Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you've caught The Bro Show on Monday, but one
Speaker 3: of the segments was Woke or Based. We're going to
Speaker 3: have the subject of that segment on the show today,
Speaker 3: Doha Macky looking forward to that.
Speaker 4: This is a great new game show. I'm all for it,
Speaker 4: Like we should be pitching this NBC.
Speaker 3: We really should.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Thursday Night's the NBC Woke or Based
Speaker 4: hosted by Ryan Graham and Sager and Jenny. You'll never
Speaker 4: know who's woke.
Speaker 3: And who's based until the end of the program.
Speaker 4: That's right. Well, huge news continues to come in. We're
Speaker 4: going to start with the very spolashy At least it
Speaker 4: was Bill as being splashy interviewed between Sean Hannity, Elon Musk,
Speaker 4: and Donald Trump that happened in primetime last night. We're
Speaker 4: going to go through what it all means, what they said.
Speaker 4: We have lots of good clips.
Speaker 3: Ryan.
Speaker 4: We're then pivoting to Israel.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the hostage exchange went off over the weekend,
Speaker 3: despite the best efforts of Trump and jo to keep
Speaker 3: it from happening, and now they are talking about finishing
Speaker 3: Phase one faster than they had before. We're going to
Speaker 3: talk about you know what's next there. They're also an
Speaker 3: indictment of five Israeli soldiers for their role in raping
Speaker 3: a detainee. If you remember, there were those infamous right
Speaker 3: to rape protests Israel after the allegations were first made.
Speaker 3: So we'll talk about the indictment that that was just
Speaker 3: handed down. We will not get a chance to talk
Speaker 3: about big news last night, but you guys just go
Speaker 3: read the story on this. Jared Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil,
Speaker 3: has been charged a lot with more than thirty of
Speaker 3: his alleged co conspirators in trying to do a coup
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two to stay in power. Some pretty
Speaker 3: incredible details coming out of there, including the alleged attempted
Speaker 3: assassination of a Supreme Court justice who, if I recall,
Speaker 3: correctly became a Supreme Court justice in a corrupt bargain
Speaker 3: with bolsonarow to get him into the presidency in the
Speaker 3: first place, and an alleged attempted poisoning of Lula to
Speaker 3: Silva the actual president. Like so, according to the allegations,
Speaker 3: Bolsonaro was aware of and approved of a plan to
Speaker 3: kill Lula and a Supreme Court justice in the process
Speaker 3: of retaining power. He failed to do so. He came
Speaker 3: with the king and missed. He's now polling even with
Speaker 3: Lula for the next round. And so we'll see. Did
Speaker 3: they take too long to do this? Do they really
Speaker 3: have the goods? I don't know.
Speaker 4: They're gonna send cash pteal to Brazil in Connor right now. Well,
Speaker 4: Patel actually will be up for he basically they've got
Speaker 4: to cloture yesterday, so he'll be up for a vote
Speaker 4: tomorrow on Thursday.
Speaker 3: The labor friendly Republican Yeah, he was up in a
Speaker 3: hearing today too.
Speaker 4: That's right. Laurie Schavez de Riemer is sitting before the
Speaker 4: Senate Help Committee. So Labor Committee, and that'll be really
Speaker 4: really interesting because she's sort of, at one source tell
Speaker 4: me recently quote she's a leftist in moderates clothing, which
Speaker 4: is quite interesting because she's also seen as somebody who
Speaker 4: could potentially pick up the votes of on the committee,
Speaker 4: at least Bernie Sanders of someone like Tammy Baldwin. But
Speaker 4: Dog's becoming kind of a cultural litmus test for Democrats.
Speaker 4: So we'll pay attention to that. But you'll see the
Speaker 4: hearing over the course of the day. That is foreshore.
Speaker 4: My colleague James Billow from Unheard interviewed Steve Bannon and
Speaker 4: ended up in New York Times headlines, was sort of
Speaker 4: everywhere yesterday. So James is going to be on the
Speaker 4: show to walk through his experience with Steve Bannon. Bannon
Speaker 4: told him that Elon Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant,
Speaker 4: and so I guess it makes sense that ended up
Speaker 4: in headlines. But James is going to join the show
Speaker 4: to walk through what that means. And we are then
Speaker 4: going to dig into the wild Eric Adams saga not
Speaker 4: over yet, not over yet, and I think maybe more
Speaker 4: interesting than some people are giving it credit for being.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously the entire indictment is like fascinating from
Speaker 4: top to bottom, has been since it dropped. But the
Speaker 4: question of how the Trump DOJ came to try walking
Speaker 4: it all back is pretty interesting as well. Then Lena
Speaker 4: Khan got a win from Donald Trump's FTC.
Speaker 3: Is that's right? Yes, yesterday, the FTC announced that it
Speaker 3: would be adopting Lena Khan's framework for evaluating mergers going forward.
Speaker 3: Lena Khan has taken a much much broader approach to antitrust,
Speaker 3: saying that the way that corporate power broadly is impacted,
Speaker 3: the way that workers are affected, the way the economy
Speaker 3: is affected, needs to be taken into account, not just
Speaker 3: the assertions of corporations about what the effects on prices
Speaker 3: and quote unquote consumer welfare would be. The Wall Street
Speaker 3: Journal has argued that Lena Cohn's approach to this means
Speaker 3: basically the end of the free world as we know it.
Speaker 3: And here you have the Trump FTC chair coming in
Speaker 3: and ratifying it, saying they're going to use the exact
Speaker 3: same standard. It's the new bipartisan consensus. And so to
Speaker 3: talk about that, we're going to have Biden's former anti
Speaker 3: trust chair at the Department of Justice Doha Mecki. She
Speaker 3: was the deputy Anti Trust chair for most of Biden's term,
Speaker 3: underneath Jonathan Canter. When he stepped down towards the end,
Speaker 3: she became acting chief for the last couple months of
Speaker 3: the Biden administration. She's close ally of Lena Khon, so
Speaker 3: she'll be on the program to talk about how it
Speaker 3: is that MAGA and the left anti trust movement are
Speaker 3: now actually making serious progress in Washington.
Speaker 4: That's such a great guest. Let's get to the a block,
Speaker 4: which was Donald Trump and Elon Musk's much hyped interview
Speaker 4: with Sean Hannity on primetime Fox News Tuesday evening. Now,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of good clips that we're going
Speaker 4: to roll through, so bear with us. It was about
Speaker 4: an hour long. My top line takeaway from it is that,
Speaker 4: you know, Hannity didn't get much out of them, which
Speaker 4: we should start by saying, is interesting given that some
Speaker 4: of Trump's most revelatory exchanges with the media have come
Speaker 4: in Handity interviews.
Speaker 3: He's comfy, he just let it, lets it.
Speaker 4: Go, And I'm curious what the audience thinks about this.
Speaker 4: As we roll through the clips, my sense is that
Speaker 4: they are both a little bit more guarded. In this interview,
Speaker 4: Hannity keeps trying to get Elon Musk to talk about
Speaker 4: his personal life and to talk about his background, his
Speaker 4: career and sort of flex and show people like there's
Speaker 4: context for Elon Musk coming into DOGE and reforming the
Speaker 4: federal government and all that. So let's roll a one
Speaker 4: from the interview.
Speaker 5: The President will make these executive orders which are very
Speaker 5: sensible and good for the country, but then they don't
Speaker 5: get implemented.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: So if you take, for example, the full the funding
Speaker 5: for the migrant hotels, the president issued executive order, Hey,
Speaker 5: we need to stop taking tax payer money and paying
Speaker 5: for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants, which makes no sense
Speaker 5: obviously if people do not want their tax dollars going
Speaker 5: to fund high end hotels for illegals. And yet they
Speaker 5: were still doing that even as late as last week,
Speaker 5: and so you know, we went in there and we're like,
Speaker 5: this is the violation of the presidential executive order. It
Speaker 5: needs to stop. So so what we're doing here is
Speaker 5: one of the biggest functions of the Dog team is
Speaker 5: just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually
Speaker 5: carried out.
Speaker 4: And that's obviously the let's say central argument for Dog,
Speaker 4: which is that the federal bureaucracy has become so unaccountable
Speaker 4: that unless it's radically reformed, you and bio radically reformed,
Speaker 4: they mean sweeping, immediate, rapid trauma. As ross Bat would
Speaker 4: say to bureaucrats, you never actually will bring them to
Speaker 4: heal because the agencies are so sprawling, like it has
Speaker 4: to be what they did to USA. I D rinse
Speaker 4: and repeat over and over again at these departments. Otherwise
Speaker 4: you never actually you still end up having let's say
Speaker 4: a anti let's say say a president who wants to
Speaker 4: crack down an illegal immigration being the head of an
Speaker 4: executive branch that is not doing that, or a president
Speaker 4: who does not want to crack down an illegal immigration
Speaker 4: overseeing an executive branch that does that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is true that a president probably should be
Speaker 3: able to govern within within some reasonable limits, but should
Speaker 3: be able to govern, which is not exactly always our system.
Speaker 3: But we have a lot of clips to go through,
Speaker 3: so I'll try to refrain from popping off, and so
Speaker 3: we get through a bunch more of these.
Speaker 4: Here's one more well, Trump was he did a big
Speaker 4: press conference yesterday as well, So that's our nice clip.
Speaker 4: Here's one more from the Hannity interview where Hannity kind
Speaker 4: of gets into conflicts of interest. Let's let's I'll let
Speaker 4: everyone judge. Let's take a look.
Speaker 6: Your task now, and I pray to God this is successful.
Speaker 4: I really do. I wish you god speed, you know,
Speaker 4: speed on Glenn.
Speaker 6: It's going to be by the way, I really believe.
Speaker 6: But there are all the countries that are well beside this.
Speaker 6: This is cutting. We're only talking about cutting. We're also
Speaker 6: going to make a lot of money. We're going to
Speaker 6: we're taking in.
Speaker 3: So what about his business?
Speaker 7: What if if there is then we all contract?
Speaker 3: He would otherwise I do it.
Speaker 6: He's got a conflict. I mean, look, he's in certain areas.
Speaker 6: I mean I see this morning. I didn't know if
Speaker 6: I said do the right thing where they're cutting way
Speaker 6: back on the electric vehicle subsidies. They're cutting back, not
Speaker 6: only cutting back, don't you Yeah, now you know I
Speaker 6: won't tell you. Well, he's probably not that happy with it,
Speaker 6: but that would.
Speaker 3: Have been one thing.
Speaker 6: He would have come to me and say, listen, you
Speaker 6: got to do me your favorite This is crazy. But
Speaker 6: this was in the tax bill they're cutting back on
Speaker 6: the subsets.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't involved in it.
Speaker 6: I said, do what's right and you get and they're
Speaker 6: coming up with a tax.
Speaker 4: But it's just preliminary.
Speaker 6: But I mean, if he were involved, wudn't you think
Speaker 6: he'd probably do that. Now, maybe he does better if
Speaker 6: you cut back on the subsidies. Who knows, because he
Speaker 6: figures he does think differently. He thinks he has a
Speaker 6: better product, and as long as he has a level
Speaker 6: playing field, he doesn't care what you do, which he's
Speaker 6: told me that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, I haven't asked the president for anything ever.
Speaker 6: And if it comes up, how will you handle it?
Speaker 3: Well, he won't be involved. Yeah, I'll accuse myself if
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 6: If there's a conflict, he won't be involved. I mean
Speaker 6: I wouldn't want that and he won't want it right.
Speaker 5: And also I'm getting a sort of a daily proctology
Speaker 5: exam here. You know, it's like I'll be getting away
Speaker 5: from something in the dead of night.
Speaker 7: Welcome to DC.
Speaker 3: If you want a friend and get a dog.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you are the most powerful man in
Speaker 4: the world who's suddenly working in government, you definitely deserve
Speaker 4: that daily exam there's no question about it. And actually,
Speaker 4: on that note, what Trump just said about the subsidies
Speaker 4: is a great example because Elon Musk as early as
Speaker 4: last July he posts it on next take all the
Speaker 4: subsidies away, it will help Tesla. So yeah, he's against them, right,
Speaker 4: he's now against Tesla. He's probably right that they would
Speaker 4: help Tesla to take those to catch up, right, and
Speaker 4: so on that note, just to the reason we say
Speaker 4: is to point out that people in Congress right now
Speaker 4: who are coming up with the tax bill and looking
Speaker 4: at what decisions to make already know that Elon Musk
Speaker 4: doesn't care about the subsidies. He's well, if anything, he
Speaker 4: encourages removing the subsidies because he said as much.
Speaker 3: So it's not really what he needs is tariffs on
Speaker 3: China to keep the better, cheaper Chinese evs out of
Speaker 3: the US.
Speaker 4: Well, that's even complicated with his relationship with China. I
Speaker 4: can't even believe we have to talk about that in
Speaker 4: the context of a quote special government employee.
Speaker 3: But here we say agent as calls him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's go to Donald Trump's press conference. We're
Speaker 4: going to come back to the interview. But on this point.
Speaker 4: He was asked by Jonathan Swan of The New York
Speaker 4: Times to talk about Doge and SpaceX yesterday. Trump put
Speaker 4: together a press conference yesterday late in the afternoon. I
Speaker 4: don't know if he was like intentionally trying to tease
Speaker 4: the interview. He kind of did the Fox interview. But
Speaker 4: let's let's rule this one.
