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Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. A couple quick programming notes.
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Speaker 5: Nevertheless, we persisted, we did, as Elizabeth Wardo, Yeah.
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Speaker 5: So true. Well, we have a big show today is
Speaker 5: you can see we get a lot of blocks on
Speaker 5: the screen there. We're going to start talking about Israel,
Speaker 5: move on to some developments in the TikTok saga, because
Speaker 5: there's it looks like Steve Manuchen wants TikTok pretty badly.
Speaker 3: Steve Manuchih Saudi money. Yeah, Steven go wrong.
Speaker 5: Yes exactly. So if we're getting we're divesting TikTok from China,
Speaker 5: does it end up in the hands of Saudi's We
Speaker 5: shall see. We're going to talk about Bernie Sanders and
Speaker 5: Sean Fain actually calling for a thirty two hour work week.
Speaker 5: That's going to be really interesting and from a conservative perspective,
Speaker 5: you should.
Speaker 3: Cut the show early in honor, we should cut it.
Speaker 5: Really from a conservative perspective, I think there's some interesting
Speaker 5: arguments to be had there. Trump arrests. That's on your
Speaker 5: screen because actually both Peter Navarro and someone who was
Speaker 5: arrested in the defamation lawsuit against Dominion, she was arrested yesterday.
Speaker 5: We'll be talking about that. We'll be talking about big
Speaker 5: updates out of Texas, actually breaking news as the Fifth
Speaker 5: Circuit Court of Appeals put the Supreme Court, the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court decision to allow SB four maybe you've heard about this,
Speaker 5: which allows Texas basically to arrest people who are in
Speaker 5: the country illegally, who are crossed into the country illegally.
Speaker 5: That put it on like blast, basically said you can
Speaker 5: do this. Then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal is
Speaker 5: right afterwards said no, there are oral arguments of this
Speaker 5: case today.
Speaker 4: The crazy circuit you can't do this.
Speaker 5: And then the deep state. That's of course on the
Speaker 5: screen as well, because the New York Times had a
Speaker 5: story that must be seen to be believed. Ryan has
Speaker 5: some great reporting out of ron Duras that we're excited
Speaker 5: to get to as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's going to be a fun one. So but
Speaker 3: let's start with Israel. So on Monday afternoon, Benjamin Yahoo
Speaker 3: and Joe Biden had their first phone call since February fifteenth.
Speaker 4: We can put this element.
Speaker 3: Up here, and over the last two days we've been
Speaker 3: hearing kind of the fallout from this call. And so
Speaker 3: what both Biden and Netanyaho have been leaking out to
Speaker 3: the public and sometimes saying just straight up publicly, is
Speaker 3: that Biden told net Nyaho do not launch an invasion
Speaker 3: of Rafa, which has now well more than a million
Speaker 3: people who are taking refuge there. They were pushed out
Speaker 3: of Gaza City and told told to go down to Conunis.
Speaker 3: They were then pushed out of Conyunis and told to
Speaker 3: go down to Rafa, which these safe corridors were created where.
Speaker 4: People were sniped and killed along the way.
Speaker 3: They continue to bomb a Rafa, they continue to kind
Speaker 3: of launch little incursions here and there, but Israel still
Speaker 3: is holding out the specter of a full scale invasion
Speaker 3: into Rafa and Emily. The case that Israel is making
Speaker 3: is that there are still two about two Hamas battalions
Speaker 3: that are hold up in Rafa, as well as roughly
Speaker 3: one hundred remaining hostages who.
Speaker 4: Have you have to be released.
Speaker 3: And Yahoo's argument that he made to the Kanesse yesterday
Speaker 3: is that you cannot defeat Hamas without dismantling these final
Speaker 3: two battalions, the Biden administration has said, and Jake Sullivan
Speaker 3: gave a press conference on Monday making this point. He says,
Speaker 3: you can defeat Hamas without going into Rafa, and that
Speaker 3: the idea that even if you dismantle these remaining two battalions,
Speaker 3: that that means you have ended Hamas is also a fantasy,
Speaker 3: like they Hamas has already reconstituted in northern Gaza, because
Speaker 3: there is no political solution that has been put forward
Speaker 3: by the parties here and so just eliminating a couple
Speaker 3: battalions does not eliminate Hamas. So I think that what's
Speaker 3: clearly going on here is something different, which is like
Speaker 3: why would they why would they be going after Rafa,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, the city closest to the Egyptian border.
Speaker 3: If going after hamaspittalions in the past has not actually
Speaker 3: ended the control of the region by Hamasa, but what
Speaker 3: has it done in northern Gaza, in central Gaza made
Speaker 3: it completely uninhabitable. So this, this to me feels like
Speaker 3: another move by Israel toward making Gaza completely uninhabitable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's actually an interesting read that we'll get to
Speaker 5: in a second. We have a clip of Jared Kushner
Speaker 5: actually kind of getting into that point. But one thing
Speaker 5: asked in the NBC News article that was just on
Speaker 5: the screen. It's interesting Netanyahu told lawmakers quote he had
Speaker 5: an argument or we had an argument, is how he
Speaker 5: phrased it with the Americans, and that again, Ran, We've
Speaker 5: seen some leaks and I'm curious for your perspective on
Speaker 5: how you read this, because I know a lot of
Speaker 5: people on the left have read this as the Biden
Speaker 5: administration is leaking to places like NBC News to show
Speaker 5: that they are putting room between them and net and Yahoo,
Speaker 5: that there's you know, all of the space between them
Speaker 5: and Net Yahoo. In this case, it actually seems to
Speaker 5: be legitimate that there actually is some huge daylight between
Speaker 5: the Biden administration's position, which is obviously much more reasonable.
Speaker 5: You know, the difference between defeating Hamas and not defeating
Speaker 5: Hamas is certainly not two battalions in Rafa, right, and
Speaker 5: substantively where Net Yahoo is. That actually seems like in
Speaker 5: this case it is absolutely real and not just the
Speaker 5: sort of window dressing that they're leaking to the press
Speaker 5: for the case of perception and.
Speaker 3: Rhetorically it's different. But if the United States is still
Speaker 3: arming sure Israel and is refusing to put into place
Speaker 3: any restrictions on weapons, then is it just cover for
Speaker 3: the United States? And actually Lloyd Austin was asked about
Speaker 3: this specific thing this week at a press conference, saying,
Speaker 3: you have encouraged Israel many times to let in more
Speaker 3: humanitarian aid and to reduce civilian casualties. They haven't done,
Speaker 3: so why not leverage weapons sales, weapons transfers, And Lloyd
Speaker 3: also just simply said, no, We're not going to do that. Like,
Speaker 3: Israel has a right to defend itself and Hamask can
Speaker 3: lay down its arms at any moment. So the second
Speaker 3: that there's any pressure applied to the US position, it
Speaker 3: completely caves, and so you wind up with mere rhetoric.
Speaker 3: So Net and Yahoo, I think can feel confident coming
Speaker 3: out of that call with the Biden administrator, with Biden
Speaker 3: himself saying, you know what, we can move forward on this.
Speaker 3: Vidant Patel, State Department spokesperson on Monday said Israel cannot
Speaker 3: go into RAFA and the AP reporter there, Matt Lee said,
Speaker 3: you just said cannot, what do you mean kennot. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it would be very difficult for them, just logistically,
Speaker 3: and Matt at least, well, aren't they a sovereign country?
Speaker 3: And he kind of sort of backed off the use
Speaker 3: of the word can, because of course, because of course
Speaker 3: they can. But it is an interesting point that Vida
Speaker 3: was sort of hinting at, which is can they like
Speaker 3: do they have the capacity? What is not talked about
Speaker 3: much in the US here is that Israel's not doing
Speaker 3: well in the ground war like they have effectively been
Speaker 3: able to turn most of gods into rubble, but when
Speaker 3: they have engaged with Hamas in street battles, they have
Speaker 3: often lost. We see almost daily videos of Israeli tanks
Speaker 3: getting blown up, of Israeli soldiers going down, getting getting evacuated,
Speaker 3: and so the question is, you know that's happening in
Speaker 3: these rubble strewn areas, how do they how do they
Speaker 3: physically do that in a densely populated area. City that
Speaker 3: was like three hundred thousand people on October six is
Speaker 3: now like almost one and a half million. How do
Speaker 3: you even accomplish a street battle?
Speaker 5: There? To that point, one hundred and thirty hostages. Some
Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty hostages remain, and that's been the
Speaker 5: first priority for months. And to have that many hostages
Speaker 5: remaining is obviously a sign of a successful military operation.
Speaker 5: Is a sign of Hamasa's continued barbarity, but of a
Speaker 5: successful military operation, it is not a sign. So they have. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and to your point, Hamas has already reconstituted in northern Gaza.
Speaker 5: Let's put a two up on the screen because this
Speaker 5: investigation from Al Jazeera and the Washington Post. This is
Speaker 5: from the Washington Post. They did an investigation about what
Speaker 5: happened to two members of an Al Jazeera crew, and
Speaker 5: Al Jazeera has presented some more evidence about this as
Speaker 5: well drone footage. This is the headline racist questions about
Speaker 5: Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists. This was
Speaker 5: in Han Yunis. Two members of Al Jazeera's crew, twenty
Speaker 5: seven year old, thirty year old were killed on January seventh,
Speaker 5: along with their driver. Then two freelance journalists were seriously wounded.
Speaker 5: They were returning from the scene of an earlier Israeli
Speaker 5: strike on a building where they had used a drone
Speaker 5: to capture the aftermath. The Washington Post actually on their
Speaker 5: website has footage of them operating the drone. The drone
Speaker 5: footage that they were taking. It's a drone that was
Speaker 5: being used. It's like available at best Buy. It's basically
Speaker 5: a commercially available normal drone that civilians would use. IDF
Speaker 5: said in a statement the next day that it had
Speaker 5: quote identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft
Speaker 5: that posed a threat to IDF troops. Two days later,
Speaker 5: the IDF said that it had been in response to
Speaker 5: quote an immediate threat in the area because both men
Speaker 5: belong to militant groups. This was the claim from the IDF.
Speaker 5: It doesn't appear that was the case. There's some evidence
Speaker 5: that Israel is pointing to. I think it's like a
Speaker 5: name in a log that Israel's pointing to that one
Speaker 5: of them was affiliated with a moss in some way.
Speaker 5: But it's pretty unconvincing evidence. I'm curious what you.
Speaker 3: Thought of this. It's this weird. I think gas lighting
Speaker 3: is overused in our current contemporary lexicon, but it really
Speaker 3: does apply to the coverage of this war. So the
Speaker 3: Washing Post writes here, and good for the Washing Post
Speaker 3: for conducting this investigation.
Speaker 4: This is not shade on them, but they.
Speaker 3: Write, no Israeli soldiers, aircraft, or other military equipment are
Speaker 3: visible in the footage taken that day, which the Post
Speaker 3: is publishing in its entirety, raising critical questions about why
Speaker 3: the journalists were targeted. Fellow reporters said they were unaware
Speaker 3: of troop movements in the area. So what they're saying
Speaker 3: is there was no reason that they can identify, either
Speaker 3: from witnesses or from drone footage, but there was a
Speaker 3: security concern going on here, yet these journalists were struck anyway,
Speaker 3: it says. It raises questions about why the journalists were targeted.
Speaker 3: In the days after they were targeted, Israel said publicly
Speaker 3: they targeted them on purpose because of these claimed links,
Speaker 3: and so that's where the gas lighting comes in. It's
Speaker 3: like Rais's questions about why they were targeting. Israel's like, no,
Speaker 3: we hit the journalists on purpose. This is Al Jazeera
Speaker 3: Gaza bureau chief's son who was killed in this in strike,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, look, he's a terrorist, like they're all there,
Speaker 3: They're all there. There's two freelance journalists that were killed
Speaker 3: here too. They're all terrorists and we hit them on purpose.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 3: To then use investigative resources to go back and say,
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be any reason why they were struck,
Speaker 3: when you know, implying that perhaps maybe they were struck
Speaker 3: on purpose, when Israel has already said they were struck
Speaker 3: on purpose. Is it is kind of crazy making, I
Speaker 3: think for for an audience who's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: they already admitted why they did this, and then they
Speaker 3: continued and they continued to do it day after day
Speaker 3: after day after day.
Speaker 5: Right the first statement said that the aircraft posed a
Speaker 5: threat to Israeli trups and again you can watch the video.
Speaker 5: It's clearly a drone that you would pick up at
Speaker 5: best by being operated by.
Speaker 3: And it would be fair to debunk that claim from
Speaker 3: the IDF. But the IDF's claims always evolve, you know,
Speaker 3: within you know, there's there's the claim in the immediate
Speaker 3: aftermath of the attack, then there's the then there's a
Speaker 3: claim six hours later, then there's the claim the next day,
Speaker 3: and so they eventually moved away from this. The drone
Speaker 3: was a threat to we hit him in a car
Speaker 3: because of their terrorists, and it took them like a
Speaker 3: week to come up with this claim that they were
Speaker 3: that they were terrorists, although they're kind of their allies
Speaker 3: online were circulating it kind of immediately.
Speaker 5: Interviews with fourteen witnesses, the Post says to the attack
Speaker 5: and colleagues of the Slang reporters offer the most detail
Speaker 5: account yet of the deadly incident. The Post found no
Speaker 5: indications that either man was operating as anything other than
Speaker 5: a journalist that day. Both passed through is raally checkpoints
Speaker 5: on their way to the south. Early in the war.
Speaker 5: One of them had been approved to leave Gaza, which
Speaker 5: is rare. You wouldn't give that to someone, as the
Speaker 5: Post points out, who is a quote known militant. The
Speaker 5: Post asked the idea of a lot of questions about it,
Speaker 5: and they just replied, quote, we have nothing further to add, right.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, setting aside this particular case in general,
Speaker 3: Hamas's has been the government of the Hamas has been
Speaker 3: the government since two thousand and six in Gaza. Like
Speaker 3: a lot of people are going to have affiliations with
Speaker 3: the government. Yes, the barak Ravid, who's done really really
Speaker 3: impressive reporting, like tons of scoops for axios. We'll talk
Speaker 3: about one of his scoops later was in the reserves
Speaker 3: in Israel. If Hamas assassinated him, that would not be
Speaker 3: justified by the fact that he had previously served in
Speaker 3: the reserves. Like that, it's an insane way to think
Speaker 3: about people, and it's only I think, made possible by dehumanization,
Speaker 3: like if you don't, if you don't think about people
Speaker 3: as the complicated kind of citizens and kind of active
Speaker 3: members of a community that they are. Israel recently killed
Speaker 3: They called it a top Hamas commander. But he was
Speaker 3: the guy whose job it was to work with the
Speaker 3: UN and the AID agencies to make sure that there
Speaker 3: was security around the AID trucks getting into northern Gaza.
