teamsters in their view,
Speaker 1: or not endorsing Kamalin. We got some also interesting numbers
Speaker 1: from the head of the Teamsters about which direction their
Speaker 1: members are going in.
Speaker 4: The Diddy indictment has been revealed.
Speaker 1: We now know some of the details of exactly what
Speaker 1: the charges are and what the federal authorities are alleging,
Speaker 1: and frankly, it is all quite horrifying. So show you
Speaker 1: that some of the things that also they seized from
Speaker 1: his properties and excited for a few guests. This morning,
Speaker 1: we've got a panel that's going to debate the pro
Speaker 1: life tactics coming from the Trump campaign. So these are
Speaker 1: both you know, soccer I kind of had this debate before,
Speaker 1: but we're like, we're both pro choice, so we.
Speaker 4: Don't really have a dog in this fight.
Speaker 1: Here, So we decided let's get two people are pro
Speaker 1: life on to talk through this issue of whether or
Speaker 1: not Trump should be moderating on the issue or whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, a moral red line. So Leila Rose
Speaker 1: is going to be one of those. Chamberlain's the other one.
Speaker 1: So that should be really good. And we have a
Speaker 1: reporter from New York to explain what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on in the Eric Adams administration because some fifteen
Speaker 1: members of his inner circle are now under some sort
Speaker 1: of federal investigation. Some people are saying this is like
Speaker 1: the worst corruption and the most you know, insanity, since basically,
Speaker 1: like Tammany Hall is a wild situation unfolding, New.
Speaker 3: York is fully back Eric Adams, New York City.
Speaker 2: Is the deeply corrupt mayor to infuse life into the city.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing I la, I mean he has some
Speaker 1: he has created some legendary content, That's.
Speaker 3: What I mean. I mean, you can't help but love this.
Speaker 2: It's like we've got corruption, We've got this like blathering idiot,
Speaker 2: perhaps savant at times, just being like New York is.
Speaker 3: The Paris or New York. He said, you never.
Speaker 2: Know what can happen in New York He's like, you
Speaker 2: could getting a bagel and the other day, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Twin Towers could go down. That's a real thing that
Speaker 3: he actually said. Yeah, Yeah, New York is fully back.
Speaker 3: We're back.
Speaker 1: I have way too much of the video that he
Speaker 1: did about like searching your child's bedroom. I have like
Speaker 1: way too much of that memorize, including him calling a
Speaker 1: backpack a quote popular knap sense right with many different pockets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the vegan who's not really vegan. I could go
Speaker 3: on forever. Yeah, there's too much.
Speaker 4: So anyway, a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: We also are going to get to this horrifying situation
Speaker 1: with the NYPD where they chased down someone who jumped
Speaker 1: a two dollars and ninety cents fare and ended in
Speaker 1: a bloody scene. A police officer was hit with friendly fire,
Speaker 1: the far evader himself was killed the passerbys. It's insane situation.
Speaker 1: So lots to talk about from New York City. So
Speaker 1: we'll get it into.
Speaker 3: All of that before we get to that. Thank you
Speaker 3: to all of our subscribers.
Speaker 2: As a reminder, you do get the show early on
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Speaker 2: yesterday for example, Counterpoints had a good debate with Matt
Speaker 2: Walsh over at The Daily Wire, and our premium subscribers
Speaker 2: got that early and quite a few have appreciated that,
Speaker 2: and it's gone quite viral now since.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been really really interesting.
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Speaker 2: on locals, etc. So subscribe if you want to be
Speaker 2: able to take advantage of that. Breakingpoints dot Com. Let's
Speaker 2: get the Hasbola though, because this story has really captured
Speaker 2: the popular imagination outside of the geopolitical context. It's literally
Speaker 2: like out of a Born movie. Not of the details,
Speaker 2: the decision to do this. I mean there's literally like
Speaker 2: a major death toll geopolitical consequences from the United States, Israeli, Lebanon,
Speaker 2: a potential broader war. So we have some video that
Speaker 2: we can share people, but I mean, this is crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's go ahead and put these new scenes
Speaker 1: of chaos. On Tuesday, Counterpoints covered that HESBELA pagers and
Speaker 1: some other devices that were not owned by HESBLA exploded
Speaker 1: with creating mass chaos. I mean, you're talking about people
Speaker 1: who were at the market. Here you can see these
Speaker 1: are new images walkie talkies that exploded, and even things
Speaker 1: like this is a keypad entryway to get into a
Speaker 1: building that exploded. This is a picture of one of
Speaker 1: the devices, presumably after you know, it was blown.
Speaker 4: Apart, and it was sheer terror.
Speaker 1: You know, you had people who were in markets going
Speaker 1: about their business and then suddenly somewhere an explosion happens.
Speaker 1: People are panicking, You had innocent bystanders, you had children
Speaker 1: who were killed. So you know, some factors, some factions
Speaker 1: are calling this, you know, this highly targeted attack, but
Speaker 1: in fact it's the polar opposite of that. You know,
Speaker 1: you had people who were at home with their families,
Speaker 1: down on their motorbikes, like I said, in a market
Speaker 1: when these things blew up, and whoever happened to be
Speaker 1: around was hit and was injured. So you now have
Speaker 1: thousands of injuries. You have somewhere around a dozen deaths,
Speaker 1: four of them children, by the way. So like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any way to describe it other
Speaker 1: than terror. It was quite clear Israel hasn't officially taken
Speaker 1: credit for it, but quite clear that it was Israel
Speaker 1: behind these attacks, and we can also show you some
Speaker 1: of the evidence of how this all went down and
Speaker 1: how they were able to penetrate the supply chain in
Speaker 1: this manner.
Speaker 4: But in addition, you know, here's.
Speaker 1: Bibi Netanya, who thinking he's really cool and uh, positioning
Speaker 1: himself as a new James Bond.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, deniel I so much James Boone,
Speaker 3: James Boone.
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and put up the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal article that we have here that has some of
Speaker 1: the new details. Again, we had attacks on subsequent days.
Speaker 1: Tuesday was the pagers. Wednesdays was buying large walkie talkies.
Speaker 1: The headline here is Hez blowwakie talkies blow up across Lebanon.
Speaker 1: In second wave of attacks, those walkie talkies used by
Speaker 1: the group, they said, blew up in homes, cars, and
Speaker 1: in operative's hands across the country. People familiar with the
Speaker 1: matter said, just a day after thousands of pagers carried
Speaker 1: by HESBELA members exploded at roughly the same time, the
Speaker 1: new attack killed twenty people injured more than four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty after Tuesday's bombies killed twelve and injured more
Speaker 1: than twenty eight hundred people. That's according to Lebanon's government,
Speaker 1: which blamed Israel, which is reasonable. There was a quote
Speaker 1: here from Yoav Gallant in terms of the broader geopolitical implications,
Speaker 1: because we've been covering here, in fact Monday morning when
Speaker 1: this I guess Tuesday morning, when this was all unfolding
Speaker 1: and we were getting the initial images, we were covering
Speaker 1: the fact that bb Night now who very much wants
Speaker 1: to expand the official war into Lebanon. Now, there's already
Speaker 1: been tit for tat exchanges between Hesblah and Israel.
Speaker 4: That's not new.
Speaker 1: What he's talking about is a much more significant escalation,
Speaker 1: something that theoretically, at least.
Speaker 4: The US opposes.
Speaker 1: Yoav Galant, the Israel defense minister, who's kind of on
Speaker 1: the ounce in the net Yahoo administration because he was
Speaker 1: war in favor of securing some sort of a ceasefire
Speaker 1: hostage deal. But he told the Wall Street Journal the
Speaker 1: center of gravity is shifting to the north. This means
Speaker 1: that we are moving forces, resources and energy to the north.
Speaker 1: I estimate that we are at the start of a
Speaker 1: new phase in this war. So any hope of you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that would end the hes Bulah
Speaker 1: attacks right away. Is if you had some sort of
Speaker 1: a lasting ceasefire deal in exchange of hostages. I think
Speaker 1: any hope of that is off the table as long
Speaker 1: as you know, it's very clear the US doesn't want
Speaker 1: to use their leverage to force any sort of result
Speaker 1: on the Israelis. It's very clear bb nat Yah who
Speaker 1: wants to not only continue the assault that he has
Speaker 1: already you know, already been taking in, but he wants
Speaker 1: to expand into this new war as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: no end insight basically sober.
Speaker 2: It's super it's very There's so much to say, not
Speaker 2: only about the covert details the attack itself. We'll get
Speaker 2: to that in terms of how it exactly folded out,
Speaker 2: showing how sophisticated is really intelligence is. But there's also
Speaker 2: a big why question, like why now, there's a couple
Speaker 2: of different stories out there. One is that this could
Speaker 2: be the precursor to some sort of larger attack. Too
Speaker 2: is that it actually means a larger attack's not going
Speaker 2: to happen. There was a third explanation I saw floated
Speaker 2: that Hesbola had actually realized that there was something wrong
Speaker 2: with their pagers and that once they got intelligence that
Speaker 2: they might lose their ability to detonate these, They're like, well,
Speaker 2: we might as well just do it right now whenever
Speaker 2: we have the ability. So all of those seem actually
Speaker 2: quite plausible. I'm not really sure I did read that.
Speaker 2: In Israel, there is a lot of mounting pressure on
Speaker 2: Yahoo to actually either sign a cease fire deal or
Speaker 2: enable some ability for those tens of thousands of people
Speaker 2: in the north of Israel sharing a border with Lebanon
Speaker 2: to be able to return home. That actually could be
Speaker 2: a part of the impetus as well, to try and
Speaker 2: satisfy the domestic and people are pissed. They haven't been
Speaker 2: able to live home in over a year, so that's
Speaker 2: that could be part of it. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: when you pair that with the calculus, it's extraordinarily brazen, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have what over a thousand of them
Speaker 2: seem to have exploded. Multiple people were killed, multiple bystanders
Speaker 2: were I mean the videos that we showed and they
Speaker 2: showed previously yesterday at literal grocery stores and everywhere. They
Speaker 2: basically didn't really care about any potential collateral damage, and
Speaker 2: they sent that page immediately. I mean, it's one of
Speaker 2: the most brazen intelligence operations and assassination, you know, things
Speaker 2: that have played out in history. I also think it's
Speaker 2: a really good reminder modern war is not glorious. It's
Speaker 2: not like a movie or call of duty. Watch videos
Speaker 2: coming out of Ukraine. You have guys who are Russian
Speaker 2: and Ukrainians napping in a hole and they look up
Speaker 2: and they see a drone who drops a grenade on them,
Speaker 2: and then they get literally blow up into smithereens or
Speaker 2: here and you know, like this this is what actual
Speaker 2: technological warfare looks like. It's bad, like it's you know,
Speaker 2: be able to watch people get their limbs blown off.
Speaker 2: I don't recommend it, but I have watched now several
Speaker 2: of these videos, and this is what it actually looks like.
Speaker 2: You know, this is what this is what you actually
Speaker 2: want to stop from happening.
Speaker 1: Generally, the reaction to it has been really just dark
Speaker 1: in my opinion, Like the level of dehumanization of I
Speaker 1: guess any Arab population at this point is really quite astonishing.
Speaker 4: And you know, think about us the Russia Ukraine example.
Speaker 1: Okay, imagine Russia partnered with China, which you know they're allies.
Speaker 1: They have and we're able to similarly, you know, infiltrate
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian supply chain, and we're able to you know,
Speaker 1: blow up thousands of pages, walkie talkie, cell phones, whatever,
Speaker 1: electronic devices indiscriminately across Ukraine, with a significant toll on
Speaker 1: children killed, you know, random people just happen to be
Speaker 1: nearby family members, et cetera. Imagine the way that would
Speaker 1: be discussed, People would see clearly like this is this
Speaker 1: is horrifying, this is you know, this is INDUS criminate,
Speaker 1: this is this is a terror attack that would be
Speaker 1: discussed in a very clear way.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 1: Not only is it not discussed that way overwhelmingly. There
Speaker 1: are a few exceptions out there, but it's discussed as
Speaker 1: like wow, how cool and amazing and lol, look what
Speaker 1: happened to them, et cetera. And you know, it's just
Speaker 1: really disturbing the way that people are able to put
Speaker 1: their humanity to the side, put the humanity of this,
Speaker 1: you know, entire nation of people to the side, entire
Speaker 1: region of people to the side, just based on the
Speaker 1: US propaganda that they're fed. So, I mean that's part
Speaker 1: of what's really dark here. Sorry you're alluding to as well,
Speaker 1: Like once you open these doors, they don't close again.
Speaker 1: Like this is the new reality is that this could
Speaker 1: be a weapon in anyone's hands.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's scary, and yeah, that's kind of what
Speaker 2: I wanted to focus on too. Is you know how
Speaker 2: many years have we been talking about here on the show.
Speaker 2: We don't make anything. This entire phone is made outside
Speaker 2: of the United States. The chip inside of it. Do
Speaker 2: you really know? I mean, as far as I know,
Speaker 2: you can't even take the back off your iPhone. You
Speaker 2: have no idea what's in this spide You.
Speaker 3: Don't know what's inside. I don't even know what's in
Speaker 3: any of these cameras.
Speaker 2: You know, on how many of us buy new electronics
Speaker 2: on a day to day basis. So this is a
Speaker 2: very good glimpse into look it could be used against us,
Speaker 2: It could be used against anybody. And the details of
Speaker 2: how this all went down actually shows how frankly easy
Speaker 2: it was for the Israel. This isn't just because they're Lebanese.
Speaker 2: Obviously these Reelis wanted to do it to Hesbala. This
Speaker 2: could happen here instantaneously if anybody wanted to.
Speaker 3: And also Israel is a small country.
Speaker 2: Yes they're technologically advanced, but the actual details of the plot,
Speaker 2: they're not that difficulty. That's actually kind of what's astounding.
Speaker 2: Why don't we get into that. Yeah, you can put
Speaker 2: that on the screen.
Speaker 4: Let's go put this the Financial Times article.
Speaker 1: And these details have actually been confirmed and furthered by
Speaker 1: the New York Times, So you know, immediately people once
Speaker 1: the pagers blow up, are like, where the hell did
Speaker 1: these pages come from?
Speaker 4: Like, how did this happen?
Speaker 1: How were the Israelis able to penetrate the supply chain
Speaker 1: in this way? They say, here Hesbela's preliminary investigation. According
Speaker 1: to one of its officials, allegis Israel spy somehow hijacked
Speaker 1: delivery of pages to Lebanon, packed them with tiny load
Speaker 1: of explosives and components, and then detonated them almost simultaneously.
Speaker 1: They traced it back to this sort of shell company
Speaker 1: called BAC Consulting, according to Hungarian company records, was just
Speaker 1: set up in May of twenty twenty two by this
Speaker 1: woman you see on your screen. She's apparently the sole
Speaker 1: director of the company. She did not reply to calls
Speaker 1: and messages seeking her comment. Her LinkedIn profile lists a
Speaker 1: PhD from ucl in particle physics among her qualifications, as
Speaker 1: well as stints at other elite UK institutions like the
Speaker 1: London School of Economics. One person who met her in
Speaker 1: recent years described her as an academic. So immediately there
Speaker 1: were a lot of questions about why this lady is
Speaker 1: selling Taiwanese pagers to Lebanese buyers, And like I said,
Speaker 1: the New York Times was basically able to confirm, like, oh,
Speaker 1: these are this BAC consulting led by this woman who
Speaker 1: you know very likely or very clearly has Israeli ties.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who inserted the explosives before selling these
Speaker 1: pagers to Hesbela. You know, they went and tried to
Speaker 1: find her office building it's empty, and try to find
Speaker 1: her apartment it's empty but has like a multi like
Speaker 1: complicated multi luck on the door. The people who were
Speaker 1: neighbors that we haven't seen her here forever. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this appears to have been the way they were able
Speaker 1: to effectuate this plot. And you know, the irony here
Speaker 1: is that Hesbela knew that they needed to get ditched
Speaker 1: their like smartphones and their cell phones because they were
Speaker 1: worried about they knew about Israeli innovation.
Speaker 4: We've even covered here. Was it called Pegasus, the.
