Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to it could happen hear a podcast about unions
Speaker 3: falling apart and in this case, how they're not being
Speaker 3: put back together again. I am your host, Bio Wong,
Speaker 3: and today we are telling a somewhat unusual story for
Speaker 3: this show. It's usual in the sense that it's a
Speaker 3: story about, you know, the replacement of democracy with bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: If like the death spiral of business union, of unionism,
Speaker 3: it's a story it's also as much about the defeat
Speaker 3: of the worker's movement as it is like LaVar Jackson's
Speaker 3: counting stats, a thing that it also bizarrely is about.
Speaker 3: And this is this is the story of the crisis
Speaker 3: of the NFL Players Association, which is the NFL's union,
Speaker 3: and it is so unhinged that the only way that
Speaker 3: this could actually be talked about reasonably is to bring
Speaker 3: in someone who knows ball, and that is Charles McDonald
Speaker 3: of Yahoo Sports and the Wonderful Football three o one podcast.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show. This is going to be a trip.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me. I've listened to a few episodes,
Speaker 4: so I was excited, and you asked me to come on.
Speaker 4: Love your work, and yeah, this is this is gonna
Speaker 4: be a good rant because and not even really a
Speaker 4: rant because because honestly, like when you like when you
Speaker 4: start the Puel is Back, it is really like a
Speaker 4: textbook case study from what we know on like just
Speaker 4: straight up organizational decay. Yeah, like you get such a
Speaker 4: clear picture on how just really a few people, in
Speaker 4: this case, thirty two NFL owners can just completely dictate
Speaker 4: the life of you know, thousands of people who are
Speaker 4: literally really sacrificing their bodies to try and you know,
Speaker 4: escape whatever poverty they come from in their in their
Speaker 4: earlier life. So it's, uh, it's fascinating, it's sad. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is one of those areas that I have obviously
Speaker 4: because it's my it's my job. But you just like
Speaker 4: extreme cognitive dissonance sometimes. Like I love football, you know,
Speaker 4: I played from the time ill seven through college. Obviously,
Speaker 4: like I do this work. It's kind of giving me
Speaker 4: like everything, and then you have to deal with just
Speaker 4: so much bad stuff that comes with me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I remember like covering the Colin Kaepernick season,
Speaker 4: which was ten years ago as of this god right,
Speaker 4: ten years ago, yeah, and just like seeing how alienating
Speaker 4: that was. Just like just writing like a column saying, hey,
Speaker 4: you know, Washington, like they should work Colin Kaepernick out
Speaker 4: because they don't have a quarterback and this guy is
Speaker 4: just a startable quarterback. And you would get like hate
Speaker 4: mail over that stuff. But I'm still tuned every Sunday,
Speaker 4: you know, Lamar Jackson stuff. I was on the front
Speaker 4: lines for that, but still tuning in to get my
Speaker 4: racest slop every Sunday.
Speaker 3: It's a fundamental issue here is people will still do
Speaker 3: it immediately. I am mildly proud that I wasn't watching
Speaker 3: that era, but I wasn't watching that era specifically because
Speaker 3: the Seahawks loss Super Bolts to the Patriots, and then
Speaker 3: I was like I'm fucking out after like eight years.
Speaker 4: Well I've been watching this stuff my whole life. Like
Speaker 4: I remember watching like college football with like my dad
Speaker 4: and his friends when I was like five and six
Speaker 4: years Old's like, I like, legit just don't know anything
Speaker 4: else to a degree, like I had to use this
Speaker 4: sport as like my vehicle to kind of explore the
Speaker 4: rest of the world, like once I got out of college,
Speaker 4: just trying to figure my shit out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think we have a good combination here
Speaker 3: to talk about this because you come at this from
Speaker 3: the football angle and then exploring out of the like, oh,
Speaker 3: by god, this is so unhinged. Everything is broken. And
Speaker 3: then I come at this kind of from the opposite direction,
Speaker 3: which is one of the things that's been really frustrating
Speaker 3: about the coverage of this is that like, like there's
Speaker 3: lots of very good coverage. Pubble Tory done a lot
Speaker 3: of very good work about this, and it's like the
Speaker 3: guy who kind of instigated the whole.
Speaker 4: Like instigators kind of put in it is put in
Speaker 4: it lightly.
Speaker 5: I mean he got the union president fired basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got the union president fired after it was
Speaker 3: revealed that he was using union money to go to
Speaker 3: strip clubs.
Speaker 6: It's like.
Speaker 5: That's like the tail end of this story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like the end of it. That's where it's going, right.
Speaker 3: But like, the thing that's been frustrating to me about
Speaker 3: this is like the people covering this, and people have
Speaker 3: done a lot of good work. Is there not people
Speaker 3: who cover unions at all? Yeah, And like that's like
Speaker 3: what I do, right, And like I don't know, like
Speaker 3: I think as much as this episode is going to
Speaker 3: be us screaming about this union doing unhinged shit, like
Speaker 3: we're obviously like pro union. Like I had my union
Speaker 3: that I organized on by show to talk about our
Speaker 3: god dract against you.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, I was member of the first box
Speaker 4: union that yeah, god damn that was almost ten years.
Speaker 3: Ago now is christ so old?
Speaker 4: And look like I believe in this stuff, like I like,
Speaker 4: with the stroke of a pen, not to put it
Speaker 4: that simplically because obviously a lot of fight went to it,
Speaker 4: but with a struggle with pen, like I was able
Speaker 4: to live in DC after being there he broke, you know,
Speaker 4: and it's crazy like my salary went up to Liverpool
Speaker 4: age and nothing.
Speaker 5: Died yep, right, you know, no one died.
Speaker 4: It was it was it was business as usual, honestly,
Speaker 4: Like nothing was weird. So obviously people who listen to
Speaker 4: the show, like, you know that these people with the
Speaker 4: money like they're out to get us obviously for their
Speaker 4: own game. And it's so just brazenly clear through like
Speaker 4: this union story, especially through the past twenty years, which
Speaker 4: is where I think you kind of have to start it.
Speaker 4: I mean, just systematically stripped down. And the one thing
Speaker 4: that even Pablo on his most recent episode, because he
Speaker 4: talked about it last week because J. C.
Speaker 5: Tretter was elected director.
Speaker 3: One of the villains of this story power right.
Speaker 4: And and you know, one thing about like Poplo and
Speaker 4: Mike Florio, who have really been on this more than
Speaker 4: like any other national journalist, is like, yeah, we still
Speaker 4: don't know a big component of like the why and
Speaker 4: the how this is happening, because you know, well, we
Speaker 4: gotta get into because basically it feels like there's two
Speaker 4: two or three guys kind of acting as liaisons to
Speaker 4: the owner while also trying to respect and you know,
Speaker 4: run the union, which are obviously just two completely incompatible
Speaker 4: ideologies when you're trying to work that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that's actually a way to start talking
Speaker 3: about this kind of going back to there there used
Speaker 3: to be a time when the NFL union would go
Speaker 3: on strike, like they did pickets, like they fought scabs
Speaker 3: outside of the gates of football stadium.
Speaker 7: This was a thing that happened like regularly.
Speaker 3: Like there's there's a whole bunch of stories of like
Speaker 3: umw A guys and like guys from like the auto unions,
Speaker 3: like on these picket lights with the NFL players and
Speaker 3: you know, like one of one of the sort of
Speaker 3: upshots of this God, Okay, that's a terrible punt, I'm
Speaker 3: realizing now because this guy, Okay.
Speaker 5: We gotta talk about Gene, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one of one of the guys who led
Speaker 3: this union was Gene Upshaw, who was a player for
Speaker 3: a long time and then was like ran the union
Speaker 3: for most of its history. And he's you know, he's
Speaker 3: running an actual union, Like they go on strike, they organize,
Speaker 3: they like do ship and you know, Jane like over
Speaker 3: the course of this runs into like they start losing stripes,
Speaker 3: which is just like a nightmare, and then he just
Speaker 3: like dies in two thousand and eight, like this is
Speaker 3: really horrible cancer. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So so like not only like like Jane, Jane was
Speaker 4: a hall of fame off intive Lineman. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 4: when you think of the Raiders in the in the past,
Speaker 4: like he was kind of like this start of that era.
Speaker 4: The only basically the only area where we still think
Speaker 4: of the Raiders is like, you know, an entity that
Speaker 4: should be respected, right, right, not a joke because because
Speaker 4: you know, it was.
Speaker 5: A different time in the league.
Speaker 4: Like especially when we see what the Seahawks sale ends
Speaker 4: up looking like, and we've seen like the Broncos and
Speaker 4: the Commanders get sold within the past decade.
Speaker 5: These teams are now being run by people who don't
Speaker 5: have football backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Like when you think of you know, even even even
Speaker 4: someone as despicable as Jerry Jones, like you can't you
Speaker 4: can't doubt at his heart that you know, he loves
Speaker 4: this sport and will be an advocate to the sport,
Speaker 4: even in ways that that could be harmful to the
Speaker 4: sport at times. But now we we kind of have
Speaker 4: like this influx of people who don't have football backgrounds,
Speaker 4: but they have the capital to kind of get in
Speaker 4: and that that has also been a shift, I think
Speaker 4: just from an ownership perspective over the last few years.
Speaker 4: But when you look at Gene was coming out as
Speaker 4: a player after he retired, and think in the early
Speaker 4: eighties he kind of set the standard for you know,
Speaker 4: he wasted He was elected executive director of the union
Speaker 4: I think in the eighties and he held that position
Speaker 4: until he died in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he died in office.
Speaker 4: That's a long time and and it's a lot of trust.
Speaker 4: And also I think Gene kind of solidified the idea,
Speaker 4: which is important now that players should run this union,
Speaker 4: which I agree with. You know, yeah, that's what the
Speaker 4: union is, right, That's that's what the union is. And
Speaker 4: I would say even just like someone who played football byself,
Speaker 4: like it's kind of a cult when you're in there
Speaker 4: and you don't really really trust the outsiders to understand
Speaker 4: like what is going on here on a day to
Speaker 4: day basis. And also when you look at like the
Speaker 4: start of this union back in the fifties, training camp
Speaker 4: used to be free for the owners. They didn't get
Speaker 4: for training camp or preseason games they played. They played
Speaker 4: six free preseason games. Yeah, and didn't get paid for
Speaker 4: training camp.
Speaker 3: Unreal, unreal, And like you can like you can get serious,
Speaker 3: like people every single year, get really really seriously injured
Speaker 3: like it trading camp and in preseason games.
Speaker 4: And there was no free agency, right, so like the
Speaker 4: team that drafted you, like they own you until you
Speaker 4: know you're ready to call it quit till they trade
Speaker 4: you somewhere else where they cut you and you kind
Speaker 4: of got to figure it out. But like the idea
Speaker 4: that you could just like have this agency and leave
Speaker 4: and your contract expires you can go side with someone else,
Speaker 4: that was not a thing. So obviously, when when you
Speaker 4: think about where football is now, like what I tell
Speaker 4: people is like watch when they ask, like why should
Speaker 4: I care about this union? Okay, think about how bad
Speaker 4: it is now? It can get worse. It was worse, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was worse. It was significantly worse. But you know
Speaker 4: you have like this idea that and it's a correct
Speaker 4: idea because the players are the basis of it that
Speaker 4: this person in charge of the union needs to.
Speaker 5: Be a player.
Speaker 4: And Gene, like coming from his background with the Raiders,
Speaker 4: we were talking about proud football organization, Like the very
Speaker 4: like material basis of being an NFL player was extremely
Speaker 4: important to Gene. So you know, up until he passed
Speaker 4: away in two thousand and eight, I mean he is
Speaker 4: you know, he's, like you said, he's leading strikes. He's
Speaker 4: fighting for more revenue, he's fighting for you know, more
Speaker 4: benefits on the back end after guys retire, and it
Speaker 4: kind of culminates in the two thousand and six CBA.
Speaker 4: I would say, this is kind of like the Empire
Speaker 4: strikes back moment for the owners because in two thousand
Speaker 4: and six, the players in the owners, they signed a
Speaker 4: CBA that on the surface granted the players a sixty
Speaker 4: percent sixty percent revenue share against the owners forty percent.
Speaker 4: When you start actually digging through the numbers.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's not fuck like, it was fake.
Speaker 4: It was fake, right, So I'll say this, it was
Speaker 4: fake in the sense that there was something called like
Speaker 4: a revenue credit or a revenue a tax or something
Speaker 4: that the owners took off of the pie before it
Speaker 4: went down to like the sixty forty split, right, So
Speaker 4: you know, and it's it started, you know in two
Speaker 4: thousand and six, like I think the first time they
Speaker 4: cut it it was like, you know, eight hundred billion
Speaker 4: dollars and then you know, within two years they were
Speaker 4: taking well over a billion dollars before it got passed
Speaker 4: down onto the player. So you know, the players, they
Speaker 4: got sixty percent of the total revenue. But by the
Speaker 4: time you know that, they the owners took a second
Speaker 4: look at that CBA and they used their opt out
Speaker 4: clause in two thousand and eight. It was functionally like
Speaker 4: a fifty one to fifty two percent split in favor
Speaker 4: of the players, which the owners deemed completely unacceptable. Right, yeah,
Speaker 4: Like and it's so funny because like this is this
Speaker 4: is like the first part like where you start to see, like,
Speaker 4: at least in this era of football, you get to
Speaker 4: see how greedy these people are, right where you're already
Speaker 4: taking a top off of like this quote unquote total
Speaker 4: revenue and then you're you're pulling the clause in two
Speaker 4: years to get out of this. So in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, the owners say, we are going to get
Speaker 4: out of this, and now the CBA instead of like
Speaker 4: the ten year clause is going to expire at the
Speaker 4: end of the twenty ten season, so they had two
Speaker 4: seasons to kind of figure out what was going to
Speaker 4: happen next. But unfortunately, in two thousand and eight, Gene
Speaker 4: Upshaw gets pancreatic cancer and I honestly just like just
Speaker 4: deteriors pretty quickly and passes away right before the season. So, hey,
Speaker 4: listeners of this podcast probably know what do billionaires do
Speaker 4: when they see a power vacuum at the top of
Speaker 4: their labor force that there are actively fighting against. They
Speaker 4: pounced and you have this vacuum of leadership. And then
Speaker 4: Damor Smith gets voted the executive director of the NFLPA
Speaker 4: and the owners. At the end of the twenty ten season,
Speaker 4: they locked out the players, and that's where things really
Speaker 4: starting to hear. You're dealing with that amount of agreed
Speaker 4: where they're already taken off the top, and then they
Speaker 4: say that's not enough, so we're gonna rip up the CBA.
Speaker 4: And the funny part was the twenty ten season like
Speaker 4: the last year of like the ripped up CBA, since
Speaker 4: they didn't have an agreement on the next year. There
Speaker 4: was no salary cap toward the twenty ten season, and
Speaker 4: Jerry Jones, owner of the Taboys, and Dan Snyder, owner
Speaker 4: of the Washington football team.
Speaker 3: Oh god, what are the worst people ever?