Speaker 3: Israel had previously said that they would not attack the
Speaker 3: policemen or trying to keep security in these areas. Those
Speaker 3: policemen are all quote unquote Hamas, because if Hamas is
Speaker 3: the government, then anybody working for them is Hamas. And
Speaker 3: so they killed this guy, found him in a hospital
Speaker 3: and killed him, and then they announced publicly, we just
Speaker 3: took out a top Hamas commander.
Speaker 5: So and again Israel is claiming that they put out
Speaker 5: a statement and linked to a document the postnotes. It
Speaker 5: was dated to Junior twenty twenty two. It had the
Speaker 5: military winning with PIJ and one of the journalist's names
Speaker 5: was next to a line item for two hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty four dollars. They mentioned a second document that named
Speaker 5: the other journalist as a squad deputy commander of the
Speaker 5: Hamasqkaza City Brigade, but did not make that document public
Speaker 5: and did not respond to numerous requests to review it,
Speaker 5: and the Post was unable to confirm any other evidence
Speaker 5: that they were acting as anything other than journalists when
Speaker 5: they were killed. Again, the quote from the IDEA was
Speaker 5: that they were flying an aircraft that posed a threat.
Speaker 5: It was a civilian drone that you could pick up
Speaker 5: at Best Buy and they had gone through Israeli security checkpoints.
Speaker 5: So Brian, it's just right.
Speaker 3: And they deconflict all the time with the IDF knows
Speaker 3: where these journalists are, because it's extremely dangerous to go
Speaker 3: anywhere without the IDEF knowing where you are. So that's
Speaker 3: another thing that has raised so many alarms about so
Speaker 3: many of these killings of journalists, that they get cleared
Speaker 3: ahead of time to go to an area and then
Speaker 3: get killed.
Speaker 5: It's frustrating from I mean, it's frustrating pureerod. But one
Speaker 5: of the reasons that it's frustrating from my perspective, like,
Speaker 5: the fog of war is a real thing, and obviously
Speaker 5: you know there are going to be in any wars,
Speaker 5: one of the reasons why we should all just generally
Speaker 5: oppose war. There are going to be civilian casualties, and
Speaker 5: it is awful. But the consistent situations that come up,
Speaker 5: whether it's you can go all the way back to
Speaker 5: sharen Akla, you can find many examples of this. It
Speaker 5: just is the pattern of shifting stories in these cases
Speaker 5: is frustrating because it goes beyond I think the fog
Speaker 5: of war often and becomes a ham fisted propaganda strategy
Speaker 5: that is utterly unconvincing.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the fog makersted fog makers of war, Alon
Speaker 3: Levy has been suspended as the Israeli government spokesperson is
Speaker 3: fast sating development. We can we can even touch on
Speaker 3: some of the conspiracy theories about why this has happened,
Speaker 3: as well as the uh the actual stated reason UH
Speaker 3: why it why it happened. So there was there was
Speaker 3: an exchange with a UK member of Parliament UH that
Speaker 3: people can find online. It's uh, it's really fascinating to
Speaker 3: see the back and forth. But the gist of it
Speaker 3: was that Alon Levy was basically just regurgitating the talking
Speaker 3: points that uh, that his government has been pushing, you know,
Speaker 3: for weeks now, basically saying there is no restriction.
Speaker 4: On aid entering into Israel.
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier how gas lighting is an overused term,
Speaker 3: but it's appropriate in the coverage of this war because
Speaker 3: anybody can see with their eyes, uh, that there is
Speaker 3: a famine going on.
Speaker 4: You know, the the UN is saying, you know, a.
Speaker 3: Million people are starving, and that you know, we're that
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine, and in famine,
Speaker 3: children are dying of malnutrition and starving. Those are the
Speaker 3: facts on the ground. And then we're told by the IDF,
Speaker 3: actually there's no restrictions whatsoever on aid and aid can
Speaker 3: just flow and completely unrestricted.
Speaker 4: What that's insane.
Speaker 3: So but most of us, you know, we're just you know,
Speaker 3: we're just suffering through Twitter like everybody else, and we just.
Speaker 4: Like watch these lies go through.
Speaker 3: This membory of Parliament had recent had just returned from
Speaker 3: a trip to the to the region and had seen
Speaker 3: and had talked to people at the UN, talked to
Speaker 3: people involved in aid distribution, and saw ailon Levy's claim
Speaker 3: that hey, there's aid can just flow right into into Godza,
Speaker 3: no problem at all, and she said, hey, that doesn't
Speaker 3: seem true. I was just there, but it's interesting what
Speaker 3: you're saying. Are you saying that more aid can get in?
Speaker 3: And he's like, absolutely, test us. If the UK sends
Speaker 3: another hundred trucks worth of aid, the other one hundred trucks.
Speaker 4: Can get in.
Speaker 3: And so what she does is she takes his comments,
Speaker 3: sends them to Cameron and says, look what the Israeli
Speaker 3: government is saying, which is it's almost funny because it's
Speaker 3: taking what the Israeli government spokesperson is saying seriously as
Speaker 3: the truth and then trying to apply it as policy
Speaker 3: when everybody involved in this knows that this is just
Speaker 3: kind of propaganda, this is just what people are saying.
Speaker 3: So she takes this and says, look look what he says.
Speaker 3: Then he starts backpedaling and saying, well, you know there's
Speaker 3: you know, we can only do forty four trucks an
Speaker 3: hour at this at this one crossing, and so She
Speaker 3: quickly does the math and she's like, Okay, well that's
Speaker 3: many more trucks that are currently getting in, So we
Speaker 3: appreciate that you have said, you know, hundred more trucks
Speaker 3: a day can get in, which is a fifty percent
Speaker 3: increase over the number you've said. Maybe backpedals more and
Speaker 3: starts talking about how well you know, before October seventh,
Speaker 3: half the truck's getting in or cement that Hamas was
Speaker 3: using to make tunnels, and gets into this like what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Like none of this makes any sense,
Speaker 3: but what point are you trying to make. We're not
Speaker 3: trying to send in cement right now, trying to send
Speaker 3: in food and medicine and maternity kits and like the
Speaker 3: you know, the basics that people need for survival. And
Speaker 3: it became essentially an international incident because he was basically
Speaker 3: caught lying in public and and the people on the
Speaker 3: ground had to say, well, no, this is we're actually
Speaker 3: not going to let in fifty percent more trucks, like
Speaker 3: it's not going to happen, so they suspend him. That's
Speaker 3: what That's what happened. But what what a lot of
Speaker 3: people are wondering is wait a minute, how this is
Speaker 3: the thing you're going to suspend this guy for. Like
Speaker 3: this is the Israeli government's line, Like they say this
Speaker 3: to everybody who asks the fact that it's not true
Speaker 3: is not new, Like everybody knew it wasn't true, so
Speaker 3: why are you coming after him. People have pointed out
Speaker 3: that Netya's wife, Sarah Nunya, who has been who has
Speaker 3: been convicted of corruption herself in Israel, has always hated
Speaker 3: this guy, that he's kind of a liberal Zionist who
Speaker 3: protested against the Supreme Court reforms that were intended to
Speaker 3: basically let the Netnahu family off, and also that he's
Speaker 3: getting too popular. At the Kanesset meeting, there was The
Speaker 3: Times visual reported yes yesterday that Netnya, who said, one
Speaker 3: of the problems with Israeli propaganda globally is that we
Speaker 3: don't have we being Israel, we don't have people who
Speaker 3: can string two English sentences together, two words together, he said.
Speaker 3: And they're like, what if we give you more money
Speaker 3: for the hsbara efforts. He's like, no, it's not just money,
Speaker 3: Like we don't have enough English speakers who are able
Speaker 3: to do this. And Levy has gotten extremely popular around
Speaker 3: the world and so the thinking among people watching this
Speaker 3: closely is that this was a chance to take him
Speaker 3: down a notch, that he was getting kind of too
Speaker 3: good at his job. What's your read on this entire
Speaker 3: ridiculous situation.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it sounds like there are behind the
Speaker 5: scenes sort of problems, fissures in the Nyahu relationship with
Speaker 5: the liberal Zionists that plagues Yaho and anyone sort of
Speaker 5: in the night now who coalition more broadly from his perspective,
Speaker 5: you know, if you're not quite Ben Gavie, but you're
Speaker 5: also not Levy, then yeah, that these fissures are real
Speaker 5: and actually are severely hamper Nyahu's ability to govern as
Speaker 5: he wishes to govern. On that note, though, Ryan, it
Speaker 5: was when you were talking about how Nanyahu's making the
Speaker 5: point about having people who can string English sentences together,
Speaker 5: it reminded me.
Speaker 3: That Jared Kushner was in string sentences together.
Speaker 5: He was stringing those sentences together. And interview with the Guardian,
Speaker 5: and there is video of a fascinating exchange between the
Speaker 5: Guardian and Jared Kushner about Gaza.
Speaker 6: Let's take a look at that Syria when there's refugees,
Speaker 6: Turkey took them Europe took them, Jordan took them for
Speaker 6: whatever reason. Here in Gaza, there's refugees from the fighting
Speaker 6: from an offensive attack that was staged from Gaza. Israel's
Speaker 6: going in to do you know, a long term deterrence mission,
Speaker 6: and it's just it's unfortunate that nobody's taking the refugees.
Speaker 7: But also there are real fears on the part of Arabs.
Speaker 7: And I'm sure you talk to a lot of them
Speaker 7: who think once Gazin's leave Gaza and ya, who's never
Speaker 7: going to let them back in?
Speaker 6: Maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza
Speaker 6: at this point. So you know, if you think about
Speaker 6: even the construct like you know, Gaza, Gaza was not
Speaker 6: really a historical precedent, right, it was the result of
Speaker 6: a war. Right, you had tribes that were in different places.
Speaker 6: Then Gaza became a thing. Egypt, you know, used to
Speaker 6: run it. And then you know, over time you had
Speaker 6: different governments that came in different ways, so you have
Speaker 6: another war. You know, usually when wars happen, you know,
Speaker 6: borders are changed historically over time. And so my sense
Speaker 6: is is I would say, how do we deal with
Speaker 6: the terror threat that is there so that it cannot
Speaker 6: be a threat to Israel or to Egypt, right. I
Speaker 6: think that both sides are spending a fortune on military
Speaker 6: I think neither side really wants to have, you know,
Speaker 6: a terrorist organization enclaved right between them in Gaza's waterfront property.
Speaker 6: It could be very valuable too, if people would focus
Speaker 6: on kind of building up livelihoods. You think about all
Speaker 6: the money that's gone into this tunnel network and that
Speaker 6: all the munitions, if that would have gone into education
Speaker 6: or innovation.
Speaker 7: Biden should recognize the Palestinian authority unilaterally as a state,
Speaker 7: and NBS should go to Jerusalem like Egyptian President Unwar
Speaker 7: Sedet did in nineteen seventy seven, and he should say
Speaker 7: I'll normalize with Israel, I'll recognize West Jerusalem as your capital,
Speaker 7: and I'll even pay to rebuild Gaza. If you recognize
Speaker 7: a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, what
Speaker 7: do you think?
Speaker 3: Good idea?
Speaker 6: No, I don't think that's a good idea. I think
Speaker 6: that there's certain elements of it that are correct. I
Speaker 6: think proactively recognizing a Palestinian state would essentially be rewarding
Speaker 6: an act.
Speaker 5: Of terror waterfront property. He said, if the money from
Speaker 5: the tunnels would have been redirected. I think he said
Speaker 5: towards education and innovation, but it was in the context
Speaker 5: actually talking about how you could redevelop Gaza in to quote,
Speaker 5: very valuable waterfront property. Ryan, what's your reaction to the well.
Speaker 3: There was also that line he had where he said,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, there's refugees, Okay, for whatever reason. Interesting
Speaker 3: then he also said that Gaza is a construct like
Speaker 3: so just google to make sure. Wikipedia says the known
Speaker 3: history of Gaza that spans four thousand years in POMPEII
Speaker 3: took it at one point, Alexander the Great took it
Speaker 3: at one point, Bedwins lived there for many years. In fact,
Speaker 3: the IDF has tragically destroyed archaeological sites that are some
Speaker 3: of the most kind of important to archaeology in the world,
Speaker 3: and have destroyed buildings that are from the sixth and
Speaker 3: seventh century, just irreplaceable and tragic destruction. So the idea
Speaker 3: that Kushner says Gaza is a construct of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century kind of expulsion of people from their land and
Speaker 3: what was Palestine is absurd. It is true that many
Speaker 3: of the current residents of Guys are refugees from elsewhere
Speaker 3: in what is now Israel. But the idea that the
Speaker 3: city itself is like a construct literally ignores four thousand
Speaker 3: years of history. But what could be more tone deaf
Speaker 3: than Jared Kushner, a real estate developer talking about the
Speaker 3: water the value of the waterfront propertyoti.
Speaker 5: Who negotiating the abraham of course, right, and was basically
Speaker 5: a Trump's point man on negotiating with Israel period in
Speaker 5: the Middle East period.
Speaker 3: Right. If anybody was responsible for the failure of our
Speaker 3: policy and the entire policy in the region, it's Jared Kushner,
Speaker 3: whose bright idea which and this is not to blame
Speaker 3: just Kushner.
Speaker 4: He was the moron that put it forward, but he had.
Speaker 3: An entire Republican administration apparatus behind him that pushed forward.
Speaker 3: And then he had an entire democratic administration that adopted
Speaker 3: the framing of it, which was to say, we are
Speaker 3: going to normalize relations with all of the Arab countries
Speaker 3: in the region, leading with Saudi Arabia and the and
Speaker 3: the UAE, and we're going to do it by pretending
Speaker 3: the Palestinian question does not exist anymore, just taking it
Speaker 3: off the table. I mean, it's an it's kind of
Speaker 3: an interesting, like third grade kind of approach to it.