Speaker 1: Advanced hacking tools that they have where yeah, where you're
Speaker 1: able to basically get access to any phone that you
Speaker 1: have the phone number for and.
Speaker 2: It's able to see what's going on. I'm a text
Speaker 2: message nothing, Pegas is one. You needed to send something
Speaker 2: like a compromise message. Pegas is too. If they want it,
Speaker 2: you're done.
Speaker 1: If they can get your phone number, then that's it.
Speaker 1: They can get access to your phone. So they knew
Speaker 1: that they've been tracking that as well, and so there
Speaker 1: was a big push of like, all right, we got
Speaker 1: to get rid of all.
Speaker 4: The cell phones.
Speaker 1: We got to go to this more like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of terrestrial, outdated tech, the low tech that will
Speaker 1: be more difficult for the israelis to be able to
Speaker 1: track and be able to penetrate, to keep our communications
Speaker 1: and our location networks secure. And you know, once they
Speaker 1: made that move, that's exactly how Israel was able to
Speaker 1: jump in. As you said, Tacker, there was some reporting
Speaker 1: that the reason this happened now was because somebody in
Speaker 1: Hesbela had figured out this was going on, and Israel
Speaker 1: was able to assassinate that individual. This is all you know,
Speaker 1: this is all not fully confirmed. There's as you said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different stories about what might have
Speaker 1: happened or why now, But Israel assassinates that person to
Speaker 1: prevent them from you know, telling the chain of command
Speaker 1: what the hell's going on. But they realized, you know,
Speaker 1: the gig was kind of up up. The other thing, though,
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense is we've seen anytime that
Speaker 1: beb is a little bit on the rocks domestically politically.
Speaker 4: What does he do?
Speaker 1: He you know, assassinates a like top has what commander
Speaker 1: in Beirut, or he assassinates Ismael Honeya in Tehran, or
Speaker 1: he does some sort of you know, a taxa and
Speaker 1: embassy in Syria. He does some sort of escalatory provocation
Speaker 1: that his domestic population absolutely loves and takes the pressure
Speaker 1: off of him politically so that he can keep holding
Speaker 1: onto power and keep doing exactly what happens.
Speaker 2: It could be the best explanation, right, And that's actually
Speaker 2: one that makes quite a lot of sense. That bond
Speaker 2: video went quite viral in Israel makes sense. You know,
Speaker 2: there's one of those where look, we got to think
Speaker 2: about it. I guess in their domestic terms, I mean
Speaker 2: the problem is is that in Lebanon two there could
Speaker 2: be a lot of chaos now in terms of what
Speaker 2: the fallout from this could be for Hezbola and for
Speaker 2: any of their Iranian proxies for them, Like, can they
Speaker 2: really take this sitting down?
Speaker 3: I mean you could see it both ways. One you'd be.
Speaker 2: Terrified, You're like, wow, every element of our communications chain
Speaker 2: is totally compromised. We're going to get wiped, you know,
Speaker 2: if we ever have to go to a war again.
Speaker 2: The other is, well, this is this is the thing
Speaker 2: about Husbola. Yeah it do they commit like terrorist acts, yes,
Speaker 2: but it's difficult to describe really in the West because
Speaker 2: it's a non governmental like governmental institution. It's like almost
Speaker 2: part of the Lebanese society and government at a basic
Speaker 2: level of like schools, kind of like amas, you know
Speaker 2: in Gaza. So it's a lot like the Bath party
Speaker 2: in Iraq after our invasion, we were like, oh, we
Speaker 2: can't have any Bath members. What about the teachers, what
Speaker 2: about people run the electric companies. It's just it's difficult
Speaker 2: to parse, you know the difference. That's also another thing
Speaker 2: about the operation. I think it would be one thing
Speaker 2: if they were all like in a meeting and you
Speaker 2: exploded a meeting, right That's that's certainly like one area.
Speaker 2: But the way that they did it, well, people were
Speaker 2: in public. I don't really know, Like I don't know
Speaker 2: if it was a message or if it was just
Speaker 2: we have to do this right now, otherwise we're not
Speaker 2: going to have any ability. But that's what's opened themselves
Speaker 2: up to a lot of criticism from its own allies
Speaker 2: like the US and others who at least behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: were stunned that something like this happened inside the Middle East.
Speaker 3: It certainly has created.
Speaker 2: A lot of tension. We're going to get to this.
Speaker 2: Flights have actually not been canceled to Israel. We can
Speaker 2: put that up right now.
Speaker 3: If we want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's seven eight seven.
Speaker 2: So multiple carriers have canceled there. They have canceled all
Speaker 2: flights at Israel Amid Lebanon explanation, Luftanza Air so not
Speaker 2: like Arab like f the hot Airways or whatever I'm
Speaker 2: talking about, Luftanza Air, France and multiple others that have
Speaker 2: canceled it. I mean, I guess out of fear that
Speaker 2: somebody's gonna blow up on their plane, which is not
Speaker 2: you know, unfounded no, I would say, I mean.
Speaker 1: We could have, right, I mean, if somebody happened, if
Speaker 1: a you know, a person happened to be on one
Speaker 1: of these planes when the signal was sent. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems pretty reasonably as pausible. Yah,
Speaker 1: seems pretty plausible. But I mean again, if you think, like,
Speaker 1: try to put yourself in the shoes of the Lebanese people.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you had US service members who were at
Speaker 1: the market, at home with their family, like, with their kids, whatever,
Speaker 1: and their cell phone explodes with thousands of you know,
Speaker 1: people who were injured, many of whom were innocent, bystander's
Speaker 1: children who were killed, etc. You can imagine how we
Speaker 1: would view that. We would rightly view that as a
Speaker 1: terror attack. Put a four up on the screen. Just
Speaker 1: one of the details here of one of the young
Speaker 1: girl's nine year.
Speaker 4: Old child who was killed yesterday.
Speaker 1: Fatima was in the kitchen when the pager on the
Speaker 1: table began to beep her. According to her aunt, she
Speaker 1: picked up the device to bring it to her dad
Speaker 1: and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face,
Speaker 1: leaving the room covered in blood. Fatima was trying to
Speaker 1: take courses in English. Her aunt said she loved English,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the children who was killed
Speaker 1: in this attack. Matt Miller was asked a little bit
Speaker 1: about this in a State Department briefing, specifically if he
Speaker 1: supports it's the operations at target has. Well, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and take a listen to this exchange which has
Speaker 1: to do with that, and also talks a little bit
Speaker 1: more broadly about legitimacy of targets in general.
Speaker 6: Yes, of course we support UH operations to target has
Speaker 6: below militants who continue to launch terrorist attacks against civilians.
Speaker 6: Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism and
Speaker 6: a right to carry out legitimate attacks against terrorists, not civilians,
Speaker 6: but terrorists. So as a general proposition, yes, of course.
Speaker 7: Okay, So let me go take you back to the
Speaker 7: legitimacy of targets and so on. Yesterday a group of
Speaker 7: settlers attacked that's school in Jericho. They beat up the students,
Speaker 7: they broke their bone, they beat up their teachers, and
Speaker 7: so on. Are they a legitimate target? Should they be
Speaker 7: a legitimate target by the same kind of definition that
Speaker 7: in which you have defined the other target.
Speaker 6: Are are civilians who the settlers attacking legitimate targets. Absolutely not.
Speaker 7: I'm saying the settlers who are who have attacked.
Speaker 6: The settlers should be stulers should settlers should be held
Speaker 6: accountable through law enforcement means site hold on, not through
Speaker 6: any type of uh extra judicial process or military process.
Speaker 6: They should be held account by law enforcement, which is
Speaker 6: what we would say about any type of violent attacks
Speaker 6: on individuals, that the law enforcement hold them accountable to
Speaker 6: the folkstad of.
Speaker 7: The law, although they do take the law into their
Speaker 7: own hand time and time again.
Speaker 6: Very violent, absolutely, which is why we believe they should
Speaker 6: be held accountable. And as you've seen, the United States
Speaker 6: make clear through our own actions, if and when Israel
Speaker 6: does not step up and hold people accountable, we will
Speaker 6: do so ourselves.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really help people accountable.
Speaker 2: One I think very reasonable take for those out there.
Speaker 2: A guy named John rob who often looked to He says,
Speaker 2: the reason the governments don't do this is it green
Speaker 2: lights the booby trapping and sabotaging of civilian supply chains.
Speaker 2: Electronics that explode devolve into contaminated food and or water.
Speaker 2: And that's actually, frankly, what scares me the most and
Speaker 2: part of the reason why I really wanted to flag.
Speaker 2: This of like, this is what modern war would look
Speaker 2: like if you think about total war. Almost every war
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century major conflict between nation states escalates
Speaker 2: into like a true do or die situation, especially if
Speaker 2: America or to ever get involved. Think about how compromised
Speaker 2: our supply chain is, how much we rely on exports.
Speaker 2: Even our own military often runs on stuff from Afar.
Speaker 2: But then think about too, about the legitimacy of target
Speaker 2: allegedly like here in America, and like we would count
Speaker 2: for that you and I could technically qualify like, oh,
Speaker 2: propagandists of the state, you know, depending on whose definition,
Speaker 2: if somebody was in here and they happened to be
Speaker 2: one of those people, which certainly possible any of the
Speaker 2: supply or the transit networks that we take whenever we
Speaker 2: come here to where you could just see how this
Speaker 2: could very clearly go crazy. And that is actually probably
Speaker 2: what I'm most afraid of is watching both watch the
Speaker 2: Russia Ukraine War. I mean, if you look at it,
Speaker 2: what are the Russians strike Whenever they do missiles, It's
Speaker 2: not the civilian popular they're going after, like energy centers
Speaker 2: and the power stations inside of Ukraine. With Hamas Israel
Speaker 2: has mostly done that as well. But now with Hesbolo,
Speaker 2: you're like you're giving you know, uh, these these tainted
Speaker 2: pagers that have been exploited through some sort of supply chain.
Speaker 2: You're just blowing it up wherever you want. Same with
Speaker 2: these cheap, commercially available drones which we're seeing all over
Speaker 2: the Russia Ukraine war.
Speaker 3: A lot of them fall out of the sky and
Speaker 3: blow people up all the time. So this is what
Speaker 3: it's really going to look like.
Speaker 2: This is why war is a nightmare and you should
Speaker 2: avoid it at all costs. And we're getting now four
Speaker 2: K video of what it really looks like when you
Speaker 2: get your entire face blown off. Previously, you know, at
Speaker 2: best it's a government sensor. Lets some guy ride about
Speaker 2: it two years later, like now you're seeing it four
Speaker 2: k irl and that's that's really scary, honestly.
Speaker 4: Now it's a Pandora's box, like it really is.
Speaker 1: They really are opening Pandora's box with this, And so
Speaker 1: you know for all that we can put John Fetterman
Speaker 1: out here up on the screen a six to finish
Speaker 1: this sound fools like him who celebrate these types of actions.
Speaker 1: I fully support efforts to target and neutralize any existential
Speaker 1: threat like HESBLA and think it could never happen to us,
Speaker 1: Like have the arrogance to think that this could never
Speaker 1: be done to us or one of our allies or
Speaker 1: some population that he happens to care about. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a full You're an absolute fool. And what can
Speaker 1: we say about it if slash when it does happen
Speaker 1: to some group that we care about, What will we
Speaker 1: have to say about it when we you know, maybe
Speaker 1: behind the scenes we'll have another tough talk with Netanyahu
Speaker 1: or whatever. But there's no expectation that the US government
Speaker 1: is going to come out and condemn these indiscriminate attacks
Speaker 1: on you know, this technology and infiltration of a civilian
Speaker 1: supply chain, et cetera. So very scary world that we're
Speaker 1: entering here.
Speaker 2: Certainly, let's go to the next part the economy. There's
Speaker 2: been some major developments here with the Federal Reserve. Let's
Speaker 2: go and put this out there on the screen. The
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve has announced now a half point rate cut yesterday,
Speaker 2: lowers interest rates by quote fifty basis points.
Speaker 3: You can think of that as half of a percent.
Speaker 2: It still is the largest reduction I believe since two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, and is the first time since twenty
Speaker 2: twenty that a rate cut has been announced now by
Speaker 2: the Fed. Really, what it is is that it's an
Speaker 2: admission by Jerome Powell that this effort to curb inflation
Speaker 2: just through interest rates is now over. But it also reveals,
Speaker 2: i think, frankly, an extraordinary failure on their point, because
Speaker 2: what ended up happening is that we had effectively supply
Speaker 2: side inflation that was not entirely fiscally caused. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to say fiscal policy didn't have any impact on it,
Speaker 2: but throughout the entire time recall, we had very very
Speaker 2: low unemployment rates. Now we're actually beginning to see those
Speaker 2: unemployment rates take up. Inflation to the extent it is
Speaker 2: cooled is largely because again of supply side factors, and
Speaker 2: all they have done really is that jack interest rates
Speaker 2: up so high that it has made the basic attainment
Speaker 2: of American life from a car loan to a house
Speaker 2: loan incredibly expensive. The ratio now worth prices where they
Speaker 2: are at all time highs or near all time highs
Speaker 2: for houses specifically in like the majority of housing markets
Speaker 2: compared then to the mortgage, and then when you put
Speaker 2: that up against what the average income or even frankly
Speaker 2: like a decent income, let's say one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars per year, you just put a vast majority
Speaker 2: of housing unavailable to a lot of people. Another really
Speaker 2: bad thing that happened is that high high interest rates
Speaker 2: at the current time, at least compared to our relative history,
Speaker 2: locked a lot of people in who have low interest
Speaker 2: rates into their houses. So the housing stock took a dive.
Speaker 2: And so what happened is that the housing supply actually
Speaker 2: constricted significantly. Then you had borrowing costs significantly go up,
Speaker 2: credit card interest balance in all these other things are
Speaker 2: all time highs right now. People's savings are very very low.
Speaker 2: So I mean, look, I'm happy to see it. I
Speaker 2: guess some people are calling it to you know, election
Speaker 2: interference and all that. To be honest, like, this is
Speaker 2: part of the problem I think with the so called
Speaker 2: like independent Federal Reserve and all that. It is actually
Speaker 2: quite common to cut interest rates in an election year.
Speaker 2: You could read it into that kind of what you will.
Speaker 2: Dave Ramsey talks about all the time. He's like, election
Speaker 2: year is coming he's like, you know, they're going to
Speaker 2: cut interest rates out. Just it's one of those where
Speaker 2: you could almost you could also basically bet on it.
Speaker 2: But also at the current time, it is pretty clear
Speaker 2: what the net effect of these very high interest rates were,
Speaker 2: which was very high credit card balances, a mortgage unattainability,
Speaker 2: locking people a lot of the housing stock up. The
Speaker 2: only question is if this is even enough to still
Speaker 2: unleash you know, some borrowing or some interest in the
Speaker 2: real estate market, just because compared to where a lot
Speaker 2: of people still are with a two or three percent
Speaker 2: mortgage rate, you know, five percent still a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: if you especially if you look at the comparison for
Speaker 2: the same amount of downpayment and what your new mortgage
Speaker 2: would be in some cases like thousands of dollars more
Speaker 2: depending on the house, especially if you live in a
Speaker 2: market like we do in the DMV, where like the
Speaker 2: average house costs is like eight or nine hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars just extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it costs you.
Speaker 1: It's insane the amount of difference at one point in
Speaker 1: the mortgage industry.
Speaker 3: You should play with those calculators, and it's really important to.
Speaker 1: Understand it's insane like, I really didn't hadn't done that
Speaker 1: math until we started looking at it in the context
Speaker 1: of FED policy, and I was blown away.
Speaker 3: But I never needed to because of eight right, just low.
Speaker 1: Interested like lower zero interest rates. And yeah, when you
Speaker 1: start looking at it, oh, when you're in mortgage interest
Speaker 1: rate is five percent, six percent, seven percent, how much
Speaker 1: of a difference that makes in terms of what you're getting,
Speaker 1: how much house you can get for your money. It's
Speaker 1: pretty mind blowing. So I think that'll be one of
Speaker 1: the major impacts is you know, hopefully it will help
Speaker 1: to start to get more movement in the housing market.