Speaker 7: By the way, this is it, We don't time to
Speaker 7: do this right up for like.
Speaker 5: One of the worst people ever.
Speaker 4: So you're like, if you play Madden before, you know
Speaker 4: sometimes you might turn off the salary cap and what
Speaker 4: do you do you spend And because Jerry has always
Speaker 4: been like, it's my money. Yeah, I'm gonna spend as
Speaker 4: much of it as i want to if I please,
Speaker 4: like within the rule as the salary cap, no salary cap,
Speaker 4: Jerry's gonna spend. And the other owners punish those two
Speaker 4: with fines after the season, yeah, for spending recklessly. That's
Speaker 4: how committed they are to like this consolidation of power.
Speaker 4: They will publish each other over it.
Speaker 3: Which which by the way, is unhinged because like so
Speaker 3: one of the fundamental like issues of the NFL is
Speaker 3: that it is a monopoly. Yes, Now, the way they
Speaker 3: get around this is a they have the union and
Speaker 3: be the teams are supposed to be quote unquote competing
Speaker 3: with each other and they are not supposed to quote
Speaker 3: unquote collude against the players. And it's like, okay, you
Speaker 3: you find guys for paying people.
Speaker 5: Like right, like you find each other.
Speaker 7: Yeah, which is like just unreal.
Speaker 3: It's just like the boss offs collusion if.
Speaker 4: You look across like to the NBA, where like the
Speaker 4: Kawhi Leonard and Steve Balmer stuff is oh my god,
Speaker 4: another party, another politic exclusive but hey, there's a reason
Speaker 4: why they are aggressively going after this, you know, because
Speaker 4: the other billionaires don't want people rummaging through their shit either,
Speaker 4: so you know, and ultimately they like the Microsoft guy
Speaker 4: being part of the gang, so they're not going to
Speaker 4: do anything. And that's when you see like, oh, there
Speaker 4: is so much power here that these guys have. And
Speaker 4: but going back to the NFL, like the twenty eleven
Speaker 4: CBA is by.
Speaker 3: The way, CBA is collective bargaining agreement, is.
Speaker 4: The collect collective bargaining agreement right between the union and
Speaker 4: the league, right, so if there's no agreement, then like
Speaker 4: they can't play football games, yeah, because you know, like
Speaker 4: you said, like the NFLPA functory just exist so the
Speaker 4: NFL doesn't get sued for like anti trust stuff, which
Speaker 4: takes us right back to the next point. So going
Speaker 4: back to twenty eleven, the players are trying to figure out,
Speaker 4: like what are we gonna do about like this lockout
Speaker 4: situation because they need to work. Honestly, you know, this
Speaker 4: is a career that you can only do for most
Speaker 4: guys like two or three years, and the idea of
Speaker 4: missing a season is not really feasible, which the owners.
Speaker 4: You know, they take advantage of all the time, like
Speaker 4: they know that these guys are on short like short clocks.
Speaker 4: If you if you get to like year five of
Speaker 4: an NFL career, you are in a very very small
Speaker 4: group of players that like, honestly like just represent the
Speaker 4: elite of the elite of people who have ever played
Speaker 4: football like in this country.
Speaker 3: And I think the everything about this too is like
Speaker 3: that's really important.
Speaker 8: This is an.
Speaker 3: Unbelievably, unbelievably skilled labor force. Yes, And in order to
Speaker 3: develop these skills, you have to devote your entire life
Speaker 3: to it. Yes, And then what you get from devoting
Speaker 3: your entire life to this thing that is killing you
Speaker 3: because you're getting injured constantly and you're getting head trauma
Speaker 3: from all of this every single time. Like, so we
Speaker 3: start from like high school, you're starting to get brain
Speaker 3: damage from concussions, and from like you're starting to get CTE. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then you have a couple of years to like
Speaker 3: make money from having devoted your life to this thing.
Speaker 4: Right, So think about like it's March of twenty eleven. Now,
Speaker 4: Gene upshaws and pass away. For a couple of years,
Speaker 4: they were in the fully in the demor Smith in
Speaker 4: the more Smith's reign of union leadership, and the first
Speaker 4: move that the owners make, like now that the CBA
Speaker 4: is officially over twenty ten season, they lock out the players, which,
Speaker 4: as we just said, if your career is two years,
Speaker 4: the idea that you would miss one of those years
Speaker 4: is kind of unfathombed. You're earning power is just like demolished.
Speaker 4: And let's say you're you're twenty four years old, you
Speaker 4: got to play two years in the NFL. You're walking
Speaker 4: out with let's say a million in your bank account.
Speaker 4: You still got to get a job, bro, you know,
Speaker 4: like you like, you still got to find something else
Speaker 4: to do. So like, this isn't money that's going to
Speaker 4: set you up for the rest of your life for
Speaker 4: most of these guys, even though it does give you
Speaker 4: like a nice cushion to fall off to, even if
Speaker 4: you're someone who struggled a little bit. And shoot, I
Speaker 4: know when I was twenty four, I would have loved
Speaker 4: to have like seven hundred thousand dollars in.
Speaker 3: My main account.
Speaker 4: Things would have things could have turned out, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe a little bit different. Probably still would have found
Speaker 4: something some way, Like where I'm right here. But but honestly,
Speaker 4: it's a good start. So what the union did was
Speaker 4: a decertified as a union in twenty eleven, led by
Speaker 4: Tom Brady and Drew Brees Falcons fan. And I will
Speaker 4: say this part has given me so much justification on
Speaker 4: my hatred. It's like it went past the football into
Speaker 4: like the like the material realm of like real life.
Speaker 4: You you, you guys messed up here. They tried to,
Speaker 4: you know, challenge the league by decert finance union and arguing,
Speaker 4: you know that now this is an anti trust situation.
Speaker 5: Blah blah blah, blah, bah blah.
Speaker 4: Get down to August the time of twenty eleven CBA
Speaker 4: in August of twenty eleven, so like this is a month,
Speaker 4: a month before the season, and the concessions that were
Speaker 4: made after like after getting locked out for what six.
Speaker 5: Like five months?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you decertified that you go through all this
Speaker 4: work to try and get a deal done, and they
Speaker 4: gave up so much. So we said before you have
Speaker 4: the total revenue split at you know, sixty forty, but
Speaker 4: functionally it was closer to you know, fifty one fifty
Speaker 4: two percent in favor of the players that dropped to
Speaker 4: like forty seven percent in the twenty eleven CBAS So
Speaker 4: now the owners are back in charge, you know, like
Speaker 4: fifty percent split in favor of the owners. So like
Speaker 4: you're you just gave them back like billions of dollars,
Speaker 4: like over the course of really really just like a
Speaker 4: couple of years, but over the lifetime of a ten
Speaker 4: year CBA. I mean that that's that's egregious and also.
Speaker 3: The believable amount of money.
Speaker 4: Another thing that changed was Roger Goodell has now like
Speaker 4: full autonomy over player punishments.
Speaker 5: I don't know why you gave that up either. That's unhinged, right, right.
Speaker 3: That's like that that's the kind of thing that like
Speaker 3: the like the only kind of unions that would sign
Speaker 3: something like that are like, like I don't even think
Speaker 3: the organized crime unions would signe out. I think that's
Speaker 3: just like literally the fascist unions and the unions that
Speaker 3: are directly controlled, like the yellow unions that are directly
Speaker 3: controlled by corporation or like, the only ones that would
Speaker 3: sign that, even those ones probably would want to still
Speaker 3: have like some involvement in that. That's like unbelievable for
Speaker 3: a union contract, just like right, nonsense.
Speaker 4: Right, And and what's changed here is like these players
Speaker 4: are not willing to go on strike, like to not
Speaker 4: play these games, to not have a situation like in
Speaker 4: the eighties where you know, Donald Trump has built up
Speaker 4: the USFL and saying, hey, why don't you strikeing players
Speaker 4: that come play over here, and you you have some
Speaker 4: some guys who were like NFL Hall of famers who
Speaker 4: have briefly played in the USFL during you know, during
Speaker 4: the strike stuff that that doesn't happen here. And I
Speaker 4: think about the timing, Yeah, August was it August fourth,
Speaker 4: twenty eleven, one hundred and thirty two day lockout they
Speaker 4: signed this deal, so so I can imagine, And I
Speaker 4: was like, I'll give them this. It's hard out here, man,
Speaker 4: like you're about to You're looking at yea, like the
Speaker 4: consequence of, you know, I'm about to not have checks
Speaker 4: and I maybe have a lifestyle where I am still
Speaker 4: should be getting you know, these weeks to be paychecks.
Speaker 4: That's kind of a tough, tough draw. So I will
Speaker 4: give them like the small grace of saying at that point, man, okay,
Speaker 4: fuck it, just let's just go just get something signed.
Speaker 4: But what they gave up, I'm not sure like they
Speaker 4: were fully aware of what they gave up here, and
Speaker 4: the part of the biggest thing that where they gave
Speaker 4: up was part of the biggest thing. After they after
Speaker 4: I say they gave the money back to the owners,
Speaker 4: they gave Roger Goodell, they made them dictator in terms
Speaker 4: of like the punishment workforce, but the rookie wage scale,
Speaker 4: my god, a massive, holy massive concession to ownership because
Speaker 4: they they as in like Tom Brady and Drew Brees
Speaker 4: more so Drew Brees from what I've gathered, kind of
Speaker 4: framed this as, hey, why are these rookies getting all
Speaker 4: this damn money? Like this is something that should be
Speaker 4: going towards the veterans, and ownership was like, oh, you
Speaker 4: see it. You think like you think that's a good idea,
Speaker 4: Like we can agree, we can agree to that. And
Speaker 4: what they got back was like less practice time, so
Speaker 4: you know, you know, you don't have to have as
Speaker 4: many two a days.
Speaker 5: That's worth billions of dollars.
Speaker 4: Really like in terms of like what you what you
Speaker 4: guys can set yourself up with and what the what
Speaker 4: the veteran players who were on board with this, what
Speaker 4: they thought was, oh okay, well if the rookie wages.
Speaker 4: If the rookie wages deal like that, if that gets
Speaker 4: capped at a certain amount, then that's more money for us.
Speaker 4: So like the like a prime example is in twenty ten,
Speaker 4: Sam Bradford was a number one overall pick to Saint
Speaker 4: Louis Rams. He signed a six year, eighty four million
Speaker 4: dollar contract. So the next year, Cam Newton is the
Speaker 4: first overall pick to the Caroline Panthers, and after this
Speaker 4: lockout ends, his contract was four years, twenty two million
Speaker 4: dollars fully guaranteed.
Speaker 7: She's christ.
Speaker 4: You lost sixty million dollars in terms of value from
Speaker 4: the year before. So what what the players, what the
Speaker 4: veteran players thought was, oh, okay, well now there'll be
Speaker 4: this influx of cap space to sign veteran players. What
Speaker 4: do billionaires do when they suddenly have access to a
Speaker 4: cheap workforce. They just loaded up on rookies, right, So
Speaker 4: these veteran players they sold themselves on like the fallacy
Speaker 4: of trickle down economics and got themselves replaced out of
Speaker 4: the league. So the only people at this benefit really
Speaker 4: was people like Drew Brees, people like Tom Brady who
Speaker 4: don't need it, right and but also are so indispensable
Speaker 4: to their organizations that they can eat up the cap
Speaker 4: space that was left over from the rookies game signed.
Speaker 4: So that's like that's when you start to see like
Speaker 4: the quarterback contracts balloon up. Where you know, you go
Speaker 4: from like in twenty fifteen, eleven years ago or twenty sixty,
Speaker 4: I think Cam Newton signed a contract that made him
Speaker 4: the highest paid quarterback in NFL history at five years,
Speaker 4: one hundred million dollars. Oh my god, you know, and
Speaker 4: now that number is what like, I think, man, who's
Speaker 4: the high paid?
Speaker 5: Is Joe Burrow the highest paid right now? At I
Speaker 5: feel like it's Burrow?
Speaker 3: Yeah that sounds right.
Speaker 4: But now like that deal is worth you know, closer
Speaker 4: to eighty million, you know, seventy million dollars a year
Speaker 4: than it is to anything like closer to twenty Yeah,
Speaker 4: so you gave up so much and you got this
Speaker 4: whole middle class of the league just decimated, and and yeah,
Speaker 4: like that that's still tangible today. You can just go
Speaker 4: on over the CAAP dot com or a stock track
Speaker 4: dot com and just look at like like average money
Speaker 4: like per year, and there's a top and then the
Speaker 4: middle class is literally like a couple players, and for
Speaker 4: quarterback it's like two or three guys like you have
Speaker 4: like announce like a Molik Willis or a Daniel Jones,
Speaker 4: like forty like as crazy as to say, like forty
Speaker 4: four million dollars, Like that's outside the top half of
Speaker 4: what guys are getting paid. And then it's all rookies yep,
Speaker 4: like all rookies and guys on rookie contracts. There's no
Speaker 4: middle class like that that's gone from the NFL. And
Speaker 4: with that, like you lose some of like like personally
Speaker 4: this is vide like you lose some of them, like
Speaker 4: the wisdom that comes with that of guys who have
Speaker 4: played in the league because now now they're getting turned
Speaker 4: out so fast because the contract is so cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to extend you because honestly, this game
Speaker 4: beats your body up so bad that it's better just
Speaker 4: to get a fresh body in there. And these people,
Speaker 4: they have no attachment to the sacrifices that have been
Speaker 4: built over a long time. So you kind of build
Speaker 4: this player force that doesn't know what's going on.
Speaker 5: And I say that with.
Speaker 4: A grain of salt now because I used to be
Speaker 4: one of these guys like, oh you know, they don't
Speaker 4: care what's going on, and there is a good chunk
Speaker 4: that don't care what's going on. But I think now
Speaker 4: it's more clear there's like an obvious force stopping them
Speaker 4: from getting like information about what's going on with this
Speaker 4: union stuff, which is the meat of this. Like the
Speaker 4: recent stuff is just like the ultimate just fucket. I
Speaker 4: guess we're ponds of the ownership stuff.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I think the arc of this is like it's it's
Speaker 3: the arc of sort of unionism in America. You know,
Speaker 3: you go back to like your early nineteen hundreds unions, right,
Speaker 3: and those unions, you know, they're unbelievably powerful. They're extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3: You know, you get to a point where like the
Speaker 3: IWW will show up to a town and like the
Speaker 3: bosses in the town will show up with guns and
Speaker 3: shoot them because they're that well organized, they're that dangerous,
Speaker 3: they're that capable of striking, they're that committed, and they're
Speaker 3: that able to tap into all of their members and
Speaker 3: have everyone in the union be a part of the
Speaker 3: union and do things with the union. And that's you know,
Speaker 3: how you can actually do collective action. And then and
Speaker 3: you can watch this with sort of like with the
Speaker 3: ability of NFLPA, like obviously like that's a much weaker union.