Speaker 3: It's like, it's a really intractable problem. How do you
Speaker 3: solve this? And he's like, what if we don't hear
Speaker 3: me out? And and and the region. And that's why
Speaker 3: I don't blame him, Like that's an idiotic thing to say.
Speaker 3: The real idiots are the ones who are like, this
Speaker 3: kid's got an idea, let's just let's just pretend it does.
Speaker 3: Let's just pretend the problem isn't there, and we'll and
Speaker 3: then we'll sign all of these accords. And Hamas has
Speaker 3: said that it launched its attack because you know, Saudi
Speaker 3: Arabia was getting so close to normalizing with Israel and
Speaker 3: pretending that the Palestinians didn't exist. Now you can obvious
Speaker 3: Amas has agency did what did you can condemn that?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: The US has agency, Saudi Arabia's agency, Israel has agency.
Speaker 3: It was it was predicted and predictable. You know what
Speaker 3: the consequences would be when you say that, oh, there's
Speaker 3: this intractable problem and let's just ignore it and I'll
Speaker 3: go away.
Speaker 5: So the other thing Kushner said, quote, I'm sitting in
Speaker 5: Miami Peach right now, and I'm looking at the situation
Speaker 5: and thinking what would I do if I was there?
Speaker 5: So another point just to but he's sitting in Miami
Speaker 5: be it's more very valuable water for property. But to
Speaker 5: the point of the interview, by the way, that was
Speaker 5: it's stamped with the Guardian, because I think the Guardian
Speaker 5: was the they must have been the first report on
Speaker 5: this was actually not an interview with the Guardian. It
Speaker 5: was in an interview with the Harvard Middle East Initiative
Speaker 5: faculty chair.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't it wasn't reported by the Guardian, reported by.
Speaker 5: The Guardian, right, and they stamped their logo on the video, which.
Speaker 3: But yes, we put our logo on top of there.
Speaker 5: Yes we may already have done that. But Ryan, you
Speaker 5: were at another State Department broofing asking questions.
Speaker 3: I think this is about unra mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this goes too to the question of what will
Speaker 3: what will Gaza become, you know, when and if there
Speaker 3: was a day day after this war, and it goes
Speaker 3: to the question of unrefunding and actually, no want to
Speaker 3: spoil it. Will just roll this back and forth with
Speaker 3: me in State Department spokesperson beating Aptel when you originally
Speaker 3: talked about the allegations against the twelve staff. You had
Speaker 3: said that UNRA itself was the one that forwarded those
Speaker 3: allegations along. You said that you found them credible. But
Speaker 3: since then, UNRA itself has said that it's staff were
Speaker 3: tortured by Israel in order to get some of those
Speaker 3: confessions extracted. Does that change your view of the evidence
Speaker 3: that was presented by Israel? And if UNRA was credible
Speaker 3: enough for you to believe the allegations the first time,
Speaker 3: is UNRA credible enough when they make an allegation of
Speaker 3: torture against its staff.
Speaker 8: I've not seen that reporting, Ryan, but I will just
Speaker 8: note that we continue to find the allegations that were
Speaker 8: laid out a number of months months ago to be credible.
Speaker 8: And we also welcome the swiftness at which UNRA informed
Speaker 8: not just the United States but others about this, but
Speaker 8: also the swiftness in which the United Nations launched its
Speaker 8: own investigation mechanism and its own independent review, and we
Speaker 8: look forward to seeing those results, and to echo Secretary Blincoln,
Speaker 8: we want these allegations thoroughly investigated so that there is
Speaker 8: clear accountability and measures put in place so this doesn't
Speaker 8: happen again. We want all this to happen because we
Speaker 8: believe very strongly that unreplay is a critical role in
Speaker 8: producing life saving assistance in the region, not just in Gaza,
Speaker 8: but the broader Middle East as well. They are vital
Speaker 8: players when it comes to food, medicine, shelter and other
Speaker 8: humanitarian support.
Speaker 3: Your position, which is in opposition, as they said to
Speaker 3: so many allies around the world, has encouraged Congress to
Speaker 3: move forward with a band. There's now an agreement between
Speaker 3: some Democrats and some Republicans to continue the ban.
Speaker 4: I think what throughout the rest of the year is.
Speaker 3: That, is that something that the State Department would support
Speaker 3: tying the State Department's hands even if the report comes back.
Speaker 8: You've heard me talk about this before. Broadly, when it
Speaker 8: comes to the supplemental bill that is being negotiated in Congress,
Speaker 8: these are active and ongoing things that are happening. So
Speaker 8: I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole too much,
Speaker 8: but broadly, we support the contours of this supplemental bill.
Speaker 3: So he says, we believe that unreplace is an important
Speaker 3: role in relief efforts, but also we're okay with Congress
Speaker 3: barring us from restarting funding for it because presidents make
Speaker 3: make that makes sense for me.
Speaker 5: Presidential administrations are often so cool with Congress stepping in
Speaker 5: and doing things that they care about. Yes, that's the
Speaker 5: if presidents care about war powers, it's basically so that,
Speaker 5: you know, they they want Congress to have more power
Speaker 5: instead of them, which is obviously completely backwards. They want
Speaker 5: to prosecute these words entirely on their own, and now
Speaker 5: they're using Congress as a crutch, which is funny because
Speaker 5: they basically are constantly blaming Congress of being overly meddlesome
Speaker 5: in the business of prosecuting.
Speaker 3: Right, But when it comes to banning the US from
Speaker 3: funding UNRA, which they say is a valuable part of
Speaker 3: the relief effort, I'm not going to go down that
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. They're going to do what they're going to do,
Speaker 3: rabbit hole.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also, how do you not how are you not
Speaker 3: familiar with this massive reporting that UNRA has said that
Speaker 3: its staff was tortured into making confessions about you know,
Speaker 3: UNRA complicity with AMAS. That's rather important element if you
Speaker 3: actually are serious about getting to the bottom of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I'm sure that they enjoy answering your questions
Speaker 5: in the briefing, like, I don't.
Speaker 4: Know how much longer I can keep going.
Speaker 3: It's it's increasing it seems it's increasingly pointless, exhausting. I
Speaker 3: got to do some self care after each one of those.
Speaker 5: The rabbit hole quote was pretty interesting in that one.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about TikTok.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about TikTok. So we have a video here
Speaker 5: of Steve mnusin. Steve Manus is involved right now and
Speaker 5: putting together some investors who would buy TikTok in the
Speaker 5: case that the bill that passed through the House and
Speaker 5: is now in the hands of the Senate is passed
Speaker 5: signed by President Biden, and TikTok is ByteDance, is forced
Speaker 5: to divest TikTok It's US portfolio. Essentially, there are different
Speaker 5: ways that they could go about divesting that operation, maybe
Speaker 5: just split off the entire US, but the forced divestment,
Speaker 5: say it happens, Steve Manuchin, he's going to be there,
Speaker 5: arms open wide, ready with investors to buy TikTok. And
Speaker 5: there's some interesting questions about where Steve Mnuchin may get
Speaker 5: that money. Let's start by rolling this clip of Steve
Speaker 5: mnuchen talking about the potential deal.
Speaker 9: I think the legislation should pass and I think should
Speaker 9: be solved. I understand the technology, it's a great business,
Speaker 9: and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok.
Speaker 3: You're trying to buy TikTok?
Speaker 9: I am because this should be owned by US, US businesses.
Speaker 9: There's no way that the Chinese would ever let a
Speaker 9: US company on something like this in China. You say,
Speaker 9: have you already put a group together? No, I'm working
Speaker 9: at an explorer group. I've spoken to a bunch of people.
Speaker 4: But who would be part of your group?
Speaker 9: I can't tell that to you now, but it would
Speaker 9: be it would be a combination of investors. So there
Speaker 9: would be no one investor that controlled this. And the
Speaker 9: issue is all about the technology. This needs to be
Speaker 9: controlled by US.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you a very practical question.
Speaker 5: So that was Becky Quick and Andrew Ross working and
Speaker 5: talking to Steveminution on CNBC. He said he would not
Speaker 5: get into who's involved, but it would not be any
Speaker 5: one investor. Let's put this next hairsheet B two up
Speaker 5: on the screen, semaphore heading good piece and run widen
Speaker 5: kind of blowing the whistle here on who steamnutin maybe
Speaker 5: getting his funding from reading from the article they say.
Speaker 5: Senator Ron Wyden, the chair of the powerful Senate Finance
Speaker 5: can be sharply criticized former Treasury Secretary of Stephen Mnuchen
Speaker 5: and has ties some money from the Middle East in
Speaker 5: his effort to buy TikTok from its Chinese owner. Manuchin
Speaker 5: told CNBC last week that he's assembling a group of
Speaker 5: investors by the platform after the House overwhelmingly forced a
Speaker 5: bill pass the bill forcing it to either be sold
Speaker 5: within six months or banned from app stores. The White
Speaker 5: House has urged the Senate, where the bill has powerful
Speaker 5: backers and opponents in both parties, to move quickly. Munuchen
Speaker 5: gave few details on who might be part of his
Speaker 5: bidding group, except to say that he was working in
Speaker 5: combination of investors. But much of the two point five
Speaker 5: billion dollars investment funds he raised after leaving office came
Speaker 5: from governments in Saudi Arabia and other golf states, where
Speaker 5: Mnusian was a frequent visitor during his time in government.
Speaker 5: Saudi investments not unfamiliar to former members of the Trump
Speaker 5: administration whatsoever. So actually this point that Ron Wyden is
Speaker 5: making and Semaphore is making. Is a really important one
Speaker 5: because it's it seems almost impossible that all of that
Speaker 5: money would be coming entirely from domestic sources, given the
Speaker 5: Steve Manus and honestly just the way finance works in
Speaker 5: this country right now, one point I did want to make.
Speaker 5: We can put the three up in the screen just
Speaker 5: really quickly. There's a very important argument about how this
Speaker 5: bill is crony capitalism and that you have a Steve
Speaker 5: manusan sweeping in going to make billions off the deal
Speaker 5: with his investors. Will I'll be sitting back and laughing,
Speaker 5: and it's because you know, they lobby Congress for this
Speaker 5: bill to pass, and in the meantime, it gives the
Speaker 5: deep state access to TikTok. So I agree that it's
Speaker 5: crony capitalism. I do just want to point out, though
Speaker 5: this is up on the screen, quoting from a Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal article, actually quoting from a TikTok spokesperson in
Speaker 5: a Wall Street Journal article. Over the past year, they
Speaker 5: say we took the unprecedented step of granting Oracle full
Speaker 5: access to our source code and our algorithm. That's not news.
Speaker 5: It's been known that this one and a half billion
Speaker 5: dollar Project taxas initiative TikTok embarked u pun after being
Speaker 5: pushed by the Trump administration. Actually at the time this
Speaker 5: was basically a big PR push that ultimately went beyond
Speaker 5: PR and actually, as they got more and more pressure,
Speaker 5: ended up with them giving Oracle Cloud access storing their
Speaker 5: US data in the Oracle cloud. Oracle is a defense
Speaker 5: contractor So one point just in this big conversation about
Speaker 5: how the US deep state's going to get access to
Speaker 5: TikTok data. They want it. That's why suddenly they're sweeping
Speaker 5: through this bill. Well, I mean they're sweeping through this
Speaker 5: bill because they do want it, but they do likely
Speaker 5: already have access via Oracle to.
Speaker 3: Data that they want, right, it's not just the data
Speaker 3: they want, they want to control at the root. And
Speaker 3: so you talked about the golf states that have contributed
Speaker 3: to Mnuchin's fund. There's a golf adjacent state that has
Speaker 3: been in talks with Manuchin's fund at minimum that's also
Speaker 3: relevant here, and that's literally Israel.
Speaker 4: So we talked earlier about some good reporting.
Speaker 3: The paroctive Vita did He and Jonathan Swan in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one had a scoop for Axios, the headline Israeli
Speaker 3: spy chief and talks to join Mnuchin's investment fund. So
Speaker 3: that the head of Massad, before he retired from his
Speaker 3: Massad position, was in talks with Mnuchin to become an
Speaker 3: investor in in Mnuchin's fund. We don't you know where
Speaker 3: was that, Where was that money coming from? Did that
Speaker 3: money enter into Manuchin's fund. So the idea that for
Speaker 3: national security reasons, we're going to seize TikTok and hand
Speaker 3: it over to a fund that has cutter Saudi and
Speaker 3: Muradi money and maybe Israeli money it was really government money,
Speaker 3: you know, does not make a whole lot of sense
Speaker 3: just on its own terms from a national security perspective.
Speaker 3: Despite Mnuchin's claims that, well, no single investor is going
Speaker 3: to have you know.
Speaker 4: Control here.
Speaker 3: If Saudi Arabia has given him a billion dollars and
Speaker 3: he's and is the biggest leveraged and is the biggest
Speaker 3: fund in Manution's fund, they have a lot of power there,
Speaker 3: regardless of what kind of contract you write up about
Speaker 3: who has what say when it comes to TikTok.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an interesting point. And you know, in general,
Speaker 5: my takeaway on this is we are such an oligarchy
Speaker 5: because it gets back to the binary choice of Trump
Speaker 5: versus Biden. There's really no good choice in this situation.
Speaker 5: I mean, I actually think the situation with Chinese control
Speaker 5: over TikTok has been concerning for a really long time.
Speaker 5: I think TikTok absolutely should be banned. I think though
Speaker 5: the bill that passed the House of Representatives was that
Speaker 5: that section B in the bill that you know doesn't
Speaker 5: just narrow this to TikTok is genuinely very problematic. You know,
Speaker 5: there's a way to do this bill that literally writes
Speaker 5: out this just applies to tik talk and bite dance.
Speaker 5: The decision to broaden it beyond just TikTok and byte
Speaker 5: dance obviously obviously stems from ulterior motives that don't I mean,
Speaker 5: it's in the text that is as blatantly of an
Speaker 5: alter blatantly as an ulterial motive as you could possibly
Speaker 5: put into the bills by saying, well, maybe this will
Speaker 5: apply in different cases as well. And you know, instead
Speaker 5: of just actually doing this as the problem crops up,
Speaker 5: we can put.