Speaker 1: I did see that housing starts, like new house building
Speaker 1: is up, but not enough to overcome the fact that
Speaker 1: you have you know, you can imagine if you have
Speaker 1: a low mortgage interest rate, even if you kind of
Speaker 1: want to move or kind of want to get something else,
Speaker 1: they're no way you're going anywhere until mortgage interest rates
Speaker 1: come down. So that will certainly be one of the
Speaker 1: things we will be looking towards. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who argue this rate cut, and
Speaker 1: I think emblematic of the fact that they went with
Speaker 1: the you know, the fifty bps or that the half
Speaker 1: point rate cut rather than the standard point two five
Speaker 1: percentage point. A lot of people feel like this came
Speaker 1: kind of too late, like they hung on to the
Speaker 1: interest rate you know, hikes and keeping it static for
Speaker 1: a little bit too long, because we started to see
Speaker 1: these troubling signs in the labor market in particular, where
Speaker 1: you're having job misses in terms of the number of
Speaker 1: new jobs created, you start to have that unemployment rate
Speaker 1: tick up, and so you know, there are many who
Speaker 1: would argue that this actually came a little bit too
Speaker 1: late and that's why they're going with this.
Speaker 4: Larger rate cut.
Speaker 1: But you know, obviously huge impact in terms of the economy.
Speaker 1: Impossible to predict how much because these are you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lag, and these are very powerful tools, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it takes some time to see what exactly all unfolds.
Speaker 4: And also potentially you know, powerful impact.
Speaker 1: On the political situation, given that we are close to
Speaker 1: an election, and any positive movement in the economy, which
Speaker 1: people expect. You know that when lending and when it's
Speaker 1: cheaper to borrow, it stimulates more economic activity.
Speaker 4: That's typically how that works.
Speaker 1: So the expectation is that this will help juice the
Speaker 1: economy in a way that could be beneficial to Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: which is why Trump is that's.
Speaker 2: Why, well, let's talk about that. Trump addressed this yesterday.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen.
Speaker 8: I guess it, Josie, economy is very good. To cut
Speaker 8: it by that much, assuming they're not just playing politics,
Speaker 8: the economy would be very bad, or they're playing politics
Speaker 8: to one of the others.
Speaker 7: But it was a big cut.
Speaker 3: It was a big cut. You know.
Speaker 2: Trump A lot of people forget this, but he was
Speaker 2: obsessed with actually giving I remember this. It was smart
Speaker 2: because he was one of the first presidents to in
Speaker 2: a long time. A lot of presidents have this religion
Speaker 2: around the FED. They're like, oh, we can't impact the
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve at all. And he would openly just tweet
Speaker 2: and berate Jerome Powell, being like, you need to keep
Speaker 2: interest rates low. It's because of his real estate background.
Speaker 2: I mean, he knows that he lived through the seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties. That's when he made his money. So imagine
Speaker 2: playing in a world where nineteen percent interest rates. I
Speaker 2: can't I really honestly can't imagine what mortgage payments and
Speaker 2: all that would have looked like even if the prices
Speaker 2: were crazy low. So his interest and knowledge of interest
Speaker 2: rates was one where as president he had consistently campaigned
Speaker 2: to keep low interest rates and to pressure the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 2: And he understands also the power now, as you said,
Speaker 2: the idea that a low interest rate cut or a
Speaker 2: cut of fifty basis points is going to material materialize
Speaker 2: in a real way for most people in the span
Speaker 2: of was it forty something days now to election?
Speaker 3: That is kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But I mean he does understand too what the overall
Speaker 2: economic picture of that can look like like. If you're
Speaker 2: willing to take a federal like interest rate view of history,
Speaker 2: going back and reading the eighties, you know, you really
Speaker 2: have two choices.
Speaker 3: You can look at it as a change in interest rates.
Speaker 2: You can look at a change in fiscal policy, and
Speaker 2: it kind of tells you. Both can tell you a
Speaker 2: very compelling story as to why growth in an economy
Speaker 2: occurs or why people feel the way that they do.
Speaker 2: I think the number one lesson we can all take
Speaker 2: away is we now all understand why like boomers are
Speaker 2: so obsessed with inflation because of what it was like
Speaker 2: to live through the nineteen seventies and so we didn't
Speaker 2: get it nearly as bad, but I get it now,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of what it looks like, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people will pay a lot more attention.
Speaker 2: And politically, of course, I mean, inflation is probably the
Speaker 2: single biggest blow to the Biden that other than his age,
Speaker 2: and to Kamala Harris that she has to work through.
Speaker 2: So we're learning really the impact that that has, and
Speaker 2: it wakes everybody up to what politics looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, And just let's put this CNBC article
Speaker 1: up that took a look at some of the overseas,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the global impacts of what a
Speaker 1: fat rate cut could mean. They say, from currencies and
Speaker 1: command of these equities to bonds, global markets are braced
Speaker 1: for that rate cut.
Speaker 4: This was written before it happened. They talk about how oil.
Speaker 1: And other commodities which are usually price and dollars, often
Speaker 1: receive a boost with the rate cut. A lot of
Speaker 1: emerging markets very sensitive to these factors, and they say
Speaker 1: much of the global stock market volatility over recent months
Speaker 1: was linked to speculation about when and by how much
Speaker 1: the US Central Bank will reduced rates. Quote interest rate
Speaker 1: cuts reduced the cost of barring US dollars, there by
Speaker 1: creating easier liquidity conditions for companies around the world. Lower
Speaker 1: interest rates should also lower the yield available on US
Speaker 1: assets like treasuries, US, making other markets relatively more attractive.
Speaker 1: So that's some of the prediction about some of the
Speaker 1: global ripple effects of the FED lowering rates. The FED
Speaker 1: was actually a little bit slow by global standards. Some
Speaker 1: other more advanced economies had their central banks had cut
Speaker 1: rates before we did. Even though you know this is
Speaker 1: not to minimize the pain of inflation here, but if
Speaker 1: you look around the world, we actually fared a lot
Speaker 1: better then many other advanced countries and were able to
Speaker 1: lessen inflation more quickly than other advanced economies. So the
Speaker 1: FED a little bit behind the curve globally in terms
Speaker 1: of making this move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: And now we've got to turn to some more recent
Speaker 2: economic news. Trump with one of the most hilarious flip
Speaker 2: flops of all time. Let's go ahead and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. I wonder if he even
Speaker 2: noticed that he was flip flopping. So Trump somehow put
Speaker 2: buried this in the middle of a tweet whenever he
Speaker 2: announced a rally in Long Island, New York, an area
Speaker 2: that has slowly but surely turned very maga. He says,
Speaker 2: Nasau Coliseum will be a really big deal. It's going
Speaker 2: to be packed, and it was packed, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of migrants, cry, etc. What the hell do you have
Speaker 2: to lose? Vote for Trump? I will listen to this.
Speaker 2: I will turn it around. Get salt back, lowerre your taxes. Okay,
Speaker 2: So we spent hours and hours on this show talking
Speaker 2: about salt. It remains one of the most hilarious policy
Speaker 2: areas in Washington because this is a blue state, specifically
Speaker 2: rich person ub session. The way it basically works, it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to explain, but the previously, prior to
Speaker 2: the twenty seventeen Trump tax bill, blue states where they
Speaker 2: had high tax rates.
Speaker 3: Let's say California. The easiest ways to think about.
Speaker 4: Alighi in New York California or primary all right.
Speaker 2: But California is an easy one. And let's take a
Speaker 2: million dollars. So, and there's a reason I'm saying a million,
Speaker 2: because that's really the only people this applies to. If
Speaker 2: you have a million dollars, you have to pay what
Speaker 2: is it thirteen something percent income tax to the state
Speaker 2: of California. Okay, so what used to happen is that
Speaker 2: that thirteen percent one hundred and thirty k roughly would
Speaker 2: then get subtracted from your overall federal income taxable burden,
Speaker 2: as in, you would then pay the top individual rate
Speaker 2: after whatever cutoff on that eight hundred thousand dollars. Well,
Speaker 2: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act removed that so called
Speaker 2: beneficiary and made it so that your taxable income at
Speaker 2: the state level was no longer deductible from your overall
Speaker 2: tax at the federal level. This massively hurts rich people.
Speaker 2: So you actually tweeted out this graph, and it's very
Speaker 2: beneficial to put this up there on the screen. For
Speaker 2: the absolute vast majority of Americans, this does not matter
Speaker 2: at all. But as you can see right here, the
Speaker 2: benefits of assault cap. Basically what happened is they capped
Speaker 2: it at just ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: If you remove that.
Speaker 2: Cap, you massively benefit people who make a lot high,
Speaker 2: high dollar income. So we're not talking about carried interest,
Speaker 2: we're not talking about stocks. We're talking about specifically people
Speaker 2: who make over about a million dollars a year. So
Speaker 2: what you could see here from the Tax Policy Center,
Speaker 2: is after you pass the three hundred and sixty thousand level,
Speaker 2: you start to save a ton of money, especially like
Speaker 2: I just gave that example.
Speaker 3: Some five million dollars.
Speaker 2: Well you can imagine now you know, thirteen percent or
Speaker 2: whatever of that five million then getting knocked off of
Speaker 2: what you are eligible to them to pay for federal
Speaker 2: income tax. We are now talking in the ballpark of
Speaker 2: five figures. And so that is something which rich people
Speaker 2: in Blue states and California, California and New York, but
Speaker 2: New Jersey as well, and you know very other ones.
Speaker 2: This is their number one priority has been now for
Speaker 2: the last basically twenty seventeen, so the last like seven years.
Speaker 2: Josh gottheimer famously, as we hear on the show, he
Speaker 2: called himself mister Salt. He even said at one point
Speaker 2: quote no salt, no dice, because I mean, people are up.
Speaker 3: In arms over this.
Speaker 4: I was on what was that?
Speaker 2: This was during Built Back Better very both Anyway, Basically,
Speaker 2: he tried to get it all through.
Speaker 1: You tried to hold the whole thing hostage, just getting
Speaker 1: this tax benefit for he represents New Jersey, yes, and
Speaker 1: you know the rich people in his district. This was
Speaker 1: priority number one. So I guess he's representing you in particular, because,
Speaker 1: as that chart points out, the tld R. To make
Speaker 1: this really simple, is that what Trump is floating here
Speaker 1: is a major tax cut for.
Speaker 2: The rich, specifically the Blue rich, the rich rich in
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: New Jersey, California, et cetera. And so, like you said,
Speaker 1: this was something that was in the Tax Gets and
Speaker 1: Jobs Act. It was controversial at the time because Democrats
Speaker 1: were saying, like, oh, you're targeting our states.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, so what and then it passes.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but if you lift the cap
Speaker 1: and then you know, you don't make it. It's it's
Speaker 1: also like it's expensive.
Speaker 3: It's extremely expensive because as I this.
Speaker 4: Is I'm talking about, it's expensive for the federal government.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, it adds significant amount to the deficit. Like
Speaker 1: it is a very expensive benefit that you're talking about
Speaker 1: giving to wealthy Blue state.
Speaker 2: Because and again because wealthy people they may not pay
Speaker 2: the same percentage, but they owe the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the you know, is made up of a lot of
Speaker 2: let's say, the top five percent of all households in
Speaker 2: the United States. I forget the exact stats, but it
Speaker 2: may be something like fifty and actually in Blue states.
Speaker 2: Part of the other reason the Blue States hated it
Speaker 2: is that New York in particular, especially in New York City,
Speaker 2: they basically designed their entire tax in their entire tax strategy,
Speaker 2: to rely on the top one hundred individuals in the
Speaker 2: city of New York. So I think it's like the
Speaker 2: top one hundred individuals in the city of New York
Speaker 2: made up almost fifty percent of all taxation coming in
Speaker 2: to the overall city.
Speaker 3: So when just one of those people leaves, it's a disaster.
Speaker 2: And what happened is that we had massive Blue state outflow,
Speaker 2: specifically of the richest individuals. So for example, you had
Speaker 2: Ken Griffin move his entire Cityldell operation. I think from
Speaker 2: Chicago down to Miami. There's been multiple very very wealthy
Speaker 2: individuals who change their permanent residents and they spend six
Speaker 2: months in one day in Florida and in Texas, and
Speaker 2: in fact, that's part of the major problems that they've had.
Speaker 2: So one of the reasons that the Blue States have
Speaker 2: been campaigning so hard is that they are getting hit
Speaker 2: by this because of out migration of their wealthiest population.
Speaker 1: And that is so David clan He was saying, look,
Speaker 1: there is actually a progressive case.
Speaker 4: For this blue state wealthy.
Speaker 1: I just want to make the case, like to play
Speaker 1: Devil's out of his her case, She says, I'm going
Speaker 1: to stand up for salt on progressive grounds because someone
Speaker 1: has to. It's good actually to incentivize the rich to
Speaker 1: stay in states that tax them and provide services, rather
Speaker 1: than encourage them to relocate to states that don't, enforcing
Speaker 1: austerity in states that do so. He's basically saying, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't have this tax deductibility, then it incentivizes
Speaker 1: a kind of race to the bottom in terms of
Speaker 1: states just trying to cut their taxes as low as
Speaker 1: possible provide very few services to their lower income population
Speaker 1: in order to attract the you know, driven or whoever.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the philosophical case.
Speaker 2: I don't believe this, but i'll give it to you
Speaker 2: as it has been made to me, is it's unfair
Speaker 2: to tax money twice, which again I don't think that's right.
Speaker 2: But the philosophical argument is like, look, you're paying thirteen
Speaker 2: percent on a million, but then you're also paying for
Speaker 2: what's the top individual rate like thirty seven or something.
Speaker 2: Whichever part of your income is eligible for that thirty seven,
Speaker 2: you're getting double taxed on that money, which means you're
Speaker 2: effectively playing a much higher tax rate.
Speaker 3: So that's the philosophical argument.
Speaker 2: The practical argument also is that it incentivizes people not
Speaker 2: to get paid cash. So what means is that a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the Blue States and others, they
Speaker 2: change their whole compensation structure, so they're like, look, I
Speaker 2: don't want money anymore, pay me in stock, and then
Speaker 2: I'll let it best and I'll just pay long term
Speaker 2: capital gains, which is fifteen percent. It's a broader problem,
Speaker 2: and it's generally indicative of how screwed up our entire
Speaker 2: tax system is. But that's the only philosophical argument. Yeah, again,
Speaker 2: I don't believe it. I mean, I just think that
Speaker 2: especially I mean the type of people who make over
Speaker 2: a million dollars a year. There's not a lot of
Speaker 2: people who make a million dollars cash on their W
Speaker 2: two per year. It might be I think it might
Speaker 2: be less than a million people or households in the
Speaker 2: entire United States.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, this argument makes sense in like
Speaker 1: a broader contact if you were going to do a
Speaker 1: whole overhaul, because the bottom line is, like people who
Speaker 1: are making that level of income a year, they get
Speaker 1: off with such a low tax rate.
Speaker 4: You know, they really are. They have so.
Speaker 1: Many loopholes that they're able to exploit. They typically pay
Speaker 1: a lower rate than just like an average middle class person.
Speaker 1: And so then it makes it very tough for me
Speaker 1: to swallow, like, yeah, but we should still give them
Speaker 1: this other tax benefit back that they previously had. So
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, going back to like the Trump point of this,
Speaker 1: this is very consistent with the way he has operated
Speaker 1: in this campaign. I mean, it's been pretty shameless the
Speaker 1: way that he has given his donor set whatever goodies
Speaker 1: it is that they're looking for, whether it's consistent or
Speaker 1: totally you know, opposite of what he said in the past.
Speaker 1: This isn't very obvious example the complete one eighty on
Speaker 1: Crypto another various, very obvious example going into room of
Speaker 1: oil and gas executives and saying, give me a billion
Speaker 1: dollars and I will cut the regulations and make it sure,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that your return on investment is rewarded.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just absolutely brazen and shameless. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, this falls into this category of he's got
Speaker 1: some blue state billionaires who are on his team now,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm going to deliver fishes because most
Speaker 1: average people they're not even going to notice the like
Speaker 1: salt part of that truth. But the people who it's
Speaker 1: important to oh, trust me, this is number one. Trust me,
Speaker 1: they are taking a look at that. They are noting
Speaker 1: that very very strongly.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, especially the two hundred and fifty k, the three hundred.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I guess again, I could make a
Speaker 2: case here in DC if you make three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty grand, you're not actually that rich. I mean you are, like,
Speaker 2: you're obviously way more rich than the vast majority all
Speaker 2: of the Ericans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not saying you're a freaking farmer, but you're not.