Speaker 3: Then you're like, yeah, I don't know, you're like nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty CIO or whatever. Yeah, but you can watch it
Speaker 3: like sort of decay into this sort of you know,
Speaker 3: what you call like a service union, where in instead
Speaker 3: of it being run by the players, there's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we're we have some people. They're going to go they're
Speaker 3: going to do everything for you. They're going to sometimes
Speaker 3: talk to you about it, but you know, like they're
Speaker 3: going to be the runs, like managing all of the
Speaker 3: contracts and all of the negotiations and like right, and
Speaker 3: as it like information circle gets tighter and tighter, you know,
Speaker 3: that makes it way easier for things to just get
Speaker 3: completely fucked. And then then you know, and this is
Speaker 3: one of the things that you see in the nineties
Speaker 3: is the complete dominance of business unionism where it's like, nah,
Speaker 3: fuck it, we're a union, yeah, right, the us on
Speaker 3: the employers actually have the same interest and we're going
Speaker 3: to work with them to make money. And it's like
Speaker 3: how is that going for you? Guys like I E.
Speaker 3: And then that's what this sort of turns into and
Speaker 3: one of the issues here, and you're talking about this
Speaker 3: with like the information control is what once you get
Speaker 3: into this situation where you know a really really small
Speaker 3: number of people, like we're talking maybe thirty people, and
Speaker 3: then the executive committees even smaller than that, are the
Speaker 3: ones who are you know. One of the things that
Speaker 3: happens in the later part of this is so JC Shredder,
Speaker 3: who's like the guy behind the scenes for like the
Speaker 3: executive just the search for like the executive director, the
Speaker 3: guy who like completely truly was like the most hideous
Speaker 3: guy I've ever had running this union. He changed the
Speaker 3: process so that it was completely confidential, to the point
Speaker 3: where the three two guys on the board who were
Speaker 3: supposed to be voting for the executive director didn't know
Speaker 3: the names of the candidates until they walked into the meeting, Right,
Speaker 3: what the fuck?
Speaker 4: And to me, like that point is like so crucial
Speaker 4: because that's where I ship from. Oh, it's not that
Speaker 4: the guys don't care about this, like they don't know
Speaker 4: what's going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's being hidden from them.
Speaker 5: They can't know, they can't know.
Speaker 4: And and I will say, like part of what makes
Speaker 4: this difficult if you are someone in there who does
Speaker 4: care and wants to wants to fix things. Is they're
Speaker 4: just the truth that like even the bottom rung players
Speaker 4: are comfortably living like off of their salaries. So when
Speaker 4: you start to get to guys who are veterans, like
Speaker 4: and even if you don't take the best deal shit,
Speaker 4: like what I'm still making fifteen million dollars a year, Like,
Speaker 4: ultimately I'm still good. And that's what it's hard to
Speaker 4: like get people galvanized about this sometimes. But I think
Speaker 4: that that part about like players not caring has kind
Speaker 4: of been overrepresented a little bit because I think if
Speaker 4: you're paying attention now, there's so much murkiness. And I
Speaker 4: think when when you get to like the recent CBA
Speaker 4: is like in twenty twenty, the COVID year one, So
Speaker 4: now that's like the more Smith and J. C. Tredder
Speaker 4: who was playing for the Browns and then he was
Speaker 4: the president of the NFLPA as they enter like this
Speaker 4: this twenty twenty CBA at the end after the end
Speaker 4: of the twenty eleven ten year run where for ten
Speaker 4: years they locked themselves into owners Chasepion to extract like
Speaker 4: as much value, yeah as as it seemed like they
Speaker 4: possibly could at the time, and then twenty twenty comes
Speaker 4: and the owners are basically just like, hey, there's gonna
Speaker 4: be another lockout unless you guys agree to a seventeenth game,
Speaker 4: which you should say that okay, cool, because there's no
Speaker 4: circumstance where you you can walk the football and know
Speaker 4: how horrible this game is for your body and say
Speaker 4: we are going to play more football without like major concessions. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because I remember when that was going on, you know,
Speaker 4: I was talking to some older guys who weren't in
Speaker 4: the unit anymore, but they were looking at it like,
Speaker 4: man like if they're if they're gonna say seventeenth game,
Speaker 4: like we need something massive like giving back to us
Speaker 4: on the other hand, because that's just straight up a
Speaker 4: revenue play to get more games on TV and make
Speaker 4: these TV contracts a.
Speaker 5: Little bit more lucrative.
Speaker 4: And that didn't really happen, you know, like no, like
Speaker 4: they just gave up the seventeenth game and they got
Speaker 4: I think one percent more in terms of like the
Speaker 4: rev share, so it got to like forty eight or
Speaker 4: forty nine percent.
Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, like that's it you.
Speaker 3: Share for adding Like what what what's the percent game added?
Speaker 3: To the season like right.
Speaker 4: And and like there were some concessions made to like
Speaker 4: players made at the bottom rung of the ladder, so
Speaker 4: like like the veteran minimum salaries, like they got boosted,
Speaker 4: the practice squads got a little bit longer, and now
Speaker 4: you got into the space where you see, like veterans
Speaker 4: can be on a practice squad instead of guys who
Speaker 4: are within like three years of you know, accrued years
Speaker 4: in the NFL. But the seventeenth game while still having
Speaker 4: inequity in terms of the revenue share, I mean, the owners,
Speaker 4: they'll sign up for that every single time. Oh we
Speaker 4: got to throw your crumbs, yep, and we still get
Speaker 4: to keep our billions. And they timed it up right,
Speaker 4: so that seventeenth game being inserted into the schedule was
Speaker 4: lining up with new TV contracts with ESPN and NBC
Speaker 4: and Amazon everyone. You see, like throwing cash is so understated,
Speaker 4: Like if not throwing cash, like billions of dollars is
Speaker 4: going to the NFL. Yeah, through these TV deals. Like
Speaker 4: it's funny. I had a friend, you know, one of
Speaker 4: these Shador Sanders stands. He was arguing like, oh you know,
Speaker 4: he was like, oh, you know, like the Browns like
Speaker 4: they took Shador because they need the jersey sales. I'm like, dude,
Speaker 4: Chador could have the number one selling jersey in the NFL,
Speaker 4: and Jimmy hasn't didn't care about that. That's a drop
Speaker 4: of a drop of a drop in the market for
Speaker 4: like where the money's actually coming from, and that's the
Speaker 4: TV deal. So to get that seventeenth game is huge,
Speaker 4: And this term is for ten years again, so in
Speaker 4: twenty thirty they can look at, you know, renegotiation trying
Speaker 4: to figure it out. But in the meantime, like to
Speaker 4: even call this a union is so far away from
Speaker 4: like how it's actually functioning.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: It's getting to the part like where it's kind of
Speaker 4: murky on what's happening. Because obviously, like if you're in
Speaker 4: a union and you know, like my coworkers, like they've.
Speaker 5: Dealt with J. C.
Speaker 4: Tradder, like I've seen him speak before, if you're in
Speaker 4: a union, obviously, like you don't want too many people
Speaker 4: outside of the union to know what's going on. Like
Speaker 4: it's just not good from a standpoint of like leverage
Speaker 4: and power. But JC Tredder like he plays off of
Speaker 4: that by keeping everything a secret.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, which is a terrible idea, which is
Speaker 3: a terrible idea, Like yeah, well it's good for him,
Speaker 3: right right, right, Like maybe you.
Speaker 4: Don't want to tell me a reporter like what's going on,
Speaker 4: but you should tell like the other people within your
Speaker 4: union what's going on. Like when you see like a
Speaker 4: lack of information about or any information about, like what's
Speaker 4: going on with these with these elections, it's because no
Speaker 4: one's being told what's going on these elections.
Speaker 5: And that's how you end up with Lloyd Howe, which
Speaker 5: is just dude.
Speaker 3: Oh god, okay, okay, let let's let's talk about Lloyd Howell,
Speaker 3: who is oh my god, yeah, one of the worst
Speaker 3: people to run a union I have ever seen.
Speaker 4: Yes, but it's purposefullly bad, you know, Like, yeah, the
Speaker 4: Lloyd Howell like a secret election, Like it's not not
Speaker 4: even to say, like I was, you know, somewhat somewhat
Speaker 4: of a secret now a secret of election basically to
Speaker 4: get Lloyd Howell hired what he somewhere for Booze Allen Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah he was. He was the CFO of booz Allen Hamilton, right,
Speaker 3: Like his background was in busting unions.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, right, that's his background. Yeah, and this, but
Speaker 4: this is where you get like such a look at
Speaker 4: the ideology of someone like J. C. Tratterer, who also
Speaker 4: studied labor unions in college. That's what you guys, degree
Speaker 4: in labor labor relations and labor rangement from Harvard.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, you're not. You're not doing the the labor
Speaker 3: relations degree to like being a union. Like like the
Speaker 3: people the people who like organize for unions are like
Speaker 3: fucking grad students who you know, have like a I
Speaker 3: don't know like they have they have some random degree
Speaker 3: and then they were like, fucking I organized my graduat
Speaker 3: you know, I'm gonna go organize the field. This is
Speaker 3: not what you go into that for. You go into
Speaker 3: this union busting.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, but so J. C. Trader and you know, the
Speaker 4: people around him they viewed that experience from Wood Howell
Speaker 4: and busting unions as a positive. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 4: there's this train of thought like oh, well, you know, well,
Speaker 4: if we know someone who knows how to destroy us,
Speaker 4: if we hire them, surely they will change their ways
Speaker 4: and they will start to help us. Like we're going
Speaker 4: to get inside knowledge on how to bust a unit.
Speaker 4: So maybe we could weaponize that and turn it back
Speaker 4: the other way. Man, that's dumb as hell, Like that's
Speaker 4: oh my god. Right, and not only that, but but
Speaker 4: but how who who? Who is elected the executive director
Speaker 4: of the union is also a part of a hedge
Speaker 4: fund that is investing in NFL teams in minorities.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Carlisle Group.
Speaker 9: Like you, you're an executive director of the union works
Speaker 9: for hedge funds that are extracting value from these teams,
Speaker 9: like like true players.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's disqualifying, Like it should be disqualifying.
Speaker 7: She's on camera.
Speaker 3: The union posted a video of him on camera talking
Speaker 3: about how he was talking to the owners about letting
Speaker 3: about letting the investment group.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It's as close as I've ever seen outside of again,
Speaker 3: a union that is literally run by the bosses to
Speaker 3: like my union guy works for managements. Like it's like baffling.
Speaker 3: I don't know, It's like it's like State integrated CCP shit, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's like, dude, yes, you have.
Speaker 5: A corporate consultant?
Speaker 4: Is your union liaison to thirty two billionaires and Roger Goodell?
Speaker 4: Like yeah, it's it's completely incompatible on like a basic
Speaker 4: like ideological level, and then you start getting to like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: well now he has like direct control over people's lives
Speaker 4: and the funds of the union, which, as ESPN and
Speaker 4: Paulo Tooria found out, he was using to go to
Speaker 4: the goddamn strip club in Miami, Yeah, and to spend
Speaker 4: on other stuff. And also he was sued for sexual
Speaker 4: harassment while he was at Booz Allen. So he's hidden
Speaker 4: like the check marks for everything you see like corporate sociopathy,
Speaker 4: right yeah, and they're like, that's our guy, that's our guy.
Speaker 4: Once all this stuff comes out about how he spends
Speaker 4: his money and you know, how he's misappropriating funds, that
Speaker 4: was what got him out, more so than like the
Speaker 4: material practices that he accept the five while he was
Speaker 4: running the union, which involved, yeah, hiding the fact that
Speaker 4: the owners were colluding against them.
Speaker 3: It is completely unhinged. And unfortunately, the other thing that's
Speaker 3: unhinged is that's going to be all for today. However,
Speaker 3: come there is more to this story tomorrow, as we
Speaker 3: finished part two of this interview, and oh my god,
Speaker 3: holy shit, somehow the worst is yet to come. So
Speaker 3: join us for part two tomorrow, in which question Mark
Speaker 3: there seems to be good evidence of the NFL paying
Speaker 3: a guy specifically to be able to keep control of
Speaker 3: the union. Oh dear, So if you if you want
Speaker 3: to find more of Charles McDonald's work, you can do
Speaker 3: so at the Football three h one podcast and at
Speaker 3: Yeahoo Sports, where he writes to call them for verts.
Speaker 3: It's quite good. You should listen to it. And yeah,
Speaker 3: dear god, I don't know foreign unions. If you're in
Speaker 3: unions that suck, make better ones, welcome to it could
Speaker 3: happen here podcast about the most unhinged union story I
Speaker 3: have ever covered. I am your host, Mio Wong, and
Speaker 3: in a moment we will return to my interview with
Speaker 3: Yahoo Sports journalist Charles McDonald. So if you have not
Speaker 3: listened to the last episode, you should listen to the
Speaker 3: last episodes. We can get you up to the twenty
Speaker 3: twenties in terms of the horrifying and depressing story of
Speaker 3: the NFL Players Association's leadership graduate selling out more and
Speaker 3: more of their players. And in this episode we're going
Speaker 3: to really sort of get down to the brass tax
Speaker 3: of what's been happening in the twenty twenties and answering
Speaker 3: the question to what extent has the NFL paid in
Speaker 3: order to have a pro management regime installed at the
Speaker 3: head of the union, a question that is really distressingly.
Speaker 3: We have good evidence of this, but before we can
Speaker 3: get to that, we need to talk about one of
Speaker 3: the other absolutely horrifying things that this union regime has done,
Speaker 3: and that is the union covering up as reported by Publictoria. Originally,
Speaker 3: it reports by an arbitration judge about whether or not
Speaker 3: the independent teams in the NFL, which are supposed to
Speaker 3: be businesses competing against each other. And I kind of
Speaker 3: emphasize this enough because this is a major portion of
Speaker 3: how the NFL's anti trust is I'm just supposed to work,
Speaker 3: is that these teams are normally competing against each other,
Speaker 3: so there is supposed to be a labor market with competition.
Speaker 3: But this document that the union covered up from an
Speaker 3: arbitration process they were in is about it has very
Speaker 3: good evidence of the league actively colluding in order to
Speaker 3: pay players less, and the union covered it up. So
Speaker 3: here we go back to our interview. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: this collusion thing, because I've been losing my fucking mind
Speaker 3: about this for a really long time, and I cannot
Speaker 3: imagine just literally having evidence in your hand that the
Speaker 3: owners are colluding against your members, like these are literally
Speaker 3: you like this is supposed to be you and you're
Speaker 3: just sing hiding the report h even.
Speaker 4: Like okay, so even if you lose the arbitration. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the fact that a judge wrote, yeah, legal document that
Speaker 4: it was like beyond the benstit of a doubt that
Speaker 4: Roger Goodell and the thirty two owners were colluding. We've
Speaker 4: seen text messages between the Cardinals owner and the Chargers
Speaker 4: owner talking about how much to pay Justin Herbert.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Lamar Jackson, Yeah, okay, can we can we explain
Speaker 3: to Lamar Jackson situation and like explain it who Lamar
Speaker 3: Jackson is for people who don't watch football, so they
Speaker 3: can understand how unhinged this is.