Speaker 3: This next a just one point on that this is
Speaker 3: where the Supreme Court's bizarre libertarian interpretation of corporation as
Speaker 3: people comes into play because if corporations are people, then
Speaker 3: a bill that targets an individual corporation is a bill
Speaker 3: of attainder, which is you control left the constitution for
Speaker 3: that one ban in the constitution, you can't basically what
Speaker 3: you know, what what England used to do, which we
Speaker 3: fought against, was, you know, they'd try somebody for treason
Speaker 3: and the jury would be like, eh, we don't, we
Speaker 3: don't think you made your case here, and then Parliament
Speaker 3: would be like, this person must be executed and they
Speaker 3: chop his head off. And and so that was a
Speaker 3: bill of at tainder, which is like going after an individual.
Speaker 3: And so right there, and a constitution says Congress can't
Speaker 3: do that to individuals. Congress never meant that a company
Speaker 3: was an individual. But Supreme Court is, you know, rethought
Speaker 3: know humanity to include corporations in its definition of people,
Speaker 3: which would then require them to say, you can't do
Speaker 3: this anyway, go.
Speaker 5: Ahead, yeah, and so put the if we put the
Speaker 5: next element up on the screen here, you can see
Speaker 5: so that section that we were just talking about, where
Speaker 5: it involves you know, companies that have at least twenty
Speaker 5: percent a foreign A hostile foreign country has at least
Speaker 5: twenty percent. Enemy country is at least twenty percent stake
Speaker 5: in an app. Actually a lot of apps have international headquarters.
Speaker 5: As Axios points out here, these numbers actually really surprised me. Ryan.
Speaker 5: So this is from Access In twenty twenty four. Not
Speaker 5: only are a greater number of apps from China and
Speaker 5: but more apps from that region have made it to
Speaker 5: the top ten most downloaded apps in the US so
Speaker 5: far compared this year, compared to just one in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one. So Timu really popular, starting to get really popular.
Speaker 5: Cap Cut that's another app by byte Edance. Sheen. Obviously
Speaker 5: they're an e commerce app there, I mean a lot
Speaker 5: of people think of them as a website. By Timu
Speaker 5: and Sheen have apps, and so we're increasingly getting into
Speaker 5: a situation where, yeah, I mean, this is a real problem.
Speaker 5: Josh Holly has been making a really good point about how,
Speaker 5: you know, American creators, American consumers shouldn't have to be
Speaker 5: responsive to China at this point that TikTok is an
Speaker 5: American industry. If, as byte Dance insists, TikTok is truly
Speaker 5: just an American company. It's based in America. It's for Americans,
Speaker 5: you know. Ultimately, though, what we know from Great Reporting
Speaker 5: and Forbes, the w Was Street Journal, and other places
Speaker 5: is that even with Project Texas, the people who are
Speaker 5: involved in Project Texas, this big effort to make TikTok
Speaker 5: more domestic here in the States, they're still getting plenty
Speaker 5: of requests for the data from Paiging. So I think
Speaker 5: there's a real point to be made. I think also
Speaker 5: the latent threat of TikTok, because you know, we are
Speaker 5: aware that the Hawks are beating the war drums with China.
Speaker 5: So whether or not you agree with them, the threat
Speaker 5: of a hot war, a hot conflict over Taiwan is real.
Speaker 5: Whether or not we like that, that is real. And
Speaker 5: so the latent threat of a potential hostile enemy in
Speaker 5: a hot war controlling a huge source of news, the
Speaker 5: primary source of news in fact, for young people in
Speaker 5: this country, that actually can put the lives of American
Speaker 5: men and women on the line. I think the Layton
Speaker 5: Tech the latent threat of TikTok if a hot war erupts,
Speaker 5: is worse than you know, in this case meta Instagram,
Speaker 5: And I think those threats of censorship and propaganda are
Speaker 5: huge with those other giants. But the hot war question
Speaker 5: is a really really big one. But that just brings
Speaker 5: us back to this oligarchy, like your options suck. Either way,
Speaker 5: it's cronyism. If TikTok wins, it's cronyism if TikTok loses.
Speaker 3: And my solution to the hot work question would be,
Speaker 3: all right, Oracle already controls their data and their UH
Speaker 3: and their and their kind of algorithm, or has has
Speaker 3: like direct access to it, and therefore, like if there
Speaker 3: is a national security crisis of some kind of war,
Speaker 3: then your defense contractor already has it, so don't you
Speaker 3: don't need to turn it over to Steve Mnuchin, Muhammed
Speaker 3: bin Salmon and Mosad.
Speaker 4: In meantime, it's.
Speaker 5: Such a perfect I mean, if there are Saudi investors
Speaker 5: ultimately involved, even indirectly, and then.
Speaker 3: You have to be they have a big piece of Twitter,
Speaker 3: like they they love all this stuff.
Speaker 5: You're reporting on Twitter. And Saudi's has been also wildly
Speaker 5: undercovered by the rest of the media.
Speaker 3: Right where they bribed engineers to get them to out
Speaker 3: the names of Dissonance, who they then killed and and
Speaker 3: Ron Wyden in this report. He's like, maybe a company
Speaker 3: and maybe a country that puts spyware on the wife
Speaker 3: of a Washington journalist Washington Post journalist's phone, then lured
Speaker 3: him into a consulate and chopped him into pieces. It's
Speaker 3: not the company that we want to force a sale
Speaker 3: of it. Social media app too.
Speaker 5: Soccer's friend Hassan Minhaj was censored on Netflix and Saudi
Speaker 5: Arabia for Yes, like if.
Speaker 3: We're if we're going to censorship?
Speaker 5: Good Lord freaked out. Yes, it's the same thing with Yes.
Speaker 5: The neo conservative position on Saudi Arabia has put them
Speaker 5: in so many binds over the years that they just
Speaker 5: laugh and smile their way through on CNBC hits. And
Speaker 5: here we are.
Speaker 4: Should we talk Bernie.
Speaker 5: Let's talk Bernie because this is such an interesting topic.
Speaker 5: Ryan Bernie Sanders and seean fain. Bernie Sanders in particular
Speaker 5: has actually introduced legislation. But Bernie Sanders and Shron Faine
Speaker 5: wrote a joint op ed calling for the thirty two
Speaker 5: hour work week, and Bernie's bill is focused on the
Speaker 5: thirty two hour work week. Tell us what he's proposing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Ernie staff are saying, I saw some of
Speaker 3: them last last night that they have not gotten a
Speaker 3: reaction this positive to legislation that they've put out in years,
Speaker 3: that the kind of the kind of outpouring of support
Speaker 3: for it has been extraordinarily heartening. But essentially, all this
Speaker 3: bill does is take current law as it applies to overtime,
Speaker 3: which currently sits at you know, forty hours, and ratchets
Speaker 3: that down to thirty two hours and says if you
Speaker 3: work over thirty two hours, then you start getting paid.
Speaker 3: Overtime doesn't mean you can't work forty hours, It just means.
Speaker 3: What it does is it incentivizes you know, companies and
Speaker 3: people to try to increase productivity and basically, you know,
Speaker 3: work less and move and move toward a place where
Speaker 3: we have kind of a more just and decent society.
Speaker 3: One of the counter arguments, of course, as well, now
Speaker 3: you're going to force people into working more jobs, and
Speaker 3: companies are going to you know, try to automate away
Speaker 3: hours and try to shrink down the number of hours
Speaker 3: that people have.
Speaker 4: The response to that is, what are you an idiot?
Speaker 3: Think?
Speaker 4: You think that that's not.
Speaker 3: What corporations are doing. Like, the number one goal of
Speaker 3: corporations today is adopting AI and automation to try to
Speaker 3: minimize labor costs, like they're already doing that. So what
Speaker 3: this is a response to that crisis. And what it
Speaker 3: says is that, Okay, you're trying to reduce people's hours anyway,
Speaker 3: what we're requiring is that you pay people a little
Speaker 3: bit more on the way there.
Speaker 5: And so I personally don't support like a federal mandate,
Speaker 5: But one of my predictions, like for the next thirty years,
Speaker 5: maybe even like the next ten years, actually probably closer
Speaker 5: to the next ten years, is that a thirty two
Speaker 5: hour workweek will become normalized in corporate culture. Now that's
Speaker 5: very optimistic, but there's a reason I say that. In
Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders op ed with Sean Fann in The Washington
Speaker 5: Post touched on it in a really really interesting way.
Speaker 5: They talk about how the Fair Labor Standards Act was
Speaker 5: signed into law in nineteen forty. Then they write, unbelievably,
Speaker 5: eighty four years later, despite massive growth in technology and
Speaker 5: worker productivity, nothing has changed. Let that sink in for
Speaker 5: a moment. In a nineteen seventy four office, there were
Speaker 5: no computers, email, cell phones, conference calling, or zoom in
Speaker 5: factories and warehouses. There were no robots or sophisticated machinery,
Speaker 5: no cloud computing. In grocery stores and shops of all kinds,
Speaker 5: there were no checkout counters using barcodes. Think about all
Speaker 5: the incredible advancements in technology, computers, robotics, artificial intelligence, and
Speaker 5: the huge increase in worker productivity that has been achieved
Speaker 5: would have been the results of these changes for working people.
Speaker 5: Almost all the economic games have gone straight to the top,
Speaker 5: while wages for workers are stagnant or worse. And it's
Speaker 5: a really really important point about technology. You think about
Speaker 5: when you wake up in the morning. If you are
Speaker 5: a white collar, if you're blue collar, you have to
Speaker 5: check your phone for professional reasons. Maybe your shift got changed,
Speaker 5: maybe you got an email from your boss changing a
Speaker 5: meeting time and you had to drop your kid off
Speaker 5: at three pm. Thought you could get out, but now
Speaker 5: you can't. You're constantly changing to your phone, even if
Speaker 5: it's eight am, even if it's seven am and you're
Speaker 5: working out. That's not leisure time because you are always working.
Speaker 5: You're sending work emails, sending work texts. You were constantly
Speaker 5: you know, thinking about or in communication and thinking about
Speaker 5: via smartphones and email apps on your smartphones about work
Speaker 5: in general, and again it could just be it could
Speaker 5: be shifts getting changed around that make it hard for
Speaker 5: you just to put your phone down and actually be
Speaker 5: without your phone, because your phone is a work device.
Speaker 5: And so we just have we haven't shifted the way
Speaker 5: we think about work. We haven't shifted the way we
Speaker 5: think about even just smartphones period. And this is a
Speaker 5: shot producer Mac who is not giving me my leisure
Speaker 5: time right now because he's texting us as we're talking
Speaker 5: about smartphones. But in all seriousness, I really think conservatives
Speaker 5: are way behind the curb and talking about work, and
Speaker 5: that Bernie Sanders and Sean Fainn are actually onto something
Speaker 5: that's way less radical than it sounds to a lot
Speaker 5: of people on the right who are like, what are
Speaker 5: you talking about? Thirty two hour work week? This is America,
Speaker 5: So this is a very different work culture than it
Speaker 5: was just fifteen years ago.
Speaker 3: I also think of this show as my leisure time.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a famous example that Adam Smith, basically
Speaker 3: the father of modern economics, has where he talks about
Speaker 3: a pin factory like a needle factory. He's like, basically says, like,
Speaker 3: imagine that you've got. You know, it takes one hundred
Speaker 3: people a week to make a hundred pins at this factory,
Speaker 3: and now all of a sudden and it's profitable, it's
Speaker 3: doing well. Now, all of a sudden, an innovation comes along.
Speaker 3: Somebody figures out a way that it takes only half
Speaker 3: a week to make that many pins. He's like, he says,
Speaker 3: in a rational and a just society, those hundred people
Speaker 3: would work twenty hours a week, and the rest of
Speaker 3: that time would be spent with their family, with their
Speaker 3: church group, with their community, playing softball, just enjoying life.
Speaker 4: We'd have just as many pins.
Speaker 3: The capitalists would make just as much profit, and the
Speaker 3: world would just be a better place instead, because of
Speaker 3: the power embedded in the political economy, everybody works the
Speaker 3: same amount, gets paid the same amount, but all of
Speaker 3: that surplus value that was created by that innovation gets
Speaker 3: just seized by the person that owns the factory. And
Speaker 3: for Smith, who is much more lefty than people give
Speaker 3: them credit for, because they haven't actually read the wealth
Speaker 3: of the nations, he was like, that's wrong, Like, the
Speaker 3: workers should in society, should take the advantage of that
Speaker 3: of that innovation, not the capitalist class that is just
Speaker 3: going to then you know, produce inequality. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: fretter right away, and and you know, create an create
Speaker 3: an unstable society along the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think you know, there's there's a really
Speaker 5: interesting point to that Bernie Sanders makes. We have a
Speaker 5: clip of Bernie Sanders. Let me actually table the point
Speaker 5: and we'll get to the site here because Bernie's explodesive
Speaker 5: exchange for the reporter. It is really I think, so
Speaker 5: it's absolutely been to Bernie though. Let's roll this clip.
Speaker 1: Senator Sanders, can I talk to you about the thirty
Speaker 1: two hour work week? It seems like Fox business, It
Speaker 1: seems like democrats want businesses to be taxed more pay
Speaker 1: their work.
Speaker 3: I didn't get to ask a question. Okay, thank you, senator.
Speaker 4: You want to hold it.
Speaker 10: Okay, we held a hearing on a thirty two hour
Speaker 10: work week because what we have seen is that over
Speaker 10: the last fifty years, despite a huge increase in work
Speaker 10: of productivity, almost all of the New Wealth has gone
Speaker 10: to the top one percent, well sixty percent of the
Speaker 10: people living paycheck to paycheck. Many of our people are exhausted.
Speaker 10: We work the longest hours of any people in the
Speaker 10: industrialized world. I think it's time for a shortened work.
Speaker 1: I ask you a question about that. It seems like
Speaker 1: democrats want businesses to be tax more, pay their more
Speaker 1: lower prices, and now pay people not to work.
Speaker 4: You know what, I would like to see how.
Speaker 1: Our business is going to survive that?
Speaker 3: That's the question.
Speaker 1: How can businesses survive all of those proposals?
Speaker 10: And mister Bezos pays an effective tax rate lower than
Speaker 10: the average work I think we have a real problem
Speaker 10: in our tax system. I think that billionaires have got
Speaker 10: to stop pay their fair share of taxes.