Speaker 3: You're living.
Speaker 2: I mean, for example, I remember looking at kavanaughs financials.
Speaker 2: His his how or his household income was something like
Speaker 2: three hundred and twenty k.
Speaker 3: He is basically living.
Speaker 2: Paycheck to paycheck between it was like NATS season tickets
Speaker 2: to private school educations, and a very high mortgage on
Speaker 2: a million dollar plus house. I see that a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, with a lot of people in this area
Speaker 2: in particular, just because the cost of living is so
Speaker 2: so high. So for them, you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: grand that they would be able to save actually is
Speaker 2: kind of meaningful. So anyways, that is the latest Trump
Speaker 2: flip flop.
Speaker 1: We're also we're also getting some war on the concept
Speaker 1: of a healthcare plan worth talking about. Let's just touch
Speaker 1: on this quickly as well. I can put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from Axios. They wrote this up. They
Speaker 1: said the Hill Gop anyway, is setting their sights on
Speaker 1: scrapping drug price talks. So one of the accomplishments of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration that is overwhelmingly popular in the comic
Speaker 1: touts on the trail for good reason quite frequently is
Speaker 1: on certain drugs. They are now able to negotiate with
Speaker 1: the medic Care program to lower the cost of those
Speaker 1: prescription drugs. Well, you have a lot of Republicans in
Speaker 1: Congress who hate this because I mean by them, because
Speaker 1: they're on the take from the pharmaceutical industry. But they
Speaker 1: say it squash's innovation. Blah blah blah, that's what they say.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they've made this a priority to try to
Speaker 1: if Republicans are able to gain control, try to get
Speaker 1: rid of even this. You know, it's a pretty modest reform,
Speaker 1: frankly from the Biden administration because it only covers a
Speaker 1: certain handful of drugs. But in the next administration, there's
Speaker 1: an additional wave of drugs that would be subject to
Speaker 1: this price negotiation to lower costs as long as the
Speaker 1: law remains in place. So Trump hasn't said any thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you use this as general rhetoric about pledging
Speaker 1: to take on big farm of blah blah blah, but
Speaker 1: he has not said actually anything specifically about the Republican
Speaker 1: plans to roll back this. This was in the Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act, these Medicare drug price negotiations.
Speaker 3: It'd be a huge fight.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I recall Josh Holly actually put it
Speaker 2: up fifty one on over forty nine in the Senate,
Speaker 2: voted on behalf of flowing prescription drug price. This will
Speaker 2: be a titanic fight. I just looked at it. I
Speaker 2: couldn't find the exact voting record, but it looks like
Speaker 2: he sponsored at least some bill. I believe he voted
Speaker 2: on it on reconciliation because there was a whole Kirsten
Speaker 2: Cinema showdown on this as well. The whole point is
Speaker 2: that this will preview many of what the Trump admin.
Speaker 2: Major fights are going to be. We just talked about
Speaker 2: taxes and salt. Actually it's funny because if I were
Speaker 2: to guess, Republicans would be much more likely not to
Speaker 2: give him salt in favor of something like prescription drug prize.
Speaker 2: They don't care about salt because it's abou Blue states
Speaker 2: and they like it. They think it's funny to tax
Speaker 2: blue states, even outside.
Speaker 1: Of the like you know the Republicans that represent Long Island, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, outside of that, but in the Senate, specifically the Senate,
Speaker 2: what matters the most in reconciliation. So then it comes
Speaker 2: back to what their major priority would be. Drug price
Speaker 2: would actually be probably much more on the table. You
Speaker 2: should recall this. Both of these are incredibly expensive in
Speaker 2: terms of the deficit. Like you just said, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't forget exactly. Remember the prescription drug price legislation
Speaker 2: is frankly bs even the way that it's currently been enacted,
Speaker 2: which is it only what is it only allows them
Speaker 2: to negotiate the top ten drugs that Medicare buys, not
Speaker 2: even all the drugs that Medicare buys, even though Medicare
Speaker 2: is the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals in the entire United States.
Speaker 2: So every other what is it, PBM, you know, like
Speaker 2: blue Cross, Blue Shield, they all get to negotiate, but
Speaker 2: the government doesn't.
Speaker 3: They just have to pay. Yeah, I mean it's a
Speaker 3: ridiculous policy.
Speaker 1: It should obviously apply to all drugs, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's one of those things you're like, it's an improvement,
Speaker 1: and it genuinely is. And you know, the top drugs
Speaker 1: that they're negotiating, like, there's been a huge significant impact
Speaker 1: for seniors in particular Medicare recipients.
Speaker 4: It matters.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it doesn't, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a very modest, modest reform, and you know,
Speaker 1: just to rebut directly the argument that Republicans and some Democrats,
Speaker 1: by the way, make who are on the take with
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical in history about this, like oh, they're not going
Speaker 1: to have the money for innovation, blah blah blah. First
Speaker 1: go and take a look at what we pay for
Speaker 1: these drugs versus everywhere else in the world, and you
Speaker 1: will be utterly disgusted. Why should our country be the
Speaker 1: piggy bank for these pharmaceutical giants, who are wildly profitable too,
Speaker 1: by the way. In addition, every single new drug molecule
Speaker 1: that has been invented in this century has been.
Speaker 4: With the aid of federal tax dollars.
Speaker 1: By and large, the research and development that these pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: giants are taken is like, let me reformulate viagra because
Speaker 1: it's very profitable, so that you know, it's a different
Speaker 1: dosage or it's a different delivery mechanism to try to.
Speaker 4: Extend patent life.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of the R and D type, you know,
Speaker 1: investments that they're making, not developing the new life saving
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, because that's risky.
Speaker 4: And by the way, you know.
Speaker 1: What, if not a lot of people have that incurable disease,
Speaker 1: then it's not going to be all that profitable. And
Speaker 1: so that's why public federal funding has been absolutely vital
Speaker 1: in the development of new drug molecules and drug company
Speaker 1: development not so much because they're driven by the profit
Speaker 1: motive and not you know what would actually be like
Speaker 1: most beneficial to society. So anyway, the talking points against
Speaker 1: this are total and complete bullshit. And one look at
Speaker 1: what we pay versus what the rest of the world plays.
Speaker 4: Should tell you that.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next part about the Teamsters up
Speaker 2: this is actually really honestly, it is.
Speaker 3: A crazy development.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting.
Speaker 3: The first this is.
Speaker 2: The first time the Teamsters have not endorsed a Democrat
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety six. So let's go ahead and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. The Teamsters has announced
Speaker 2: they will not be making an endorsement in the presidential race.
Speaker 2: I'll go ahead and read here it says the General
Speaker 2: Executive Board of the International brother of Teamsters on Wednesday
Speaker 2: elected not to endorse any candidate for US president after
Speaker 2: reviewing six months of nationwide member polling, wrapping up nearly
Speaker 2: a year of rank and file roundtable interviews with major candidates,
Speaker 2: the union was left with few commitments on top Teamster
Speaker 2: issues from either President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris,
Speaker 2: and found no definitive support amongst members for its parties
Speaker 2: nominee in data release publicly earlier this day, President Biden
Speaker 2: won the support of Teamsters voting in straw polls at
Speaker 2: local unions between April to July prior to his exit
Speaker 2: from the race, but an independent electronic and phone polling
Speaker 2: from July to September, A majority of voting members twice
Speaker 2: selected Trump for a possible Teamster's endorsement over Harris. The
Speaker 2: union's extensive member polling showed no majority support for Vice
Speaker 2: President Harris and no universal support amongst the membership for
Speaker 2: President Trump. He goes on to say, the Teamsters thanks
Speaker 2: call candidates for meeting with the members. So this is
Speaker 2: an extraordinary development, obviously for a couple of reasons. Traditionally
Speaker 2: the teams always just endorsed a Democrat at a candidate.
Speaker 2: But Sean O'Brien has made some interesting plays in the
Speaker 2: last couple of in the last couple of months, So
Speaker 2: he spoke at the RNC convention where which is kind
Speaker 2: of shocking. And not only did he speak at the
Speaker 2: RNC convention, he gave, you know, a blistering speech against
Speaker 2: corporate profiteering.
Speaker 3: The crowd kind of didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 3: They were like, do we support this? You know, they're
Speaker 3: like some people were like yeah.
Speaker 2: The other people were like, I don't know what's going
Speaker 2: on with this communism here in the building.
Speaker 3: He's given interviews in the past. He was praised JD Vance.
Speaker 3: He praised.
Speaker 2: I believe Josh Holly, but he's put down people like
Speaker 2: Mitch McConnell and others with Trumpet was very much like
Speaker 2: a questioning agenda with Kamala previously. I mean, look, let's
Speaker 2: also be fair, he was relatively complimentary to Joe Biden
Speaker 2: when we had him here on the show.
Speaker 3: He'd been complimentary of that.
Speaker 2: He seemed to portray himself more as like a hard
Speaker 2: line like issues guy talking about the pro Act and others.
Speaker 2: We've interviewed him twice here in person. So regardless, I've
Speaker 2: aways found me to be an interesting character. But you know,
Speaker 2: this development is actually major, especially because I think it
Speaker 2: reveals a lot about cultural politics, something I've been talking
Speaker 2: about here a lot on the show. But you know,
Speaker 2: when you had some plus fifty percent majority of the
Speaker 2: Teamsters union members in that poll switched from Biden to Trump,
Speaker 2: you can't help but just say that's crazy, Like obviously
Speaker 2: we have and look, let's also be fair, teams is
Speaker 2: probably the most conservative union, not in terms of like
Speaker 2: the union itself, but its membership.
Speaker 3: It would makes sense, but among one.
Speaker 2: Of them these are white working class folks, so to
Speaker 2: be to be surprised that white working class people are
Speaker 2: supporting Trump at nearly a sixty to forty margin. That's
Speaker 2: not really a surprise in these days, but it does
Speaker 2: tell you the power of a lot of culture and
Speaker 2: how these individual union members have voted. Remember, Trump won
Speaker 2: some forty percent of the union vote back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: He shocked everybody against Hillary. That was a way higher
Speaker 2: number under Barack Obama. So there is actually a lot analytically,
Speaker 2: this is a very interesting result.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your cultural point is really important. I saw someone
Speaker 1: tweet that this is a real blow for quote unquote deliverism,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the theory of politics that I
Speaker 1: would like to believe was the way it actually works
Speaker 1: and probably isn't, in which if you deliver for a
Speaker 1: key constituency, they reward you. The one thing that in
Speaker 1: the Teamsters announcement they point to that's legitimate is they
Speaker 1: have some members that were impacted by that railway strike
Speaker 1: and the way the federal government came in with a
Speaker 1: heavy hand and crammed down, you know, a deal on
Speaker 1: them that they did not want and blocked any sort
Speaker 1: of continuing strike activity.
Speaker 4: That's legitimate.
Speaker 1: But if you you know, okay, and Trump also you know,
Speaker 1: would not commit to doing any better on that, So
Speaker 1: they're kind of like, you know, even on that one.
Speaker 1: On the pro Act, very clear, you know, Democrats, almost
Speaker 1: every Democrat supported the pro Act. Kamala Harris supports the Proact,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden also supports the pro Act. Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: even more clear though this question of deliverism.
Speaker 4: Democrats, over the.
Speaker 1: Objections of every single Republican, saved the Teamsters pension as
Speaker 1: part of the American Rescue Plan. And you know, I
Speaker 1: know Teamsters members who were close to retirement where this
Speaker 1: was really quite existential for them. Their pension fund was
Speaker 1: totally screwed. They were looking at, you know, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: going to get a quarter of the pound I was
Speaker 1: promised that I worked hard.
Speaker 4: For my entire life and career.
Speaker 1: And it was Democrats, led by Joe Biden Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: who again over the votes of every single Republican, made
Speaker 1: sure that that pension fund was made whole so Teamster's
Speaker 1: retirees would be able to retire with you know, the
Speaker 1: levels of funding that they had worked for and had
Speaker 1: been promised. So yeah, when you you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot to say here. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: Sean O'Brien, how strongly did he, you know, educate his
Speaker 1: members about the disparity between the Republicans and the Democrats
Speaker 1: on that issue by going to the Republican convention Even
Speaker 1: though he wasn't just like flowery towards Republicans, he really
Speaker 1: gave them a kind of a talking point, and I
Speaker 1: think also didn't do an effective job of educating on
Speaker 1: the very clear disparity between Democrats and Republicans just purely
Speaker 1: on labor issues. Then with regard to the difference in
Speaker 1: how the membership voted between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Yew,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you're like, this is perplexing because
Speaker 1: they're in the same administration. On the other hand, saga
Speaker 1: to your point on the culture like Joe Biden reads's
Speaker 1: moderate old white guy, Kamala aras black woman who has
Speaker 1: a more progressive record, comes from California, et.
Speaker 4: Cetera, etc. It's hard to think that it's anything.
Speaker 1: Other than that cultural vote, given that on labor they
Speaker 1: have an identical record and posture.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the case you could make.
Speaker 2: We had teams as president on talk about Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: a lot of the teams just people hate California. They
Speaker 2: don't like Avin for signing what was it that bill
Speaker 2: about driverless cars that he overruled.
Speaker 3: The Teamsters on. That's the last time we talked about. No.
Speaker 2: I'm just they're like, look, she's some California Stilicon Valley,
Speaker 2: you know, liberal, which is kind of true.
Speaker 1: Her record on unions is rock solid, though, you know,
Speaker 1: and Trump's record on unions was horrific. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of debate, and always there's a lot of criticism
Speaker 1: when unions come out and endorse like lefty causes like
Speaker 1: the ua W came down and you know, in favor
Speaker 1: of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaker 4: A number of other unions did as well.
Speaker 1: And there's always this refrain from the right of like,
Speaker 1: just stick to the policy, stick to wages, stick to
Speaker 1: like what you're focused on. And here it almost feels
Speaker 1: like the reverse because again, if you're just looking at
Speaker 1: the issues, it's really not close between the Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 1: I actually I not only understand, but I support unions
Speaker 1: withholding their support for Democrats who don't deliver for them.
Speaker 1: But this administration, the Biden Harris administration, and I have
Speaker 1: a million other critiques of them that you guys hear
Speaker 1: on the show all the time. On labor, they were
Speaker 1: not perfect. They are by far, by far the best
Speaker 1: administration on labor in my lifetime.
Speaker 4: It's not even close.
Speaker 1: Way better than Obama, way better than Clinton, obviously, way
Speaker 1: better than every Republican. So yeah, that's what's like depressing
Speaker 1: to me about it is because I would like the
Speaker 1: politics of deliverism to be a real thing. The fact
Speaker 1: that on a very specific, really important, very tangible issue,
Speaker 1: this administration delivered for this union.
Speaker 4: And then you know, they get slapped in the face.
Speaker 1: What incentive does it give them in the future for
Speaker 1: just talking like naked political manoeuvering. What incentive does it
Speaker 1: give them in the future to go to the mat
Speaker 1: and expend political capital in a similar fight when it's
Speaker 1: clearly not rewarded.
Speaker 2: Yes, but you know, Union's job is to represent as
Speaker 2: members members close port Trump, you know, at least right now,
Speaker 2: and so maybe the wash is the best that you
Speaker 2: are going to get when they're like, Okay, our members
Speaker 2: clearly are support of one candidate. We don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: that candidates can deliver us on a policy level. But
Speaker 2: we can't turn around and support somebody who's got only
Speaker 2: forty percent of our membership. At the end of the day,
Speaker 2: organizations at least are quasi democratic. This is probably the
Speaker 2: best result, you know, that Kamala could have gotten if
Speaker 2: the majority, vast majority actually in this particular case, are
Speaker 2: supportive of Donald Trump. I do think it also is
Speaker 2: an indicative of just what cultural politics look like and
Speaker 2: mean today. If you were going to go if I
Speaker 2: would probably go ask these teams just guys were like, look,
Speaker 2: why do you guys support Trump? I pretty much guarantee
Speaker 2: you mcgrade's can be number one at the top of
Speaker 2: that list, which they clearly could have major beef with
Speaker 2: the with the Biden Harris administration.