Speaker 4: Lamar Jackson is a wizard, is the best way that
Speaker 4: I could put it. Lamar Jackson. He is the franchise
Speaker 4: quarterback for the Baltimore Rayments, And I just think that
Speaker 4: anyone with the brain could have seen what was going on. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: like with this situation, so so and even before Deshaun,
Speaker 4: even before Lamar Jackson. You have to take it back
Speaker 4: to Deshaun Watson trade out of Houston.
Speaker 3: Oh god, the one trade we've ever covered on this show,
Speaker 3: because holy shit, dude, Oh but this, this is.
Speaker 4: What got the Dominoes rolling on this stuff. Where As
Speaker 4: terrible as Deshaun Watson is as a football player now
Speaker 4: and obviously as a human being, yeah, like right when
Speaker 4: he was in Houston, it feels like a different world,
Speaker 4: but he was the man, Like he was incredible, like
Speaker 4: to the point where the Texans I think his last
Speaker 4: year starting there, they went four and twelve and it
Speaker 4: was like so obviously not his fault, like in terms
Speaker 4: of efficiency, like he was right behind Patrick Mahomes to
Speaker 4: the top of the league. Like he got an apology
Speaker 4: from JJ Watt that year saying, like, dude, we wasted
Speaker 4: an absolutely incredible year from you. And then you know
Speaker 4: the thirty accusations of at best sexual mixed conduct, at
Speaker 4: worst sexual assault, and in some of those cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really hideous shit.
Speaker 4: Right, So then it gets to a point where he
Speaker 4: the texts they don't want them there, He doesn't want
Speaker 4: to be there anymore. But you have what looks to
Speaker 4: be a franchise quarterback in his mid twenties available for
Speaker 4: any team to have, you know, with the trade. So
Speaker 4: my team, Sally d Lash Falcons, they thought that they
Speaker 4: had a deal done for Deshaun Watson, and then the
Speaker 4: Cleveland Browns came in. And this is where the where
Speaker 4: the ownership you know feedback kind of gets broken, where
Speaker 4: Jimmy has Them breaks the rings and says, I want
Speaker 4: this guy on my team so bad. You know, this
Speaker 4: is why like nobody ever hits free agency in the NFL,
Speaker 4: because this is what it would look like in terms
Speaker 4: of like when owners actually have to bid against each
Speaker 4: other for elite talent. Yeah, Jimmy has Them comes in
Speaker 4: and says, here's five years, two hundred and thirty million dollars.
Speaker 4: Every single penny will be guaranteed, no stipulations and nothing.
Speaker 3: Like that, which is like not how this works normally, Like,
Speaker 3: no one gets guarantee contracts, right, And because.
Speaker 4: The previously the actual first player to get a fully
Speaker 4: guaranteed the contract from another team was actually Kirk Cousins
Speaker 4: with the Vikings when he left Washington. They gave him
Speaker 4: like a three year I think it was three years
Speaker 4: eighty eight million dollars fully guaranteed. But still that ain't
Speaker 4: five years two hundred and thirty yeah, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And what the owners were mad about was not that
Speaker 4: you would seek out someone with the personal background Deshaun
Speaker 4: Watson to represent your franchise. It's that you would pay
Speaker 4: any NFL player two hundred and thirty million dollars guaranteed.
Speaker 5: Because now that sense precedent.
Speaker 4: Because if you're Lamar Jackson, whose contract was coming to
Speaker 4: an end at the season after Deshaun Watson signed this deal,
Speaker 4: I didn't touch those women. Yeah, I'm an MVP quarterback
Speaker 4: and I'm in my twenties. Why shouldn't I get a
Speaker 4: fully guaranteed contract? Yep, right, which is what he was doing.
Speaker 4: And the Ravens they said, okay, fine, go out into
Speaker 4: the market. And I felt like I was going insane
Speaker 4: during this because, oh my god, there were so many
Speaker 4: arguments from talking heads about why teams shouldn't sign Lamar Jackson.
Speaker 4: So he was hit with what's called a non exclusive
Speaker 4: franchise tag, which means the Ravens. I don't even know
Speaker 4: how how the idea of the franchise tag existing is
Speaker 4: another week like labor.
Speaker 3: L hittyous anti labor practice.
Speaker 4: Right, So his contract with the Ravens is over. And
Speaker 4: they can hit him with an exclusive franchise tag, which
Speaker 4: means you will be playing for US next year. You
Speaker 4: basically have no say in it unless we remove this
Speaker 4: or you know, we work out a trade with somebody else,
Speaker 4: but you cannot go negotiate with anyone else even though your.
Speaker 5: Contract has expired.
Speaker 4: And yeah, to be quote unquote fair, like, the payment
Speaker 4: is a average of the top five you know, yearly
Speaker 4: salaries of the position you play, so you will get
Speaker 4: paid like, you know, a top five player for one
Speaker 4: year at your position. It really only goes to mostly
Speaker 4: valuable players that they're trying to extend. But they hit
Speaker 4: him with a non exclusive franchise tag, which means they
Speaker 4: have right a first refusal on if another team offers
Speaker 4: Lamar Jackson a contract, and that team would owe the
Speaker 4: Ravens two first round picks in order to sign Lamar Jackson.
Speaker 4: So Deshaun Watson is one for three. Yeah, and this
Speaker 4: rule is legally mandate. That is two first round picks.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure you know the Raves have probably asked
Speaker 4: for a little stuff beyond that, but I only have
Speaker 4: to give you two first round picks and I can
Speaker 4: just sign Lamar Jackson it's like a generational quarterback, like right, right, right,
Speaker 4: at this point, we're talking about a quarterback who is
Speaker 4: like twenty five years old. He's the first unanimous MVP,
Speaker 4: which he wonted his first season as a starter. Yeah,
Speaker 4: since Tom Brady. He's one of two players in like
Speaker 4: or you know, I don't know if it's two, but
Speaker 4: it's less than five players in the history of the
Speaker 4: league that have been unanimous MVPs. Every single person voted
Speaker 4: for Lamar Jackson be an MVP, and the Ravens said
Speaker 4: go ahead and negotiate with another team, and no one,
Speaker 4: no one even brought him in to talk to him, right, Like,
Speaker 4: it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Chicago, so like I grew up
Speaker 3: with the Bears, and my family are like a like
Speaker 3: a family is like Seahawks fans. Right, Neither of those
Speaker 3: two teams have ever had a quarterback who's in the
Speaker 3: same stratosphere as this guy. Like this is right. These
Speaker 3: guys never like ever ever.
Speaker 4: Ever hit free agency, never ever, and people like they'll
Speaker 4: bend the rules to things that aren't written were let's say, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, the.
Speaker 5: Ravens will just match, make them match. Then you have them.
Speaker 3: That's a competitive advantage for you.
Speaker 4: Right right. I hate that my favorite team he's popped
Speaker 4: up in this Atlanta. But but Arthur Blank, he put
Speaker 4: his name on it, saying, you know, the Falcons, like
Speaker 4: they were trying to out, you know, backup quarterback quality guys,
Speaker 4: because after Matt Ryan left.
Speaker 3: Has been rider like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: Marcus Mariota, dude.
Speaker 4: And and I'm sitting there like you're telling me that
Speaker 4: I can sign Lamar Jackson and I got to give
Speaker 4: up two first round picks for him, Like, dude, pay
Speaker 4: him sixty million guaranteed every year.
Speaker 5: He's worth that much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And Arthur Blank says, well, you know, Lamar Jackson,
Speaker 4: he's gonna get hurt too much for us to sign him.
Speaker 5: So so nope, no team signs him. No team even
Speaker 5: talks to him.
Speaker 4: So obviously he goes back to the Ravens, doesn't get
Speaker 4: the full guaranteed contract that the Shaun Watson got and
Speaker 4: that kind of put an end to it for a
Speaker 4: little bit until the power of journalism popped up. Poullotory
Speaker 4: does his investigation here's about arbitration, hearing about collusion in
Speaker 4: the NFL, and he gets his hands, like on the
Speaker 4: documents that say that while Lamar Jackson was going through
Speaker 4: his free agency basically rejection by thirty one teams, when
Speaker 4: he would have been upgrade for like.
Speaker 5: Twenty eight of them, twenty nine of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the time, I would throw a number one
Speaker 3: overall rookie quarterback that I just drafted with the first
Speaker 3: ro overall pick out the fucking window thrown away to
Speaker 3: get Lamar Jackson.
Speaker 4: Right, you can be a part of this. Two first
Speaker 4: round picks were giving you two first round picks plus. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know if like at that time, like it may
Speaker 4: have been like Kyler Murray or something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, take them like it's taken.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable, Like I cannot he he literally like the
Speaker 3: game of football is a fundamentally a different game now.
Speaker 3: It was when when Lamar Jackson like started playing because
Speaker 3: of him, and it's just like he didn't take.
Speaker 4: Him his influence on the NFL so strong that we
Speaker 4: don't really do the black quarterback talking points anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because the league was like, oh, we can't let that
Speaker 4: happen again. Like when Lamar Jackson fell to thirty two
Speaker 4: and everyone's talk about does he needs to play a
Speaker 4: different position, and in year two he wins an MVP.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the.
Speaker 4: Year after he signs his deal with the Ravens, he
Speaker 4: wins his second MVP. Like that kind of cooled the fans.
Speaker 4: Like when you get to see guys like Kim Warre
Speaker 4: going first overall or even Kyler Murray going first of
Speaker 4: all and there's no talk about like how smart they
Speaker 4: are as players. Yeah, Like that's his influence directly, his
Speaker 4: success contribute to that, Like he is a Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: It kind of gives me chills, like think about like
Speaker 4: what he's accomplished concerning like what has this fact against him? Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like he is such an important figure for this era
Speaker 4: of football and really just the whole league, like on
Speaker 4: the field and off the field, like what he means
Speaker 4: like culturally in society, for like for the chances that
Speaker 4: black man can get to play a position that deemed
Speaker 4: like they were deemed not the place part enough because
Speaker 4: he was so good that they said, we can't look
Speaker 4: that stupid again. This player was available. This player was
Speaker 4: available in his athletic times. Every team could have drafted him.
Speaker 4: Every single team in the league could have drafted him,
Speaker 4: and they fucking didn't the Ravens passed on him.
Speaker 5: It's like he was not even the first Ravens draft
Speaker 5: pick that year.
Speaker 4: No, they drafted hidden Hurst twenty five overall before they
Speaker 4: drafted Lamar Jackson. Every single team passed on him, and
Speaker 4: he's one. He's one of eleven players in the HISTORIL
Speaker 4: and NFL to win two MVPs. Every other player that
Speaker 4: has won two or more MVPs is either a Hall
Speaker 4: of Famer or actively playing Aaron Rodgers and Pat Mahomes.
Speaker 4: That's it, Like this guy is a Hall of Famer already.
Speaker 3: And he should have won a third by the way,
Speaker 3: like right, he should have won the third, but either
Speaker 3: way near identical, like like statistical tie for like a
Speaker 3: third one.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he's first. He's the three time first team
Speaker 4: up pro. He's going to be a Hall of Famer.
Speaker 4: And the fact that nobody nobody called him in to
Speaker 4: say what what would it take? What contract are you
Speaker 4: looking for? That that's why I was like something, something,
Speaker 4: something is so obviously not right here. The Colts traded
Speaker 4: to first rowd picks for a quarterback, Like yes, right,
Speaker 4: precisely precisely, and.
Speaker 3: Like they're starting a guy who broke his leg and
Speaker 3: then also news Achilles like letters like.
Speaker 4: I just do like Jalen Ramsey went for two first
Speaker 4: round picks and he's a great play, but he's a cornerback.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not even the same thing.
Speaker 3: So this is the most important position in sports.
Speaker 4: Right A first ballot Hall of Famer was on the
Speaker 4: market in his prime and nobody talked him about a
Speaker 4: contract except the team that owned that, you know, owned
Speaker 4: like the rights of first refusal. And it was so
Speaker 4: frustrating to see, like my colleagues in the media say, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, the Rams were just gonna match. That's so disingenuous.
Speaker 4: That's so disingenuous because you're you're stripping Lamar like of
Speaker 4: his agency as a player one like he's better than
Speaker 4: every other quarterback that just about any team has. It
Speaker 4: will be such a severe upgrade. And you're also just
Speaker 4: like holding the line for what you're not getting cut
Speaker 4: of that money? Why are you lying for these people
Speaker 4: like that? But but Pablo took back, like in his
Speaker 4: reporting he found out that a job agreed with the
Speaker 4: union that the players were being colluded against, like actively,
Speaker 4: like there's there's text messages and J C.
Speaker 5: Trader and Lloyd Howe they hit this from the unit.
Speaker 10: Bro.
Speaker 5: If if you're a union and you have even if
Speaker 5: you lose.
Speaker 4: Arbitration, you have physical note from a judge that says
Speaker 4: you were ccluded against, take your megaphone to the top
Speaker 4: of the talls mount in the world and talk about this.
Speaker 4: Apply some pressure now, Like this is where I started
Speaker 4: to get curious, like why why did this happen? Because
Speaker 4: that part we still don't have enough information all like
Speaker 4: like I need to like how much like if there's
Speaker 4: a kickback going back to like JA C. Trader, how
Speaker 4: much is it? And we do know that Lloyd how
Speaker 4: part of the reason also parbat of reason why he
Speaker 4: was fired or had to resign with because he along
Speaker 4: with he along with a former former MLBPA union leader,
Speaker 4: Tony White, who was recently fired for banging his brother's
Speaker 4: wife who he hired to work at the mL LBU.
Speaker 11: Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the NFLPA is so lucky that the MLBPA had
Speaker 3: a shadow that's almost as embarrassing to the strung club
Speaker 3: that maybe.
Speaker 4: But Lloyd Howell and Tony White, they were working together
Speaker 4: as part of an eight man group of like union
Speaker 4: parasites like at the top of the corporate ladder in
Speaker 4: America to siphon money away from the union into their
Speaker 4: own personal pockets.
Speaker 5: Like this is what's running it.
Speaker 4: We know for a fact Lloyd an Tony White, who's
Speaker 4: the you know baseball union had what it was because
Speaker 4: he no longer has his job or family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that did for him, but fucking you, you you
Speaker 3: brought this upon yourself, right.
Speaker 4: He can't go home for Christy like that, Like he's done.
Speaker 4: They were part of a small group that was sifeing
Speaker 4: money away from you union funds to line their own pockets.
Speaker 4: Like that is verified. They've been sued for that. So
Speaker 4: what else is going on here?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: What is the incentivization for J. C. Tredder to push
Speaker 4: someone like that through? And then the backside is jc's
Speaker 4: reign as the union president expires while Lloyd How's the
Speaker 4: executive director and Lloyd makes a new cushy role for
Speaker 4: JC as like you know, I don't remember what the
Speaker 4: role was called, but like.
Speaker 7: It's like if a strategy or something.
Speaker 4: Yes, chief strategy officer, so something that paid him like
Speaker 4: three million dollars a year, very handsomely, punctually Lloyd was off,
Speaker 4: you know, blowing money at the Strip club, and JC
Speaker 4: was kind of running like the actual data day things
Speaker 4: because he's the one that has a connection.