Speaker 5: He's all up in her grow Ryan. So if you
Speaker 5: were just listening to that clip, Bernie Sanders is just
Speaker 5: playing wildly.
Speaker 4: It's going to turn violent.
Speaker 5: Yes, he's about to fight her.
Speaker 3: Reporter fast war in the hallway.
Speaker 5: In the hallway, yes, but really that's classic Burnie it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like he doesn't want to hear the
Speaker 3: nonsense from the Fox Business crowd. But yeah, he turned
Speaker 3: straight to the camera.
Speaker 5: That was my other favorite part. When you said Fox Business,
Speaker 5: he rolled his eyes super exasperated and just addressed the
Speaker 5: camera straight down the lens.
Speaker 3: And people like overtime, like overtime is Overtime is the
Speaker 3: thing that gives you a little.
Speaker 4: Bit of breathing room.
Speaker 3: When the company is forced to give you overtime, they
Speaker 3: don't want to give you overtime, you know. They try
Speaker 3: to figure out ways to either cheat you out of
Speaker 3: it or to have enough people on staff that they
Speaker 3: don't need to get there. So what this does is
Speaker 3: it will would make it easier for workers to get
Speaker 3: the overtime that they deserve. And if a company can't
Speaker 3: figure out a way to get everything it's done, everything
Speaker 3: done that it needs done with its workforce working thirty
Speaker 3: two hours a week, then all right, you got to
Speaker 3: pay him overtime.
Speaker 5: Well, you just said something interesting, which is what they deserve.
Speaker 5: And that's where I think actually just will be surprised
Speaker 5: by how quickly and I could totally be proven wrong
Speaker 5: on this, it's happened before, But how quickly different corporations
Speaker 5: adapt after people like Bernie Sanders kind of moved the
Speaker 5: Overton window on this question. They quote in the Washington Posts.
Speaker 5: They say studies have shown that workers are either equally
Speaker 5: or more productive during a four hour, four day work week.
Speaker 5: One study found that worker productivity rose with fifty five percent,
Speaker 5: saying their ability at work increased after companies adopted this
Speaker 5: new schedule. That's I think that's the important point.
Speaker 3: There's been a ton of pilot programs of this, and
Speaker 3: everywhere it's been implemented, the company's been happy and the
Speaker 3: workers have been happy. Yeah, so give it a shot now.
Speaker 3: We also wanted to play this fun CNBC clip since
Speaker 3: we've we've already got Fox Business in there. We can't
Speaker 3: neglect their ally in the class war. A great clip
Speaker 3: recently from CNBC talking about the presidential election.
Speaker 4: Let's roll this one.
Speaker 11: We often say, you know, when you look at between
Speaker 11: the policies that Biden or Trump would take in that
Speaker 11: it's not like we have a Bernie Sanders socialist running.
Speaker 11: I mean, you don't have some of the worst case
Speaker 11: scenarios where they're really anti capitalists. Even Biden, who is
Speaker 11: favorable higher taxes, is still pro business. Generally you're not
Speaker 11: trying to so you should have any business opportunities. So
Speaker 11: you know, there's definitely pros and cons of each of them.
Speaker 11: You had, you know, Trump, who could actually bring a
Speaker 11: much more tariff oriented mindset to certainly to China. But
Speaker 11: you worry about like what do you bring tariff against
Speaker 11: against everything they're going to be We're talking about the FED.
Speaker 11: You know, Trump has made a very cleary he's anti palace,
Speaker 11: with questions who would he put in Some of those
Speaker 11: people have been actually quite hawkish that he's rumored to
Speaker 11: talk about. So we'll see how that impacts things, But
Speaker 11: in general, we'd say it's not going to be a
Speaker 11: major difference one or the other despite all the noise.
Speaker 3: Very happy for the squawk Box. They are getting the
Speaker 3: presidential election that they wanted.
Speaker 5: I like that we had classic Bernie and then classic
Speaker 5: squawk Box, which is that they can't quite decide if
Speaker 5: Biden and as a socialist or a capitalist.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing with the one whenever Bernie does
Speaker 3: something like a thirty two hour work week, they're reminded that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it could be worse.
Speaker 5: You always see that play. Yeah, well, let's move on
Speaker 5: to the Trump arrests that we've been teasing at the
Speaker 5: bottom of the screen. Yesterday was unfortunate for several people
Speaker 5: sort of in the broader Trump orbit, one of whom
Speaker 5: is Peter Navarro. So maybe a familiar face to some
Speaker 5: folks who can put this first element up on the screen.
Speaker 5: This is CNN headline x Trump aid Peter Navarro begins
Speaker 5: serving prison sentence after historic contempt prosecution. He is the
Speaker 5: first former White House official actually to be imprisoned for
Speaker 5: a contempt of Congress conviction. A lot of people may
Speaker 5: think immediately of Steve Bannon in that case, because he
Speaker 5: was actually prosecuted and convicted on a pretty similar charge,
Speaker 5: also from non compliance in a January sixth Committee subpoena.
Speaker 5: He wasn't in the White House during the period that
Speaker 5: the House Committee was a subpoenaing in regards to but
Speaker 5: that judge has let Bannon delay serving the four month
Speaker 5: prison sentence that he was actually given while his appeals
Speaker 5: are continuing to play out. While Peter Navarro actually did
Speaker 5: report to that federal prison in Miami, he spoke for
Speaker 5: thirty minutes at a gas station yesterday and called it
Speaker 5: quote unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers. The
Speaker 5: other quote, he said, I am pissed. That is what
Speaker 5: I am feeling right now. Kind of an interesting case, actually, Ryan,
Speaker 5: he was subpoena for documents and testimony at CNN says
Speaker 5: related to efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election. He
Speaker 5: rebuffed the demands, claiming that Trump had asserted privilege over
Speaker 5: the requests and arguing the House Committee must negotiate with
Speaker 5: Trump directly to sort out that dispute. Then he was
Speaker 5: charged in June twenty twenty two with two counts of
Speaker 5: contempt and was then found guilty on both counts. As
Speaker 5: people may remember last September. So that gets to the
Speaker 5: separation of powers question he's raising. He was saying that
Speaker 5: Congress had to work that out with Trump, who had
Speaker 5: asserted power over the documents. Let's put up D two. Now,
Speaker 5: a lawyer was this isn't a separate case. This is
Speaker 5: a pro Trump. Michigan attorney, as the Associated Press headline says,
Speaker 5: who was arrested after a hearing in DC over the
Speaker 5: leaking of Dominion documents. Stephanie Lambert they Wright was arrested
Speaker 5: by US marshals after hearing over possible sanctions against her
Speaker 5: for disseminating confidential emails from Dominion voting systems. Lambert obtained
Speaker 5: the Dominion emails by representing Patrick Byrne, who is, as
Speaker 5: the AP says, a prominent funder of election conspiracy theorists
Speaker 5: being sued by Dominion for defamation. The US Marshals said
Speaker 5: that Lambert was arrested in quote. Local Chargers of Michigan.
Speaker 5: Judge in this earlier this month issued a bench warrant
Speaker 5: for Lambert after she missed a hearing in her case.
Speaker 5: She's charged with four felonies for accessing voting machines in
Speaker 5: a search for evidence of a conspiracy theory against Trump.
Speaker 5: She acknowledged passing on the documents or passing on the
Speaker 5: records from dominion to quote law enforcement, and attached an
Speaker 5: affidavit that included some of the lets emails was signed
Speaker 5: by a county sheriff in southwestern Michigan who's investigated false
Speaker 5: claims of widespread election fraud from the twenty twenty election. Goodness,
Speaker 5: Ryan Peter Navarro, Let's start with him. Interesting case because
Speaker 5: it's definitely unprecedented overused word, but actually he is the
Speaker 5: first former White House official, as we mentioned, to be
Speaker 5: charged in a case like this one, a breach of
Speaker 5: what until Trump would have been considered Washington norms to
Speaker 5: actually jail Peter Navarro over his non compliance with the subpoena.
Speaker 3: Especially because the committee that he was subpoena to testify
Speaker 3: in front of no longer is in operation, like they've
Speaker 3: they've done the report, they put it out there. I'm
Speaker 3: kind of conflicted. I'm torn on this one because on
Speaker 3: the one hand, you look at other countries that are
Speaker 3: constantly jailing each other's political opponents, and it might be
Speaker 3: satisfying to the partisans on each side, but I never
Speaker 3: look at those countries with envy, Like gee, I wish
Speaker 3: that that basket case of a system was the basket
Speaker 3: case of a system that we had. There's something about
Speaker 3: allowing people to lose with grace that allows for the
Speaker 3: peaceful transfer of power, which is one reason that I
Speaker 3: think that Democrats should have immediately come down harder on
Speaker 3: Trump rather than waiting four years, because he attacked the
Speaker 3: foundation of democracy, which is the peaceful transfer of power.
Speaker 3: People take for granted how important and beneficial and innovation
Speaker 3: that is to humanity, like for millennia, Like the way
Speaker 3: that power was transferred created wars between rival factions that
Speaker 3: you know, thousands or millions of people would get caught
Speaker 3: up in and killed in over just you know, who
Speaker 3: got to have who got to have power, something that
Speaker 3: you know, most of the peasants who were getting killed
Speaker 3: as a result of this. They weren't going to see
Speaker 3: any benefit one way or the other. It's just they
Speaker 3: were just getting caught up in this stuff. On the
Speaker 3: on the other hand, you do want Congress to be
Speaker 3: able to have investigative power and you and you do
Speaker 3: want when somebody is subpoena to come like if you
Speaker 3: don't want to testify to me, just plead the Fifth
Speaker 3: Amendment like that's that's that's why the Fifth Amendment exists.
Speaker 3: But showing actual contempt like that, and that's what it is.
Speaker 3: It's like, you've got a subpoena, I'm not showing up.
Speaker 3: I think it's illegitimate. I've contempt for this subpoena underminds
Speaker 3: the ability of Congress to then investigate. So I'd say
Speaker 3: to you know, people who are you know, the megotypes
Speaker 3: out there, like what you know, what if you want
Speaker 3: to investigate Hunter Biden or and Hunter Biden just says, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not showing up, Like should that be okay?
Speaker 4: Is that fine?
Speaker 3: Or do you ought you to respect subpoenas.
Speaker 5: The Stephanie Lambert case is interesting in this context too,
Speaker 5: because we're in this one up doom spiral of norm
Speaker 5: breaking and I think that's really relevant in the January
Speaker 5: sixth stuff. But the January six committee stuff. One of
Speaker 5: the reasons Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon ignored these subpoenas
Speaker 5: because they always saw the January six Committee as illegitimate.
Speaker 5: From the beginning, Nancy Pelosi refused to see Kevin McCarthy's
Speaker 5: choices for committee members, and then proceeded to tout the
Speaker 5: committee as a bipartisan one because Liz Cheney and Adam
Speaker 5: Pinsinger were on it, and the media basically gave her
Speaker 5: opacity that as well, and continuously referred to it as
Speaker 5: a bipartisan committee. It's true, it's bipartisan, although you know,
Speaker 5: technically true it was bipartisan, although again she refused to seat,
Speaker 5: as is the norm, the picks by the Speaker or
Speaker 5: by Kevin McCarthy at the time, not the Speaker of
Speaker 5: the House yet I don't believe but that that's why
Speaker 5: Bannon and Navarro refused. And the January sixth Committee's hearings
Speaker 5: were again produced by a former ABC guy and very
Speaker 5: much not designed to obtain the truth, but to obtain
Speaker 5: what one side of the narrative determines is the truth.
Speaker 5: There weren't a lot of cross examinations of people like
Speaker 5: Cassidy Hutchinson, who now appears very clearly to have spewed mistruths.
Speaker 3: And they were making a cool documentary exact true crime.
Speaker 5: Exactly it was. It was true crime and almost explicitly
Speaker 5: intentionally true crimes made for TV documentary. So that's where
Speaker 5: this comes from. And we're about to have the same
Speaker 5: thing happen with elections. I don't know if you saw this.
Speaker 5: Katie Porter apologized to the pod Bros. The pods Bros, Yeah, rigged,
Speaker 5: but then.
Speaker 3: She argued that because it took away from her point,
Speaker 3: which is that it is rigged, which was not rigged
Speaker 3: in the sense that election officials aren't the votes accurately.
Speaker 4: That's what she was saying.
Speaker 5: Right, And AOC recently talked about essentially how corporations buy
Speaker 5: elections and the contention, and Trump did not make this
Speaker 5: point elegantly. He did not make this point well at all,
Speaker 5: and he made different points. He flirted way too much
Speaker 5: with the dominion voting stuff. But Trump allys have been
Speaker 5: very clearly making the point that Mark Zuckerberg basically bought
Speaker 5: the twenty twenty election. Mark Zuckerberg and some other billionaires
Speaker 5: basically bought the twenty twenty election. Per Mollyball's Time article
Speaker 5: about how a cabal of well funded.
Speaker 3: Illegally subsidized like some absentee voting and stuff.
Speaker 5: Right, that's it, right, is so like poured a bunch
Speaker 5: of money into dem districts. And again, that's not the
Speaker 5: definition of rig that everybody uses a lot of people
Speaker 5: use the definition to mean like dominion stuff, which is
Speaker 5: absolutely a conspiracy theory and insane, ridiculous nonsense, and it
Speaker 5: is not true. But it is kind of getting to
Speaker 5: this point where terrifying, as you said before, when you
Speaker 5: look at other countries that are constantly jailing political opponents
Speaker 5: and constantly having a quite elections that people aren't comfortable with,
Speaker 5: that people question and don't have faith in. We took
Speaker 5: that for granted for a really long time, and we're
Speaker 5: in a doomspoo right now where public faith in elections
Speaker 5: I only see it eroding over time, not going back
Speaker 5: in a better direction.
Speaker 3: Well, Stephanie Lambert's defense is kind of funny, she argues,
Speaker 3: so she basically is getting locked up for getting access
Speaker 3: to dominion emails under an NDA and under the secrecy
Speaker 3: of a lawsuit. That she's involved in and then leaking those,
Speaker 3: you know, breaking the NDA and leaking those. What she
Speaker 3: says is that she discovered evidence of a crime that
Speaker 3: Dominion had committed. And her argument was if she found
Speaker 3: a severed head in discovery, that of course she would
Speaker 3: have to then call the authorities and say, hey, there's
Speaker 3: a severed head here in this evidence box, and doesn't
Speaker 3: appear that anybody has told anybody about it. So, you
Speaker 3: know what, fair enough, I think that that particular example
Speaker 3: would in fact require her to go to law enforcement.