Speaker 3: So that actually validates the thing.
Speaker 2: A lot of what we talk about here is that, look,
Speaker 2: worker issues is not just the pro act. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people were actually white working class people.
Speaker 2: They don't necessarily care as much about that as they
Speaker 2: do a widespread, you know, amount of issues. I also
Speaker 2: think that this is just part of the further class
Speaker 2: realignment where we have where regardless of individual issues, the
Speaker 2: over all cultural orientation of the Democratic Party is trending
Speaker 2: towards white upper class voters, and the overall cultural orientation
Speaker 2: of the Republican Party is white working class voters. The
Speaker 2: interesting thing is that various races began to split them
Speaker 2: between Democrat and Republican based on their educational level.
Speaker 3: And I love this.
Speaker 2: I just see a poll this morning from New York Times,
Speaker 2: siena high quality Harris Trump tied at the national level. Yeah, terrible,
Speaker 2: Harris up by four in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: I know why.
Speaker 2: White people, white people in the mainline suburbs of Philly
Speaker 2: who all went to college, probably working pharma or banking
Speaker 2: or actually right now, Pennsylvania is exploding in healthcare. So
Speaker 2: it's like this was a bunch of rich doctors and
Speaker 2: nurses who are pro comma.
Speaker 3: Now, I actually love.
Speaker 2: That result just because again it demonstrates, like what, First
Speaker 2: of all, it validates a lot of stuff that we
Speaker 2: say here about class dynamics and orientation. But it also
Speaker 2: just shows you how different the current electorate is from
Speaker 2: the past, and then the various ways that things look.
Speaker 2: So we talked about salt, right, well, now we have
Speaker 2: two pro salt candidates, So rich people in blue states
Speaker 2: should be very happy.
Speaker 3: Now we also.
Speaker 1: Actually do we know where Kamo stands on salt. I
Speaker 1: don't sure that we do. I don't know that she
Speaker 1: does support.
Speaker 2: It, but anyway, most Democrats know they don't. A California
Speaker 2: Democrats don't salt.
Speaker 1: It was like a fairly small group the Gottheimer group
Speaker 1: let me find this, that was trying to reinstate the or.
Speaker 4: To lift the salt tax cap. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think they never put out a position. I
Speaker 1: don't actually think that she does support it. I would
Speaker 1: be shocked because the administration, at least the bid Harris
Speaker 1: administration wasn't supportive of it.
Speaker 2: That's right, but Joe Biden was not. But I guess
Speaker 2: is Delaware. I think it's a lower tax state and
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. But my point is just at least
Speaker 2: Trump is now pro salt. But on the union front,
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think at a discrete policy level,
Speaker 2: this is going to have some impact where a lot
Speaker 2: of Democrats you know, in the future, are going to
Speaker 2: be like, look, if you got a bunch of white
Speaker 2: specifically a majority white union and they're not college educated,
Speaker 2: the likelihood that they don't support you is going to
Speaker 2: be very high and that will have some impact. That's
Speaker 2: straight up, that's what the future will look like. I
Speaker 2: guess the converse is, I would hope, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're a Republican, that you look at this too and
Speaker 2: you're like, hey, we could actually get some votes over here.
Speaker 2: So maybe one or two you got JD in the
Speaker 2: White if he wins, he is in the White House,
Speaker 2: this would be a chit that him and his staff
Speaker 2: would be able to use if they were talking about
Speaker 2: teamsters and they were up against let's say a Larry
Speaker 2: Cudlow across from the desk, and they could remind someone
Speaker 2: like Trump, which way will Trump go? No clue evidence
Speaker 2: suggests probably in the Cudlow direction, but you never know.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump won't hesitate to throw Sean O'Brien on
Speaker 1: the teamsters under the bus the moment that it conflicts
Speaker 1: with you know, Bill Lackman or whoever whatever.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know that's true. I mean, we loves
Speaker 3: the unions.
Speaker 1: Judging by past record, you know, that's what we have
Speaker 1: to go on. He didn't move any of his positions
Speaker 1: on unions, and he's a lifelong union buster. Actually, remember
Speaker 1: when Trump and Elon were like joking about how awesome
Speaker 1: and cool it was, that Elon fired striking workers. Sean
Speaker 1: O'Brien came out and called that economic terrorist. And that's
Speaker 1: the guy you're you know, you're of coursing him, but
Speaker 1: you're giving him a big talking point that he's celebrating.
Speaker 4: So let's listen. I think, you know, I hope it
Speaker 4: works out for you.
Speaker 2: We have Trump's comments actually on this B eight. Please
Speaker 2: let's take a listen this President.
Speaker 9: Any reaction to the Teamsters decision.
Speaker 10: Not to endorse.
Speaker 9: No, they are.
Speaker 6: It's a great honor.
Speaker 8: They're not going to endorse the Democrats. That's a big thing.
Speaker 8: And this is the first time, and I guess fifty
Speaker 8: sixty years that that's happened. Democrats automatically have the team series.
Speaker 8: They took a voter and I guess I was at
Speaker 8: sixty percent or more. And that's a great honor.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's really I've.
Speaker 8: Had a lot of Teamsters work for I mean a
Speaker 8: lot of the concrete trucks, and we built all these
Speaker 8: buildings that you see in New York City the teamsters there, you.
Speaker 1: Go, a great honor to not be endorsed by the
Speaker 1: tess All right, let's go and move on to shocking
Speaker 1: new details. That we're learning about this federal indictment against
Speaker 1: Sean Ditty Combs, So you can put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen tear sheet with some of the details. He's
Speaker 1: been denied bail. This is per variety. Sean did he
Speaker 1: cums and I bail on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
Speaker 1: So he was charged with three counts racketeering, conspiracy, sex
Speaker 1: trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage
Speaker 1: in prostitution. The judge decided there were no conditions that
Speaker 1: could guarantee Comb's appearance in court. She said she considered
Speaker 1: alternatives like home detention, substantial bond offered by Combs, but
Speaker 1: ultimately concluded that the presumption in favor of detention has
Speaker 1: not been rebutted by the defense.
Speaker 4: Makes sense.
Speaker 1: This is a man with nearly endless resources. You know,
Speaker 1: if anyone was going to be a flight risk, seems
Speaker 1: like it would be him. In fact, I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit shocked he didn't already try to flee knowing that
Speaker 1: this was coming. But he is pled not guilty, and
Speaker 1: is I guess going to have his day in court.
Speaker 4: Let's put the next details.
Speaker 1: Up on the screen from the indictment, which I read
Speaker 1: in full. Its fourteen page indictment not overly lengthy. So
Speaker 1: this is what the grand jury charged. As I said,
Speaker 1: it was three counts racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking by force,
Speaker 1: and transportation to.
Speaker 4: Engage in prostitution.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, guys, and put up some of the next
Speaker 1: details so that I can read this off of the screen.
Speaker 1: So the core of this, the allegations here involve these
Speaker 1: quote unquote freak offs, and they say in the indictment
Speaker 1: that he subjected victims to physical, emotional and verbal abuse
Speaker 1: to force them to engage in these freakoffs. He maintained
Speaker 1: control over his victims through physical violence, promises of career opportunities,
Speaker 1: granting and threatening to withhold financial support by other cours
Speaker 1: of means, including tracking their whereabouts, dictating their appearance, monitoring
Speaker 1: their medical records, controlling their housing, and also supplying them
Speaker 1: with drugs during and separate from freakofs colms, among other things,
Speaker 1: Hit kicked through objects, at and dragged victims, at times.
Speaker 4: By their hair.
Speaker 1: These assaults resulted in injuries that took days or weeks
Speaker 1: to heal. He threatened their careers and livelihoods, including if
Speaker 1: they resisted participating in the quote unquote freak offs. Victims
Speaker 1: beliefs they could not refuse his demands without risking their
Speaker 1: financial or job security or without repercussions in the form
Speaker 1: of physical or emotional abuse. Comes also used the sensitive,
Speaker 1: embarrassing and incriminating recordings that he made during freak Offs
Speaker 1: as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of
Speaker 1: the victims. Sogra If you read through the indictment, yes,
Speaker 1: this is you know, Sean Combs is at.
Speaker 4: The center of it. But they really framed.
Speaker 1: This as a you know, years long, we know, decades long,
Speaker 1: allegedly criminal enterprise. So Bad Boy Records was not just
Speaker 1: about you know, media, entertainment, culture, et cetera. They frame
Speaker 1: a core priority of Bad Boy Records being you know,
Speaker 1: this repeated system abuse and the cover up of that
Speaker 1: abuse being at the core of the enterprise. And really,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is a portrait of a
Speaker 1: monster that you're looking at here. And what's being alleged,
Speaker 1: he says, he's not guilty. What's being alleged is wholly
Speaker 1: consistent with what Cassie, the R and B singer alleged
Speaker 1: he had done to her, and of course we saw
Speaker 1: in the public domain that horrifying video of her being
Speaker 1: beaten and dragged in a hotel hallway that comes up
Speaker 1: in this indictment, and they also talk about how he
Speaker 1: paid off a hotel worker to make sure that that
Speaker 1: never saw the light of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, and included, by the way, in the
Speaker 2: search of his home they found narcotics videos, three AR
Speaker 2: fifteens with defaced serial numbers, and quote, more than one
Speaker 2: thousand bottles of baby oil and lubricant that that were
Speaker 2: called freakoff supplies. His employees were instructed to ensure that
Speaker 2: quote Freakoffs were always stocked with baby oil.
Speaker 3: Linens and lighting.
Speaker 2: Enforcement seized multiple of those supplies as evidence in both
Speaker 2: of his homes of not only his proclivities, but obviously
Speaker 2: what they allege is basically a scheme arranging for victims
Speaker 2: of sex workers and others to be able to move
Speaker 2: about the country and enable him to continue this scheme.
Speaker 2: I will say, this really does actually validate a lot
Speaker 2: of the details in terms of like forcing a lot
Speaker 2: of the people involved to engage with like male prostitutes
Speaker 2: is something that they allege here. The fact that he
Speaker 2: was denied bail is a pretty big deal. Just to
Speaker 2: show the way that the court sees it. They claim
Speaker 2: that they are going to appeal the decision. Their defense
Speaker 2: basically comes down to this quote, is it sex trafficking,
Speaker 2: not if everybody wants to be there. That is what
Speaker 2: his attorney, Mark agne Phillo said in terms of his
Speaker 2: clients innocence, and that actually is going to be a
Speaker 2: key part of the case. And I mean, it is
Speaker 2: an interesting question about consent and about what it exactly
Speaker 2: means for that. I mean, I think they probably have
Speaker 2: him from reading the indictment relatively like dead to rights
Speaker 2: in terms of transporting people across lines for sex purposes.
Speaker 2: That is a federal crime whenever it comes to prostitution.
Speaker 2: I guess the big question that they're going to get
Speaker 2: is about the consent not necessarily of the sex workers themselves,
Speaker 2: but also the other people who are involved and their
Speaker 2: allegations of being a victim where they have I think
Speaker 2: a better case is about the violence and then the
Speaker 2: evidence of the violence that he perpetrated on those people.
Speaker 2: But I could see some interesting like legal chicanery around
Speaker 2: that question of like whether people voluntarily wanted to be
Speaker 2: at the end.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the government proves the allegations they made here,
Speaker 1: it will not be a difficult question. Because you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, any given girl being beaten, you know, and
Speaker 1: force subject to emotional abuse. You're talking about her being drugs.
Speaker 1: You're talking about him saying if you don't come, I
Speaker 1: am going.
Speaker 4: To destroy you. I will destroy your career.
Speaker 1: There are allegations of arson in here, and multiple instances
Speaker 1: of arson. They actually don't go into the details, but
Speaker 1: one allegation that we know that's in the public sphere
Speaker 1: is that he threatened Cassie that if she left him
Speaker 1: and continued dating Kid Cutty Rabber Kid Cutty, that he
Speaker 1: would I think he threatened to blow up Kid Cutty's car,
Speaker 1: and then lo and behold, Kid Cutty's car blows up
Speaker 1: in the driveway, So that could be one of the
Speaker 1: instances of arson that they're talking about. So again, government
Speaker 1: has to prove their case. But also keep in mind
Speaker 1: that allegedly this was all recorded by Diddy himself, and
Speaker 1: they searched his residences, So I think it's entirely possible,
Speaker 1: if not likely, that they have a library of video
Speaker 1: footage to substantiate the allegations that they are making here. So,
Speaker 1: as I said, if if they prove what's in this indictment,
Speaker 1: it will not be a difficult question of you know, coercion, consent,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. Like if a woman is being
Speaker 1: beaten and emotionally abused and threatened within you know, her career,
Speaker 1: in an inch of her life, and you're amitable of
Speaker 1: your boyfriend's car to force you to participate in these things,
Speaker 1: then I think is a pretty clear lack of consent
Speaker 1: in that situation. Uh So, and he also they also
Speaker 1: alleged that he used kidnapping in order to get his way,
Speaker 1: So again, portrait of a total and complete monster. He
Speaker 1: will have his opportunity to argue otherwise. But the obviously
Speaker 1: the other big question here is like who else was
Speaker 1: that these freak offs? Who else participated? Who else in
Speaker 1: the Combs enterprise? You know, they make allegations here as
Speaker 1: well about how employees, assistants, et cetera, were you know,
Speaker 1: securing not only supplies for the freak offs. Okay, that
Speaker 1: may not be illegal if you don't know that you
Speaker 1: know what the supplies are going to be used for,
Speaker 1: but who helped to cover up the abuse. Remember, you're
Speaker 1: talking about women who had to be hidden for weeks
Speaker 1: at a time because again allegedly of the abuse that
Speaker 1: they suffered. They're you know, visible marks that could not
Speaker 1: be hidden. You're talking about him tracking their medical records
Speaker 1: so that he's in control of their medical care after
Speaker 1: they are subject to this abuse. So you know what
Speaker 1: other stars and celebrities could be implicated here, is you know,
Speaker 1: Didy the top of the chain, or is there someone
Speaker 1: else that they're going to try to get him to
Speaker 1: roll up on? Still a lot of questions. Puts he
Speaker 1: four up on the screen. We've got some reaction from
Speaker 1: the celebrity world. We have fifty cent apparently tweeted a
Speaker 1: photo of himself and actor Drew Barrymore, captioned here, I
Speaker 1: am keeping good company with Drew Barrymore and I don't
Speaker 1: have a thousand bottles of lube at the house, okay.
Speaker 1: Radio host Charlotte and the Gods said on Monday on
Speaker 1: a Monday segment of The Breakfast Breakfast Club, if Combs
Speaker 1: is convicted of rocketeering and sex trafficking, there will be
Speaker 1: others involved who will be probably.
Speaker 4: Going to jail.
Speaker 1: And singer Audreo Day, who's been outspoken about Comb, said
Speaker 1: Monday she felt validated after the arrest, falling up the
Speaker 1: tweet by saying she chose to speak to people who
Speaker 1: could move justice in the way I needed to. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's my sense reading the indictment is it just scratched
Speaker 1: the surface of the specifics and doesn't get a lot
Speaker 1: into the evidence of what they have.
Speaker 4: I think we're going to learn a lot more here.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty clear cut case of just
Speaker 2: like Weinstein, where we know, know none of those assistants
Speaker 2: never got prosecuted. A lot of the people behind the
Speaker 2: scenes in the Weinstein company basically walked free or none
Speaker 2: of their names were brought up, obviously the whole Epstein
Speaker 2: case with Glean Maxwell. So it's really a question of
Speaker 2: what the Feds have and who they're able to prove
Speaker 2: as complicit. Also, I guess it depends on Comb's himself
Speaker 2: and whether he strikes a plea deal with the government.
Speaker 2: You know, like you said, Charlemagne and many other legal
Speaker 2: observers that he's almost certainly going to jail at least
Speaker 2: for some undetermined period of time.
Speaker 3: So we'll see.