Speaker 8: And given your concerns about corruption, you said that if
Speaker 8: there were any conflicts of interest with Elon Musk, you
Speaker 8: wouldn't let him anywhere near it. That's right, Jose and
Speaker 8: SpaceX employees are now working directly at the Federal Aviation
Speaker 8: Administration and the Defense Department, agencies that have billions of
Speaker 8: dollars in contracts with Musks companies or that directly regulate
Speaker 8: his companies.
Speaker 3: How is that not a conflict of issue?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, I'm just hearing about it. And if
Speaker 6: there is, and he told me before, I told him,
Speaker 6: but obviously I will not let there be any conflict
Speaker 6: of interest. He's done an amazing job, they've revealed. In fact,
Speaker 6: he's going to be on tonight at a big show
Speaker 6: called Sean Hannity at nine o'clock and he's on, and
Speaker 6: I'm on and we talk about a lot of different things,
Speaker 6: and any conflicts. I told Elon, any conflicts, you can't
Speaker 6: have anything to do with that. So anything to do
Speaker 6: with possibly even space, we won't let Elon partake in that.
Speaker 4: So to the extent they talked about it, it was
Speaker 4: Handy saying what about conflicts of interest and then Trump
Speaker 4: saying we won't let him do it.
Speaker 3: John Swan saying, given your concern about corruption, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: gonna need some evidence. I need some receipts for this
Speaker 3: alleged concern about corruption. I wish he would have said
Speaker 3: it was nine eighth Central. That would have been even funnier.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I know that would have been funny. But
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously he talks a lot about corruption, which
Speaker 4: is why Bannon and others we'll talk about this later
Speaker 4: in the show, are so irked by his relationship with
Speaker 4: Elon Musk. I almost just said Donald Musk. But let's
Speaker 4: pivot back to the Hannity interview. That was a great
Speaker 4: interlude with the Jonathan Swan question just hours earlier. But
Speaker 4: here's what they talked about in relation inflation with Hannity.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and inflation is back. I'm only here for two
Speaker 6: and a half weeks. That was genflation there back now
Speaker 6: think of it. Inflation's back, and they said, oh, Trump
Speaker 6: and fact I had nothing to do with it. These
Speaker 6: people have run the country. They spent money like nobody
Speaker 6: has ever spent.
Speaker 4: If you were listening to this and not just watching it,
Speaker 4: you missed the great USAID ticker. It looked like a
Speaker 4: when you're watching TV at three in the morning and
Speaker 4: they're selling CDs for Elvis's Greatest hits. They were just
Speaker 4: scrolling through crazy USAID spending when they talked about inflation there.
Speaker 4: Now we have another clip from the press conference getting
Speaker 4: to exactly the point Ryan just raised about corruption. Trump's
Speaker 4: take on corruption. Let's roll this from the press conference again.
Speaker 4: This was just hours before the Fox interview.
Speaker 6: We have a very corrupt country, very corrupt country, and
Speaker 6: it's a sad thing to say, but we're figuring it
Speaker 6: out now. The good thing about social security, and what
Speaker 6: I read is if you take all of those numbers
Speaker 6: off because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent, but if you
Speaker 6: take all of those millions of people off social Security,
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, we have a very powerful social
Speaker 6: security with people that are eighty and seventy and ninety,
Speaker 6: but not two hundred years old, you know, So that's
Speaker 6: a very positive thing.
Speaker 3: So finally, go ahead, Yeah, no, I wish that was true.
Speaker 3: And hey, if this lets Republicans get it away with
Speaker 3: not cutting it, okay, go ahead, lie to yourself that
Speaker 3: there's like huge savings to be made from dead people
Speaker 3: getting solid security. It's just not true, but okay.
Speaker 4: In the Fox News interview he said that's a red line.
Speaker 4: He said, Elon's not going to be touching Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
Speaker 4: And actually Frank Omerchetti has a good essay out in
Speaker 4: Jacobin that as somebody on the right I think captures
Speaker 4: the dynamics of DOJE and the right better than anything
Speaker 4: I've been in a long time. I recommend it for
Speaker 4: everyone because he goes through russ Boat's arc. Oh yes,
Speaker 4: and talks about how austerity used to be seen by
Speaker 4: many on the right as their flavor of populism in
Speaker 4: the Obama era. And yes, there's been some substantive shifts
Speaker 4: by some people away from that American compass those people.
Speaker 4: So on the one hand, there's really been sincere movement
Speaker 4: by a lot of people to put like policy meat
Speaker 4: on the bones of Trump's anti elite sentiments and pro
Speaker 4: worker sentiments. On the other hand, they're still lurking very
Speaker 4: much an appetite among the people who are around Trump.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk's libertarian you know, I guess urges will certainly
Speaker 4: egg them on.
Speaker 3: And votes in the key position to implement this revolution.
Speaker 4: Right. And obviously, obviously Donald Trump is more powerful than
Speaker 4: russ vote. He's more powerful than anyone in the cabinet,
Speaker 4: and he's if he doesn't want them to touch the security,
Speaker 4: Medicare Medicaid, which he clearly doesn't. He knows that that
Speaker 4: would be legacy tarnishing, then he'll probably get his way
Speaker 4: on that. But if there's a crack in the foundation,
Speaker 4: you could see significant changes. So let's roll this last
Speaker 4: clip of Stephen Miller going on CNN yesterday afternoon and
Speaker 4: getting some questions about a White House filing that actually
Speaker 4: clarified Elon Musk is not the administrator of DOGE. This
Speaker 4: was they said, he is an employee of the White
Speaker 4: House Office. And everyone's sort of looking around being like,
Speaker 4: what does that mean. We've talked a little bit about
Speaker 4: his special government employee designation. It's basically impossible for him
Speaker 4: to be in compliance with that, it's up to the
Speaker 4: to the DJ to enforce.
Speaker 3: It's fortunate for him.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So all that is to say, though, he goes
Speaker 4: on and gets Steven Miller, goes on Brownie Keeler's show
Speaker 4: on CNN, and this is how he answers questions about
Speaker 4: what Basically, who if Elon Musk is not the head
Speaker 4: of DOGE, who is leading DOGE. Let's roll this, So
Speaker 4: who is in charge of DOGE?
Speaker 9: The President of the United States, He's the administrator of DOGE.
Speaker 10: No, the DOGE is the what was formerly US Digital Services.
Speaker 10: It's an agency of the federal government that reports into
Speaker 10: the Office of the Executive Office of the President, which
Speaker 10: reports to the President of the United States. Okay, the
Speaker 10: way that Article two works as a president wins an
Speaker 10: election and then he appoints staff, including myself, including Mike Waltz,
Speaker 10: including Susie Wilds, including Elon Musk, and those staff.
Speaker 3: Report to him.
Speaker 4: Okay, well aware.
Speaker 9: So Elon Musk a week ago answered a question about
Speaker 9: transparency a DOGE. This is how we spoke about DOGE.
Speaker 5: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible.
Speaker 5: In fact, our actions repost our actions to the DOGE
Speaker 5: handle on x and to the doge website. So all
Speaker 5: of our actions are maximally transparent.
Speaker 9: But you hear him there we post our actions. All
Speaker 9: of our actions are maximally transparent. Does Elon Musk know
Speaker 9: he's not in charge of DOGE.
Speaker 3: Again?
Speaker 10: The president runs the government. Then the president appoints advisors,
Speaker 10: including Elon, I'm including myself, including all the other staff
Speaker 10: here at the White House. And then those staff in
Speaker 10: turn execute the president's commands and directions to all the
Speaker 10: agencies of the federal government. This is how democracy works,
Speaker 10: something that we treasure in America. The whole American people
Speaker 10: go to the ballot box, they elect the president. The
Speaker 10: president appoint staff, the staff that administer his orders and
Speaker 10: directives across the whole US government.
Speaker 4: Stephen Miller's CNN interviews are actually always pretty entertaining.
Speaker 3: They're always funny. He's talking about this is how we've
Speaker 3: always done it. People should realize, though, the reason we
Speaker 3: have a civil service is from a specific problem that
Speaker 3: our government had, which was it was too efficient. You
Speaker 3: would elect a president, and you'd elect a Congress, and
Speaker 3: then they would very efficiently give themselves all the money.
Speaker 3: For instance, if they wanted to build transcontinental railroad, the
Speaker 3: railroads would give free stock to the members of Congress
Speaker 3: and to the White House, and then instead of going
Speaker 3: through an administrative process where they had to bid competitively
Speaker 3: and there would be oversight and igs and inspections, they
Speaker 3: would just bribe members of Congress and the administration and
Speaker 3: they would get the railroad contract. And then they would
Speaker 3: basically be you know, meme coins that would bubble up
Speaker 3: and then pop and sent the country into multiple depressions
Speaker 3: in the nineteenth century. And at that point, the people
Speaker 3: are like, you know what, we don't trust you politicians
Speaker 3: and you oligarchs to do this efficiently because you're just
Speaker 3: scratching each other's back and ripping us off. So we
Speaker 3: want a civil service that is transparent and is accountable.
Speaker 3: And so they built one. And it is annoying sometimes
Speaker 3: to have to bid for contracts and to have people
Speaker 3: ask for paperwork to prove that you're actually like laid
Speaker 3: down railroad tracks. And so now we're going to back
Speaker 3: to the efficient process, and we'll see how that works out.
Speaker 4: Well. The efficient process, well, the post efficient process was
Speaker 4: still sort of a victory for the oligarchs too, because
Speaker 4: they ended up being able to game the system pretty well.
Speaker 4: It's not that they didn't lose.
Speaker 3: If you look at the oligarchs in the late nineteenth
Speaker 3: century versus from the progressive era through the seventies nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: the oligarchs heyday is now and way back then twentieth century,
Speaker 3: they were on their heels.
Speaker 4: They were able to carve out. All I'm saying is
Speaker 4: the system still They were able to carve it up
Speaker 4: because they have more resources and happened. Saying it's not
Speaker 4: argument against the Yeah, yeah, not an argument against the
Speaker 4: system existing at all. Although that is where Elon Musk
Speaker 4: and some folks in Trump's orbit will say this has
Speaker 4: been Actually they made this argument about DEEI in particularly
Speaker 4: like this has been a boon to these different like
Speaker 4: equity consultants, And there's probably some truth to the it's a.
Speaker 3: Little industry built top around that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not going to be enough probably to mollify
Speaker 4: every voter.
Speaker 3: Your doge dividend isn't going to be very big off
Speaker 3: the backs of gutting the I.
Speaker 4: No, not, but the Elon Musk actually yesterday tweeted that
Speaker 4: he was he would think about the Doge diffidend, which
Speaker 4: just quite interesting. But that exchange is also noteworthy because
Speaker 4: Doge is the USDs, as Stephen Miller noted, like that
Speaker 4: was not something people expected. They took over an existing agency.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just this like outside advisory group created Doge
Speaker 4: and is now appears to be a series of employees
Speaker 4: at different spread across different agencies, as opposed to sort
Speaker 4: of a central Doge hub, sort of like Doge vibes,
Speaker 4: like just hiring people have Doge vibes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it's a little uh, it's a sell. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: it is infiltrating all over the place.
Speaker 4: Well, both Trump and Elon Musk are quite good at selling.
Speaker 4: So it makes sense that we know the brand. We
Speaker 4: know that, Yeah, when we know the organization. All right, Ryan,
Speaker 4: let's pivot to this block on the hostage returns.
Speaker 3: So phase one of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and
Speaker 3: Hamas may be coming to completion earlier than expected. We
Speaker 3: could put this axios element up on the screen. Hamas
Speaker 3: proposed to Israel, and it appears that Israel's close to
Speaker 3: accepting an agreement by which all of the remaining living
Speaker 3: prisoners held by held by Hamas, who are scheduled to
Speaker 3: be released in Phase one, will be released all at
Speaker 3: once this coming weekend, rather than stretching it out over
Speaker 3: the next two weeks, which means there would be six released.
Speaker 3: You put this second second element up on the screen.
Speaker 3: As we move to phase two of the negotiations, Hamas
Speaker 3: is signaling, and we can talk about this more, quite
Speaker 3: quite strongly, that they are willing to do what Israel
Speaker 3: has demanding that they do, lay down their arms and
Speaker 3: surrender basically and handover governance either to the Palestinian Authority
Speaker 3: or to some other national unity project. Now, whether they
Speaker 3: whether Hamas would agree to the Palestini authorities an open question.
Speaker 3: What exactly that would look like is an open question.
Speaker 3: But if you notice there the key stumbling bock, there
Speaker 3: isn't actually Hamas, it's Israel, which has said absolutely, under
Speaker 3: no circumstances would it allow the Palestinian authority to oversee
Speaker 3: Gaza in a in a post in a post war scenario,
Speaker 3: which is very i think confusing to people who are
Speaker 3: following this from a FARX. We're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: isn't the Palistini authority, the legally recognized representatives of the
Speaker 3: Palatinian people and effectively a subcontractor of Israel carrying out
Speaker 3: the occupation in the West Bank and literally doing battle
Speaker 3: with resistance fighters in the West Bank. And and and
Speaker 3: even they are not good enough for Yahoo. Now, what Nenya,
Speaker 3: who has been saying, is that Trump has opened the
Speaker 3: door to possibilities that Israel did not even consider previously,
Speaker 3: which is the complete ethnic cleansing and depopulation of Gaza.
Speaker 3: Uh Nenya is now saying this will be done voluntarily.