Speaker 5: To the players, right. And now we've gone through a
Speaker 5: point where.
Speaker 4: After Gene Upshaw dies, the two executive directors who followed him,
Speaker 4: as you know, the head of union, Jamar Smith and
Speaker 4: Lloyd Howe. Neither of those guys were NFL players, So
Speaker 4: you can understand how players might feel we've gotten a
Speaker 4: little bit too far from our roots, like we don't
Speaker 4: have guys who are from our background interested in you know,
Speaker 4: players and what we go through.
Speaker 5: Which leads back to J. C.
Speaker 4: Tredder, who played for the Packers, played for the Browns,
Speaker 4: was at his peak.
Speaker 5: Man, he was a good player.
Speaker 4: Like I'm not going to take that away from Like
Speaker 4: he was a good starting center on a lot of
Speaker 4: good offensive lines in Cleveland that didn't win any games, no,
Speaker 4: but they they blocked the hell out of people, man Like,
Speaker 4: Like like when you go back you look at some
Speaker 4: of those lines, like they had Joe Thomas and Alex
Speaker 4: Snack and Mitchell Schwartz, Joe Platonio, like they have some
Speaker 4: stars that are out there winning four or five games
Speaker 4: a year. So Lloyd Halliver resigns in a mess. JC
Speaker 4: is still the chief Strategy offers of the NFLPA.
Speaker 7: I think he resigns eventually from there.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, after whatd HALLI resigns. J C resigns too.
Speaker 4: So now we're up to last summer summer twenty twenty five. Yeah,
Speaker 4: eight months ago, right, it's March twenty seven. Eight months ago.
Speaker 4: J C tried to resigns from the chief strategy officer
Speaker 4: role that was cut out before him and says he
Speaker 4: said in an interview to my friend Jonathan Jones, I
Speaker 4: have no interest in any leadership roles in the moving forward.
Speaker 4: He said. I have given this my all. I've given
Speaker 4: this everything I had. I'm gonna go home and be
Speaker 4: a family man. I have no interest in this at all.
Speaker 4: And it seemed like it until this month when j C.
Speaker 4: Pouse back up as one of the finalists for the
Speaker 4: new executive director role that's was previously left by Lloyd Howe.
Speaker 5: Now this is where it's murky.
Speaker 4: I don't know like all the processes that go on
Speaker 4: with like how they decide like who's gonna, you know,
Speaker 4: do what, like they apparently they have three hundred candidates.
Speaker 4: It will have down the three. I don't ask some
Speaker 4: players what was going on in the past couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: They don't know, like how like all this was selected.
Speaker 4: But they are presented with three finalists for the executive
Speaker 4: director role to vote on Rider, who has popped up
Speaker 4: out of nowhere. Then the commissioner of the American Athletic
Speaker 4: Conference so like Temple and you know those East Coast schools,
Speaker 4: like like James Madison or whatever, like he's overseeing that.
Speaker 3: It's like a college football commissioner.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, like like yeah, college football, college football commission
Speaker 4: Like he's talking to like the president of Rice University
Speaker 4: about like scheduling games against Toledo or some shit.
Speaker 11: Christ.
Speaker 4: But see you have Jay C. Tradder the American Conference commissioner,
Speaker 4: not even like the ACC, the A A C. Right
Speaker 4: think ass conference. It used to be the Big East,
Speaker 4: Like they're stolen Big East valor this this guy was
Speaker 4: running against JAYC.
Speaker 5: Trader.
Speaker 4: And also the third was a former Hollywood Union exect
Speaker 4: who didn't really seem to be that interested in the
Speaker 4: role in the first place. So we get down to
Speaker 4: the election day and we find out the American Conference
Speaker 4: commissioner drops out on.
Speaker 5: Election day. He dropped right. Okay, So now so now.
Speaker 4: We're dealing with We've had two executive directors back to back,
Speaker 4: Morse Smith, Lords Howe not football players didn't go well.
Speaker 4: Ja C. Tratder was a part of that, but he
Speaker 4: played football, right, So you see the Jac Tradder or
Speaker 4: this Hollywood guy who doesn't give a crap. I forget
Speaker 4: his name, but his background wasn't like always the cleanest
Speaker 4: in terms of, you know, actually getting things done, in
Speaker 4: terms of you know, being pro labor all the time,
Speaker 4: ultimately as fucked up as it is. That's an easy
Speaker 4: choice if you're a player. These are my two options.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna take the guy who at least has played football.
Speaker 5: So you had Ja C.
Speaker 4: Tradder, who is now back as the executive director eight
Speaker 4: months after he said he had no interest in being
Speaker 4: any type of union leadership.
Speaker 7: And like somehow this whole process has like stage manage.
Speaker 1: He's like back again.
Speaker 4: Right, But to me, this lynchpin right here is actually
Speaker 4: the most fascinating part of what's happened. And this is
Speaker 4: where like, if you listen to this podcast probably won't
Speaker 4: sound like the conspiracy If you're not thinking about labor
Speaker 4: relations in America. It might sound like conspiracy to you,
Speaker 4: but j C. Tretder when he was the president, like
Speaker 4: his right hand man, I think it was like the
Speaker 4: vice president was Jalen Reeves Mayban or was very important.
Speaker 4: He was especially seen was the linebacker for the lines
Speaker 4: for a long time. He became the union president after
Speaker 4: j C. Tretder left and you know, became like the
Speaker 4: chief strategy officer. So he basically followed in j C.
Speaker 4: Treader's footsteps as the union president. So you know, while
Speaker 4: all this shapey stuff's going on, Reeves Mayban is an
Speaker 4: underrated part as you know, the new union president because
Speaker 4: Lloyd was executive director.
Speaker 5: J C had this new role as the chief strategy officer.
Speaker 4: But Jalen Reeves Mayban is sitting there as the president
Speaker 4: of the union, so obviously he is involved in this somehow, right,
Speaker 4: Like he is involved with like the cover up for
Speaker 4: the players not being as aggressive as you should be
Speaker 4: towards ownership in terms of gave up a seventeenth game,
Speaker 4: dog like that's insane and you got nothing back for it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So there's a clock though, in terms of how long
Speaker 4: you can like be removed from being a player and
Speaker 4: still be the NFLPA president. And last year Jalen labeling
Speaker 4: he had been out of the league, so his clock
Speaker 4: was almost up.
Speaker 5: I think it's within yes, two years. Two years.
Speaker 4: So if you flaw the league, you're not signing a contract,
Speaker 4: like no one's pursuing you, like you kind of just
Speaker 4: get filed as retired, even if you're not, even if
Speaker 4: you have to come out and say like I'm retired,
Speaker 4: Like there's a bunch of players that never said I'm retired,
Speaker 4: but nobody's signed them, like t Y Hilton. T Y
Speaker 4: Hilton just functually retired, like yeah, two weeks ago. He
Speaker 4: hasn't played like five years, okay, but he has been
Speaker 4: placed in a retired file in the NFL. As far
Speaker 4: as just like labeling things go, and if you are retired,
Speaker 4: if you were labels retired, you can't be the NFLPA president.
Speaker 5: Makes good, perfect sense.
Speaker 4: So okay, this does not sound crazy, probably the people
Speaker 4: who listen to this podcast. Right, If you are one
Speaker 4: of thirty two owners, right, and you have this power
Speaker 4: structure of an organization that you negotiate against the NFLPA,
Speaker 4: this power structure is very friendly towards you. You know,
Speaker 4: they've given you a lot over the past fifteen years
Speaker 4: since he ripped up the two thousand and six Cbah.
Speaker 4: How much would you pay to keep that in place?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Yep?
Speaker 5: How much would you pay to keep it in place?
Speaker 4: And I haven't seen many people talking about this part
Speaker 4: of it, But the Chicago Bears signed Jalen Reeves Maybin
Speaker 4: this fall.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, right to a betterment deal. I looked
Speaker 5: it up.
Speaker 4: I think he played like forty special team snaps for
Speaker 4: them this season. But that resets his clock. That resets
Speaker 4: his clock to be president of the Union. So now
Speaker 4: we get to the end of the season. Yep, Jailerry
Speaker 4: Vaven runs again to be president. I'm not sure anybody
Speaker 4: ran against him. No one's told us who the other
Speaker 4: Cannions were, yep, if there were other candidates, And now
Speaker 4: he's the president of the Union again after he was
Speaker 4: almost barred from it. Does any Bears remember like any
Speaker 4: play the Jaylen Breeze may made?
Speaker 3: No right? Like I would. I watched every game of
Speaker 3: that team, y'all. I guess they're like two that I
Speaker 3: missed for those on planes.
Speaker 4: But like no, but okay, but but somethink about it
Speaker 4: from disrespect. If you are an owner and you have
Speaker 4: this power structure that is generating billions capital b billions
Speaker 4: of dollars back in your direction away from the people
Speaker 4: that they represent, would it be worth five hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars keep that dolling and a little roster spot at
Speaker 4: the bottom. Absolutely. Now that's the part that I haven't
Speaker 4: seen people you know bring up as much because it
Speaker 4: get stuck on Trader. But Treader's right hand man was
Speaker 4: almost ineligible to be the president of the NFLPA. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he pops up in this little role when it
Speaker 4: looks like his career is over, like they signed him
Speaker 4: late in the season to play special teams. You should
Speaker 4: bumple some of them in practice squad to go do that,
Speaker 4: because because you want guys that you've already you know,
Speaker 4: developed a relationship, guys you've started you started training working with.
Speaker 5: To get those reps.
Speaker 4: Some outside guy like coming into play special teams that
Speaker 4: you know that's it's.
Speaker 5: Unnecessary, it's unnecessary.
Speaker 12: It's been out of the lead too, Like, yeah, there's
Speaker 12: no reason to do it unless you, as a power structure,
Speaker 12: are interested in him having eligibility to keep funneling you money, yep,
Speaker 12: at expense of the players.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I've really changed my tune like on players
Speaker 4: not carrying over the past month, just from talking to guys,
Speaker 4: like because I used to cover the Jets and the
Speaker 4: Giants like for a newspaper here in New York City, Like
Speaker 4: this is what I've done for the past ten years.
Speaker 5: I've met a lot of guys.
Speaker 4: They are like curious because You're like, what is this mechanism? Yeah,
Speaker 4: that is allowing you guys to operate with so much
Speaker 4: secrecy where you have J. C. Tredder, I mean shout
Speaker 4: out to like the people who ran against him or
Speaker 4: were there for a minute, but functionally, like practically he
Speaker 4: ran unopposed for the executive director role, and so you
Speaker 4: whittled it out from three hundred candidates to three and
Speaker 4: one of them is J. C. Tratder and the other
Speaker 4: is the commissioner of like the sixth mostly important college
Speaker 4: football conference in the country. And then a Hollywood movie
Speaker 4: like union exec guy. I mean, that's that's functionally unopposed.
Speaker 4: And then with Jalen reason Laban, we don't even know
Speaker 4: if anyone ran against him. So these guys are just
Speaker 4: walking back into power yep, and the question that I
Speaker 4: and players and other drills have what is that mechanism
Speaker 4: that is operating in the shadows that is allowing us
Speaker 4: to happen and how much is it worth?
Speaker 5: Because now we're coming up.
Speaker 4: On a new CBA negotiation, they're probably going to get
Speaker 4: an eighteen inch game in eighteenth. Like you you have
Speaker 4: gone from in twenty years. You've gone from a spot
Speaker 4: where you had revenue majority, even if it wasn't the
Speaker 4: sixty percent fifty two fifty three, that's better than forty seven.
Speaker 4: And like the literal death of Gene Upshaw, Yeah, it
Speaker 4: like killed this union in a way that I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's recoverable from because you've said precedent over
Speaker 4: two cbas likely to be three, that you will give
Speaker 4: up anything for what though, yeah, for nothing, but for
Speaker 4: what like like Roger Goodell should never be coming out
Speaker 4: and saying I'm glad that j. C. Tretder was named
Speaker 4: the executive, Like j C. Tredder should be a pain
Speaker 4: in his past. No, And it just it's sad to
Speaker 4: me like as someone like who like I love the
Speaker 4: sport so much and to see like what's happening to
Speaker 4: the Union. It's horrible because ultimately, like we're so short
Speaker 4: sighted that you know what what's happening from me, like
Speaker 4: right right now or today, it's the only thing that matters.
Speaker 4: But like there's gonna be real consequences for these guys
Speaker 4: for decades and man, like I remember my first year
Speaker 4: covering the Jets and the Giants for the Alien News
Speaker 4: up here in New York was twenty nineteen, and the
Speaker 4: Jets had a Legends day like where a bunch of
Speaker 4: guys that came back and they were on during halftime.
Speaker 4: It's for crappy teams do when you have nothing to
Speaker 4: talk about then, like you talk about talk about the
Speaker 4: good old this, right, but you know these guys that
Speaker 4: come up and they were hanging out with us in
Speaker 4: the press box before they went down on the field
Speaker 4: of the halftime. These are like fifty year old men
Speaker 4: like on canes and stuff like that, Like like my
Speaker 4: dad's sixty and he still shoots hoops sometimes like at
Speaker 4: the gym, and these are like forty five fifty year
Speaker 4: old men that they can't walk with that assistance that
Speaker 4: are like like they walk around like and they're forgetting like, oh,
Speaker 4: what I just turned this corner to do like all
Speaker 4: the time, like you're talking to them and you have
Speaker 4: to keep reminding like refresh, like refreshing them on what
Speaker 4: we were talking about, as if it's like chat GBT,
Speaker 4: you know, like and it's sad. But when you see
Speaker 4: like like the material restrictions that these guys have in
Speaker 4: their own lives post playing, and these guys like they're
Speaker 4: not all rich, like they're just normal people, it's it's
Speaker 4: sad that this union has capitulated to the owners for
Speaker 4: such a violent job. And sure, like you can say,
Speaker 4: like you know, no one's telling you to be a
Speaker 4: football player, but that's the only option a lot of
Speaker 4: these guys have, like to go be football players and
Speaker 4: to go put their body on the line just so
Speaker 4: their family can live in.
Speaker 5: Comfort for a few years. Oh it's sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's the actual poverty draft. It hits
Speaker 3: way way way more people than the military does, like
Speaker 3: significantly more. And I think it's something that's really really
Speaker 3: really badly understood on the left because it's like people
Speaker 3: on the left head not to care about sports stuff,
Speaker 3: but it's like football is a structural part, but the
Speaker 3: entire American economy. It's a structural part of our the
Speaker 3: entire American educational system, like half of the educational system
Speaker 3: is designed to funnel people into this sport specifically so
Speaker 3: these people could make fucking money off of it. Yes,
Speaker 3: and that stuff shapes everything.
Speaker 4: And I understand, like why left these like they don't
Speaker 4: care about spor us, Like I get it. But if
Speaker 4: the NFL were to cease existing tomorrow, that would be
Speaker 4: like a major collapse within the US economy. Yeah, Like
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm joking. Basically everything you watch, especially now,
Speaker 4: is subsidized by some NFL game, right, Like yeah, that's
Speaker 4: that's why these companies exist. If you if you go
Speaker 4: back every single year and you look at the top
Speaker 4: one hundred most watched TV shows of the year, ninety
Speaker 4: seven of them will be NFL games, yep. And you'll
Speaker 4: have like the two coag football games and like the
Speaker 4: Macy's things giving pretty.