Speaker 2: I mean, the details are truly crazy and I think
Speaker 2: demonstrate again some of the rot within hip hop and
Speaker 2: a lot of the behind the scenes stuff which were
Speaker 2: obviously floated out there. But we're ten times worse than
Speaker 2: anybody new, allegedly for the lawyers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, see what we find out next.
Speaker 3: We've got a great panel standing by. Let's get to it.
Speaker 2: We are very excited now to be joined by a
Speaker 2: panel where we are going to discuss the topic of
Speaker 2: abortion and how Republicans should respond. So joining us now
Speaker 2: is familiar face Will Chamberlain. He is conservative commentator. We
Speaker 2: have Lila Rose as well. She is host of the
Speaker 2: Lila Rose Podcast. Thank you guys so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me absolutely.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're going to start off kind of with
Speaker 2: the way that you guys think Republicans should respond to
Speaker 2: the general abortion topic in the United States. Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: out with a new ad and it gets to some
Speaker 2: of the debates of and happening in the conservative movement
Speaker 2: and what that should look like. Let's take a listen
Speaker 2: to the ad and we're going to get both of
Speaker 2: your response.
Speaker 11: I've never slept a full night in my entire life.
Speaker 11: I was five years old when my stepfather abused me
Speaker 11: for the first time. I just felt like I was
Speaker 11: alone on a planet with a monster.
Speaker 4: I was twelve when he impregnated me.
Speaker 11: I just remember thinking, I have to get out of
Speaker 11: my skin.
Speaker 3: I can't be me right now, like.
Speaker 4: This can't be it. I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: I was a child.
Speaker 11: I didn't know what it meant to be pregnant at all.
Speaker 11: But I had options. Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 11: girls and women all over the country have lost the
Speaker 11: right to choose.
Speaker 5: Even for rape or insist.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump did this.
Speaker 11: He took away our free.
Speaker 2: This is an important ad because it kind of highlights
Speaker 2: some of the difficulties in the conservative movement right now.
Speaker 2: Will I want to start with you both of you
Speaker 2: guys have kind of embroiled in a general topic online
Speaker 2: about how conservatives should respond on the topic of potential
Speaker 2: like moderation supposedly on the abortion issue, specifically in terms
Speaker 2: of exceptions for rape incests and the life of the mother,
Speaker 2: but also in terms of Donald Trump's previous statements perhaps
Speaker 2: either backing or endorsing a national abortion ban. How do
Speaker 2: you view the Trump campaigns like current navigation of the topic,
Speaker 2: and then the general idea of quote unquote moderation on
Speaker 2: the issue in the context of the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: election politics.
Speaker 10: I mean, I think the Trump campaign is doing what
Speaker 10: makes sense at the moment. I think they have two
Speaker 10: big messages. One they think abortion is a state issue now,
Speaker 10: which it is under the law, that's the conclusion of dods.
Speaker 10: And second that they generally support the exceptions, you know, rape, incest,
Speaker 10: in the life of the mother. I mean, whenever you
Speaker 10: hear Trump talk about abortion, he always brings up his
Speaker 10: support of the exceptions. So I think, I mean, when
Speaker 10: it comes to specific ads like this one, I think
Speaker 10: you would just point out that they're basically false outright.
Speaker 10: Most of every every Harpe build that I know of
Speaker 10: has an exception, has the exceptions in it. So I
Speaker 10: think I think it's I think the Trump campaign is
Speaker 10: basically doing the right thing and it's messaging on this issue.
Speaker 10: And I think that's largely because you know, for the book,
Speaker 10: this is in a sense, if you look at the polling,
Speaker 10: it is where Republicans are seen as weakest, and so
Speaker 10: it's the issue we wanted to talk about the least,
Speaker 10: and it's the issue where we are playing defense.
Speaker 2: Lyyla, can we get your response because previously I know
Speaker 2: that you've been embroiled in some of these debates, specifically
Speaker 2: about Trump at least JD. Van's coming out in an
Speaker 2: interview and coming out supposedly saying that Trump would veto
Speaker 2: a national abortion ban, something that you were very critical of.
Speaker 2: So in the context of the politics and your own activism,
Speaker 2: how do you view this?
Speaker 12: Sure well, I want to start by to such josheeing
Speaker 12: the ad which was absolutely heartbreaking that you guys share it.
Speaker 12: I mean, this is the common approach used by abortion
Speaker 12: advocates is, you know, find the most tragic and heartbreaking story,
Speaker 12: and usually it's the victim, a twelve year old victims,
Speaker 12: a sexual assault survivor, and use them as justification for
Speaker 12: legalizing abortion on demand. And I think it's important to
Speaker 12: note that, first of all, there's almost a million abortions
Speaker 12: every single year. The vast majority of them are convenience abortions.
Speaker 12: These are abortions not having to do with these severe cases.
Speaker 12: They're having to do with general choice, and these are
Speaker 12: human beings. The science is very clear that at the
Speaker 12: moment of fertilization. This is a unique individual human life,
Speaker 12: and abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life.
Speaker 12: In the case of rape and incests, these are the
Speaker 12: worst and most horrific and heartbreaking cases. But I think
Speaker 12: that the focus should be instead on getting justice for
Speaker 12: that young girl and removing her from a situation of
Speaker 12: sexual abuse, because the reality is I've spent a decade
Speaker 12: of my life investigating abortion clinics, and abortion clinics love
Speaker 12: abortion life sexual abuse because sexual abusers find abortion to
Speaker 12: be a great outlet, a great way to hide and
Speaker 12: cover up the crimes that they were committing on their victim.
Speaker 12: So this idea that abortion is a solution to sexual
Speaker 12: abuse or rape, that this is all that this young
Speaker 12: girl needs, this is her solution, I think it's horrible.
Speaker 12: I think the solution needs to be to remove her
Speaker 12: from the sexual abuse situation, to get her the healing
Speaker 12: and the support that she needs, and to get justice
Speaker 12: against her abuser.
Speaker 5: Often that doesn't happen, instead of filing.
Speaker 12: Out the penalty of this crime on this innocent, developing
Speaker 12: new human life.
Speaker 1: So, Lila, just to be clear, you believe that Hadley,
Speaker 1: the young lady in that ad who also was featured
Speaker 1: ad in the state of Kentucky, very red, very conservative,
Speaker 1: and very socially conservative state. She was also featured in
Speaker 1: an ad there that was very effective. You believe she
Speaker 1: should have been forced to carry that baby's term when
Speaker 1: she was twelve years old.
Speaker 12: I do not think that that baby should have been
Speaker 12: killed for the crime of the father.
Speaker 3: Okay do you?
Speaker 12: And I think she deserved the best medical care and
Speaker 12: support and she should have been removed from the abusive situation.
Speaker 12: But in many of these cases, abortion is not taking
Speaker 12: away the trauma of the rape. I mean, I think
Speaker 12: people get so horrified by rape, as they should be,
Speaker 12: and they think that somehow the baby, the new pregnancy,
Speaker 12: is the fault, is the reason for the trauma and
Speaker 12: the pain, when the reality is the trauma and the
Speaker 12: pain is from the sexual abuse.
Speaker 4: So, Lyla, that's what you do?
Speaker 1: You accept that view that that twelve year old girl
Speaker 1: raped byerstep dad should be forced to carry that baby
Speaker 1: to term. Do you accept that that's an unpopular view
Speaker 1: in the American public and a political liability for Republicans
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump to run on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think a lot of people have not really
Speaker 12: grappled with what abortion is that it's the intentional killing
Speaker 12: of an innocent human life. And I think that a
Speaker 12: lot of people haven't heard the stories of sexual assault
Speaker 12: survivors who have chosen life for their babies, or who
Speaker 12: had abortions and suffered afterwards trauma from the abortion, not
Speaker 12: just the rape.
Speaker 5: We don't really have these stories or.
Speaker 12: These ideas and are lexicon typically when it comes to
Speaker 12: this issue, because unfortunately the abortion advocates, like Kamala Harris
Speaker 12: is extremely pro abortion, is using these very tragic stories
Speaker 12: to justify their agenda, which is abortion on demand.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't forget ly, I understand, I understand you
Speaker 1: forget where I understand your personasive. But what we're trying
Speaker 1: to get to here is the political implications. So do
Speaker 1: you think that this ad is problem for Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Do you think that his stance generally on abortion, in
Speaker 1: the fact that he's the person who put the justices
Speaker 1: in place that overturned Roll versus Wade, do you think
Speaker 1: that that's political liability as.
Speaker 4: Most do, or do you reject that analysis?
Speaker 12: Well, as you probably may have seen some of my
Speaker 12: statements about president former President Trump and his campaign, his
Speaker 12: campaign is not as pro abortion as the Harris Walls campaign,
Speaker 12: but they're in support of abortion.
Speaker 5: So you know the fact that Kamala Harris is using.
Speaker 12: This ad, I think it's very deceptive on multiple levels.
Speaker 12: But the reality is the Trump Fans campaign supports abortion pills.
Speaker 12: They support, as Will was saying earlier, they support abortion
Speaker 12: in multiple cases.
Speaker 5: They support they don't want the heartbeat law.
Speaker 12: As an example, President Trump has been critical of the
Speaker 12: heartbeat law that the pro life movement worked very hard
Speaker 12: for in the state of Florida. So there have been
Speaker 12: a number of really troubling positions and policies coming out
Speaker 12: of the Trump Fans campaign, and that's why the prologue
Speaker 12: movement and the base has been critical and saying, well, well,
Speaker 12: this is not the correct position to take there.
Speaker 5: These are human lives that deserve protection.
Speaker 2: Well, this is where I want to get your response,
Speaker 2: because one of the most interesting points I saw that
Speaker 2: you make was you previously worked for Governor Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 2: and you were like, listen, if the pro life community
Speaker 2: had wanted to come out and the Republican Party generally
Speaker 2: had wanted to support the best person on the issue
Speaker 2: of life in that campaign, they would have voted for
Speaker 2: somebody like a Ron DeSantis or a Mike Pence even
Speaker 2: at one point who was thinking about it. So on
Speaker 2: that political point of what Lilah said, what would your
Speaker 2: response be to her? I think both of these are
Speaker 2: totally legitimate arguments, and it gets down to the actual
Speaker 2: politics of it navigating this in this current election, what
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 10: I think the way the pro life movement ought view
Speaker 10: what President Trump is doing is that he's he's just
Speaker 10: the messenger for where the broader public is. Trump was
Speaker 10: a deeply pragmatic and transactional leader when he was in
Speaker 10: the White House, and he has even more reason to
Speaker 10: be pragmatic now that he's facing criminal indictments across the
Speaker 10: country from a weaponized justice system against him. So, I mean,
Speaker 10: if anybody was designed to be like, how am I
Speaker 10: going to get the White House back? And who's focused
Speaker 10: on that goal beyond others, it would be Donald Trump.
Speaker 10: And so when he looks at the abortion issue, he says,
Speaker 10: this is a political liability for us, And I'm going
Speaker 10: to take the position that you know, I'm going to
Speaker 10: try and obviously balance the need the fact that pro
Speaker 10: life conservatives are a part of the conservative coalition and
Speaker 10: we don't want to lose their votes. But at the
Speaker 10: same time, given that the bulk of the public is
Speaker 10: not where the pro life movement is, we're going to
Speaker 10: have to chack to the center. And I think, you know,
Speaker 10: I don't hear a lot of you know, green saying
Speaker 10: the Kamala Harris is betraying them when Kamala Harris says
Speaker 10: she now supports cracking, or that the LGBTQ people are
Speaker 10: saying that Harris is betraying them when she no longer
Speaker 10: stands by her earlier position that there should be transition
Speaker 10: surgeries available to legal aliens detained. So I think there's
Speaker 10: I think happens during campaigns.
Speaker 1: Sure, I think the equivalent issue right now on the left,
Speaker 1: speaking of someone on the left is the Gaza seespire
Speaker 1: and the commitment to you know that many of us
Speaker 1: would like to see from the Biden administration to embarking weapons.
Speaker 1: And so there's a very similar debate that plays out
Speaker 1: between what we call the lesser evil voting that you
Speaker 1: know that Lilah is somewhat articulating of you know, from
Speaker 1: her perspective, Harris Walls are worse on abortion. From her perspective,
Speaker 1: Trump advanced may be better, but they still don't meet
Speaker 1: her moral red line. And you know, a part of
Speaker 1: why I'm pathetic to that view because I find myself
Speaker 1: in a similar position on the left.
Speaker 4: But yet, Nila, if you could just explain.
Speaker 1: A little bit more of how you think about your
Speaker 1: vote and more broadly, how you think about the votes
Speaker 1: of the pro life movement. Has Donald Trump done enough,
Speaker 1: come enough towards your position that you feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: yes I can vote for this person, as he's not
Speaker 1: where I want him to be, but he's, in your view,
Speaker 1: the lesser of two evils, or do you still continue
Speaker 1: to feel like there's a moral line here and your
Speaker 1: threshold has not yet been met by him?
Speaker 12: Listen, context is key here in the recent history has
Speaker 12: to be stated. So what happened, as many folks may
Speaker 12: know or may not know, the Republican National Convention obviously
Speaker 12: shows Donald Trump as the nominee. And during that convention,
Speaker 12: after four decades of a pro life platform, due to
Speaker 12: reportedly Trump's influence and pressure on the convention and the delegates,
Speaker 12: they gutted the Republican Party platform on life. So you
Speaker 12: had four decades of a strong Republican Party platform on Life,
Speaker 12: protecting life abortion was mentioned and decried twenty three times.
Speaker 12: Now the platform mentions abortion once, and they talk about
Speaker 12: access to things like IVF and birth control. They are
Speaker 12: basically weakening, softening the platform on life. Then you look
Speaker 12: at the last several weeks President Trump's campaign coming out
Speaker 12: and saying they support access to abortion pills. Abortion pills
Speaker 12: are sixty percent of all abortions in this country. That's
Speaker 12: over a thousand abortions every single day, killed via children
Speaker 12: killed via the abortion pill. So these are dramatically huge
Speaker 12: concessions that the Trump campaign is making, ultimately throwing not
Speaker 12: just the proloct movement, which has been a base for
Speaker 12: the campaign in the past and for President Trump in
Speaker 12: the past, but throwing the cause, the issue under the
Speaker 12: bus here. So this is not just these tiny little quibbles.
Speaker 12: These are significant steps that have been unprecedented in recent
Speaker 12: decades coming from the GOP nominee. And that's why it
Speaker 12: is my responsibility as a pro life activist speaking for
Speaker 12: people who have no voice. Unborn children have no vote,
Speaker 12: they have no voice. They are being killed by the
Speaker 12: thousands every single day in this country legally, and is
Speaker 12: my responsibility to speak for these children. And so I
Speaker 12: have been speaking out urging the campaign to change course.
Speaker 12: The policies that they've been recently upholding and the statements
Speaker 12: that they're making are extremely pro abortion and it needs
Speaker 12: to stop.
Speaker 5: So that's my position. And look the left talking about the.
Speaker 1: Well, but will you vote for him if he doesn't
Speaker 1: change his position?
Speaker 4: Will you vote for him?
Speaker 12: The vote is at risk right now the voters, and
Speaker 12: then there are weeks before the election.
Speaker 5: He can change course on this.
Speaker 12: President Trump actually recently started to change course in the
Speaker 12: right direction because of pressure. So you know, pressure works.
Speaker 12: Keep in mind, these campaigns they work for the voters.
Speaker 12: The voters don't work for them. These are they're trying
Speaker 12: to be public servants to serve this country and represent
Speaker 12: this country.
Speaker 5: We don't vote work for them. They work for us.
Speaker 12: So it's our position and our responsibility to speak out
Speaker 12: for those that have no voice and that are those
Speaker 12: are children in the womb.
Speaker 1: And one more, one more question for you, because I'm
Speaker 1: still not really clear if you recognize, you know, the embrace.
Speaker 4: Of you know, rejection, you reject the IVF.
Speaker 1: We can actually put up on the screen D three
Speaker 1: the polling on IVF even only ten percent of Republicans
Speaker 1: even agree with your position on IVF, which, listen, you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're allowed to have the views that you do.