Speaker 3: They will create mechanisms for the people of Gaza to
Speaker 3: leave voluntarily, and that they will all leave. It's a fantasy,
Speaker 3: but it appears that Nena was unwilling to move forward
Speaker 3: as long as there's at least a possibility that this
Speaker 3: could happen. I guess it's who knows what it is.
Speaker 3: Part of this agreement. There's supposed to be thousands of
Speaker 3: mobile homes and new aid that Israel is allowing in
Speaker 3: hamas is in order to I think, get three hundred
Speaker 3: mobile homes brought into Gaza. That's that's another thing. That's
Speaker 3: that's re upping this hostage exchange. Now two of these hostages.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you followed this story are deeply
Speaker 3: mentally ill people who stumbled into Gaza in twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: and twenty fifteen. You follow this, So these folks have
Speaker 3: nothing to do with October seventh, and to Hamas's discredit,
Speaker 3: they should have released these these men years and years
Speaker 3: and years ago. So what happened in twenty fourteen and
Speaker 3: a Jewish Ethiopian guy, he's from Ethiopia, he came to
Speaker 3: is really deeply mentally ill. He had wandered, i think
Speaker 3: into the West Bank many times, he was a known
Speaker 3: figure there. One day he just wanders into Gaza and
Speaker 3: he gets captured like immediately and amas, what on earth
Speaker 3: is going on here? And they realized in pretty short
Speaker 3: order that it's a crazy person. And they had just
Speaker 3: done the eled Shalite deal, which they exchanged the soldier
Speaker 3: for thousands of Palestinians, and so there's still thousands of
Speaker 3: Palestinians held. So you can see it from Hamases perpectively, like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: now we have an Israeli hostage, let's exchange him for
Speaker 3: they on thousands more. And so they tried that for
Speaker 3: several years. And then another a Bedouin man who was
Speaker 3: also deeply mentally a wanders into Gaza in twenty fifteen
Speaker 3: and they capture him too. But it quickly became clear
Speaker 3: that Israel's like this Ethiopian guy and this Bedouin, we're
Speaker 3: not training you anything for them. And so you could
Speaker 3: say that's you can say that's two Israel's discredit that
Speaker 3: they were not treating those citizens with equal dignity. But
Speaker 3: at that point, if you're Hamas, it's like let the
Speaker 3: guys go. You're not getting anything for them. So they've
Speaker 3: held these poor guys for ten years at this point,
Speaker 3: so now they're finally getting let out.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: The big controversy over the last couple of weeks has
Speaker 3: been over the Bebas family. This one you followed, yes, right,
Speaker 3: and we have some news on this from drop site
Speaker 3: from Jeremy Skhill. So this is Sheery Ariel Kiff Beabas,
Speaker 3: a mother and her two children. So there was some
Speaker 3: false hope in Israel that they would be released last
Speaker 3: week as part of this exchange. However, as Jeremy reports
Speaker 3: here and notes, back in November of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: Hamas announced that they had all been killed in Israeli airstrike.
Speaker 3: The Muja had Dean brigades put out their own statement
Speaker 3: and they said it was one of their factions that
Speaker 3: because you know, October seventh wasn't just Hamas once once
Speaker 3: the fence was broken, a bunch of other groups disconnected
Speaker 3: from Hamas broke through. There were a lot of rumors
Speaker 3: that this that there was the Mujahideen Brigades that had
Speaker 3: taken the Bibas family. We now can confirm, you know
Speaker 3: that that that is what happened. Uh. They are an
Speaker 3: offshoot of FATA, which is the kind of rival of Hamas,
Speaker 3: so that you know, there's some collaboration between between all factions,
Speaker 3: but they're essentially a rival group. And so their spokesperson
Speaker 3: says uh, within the framework of the first phase of
Speaker 3: the prisoner exchange agreement with the Resistance, the bodies of
Speaker 3: the Biba's family who were captured by a group of
Speaker 3: arm muja Hadeen will be handed over tomorrow Thursday. They
Speaker 3: were they were preserved and treated well according to the
Speaker 3: teachings of the True Islam, before they were bombed by
Speaker 3: the Zionist occupation missiles and were killed along with the
Speaker 3: captor group. The brigades preserved the family's bodies throughout the
Speaker 3: stages of the war until the date of handover unquote.
Speaker 3: So if you remember in November there was this week
Speaker 3: long ceasefire where all children and many women were exchanged.
Speaker 3: They were supposed to be part of that, but they
Speaker 3: were killed before that, before that exchange. We talked last
Speaker 3: week about this nine to seven to two report. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you saw this that was of course
Speaker 3: you saw your here that talked about how Israel had
Speaker 3: discovered that if they used these bunker buster bombs, they
Speaker 3: sucked all of the oxygen out of tunnels as well.
Speaker 3: So even if they didn't know precisely where somebody they
Speaker 3: were targeting was, as long as they got it within
Speaker 3: several hundred meters, they could suffocate anybody in that area.
Speaker 3: And after October seventh there was a high value placed
Speaker 3: on revenge against anybody that they believed was involved with
Speaker 3: October seventh. That's understandable. However, if you were a militant
Speaker 3: involved in October seventh, the chance that you are now
Speaker 3: with a hostage, it's pretty high they have. Israel has
Speaker 3: since changed its rules of engagement over how they try
Speaker 3: to assess whether or not there is a risk of
Speaker 3: killing a hostage in a strike.
Speaker 4: According to the New York Times.
Speaker 3: According to New York Times in October and November, there
Speaker 3: was effectively no concern for that. If there was a
Speaker 3: high value target and you didn't have affirmative evidence that
Speaker 3: there were definitely hostages around this high value target, you
Speaker 3: were able to green light the attack. It is in
Speaker 3: that context that we know that Israel killed these these
Speaker 3: three hostages and also the all the people you know
Speaker 3: who were their captors around them. You've seen from some
Speaker 3: commentators on this the killing of these children and their
Speaker 3: mother to be evidence of Hamas' is like depravity, and
Speaker 3: so I just think it's important people have all of
Speaker 3: the context here.
Speaker 4: The kidnapped them.
Speaker 3: Well, Hamas didn't. It was a mujahidingbergrade, you're saying, But
Speaker 3: also you should there is no excuse to take children, period.
Speaker 3: So even if Israel killed them, there's there is absolutely
Speaker 3: no excuse under any circumstance.
Speaker 4: Now that's barbarism and depravity in and of itself.
Speaker 3: And Hamas should have found some way to pressure the
Speaker 3: muja Hitden brigades to release them before Israel was able
Speaker 3: to kill them, but it happened within weeks.
Speaker 4: And then the Hamas distinction to the point you just
Speaker 4: made is important because political negotiations. Hamas is saying October seventh,
Speaker 4: our operation, this was not us, right. And when Jeremy
Speaker 4: references media reports about the Israeli Israeli strike and the
Speaker 4: mom and children, is that is that to say like
Speaker 4: this has been like Israeli media has said, we have
Speaker 4: definitive evidence that this was bunker busting.
Speaker 3: Like that it was, so they don't Israeli media doesn't
Speaker 3: know because Israel at the time was carpet bombing, you know, ministry,
Speaker 3: major parts of the area, and and it you know,
Speaker 3: it seems like they had identified probably through some type
Speaker 3: of signals intelligence like following people's phones. The captors I
Speaker 3: see say like, okay, we followed these phones because you
Speaker 3: can you know, look, you know you can just go
Speaker 3: on your phone. You know, Apple now can follow your location,
Speaker 3: so they could follow Okay, this crew, these Muja hitting brigades,
Speaker 3: they went into Israel on October seventh, they are now
Speaker 3: here in this area. That that is the most likely
Speaker 3: scenario that that they identified these are some terrorists who
Speaker 3: went into Israel on October seventh, and there's some and
Speaker 3: then they and then they bombed them without thinking like
Speaker 3: what did they Okay, we saw they went to a kabutz,
Speaker 3: we saw they went back. Who did they take Israeli
Speaker 3: hostages back with them? And if so, let's actually not
Speaker 3: bomb them as much as we would love, as satisfying
Speaker 3: as would be to us to kill them, the like
Speaker 3: the high likelihood that you're going to kill hostages with them,
Speaker 3: and so that it is, it is known for certain
Speaker 3: that you know, a significant number of hostages were killed
Speaker 3: under those circumstances, and that has been deeply damaging to
Speaker 3: Danahu and to the entire Israeli society. But it it
Speaker 3: took it took a very long time for them to
Speaker 3: reassess that. But that policy, and then.
Speaker 4: Thing is, I don't have an answerive seems that I
Speaker 4: remember a little bit that FATA reportedly coordinated a bit
Speaker 4: on October seventh with Hamas, and Hamas has said basically
Speaker 4: became a frenzy that there was like a precise operation planned,
Speaker 4: but then it kind of started snowballing into something different.
Speaker 4: But there is reporting that FATA was coordinating with Hamas.
Speaker 3: There there was, Yeah, there's some indication that there were
Speaker 3: that they knew that something was going to happen, but
Speaker 3: they were formally part right, because they were because the
Speaker 3: Casamber Gades, which led the the operation, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 3: wanted utmost secrecy. Yeah, oh yeah, and they don't trust
Speaker 3: Fatah because FATA's well not only are they their rivals,
Speaker 3: you know they got links to the PA. PA's got
Speaker 3: links to Israel, to Israel, so you don't know who like,
Speaker 3: so there was there was, but you know, they wanted
Speaker 3: back up. So they wanted it known there's going to
Speaker 3: be something happening, but they didn't want to let them
Speaker 3: know precisely. I mean, what did happen?
Speaker 4: And even more stunning intelligence failure on Israel's behalf. But
Speaker 4: the last thing I want to say is I think
Speaker 4: Jeremy's tweet to the House was House Foreign Affairs Committee
Speaker 4: is just.
Speaker 3: Important, That's right. Which one was that it was.
Speaker 4: One of the early Yeah, there it is. They're saying
Speaker 4: Hamas executed a mother and her two children in cold
Speaker 4: blood and reference to these specific family and it's.
Speaker 3: A good and actually that next line is really important.
Speaker 3: So if you're just listening along the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Speaker 3: Republicans say, quote, this is barbarism, and then this is
Speaker 3: the key point. Israel has every right to finish the
Speaker 3: job and eradicate these terrorists from the face of the earth.
Speaker 3: So it is known at this point, this was yesterday.
Speaker 3: It is known at this point that Hamas did not
Speaker 3: execute a mother and her two children cold blood, this
Speaker 3: particular family. Yeah, Yet the House Republicans here are using
Speaker 3: that claim to say, now we need to eradicate and
Speaker 3: that's being done in the context of Trump's push to
Speaker 3: ethnically cleanse the entire area.
Speaker 4: So, and the reason, I just think what Jeremy said
Speaker 4: is important, even though to some people they may say, well,
Speaker 4: October seventh was barbarism and prouty, Well it was, and
Speaker 4: that's sort.
Speaker 3: Of The pets took civilians, absolutely, killed hundreds.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And that's sort of the point here is that
Speaker 4: the House for Affairs Republicans, maybe some social media staffer
Speaker 4: posted this, but you don't have to go along with
Speaker 4: misinformation here. You don't have to. And I think there's
Speaker 4: so much I mean, we've talked at length about how
Speaker 4: the Sharin Abubakola case personally just was an interesting, I
Speaker 4: guess gateway to a lot of different things on my end.
Speaker 4: But you don't have to rely on misinformation. You don't
Speaker 4: have to build so much of this on the house
Speaker 4: of cards. That is misinformation. You don't have to build
Speaker 4: your case on that. And repeatedly it is built on misinformation.
Speaker 4: That's just sort of I don't want to use the
Speaker 4: phrase too good to check, but too convenient.
Speaker 3: I know what you mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's too convenient for the narrative to check.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's no price to pay domestically in the US, like,
Speaker 3: there's no there's going to be no consequence for the
Speaker 3: House Foreign Affairs, Republicans or anything.
Speaker 4: They didn't even delete it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because anybody who come fact checks it like we're
Speaker 3: doing then gets accused of, yes, you know, being apologists
Speaker 3: for like kidnapping them.
Speaker 4: It's incredibly sensitive to do it without looking callous because
Speaker 4: otherwise you just look like a fact check bro, like
Speaker 4: you're swooping in to say, well.