Speaker 4: And break her NDA.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: So her claim and her analogy then rests on whether
Speaker 3: she can prove that what the emails that she discovered
Speaker 3: related to Dominion prove a crime. And it has been
Speaker 3: established at this point that it did not. That that's
Speaker 3: not that's not where the quote unquote rating would have happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely. Let's move on to Texas big news. Actually,
Speaker 5: in a story that was big news yesterday, there was
Speaker 5: continuous big news when the Circuit Court of Appeals weight in.
Speaker 5: So let's start with E one. This is a tear
Speaker 5: street from NBC News. Supreme Court allows Texas to enforce
Speaker 5: immigration law. That law in question is SB four, which
Speaker 5: stands for Senate Bill for it allows Texas. Basically, this
Speaker 5: is a new law gives local police the power to
Speaker 5: arrest migrants. The three liberal justices dissented in this case.
Speaker 5: They rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration that
Speaker 5: said states do not have authority to legislate on immigration.
Speaker 5: It is solely a federal government issue. That's also what
Speaker 5: was actually at issue in a case that we talked
Speaker 5: about just a few weeks ago, of the enforcement of
Speaker 5: border laws. Texas is trying to put up different types
Speaker 5: of barriers in the Rio Grande in sections of the border.
Speaker 5: That is really similar. It's basically a clash over federalism
Speaker 5: and state versus federal powers. This is really similar to
Speaker 5: the law. As NBC WWO said in that first tear
Speaker 5: sheet can go into effect. Well, litigation continues in lower courts.
Speaker 5: It could still be blocked at a later date. Well,
Speaker 5: funny enough, Ryan after Ken Paxson, we can put E
Speaker 5: two up on the screen. He's the Attorney general of Texas.
Speaker 5: He said, huge win. Texas had defeated the Biden administration
Speaker 5: and acl US emergency motions at the Supreme Court. Our
Speaker 5: immigration law as before is now in effect, as always,
Speaker 5: it's my honor to defend Texas and it's sovereignty to
Speaker 5: lead us to victory in court. Well, that victory was
Speaker 5: short lived. We could put the next stair shape up
Speaker 5: on the screen. This is E three because then the
Speaker 5: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in to put that
Speaker 5: immigration law back on hold. There are arguments in court
Speaker 5: on this law actually today, Ryan. So it's an evolving
Speaker 5: situation and reminds me a lot of what happened in
Speaker 5: Arizona with then Governor jan Brewer when she passed I
Speaker 5: think it was called SB ten seventy. I think this
Speaker 5: was back around like twenty eleven during the Obama administration,
Speaker 5: these questions over state powers federal powers when it comes
Speaker 5: to enforcing immigration laws. At the time, the Obama Biden
Speaker 5: administration and now the Biden Harris administration maintains basically that
Speaker 5: states cannot take these actions to crack down on illegal immigration.
Speaker 5: And that's again at issue here in the spfore controversy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Mexico responded to this ruling from the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court yesterday by saying that they're going to enter
Speaker 3: a Friend of the Court memo that and and there,
Speaker 3: and they also said publicly, we're not dealing with Texas
Speaker 3: as a sovereign government, like Texas is not negotiating with
Speaker 3: Mexico as a country, like just like Mexican states would
Speaker 3: not be able to negotiate with the United States. And
Speaker 3: so they said they will not coordinate with Texas on
Speaker 3: deportations and otherwise they're like get out of here. Like
Speaker 3: our partner in Mexico's and our partner that we deal
Speaker 3: with is the United.
Speaker 4: States of America.
Speaker 3: Not doing immigration with every individual states raises questions over
Speaker 3: like how Texas plans to enforce this, How Texas is
Speaker 3: going to go about figuring out you know, who, you know,
Speaker 3: who it believes is in the country legally or or illegally.
Speaker 3: Is Texas going to create its own laws around this issue?
Speaker 3: Are they going to actually respect American laws? Like if
Speaker 3: if somebody has a deferral of prosecution from you know,
Speaker 3: some type of parole situation with the with the federal government,
Speaker 3: does Texas honor that. Does Texas say that anybody with
Speaker 3: a green card doesn't count? Does Texas only allow for uh,
Speaker 3: you know, full law on citizens to count, or is
Speaker 3: what what if Texas decides that actually naturalized citizens don't count,
Speaker 3: and only kind of native born citizens count. Like what
Speaker 3: would stop Texas from passing laws to that effect if
Speaker 3: they can just do their own immigration policy.
Speaker 4: And those are the those are the reasons.
Speaker 3: For instance, that the three liberal Supreme Court justice said
Speaker 3: that this would just create complete and total chaos if
Speaker 3: it was allowed to take effect, and which is why
Speaker 3: you know, they they argued that it should be you know,
Speaker 3: stayed in an emergency basis the fact that the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 3: which is made up of strong conservatives is yes, you
Speaker 3: would generously call them kooses, I would call them, Uh,
Speaker 3: your generosity also said, uh, that this has to be
Speaker 3: stayed pending. These these arguments goes to how huge a
Speaker 3: kind of break you know that this would represent, because
Speaker 3: what if what if New York besides to start doing its.
Speaker 5: Own sanctuaries are exactly this.
Speaker 3: Well, sanctuary cities are the opposite which are saying, we're
Speaker 3: not touching immigration law. Well, it's all to enforce it, right, Well,
Speaker 3: I mean if they can't stop, they cannot actually stop
Speaker 3: like a raid from happening in their city. What what
Speaker 3: they can do is they can say, if we arrest somebody,
Speaker 3: we're not doing your immigration work for you. We're not
Speaker 3: going to check their immigration status and we're not going
Speaker 3: to turn them over if we discover.
Speaker 4: But but it doesn't act.
Speaker 3: Stop immigration authorities from like going into state Philadelphia.
Speaker 5: Sure, but if illegal immigration is a crime, they're not
Speaker 5: enforcing laws against the crust. That's part of the same right.
Speaker 3: You know, states generally enforced state laws and not federal laws.
Speaker 5: Sure, that's sure, sure, sure, But I mean there are
Speaker 5: plenty of state statutes that are violated by people, whatever
Speaker 5: it is, fake social Security cards. And the sanctuary says
Speaker 5: we're not complying with immigration authorities. And I think it's
Speaker 5: interesting because actually, to this point, the Constitution is not
Speaker 5: clear on this question. And Ken Paxton, in his statement
Speaker 5: after the Supreme Court initially ruled, said the Constitution is
Speaker 5: clear Texas has the sovereign authority to defend its borders
Speaker 5: from cartels, et cetera. And this is where Texas Republicans
Speaker 5: and Republicans in general favor the invasion language because they
Speaker 5: think that makes the constitutional powers to enforce immigration more clear. Now,
Speaker 5: I don't blame Texas for doing what it did at all.
Speaker 5: We probably disagree on that. We definitely disagree on that,
Speaker 5: but at the same time, I actually do not think
Speaker 5: the Constitution is clear on this question whatsoever, which is
Speaker 5: why you have this ping ponging back and forth in
Speaker 5: the court. And the other thing that's probably worth mentioning
Speaker 5: is this flood of people that have come into the
Speaker 5: country over the course of the Biden administration is not
Speaker 5: the same as what's happened before, where you have people
Speaker 5: who are actually illegally crossing the Rio Grande and then
Speaker 5: sneaking into different parts of America. That's still happening, But
Speaker 5: I don't know how much this law even affects what's
Speaker 5: happened over the last couple of years because so many
Speaker 5: people right now are here on temporary humanitarian parole, and
Speaker 5: that's basically Republicans. In my own entire objection to what
Speaker 5: Joe Biden has done is that it's created the system
Speaker 5: of mass humanitarian parole in the hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 5: thousands a year, and so if you're here in humanitarian parole,
Speaker 5: you're not getting deported by Texas police or any.
Speaker 3: What Texas would have to do is then go find
Speaker 3: people who've actually been in Texas for like ten years
Speaker 3: but are undocumented and don't have that paperwork protection. And
Speaker 3: then they wrote into the law that you can't arrest
Speaker 3: people what in hospitals, schools, and churches, but they can
Speaker 3: go everywhere else and try to And then how do
Speaker 3: they guess, like are they just just papellis and they're
Speaker 3: just asking people for papers? Like on the streets of
Speaker 3: San Antonio or Austin you set up and that was Arizona?
Speaker 5: Was that traffic stops?
Speaker 1: I remember?
Speaker 5: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right? So then exactly yes? And so then do you
Speaker 3: have Texas rangers setting up checkpoints like in cities throughout
Speaker 3: Texas so that everyone who's walking down this particular street
Speaker 3: has to go through this checkpoint. So all the people
Speaker 3: who are like cheering this like you're potentially opening the
Speaker 3: door for a papers please society. And okay, now that
Speaker 3: now they're asking for immigration papers. If I really want
Speaker 3: to pander to to the right, what if they start
Speaker 3: asking for vaccine.
Speaker 5: Passport but blue versus red stage Yeah right.
Speaker 4: You want you? Does that sound cool?
Speaker 3: Like checkpoints where you have to not just have your
Speaker 3: immigration papers in order, but all your other papers.
Speaker 4: You have to be up to date on all of
Speaker 4: their you.
Speaker 3: Know, you can't have any back taxes paid, no lean,
Speaker 3: no leans against your house because you know you didn't pay.
Speaker 4: You your water bill.
Speaker 3: Gun permits yeah yeah yeah, pat you down.
Speaker 4: You have a gun.
Speaker 3: You have a gun permit?
Speaker 5: Yeah No. I mean, I think it goes back to
Speaker 5: what we were talking about in the block about Trump
Speaker 5: arrests on the being on the cusp of careening down
Speaker 5: the slippery slope oligarchical doom spiral where everyone in power
Speaker 5: is just constantly one upping each other in response to
Speaker 5: what they perceive as a norm breach. Well, we're going
Speaker 5: to just keep breaching norms until we get to that point. Now.
Speaker 5: I genuinely again, I don't think the constitution is clear.
Speaker 5: I think Texas is in a very real dilemma where
Speaker 5: the Biden administration's policy has radically transformed Texas, has created
Speaker 5: in those border cities serious safety concerns, serious public health concerns,
Speaker 5: serious welfare concerns, like I mean the literal welfare of
Speaker 5: these communities like Alpasso, where you have people in tragic circumstances,
Speaker 5: sleeping on the streets, in dirty conditions, not enough to eat,
Speaker 5: you know, these uncertain futures, and it's a real problem
Speaker 5: for Texas and Texas should be able to try to
Speaker 5: take steps to disincentivize people from coming into the state
Speaker 5: if that's the will of the voters and the Republican representatives,
Speaker 5: I mean small are Republican representatives. I do think it is.
Speaker 5: There's a substantive question here. I think the Constitution doesn't
Speaker 5: have an obvious solution, which is why the stuff ping
Speaker 5: pongs through the courts and why again, basically, you can't
Speaker 5: do anything in Congress because we are an oligarchy. There's
Speaker 5: no way to get around the fact that Congress should
Speaker 5: be acting in these cases. And there's just no way
Speaker 5: for you know, you have the bill HR.
Speaker 3: Two that got to give at some point, though, right you'd.
Speaker 5: Think although under Biden were up to uh several millions,
Speaker 5: uh just conservative estimates around four million people. And if
Speaker 5: that's not what's going to give.
Speaker 3: I'm still shocked that Republicans didn't take the all of
Speaker 3: the authorities that Democrats were ready to hand to the
Speaker 3: executive when it came to immigration, which then a Steven
Speaker 3: Miller type in the Trump administration could have ripped wide
Speaker 3: open and done extraordinary amounts of damage if he wanted to.
Speaker 3: But for political reasons they said no because it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's not enough, and they didn't want to give Democrats
Speaker 3: a win.
Speaker 5: Well, Trump was willing to negotiate with Pelosi on DAKA.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's what it.
Speaker 4: Been doing back in the day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was. And you know, obviously that got stopped
Speaker 5: because probably people like Steven Miller were so upset that
Speaker 5: Trump even flirted with that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, so and talk deep state. So New
Speaker 3: York Times has deep state trending by with with it
Speaker 3: with a very interestingly chosen, really bizarre kind of decision
Speaker 3: to make this like a six or seven minute opinion video.
Speaker 4: By the opinion pages.
Speaker 3: So it's not I'm sure the reporters over at the
Speaker 3: Times would want me to reiterate over and over that
Speaker 3: this was the opinion side of the New York Times
Speaker 3: that did this, not the kind of news reporting side,
Speaker 3: because I'm sure they're like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 4: What is this.
Speaker 3: Uh so we're not we don't, we're not going to
Speaker 3: play the video. This is there there their copyrighted material.
Speaker 3: We'll let you go over and you can check it
Speaker 3: out over at the over the New York Times. But essentially,
Speaker 3: what it's it's kind of it's it flirts with being
Speaker 3: satirical at times like it it comes in with like
Speaker 3: this heavy tone that they're going to kind of investigate
Speaker 3: the Trump administration's claim that a deep state has really
Speaker 3: kind of taken over the government. And they go to
Speaker 3: the EPA and talk to somebody who you know, is
Speaker 3: in charge of water quality. They go to somebody in NASA.
Speaker 3: We can move off the element now if you want.
Speaker 3: They go to somebody that you know who created it.
Speaker 3: Basically this program that showed that you can kind of
Speaker 3: hit an asteroid or a meteor and send it off course,
Speaker 3: you know which anybody who has seen Don't Look Up
Speaker 3: can say, you know what, forget the metaphor about climate change.
Speaker 3: If we don't want to get hit by an actual comment,
Speaker 3: it be nice to study how to like deflect a
Speaker 3: comment rather than like it don't look up spoilers like
Speaker 3: leave it to the tech guys.
Speaker 5: You're talking about how great SDI was in the nineteen
Speaker 5: eighties and how much you supported Star Wars.