Speaker 7: Yeah, maybe like maybe the World Series, right, maybe the
Speaker 7: World Series.
Speaker 4: Like right, maybe the Oscars can like maybe the Oscars
Speaker 4: versus like Jets Bills like Week twelve, that's.
Speaker 3: Not flow like throw on a Thursday night like right,
Speaker 3: But that's.
Speaker 5: How big this is.
Speaker 4: And I would implore people to not say, hey, who
Speaker 4: cares about this? It's important And also like there's there's
Speaker 4: there's also just like clear like you look at a game,
Speaker 4: there's clear racial divides. Yeah, and who has to play
Speaker 4: this game and who doesn't have to play this game?
Speaker 4: There are studies that show that like upwards of eighty
Speaker 4: percent of black boys who play sports want to be
Speaker 4: professional athletes.
Speaker 5: I mean, because that's that's it.
Speaker 4: Really like it's that or I'm gonna go do I
Speaker 4: don't fucking know, and and those are really your options.
Speaker 4: And that's why I say, like I've used I've used
Speaker 4: the NFL to kind of figure out my way like
Speaker 4: through you know, how I feel about things, because there's
Speaker 4: such real like desperation for these people to get out.
Speaker 4: And the problem, like also with the union is like
Speaker 4: let's say, like some of these guys come from nothing,
Speaker 4: Like the fact that they could figure out a way
Speaker 4: to get to a bus that would take them to
Speaker 4: school where they could play.
Speaker 5: Football is like a major accomplishment in the rown.
Speaker 4: And the fact that you can go from that to
Speaker 4: making three hundred thousand dollars in a year at twenty one,
Speaker 4: that will distort you as well, because now you've made
Speaker 4: such an extreme jump so fast, probably gonna be a
Speaker 4: little bit complacent. You might not be thinking about what's
Speaker 4: next because, and I say this for like a twenty
Speaker 4: one year old person, you spent the last twenty years
Speaker 4: of your life fucking fighting, like just to get to
Speaker 4: the next day. I remember one of the crazy thing
Speaker 4: back in the day, like when Laramie Tumpsill was at
Speaker 4: Ole Miss, Like back when they got busted before the
Speaker 4: nil stuff going out, there's this text thread between Laramie
Speaker 4: Tumpson's OH line coach and his mom saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: can you send money for the light.
Speaker 5: Bill this month?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a five star starter on your team that
Speaker 4: is generating millions of dollars, and you could get in
Speaker 4: trouble for sending his mom like two hundred bucks to
Speaker 4: keep the lights one. You know, there's a real like systemic,
Speaker 4: like obvious extraction of value from these black men, and
Speaker 4: once it's over, they say good luck, get fucked until
Speaker 4: you know, we had like the CTE lawsuit where they
Speaker 4: had to payout billions of dollars, but ultimately you just
Speaker 4: kind of come in and get discarded, which is why
Speaker 4: this union is so important, And the fact that you
Speaker 4: can be JC Tretdery use the trust that you have
Speaker 4: earned through your own blood, sweat and tears of being
Speaker 4: an NFL player and good enough to stand on your
Speaker 4: own as like almost a decade long NFL starter. The
Speaker 4: fact that you would use that and turn around and
Speaker 4: like just capitulate the owners like that's scum.
Speaker 5: Ideos it's scum, and it's it's.
Speaker 4: Sad and just everyone here deserves better except for the
Speaker 4: people at top. Yeah, and there needs to be some
Speaker 4: answers on why are you guys doing this? They're not
Speaker 4: doing for no reason. There has to be something there.
Speaker 4: That's the part that we don't know.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to kind of go back to
Speaker 3: you for seconds, like how they're able to do this.
Speaker 3: I don't know the exact mechanisms of how they specifically
Speaker 3: have been able to do this, because every union is
Speaker 3: structured like kind of differently. But there's something that's actually,
Speaker 3: unfortunately like pretty common in even sort of like progressive
Speaker 3: unions where you know, like we've had people on this
Speaker 3: show a few times who were trying to dislodge this
Speaker 3: clique that used to run Actually I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: they're still running it, but they used to run the
Speaker 3: big nurses union, like a huge portion of the country's nurses,
Speaker 3: and so okay. One of the problems here is that,
Speaker 3: like you need elections, even if they're well publicized, even
Speaker 3: if you are trying to get everyone to vote, have
Speaker 3: really really low turnout. Members unless they're really engaged, do
Speaker 3: not pay attention to it. Yeah, and that's not even
Speaker 3: really engaged in the sense of engage in union activities,
Speaker 3: because even most of the people who like are really
Speaker 3: engaged in like I want to go on strike or
Speaker 3: like I want to I'm gonna show up to this
Speaker 3: like contract session are voting in the union elections because
Speaker 3: no one knows what's happening. No one knows who any
Speaker 3: of the candidates are. It's no one cares. It's like
Speaker 3: it's it's an even more extreme version of the problem
Speaker 3: with like no one voting in regular elections, and so
Speaker 3: with a really small amount of votes, you can just
Speaker 3: get you and your faction installed for generations. Right, Like
Speaker 3: there are admin caucuses in a whole bunch of unions,
Speaker 3: like and we're talking about like like the Teamsters and
Speaker 3: like the union's on that scale. We're like, yeah, there was.
Speaker 3: It was a huge deal when the teamsters like finally
Speaker 3: ran out their admin caucus. But like, these people are
Speaker 3: in power for half a century, super empowered for like
Speaker 3: generations of these guys are able to stay in these unions,
Speaker 3: and they're able to do it because it's really really
Speaker 3: easy to control union elections, especially once you're empowered. And
Speaker 3: this is something I'm like I've talked about on this
Speaker 3: fucking show. Like I've seen union staffers whose job it
Speaker 3: is to do organizing get fired for telling their own
Speaker 3: members to read a contract there but they were being
Speaker 3: asked to vote on because that was considered a threat
Speaker 3: to the power base, right, And the problem is is
Speaker 3: that once you're running the union, you con troll the
Speaker 3: jobs of all of the staff in these you and
Speaker 3: one of the things that actually came out in public
Speaker 3: tourist reporting is that they offered anyone who'd been at
Speaker 3: the union for more than seven years a buyout. And
Speaker 3: so you know, you can watch them do like they're
Speaker 3: doing a systemic purge of all of this stuff, and
Speaker 3: then like the moment, Shredder is like leading the search, right,
Speaker 3: he's able to use his position, like his very specific
Speaker 3: position in this bureaucracy, like as a president of the
Speaker 3: union to like go change the terms of the search
Speaker 3: so that it's no secret and you can just keep
Speaker 3: using whatever. Every position take over gives you a little
Speaker 3: bit more sort of bureaucratic power that you can use
Speaker 3: to rap fuck people. And once they're in, it's like
Speaker 3: it is possible to dislodge them. Mm hmm, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is something that happened with the UAW in the
Speaker 3: last like that was twenty twenty twenty twenty three. They
Speaker 3: got in and they dis lodged an admin caucus that
Speaker 3: had been in power and like doing similar shit to
Speaker 3: this for like decades and decades and decades. And so
Speaker 3: it is possible for you know, reform caucuses inside the
Speaker 3: Union to organize and drive the leadership out, but it's
Speaker 3: really hard. And the moment you start doing that, like
Speaker 3: every single person who's any way affiliated with you will
Speaker 3: get targeted for retaliation by the union.
Speaker 5: And yes, that that's what has happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah with J. C.
Speaker 5: Tradder yep again, Pabla Tori.
Speaker 4: He released an interview two weeks ago with you know,
Speaker 4: longtime security officer who was basically one of the people
Speaker 4: who was like Hey, Yeah, what's going on here with
Speaker 4: DoD j C try to Alloyd house stuff?
Speaker 5: And they fired him for that.
Speaker 4: Like the union five the security guy who've been working
Speaker 4: like keep been working there since Like Dean I'm show
Speaker 4: I was working there. So he he's part of the
Speaker 4: old guard that is there for like the material like
Speaker 4: improvement of players' lives, like as far as they can
Speaker 4: take it without you know, dealing with the real bounds
Speaker 4: of like we got to kind of get this number
Speaker 4: for the season or our worker base is gonna be
Speaker 4: harm Like those guys don't really work there anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 4: someone like Dominicq fox Worth, he's like he's on TV now,
Speaker 4: you know, and I know he cares a lot about this,
Speaker 4: but he's off doing different things. And I think another
Speaker 4: thing that that's tough when you look back at like okay,
Speaker 4: who is playing football. These are ultimately young men who
Speaker 4: like they enter this union without any knowledge of like
Speaker 4: how unions work, Like what are the finances behind any
Speaker 4: of this? You're geared to take like your high school
Speaker 4: free time and your college free time, especially now that
Speaker 4: these colleges are throwing out cash, like you are honed
Speaker 4: to care about football and get football done, and you know,
Speaker 4: once we get to college, like we'll see what it is.
Speaker 4: Hopefully you can get your degree and keep it moving.
Speaker 4: But most of the time, like these guys, they don't
Speaker 4: know what any of this stuff is. So you have
Speaker 4: like this very uninformed, you know, labor force that's getting
Speaker 4: turned out two three years at a time. It would
Speaker 4: probably be pretty easy, honestly, to create a blockade of
Speaker 4: knowledge when the people who could be asking you about
Speaker 4: this are going to be irrelevant if you just hold
Speaker 4: the lines for a year, you know, it's sad.
Speaker 3: The other thing about this, right is that these guys
Speaker 3: don't have even the basic concentive that even like the
Speaker 3: UAW and their moost In Trench had, which is like,
Speaker 3: if you fuck this up enough, there won't be a union.
Speaker 3: It was like these guys, there's always going to be
Speaker 3: something called the NFL Players Association, right because the NFL
Speaker 3: needs it for cover, which means they don't even have
Speaker 3: to do the minimal organizing worker like even the minimal
Speaker 3: like pretending to actually fight for the people who are
Speaker 3: supposed to be the union because it doesn't matter to them,
Speaker 3: Like why the fuck would they why the fuck would
Speaker 3: they try to onboard new people, like into the union,
Speaker 3: get them involved with the Like why do they care?
Speaker 3: They can just fucking go home and like pash their
Speaker 3: checks and get whatever the fuck benefits are getting from
Speaker 3: the league for doing this shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I want to know those benefits are. I
Speaker 4: just want to know.
Speaker 3: Yep, me too. I would love like really.
Speaker 5: Because when it gets down to like how much is
Speaker 5: your soul worth? Man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like j C is one of those guys ultimately
Speaker 4: who has made enough money playing in football where he.
Speaker 5: Doesn't have to do this. Yeah, you know, he doesn't
Speaker 5: have to go around like this.
Speaker 4: Like it's it's a little baffling in that sense, Like
Speaker 4: and I know that, like I guess something that I
Speaker 4: guess I struggle sometimes.
Speaker 5: Like why are y'all doing this fuck up shit? Like why?
Speaker 4: Like it's really like that, like a couple more bucks
Speaker 4: really means that much to you, Like you're really willing
Speaker 4: to sell out all these people? But the answer is yes,
Speaker 4: The answer is yes. Personally, I can't reconcile that it's abhorrent.
Speaker 4: It's terrible, but it's just the truth of the matter
Speaker 4: is so hopefully they can figure out a way to
Speaker 4: kind of dismantle this, but like man, even the fact
Speaker 4: that like man, you got like the Bears, they signed
Speaker 4: you and made all of a sudden like his clocks back,
Speaker 4: and now you have the same power structure as you
Speaker 4: hit another landmark where you're gonna be negotiating for eighteen games.
Speaker 4: That's a tough thing topple open man, that's a tough
Speaker 4: thing get past. It's really difficult. Yeah, eat at Arby's. Actually,
Speaker 4: don't do that.
Speaker 5: Army is not good.
Speaker 3: No, it's just well, I think that's a decent point
Speaker 3: to sort of end. Don unless you have a Yeah,
Speaker 3: do you have anything else? Do you want to make
Speaker 3: sure people know about this whole thing?
Speaker 4: I would say, like, if you're not watching football, you should.
Speaker 4: It's a great game. I look, I say this as
Speaker 4: somewhere football has like materially harmed me. Like my back
Speaker 4: is messed up. I've had two hernie a dis my
Speaker 4: back son seventeen, I turned thirty two this year. It's
Speaker 4: like half my life, you know, would I do it again?
Speaker 5: Fuck?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, don't I don't know?
Speaker 4: And like this this is where like my my like
Speaker 4: the people who know me, they like, man, you're wired
Speaker 4: a little differently, But I think that standard for football players.
Speaker 4: Like it's a really complicated relationship, but like all my
Speaker 4: best friends are still like football related in some way,
Speaker 4: whether it's college or journalism now or you know.
Speaker 5: Going back to high school back in the day.
Speaker 4: Like I still talk to so many people that I
Speaker 4: played football with, Like I'm watching like I'm the guy
Speaker 4: watching these like crappy like Division two games like on
Speaker 4: a on a Friday night. It's it's awesome. So like
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, you should check out Lamar Jackson, Like
Speaker 4: just go on YouTube, just look up a highlight and then.
Speaker 3: This is it's just wild. Like you know when you when.
Speaker 4: You've watched football or really any of these sports, like
Speaker 4: they are just inescapable. I hate to even say micro
Speaker 4: consins of like American society because like this is obviously
Speaker 4: this is this is American society. Like when you just
Speaker 4: look on the influence that football has, like the economy
Speaker 4: as a whole, and the way that people who are
Speaker 4: less fortunate are able to be extracted and run into
Speaker 4: the ground, yeah, and forgotten even by the people who
Speaker 4: are supposed to protect them. I think that's something that
Speaker 4: we see here just about every arena of American life.
Speaker 5: So I would just.
Speaker 4: Implore some of our our fellow leftisium don't be the
Speaker 4: who cares about sports, because whether you know about it,
Speaker 4: sports is interacting and directly impacting your life in this
Speaker 4: country every single day. And I think it's important to
Speaker 4: kind of care about some of the labor practices that
Speaker 4: are going on. Even if you know the labor practices
Speaker 4: are around Lamar Jackson getting paid you know, sixty million
Speaker 4: dollars a year over fifty million dollars a year, but
Speaker 4: it's still it's still important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And I think there's I think there's
Speaker 3: two there's two points I can make there. One is
Speaker 3: that like, yeah, I don't know, like it was it was.
Speaker 3: It was the fucking like transwomanted college sports thing was
Speaker 3: like one of the two avenues through which like, oh wait,
Speaker 3: hold on, a bunch of us just don't have fucking
Speaker 3: rights now. Yeah, And you know, and like and that
Speaker 3: that kind of like cultural stuff that comes out of
Speaker 3: places that we're just not usually.