Speaker 3: But actually brutal, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so yes, I mean, but that's how the
Speaker 4: cycle perpetuates itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of barbarism, quickly, before we move to this
Speaker 3: incredible story out of Miami and put up this last
Speaker 3: Jeremy post. In Israel, five five Israeli military reservists have
Speaker 3: been indicted for the torture of a Palestinian who had
Speaker 3: been held at stay time in prison. This was a
Speaker 3: case that made international headlines because there was video of it,
Speaker 3: and because it then was debated in the Kanessets, with
Speaker 3: people in the Kannesset arguing that there should not be
Speaker 3: any prosecution for this, that it is within the Israeli
Speaker 3: reservists right to do whatever it is that they believe
Speaker 3: they want to do to Palestinian detainees. And the counter
Speaker 3: argument in the Kannesset, and by the way, this led
Speaker 3: to those infamous right to rape protests, the counter argument
Speaker 3: in the Kannesisset was not this is wrong and it
Speaker 3: should be prosecuted because it's wrong. Counter argument was, according
Speaker 3: to the International Criminal Court, they only have jurisdiction if
Speaker 3: there is no accountability mechanism within the state itself, and
Speaker 3: that's Congo, Kenya, Israel. It doesn't matter. The ICC does
Speaker 3: not have jurisdiction if there are prosecutors on the case
Speaker 3: in a particular state. And so there were people in
Speaker 3: the Canessa that said, we have to prosecute some people
Speaker 3: for something, or we're all going down. So let's prosecute
Speaker 3: these guys. They're caught raping a detainee on video. Let's
Speaker 3: just you know, basically, just throw them under the bus
Speaker 3: so that we can show the ICC that we're doing something,
Speaker 3: and then our lawyers of the ICC can show them
Speaker 3: this indictment say, look, you don't have jurisdiction here because
Speaker 3: when people commit crimes here, we prosecute them. But the indictment,
Speaker 3: which people can find online is just extraordinary. Quote. For
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him,
Speaker 3: stole on his body, hit him, and pushed him all
Speaker 3: over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along
Speaker 3: the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including
Speaker 3: on his head. During the assault, the blindfold came off
Speaker 3: the detaining and moments later one of the soldiers stabbed
Speaker 3: the detaining in his buttock with a sharp object, which
Speaker 3: caused an internal tear in his rectal wall. They then
Speaker 3: used a t shirt to try to cover up the bleeding,
Speaker 3: but after a while the bleeding became so intense that
Speaker 3: he was taken to taken to the hospital. He had
Speaker 3: the result of the suffering, according to the indictment, which
Speaker 3: is based on medical records, includes seven broken ribs, of
Speaker 3: punctured lung terar in his rectum and injuries all over
Speaker 3: his body. So they have been indicted, so that is good, incredible.
Speaker 3: It would be better if he was indicted because they
Speaker 3: believed that this was wrong, and some absolutely do. But
Speaker 3: the most persuasive argument being made for why they should
Speaker 3: be indicted is so that other people don't get dragged
Speaker 3: before the ICC.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess that's the idea, and the post
Speaker 4: World War two reforms to have some of these international
Speaker 4: bodies is to create incentives for better behavior.
Speaker 3: So in that case, okay, there we go, there you go.
Speaker 4: That's the glass half full, all right, Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter why.
Speaker 3: There was a report released last week about that prison
Speaker 3: thirty Pagde human rights report that barely made a ripple,
Speaker 3: and you read through it, you're like, one of the
Speaker 3: things they say, that gravel that they mentioned there, they
Speaker 3: make people sit on the sharp gravel for sixteen straight
Speaker 3: hours without being able to move. If you and I
Speaker 3: had to sit in these chairs for sixteen hours, you
Speaker 3: can't do it for sixteen seconds and then they're nice
Speaker 3: cushion like, these are comfy chairs, but don't want to
Speaker 3: move around. Would still be torturous, Yeah, on sharp gravel
Speaker 3: like anyway. So this is the things that were described
Speaker 3: in that indictment are happening as you and I speak,
Speaker 3: two people right now, and will be happening the rest
Speaker 3: of today and tomorrow and the day after, the end
Speaker 3: of the day after that. Let's move to Miami. This
Speaker 3: this incredible story.
Speaker 4: Incredible there.
Speaker 3: So over the weekend we can put this guardian element
Speaker 3: up on the screen. This first one, Mordecai Braffman, twenty
Speaker 3: seven year old Jewish man, is driving down the highway
Speaker 3: in Miami and sees what he thinks are two Palestinians,
Speaker 3: gets out, stops them.
Speaker 4: For even just stopping there. That's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look what are you doing? Keep driving? Yes, he
Speaker 3: gets out, stops them and opens fire with a semi
Speaker 3: automatic handgun. If this wasn't if there wasn't some video
Speaker 3: evidence of this, plus the direct testimony of Braffman himself,
Speaker 3: I'd be like, there's no way any of this is true. Agree,
Speaker 3: So Braffman, so that he fails to kill these two
Speaker 3: people who.
Speaker 4: Are seventeen shots, He gets off seventeen shots in Miami Beach.
Speaker 3: They turned out to be Israeli tourists, is Rahi Jews
Speaker 3: in Miami. We're going to talk about that. Talk about that.
Speaker 3: More so, he was mistaken about their religious identity. They run,
Speaker 3: they and we have a video of them trying to
Speaker 3: get into this conrad to get some help. One shot
Speaker 3: in the shoulder, the other was only grazed in the arms.
Speaker 3: That's how they were able to live. Police come to
Speaker 3: the scene and they capture Brafman and they arrest him.
Speaker 3: They bring him in, they interrogate him and he confesses.
Speaker 3: He said, I saw two Palestinian men and I killed
Speaker 3: them both.
Speaker 4: I killed two Palestinians.
Speaker 3: That's what he tells them. Turns out he learns later
Speaker 3: his two mistakes he made. He didn't actually kill them,
Speaker 3: and they were not Palestinian.
Speaker 4: When you mow people down from a car, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: To say they're not Palestinian from Palestine. And we'll talk
Speaker 3: about that in a moment. After they are shot at
Speaker 3: one of them posts on social media. We can put
Speaker 3: this up on the screen. They tried to murder us
Speaker 3: in the heart of Miami, but the creator of the
Speaker 3: world is with us, so he didn't go. He said,
Speaker 3: my father and I went through a murder attempt against
Speaker 3: anti Semitic background, so he blames anti Semitism for it.
Speaker 3: So I want to say thank you to everyone for
Speaker 3: their support. And it is not taken for granted with
Speaker 3: Israel Live Israel, Death to the Arabs. So this is
Speaker 3: the guy who has a bullet in his shoulder because
Speaker 3: the Miami guy thought he was a Palestinian, but he
Speaker 3: kind of is Arab. So this is a weird thing
Speaker 3: that that's what's so complicated about this whole question. Yes,
Speaker 3: and he's they are considered to be you know, Arab
Speaker 3: by a lot of Israelis even though they are Jewish Israelis.
Speaker 3: I mean, put put up this vo here, so here here, here,
Speaker 3: these here, these guys are giving an interview describing, you know,
Speaker 3: what happened, and you can see, like you can see
Speaker 3: why if you're a Miami guy who doesn't live in Israel,
Speaker 3: you were like, oh, those these are Palestinian guys. Although
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why he didn't think, like this is
Speaker 3: Miami could have it could have been Colombian Mexican like
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican urban possibil are endless. How you picked them
Speaker 3: out as Palestinian.
Speaker 4: That you were just driving through Miami Beach and you
Speaker 4: see two dudes that you think might be Palestinian and
Speaker 4: start it's.
Speaker 3: Not in Miami either.
Speaker 4: Insane. It's insane that none of it really makes sense.
Speaker 3: The same guy, by the way, Mordecai Local News interviewed
Speaker 3: him months ago because there was some vandalism of a
Speaker 3: Jewish flag at a coffee shop, and he did one
Speaker 3: of those men on the Street interviews where he says,
Speaker 3: I wish we could all just get along. Why does
Speaker 3: there have to be so much strife and conflict? And
Speaker 3: so they replayed that interview with him, and then months
Speaker 3: later he pulls over and just opens fire on two
Speaker 3: guys because he thinks extremely weird with Arab So, I
Speaker 3: don't know if you guys follow alone with Rahi. He's
Speaker 3: a Israeli as his last name on Twitter says is
Speaker 3: Rahi Jew from Israeli from Israel. He has actually since
Speaker 3: left Israel recently. He now lives in the United States.
Speaker 3: He's so driven, so insane by what was going on
Speaker 3: in Israel, so he wrote on Twitter large following here
Speaker 3: he says what most people don't get about the incident
Speaker 3: in Miami where a Jewish man alone is Jewish, where
Speaker 3: a Jewish man shot to other Israelis whom he thought
Speaker 3: were Palestinians. Is the inter Jewish racism. The shooter is
Speaker 3: an Ashkenazi, a white European Jew. His victims are Arab Jews.
Speaker 3: To him, brown Jews look like Arabs, but that's only
Speaker 3: because they are. If there ever was a more perfect
Speaker 3: demonstration of the facan made up the idea of a
Speaker 3: Jewish ethnicity or nation, I never heard about it. His victims,
Speaker 3: by the way, would rather he shot them again that
Speaker 3: admit their Arabs. And I think, I think alone is
Speaker 3: almost fair in saying that, because after they got shot, Yeah,
Speaker 3: death to the Arabs. And his point here is that
Speaker 3: these guys are Arabs, that they have lived in Arabia forever,
Speaker 3: for thousands of years. Zionist brainwashing is the strongest propaganda
Speaker 3: material invented by mankind, he says. And so Arab Jews
Speaker 3: would rather die than face their arabness, and white Jews
Speaker 3: would rather kill Arab Jews that acknowledge the humanity of Arabs.
Speaker 3: This is from an Arab, an Arab Jew, So you're like,
Speaker 3: you can imagine what his experience was like as an
Speaker 3: Israeli citizen that drove him to say this and then
Speaker 3: to also leave and move to the United States.
Speaker 4: I can't wrap my head around the story being true.
Speaker 4: It's completely wild, and the lack of media coverage over
Speaker 4: it is also absolutely insane. I do think it's true
Speaker 4: that had this been a case of like.
Speaker 3: If the shooter was Arab, it's crazy, it would be
Speaker 3: wall to wall cover.
Speaker 4: We'd be hearing a lot more about it. But I
Speaker 4: don't know if media is just as confused about what
Speaker 4: to do with the story. It seems enormously significant to
Speaker 4: me that somebody fires seventeen shots at people they drove
Speaker 4: by on Miamph. I mean, it's just an insane story,
Speaker 4: but there's so little coverage of it. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't know if it's just because people are confused with
Speaker 4: how to handle it doesn't fit into any narrative very conveniently,
Speaker 4: but it's insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, people often make the argument that
Speaker 3: the Israeli occupation is obviously you know, the primary victims
Speaker 3: of the Israeli occupation are those who are occupied. But
Speaker 3: Israelis themselves are victimized in the sense that the necessity
Speaker 3: of carrying out or the action of carrying out a
Speaker 3: brutal occupation of another produces in your society the kind
Speaker 3: of thing that alone is describing there a stratification of racism,
Speaker 3: hatred that then drives a wedge between even Jewish Israeli
Speaker 3: citizens based on color and ethnic origin. And like you said,
Speaker 3: it's like the whole idea of Israel is to create
Speaker 3: this national identity where all at least all Jews inside
Speaker 3: Israel or equal. And what he's saying is that this
Speaker 3: is another another example of how that's just not the case.
Speaker 4: Jews inside of Israel in theory equal, not based on
Speaker 4: skin color, but based on Jewishness. And that's incredibly complicated
Speaker 4: for a society to accomplish when it's there are distinctions
Speaker 4: like literal tribal distinctions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and there's some and there's some color involved,
Speaker 3: a little whiter, a little less white.
Speaker 4: Right, crazy story, crazy story not getting nearly enough of.
Speaker 3: New York Times, which is something like live blog the
Speaker 3: campus protests and had like fifteen different editors, you know,
Speaker 3: working on the story and where was it in the Netherlands,
Speaker 3: the soccer each other Like that was like an all
Speaker 3: hands on deck moment for the New York Times. But
Speaker 3: Miami they can't. They don't have anybody in Miami, seventeen
Speaker 3: shots five. I think New York Times might have some
Speaker 3: readers in Miami.
Speaker 4: Probably, yeah, probably, well increasingly probably last But all right,
Speaker 4: let's move on to Steve Bannon. We're joined now by
Speaker 4: my colleague get unheard, James Billow, who had the great
Speaker 4: pleasure of interviewing Steve Bannon actually in the war Room
Speaker 4: studio and made headlines all over the place, ended up
Speaker 4: in the New York Times Politico because Steve Bannon told
Speaker 4: James that Elon Musk was quote a parasitic illegal immigrant
Speaker 4: and actually much more so. James, First of all, thank
Speaker 4: you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 7: Thank you a pleasure to be all.
Speaker 4: Tell us about your meeting with Bannon. What is the
Speaker 4: war room studio like? What was it like being there
Speaker 4: talking to him in the flash after the guilty plea?
Speaker 4: I think you talked to him just a couple of
Speaker 4: days after that all happened. How are his spirits?
Speaker 1: He was in a great mood and actually a pretty
Speaker 1: garrulous chap. I'm I'm sure that'll come as no surprise whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but that it was too deftly he pled guilty to
Speaker 1: the board of wolfsm But more importantly in his eyes,
Speaker 1: there was nominational confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, which he
Speaker 1: was in a very good mood about. I think the
Speaker 1: thing with Bannon is that although he's red lines with
Speaker 1: the Keys and he's very positive about the likes of
Speaker 1: Tulsi and Robert Fie joining the movement, he's very big
Speaker 1: on the MAHA stuff. In his words, he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad we got the red pilled moms and the
Speaker 1: anti vaxers that were all coming to join forces. It
Speaker 1: wasn't actually really sure how big this constituents. I asked him,
Speaker 1: how many people do you ac think the Tulsi's Kennedy's
Speaker 1: the world bringing over? And he seemed to think it
Speaker 1: was somewhere between five and ten million, all thanks to
Speaker 1: the radicalization of COVID, which is maybe possible, maybe a
Speaker 1: bit of a stretch. But as for his studio, it
Speaker 1: was a complete mess. There was memberbilius over the place.
Speaker 1: There was religious be a lot of reminders and signs
Speaker 1: to fight, fight Fight. I'm sure that pretty familiar to everyone.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's very diligent about what he does.