Speaker 3: There you go, yeah, I meant got to work those
Speaker 3: got to work out those lasers so you can target
Speaker 3: the meteors and save planet from extinction. Basically they talk
Speaker 3: to a bunch of bureaucrats who are doing like genuinely
Speaker 3: good work and saying like we have we have uncovered
Speaker 3: the deep state. So there's there's a lot to unpack
Speaker 3: about this argument. I guess we can just roll through
Speaker 3: this first, Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: Bringing the nuance.
Speaker 3: They are the mouthpiece of the state, help helping to
Speaker 3: get this thing trending, though probably didn't need much help
Speaker 3: because of how kind of absurd the whole thing was,
Speaker 3: so we.
Speaker 4: Can take it, take it piece by piece.
Speaker 5: By the way, that is a man who has how
Speaker 5: much how many billions in.
Speaker 3: States that well is more deep state than this guy.
Speaker 3: He is the deep state. Yes, yeah, Elon Musk is
Speaker 3: the deep state.
Speaker 5: So it is kind of interesting that.
Speaker 3: It is getting But although he's starting to surface like
Speaker 3: he's so you know, he's gotten so powerful, he's not
Speaker 3: even deep state anymore. So two things. One, to me,
Speaker 3: the deep state that Trump is often referring to is
Speaker 3: like the CIA and the National Security apparatus that you
Speaker 3: know that he believes correctly kind of tried to undermine
Speaker 3: his his presidency, Like that's that's really what he means,
Speaker 3: what his And I'm curious if you agree with me
Speaker 3: on this. What his more ideological right wing allies mean
Speaker 3: by deep state is actually the EPA and the broader
Speaker 3: administrative states. That's such an interesting but they wanted that
Speaker 3: that's the deep state.
Speaker 4: They want to disband it.
Speaker 3: Where if I bet if you said that Trump they're
Speaker 3: saying the EPA is the deep state, you'd be like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? You know, I'm sure he's
Speaker 3: annoyed by the EPA when they get in his way
Speaker 3: around development projects.
Speaker 4: But when he's talking deep state.
Speaker 3: He's talking Russia Gate and spying on his campaign and
Speaker 3: all and all of those types of things, right, Like
Speaker 3: those are like.
Speaker 5: I think that's a really interesting point. I was thinking
Speaker 5: about this yesterday, but I think you put it. I
Speaker 5: wasn't thinking about in the word the way that you
Speaker 5: put it, which I think is really well done. Because
Speaker 5: there's the deep state that is sort of the Schedule
Speaker 5: F priands of people like Groundo. Santa's Schedule F would
Speaker 5: basically allow the president. But I love this proposal. I
Speaker 5: love Schedule F. I think it's in the New.
Speaker 3: York Times video. They warn't about Schedule F, which would
Speaker 3: what allow basically allow the administration to root out a
Speaker 3: bunch of civil servants without kind of the kind of
Speaker 3: worker protections that have been built up over time.
Speaker 5: And the idea in conservative circles is that basically, at
Speaker 5: vast bureaucratic institutions like the EPA for example, any given
Speaker 5: president really doesn't have control over his own executive agencies
Speaker 5: like the EPA actually, thanks to Richard Nixon, falls under
Speaker 5: executive powers, meaning you are the one, the president is
Speaker 5: the one who's technically in charge of these bureaus. They say,
Speaker 5: with the vast growth at some of these organizations, Department
Speaker 5: of Labor, et cetera, they are not really under the
Speaker 5: president's executive perview constitutional perview because they're so powerful on
Speaker 5: their own. This is being litigated in the Chevron case
Speaker 5: that's going through the Supreme Court right now, which will
Speaker 5: be huge news when it's decided around June. But basically
Speaker 5: executive powers is the question of Schedule F. And so yes,
Speaker 5: when some people say deep state, I think they do
Speaker 5: really mean like the EPA, whatever, as when I say it,
Speaker 5: I typically only mean the National Security Apparatus. But I
Speaker 5: think the word, to your point, has been used interchangeably,
Speaker 5: which allowed the New York Times to sort of construct
Speaker 5: this giant s draw man about how gosh, what is
Speaker 5: the quote from this video that's so good? There's one
Speaker 5: quote that I particularly love from the video about how
Speaker 5: you're right. It is kind of like it's kind of
Speaker 5: tongue in cheek and then also kind of not tongue
Speaker 5: in cheek, you know, like they tried to they tried
Speaker 5: to like sort of be very clever about it.
Speaker 4: Well you're looking for it.
Speaker 3: I'll make the point that I think that what a
Speaker 3: lot of Trump's allies are doing is weaponizing his and
Speaker 3: his supporters hostility to the national security deep state in
Speaker 3: their unrelated attack on the rest of the government.
Speaker 4: Right, Like, their real.
Speaker 3: Goal is to get rid of the EPA and the
Speaker 3: NLRB and Department of Labor, Department of Education. They want
Speaker 3: to get to get rid of it. They've always wanted
Speaker 3: to get rid of all this cfp B. Whereas whereas
Speaker 3: most of I think Trump's base like the CFPB, Like
Speaker 3: if you tell them what the cfp B does, it's
Speaker 3: like the place that you can go to complain if
Speaker 3: you get ripped off by a corporation. And and they're
Speaker 3: going to like they've paid back billions of dollars to
Speaker 3: Americans and uh and go after fraud, but you know,
Speaker 3: engaged in by corporations or the FTC breaking up, breaking
Speaker 3: up monopolies and stopping mergers that would be harmful to consumers, workers, environment,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Like most of Trump's base, I've been it's like, no,
Speaker 3: that's that's a good thing. Do you like Cowley and
Speaker 3: uh and you know, and on other kind of maga
Speaker 3: Senators people new right folks are totally into, you know,
Speaker 3: that element. But the kind of corporate wing is not
Speaker 3: at all into what Lena Khan is up to and
Speaker 3: would love to kind of make her collateral damage of
Speaker 3: an attack on.
Speaker 4: The deep state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just quote unquote deep state in the national
Speaker 3: security sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean again, like I'm hardly a libertarian or
Speaker 5: part of the corporate wing of the conservative sphere, but
Speaker 5: I think, you know, there's this argument especially I actually
Speaker 5: wrote a piece a couple of years ago called like
Speaker 5: the culture something like the War on energy is part
Speaker 5: of the culture war something like that. I don't remember
Speaker 5: exactly what the headline was, but basically, from a conservative perspective,
Speaker 5: the EPA various regulations that come out of the EPA,
Speaker 5: which is actually what's on the docket in the Chevron case.
Speaker 5: What's that issue in the Chevron case that's going through
Speaker 5: the Supreme courts right now about how these agencies can
Speaker 5: act on their own versus you know, through various other
Speaker 5: exercises of constitutional power, whether it's from Congress or the
Speaker 5: President of United States. That's you know, sort of what
Speaker 5: you have is unelected people in Washington, d c. Through
Speaker 5: some of these agencies making decisions that should be made
Speaker 5: on a state or local level, or should be made
Speaker 5: by the President themselves, or at the under the authority
Speaker 5: the president themselves. And technically they are acting under the
Speaker 5: authority of the President themselves. But the question of whether
Speaker 5: that power has become overly broad is a very real one,
Speaker 5: and it does. You know, there are corporations that really
Speaker 5: love these executive agencies because they feel like they have
Speaker 5: the revolving door power and can bend them to their will.
Speaker 5: And so if you disempower the agencies, consolidate some of them,
Speaker 5: Like I wouldn't fully get rid of the Department of Education,
Speaker 5: which has been a goal of the conservative movement for many,
Speaker 5: many years, but dramatically shrink it down. I think that
Speaker 5: would give teachers unions less power. It certainly would give
Speaker 5: teachers unions less power, but it would empower them more
Speaker 5: on the local level. So anyway, all that is to say,
Speaker 5: the conflation is a real problem for the right because
Speaker 5: there are obviously consensus points between people like you and
Speaker 5: me on the national security deep state. Those are not
Speaker 5: consensus points at all on the broader executive power question.
Speaker 3: And there's an interesting unchallenged assumption in the New York
Speaker 3: Times video where they can saying that these you know,
Speaker 3: these government people are doing this good work for you.
Speaker 3: Trump wants them to work for him. Yeah, But the
Speaker 3: unchallenged assumption there is that the president doesn't work for
Speaker 3: the people like you. Actually don't you want the bureaucrats
Speaker 3: to work for the president? Now for the New York Times,
Speaker 3: they don't if the president is Trump. And during you know,
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, you had all of these cases of of
Speaker 3: bureaucrats and I cheered them on undermining Trump and like
Speaker 3: pursuing because that's that's a political struggle. But you know,
Speaker 3: you'd have these social media accounts that would like go
Speaker 3: rogue against the Trump the Trump administration. But if you
Speaker 3: think about it from a shoe on the other foot perspective,
Speaker 3: Let's say a Bernie Sanders, you know, Pregaza gets elected
Speaker 3: president and he has an agenda, radical agenda that he
Speaker 3: wants to accomplish, and a bunch of the bureaucrats don't
Speaker 3: like his agenda and work to sabotage it. I would
Speaker 3: be outraged. Mm hmm, Like, I know, I didn't elect you.
Speaker 3: I elected Bernie to implement this agenda, implement his agenda.
Speaker 4: Yes, so I get like so.
Speaker 3: The Times has an interesting kind of contradiction there that
Speaker 3: they need to work out.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Their quote is when we hear deep state, instead
Speaker 5: of recoiling, we should rally. We should think about the
Speaker 5: workers otherwise known as our public servants, that every day
Speaker 5: superheroes who wake up ready to dedicate their careers and
Speaker 5: their lives to serving us. These are the Americans we employee.
Speaker 5: Even though their work is often invisible, it makes their
Speaker 5: lives better. But if Donald Trump is re elected in
Speaker 5: an act scheduled, if that could change, he would have
Speaker 5: the power to evsterate the so called deep state and
Speaker 5: replace our public servants with people who work for him,
Speaker 5: not us. Of course, from the perspective of like the
Speaker 5: real left, yes, the revolving door at the EPA between
Speaker 5: Exon Mobile is a very real thing.
Speaker 3: Do they really work for us or do they work
Speaker 3: for Exon Mobile their future employees? Now, like some of
Speaker 3: these agencies are you know, doing great work like that,
Speaker 3: like the FTC.
Speaker 4: That we mentioned.
Speaker 3: But if I had one criticism editorially kind of stylistically
Speaker 3: of the Times video, it mocks the entire idea, and
Speaker 3: so it's you're never going like it was. It was
Speaker 3: clearly intended for people that already agree with them, yeah,
Speaker 3: to like buck up their their take rather and like look,
Speaker 3: look how you know ridiculous these people are that don't
Speaker 3: understand that.
Speaker 4: You know, NASA does great work and they it's great work.
Speaker 3: And the late Department of Labor, you know, that's the
Speaker 3: other one they mentioned, Department of Labor rescuing thirteen year
Speaker 3: olds from working in slaughterhouse.
Speaker 5: It's like, although it's not doing a great job of
Speaker 5: that either.
Speaker 3: Which means that we need to fund them more, not
Speaker 3: do more, not do less.
Speaker 5: It means we need to cut down the revolving door
Speaker 5: problem of industry lobbying. The Department of Labor rind closed doors.
Speaker 3: But it's it's there's there's no persuasion attempt in the
Speaker 3: video at all.
Speaker 4: It just it just mocks the entire notion.
Speaker 3: And so which, okay, you know that's that's their editorial
Speaker 3: choice if they don't want to try to persuade, and
Speaker 3: maybe The Times is just given up on trying to
Speaker 3: reach an alternative audience that doesn't already agree with them.
Speaker 3: But that would be a shame because of how you know,
Speaker 3: hegimonic they are at least over mainstream media.
Speaker 5: Well, Brian, you have a great story that you reported
Speaker 5: out over at the Intercept Intercept about Honduras.
Speaker 4: Fun.
Speaker 3: This is a fun one.
Speaker 5: Tell us what the hell is going on?
Speaker 4: So we can put this put this one up on
Speaker 4: the screen here.
Speaker 3: So the story went up last night over at the
Speaker 3: Intercept and it's a complicated, but not that complicated story.
Speaker 3: So if you're just listening, the headline on this one
Speaker 3: is Honduras ratchets up battle with crypto libertarian investors rejects
Speaker 3: World Bank court. The subheadline after the Honduran president repealed
Speaker 3: a law granting unfettered authority to outside investors. Crypto keistadors
Speaker 3: took to this to a World Bank arbitration court. I'm
Speaker 3: pleased with myself for crypto keystadors love it.
Speaker 4: I think that's I think that's a good one.
Speaker 3: Let's start with the initial irony that this that these
Speaker 3: are crypto libertarians who are using the basically one of
Speaker 3: the great biggest examples of a globalist institution, which would
Speaker 3: be the World Bank. Like they're supposed to hate the
Speaker 3: World Bank. Instead they're using the World Bank.
Speaker 5: Ron Paul raged against the World Bank for.
Speaker 3: Years and now and now these crypto bros are trying
Speaker 3: to use the World Bank to force Hondoras to do
Speaker 3: fill in the blank. I'll explain what they're doing here.
Speaker 3: So for this you have to back up to two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine. You could start. So Manuel Zelia, as
Speaker 3: the president at the time of Honduras, is left leaning
Speaker 3: president who starts to try to reform the constitution or
Speaker 3: try to challenge the limits on running for another term.
Speaker 3: The military overthrows him in a coup which was supported
Speaker 3: by the United States. It does not appear that it
Speaker 3: was orchestrated by the United States.