Speaker 5: But would it be resp on to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well just once, just one second, and then you
Speaker 1: can respond, would it be worth, in your opinion, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: losing this election to Kamala Harris in order to, for example,
Speaker 1: oppose IVF or you know, oppose you know, even forcing
Speaker 1: a or support forcing a twelve year old girl to
Speaker 1: bear the.
Speaker 4: Baby of her rapists.
Speaker 1: Would you do you think it's worth losing an election
Speaker 1: over those issues.
Speaker 5: Listen, there's a few key distinctions here.
Speaker 12: First of all, you're assuming that by galvanizing his base,
Speaker 12: President Trump will somehow hurt his chances. The reality is this,
Speaker 12: pro abortion voters, voters that abortion is their top issue
Speaker 12: for them, that's what they're going to get out their
Speaker 12: vote for, are already voting for Kamala Harris. I don't
Speaker 12: think the strategy of the true fans campaign to say, well,
Speaker 12: I'm going to win some you know, hardcore abortion supporters
Speaker 12: who care about this so much they'll show up to
Speaker 12: vote on this issue. Those people are already voting for
Speaker 12: the Harris Walls ticket because Kamala Harris has a extreme
Speaker 12: pro abortion record and that's been tried and true for
Speaker 12: now her entire career. So to think that Donald Trump
Speaker 12: is them are going to get the abortion vote, I
Speaker 12: think is just pining the sky thinking. In addition, he's
Speaker 12: going to hurt and suppress his own base, the pro
Speaker 12: life base, by basically again throwing this issue under the bus.
Speaker 12: And then on the issue of IVF, I have to
Speaker 12: state about that. You know, the data shows that ninety
Speaker 12: three percent there's an education gap on this issue, which
Speaker 12: is is why the pulling is the way that you indicated,
Speaker 12: or some pulling may appear that way.
Speaker 5: Ninety three percent.
Speaker 12: Of babies conceived via IVF are end up being frozen, killed, destroyed,
Speaker 12: or miscarried. Only seven percent of them make it out alive.
Speaker 12: This is a highly dangerous and expensive and quite frankly,
Speaker 12: extremely difficult technology for the women and for the families.
Speaker 12: It is expensive and it is highly dangerous for the
Speaker 12: new human lives that are being created. There's a reason
Speaker 12: that there is concern about this, and there's ethical issues
Speaker 12: with this, and what the Trump Fans ticket did recently
Speaker 12: wasn't just to say we support IVF, it was to
Speaker 12: say we're going to do tax funded insurance companies subsidized
Speaker 12: and mandated IVF. So it was saying, we want everyone
Speaker 12: in the country to do IVF if they want that.
Speaker 12: This is about sixty thousand dollars to achieve one live
Speaker 12: berth and there's a million babies embryos that are frozen
Speaker 12: indefinitely right now. So no one's talking about these facts, right,
Speaker 12: We're just up in the one hundred thousand foot view
Speaker 12: of well, we support choice, we support reproductive freedom. Well
Speaker 12: what are we actually talking about when we use this terminology.
Speaker 12: We're talking about human lives that are recklessly being destroyed.
Speaker 12: And that's why the pro life movement needs to be
Speaker 12: speaking out right now.
Speaker 3: Total understand where you're coming from, Lila Will.
Speaker 2: I want to give you, obviously a chance to respond
Speaker 2: on the politics of the issue. You can go all
Speaker 2: the way back both with the R and C platform
Speaker 2: and then towards IVF.
Speaker 10: Okay, so I guess back towards the politics of the issue.
Speaker 10: I mean, Crystal said something interesting which was the analogy
Speaker 10: to the left in Gaza, which I think is actually
Speaker 10: very very interesting and appropriate, and I hope you know, uh,
Speaker 10: you know, as a Republican who wants to see Donald
Speaker 10: Trump in office, I hope that these propouse dying people
Speaker 10: stick to their guns and refuse to vote for Kamala Harris,
Speaker 10: who is very obviously the better candidate for Gaza pro
Speaker 10: Gaza for you know, platform, because I guarantee you the
Speaker 10: Republicans are going to be pro Israel one hundred percent
Speaker 10: of the time every time. So you know that said,
Speaker 10: you know, I hope that Democrats don't take my advice
Speaker 10: and you know, go ahead and continue to abstain and
Speaker 10: withhold their vote from Kamala Harris on because of Gaza.
Speaker 10: And at the same time, I really really hope that
Speaker 10: that Whila comes around and realizes that Trump is still
Speaker 10: in the Republican Party is the home of the pro
Speaker 10: life movement in the same way that the Democratic Party
Speaker 10: is the home of the Palestinian sympathizers, and comes around
Speaker 10: to vote for us.
Speaker 1: Well let me, let me, let me say prising, let
Speaker 1: me ask for I'll get a challenged just a second, Lila,
Speaker 1: but Will hasn't had as much of a chance to speak.
Speaker 1: But let me just press you on one thing, Will,
Speaker 1: because I do think that from Lilah's perspective, and from
Speaker 1: your perspective as well as a pro life person, you'll
Speaker 1: Republicans have under Trump. Trump specifically has somewhat accepted the
Speaker 1: Democratic framing around abortion, and we do see post Row
Speaker 1: versus Wade, you see an increase in support for choice.
Speaker 1: So for the first time, I kind of ever, it's
Speaker 1: not really a fifty to fifty issue anymore. You have
Speaker 1: a very clear, consistent majorities in favor broadly of choice.
Speaker 1: So isn't there a risk of longer term harm to
Speaker 1: the pro life movement of a Republican who in certain
Speaker 1: key ways accepts some of the Democratic framing on the issue.
Speaker 10: So I want to correct you at the asset. I
Speaker 10: wouldn't characterize in my politics as pro life. They're more
Speaker 10: pro natalist. So I end up disagreeing with Lyla on
Speaker 10: things like IVF for example. But and I don't want
Speaker 10: to like falsely portray myself to your art.
Speaker 4: Yeah, important clarification.
Speaker 10: But I think on the on the question of would
Speaker 10: this too harm to the pro life movement to have
Speaker 10: Trump in, I think the much greater harm is is
Speaker 10: the risk of a Kamala Rigas presidency. Something I tweeted
Speaker 10: out which I think is true that I think the
Speaker 10: pro life movement, if they were being strategic, should realize
Speaker 10: that they don't want abortion to be an issue at
Speaker 10: the federal level for at least a decade, given where
Speaker 10: the polling is, because the likely outcome of abortion being
Speaker 10: salient at the federal level is a national confiocation of Row,
Speaker 10: or further right, going all the way to saying that
Speaker 10: the federal government says nobody, no state can impose any
Speaker 10: restrictions on abortion whatsoever, or packing the Supreme Court if
Speaker 10: they get that chance, and then effectively reversing Dobbs and
Speaker 10: reinstating Row and writing it into the Constitution with a
Speaker 10: permanent Democrat majority in the Court. So I think I
Speaker 10: think that you know, I think perhaps the mistake that's
Speaker 10: being made and worrying too much about, oh, well, Trump
Speaker 10: is going to move us a little bit to the
Speaker 10: left is if the Democrats win. I think they are
Speaker 10: not considering just how bad it could get. It's like, effectively,
Speaker 10: I feel like you guys are treating Dobbs as the
Speaker 10: new baseline and not recognizing how things could get substantially worse.
Speaker 2: Leila, I want to get your response to that, because
Speaker 2: I think that seems to be the key one. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: Trump can lose and then the Democrats will basically resolve
Speaker 2: the abortion question for all time by nuking the filibuster
Speaker 2: and making it national. Or you can have the current
Speaker 2: outcome where multiple red states have at least some restriction.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I guess I understand where you're
Speaker 2: coming from, but you also have to intersect with the
Speaker 2: practical realities of the American political system.
Speaker 3: So how do you think about that question?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, listen a few things.
Speaker 12: First of all, again, what the Trump influence has done
Speaker 12: so far in the GOP and what the Trump fans
Speaker 12: ticket has done in just the last few weeks is
Speaker 12: moving left on abortion. And the job of the pro
Speaker 12: life movement is not to just show up and vote
Speaker 12: for whoever the GOP candidate is. The job of the
Speaker 12: prolift movement is to advocate and be activist for a
Speaker 12: group of people who have no voice.
Speaker 5: And no vote. Those are children in the womb. They're
Speaker 5: in danger being murdered by abortions.
Speaker 3: So that's our.
Speaker 12: Job, right And I look at you know, Cecile Richards,
Speaker 12: who is the former president of Planned Parent at the
Speaker 12: biggest abortion chain globally, and she's in the New York
Speaker 12: Times just in the last week telling Kamala Harris to
Speaker 12: be more pro abortion.
Speaker 5: The left knows how to do this.
Speaker 12: I mean, I think the right makes ourselves increasingly impotent
Speaker 12: when we just let the politicians do whatever they want
Speaker 12: and we don't stand up for what is good and true,
Speaker 12: at what we believe to be good and true. You know,
Speaker 12: Cecil Richards is out there say Kamala Harris be more
Speaker 12: pro abortion. It's not even good enough. And she's for
Speaker 12: abortion through all nine months that's tax funded. It's obscene, right,
Speaker 12: And so for the prolog movement to be silent right
Speaker 12: now and does not say a word of criticism, to
Speaker 12: say instead, oh, it's fine, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 12: We don't care as long as you're a little bit better.
Speaker 12: As long as you're better than Kamala on this, we're
Speaker 12: going to show up no matter what. I think that
Speaker 12: it would be a serious mistake. I think it is
Speaker 12: a responsibility of pro life voters. You know, my top
Speaker 12: iss she was life. I know that's not Will's, that's okay,
Speaker 12: he's going a different track. But my top issue is life.
Speaker 12: Because there's three thousand babies being killed by abortion every
Speaker 12: single day in this country. If you care about the
Speaker 12: future of this country, if we care about justice for
Speaker 12: the most vulnerable and the most innocent, then we would
Speaker 12: be all caring about this issue. We would all make
Speaker 12: this our top issue. This is the leading cause of
Speaker 12: death in America. And so my responsibility is to say
Speaker 12: stop doing this, GOP, stop pushing towards the left on
Speaker 12: this and becoming more pro abortion. And I will continue
Speaker 12: to say that the Democrats, you know there are some
Speaker 12: pro like Democrats, stop being so radically pro abortion as
Speaker 12: a party. Instead, why don't you embrace justice and human
Speaker 12: rights for the most vulnerable and create a better view
Speaker 12: for women that we don't need to kill our babies
Speaker 12: as our so called healthcare. We can do better. You know,
Speaker 12: there's countries like Malta that have one of the lowest
Speaker 12: maternal mortality rates in the world, and it's a pro
Speaker 12: life country. We can do this where we love and
Speaker 12: care for both mom and baby. That should be our demand,
Speaker 12: not just for the GOP, but for the Democrats as
Speaker 12: well well.
Speaker 2: Then I got a question for Will So the effect
Speaker 2: of this pushback from LYLA and the pro life activism
Speaker 2: appears to have been something like Trump on the debate
Speaker 2: stage then disavowing jd vance On saying he would veto
Speaker 2: a national abortion band.
Speaker 3: So do you think then that.
Speaker 2: Like pro life voices like Lila, which are entirely legitimate,
Speaker 2: I'm not putting that down, would help put could put
Speaker 2: Trump in a more vulnerable political position.
Speaker 10: I mean it's possible. I ultimately don't think Trent will
Speaker 10: end up taking to, you know, tacking too far towards
Speaker 10: the right, given where you know, we're what two months
Speaker 10: away from a general election six weeks. Yes, I think
Speaker 10: that that's the context. And I mean, I just I
Speaker 10: think I just fundamentally disagree with Lilah's political strategy here.
Speaker 10: I think that was absolutely appropriate. During the primary, I
Speaker 10: worked for a different candidate. During the primary. I supported
Speaker 10: rondas Stantis. I wanted him to win. And you know,
Speaker 10: even though I'm not personally as pro life as Governor
Speaker 10: de santis As, I was perfectly happy to support him
Speaker 10: because I thought he would be a great president. But
Speaker 10: he didn't win. And you know, the general election is
Speaker 10: where you know, the two great you know, political forces
Speaker 10: in our country collide and we see who who's persuading
Speaker 10: more of the public. And I think that it's really
Speaker 10: important that the pro life movement recognizes, you know, and
Speaker 10: this is for its you know, really for itself, for
Speaker 10: the health of the pro life movement and its political
Speaker 10: salients going forward, that it's on the right and the
Speaker 10: Republican Party is the vehicle for its concerns and imperfect
Speaker 10: as it may be in their eyes, and so it
Speaker 10: you know, pro life voters should come out and vote
Speaker 10: for Trump, even if he's in saying things they don't
Speaker 10: agree with.
Speaker 1: Well, one last question for you, because you know, Lila
Speaker 1: pointed out took a lot of the pro life language
Speaker 1: out of the R and C platform. Jade Vance floats
Speaker 1: he'd be to a national abortion band. Trump won't really say,
Speaker 1: but there's certainly been efforts for him to moderate on
Speaker 1: the issue and even just leaving it to the states.
Speaker 1: You know, if you view this as murder, it's murder,
Speaker 1: whether it's having in California's murder of what's happening in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: That's not the way I view the is shoe, but
Speaker 1: it's way Lyla and many.
Speaker 4: Other people do. So if in spite of being thrown
Speaker 4: under the bus like that.
Speaker 1: Every pro life voter shows up and votes for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: aren't they?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: You know, can't every Republican president there on forward basically
Speaker 1: take their vote for granted. And don't they lose power
Speaker 1: within the coalition if they're not willing to even threaten
Speaker 1: to withhold their votes.
Speaker 10: I mean, no, I think I think it's the opposite. Actually,
Speaker 10: I think the way you demonstrate your power within the
Speaker 10: coalition is by is in the primary and through your
Speaker 10: strength in the primary. And you know, Donal Trump's use
Speaker 10: were not a secret during the primary. He was critical
Speaker 10: of harpy bills like one that Ronda stands before during
Speaker 10: the primary, and it didn't matter pulling. You know, he
Speaker 10: won the primary going away. So I think that that's
Speaker 10: the place to start. And if you know, I think
Speaker 10: for any political movement, you know, internal fashion within a
Speaker 10: party to say, oh, we're going to withhold our vote
Speaker 10: in the general if you don't do exactly what we want,
Speaker 10: even though what we want is opposed by sixty five
Speaker 10: seventy percent of the public. I mean, for you know
Speaker 10: that suddenly the end result of that is that movement
Speaker 10: gets more and more marginalized because ultimately, even a lot
Speaker 10: of followers of that movement do want to win and
Speaker 10: do want to see that their their faction take power,
Speaker 10: because we see what happens when the other guys take power.
Speaker 10: I mean, people need to remember what it was like
Speaker 10: to have you know. I mean, well, we have Biden
Speaker 10: right now, but even you know, Obama was absolutely terrible
Speaker 10: on life and religious conscience when he was in power.
Speaker 10: You know, think of me, think about cases like the
Speaker 10: Little Sisters of the War. Why is the Little Sisters
Speaker 10: of the poor a plaintiff against Barack Obama? Guess what
Speaker 10: the broke Obama administration was forcing down their throats.
Speaker 3: So yeah, last word to you, Lilah, and then we
Speaker 3: got to go.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you so much. Yeah. Briefly, listen what
Speaker 5: Will is saying.
Speaker 12: I understand what he's saying, but the reality is, what
Speaker 12: has happened in the last few weeks is new President
Speaker 12: Trump coming out saying that he's going to do force
Speaker 12: tax funded tax fair funded.
Speaker 5: IVF for all people. This is new.
Speaker 12: These are not policies that he was doing in the primary. Okay,
Speaker 12: you know he supports access to abortion pills, this is new.
Speaker 12: Gutting the Republican Party platform, this is new. They didn't
Speaker 12: do that in twenty twenty or in twenty sixteen, obviously,
Speaker 12: So these are new things that are happening. And again
Speaker 12: I believe it's the responsibility of pro life voters to
Speaker 12: speak out right now. I do think that Trump will
Speaker 12: respond and does respond to pressure. I think that's our
Speaker 12: responsibility to speak out on behalf of the people that
Speaker 12: don't have a voice, and so that's what we will
Speaker 12: continue to do because there are lives.