Speaker 1: He has markings all over these little newspapers, wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal ft and then has MSNBC on the background because
Speaker 1: he comaga better than anyone else on the right desk.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's a very interesting chat and it was
Speaker 1: good to good to speak with him and spend so
Speaker 1: long with him.
Speaker 3: One of the things you picked up on was his
Speaker 3: ambivalent relationship or with Elon Musk at this point, where
Speaker 3: on the one hand he says Elon Musk is a
Speaker 3: parasitic illegal immigrant and the tech frows need to be
Speaker 3: driven out of this coalition. On the other hand, he says,
Speaker 3: right now, I trust Trump because Trump is using Musk
Speaker 3: as blunt, blunt force instrument to go after the administrative state. Now,
Speaker 3: Bannon is not one for austerity. Now, he'll talk about
Speaker 3: how the deficit and the debt are out of control
Speaker 3: and the country needs to do something about that, but
Speaker 3: he does not want to go after Medicaid, social security, Medicare.
Speaker 3: He does not want tax cuts for the rich. He's
Speaker 3: fine with the tax cuts, no tax on tips, that
Speaker 3: sort of thing that he hates. The administrative state. Musk
Speaker 3: and his Musk and and russ vote, you know, seem
Speaker 3: much more to be driving towards real austerity, like genuine
Speaker 3: austerity what's what's what's Bannon's relationship to vote though? You know,
Speaker 3: Trump's o MB director because like Bannon's antiosterity credit is
Speaker 3: undermind if he's too close to vote. So how should
Speaker 3: we think about where Bannon is on this? On this question?
Speaker 1: I agree because his his MAGA well view co hit
Speaker 1: is in a lot of respect. There's these kind of
Speaker 1: populist measures that he is in favor of enforcing, you know,
Speaker 1: the as you mentioned, no taxes on over time and
Speaker 1: no tax on tips and that kind of thing, while
Speaker 1: at the same time reduced spending in the defense industry
Speaker 1: of the Pentagon. The weird thing is he's actually got
Speaker 1: a very good relationship with russ even though he is
Speaker 1: this kind of arch Austerian, as you mentioned in the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal piece that or so before mine, when
Speaker 1: they're doing a tour around his studio, he got a
Speaker 1: call from russ vote basically outlining you're the one in charge,
Speaker 1: not go and do your job. A bit further than that,
Speaker 1: he was quite keen to show off.
Speaker 3: He broke uple. He broke up a little bit there.
Speaker 3: What was the what was the call? What was the
Speaker 3: relationship there?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Sorry, So he got a call from russ Vote basically
Speaker 1: asking for his advice, and it was the effect of
Speaker 1: balance response that you're in charge here, you can decide.
Speaker 1: And I asked him a bit more about this in
Speaker 1: our meeting and he said he has a very good
Speaker 1: relationship with Russfo.
Speaker 7: And he says, look, you're the one in charge.
Speaker 1: Now do push you around doges one that has been
Speaker 1: elected or appointed.
Speaker 7: You are the one in charge.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: What I found strangers, as you mentioned RUSSFO is this
Speaker 1: kind of ultra Austerian tax libertarian type. And I said,
Speaker 1: we why have you got such a close relationship with
Speaker 1: this guy? And he's like he's been a part of
Speaker 1: the alliance for eight plus years. I trust him. Always
Speaker 1: seems to come down to this trust. And again with Trump,
Speaker 1: you employing all these measures like you're going to redo
Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen jobs and tax cuts, even though that's
Speaker 1: going to increase the deficits. You know, I just backed
Speaker 1: Trump to do the rep to make the right decision.
Speaker 1: I just backed Trump to keep muscle and the other wrangled.
Speaker 1: So does seem to be this weird paradox aradiction and
Speaker 1: worldview that I can't head around. But yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: big fan of russbo He's a big fan of Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 7: He said he loved the document.
Speaker 1: The only thing he didn't like were these two entitlements
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, which again because that there's a
Speaker 1: big part of what RUSS vote is about.
Speaker 3: Well, Emily, can you help us with that, Like how
Speaker 3: do we disentangle this? Because if Bannon does trust russ Vote,
Speaker 3: then I'm out of here, Like come on, like what's
Speaker 3: going on here?
Speaker 4: Bannon's no longer ye, I'm off the the hero that well,
Speaker 4: so RUSS vote being trusted by Bannon is a really
Speaker 4: interesting point, James, because Bannon does sort of see things
Speaker 4: you quote him in the story talking about how the
Speaker 4: enemy of his enemy is his friend. But also he
Speaker 4: very much has this trench warfare bunder mentality that people
Speaker 4: who have been around the conservative movement and have been
Speaker 4: around the Trump movement you just sort of have. Like
Speaker 4: Russ was a populist in the late aughts and early
Speaker 4: twenty tens, when populism on the right looked like austerity.
Speaker 4: It looked like a lot of people here in DC
Speaker 4: said this is the time to deal with security and
Speaker 4: titlement programs. They said the Tea Party was something to
Speaker 4: be interpreted as like a referendum on fiscal conservatism as
Speaker 4: opposed to maybe this sort of like primal cultural shout
Speaker 4: that I think we understand it to be now. And
Speaker 4: Russ was around, it was at like Republican Study Committee
Speaker 4: around like Jeb Henzerling and Mike Pence actually at the
Speaker 4: time in those days. So Bannon sort of looks at
Speaker 4: vote and says, this man has always had populist instincts.
Speaker 4: He's always been a part of the so called movement,
Speaker 4: and if you're around the conservative movement, people really do
Speaker 4: have this instinctive trust. And it sounds like James, that's
Speaker 4: what you picked up on. I'm also curious if you
Speaker 4: could just tell us a little bit more if on
Speaker 4: the flip side of that, some of this is Bannon
Speaker 4: seeing Elon Musk. He's referred to him as somebody who's
Speaker 4: a convert, so he should be sitting in the back
Speaker 4: pew before. Was it sort of like volcanic visceral when
Speaker 4: you were talking to him about Elon Musk. I know
Speaker 4: we've used the parasitic illegal immigrant quote that made headline,
Speaker 4: but he told you some more about Musk as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I just just about russ vote.
Speaker 1: I think the left is often criticized for these ideological
Speaker 1: purity tests, and it's almost like the right far the
Speaker 1: other way.
Speaker 7: They'll basically let anyone in the movement because grow, even though.
Speaker 1: It's quite becomes quite difficult to paper over these quite
Speaker 1: noticeable contradictions between various groups. As for Musk, he was
Speaker 1: definitely at his most animated him. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys remember this interview ban I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember this, but Bannon did an interview with an
Speaker 1: Italian newspaper just before Another day where he was asked
Speaker 1: about Elok and that's when he is a truly evil
Speaker 1: guy and everything in my power to run him out
Speaker 1: of office before inauguration.
Speaker 7: He obviously failed in that. And I brought this up
Speaker 7: and I said, well, what do you plan to do now?
Speaker 1: And again it's this weird paradox because he said, well,
Speaker 1: I think that the last two two weeks, two three
Speaker 1: weeks of administration has confirmed that Musk is indeed evil.
Speaker 1: The Doge cuts being completely performative. They haven't a Oh
Speaker 1: and by the way, he's an agent of Chinese influence. Well,
Speaker 1: why the hell are you laying office. Why aren't you
Speaker 1: pushing to get him out? And he says, I just
Speaker 1: trust Trump. Trump is going to keep an eye on him.
Speaker 1: He has served a purpose. He's, as you mentioned, Ryan,
Speaker 1: here's this armor piercing shell taking on this administrative shape.
Speaker 1: Because let's not forget that was one of the three
Speaker 1: totems of his twenty seventeen platform. And he still is
Speaker 1: absolutely desperate to take on this what he calls praetorian
Speaker 1: guard and if that means wrangling the tech rows in
Speaker 1: the world's richest man, then he's absolutely going to.
Speaker 7: Be doing it.
Speaker 4: James Billow of Unheard, thank you so much for your
Speaker 4: time this morning. I know you're probably inundated with people
Speaker 4: being like, damn, tell me more about that conversation, So
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 7: Thanks well.
Speaker 4: Drama continues in New York over Eric Adams, the agreement
Speaker 4: Eric Adams made with the Trump administration over migrant deportations. Now.
Speaker 4: Tom Holman, who is Donald Trump's Borders Are, was asked
Speaker 4: about some pushback from Alexandria Cosioquortez on Fox News and
Speaker 4: gave quiet an answer. Let's roll this clip.
Speaker 3: Heard you talking about AOC over the weekend. Do you
Speaker 3: believe she is breaking the law.
Speaker 11: Hull leing that up to doj When I find this
Speaker 11: servance that any member of Congress wants to educate people
Speaker 11: how they bade law enforcement, you can claim you're educating
Speaker 11: those constitutions rights. Okay, you can keep that claim. What's
Speaker 11: what she in facts doing? Tell people don't open your door,
Speaker 11: hiding at home, don't talk to Ice. We're talking about
Speaker 11: people are in the country legally committed a crime their
Speaker 11: public safety thread, They've been convicted of serious crime, and
Speaker 11: they've in order to be moved by federal judge so
Speaker 11: it's able to see. And others don't want Ice to
Speaker 11: enforce the laws that they enacted. She's a member of Congress.
Speaker 11: Let us enforce the laws you enacted. That's what we're
Speaker 11: supposed to do.
Speaker 4: You can't go after her.
Speaker 11: Do you think others should?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 11: I think I've asked you, Jade, where where is that
Speaker 11: line of impediment of interference? Now someone standing in your
Speaker 11: way for Benu from wrestling, somebody put your hands on
Speaker 11: and that's impediment. But what what line is telling people
Speaker 11: to hide from myce not open the door? Want where
Speaker 11: do you cross that line on a Department of Justice
Speaker 11: give us that line. You have talked to him about this,
Speaker 11: That's what you're saying, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And so that's not an off the cuff response. He
Speaker 3: he had said that multiple times previously. And I think
Speaker 3: Fox there is seeing if he's going to clean that
Speaker 3: up or if he's actually if this is where he stands.
Speaker 3: So and so what Homan is saying is that AOC,
Speaker 3: by giving clinics in her district or by talking openly
Speaker 3: on Instagram Live or whatever and saying, look, they're called
Speaker 3: know your Rights trainings like here, here are the rights
Speaker 3: that you have. You know, right to remain silent, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. You know the basic rights that we have country,
Speaker 3: which there's nothing in the constitution that says our rights
Speaker 3: are restricted to citizens. If you are in this country,
Speaker 3: you have these, You have these rights in general. So
Speaker 3: AOC responded by going after JD. Vance and saying, you
Speaker 3: lied to the world in Munich. If this administration believed
Speaker 3: in free speech as you claimed, its leaders wouldn't be
Speaker 3: threatening members of Congress with criminal investigations for educating the
Speaker 3: public of their constitutional rights. And so the other element
Speaker 3: here that I think is interesting is that AOC has
Speaker 3: gotten a lot of mockery for previous suggestions that the
Speaker 3: Trump administration was going to come after her criminally, Like,
Speaker 3: don't be ridiculous, you know this is you're being hysterical.
Speaker 3: It's February, like they haven't been in office a month
Speaker 3: and a court and Holman is talking to the Department
Speaker 3: of Justice asking them whether or not she has broken
Speaker 3: the law.
Speaker 4: He's asking for the line between helping criminals evade prosecution
Speaker 4: or deportation. That's what he said. He's trying to figure out.
Speaker 3: There is a crime called impeding, which if you are
Speaker 3: getting in the way of immigration officials, you can be
Speaker 3: charged with that. In fact, I covered this utterly insane
Speaker 3: case that was run by a Democratic Attorney General or
Speaker 3: democratic US attorney under the Obama administration named Carmen Ortiz, who,
Speaker 3: for nakedly political purposes, went after this bureaucrat who who's
Speaker 3: cleaning lady or nanny like, came to her and said,
Speaker 3: I think, like I don't have papers, Like what should
Speaker 3: I do? And the woman said something like, well, don't
Speaker 3: leave the country because if you do, you're not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to come back back in and you should
Speaker 3: apply for a green card. And here's how you can
Speaker 3: do that, which like very standard, normal, like non non
Speaker 3: criminal behavior. She charged that person with impeding and got
Speaker 3: a conviction out of it. It became a controversial case
Speaker 3: and she was criticized for it, but she got that
Speaker 3: that was However, a direct conversation with one individual about
Speaker 3: a specific case, AOC talking to a community group full
Speaker 3: of people were talking on Twitter in general about your
Speaker 3: constitutional rights, to me, is crazy. If you want to
Speaker 3: talk about criminal behavior, we should talk about the Home
Speaker 3: and Eric Adams deals, which is still the saga of
Speaker 3: which is still ongoing.
Speaker 4: And let's go to a one. We can put that
Speaker 4: up on the screens. To New York Times headline from Monday,
Speaker 4: which reads, four top New York City officials this's the
Speaker 4: first paragraph, said they would resign after the Justice Department
Speaker 4: moved to dismiss Mayor Eric Adams corruption case in exchange
Speaker 4: for his help with President Trump's deportation agenda. The four
Speaker 4: officials oversee much of New York City government, and their
Speaker 4: departure is poised to blow a devastating hole in the
Speaker 4: already wounded administration of Mayor Eric Adams. Brian, this is
Speaker 4: actually starting to wound the administration of Governor Kathy Hochel
Speaker 4: as she faces increasing calls to get rid of Eric Adams,
Speaker 4: which is within her power. Yes, I mean Democrats are
Speaker 4: now increasingly calling on Kathy Hokle to get this guy
Speaker 4: out of there. She has to be careful, obviously, because
Speaker 4: Eric Adams's previous immigration policies were wildly unpopular, not just
Speaker 4: in the city of New York, but around the entire state.