Speaker 4: Maybe we'll learn more.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of ties between the coup lotters
Speaker 3: and the United States officials. Regardless, Hillary Clinton a State
Speaker 3: department like immediately is pleased by the coup and supports
Speaker 3: kind of a new person taking power. After Zelaya is ousted,
Speaker 3: there are then, you know, kind of bogus rough elections
Speaker 3: that are held that see portfolio. Lobo Sosa, right wing,
Speaker 3: right wing president take power in Honduras. He immediately moves
Speaker 3: to undo all of the worker protections and the land
Speaker 3: reform and the other kind of left wing social policy
Speaker 3: that Zalaya was putting into place. At the same time,
Speaker 3: the head of the National Congress, Juan Orlando Ornandez, puts
Speaker 3: forward legislation that will carve out up to a third
Speaker 3: of Honduras for these radical liber this radical libertarian idea,
Speaker 3: which is that you can just have this like this
Speaker 3: American corporation. You can have this territory and it's called
Speaker 3: a z and you can create your own laws. You
Speaker 3: will be a sovereign government. You can you can create
Speaker 3: a city, you can you can pretend that you are
Speaker 3: an actual government and that we will honor you as
Speaker 3: a government. And they do all sorts of like insane
Speaker 3: things like based on the amount of property you own,
Speaker 3: is how many votes you get in the election. It's
Speaker 3: like it's like how libertarian, you know, you can get
Speaker 3: rid of pedophilia laws like it's like a libertarian kind
Speaker 3: of fever dream. They take bitcoin as like, you know,
Speaker 3: as kind of legal tender in these areas.
Speaker 5: Did you watch Anakapolco by the way, in Hi. It
Speaker 5: was a great documentary about an attempt that basically do this.
Speaker 3: And so they're trying to do this all over the world,
Speaker 3: but Honduras is one place that they picked on and
Speaker 3: it did not end well, by the way, I'm surprised then. Well,
Speaker 3: and so the Supreme Court of Honduras at the time says,
Speaker 3: you can't do this, this is this is unconstitutional. Hernandez,
Speaker 3: as the President of Congress, sacks a bunch of Supreme
Speaker 3: Court justices, puts in new Supreme Court justices and amends
Speaker 3: a constitution and says and the new justices are like, actually, oh,
Speaker 3: this is this is totally fine.
Speaker 4: You can do this.
Speaker 3: Hernandez then takes power after Lobo Sosa implements these these
Speaker 3: z laws.
Speaker 4: Why are we talking about Hernandez?
Speaker 3: Lobo Sosa, his his brother Tony Hernandez, who's a congressman,
Speaker 3: was a well known narco trafficker, like one like who
Speaker 3: prosecutors federal US federal prosecutors later said was moving monumental
Speaker 3: amounts of cocaine now and and also that he was
Speaker 3: funding the campaigns of the past two presidents, his brother
Speaker 3: and the one before him. Now, remember that Zealia was
Speaker 3: overthrown in two thousand and nine ostensibly because he was
Speaker 3: trying to extend to a second term. Well, lo and behold,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the new Supreme Court that Hernanda's
Speaker 3: put into place doesn't have problems with new terms anymore.
Speaker 3: And so in twenty seventeen, he runs for re election,
Speaker 3: funded by narco traffickers, again through incredibly irregularity. It's just ridiculous,
Speaker 3: ridiculously fraudulent election. He claims victory, and the Trump administration
Speaker 3: quickly recognizes him and says, this is our man. You
Speaker 3: know we Hernan Hernanda's president going to continue to be
Speaker 3: This is while America knows that he's deeply tied at
Speaker 3: the hip with drug traffickers. So he finally leaves office
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, and by then he's lost usefulness
Speaker 3: to the United States. So, along with his brother, the
Speaker 3: president is himself arrested and indicted and earlier this month,
Speaker 3: convicted of being a co trafficker. So the Hernandez brothers
Speaker 3: are currently sitting in American prisons. Meanwhile, Shiamura Castro, who
Speaker 3: is the wife of Zelia, wins in the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one presidential election legitimately on kind of a left wing
Speaker 3: platform that she's going to fight back against this narco corruption.
Speaker 3: She's going to roll back these kind of right wing policies,
Speaker 3: and she's going to bring in Zelia's agenda of the
Speaker 3: land reform of worker rights, and she promises that she's
Speaker 3: going to kick these crypto bros out of the country,
Speaker 3: that this is obscene. We're not turning our country over
Speaker 3: to these guys. So she very quickly passes through the
Speaker 3: National Congress a repeal of these laws. If there was
Speaker 3: sovereignty and democracy in Honduras, if that's what we respected,
Speaker 3: that would be the end of it. Be like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 3: your coup government handed over a bunch of the country
Speaker 3: to you. But now your coup government is in prison,
Speaker 3: a federal prison in the US. So you lose, you
Speaker 3: pack up and go home. No, of course that's not
Speaker 3: how it goes. So the crypto crowd sue goes to
Speaker 3: the World Bank, which has en up you know, through
Speaker 3: the Central American Free Trade Agreement, had set up this
Speaker 3: obscure court that is that is part of this this
Speaker 3: theme that developed over the last few decades called basically
Speaker 3: investor settlement dispute resolutions, so that you take the you
Speaker 3: take a sovereignty out of the question, and you have
Speaker 3: like the World Bank or the WTO or some other
Speaker 3: global financial institution sets up an arbitration court, and if
Speaker 3: a corporation has a problem with a government, they take
Speaker 3: it to that court rather than rather than having to
Speaker 3: go through you know, Honduran courts. The idea being that
Speaker 3: these governments are so corrupt they can't be trusted. But
Speaker 3: the actual idea being that the corporations can corrupt the
Speaker 3: global financial institutions and win and win judgments there that
Speaker 3: they can then get an American court to enforce and
Speaker 3: then they can start seizing Honduran property all over the world.
Speaker 3: So the response from Shiamora Castro was, you know what
Speaker 3: we're at, We're leaving this World Bank court. We're not
Speaker 3: playing this game. We're out of here.
Speaker 4: And so she did that. Last week.
Speaker 3: I spoke to the Commissioner that she is appointed to
Speaker 3: oppose these these crypto bros. He said that the World
Speaker 3: Bank Court has acceded to its request to leave. I
Speaker 3: reached out to the crypto folks for comment. Uh, they said,
Speaker 3: it's unconstitutional. She can't just walk away from this court.
Speaker 3: The Honduran government tell me, know, like, that's not at
Speaker 3: all what the policy is. You know, it takes Congress
Speaker 3: to reach a treaty, but you can walk away from
Speaker 3: this court, like the treaty allows a mechanism for you
Speaker 3: to walk away.
Speaker 4: What I think will still happen is they'll continue this case.
Speaker 3: It might even win an arbitration ruling, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: in absentia, and then they'll start and force seeing this
Speaker 3: judgment against Honduran assets all over the world, exacerbating the
Speaker 3: problem for you know, the economic problems for Honduras. The
Speaker 3: crypto dudes are suing for eleven billion dollars.
Speaker 4: I think that you can google this, but.
Speaker 3: Honduran National Government's annual budget is something like seven billion.
Speaker 3: The GDP of Honduras is like thirty billion. The context,
Speaker 3: of course, is that this has led to a surge
Speaker 3: in migrants coming to the northern border as the narco
Speaker 3: traffickers took control. In the wake of this kind of
Speaker 3: US supported coup an attempt to like turn it into
Speaker 3: some libertarian paradise.
Speaker 5: This is such an incredible story. The narcos, by the way,
Speaker 5: that have been tried in court by the US, part
Speaker 5: of their defense has been that they were on really
Speaker 5: friendly terms with the US government. It's one of the
Speaker 5: paragraphs the US had no evident problem with that free
Speaker 5: willing narco state. Well, Hernandez was an off and remained useful.
Speaker 5: Yet once Castro took power in a backlash of the
Speaker 5: US field corruption, the U United States suddenly rediscovered its
Speaker 5: respect for the rule of law and the sanctity of
Speaker 5: contracts with US investors. Unfortunately, probably going to see something
Speaker 5: similar play out in Haiti in the days and weeks
Speaker 5: to come. This is a very interesting story in the
Speaker 5: ongoing saga of the marriage between crypto and Power's similar
Speaker 5: to kind of how the Internet started in not even
Speaker 5: how the Internet started, but how the Internet kind of
Speaker 5: took off in the nineties and the aughts, as you know,
Speaker 5: the sort of jungle the wild wild West in a
Speaker 5: great way, A lot of Americans saw this as like
Speaker 5: the frontier, and then quickly it was captured by powerful interests.
Speaker 5: Silicon Valley used to see themselves as the cowboys, and
Speaker 5: some of them still do, like Jeff Bezos and his
Speaker 5: dumb cowboy hat. But you have seen the marriage between
Speaker 5: people like Elon Musk. As we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 5: talked about how the New York Times is the mouthpiece
Speaker 5: of the state. Elon Musk is tied at the hit
Speaker 5: to the.
Speaker 3: State requires an authoritarian government. It turns out, so now
Speaker 3: crypto and again unaccountable.
Speaker 5: Well, Paul was right about the World Bank, by the way,
Speaker 5: I think we've talked about that before. But the marriage
Speaker 5: of crypto and power, the marriage of crypto in the
Speaker 5: World Bank, that's it seems to be a pretty interesting
Speaker 5: statement on the direction of crypto.
Speaker 3: It sure is. And I can wrap by saying that,
Speaker 3: like the going and going to comment for this company Prospera,
Speaker 3: which is the one that is suing for eleven billion dollars,
Speaker 3: was one of the more interesting.
Speaker 4: Kind of exchanges I've had.
Speaker 3: So I reached out to the communications department for the
Speaker 3: company and they wrote back.
Speaker 4: And then I can send these to producers. We can
Speaker 4: put them up.
Speaker 3: They wrote back and said, you'll be hearing from the
Speaker 3: office of the Technical Secretary. And I'm like, oh, so
Speaker 3: they're really going with soul, we're a government thing. And
Speaker 3: so then I hear from Jorge Colleendres and his signature
Speaker 3: says Technical Secretary, Republic of Honduras. But then under it
Speaker 3: it says the Republic of Honduras. Yeah, Republic of Honduras.
Speaker 3: Then underneath there's his manager General Service Provider. Like this
Speaker 3: this this interesting blend of public and private. And he says,
Speaker 3: you know, dear Ryan, attached to will find my office's
Speaker 3: statement on the unconstitutional withdrawal from ic SID by the
Speaker 3: Honduran government, and then attaches this this letter which has
Speaker 3: may we can, I can, I'll give this producers too.
Speaker 3: It's got it's got seals on it. It's got like
Speaker 3: government signature, is it like it really like is saying
Speaker 3: that it is a government And they say in the
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the statement. A Prospera ZED is
Speaker 3: a local government and special economic zone of the Republic
Speaker 3: of Honduras. It is governed by the Technical Secretary, a
Speaker 3: Honduran citizen by birth, appointed by the Government of Honduras
Speaker 3: and empowered by Article three twenty nine of the Honduran
Speaker 3: Constitution and the Zeed Organic Law to oversee the implementation
Speaker 3: of new policies and rules designed to foster economic development,
Speaker 3: facilitate job creation, attract national and foreign direct investment, and
Speaker 3: safeguard the fundamental rights of the workers and residents of
Speaker 3: this special jurisdiction. So like they're all in on the
Speaker 3: idea that like they are an actual government that has
Speaker 3: been created by the Honduran government, and that the Honduran
Speaker 3: government cannot undo the creation of that government.
Speaker 5: You know what special Economic Zone sounds like to me
Speaker 5: is like United Fruit owning the railroads. It's just it's
Speaker 5: the echoes are really really strong here. And then you
Speaker 5: have the United States suddenly rediscovering the rule of law
Speaker 5: because they want to protect corporate interests if that's what
Speaker 5: ends up happening, and it's echoes of the past are
Speaker 5: very strong in this case Special Economic Zone.
Speaker 3: What's funny, though, is then I also got a second reply.
Speaker 4: So the.
Speaker 3: Comms folks sent me off to the government, local government,
Speaker 3: but then somebody else from the corporation also as I
Speaker 3: sent it to a big channel, somebody else got it,
Speaker 3: and they're like, I'm busy, I can't respond now, but
Speaker 3: and sent like a five hundred word response which was
Speaker 3: basically saying Honduras is basically in league with like Cuba
Speaker 3: and Venezuela and we're fighting for fighting for freedom.
Speaker 4: Yes, so we got yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean that's also just all of these echoes of
Speaker 5: the past in this case study, where it's like, I
Speaker 5: don't want to sneer at people, whether they're in America
Speaker 5: or Honduras or you know, people who really love Bukele
Speaker 5: who had a failed crypto experiment. But it's there are
Speaker 5: good reasons that people sort of and they probably would
Speaker 5: find common ground with the two of us on a
Speaker 5: lot of issues, Like hardcore libertarians that really believe in
Speaker 5: the vision of crypto and the mission of crypto. I
Speaker 5: don't want to come across as sneering about that. And
Speaker 5: similar in the past. I mean there are people who.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is controversial stuff within the crypto world,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of crypto people are like this is
Speaker 3: this is crazy, Like you try to do your floating
Speaker 3: cities and realize that that wasn't going to work, so
Speaker 3: now you're just going to like third world countries and
Speaker 3: trying to just take territory there. Yep.
Speaker 5: And a lot of really great visions get derailed by
Speaker 5: billionaires derailed by billionaires and captured by their interests, and
Speaker 5: they end up ruining people with good intentions lives in
Speaker 5: the process.
Speaker 3: All Right, I just sent back the emails perfect.
Speaker 5: So if you're watching this, you probably saw them. I
Speaker 5: haven't seen them yet. I look for it. I'll have
Speaker 5: to watch to see the emails, f Ryan. This has
Speaker 5: been another fun edition of Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: Always always a good time here.
Speaker 5: We got to talk about Honduras. We got to watch
Speaker 5: the State Department.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a hearing this afternoon or this morning
Speaker 3: that I'm headed to now where the Assistant Secretary donlu
Speaker 3: is going to be solo testifying at the house. He's
Speaker 3: the State Department official who basically nudged Imran Khan out
Speaker 3: of power yes back in twenty twenty two, so it'll
Speaker 3: be interesting to see if he gets questions about that
Speaker 3: or the US is response to the brazenly stolen election
Speaker 3: of February eighth.
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Speaker 5: get the whole show right to your inbox. And I
Speaker 5: will say, Ryan, I think we can officially tease that
Speaker 5: we're getting really close to Friday show.
Speaker 3: But only if you guys do a couple more subscriptions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, flood flood us with subscriptions.
Speaker 4: Today and then we'll do a Friday show.
Speaker 5: Then we'll take them to Crystal and Sager and say, look,
Speaker 5: the people are calling clamoring for Counterpoints.
Speaker 3: Friday, but not yet.
Speaker 4: So for now, we'll see you next Wednesday.
Speaker 5: Sounds good to see you guys next Wednesday.