Speaker 4: Right right, and just to tack onto that, as we've
Speaker 4: seen over the past few months and as many dangered
Speaker 4: and misrepresented and punched down communities have said to y'all
Speaker 4: forever and I say this as a black person. If
Speaker 4: they do it to us, yep, we'll do it to you.
Speaker 4: At some points, it's just sad that like we've gotten
Speaker 4: to the point where, you know, you've been fighting and
Speaker 4: screaming for so long, like, bro, could you just turn
Speaker 4: your head this way and just look you see, Like.
Speaker 5: Bro, we're the same man. We're all just humans out
Speaker 5: here trying to make it.
Speaker 4: That thought process is just so violently opposed by the
Speaker 4: powers it be, and it's just so ingrained in our society,
Speaker 4: like certain people have to get stepped on that you
Speaker 4: will let yourself get stepped on. And now, shit, we
Speaker 4: got videos of you know, people getting executed in the
Speaker 4: street in Minneapolis, and what's happened.
Speaker 5: Nothing, just like.
Speaker 4: Every other police shooting, you know, of a black person
Speaker 4: or or a transperson getting killed, Like, yeah, nothing happened,
Speaker 4: and nothing keeps happening, and ultimately we get to a
Speaker 4: point where that's just the norm. So shit, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff to fight. But you can even see
Speaker 4: like how the NFL union has followed that stame like deterioration.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: Shit, you know, you go back to the twenty eleventh CBA,
Speaker 4: you threw the rookies under the bus, and then what
Speaker 4: the omners do? They came and took your money too, right,
Speaker 4: And then when it came down to you know, the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty CBA, you guys have set such a precedent
Speaker 4: of us running your pockets that we will set the hard,
Speaker 4: non negotiable stance of an extra football game and you
Speaker 4: will capitulate. That's everywhere, man, that that is everywhere in
Speaker 4: the corporate structure and lafe of America. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: sports in is capable. Check out Lamar Jackson. On some days,
Speaker 4: it's good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think.
Speaker 10: I think.
Speaker 3: The one last thing I want to say is that,
Speaker 3: you know, the reform calock is taking over the UAW
Speaker 3: with something that was seen as impossible. Like it was
Speaker 3: like literally, I mean like every union has a reform caucus,
Speaker 3: they normally lose every single time, and then one day
Speaker 3: they won and it like completely changed what the labor
Speaker 3: movement in America is. And you know, the thing, the
Speaker 3: thing about organizing reform caucuses is that I know that
Speaker 3: people who organize these things like they're just random people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like anyone can do this. This is this is not
Speaker 3: something that requires like you know, an incredibly specialized skill set,
Speaker 3: you can just do it. And as much like actual
Speaker 3: teenagers do this shit watching people and how tenaciously they
Speaker 3: can fight and watching them win. That that's how I
Speaker 3: get out of bed in the morning, is I have
Speaker 3: I have seen the hope in how how people can
Speaker 3: fight fights that are just unwinnable, that are so unfathomable
Speaker 3: that most people don't even think there's a point in
Speaker 3: fighting it, and then one day they win. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: yeah maybe one day well.
Speaker 4: Two, I mean, I mean yeah, and if you just
Speaker 4: think about the basis of the NFL PA, because now
Speaker 4: it's an anti trust blocker, right, that's what it is now,
Speaker 4: But the roots of it, yeah, there were guys trying
Speaker 4: to get rights for they trying to get paid for
Speaker 4: the amount of time that they put into this job.
Speaker 4: One of the base complaints is when the league was
Speaker 4: smaller and you had like kind of other leagues you
Speaker 4: know that are defunked now or were absorbed by the
Speaker 4: AFC or the NFC before it all merged the NFL.
Speaker 4: One of the basises was the NFL owners would ban
Speaker 4: you if you played in another league, like if you
Speaker 4: spent any time playing another league.
Speaker 5: They would ban you for five years. Man, that's your
Speaker 5: whole career, right. Yeah, And I don't know if this
Speaker 5: made the show, if we're talking about before the show, but.
Speaker 4: One of the things that got the NFLP like organized
Speaker 4: in the fifties was guys were doing training camp in
Speaker 4: preseason games for free. They weren't getting paid for it.
Speaker 4: But these are just regular men who are just like,
Speaker 4: fuck it, I'm tired of this. Yeah, And sadly it
Speaker 4: has been co opted into something that does not represent
Speaker 4: what it was before. But you know, this stuff is
Speaker 4: started by reckless people who are saying, fuck it, I'm
Speaker 4: tired of this. We got to make a change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think on that note, where can people
Speaker 3: find your work?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can find me on blue Sky or verts.
Speaker 4: You can find me on Yahoo Sports Football three oh
Speaker 4: one podcast. I'm trying to be found a little bit
Speaker 4: less these days.
Speaker 3: That's so reasonable blue Sky can find for.
Speaker 5: The most part. Yeah, you know, it's a little less.
Speaker 3: I get there's a read. There's a reason I'm not
Speaker 3: putting by handling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I will say this is not necessarily a
Speaker 4: friendly blue Sky count. I'm not one of those guys
Speaker 4: who's just gonna let you pop off. We do clap
Speaker 4: back around here, right.
Speaker 13: We do, in fact love to see Yeah.
Speaker 14: Hello everyone, and welcome to it could happen here. My
Speaker 14: name is Daniel Kurd. I'm a researcher of Arab in
Speaker 14: Palestinian politics. Today I'm joined by Molli Krabapple, an award
Speaker 14: winning writer and artist.
Speaker 6: She's written three books.
Speaker 14: Is co author of the book Brothers of the Gun
Speaker 14: and Illustrated Collaboration with Syrian war journalist Montjuan Hisham, which
Speaker 14: was a New York Times Notable Book and longlisted for
Speaker 14: the twenty eighteen National Book Award, and her memoir Drawing
Speaker 14: Bud also received global praise. Her most recent book is
Speaker 14: Here Where We Live Is Our Country, The Story of
Speaker 14: the Jewish Bund, and it'll be out on April seventh.
Speaker 6: I've already pre ordered. I'm very excited.
Speaker 14: So I wanted to talk to Mollie today given how
Speaker 14: relevant the history she outlines in her book is to
Speaker 14: this current moment, especially for the American Jewish community.
Speaker 6: So thank you Mollie for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Donna for having me. It's my
Speaker 1: total honor to be here.
Speaker 14: So you describe in the book The Bunns Philosophy of
Speaker 14: doy k or hearness as a rejection of the idea
Speaker 14: that Jews need to seek a homeland elsewhere to find safety.
Speaker 6: How did you come to understand this concept personally?
Speaker 14: And why do you think it was, at least from
Speaker 14: my perspective, so thoroughly erased from mainstream Jewish historical memory
Speaker 14: after the Holocaust.
Speaker 15: I mean I came across dokit through studying the Booned,
Speaker 15: which I came across through the watercolors of my great
Speaker 15: grandfather Samuel Brothboord, who was a post Impressionist painter who
Speaker 15: was a member of the boond as a young man.
Speaker 1: Back in Russia.
Speaker 15: And the concept of dokite or heereness means is it's
Speaker 15: a defiant assertion of rootedness in a place that wanted
Speaker 15: Jews dead. Jews had lived in Eastern Europe for over
Speaker 15: a thousand years, but in the eighteenth, nineteenth and at
Speaker 15: the dawn of the twentieth century, these countries were some
Speaker 15: of the roughest places to be a Jew in the world.
Speaker 15: In the Tsarist Empire, Jews were racialized minority. It set
Speaker 15: it on their papers. They could only like live in
Speaker 15: a certain area. There was military conscription for twenty five years.
Speaker 15: It sucked, shall we say. And in inter war Poland
Speaker 15: as well, the government was trying to use racism as
Speaker 15: a glue to hold this diverse and quite impoverished country together.
Speaker 15: So what here this meant is it meant that Jews
Speaker 15: had the right to live and not just live, not
Speaker 15: just survive, not just cling to life, but to flourish
Speaker 15: and have beautiful lives in their homes that they had
Speaker 15: lived in for the last thousand years. And that even
Speaker 15: if European Christians thought that Jews were, you know, Sath,
Speaker 15: the Oriental aliens who needed to be forcibly deported to Palestine,
Speaker 15: which is exactly what the Polish interwar government thought, even
Speaker 15: if that's what the was in power thought, Jews had
Speaker 15: a right to live and flourish in freedom and dignity
Speaker 15: in their homes, because that's the right that every single
Speaker 15: human on this earth has. And in many ways it
Speaker 15: almost reminds me of this like precursor echo of the
Speaker 15: Palestinian concept of some mood, of the steadfastness to stay
Speaker 15: in your home despite the genocidal predations of the Israeli state.
Speaker 15: And I think that the concept of heareness was crushed
Speaker 15: by a variety of things. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 15: as we all know, you know, there was a genocide
Speaker 15: in Europe that wiped out two thirds of European Jews
Speaker 15: and wiped out ninety percent of the Jews in Poland.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just that.
Speaker 15: It was also that after the genocide, countries like Poland
Speaker 15: were so psychopathically violent to Jewish survivors that it convinced
Speaker 15: the overwhelming majority of Polish Jewish survivors that they had
Speaker 15: to go somewhere else. There are about a thousand Jews
Speaker 15: that were murdered by nationalists in the aftermath of the Holocaust,
Speaker 15: including you know, dozens who were burned alive in this
Speaker 15: like famous town called Kiltze. Now, whether that somewhere else
Speaker 15: meant Palestine or whether that meant New York City, that
Speaker 15: was something that was very much up to the visa
Speaker 15: regimes of the era. The vast majority of Jews who
Speaker 15: survived the Holocaust did not necessarily want to go to Palestine,
Speaker 15: let alone to you know, sign up to join the
Speaker 15: Haganah and throw themselves as cannon fodder into another war.
Speaker 1: After surviving Auschwitz. The majority of Jewish survivors probably.
Speaker 15: Wanted to go live with their families in America and
Speaker 15: in other countries that had large Jewish communities, But the
Speaker 15: Western democracies, And tell me if this sounds familiar in
Speaker 15: the current moment. While the Western democracies preached a language
Speaker 15: of human rights and universalism, in practice they were quite
Speaker 15: content to let impoverished refugees wrought in camps. Does that
Speaker 15: I could see no other echoes? Of course not No,
Speaker 15: it has only happened once ever, Yeah, yeah, definitely we've
Speaker 15: learned our lesson, and yeah, exactly, the world has definitely
Speaker 15: learned this lesson about the corrosive effects of hypocrisy. And
Speaker 15: so Zionist groups were able to take over camp administrations
Speaker 15: and use them as recruiting grounds and to convince and
Speaker 15: in fact sometimes violently coerce survivors to go to Palestine
Speaker 15: and in many cases to do the Nakba. And I
Speaker 15: think that these are the concrete reasons, right that the
Speaker 15: concept of Dokhite was so crushed, so erased, right like
Speaker 15: it was physically erased, you know, violence. But there's something
Speaker 15: more than that, even because you know, there are many,
Speaker 15: many movements that are physically crushed with violence, whose memories
Speaker 15: are vivid and alive and resonant to think about, like
Speaker 15: the Black Panther Party in America, you know, who were
Speaker 15: subject to the most brutal violence by the state, but
Speaker 15: who you know, remain as legends. And I think the
Speaker 15: reason that the Boones wasn't just physically crushed by the
Speaker 15: twentieth century, but the reason that it was so ideologically
Speaker 15: marginalized was because they always opposed Zionism.
Speaker 1: From the very first days of their founding. They opposed
Speaker 1: Zionism as.
Speaker 15: A capitulation to the same European racists that wanted to
Speaker 15: kick Jews out of their home. And not only did
Speaker 15: they oppose Zionism because many Jewish groups opposed Zionism. The
Speaker 15: Satmar Pasidic community where I live also opposed Zionism. It
Speaker 15: wasn't just the Boon's opposition to Zionism that made Zionis
Speaker 15: so angry. It's that Zionism is built on this very
Speaker 15: self hating dichotomy. And that dichotomy is that there are
Speaker 15: diaspora Jews who were weak and that's why they were murdered,
Speaker 15: and then there are you know, the brave, big Dick
Speaker 15: Israeli Sabras who are strong and bravely oppressing and murdering themselves,
Speaker 15: and that's why they live. And what the booned did
Speaker 15: was it shows the lie of that because the boones
Speaker 15: were strong. They didn't just fight for their right to
Speaker 15: stay in Europe with graduate school seminars.
Speaker 1: They fought for it with brass knuckles and with guns.
Speaker 15: The statement here where we live is our country isn't
Speaker 15: something that has the same meaning as it would mean
Speaker 15: if I said it in New York City, like, of
Speaker 15: course New York is my city.
Speaker 1: It's fucking awesome.
Speaker 15: When they said it, I always felt like there was
Speaker 15: an implied motherfucker at the end. Here where we live
Speaker 15: as our country, motherfucker. Whether you like it or not,
Speaker 15: we're born here and it's ours right.
Speaker 6: It's so powerful.
Speaker 14: And I'm glad that you mentioned other kind of ideological
Speaker 14: like resonances, like the Black Panthers. They don't really exist
Speaker 14: in the same way anymore, but they're still resonant in
Speaker 14: like black lives matter. It brings me to this next question,
Speaker 14: which is that especially younger Jewish Americans, they increasingly are questioning,
Speaker 14: you know, Zionist narratives and they describe their solidarity with
Speaker 14: Palestinians not as a rejection of Jewish identity, but as
Speaker 14: a expression of their commitment to universal justice, and as
Speaker 14: a rejection maybe I'm Zionism, but not their Judaism. Do
Speaker 14: you think that this is a boon dist inheritance even
Speaker 14: if I'm conscious, or is it something new?
Speaker 15: I think that decent people of all stripes are seeing
Speaker 15: what Palestinian journalists and Lebanese journalists have risked their lives exposing.
Speaker 15: They're seeing a genus live streamed on their smartphones, and
Speaker 15: you know, live streamed by these amazing journalists, you know,
Speaker 15: who are living in killing cages. And anyone who's a
Speaker 15: decent person, whether you're Jewish or not, will turn away
Speaker 15: from the ideology that is responsible for that genocide. So
Speaker 15: I wouldn't say it's a bondust resonance that's making people
Speaker 15: turn against you know, Zionist institutions. I think it's just
Speaker 15: their basic humanity, the same as so many other groups
Speaker 15: of people are. And I credited a lot to the
Speaker 15: amazing work of Palestinians who have done so much work
Speaker 15: with so much grace at you know, such huge risks
Speaker 15: of their lives to be able to tell.
Speaker 1: These stories for the world to know at least see.
Speaker 15: However, I think that there's something a little bit different
Speaker 15: going on, which is that, you know, young Jews are
Speaker 15: seeing the Israeli mass murder machine for what it is.
Speaker 1: But if they've gone.
Speaker 15: Through like the standard issue you know, like Hebrew school education,
Speaker 15: they don't really learn a lot about Jewish history. Like
Speaker 15: the way you would learn about it would be ancient kingdoms,
Speaker 15: the par Kocopa revolt maybe if you're lucky, and then
Speaker 15: like a big, long, you know, two thousand year gap
Speaker 15: of horror and murder where nothing interesting or go what
Speaker 15: ever happened, and where you were just a victim of
Speaker 15: all of history, and then you know, glorious creation of
Speaker 15: the state of Israel redemption.