Speaker 4: So she doesn't want to look like she's you know,
Speaker 4: this is retribution for Eric Adams cracking down on a
Speaker 4: legal immigration and assisting the Trump administration on one of
Speaker 4: its most popular policies. On the other hand, he's a
Speaker 4: huge albatrosh Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: The argument for moving him from office is that he
Speaker 3: ran and claimed that he would be carrying out his
Speaker 3: duties and the best interests of the voters who put
Speaker 3: him in office, but instead, in order to stay out
Speaker 3: of prison, he struck a deal with the Trump administration
Speaker 3: to be their lackey. The evidence for that claim comes
Speaker 3: from Tom Holman Adams and who said it. Let's let's
Speaker 3: put d two up this Fox and Friends admission. I mean,
Speaker 3: he doesn't come through towhere.
Speaker 11: If he doesn't come true, I'll be back in New
Speaker 11: York City and we won't be sitting on the couch
Speaker 11: up in his office up up his same word, a
Speaker 11: hell is an agreement we came to So I wanted.
Speaker 4: We're going to deliver before the safety of the people
Speaker 4: of this city.
Speaker 3: And then he but you see Eric Adams there, He's like,
Speaker 3: we're going to deliver for this city, the people of
Speaker 3: New York City. As if we didn't just see him
Speaker 3: say out loud, we we have an agreement and if
Speaker 3: you break it, yeah, I'm gonna be up your butt.
Speaker 4: Yep. Which anyway, well, we can put D three on
Speaker 4: the screen, Eric Adams. This is another New York Times headline.
Speaker 4: It's now up to the judge whether to drop charges
Speaker 4: in the Adams case, so that can is kicked into
Speaker 4: or listen, the ball keep giving the metaphors. Here goes
Speaker 4: into the court of the judge because Emil Bove, the
Speaker 4: acting Deputy Attorney General, made that issue last Monday. So
Speaker 4: now it goes to the courts. Or by the way,
Speaker 4: Kathy Hokeel could get rid of Eric Adams and a
Speaker 4: lot of this, but obviously it's still going to the
Speaker 4: Trump administration. Well still yeah, the Trump administration still has
Speaker 4: to still be litigated by the Trump administration, or will
Speaker 4: be the backlash of the Trump administration's decision will still
Speaker 4: be litigated. Now, Eric Adams is going to be in
Speaker 4: court today. That's news we learned yesterday talking about all
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 3: Now, as viewers of this program know, there is this
Speaker 3: Stephen Donziger alternative go on. So when Donziger as an O.
Speaker 3: If you guys followed our program, you've seen Donziger interviewed.
Speaker 3: He's the Chevron attorney who was prosecuted as part of
Speaker 3: his successful Ecuadorian civil case against Chevron. Chevron then came
Speaker 3: after him criminally back here in the United States. The
Speaker 3: US attorneys saw the evidence that Chevron had compiled and
Speaker 3: declined to go forward with prosecution. Chevron went to the
Speaker 3: judge anyway, and the judge decided to hire a private
Speaker 3: prosecutor who had links to Chevron also and enable that prosecutor,
Speaker 3: this private one, to prosecute on behalf of the government,
Speaker 3: a case that the government itself had said that they
Speaker 3: didn't want to bring. Donziger refused to turn over his
Speaker 3: documents and his phones, and that such was found in
Speaker 3: contempt and did more than like a year plus or
Speaker 3: so in prison. So of course like that's that is
Speaker 3: a standard that is held for environmental attorneys who win
Speaker 3: victories against Chevron, not for in general mayors. But it
Speaker 3: is a precedent that exists that this judge, if they
Speaker 3: felt like it could appoint, could go to a law
Speaker 3: firm and say, look, I think I've looked at this
Speaker 3: indictment and it's rock solid. Get a private prosecutor. That
Speaker 3: would be funny. What would what would the just Department do? Then?
Speaker 3: Both is on a firing rampage recently, just yesterday asked
Speaker 3: for what's a prosecuting chang I for heard the first.
Speaker 4: Is D six. Yeah, if we put DEI six up
Speaker 4: on the screen. This is another senior US prosecutor resigned
Speaker 4: citing a demand a probe Biden era conduct. This is
Speaker 4: Denise Chung, the supervised criminal cases at the US Attorney's
Speaker 4: Office in Washington, and Gorden Reuter said she had been
Speaker 4: ordered to open a probe into a contract that she
Speaker 4: did not identify and that she believed request was not
Speaker 4: supported by evidence.
Speaker 3: This was about the EPA thing where the e p
Speaker 3: A on the way out. Yes, that's set up. This
Speaker 3: arrangement where nonprofits were going to be executing the Inflation
Speaker 3: Reduction Acts mandates, and so they moved they moved the
Speaker 3: money out. There was a Project Veritas video that came
Speaker 3: out where some Biden person was saying, we're throwing the
Speaker 3: gold bars off the Titanic, as were.
Speaker 4: Which was thinking, it appears that they actually really were.
Speaker 3: Yes, However, lawfully, it's like Congress's Congress appropriated the money
Speaker 3: and directed it to be spent, and their fear was
Speaker 3: that if they didn't spend it, then the next administration
Speaker 3: would block it from being spent, which would undermine Congress
Speaker 3: is you know, uh, lawfully executed appropriations. And so they
Speaker 3: moved them out quickly, and so Chang said, I don't
Speaker 3: think that you have enough to open a grand jury here,
Speaker 3: and then both said, well, then I want your Uh No,
Speaker 3: it wasn't both. It was Martin who said at Martin
Speaker 3: is that I want your resignation. So she tendered it.
Speaker 3: So it did seem like she was willing to work
Speaker 3: with the FBI to try to go to the banks
Speaker 3: to get the money back.
Speaker 4: It's not impossible to me that there was potentially misconduct.
Speaker 4: There should be. Stuff looked into when you know, people
Speaker 4: talking like gold bars off the Titanic. But I think
Speaker 4: actually this brings us to the point that I wanted
Speaker 4: to make, which is this is in a D five.
Speaker 4: Some of this, I think people on the right are
Speaker 4: correct to assume is lit miss tests for loyalists. They're
Speaker 4: sort of looking to push for self deportations. In the
Speaker 4: earliest days of Trump's two point zero doj and byron
Speaker 4: Yorke and The Washington Examiner had a pretty good piece
Speaker 4: walking through what substance of argument there may have been
Speaker 4: for dropping the case against Eric Adams, comparing it to
Speaker 4: the overzealous prosecution of Bob McDonald, even Chris Christie. Some
Speaker 4: of this has been bipartisan, by the way, just cases
Speaker 4: that end up going nowhere against politicians. And I think
Speaker 4: this is interesting because Jason Willock in the Washington Post
Speaker 4: wrote on the quote underwhelming charges against Eric Adams, but
Speaker 4: said this was a hugely botched operation by the Trump administration,
Speaker 4: which was making this sort of thin case about election interference,
Speaker 4: that you're not allowed to investigate politicians when the voters
Speaker 4: have the potential to cast ballots about this politician, or
Speaker 4: that this was just about the illegal immigration deal, you know,
Speaker 4: it's more valuable. This is what Emil Bob said in
Speaker 4: a letter that was very widely circulated back and forth
Speaker 4: with Sassoon, who resigned. We covered this last week with Crystal,
Speaker 4: that it was more valuable to get adams cooperation on
Speaker 4: migrant deportations than it was to prosecute him for this crime.
Speaker 4: So a lot of people are right, I think correctly,
Speaker 4: see the DOJ as a place where a lot of
Speaker 4: career politicians are very hostile to Donald Trump. They're hostile
Speaker 4: to people who are loyalists to Donald Trump, and they
Speaker 4: want to purge the dj of those people. And some
Speaker 4: of these measures are going to be ways that force
Speaker 4: people to kind of self deport and they have no
Speaker 4: problem with that whatsoever. On the other hand, there's probably
Speaker 4: a legitimate case to be made that this is part
Speaker 4: of a decade plus long pattern of prosecutors at the
Speaker 4: Justice Department putting politicians in the crosshair, and some of
Speaker 4: these cases end up falling apart. The bottom Donald case
Speaker 4: is a really good example. Eric Adams is clearly corrupt.
Speaker 4: There's absolutely no question that Eric Adams is corrupt. There
Speaker 4: isn't like some Russia Gate thing that's going to be
Speaker 4: unraveled here.
Speaker 3: So was McDonald right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean is taking yes, but the cases suck, And
Speaker 4: I think that's a legitimate point that then got I
Speaker 4: think unfortunately because of the Trump administration. Doesn't mean the
Speaker 4: media coverage was great, but because of the Trump administration
Speaker 4: lost because it was clearly a partisan move. It was
Speaker 4: clearly about Eric Adams supporting the partisan ends of Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: So you end up in the death spiral once again.
Speaker 4: If you're trying to clean up this Banana Republic death
Speaker 4: spiral in the Justice Department with partisan maneuvers, it doesn't
Speaker 4: end up working, right.
Speaker 3: And what I think is going on here is just
Speaker 3: more gangland stuff where the Trump Justice Department is trying
Speaker 3: to figure out who's going to be unquestionably loyal to Trump,
Speaker 3: and so they came up with a completely unethical and
Speaker 3: absurd thing for them to do so that which is
Speaker 3: to drop the charges against this guy in exchange for
Speaker 3: him doing your policy bidding, which to somebody who works
Speaker 3: at the Justice Department has gone through all the legal
Speaker 3: brainwashing about their ethics and brain and brainwashing in a
Speaker 3: good way, I think literal washing like get clean with
Speaker 3: this stuff, like that's you don't do that. Daniel Sisson's
Speaker 3: letter is well said on this, but it's obvious, like
Speaker 3: that's not how that's not how the Department Justice sees itself.
Speaker 3: So to order the Department Justice to explicitly do that
Speaker 3: is to root out, weed out all of the people
Speaker 3: who have a conscience, and to have left only the
Speaker 3: ones who are like, yeah, I'll do it just in
Speaker 3: the same way that there's a gang initiation to you
Speaker 3: have to go out and you know, shooting innocent civilian.
Speaker 4: I'm sure some people inside the DOJ are frustrated with
Speaker 4: these prosecutions falling apart and appeal and all of that.
Speaker 4: So maybe there are some people, maybe there's some good
Speaker 4: attorneys internally, so Soon actually may have been one of them,
Speaker 4: someone who's stuck around initially who were sort of frustrated
Speaker 4: by these processes and are open to changing them. But yeah,
Speaker 4: like it took what I think is a pretty good
Speaker 4: opportunity to make the case about bipartisan over zealous prosecutions.
Speaker 4: I mean, this goes back to what goes back a
Speaker 4: long time. But you can look at Comy and Martha Stewart,
Speaker 4: like there are just all kinds of examples of this
Speaker 4: stuff going on at the DJ for the FBI too
Speaker 4: for a really long time. So it just this was
Speaker 4: a very very poor partisan way to make the argument,
Speaker 4: and that just isn't encouraging in terms of the Trump
Speaker 4: administration's ability to clean up the DOJ in a way
Speaker 4: that makes it neutral, responsive to the president. But like
Speaker 4: justice should be blind, this just ended up landing in
Speaker 4: a very different way, even though I think one thing
Speaker 4: that's being missed the conversation is that there have been
Speaker 4: and this does appear to be a somewhat over zealous
Speaker 4: prosecution and underwhelming case on the very narrow specific legal question.
Speaker 4: The broader question is he correct. Clearly he is corrupt.
Speaker 12: There's plenty of evidence in the indictment that is plain
Speaker 12: this day on that and in related news, the Trump
Speaker 12: administration just announced that they do not plan to follow
Speaker 12: the Rhode Island federal judges.
Speaker 3: Order that they restart USAID in foreigns service funding. Their
Speaker 3: argument is that you go f off, you know, basically,
Speaker 3: the way that they're couching it in their reply is
Speaker 3: we are going to continue to evaluate on a case
Speaker 3: by case basis. So now it's kind of up to
Speaker 3: that judge who's going to say, okay, well, I made
Speaker 3: my order. How am I going to enforce it? We'll see.
Speaker 4: Let's move on to Lena Khan and other news about
Speaker 4: justice and Trump two point zero. We have a great guest,
Speaker 4: and we're excited to talk about the big win for
Speaker 4: Lena Khan.