Speaker 9: On the line.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we really appreciate both of you joining us.
Speaker 2: It's a very interesting conversation, one that you don't generally
Speaker 2: see on television, So thank you both.
Speaker 3: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: For a look at whatever the hell is going on
Speaker 1: in New York City, which I've struggled to comprehend. We
Speaker 1: are joined by a great friend of the show, journalist
Speaker 1: Ross Barkin, who is a contributing writer for New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine.
Speaker 4: Great Cazar.
Speaker 9: Good to have me, and it's great to be back.
Speaker 4: Great to have me.
Speaker 1: I like that more people need to say that, let's
Speaker 1: go and put this first hair sheet up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is the latest New York Times accounting of some
Speaker 1: of the developments with Eric Adams and his circle. The
Speaker 1: headline here is pressure grows on Mayor Adams as key
Speaker 1: officials leave a mid investigations. We just had two prominent
Speaker 1: officials resign. We had the police commissioner resigned on Thursday
Speaker 1: at the request of at city Hall. Lisa Zornberg, the
Speaker 1: mayor's chief legal advisor, resigned abroughly on Saturday, largely, they say,
Speaker 1: in frustration over the Mayor's refusal to follow her advice
Speaker 1: on personnel matters. As I was looking into this, there
Speaker 1: seemed to be more than a dozen Eric Adams associates
Speaker 1: who are under some sort of investigation. He himself appears
Speaker 1: to be under investigation for relationships with the country of Turkey.
Speaker 1: Can you just help us understand what's going on here
Speaker 1: and if these are all just like individuals doing their
Speaker 1: own thing, or if it really all goes back to
Speaker 1: Mayor Adams himself.
Speaker 9: A question what's going on? So there.
Speaker 13: Four federal investigations into Eric Adams and his administration. It
Speaker 13: is not clear at this point if Adams himself is
Speaker 13: a target. His phone in one of the investigations was seized.
Speaker 13: So right now you had the police commissioner who recently
Speaker 13: resigned because he is under investigation because his twin brother,
Speaker 13: stay with me, was running a security a consulting firm
Speaker 13: of some sort that was helping helping in quotation marks
Speaker 13: restaurants and businesses deal with various nightlife complaints. And this
Speaker 13: business of this twin brother would allegedly go over to
Speaker 13: these restaurants and tell them, hey, you know, we can
Speaker 13: make these complaints go away if you pay us a fee.
Speaker 13: So you have a sort of possible favor trading there.
Speaker 13: You've a completely separate investigation into Eric Adams as possible
Speaker 13: his mayoral campaigns, possible ties to the Turkish government, possibly
Speaker 13: taking foreign money, which is legal. You have another investigation
Speaker 13: into a consulting firm being run by a close Adams ally,
Speaker 13: Tim Pearson, who's very close with the NYPD. You have
Speaker 13: his deputy mayor for Public Safety and other Adam's ally
Speaker 13: Philip Banks, he had his phone seized. And then there's
Speaker 13: yet another investigation. So the question is where does this
Speaker 13: all go? What does this all mean? It's all very confusing.
Speaker 13: There are a lot of moving parts we do not
Speaker 13: know obviously the outcome. If Adams himself will be indicted,
Speaker 13: I will say no. Sitting mayor of New York City
Speaker 13: has ever been indicted. But there's always time, there's always
Speaker 13: the first time for something right. But already Adams has
Speaker 13: had people in his administration indicted in another separate case,
Speaker 13: has built his building's commissioner resigned over an indictment related
Speaker 13: to a completely separate corruption probe. So you have many
Speaker 13: different corruption probes, you have a lot of possibilities for
Speaker 13: further resignations, and you have a city that quite frankly,
Speaker 13: a city government that is somewhat paralyzed right now, that
Speaker 13: is not governing. It wasn't governing very well before all
Speaker 13: this started, but certainly now even less has happened.
Speaker 2: Sticking with that, I want to talk to my personal favorite,
Speaker 2: which is this idea of business owners being forced to
Speaker 2: pay protection racket money. Can you tell us some of
Speaker 2: the details on this is one of those which is
Speaker 2: often alleged in movies. I did realize it was somewhat real,
Speaker 2: this idea of like having a pension benefit card any
Speaker 2: of that. But this seems to go up to the
Speaker 2: highest levels of the New York administration.
Speaker 3: Can you talk to us about that?
Speaker 9: Sure?
Speaker 13: So, again, this is all you know in various reports
Speaker 13: that have not been in have been verifying the sense
Speaker 13: of there in mainstream outlets, but you know, the indictment
Speaker 13: has not been brought. So basically, as far as we understand,
Speaker 13: the former police commissioner just resign named Edward Caban.
Speaker 9: He has a twin brother, James. James is running.
Speaker 13: James a former NYPD officer who was forced out a
Speaker 13: long time ago and had issues. He was running this
Speaker 13: private firm that, as far as I understand, would go
Speaker 13: to restaurants or.
Speaker 9: Nightclubs, or nightclubs would come to them. Either way.
Speaker 13: The nightclub would have you know, maybe they're having an issue,
Speaker 13: the noise complaint or something with the city. They've been
Speaker 13: slapped with, you know, some type of fine or something else. Right,
Speaker 13: these things happen, and so this firm would help you
Speaker 13: deal with these issues and would take a fee.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 13: Of course, the firm is being run by the twin
Speaker 13: brother of the police commissioner, so you can imagine some
Speaker 13: of the conflict of interest issues that might surface.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and how they're securing that help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, help.
Speaker 13: Whether this is enough to warrant a crime in the
Speaker 13: sense that an indictment will come, we don't know, but
Speaker 13: this is one of the investigations, and it has been
Speaker 13: enough to force the police commissioner to resign. New York
Speaker 13: is now on its third police commissioner in a three
Speaker 13: year peroo, which is quite insane. We had three police
Speaker 13: commissioners in eight years under build A. Blasio and then
Speaker 13: one under Michael Bloomberg, So three and three years is
Speaker 13: so this.
Speaker 1: Is this is perhaps an impossible question to answer, but
Speaker 1: you can feel free to baselessly speculate.
Speaker 4: You know, are these sort.
Speaker 1: Of things that are just like always going on in
Speaker 1: New York City government but normally don't see the light
Speaker 1: of day and some you know, federal prosecutor investigator or
Speaker 1: whatever got to be in their bonnet and decide they're
Speaker 1: actually going to crack down on it. Or do you
Speaker 1: think that there is an atypical level of pay to
Speaker 1: play corruption scheming occurring under the Atoms administration.
Speaker 9: I think it's atypical.
Speaker 13: So I will say there have been investigations into prior mayors.
Speaker 13: There are inevitably scandals of some sort.
Speaker 9: Build A.
Speaker 13: Blasio was investigated, no charges were ever filed. There were
Speaker 13: Michael Bloomberg himself was not investigated. But there was this
Speaker 13: city time scandal many years ago that damaged his administration.
Speaker 9: But this is unusual.
Speaker 13: You do not see this many investigations, and I think
Speaker 13: what strikes me is the brazenness. It's very much old
Speaker 13: school machine politics. But I would add it's old school
Speaker 13: machine politics without the delivery of public goods attached to it.
Speaker 13: So you looked at like the old Tamley Hall model.
Speaker 13: It was corrupt. It was what they would used to
Speaker 13: call honest graft. You'd take money and get rich, but
Speaker 13: in turn you'd be kind of delivering something for your constituents.
Speaker 13: I've argued for a while now, putting aside all the corruption,
Speaker 13: Adams has not been a very effective mayor because he hasn't.
Speaker 9: Accomplished very much.
Speaker 13: And I think most voters look at him and just
Speaker 13: see a mayor flailing about who's not serious and who
Speaker 13: now is appears to be corrupt, and they don't see
Speaker 13: their city getting better, and they don't see what they're
Speaker 13: what they're getting in return. I think that's a big
Speaker 13: issue for him. So it's atypical to see this many investigations.
Speaker 13: And then further, I'd say it's atypical and certainly modern
Speaker 13: times for a mayor to be three years plus into
Speaker 13: their first term and not really have any signature achievement
Speaker 13: that people can remotely talk about or remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we got to get back to those good
Speaker 1: old tammany holidays, agree, honest graph Ross. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I also wanted to get you to weigh on an
Speaker 1: extraordinary and deeply disturbing situation that's unfolding. Their protests now
Speaker 1: over the NYPD's handling bloody handling of a fair evader
Speaker 1: on the subways. So we've put up e two guys
Speaker 1: just to see a little bit of the protests over
Speaker 1: this NYPD shooting various people over this fair evasion. We
Speaker 1: could go ahead and put also this tear sheet up
Speaker 1: on the screen to talk about some of the details here.
Speaker 1: Four people were shot after police opened fire on what
Speaker 1: they're describing as a knife wielding subway fair evader.
Speaker 4: Some questions now emerging about that knife.
Speaker 1: I'll let you lay that out for us, Ross, But effectively,
Speaker 1: what they say is that four people are shot, including
Speaker 1: a New York Police officer, by quote unquote friendly fire
Speaker 1: when two officers open fire will suing a subway rider
Speaker 1: who didn't pay his fare. The man jumped back onto
Speaker 1: the subway platform started approaching one of the officers with
Speaker 1: this alleged knife. Both officers fired their guns as they
Speaker 1: handcuffed the man. One of the officers realized he himself
Speaker 1: had been shot was bleeding from his chest. The bullet
Speaker 1: struck under the officer's left armpit, missing his vest and
Speaker 1: lodging in his back. Two random innocent bystanders, a man
Speaker 1: and a woman, also shot by police. The woman was
Speaker 1: grazed by a bullet and the man was struck in
Speaker 1: the head. The sub suspect, whose name has not yet
Speaker 1: been publicly released, has apparently, you know, a long track record,
Speaker 1: arrested more than twenty times, history of mental illness, etc.
Speaker 1: But all of this starts with someone you know effectively
Speaker 1: jumping the turnstile over a two dollars and ninety cents
Speaker 1: subway fare.
Speaker 9: Yes, and it's really a terrible episode.
Speaker 13: And I think it speaks to the fact that in
Speaker 13: too many cases police are called in to handle issues
Speaker 13: or handling issues in such ways where they're not necessary
Speaker 13: or certainly one should not be drawing their gun to
Speaker 13: stop a fair evader. I think that that is the
Speaker 13: real problem. Supposedly he wielded a knife or brandished it,
Speaker 13: but then you're shooting enough to hit him, to hit others,
Speaker 13: hit a police officer. So it's this rank and confidence
Speaker 13: combined with features of the system which you know police
Speaker 13: are trained in a certain way, and there's also a
Speaker 13: big push now to crack down fair evasion. It's actually
Speaker 13: a much bigger issue on the buses than the subways,
Speaker 13: and it's something that on one hand, no one should
Speaker 13: evade the fair like I think it should be paid.
Speaker 9: But this is also one of those problems where.
Speaker 13: If the MTA had better gates like they have in
Speaker 13: other countries, one couldn't really evade the fair of the subway.
Speaker 9: And you also would have running around the gun.
Speaker 13: So you kind of start there with there should just
Speaker 13: be better security, physical security infrastructure at the subway stations,
Speaker 13: which you see in other foreign metro systems. And of
Speaker 13: course the MTA in most American authorities and bureaucracies are
Speaker 13: very bad at spending money and run way over budget,
Speaker 13: so things that you could do in Asia in Europe
Speaker 13: for fractioning the costs become these insane endeavors where it
Speaker 13: should be very easy to secure subway stations and build
Speaker 13: just nice new gates so one doesn't hop the sort
Speaker 13: turnstile and then therefore one is not being chased by
Speaker 13: a cop of the gun. So it's kind of like
Speaker 13: all these various problems converging kind of at one time.
Speaker 13: But you know, also New York is a real problem
Speaker 13: which which we've talked about actually on the show before,
Speaker 13: dealing with mentally ill people. There's a lot of mentally
Speaker 13: ill people on the streets who should not be.
Speaker 9: On the streets.
Speaker 13: I think one thing I'll say about Eric Adams, and
Speaker 13: he's been correct about, is that authorities need to be
Speaker 13: more aggressive at getting mentally ill people help and getting
Speaker 13: them to secure facilities, not prisons, but places where they
Speaker 13: can really be medicated and kind of have their lives
Speaker 13: restored to a degree. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 13: setting a cop out with the gun is not the
Speaker 13: way to do it. You also need the infrastructure, you
Speaker 13: need the facilities, need the mental health services, the psychiatric
Speaker 13: hospitals which we close down over the many decades to
Speaker 13: house these sort of people. So you see kind of
Speaker 13: an episode of real incompetence in the NYPD, which isn't new.
Speaker 9: And then I think you.
Speaker 13: Take all these bigger macro issues and this is an
Speaker 13: instant that you wouldn't really see in other countries. And
Speaker 13: I think if you speak to all these issues, you
Speaker 13: can kind of see.
Speaker 1: Why confluence of a lot of things lasting ross to
Speaker 1: that point about incompetence.
Speaker 4: You can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So the police said on Monday, we're searching for a
Speaker 1: man who allegedly removed that knife from the scene of
Speaker 1: that police shooting at the Brooklyn subway station. That contradicted
Speaker 1: an earlier claim that they had recovered the weapon from
Speaker 1: the scene. They said later that it was a different knife.
Speaker 1: So what exactly is going on here is best we
Speaker 1: can tell.
Speaker 13: I mean, I would say just to sure reports incompetence
Speaker 13: and also could be lying involved. I mean, police do lie,
Speaker 13: but I'd say never, never underestimate rank incompetence.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 13: I'm a bit of an Ockham's razor person. Yeah, I
Speaker 13: tend to think, okay, you know, I think the average
Speaker 13: not the average person. But I think i'd say a
Speaker 13: lot of people in politics think, oh, this is odd conspiracy, right,
Speaker 13: And then I think most of the time, like the
Speaker 13: Trump assassination attempt, the more you read about it, the
Speaker 13: more you realize it it was just a real screw up.
Speaker 13: I mean a real security failure and lack of coordination.
Speaker 13: So here at the police, I mean it's Look, the
Speaker 13: NYPD is not I would I would say, in one hand,
Speaker 13: it's a better trained police force and a lot of
Speaker 13: others across America. I'd rather deal with the NYPD than
Speaker 13: some like small town, small time police that are paid
Speaker 13: less money and go through less training and don't have
Speaker 13: sort of the awareness of these kinds of situations. At
Speaker 13: the same time, Look, you've got a lot of you know,
Speaker 13: cops who are in there. I don't know much about
Speaker 13: these police officers. A lot of they're just in their
Speaker 13: twenties and they didn't go they didn't really get much education,
Speaker 13: and they do some training and then they're on the
Speaker 13: force of like twenty two to twenty three and you
Speaker 13: get problems like this. And so I do think we
Speaker 13: need honestly better policing. I don't think we need the
Speaker 13: absence of policing, but we do need better police on
Speaker 13: the force. And that's like, that's a bigger conversation, right,
Speaker 13: But I do think, like I think of policing like
Speaker 13: the German model. Germany has like a highly trained police force.
Speaker 13: When I understand and they go through like years of
Speaker 13: sort of education and really are prepared to be out
Speaker 13: in the world. I do think with the NYPD and
Speaker 13: most American police, you're just you're getting You're giving very young,
Speaker 13: inexperienced people guns. You're telling them go out and go
Speaker 13: to these neighborhoods that are you know, not like the
Speaker 13: neighborhoods they know. And I don't know much about this
Speaker 13: police officer. That's typically what you see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's part of a confluence of some of the
Speaker 1: you know, the worst ills of American untreated mental illness,
Speaker 1: you know, viol relatively compared to other similarly developed countries,
Speaker 1: violence society, cops that are insufficiently trained to or you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps feel fearful in the situation anyway. So and it
Speaker 1: ends in absolute horror. Ross thank you so much for
Speaker 1: breaking all these issues down, because I've been trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the hell's going on.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thanks man, We appreciate you well.
Speaker 9: It's happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: That's our pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for watching, guys. We appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Become a prem subscriber if you want the show early,
Speaker 2: otherwise we'll see you guys later