Speaker 3: Yesterday, all right, stick around for that. Yesterday, Trump's FTC
Speaker 3: chair put out a major new announcement that he was
Speaker 3: going to keep in place the merger guidelines that had
Speaker 3: controversially been put into place originally by Biden's FTC chair
Speaker 3: Lina Khan. You put this first element up on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is This is Andrew Ferguson saying, look, today I'm
Speaker 3: inforido the FTC staff that the twenty three merger guidlands
Speaker 3: are in effect and will serve as the framework for
Speaker 3: agency's merger review analysis. These guidelines build on previous guidelines
Speaker 3: and many decades of case law that stability is important
Speaker 3: for enforcement. Agencies in the business community can roll the
Speaker 3: rest of that so people can read it, pause and
Speaker 3: read it if they're watching. But I wanted to get
Speaker 3: reaction from Doha Mecki, who served as the Biden administration's
Speaker 3: chief in the Anti Trust Division, towards the end, and
Speaker 3: as the deputy chief and the Anti Trust Division through
Speaker 3: I guess most of his tenure and have no you know,
Speaker 3: you've been working with Lenacon for a long time, towards
Speaker 3: towards this day, towards this idea that there would be
Speaker 3: a new bipartisan consensus around anti trust and how the
Speaker 3: government ought to approach mergers. So, first of all, were
Speaker 3: you surprised that Ferguson said, Okay, you know what, we're
Speaker 3: sticking with what Lenikon outlined and then tell us, tell
Speaker 3: us why it matters.
Speaker 13: Sure, So this was not hugely surprising for those of
Speaker 13: us who have worked in and around the anti trust agencies.
Speaker 3: Once Ferguson became chair, it was a signal that I think.
Speaker 13: It was a great So let me just back up
Speaker 13: and say, you know, I worked in the Anti Trust
Speaker 13: Division of the DOJ on or Barack Obama as a
Speaker 13: career public servant, and I actually worked for Donald Trump's
Speaker 13: first head of the Anti Trust Division, a guy named
Speaker 13: Macan del Raheim, and then had a great honor to
Speaker 13: serve as principal deputy to Jonathan Canter and then ultimately
Speaker 13: lead the Anti Trust Division myself at the end of
Speaker 13: the Biden administration, and so I have seen for a
Speaker 13: very long time this bipartisan role towards an anti trust
Speaker 13: consensus that really prizes going back to first principles. And
Speaker 13: I think that Donald Trump has made a really important
Speaker 13: down payment in designating Andrew Ferguson chair of the FTC
Speaker 13: and nominating a woman named gil Slater to lead the
Speaker 13: Anti Trust Division of the DOJ. And what I know
Speaker 13: of both of them is that they are fiercely conservative.
Speaker 13: They have a deep fidelity to law, and that means
Speaker 13: going back to statutes, right the text of statutes, going
Speaker 13: back to Supreme Court and appellate procesity, and that's good
Speaker 13: news for the American people. When we drafted the Merger Guidelines,
Speaker 13: which is a process that started in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 13: we undertook a deep review of all of the Supreme
Speaker 13: Court and appellate cases that had ever been decided on
Speaker 13: merger antitrust challenges and attempted to write out a document
Speaker 13: that gave transparency to the business community about how it
Speaker 13: was that we were going to undertake merger analysis. And
Speaker 13: for the first time ever, ever since nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 13: those guidelines actually cited case law and so on that telling,
Speaker 13: it's not surprised, like vibes.
Speaker 3: Just vibes basically from the Northity Chicago or something.
Speaker 4: There was no citation take case law.
Speaker 13: Even though other guidance documents such as that now withdrawn
Speaker 13: two thousand Competitor Collaboration Guidelines cited law, the merger guidelines
Speaker 13: never did. And so this is a deeply conservative principle.
Speaker 13: There's no anti trust exception to statutory interpretation or judicial
Speaker 13: precedent in antitrust. And so again this is not hugely surprising,
Speaker 13: and I won't necessarily agree with every decision that the
Speaker 13: new administration makes, but I think this is a really
Speaker 13: important one and a good one.
Speaker 4: Well, even the Federal Society. People associated with Federal Society
Speaker 4: just this week we're looking at the con merger guidelines
Speaker 4: and saying these are pretty reasonable. So maybe if you
Speaker 4: could tell us just a little bit about some context,
Speaker 4: what were these merger guidelines? What did they do? And
Speaker 4: the second tag along part of that question I have
Speaker 4: is does this send a real chill to the consumer
Speaker 4: welfare standard people on the right. And I'm sure you're
Speaker 4: friends with many of the other people in legal circles
Speaker 4: who have for years been using consumer welfare standard. It's
Speaker 4: fallen out of fashion in the last decade ish, But
Speaker 4: now when you have a Republican president's FTC look at
Speaker 4: things this way, it seems like a pretty big shift.
Speaker 13: Well, let me go give you some history about merger guidelines.
Speaker 13: So the first merger guidelines were promulgated in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 13: A guy named Don Turner, who led the Anti Trust
Speaker 13: Division then under LBJ, you know, gave a guidance document
Speaker 13: that attempted to distill how it was that the anti
Speaker 13: trust agencies review mergers. You know, for your listeners, there's
Speaker 13: a certain number of mergers, the biggest mergers, highest dollar value,
Speaker 13: that have to be notified to the anti trust agencies
Speaker 13: every year. And so there's a long tradition of providing
Speaker 13: transparency to the public about how it is that the
Speaker 13: agencies decide the legality of mergers. And they've been updated continually.
Speaker 13: Nearly every president has updated the merger guidelines at least
Speaker 13: at one point in their administration, and that was true
Speaker 13: of the Reagan administration, the Clinton administration, you know, even
Speaker 13: the first Trump administer stration updated something called vertical Merger
Speaker 13: Guidelines that have since been superseded.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that meant layout for people what that meant
Speaker 3: because that it is important.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's very very important. So, you know, making clear
Speaker 13: that when a merger combines to companies and reduces the
Speaker 13: number of available options for consumers or employers, for workers,
Speaker 13: or any number of ways, that mergers can really threaten competition.
Speaker 13: You know, the guidance documents help the public and the
Speaker 13: business community in particular, can gauge for themselves how it
Speaker 13: is that the agencies are likely to look at that merger.
Speaker 13: And so insofar as the business community was using guidance
Speaker 13: documents as a sort of you know, litmus test for
Speaker 13: what kinds of mergers would be permissible, I think this
Speaker 13: is likely of your very important development for the business community.
Speaker 13: I remember in twenty twenty three when they were released,
Speaker 13: there were the sort of usuals who heavily criticized the
Speaker 13: document and attempted to frame them as radical, which is
Speaker 13: unusual considering that it was very clear what kind of
Speaker 13: case law the agencies.
Speaker 3: How did they change? So like for decades, it seems
Speaker 3: like the merger guideline was including from Obama was cool?
Speaker 4: Do it?
Speaker 13: We don't care, I'm sure those folks would dispute them.
Speaker 3: But they were there though. I mean, what was it
Speaker 3: like to try to flag a merger back then?
Speaker 13: You know, there are ways in which there has been
Speaker 13: a creep and an increased permissiveness about the kinds of
Speaker 13: mergers that are lawful. And what we saw when we
Speaker 13: came in was that, you know, there were routinely mergers
Speaker 13: bound up by something called consent decrees right settlements that
Speaker 13: ultimately offered no real protection to the public.
Speaker 3: So it will allow this merger if you agree to
Speaker 3: do this thing correct, and then they wouldn't do.
Speaker 13: The thing correct, and facially you would have illegal mergers
Speaker 13: being notified to the agencies. And you know, it raised
Speaker 13: real questions about why these mergers were being proposed in
Speaker 13: the first place. But in these Merger guidelines, we tried
Speaker 13: our best to be very clear, again always summoning the
Speaker 13: law and going back to first principles about when a
Speaker 13: merger might harm workers, when a merger that was new
Speaker 13: to care about workers, you know, you know.
Speaker 4: Rather than consumers.
Speaker 13: They were contemplated in the prior version of the Merger Guidelines,
Speaker 13: But these made it very very clear, right, there was
Speaker 13: no ambiguity about the twenty twenty three merger guidelines. There
Speaker 13: are also problems in digital markets, right big tech mergers
Speaker 13: something called killer acquisitions, you know, platform m mergers.
Speaker 3: That's where a tech company or something goes out and
Speaker 3: buys a competitor and.
Speaker 13: Then shelves it or mothballs it or folds it into
Speaker 13: their existing offerings and kills maybe something that they had
Speaker 13: and development. So there's there's all kinds of ways that
Speaker 13: you can have problematic mergers and digital markets, and there
Speaker 13: was really no framework for thinking about those kinds, or
Speaker 13: no clear framework rather for thinking about how those kinds
Speaker 13: of mergers can harm real people communicators like Facebook.
Speaker 4: It's not exactly the same thing as a monopoly with
Speaker 4: a hard product.
Speaker 13: Exactly, And that that I think was the absurdity of
Speaker 13: these really old paradigms that haven't existed for a long time.
Speaker 13: I mean, if you're thinking about every merger as you know,
Speaker 13: a widget manufacturer acquiring something or bridging with another widget manufacturer,
Speaker 13: I mean, it's it's it's reallyiculous to think that every
Speaker 13: merger is horizontal or vertical, which are these again technocratic
Speaker 13: terms that just don't mean anything in the modern economy.
Speaker 13: And so I think that these guidelines, again rooted in
Speaker 13: law which should make everybody happy, really attempted to take
Speaker 13: on market realities in the modern market. Right, the way
Speaker 13: ordinary people participate in our market economy was really reflected
Speaker 13: in these merger guidelines.
Speaker 3: And so when you were chief of the Anti Trust Division,
Speaker 3: you put out a number of orders and blocks of
Speaker 3: mergers that pissed off a lot of powerful people. And
Speaker 3: one of the reactions to that, we talked about this
Speaker 3: on money. We can put this next element up the
Speaker 3: screen when to get your take on it was this
Speaker 3: really wild Brightbart article Biden Anti Trust holdover at Doha.
Speaker 3: Meki continued, woke agenda instead of taking on big tech.
Speaker 3: You know, people can go back and look at our
Speaker 3: Monday piece where we dissect the evidence laid out in
Speaker 3: this bright part piece. So without getting too much into it,
Speaker 3: to go over it again, curious, where do you think
Speaker 3: this came from?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Like what how do like what's going on here?
Speaker 13: You know, it's hard to speculate where these kinds of
Speaker 13: things come from, but I'll say that, you know, when
Speaker 13: I was at the Any Trust Division, we took on
Speaker 13: powerful interests and made clear that they too had to
Speaker 13: obey the law. And it's not at all surprising for
Speaker 13: anyone who's been in our line of work that sometimes
Speaker 13: it can get vitriolic, that sometimes companies can take it personally.
Speaker 13: And so, you know, I'll leave others to speculate about
Speaker 13: the exact origins. I'll just say that this sort of
Speaker 13: thing is not surprising, right, because big, entrenched, powerful interests
Speaker 13: often you know, says that aren't true, attack you personally.
Speaker 13: And we always took the view when we were running
Speaker 13: the Anti Trust Division that it was our job to
Speaker 13: absorb that kind of blowback, unpleasant as it might be,
Speaker 13: because we were insulating a career staff prosecutors, economists, statisticians,
Speaker 13: paralegals who were doing the really difficult work of holding
Speaker 13: lawbreakers accountable.
Speaker 4: Well, and what's interesting about this, Bright, Well, there are
Speaker 4: many things interesting about the Bridebarn article. But what I
Speaker 4: find interesting is the point I think Ryan was alluding to.
Speaker 4: It sounds like some commshop for a really powerful business
Speaker 4: interest pitched this to Breitbart because you dissect the story
Speaker 4: as a journalist, you're looking at this, they're like, this
Speaker 4: is very thin. It's not a well substantiated story. It
Speaker 4: says at one point quote. None of Macki's actions have
Speaker 4: anything to do with countering big tech. And it singles
Speaker 4: one decision that you made a lot lawsuit just before
Speaker 4: Trump took office. But it looks like a really thin
Speaker 4: piece of opo that was pitched to Breitbart, which sort
Speaker 4: of a lot of conservative media outlets, speaking of somebody
Speaker 4: who's been in conservative media for a long time, have
Speaker 4: that sort of reflex to publish that opo from certain
Speaker 4: com shops that represent business interests. And I guess I'm
Speaker 4: curious if you think that this wedge the business community
Speaker 4: continues to try and drive between like Andrew Ferguson camp
Speaker 4: and your camp. Is it getting more powerful now that
Speaker 4: Elon Musk and other massive CEOs have so much sway
Speaker 4: in the Trump administration and the Republican Party more broadly,
Speaker 4: Or is what Ferguson did just yesterday, just this week
Speaker 4: early signs about anti trust when the Trump administration? Is
Speaker 4: that a really positive indication actually that this new ideological
Speaker 4: commitment to rethinking por prior standards is real and here
Speaker 4: to stay on the right.
Speaker 13: You know, I think there's I've heard sometimes that there's
Speaker 13: a realignment of a kind happening in antitrust and I
Speaker 13: feel like I've really had a front row seat to
Speaker 13: some of that because again, I was counseled to Donald
Speaker 13: Trump's first head of the Anty Trust Division and principal
Speaker 13: deputy to Biden's head of the Anty Trust Division before
Speaker 13: leading the institution myself. And this is not at all surprising,
Speaker 13: but it's hugely interesting. I think both parties have a
Speaker 13: sort of factionalism that is playing out, and so many
Speaker 13: people have observed, myself included that when Donald Trump ran
Speaker 13: for president in twenty sixteen, there was an element of
Speaker 13: populism that was real, right, it was very interesting.
Speaker 3: And did you see it evolving in the first Trump administration?
Speaker 14: Absolutely absolutely, as somebody who was working in that, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 14: the Google exactly my past. I saw really bold actions
Speaker 14: that really started to take hold at the end of
Speaker 14: Obama and really started to manifest as departures from traditional
Speaker 14: kind of libertarian orthodoxy. And so that's the Visa Plaid
Speaker 14: merger challenge, the AT and T time Warner merger challenge,
Speaker 14: the filing of the Google Search lawsuit, which is the
Speaker 14: most significant, you know, section two monopolization tech lawsuit since
Speaker 14: Microsoft in nineteen ninety eight, and so you know, even
Speaker 14: in the Democratic Party, there are these forces where you
Speaker 14: you know, it's not really like center left, you know,
Speaker 14: liberal progressive. I mean, there are interests that really prize
Speaker 14: big powerful corporations and folks who really want to return
Speaker 14: power to the people. And I see elements of that
Speaker 14: on the right as well. I was listening to a
Speaker 14: podcast Ross doubt Hat and Steve Bannon on his podcast.
Speaker 14: You know, certainly that was not on my bingo card.
Speaker 14: You know, he called himself and neo Randeisian. But I mean, really,
Speaker 14: I think even that doesn't do enough to really surface
Speaker 14: how interesting his commentary was about the techno feudalists. And again,
Speaker 14: I sort of I see this potential factionalism in their
Speaker 14: own party. I see it in conservative organizations. I see
Speaker 14: it in the conservative legal movement.
Speaker 13: And so I think that I think it remains to
Speaker 13: be seen how that will play out. But I know
Speaker 13: that there are certain good appointments and decisions that we
Speaker 13: are likely to see, even if they are in contradiction
Speaker 13: with other decisions that the new administration makes.
Speaker 3: And Lena Khan herself comments that on this also. She
Speaker 3: said the twenty twenty three merger guidelines emphasize fidelity to
Speaker 3: law reflect modern market realities, and are increasingly being adopted
Speaker 3: by courts. Good to see bipartisan commitment to rigorous analysis
Speaker 3: for policing mergers, and bipartisan commitment, I think is a
Speaker 3: key term there. When we talked about this on Monday
Speaker 3: with Sager, one of the points he made it is like, look,
Speaker 3: if you think that the right is going to get
Speaker 3: credit the left here, then you're being naive here. It's
Speaker 3: not going to happen. On the other hand, you do
Speaker 3: have people like Hawley, Ted Cruz, even to some extent
Speaker 3: jd Vance saying nice things about Lena Kahan. So I'm
Speaker 3: curious and how much you can tell us about this,
Speaker 3: how much Cross, how much bipartisan work is being done
Speaker 3: to forge a coalition, because for forty years or so,
Speaker 3: there was a bipartisan consensus whereby no matter which party one,
Speaker 3: whether it was Reagan or Clinton or whoever Bush Obama,
Speaker 3: the approach to anti trust and labor to some degree
Speaker 3: was going to be roughly the same. You'd have three
Speaker 3: Democrats on the panel and two on two Republicans they'd switch.
Speaker 3: You'd have three Republicans and two Democrats. But the decisions
Speaker 3: that would come through the various commissions a FTC and
Speaker 3: others would be basically the same. And I know that
Speaker 3: there's been some effort to make that the case, but
Speaker 3: in reverse, yeah, that there would be a bipartisan consensus
Speaker 3: that actually, know, the populist approach is the one we're
Speaker 3: going to do. Then, whether it's Hawley or Warren or
Speaker 3: Sanders or so, how much actual coordination is there? Are
Speaker 3: you guys do you agree and you kind of are
Speaker 3: moving in your separate lanes forward or are you guys talking?
Speaker 13: You know, when I was at the Anti Trust Division,
Speaker 13: I made it a point to go into explicitly conservative
Speaker 13: spaces to talk about why ant high trust matters for
Speaker 13: people of all stripes. And I always felt like I
Speaker 13: had a warm welcome in those places. You know, whether
Speaker 13: folks on the right will ultimately credit you know, Democrats,
Speaker 13: liberals others for you know, intellectual contributions to that movement,
Speaker 13: I just think that misses the point, right, It's not
Speaker 13: really about credit. Right, The American people are suffering. I
Speaker 13: saw that firsthand. And when I went out and talked
Speaker 13: to farmers right or invited in ranchers from South Dakota,
Speaker 13: I wasn't thinking about, oh, well, this is a red state.
Speaker 13: I was thinking about, these are my fellow Americans, and
Speaker 13: they're being screwed over by powerful corporate interests, by you know,
Speaker 13: the oligarchs of whatever industry, right, including agriculture, and so
Speaker 13: that really means something to people, and I think that's
Speaker 13: the important thing, right, working towards a new consensus. Again,
Speaker 13: I think it remains to be seen whether we ultimately
Speaker 13: get there, but I think we're seeing movement and progress
Speaker 13: and this is a really exciting thing to watch.
Speaker 3: Well, do thanks for joining us, you seriously thank you
Speaker 3: do an impressive job covering up your wok agenda. Yes,
Speaker 3: I couldn't even tell you the sumhere.
Speaker 4: Hartbert said that you quoted Dubois and this is your
Speaker 4: woke agendas. You were approvingly quoting one of the pre
Speaker 4: eminent black intellectuals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they described him as black.
Speaker 4: Ye, black Marxist thinker, I think is what It's all
Speaker 4: Very absurd, very absurd. We appreciate thank you all.
Speaker 3: Right, up next, speaking of Welke this, we've got a
Speaker 3: little Dave Chappelle segment. Stick around for that.
Speaker 4: Well, Dave Chappelle is putting Saturday Night live on Blast
Speaker 4: actually during the big fiftieth anniversary celebration week of all times,
Speaker 4: we can go ahead and put this element up on
Speaker 4: the screen. He alleged in a recent comedy set, according
Speaker 4: to a journalist who was there, that SNL producers told
Speaker 4: him he could not talk about Gaza and he could
Speaker 4: not talk about transgenderism when he hosted the show. I
Speaker 4: think it was last fall, somewhere around the election, and
Speaker 4: Dave Chappelle. This is described in the Deadline article that's
Speaker 4: up on the screen as sort of a quote shocking
Speaker 4: instance of potential censorship. I believe he ended up and
Speaker 4: I think Deadline notes this talking about Palestine in that
Speaker 4: show and went fairly viral for it. But the idea
Speaker 4: is that he wasn't supposed to, like wait, into those
Speaker 4: controversial topics. It is a pretty interesting allegation against Saturday
Speaker 4: Night Live. Ryan Chappelle has obviously become really popular on
Speaker 4: the right. I mean he's always been popular with actually everyone,
Speaker 4: probably more popular with the left than the right in
Speaker 4: the past, but he's always been popular with everyone likes
Speaker 4: this to know, he's a man. But he's gotten a
Speaker 4: lot of traction on the right because he's been willing
Speaker 4: over the last half decade plus to from a position
Speaker 4: of the left say some things about like trans ideology,
Speaker 4: whether it's like locker rooms bathrooms that the right really
Speaker 4: approves of. No, he's saying SNL didn't want to talk
Speaker 4: want him to talk about Gaza from the left or
Speaker 4: trans issues from the right. Sort of interesting.
Speaker 3: It's funny. You remember we used to have a deal
Speaker 3: that if I made you talk about an Israel block, yes,
Speaker 3: then you would make me talk about a trans block
Speaker 3: because that was you know, several years ago, whenever we
Speaker 3: launched this program, Like those were the two like most
Speaker 3: most difficult issues for each of us to talk about.
Speaker 3: Navigator right to navigate in a way that it's sensitive. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So he and he talks about he said, he's speaking
Speaker 3: directly to Trump and he's like, look, you know you
Speaker 3: need to take this seriously. You know, the whole world's
Speaker 3: counting on you. You know, even the people that hate
Speaker 3: you counting on you. And he said, whether whether it's
Speaker 3: the people in the Palisades or the people in Palestine,
Speaker 3: you know you got to treat them with dignity, and
Speaker 3: also clearly making a reference to Trump's musing about ethnically
Speaker 3: cleansing the higher region, saying, come on, man, like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? Like ridiculous?
Speaker 4: Well, when he said that wasn't it? It was before
Speaker 4: Trump rolled out the Gaza plan, I thought it was
Speaker 4: what was it? I thought it was back around the fall.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Either way, that's that's right, that's right. Sort always bet
Speaker 4: on the table. But yes, so did you catch by
Speaker 4: the way you have Saturday Night Lives fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 3: Not much they did watch.
Speaker 4: I did watch. Some of it was pretty good. They
Speaker 4: did a great, shockingly good uh. In memoriam for all
Speaker 4: of their politically incorrect sketches over the years, they had
Speaker 4: to blur out. One of the jokes is they had
Speaker 4: to blur out every time someone in SNL did like
Speaker 4: a version of blackface.
Speaker 3: Rolled the like pretty often Tommy fallon there or it
Speaker 3: was his somewhere else. I thought Jimmy Kimmel was Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 4: Jimmy Kimmel is the Yeah, I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I don't want to libel anybody on slandering you just.
Speaker 4: Did was offensive to the Irish, even though you are Irish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I can say it, but.
Speaker 4: Anyway, it's I think the I guess from Saturday Night
Speaker 4: Live's perspective. If I'm Saturday Night Live and I bring
Speaker 4: Dave Chappelle on the show, the benefit of Dave Chappelle
Speaker 4: is just letting Dave Chapelle do Dave Chappelle.
Speaker 3: If you if you invite Dave Chapelle, just let him,
Speaker 3: let him rip.
Speaker 4: Literally, don't edit anything. Just give him a microphone on
Speaker 4: the stake, say your prayers and.
Speaker 3: Let it go. Yeah, and he's just and he's gonna
Speaker 3: nark you out anyway.
Speaker 4: Which appears to be exactly what happened. So I mean, listen,
Speaker 4: it's it's interesting that to me, it's interesting that Chappelle's
Speaker 4: SNL appearance I think at this point was a couple
Speaker 4: of months ago, because to me, it just seems like
Speaker 4: the culture has shifted so much in the last couple
Speaker 4: of months, like the last month in particular, that like
Speaker 4: vibe shift that people sensed when Trump I think, especially
Speaker 4: after Donald Trump was almost assassinated and you started to
Speaker 4: see different figures in pop culture come out and say
Speaker 4: they were pro Trump, and you started to see his
Speaker 4: campaign doing really well, it looked like there was something
Speaker 4: under the surface where culture was about to just kind
Speaker 4: of accept Trump and a lot of people were going
Speaker 4: to be just more open to him. Joe Rogan comes on,
Speaker 4: endorses him, Dana White starts campainting with him, and all
Speaker 4: of that. It's just interesting to see how SNL was
Speaker 4: thinking of it, even just not that long ago, because
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I don't know how different that would
Speaker 4: be if he were to come back in host like
Speaker 4: next week.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're right, that was that was a previous
Speaker 3: bit that I was thinking of.
Speaker 4: It's a good but a very good Yeah, this must
Speaker 4: have been January, Yeah, because it was Yeah, I think
Speaker 4: he hosted right in the new year, and he was yes.
Speaker 3: And because he's from Ohio, you know, and hangs out
Speaker 3: around there, he's always seemed to have his finger on
Speaker 3: the pulse a little bit more than you know, probably
Speaker 3: a lot of the other people over at Sunday Live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is he was referring to his when he
Speaker 4: hosted the show in January. So yeah, he he really said, well,
Speaker 4: this is how he ended the San Francisco set, by
Speaker 4: the way, he said, give the Jews a break free
Speaker 4: Palestine before literally dropping the mic. According to the reporter
Speaker 4: at San Francisco Gate who was actually there, and this
Speaker 4: is where he said to Trump and the monologue back
Speaker 4: in January, well, please do better next time. Do not
Speaker 4: forget your humanity, and please have empathy for displaced people,
Speaker 4: whether they're in Palisades or in Palestine. He also said,
Speaker 4: I'm tired of being controversial. I'm trying to turn over
Speaker 4: a new leaf. It was way too soon to try
Speaker 4: to joke about a catastrophe like that. This one hits
Speaker 4: close to home. So it was a I mean, it
Speaker 4: was a really good monologue. But he's now accusing us
Speaker 4: and ill of censoring it, literally, of censoring it.
Speaker 3: Although it's live. He could do whatever he wants. What
Speaker 3: are they gonna do?
Speaker 4: He probably wants to get paid.
Speaker 3: Do you get paid for that?
Speaker 4: I'm sure?
Speaker 3: What do you think one of those things you just
Speaker 3: do because it's like an promotion?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 3: The super Bowl? Do you get paid for the Super
Speaker 3: Bowl halftime show?
Speaker 4: No idea, I'm sure you it's something other than publicity.
Speaker 3: They got to pay your dancers at least.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we should be entertainment lawyers next career anyway. Interesting
Speaker 4: tibet from Dave Chappelle that. You know, we talked earlier
Speaker 4: about how little covers there was of this wild Miami
Speaker 4: beach shooting. It's just there. I'm just wondering, Ryan, with
Speaker 4: the democratization of media like drop site for example, drop
Speaker 4: Site's doing so well, how much longer Meati gets away
Speaker 4: with sort of being able to own the narrative on
Speaker 4: these topics because Dave Chapelle is going to put you
Speaker 4: on blast. He feels comfortable, he feels like there's a
Speaker 4: permission structure culturally now where he lived. Yeah, he's okay,
Speaker 4: he made it.
Speaker 3: Have a T shirt.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, anyway, on that note, thank you so much
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Speaker 3: See you guys soon.