Speaker 1: Like that's the sort of bullshit narrative you'd get.
Speaker 15: And when young Jews reject that narrative, as they should,
Speaker 15: you know, when they learn about the reality of what
Speaker 15: Zionism means, a lot of them are left with a
Speaker 15: real hole in them because they haven't like learned anything
Speaker 15: positive about their own heritage. They've just been fed fairy
Speaker 15: tales that are meant to you know, legitimize this state,
Speaker 15: and so you know, there's like a lot of a
Speaker 15: lot of shame, rite a lot of pain over that.
Speaker 1: And I think what a lot of.
Speaker 15: Young Jewish people are trying to do is they're trying
Speaker 15: to look back to like their own grandparents and their
Speaker 15: own great grandparents. And for Jews in America, like most
Speaker 15: Jews in America come from Eastern European backgrounds, you know,
Speaker 15: it's a different, different sort of demographic breakdown than in Israel.
Speaker 15: And that sort of Jewish socialism is something that's very,
Speaker 15: very very present in so many people's family history. Not
Speaker 15: necessarily that you know, your grandfather was like the greatest
Speaker 15: socialist revolutionary in the world, but just that he belonged
Speaker 15: to a socialist garment union and was part of like
Speaker 15: a socialist mutual aid thing, because that was just the
Speaker 15: culture that so many American Jews swam in one hundred
Speaker 15: years ago. And so I think there's this huge rediscovery
Speaker 15: of the boond and of Jewish socialism that's inspired by
Speaker 15: the rejection of the Chinesst genocide.
Speaker 14: On the one hand, I'm witnessing what you're saying, you know,
Speaker 14: like we're all kind of witnessing, like I said, it's
Speaker 14: not specifically to the Jewish community, but because the Jewish
Speaker 14: community has been fed, you know, this idea that is
Speaker 14: really so integral to their Jewishness and to their safety
Speaker 14: and to this, to these kinds of things, there is
Speaker 14: a very maybe specific way that they are metabolizing that
Speaker 14: or acting out against it. But at the same time,
Speaker 14: you know, we've seen a number of different polls, including
Speaker 14: most recently the Jewish Federations of North America.
Speaker 6: They put out.
Speaker 14: Polling results where thirty seven percent identified as non Zionists
Speaker 14: and seven percent of their polling identified as anti Zionists.
Speaker 6: But it was an interesting.
Speaker 14: Poll because it's like both people who were like critical
Speaker 14: of Israel and those who were supportive of Israel took
Speaker 14: it to mean that it, you know, confirmed their biases
Speaker 14: because despite the fact that the genocide has happened and
Speaker 14: is happening, that anti Zionism component hasn't really risen very much.
Speaker 14: And then still a lot of polls show that, like
Speaker 14: people presume Israel is vital to Jewish continuity.
Speaker 6: So how do you make sense of that contradiction? Well,
Speaker 6: that's one question is how do you make sense of
Speaker 6: that contradiction?
Speaker 14: But the second question is like, do you think rediscovering
Speaker 14: bundestaught like offers a way through it?
Speaker 15: I do, actually, I mean I think that you know,
Speaker 15: people have not just like been fed this idea that
Speaker 15: Israel is you know, like essential for their safety for continuity,
Speaker 15: but also that it's like an essential part of themselves.
Speaker 15: And I do think that it's very life affirming and
Speaker 15: important to know that you have something better that you
Speaker 15: can reject this shitty ideology.
Speaker 1: I mean, in terms of polls, I often feel like, I.
Speaker 15: Mean, maybe I'm maybe I'm just wrong about Americans, but
Speaker 15: I sometimes feel like people don't even know what the
Speaker 15: hell they're signing on to with poles, like I will
Speaker 15: see something where people be like, we want strong borders
Speaker 15: and to like you know, deport all the illegals, but
Speaker 15: also we fucking hate Ice, And I'm like, you just
Speaker 15: you just want like wildly contradictory things.
Speaker 1: And I wonder like how.
Speaker 15: I don't know, like how educated people even are, and
Speaker 15: how much like the framing of questions affects what people think.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to think of what to make
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 15: I mean, I do think, you know, very sadly, like
Speaker 15: there are a large number of you know, American Jewish people.
Speaker 15: And in some way I'm talking like outside of my
Speaker 15: own experience because my own family's not Zionist, so this
Speaker 15: is more like my speculation type thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, they're they're very progressive. They believe in
Speaker 1: you know, like ETI kid for all.
Speaker 15: They believe in you know, they believe the cops shouldn't
Speaker 15: be constantly murdering black people as they do in America
Speaker 15: all the time.
Speaker 1: They believe even ice should be abolished.
Speaker 15: But they also have this like unthinking emotional attachment to Israel,
Speaker 15: even if they literally hate everything that Israel's doing. And
Speaker 15: I feel like a lot of those people, what they'll
Speaker 15: do is they'll try to blame it on net Yahoo
Speaker 15: and not on the entire system, Like like I would
Speaker 15: see people who supported the protests, you know, over the
Speaker 15: judicial reform, but they weren't willing to like fully confront
Speaker 15: the absolute fucking horrors not just of the occupation but
Speaker 15: of Israel itself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 14: I've also, you know, obviously experienced that kind of block,
Speaker 14: you know, where it's easier to blame a particular government
Speaker 14: than to maybe think about, i mean the specificities of
Speaker 14: Israel's founding and Israel's ideology, but also like the violent
Speaker 14: nature of nation states, and like just kind of thinking
Speaker 14: through that I think can be a little bit difficult
Speaker 14: for people. And as someone who works on polling, like, yes,
Speaker 14: there are so many contradictions. We take polling to understand
Speaker 14: the starting points, but that doesn't restrict our political imagination.
Speaker 14: Like that's how I think of it. It's obviously also
Speaker 14: difficult for people to start to kind of maybe disentangle
Speaker 14: their emotional commitments to the state of Israel, especially in
Speaker 14: this moment where there are like white supremacists and Nazis
Speaker 14: and neo Nazis and all sorts of evil people regaining
Speaker 14: control of all sorts of you know, state institutions and
Speaker 14: finding you know, a great deal of legitimacy and a
Speaker 14: great deal of traction amongst the American public.
Speaker 6: It's difficult to tell. I think some parts of the
Speaker 6: American Jewish.
Speaker 14: Community like, hey, Israel's not a safety valve for you,
Speaker 14: when in fact there's so much anti Semitism now in
Speaker 14: the United States.
Speaker 15: I mean, I feel like it's a self reinforcing loop.
Speaker 16: Though.
Speaker 15: I mean, on one hand, you have Jewish institutions who
Speaker 15: are literally sticking up this fucking flag of a state
Speaker 15: that is conducted by the ICC of doing genocide and
Speaker 15: you know, waving that flag around and having soldiers from
Speaker 15: an army that's doing a genocide speaking there like honored
Speaker 15: guests and saying like, this is what it means to
Speaker 15: be Jewish.
Speaker 1: It's that we back Israel.
Speaker 15: And on the other hand, you have these wormy little
Speaker 15: neo Nazis like Nick Fuentes who have always hated Jews,
Speaker 15: and not because of Israel. Nick Fuentes also thinks all
Speaker 15: women should be put in reading camps and all black
Speaker 15: people should be locked behind bars.
Speaker 1: Keats Jews because he's a neo Nazi.
Speaker 15: Who are seeing the rightful anger that people have with
Speaker 15: the ongoing genocide, and they're seeing people's disillusionment with both
Speaker 15: political parties who are continuing to provide weapons and QN
Speaker 15: cover to Israel, and they're exploiting that. And that's something
Speaker 15: that fascism has always done, right, Like fascism has always
Speaker 15: exploited issues that are popular. It will try to exploit
Speaker 15: the desire that people have for peace, for instance, it
Speaker 15: will try to exploit the desire people have for economic justice.
Speaker 15: But instead of you know, actually giving people economic justice.
Speaker 15: They'll just say, oh, it's the Jews, Oh it's the
Speaker 15: leftist billionaires, or it's George Soros, and yeah, like you
Speaker 15: absolutely see some of the worst scumbags on earth who
Speaker 15: are exploiting the anger that people feel over the genocide
Speaker 15: in order to worm their way into power and to
Speaker 15: worm their way into legitimacy.
Speaker 1: And I always think about this with Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 15: I mean, for me, like, okay, like he's like, you know,
Speaker 15: standard issue he has anti Jewish shit, that's like standard
Speaker 15: issue Christian shit. But like, for me, the thing that's
Speaker 15: so I hate so much about seeing smart people boost
Speaker 15: Tucker Carlson is that Tucker Carlson advocates the ethnic cleansing
Speaker 15: of the United States of immigrants. Ten months ago, he
Speaker 15: was on Megan Kelly praying about how he wanted one
Speaker 15: million people deported in Trump's hundred days.
Speaker 1: He was even saying, we don't have to put them
Speaker 1: into tention centers.
Speaker 15: We can just force a million people, a million people
Speaker 15: over the border into Tijuana and quote, let the Mexicans
Speaker 15: deal with them. This is hardcore white supremacist ethnic cleansing,
Speaker 15: and it's not just a speculative thing. There are tens
Speaker 15: of thousands of immigrants right now in concentration camps in
Speaker 15: the US. And the fact that anyone, because he gives
Speaker 15: good clip on Palestine, thinks that he's their ally when
Speaker 15: he would happily support the same eye system that is
Speaker 15: locking up Palestinians right now, is insane.
Speaker 1: It's madness. And I just I mean, I know that.
Speaker 15: People are so traumatized and so heartbroken and you know,
Speaker 15: even being like driven crazy by the ongoing genocide and
Speaker 15: by the American enthusiastic collusion with the genocide. But there
Speaker 15: has to be a certain basic level of solidarity with
Speaker 15: other groups who are also under threat, like all the
Speaker 15: other immigrant communities that are getting round and I've been
Speaker 15: putting in concentration camps right now.
Speaker 14: No, absolutely, I mean there has to be a basic
Speaker 14: minimum level of solidarity and like a basic minimum level
Speaker 14: of like analysis, like yeah, yeah, exactly. The animating force
Speaker 14: behind Tucker Carlson is not love for Palestinians or like
Speaker 14: some you know, desire for justice or anything, you know,
Speaker 14: So it's like the natural conclusion of attacker Carls and
Speaker 14: is something like the ethnic cleansing that he's asking for
Speaker 14: it has been disturbing to seek and continue to see
Speaker 14: how people have really convince themselves that this is something
Speaker 14: to try to capitalize on. I mean, Tucker Carlson went
Speaker 14: to the Middle East and people were taking photos with him,
Speaker 14: and I'm like, this man hates you. This man doesn't
Speaker 14: care about any of these things that you care about.
Speaker 14: But like you said, it's just the situation is so
Speaker 14: bad that people are willing to forego solidarity and basic
Speaker 14: political truths to engage with someone like him. I mean,
Speaker 14: you've kind of mentioned it and alluded to it, and
Speaker 14: your answers already about Jewish institutions like finding Israeli flag
Speaker 14: and things like that.
Speaker 6: Who are the forces today?
Speaker 14: What are the institutions today that benefit from something like
Speaker 14: the boond and like its philosophy not being revisited, and
Speaker 14: what did they stand to lose if these Buddhist ideas
Speaker 14: become widely known again.
Speaker 15: I feel like the vast majority of mainstream Jewish institutions,
Speaker 15: I mean, there's obviously like the ADL, right, you know,
Speaker 15: a ridiculous group that I almost feel like primarily exists
Speaker 15: to try to like terrify elderly people, so that Jonathan
Speaker 15: Green Blat keeps getting his ridiculously inflated salary and keeps
Speaker 15: getting to like prants around like he's important. There's you know,
Speaker 15: like the campus Hillales right, who claim that they're just
Speaker 15: you know, a neutral thing for Jewish identity, but make
Speaker 15: it a prerequisite that you're Zionist. There's just like a
Speaker 15: vast amount of institutional Jewish groups that are not democratic.
Speaker 15: They're not things that we vote for. I did not
Speaker 15: fucking vote for Jonathan Greenblat to be appointed my spokesman,
Speaker 15: you know, I didn't vote for these things like these
Speaker 15: are institutions led by very wealthy people that are.
Speaker 1: In no way responsive to young Jews. They're not responsive to.
Speaker 15: Like ordinary people, and they want to keep having their
Speaker 15: sort of stranglehold on getting to be the like spokesman for.
Speaker 1: These very very very diverse communities.
Speaker 15: And I think that, you know, as the boond and
Speaker 15: as other anti Zionist forms of Jewishness are discovered and rediscovered,
Speaker 15: that these spokespeople are terrified because I mean, the biggest
Speaker 15: thing that they want that they're so terrified about is
Speaker 15: they're terrified.
Speaker 1: About losing the young people. The whole project.
Speaker 15: It's about, you know, like this Jewish continuity, they call it.
Speaker 15: And you know Jewish people like getting married to each other,
Speaker 15: you know, having kids, like contributing money to their institutions,
Speaker 15: you know, maybe making Aliyah to Israel.
Speaker 1: And if people are like.
Speaker 15: No, I reject this, I reject this state that's committing
Speaker 15: a genocide, and I reject this ideology built on supremacy.
Speaker 15: And actually it's like fine to live in New York
Speaker 15: City and to you know, live and love and struggle
Speaker 15: alongside my neighbors. That's directly antithetical to their project. And
Speaker 15: I think that's why the Boon has not just been
Speaker 15: a race, but it's mirror mentioned provokes such anger. Like
Speaker 15: sometimes I just look through my comments and it's just
Speaker 15: these endless fucking comments from people being like, boond all
Speaker 15: died in the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: Lol, Like what do you say to this, right, that's
Speaker 1: so disstic. Yeah, the boons was all gassed. Lol, you
Speaker 1: want you used to be gassed? You know, Zionists are thriving.
Speaker 15: And I'm like, this is the most psychopathic to talk
Speaker 15: about self hating, right, mocking people for being murdered in
Speaker 15: the Holocaust. You know, it's because the Boone's ideology of
Speaker 15: solidarity cross difference of heereness and of socialism is profoundly threatening.
Speaker 14: And honestly like what Thriving was happening, Like people in
Speaker 14: Israel are terrified. There are missiles raining down like a garrison.
Speaker 14: State cannot keep people safe. No such Ethno state can
Speaker 14: keep people safe. But and I'm reminded also from your
Speaker 14: answer about Maril Angel's article, I think last year and
Speaker 14: Jewish currents, we need new Jewish institutions. I think it's
Speaker 14: like they see the writing on the wall that this
Speaker 14: is something that's going to happen.
Speaker 6: And with books like.
Speaker 14: Yours, with kind of a revisiting of this history, it
Speaker 14: only hastens, you know, this kind of political project coming
Speaker 14: to fruition. My last question that I have for you
Speaker 14: is more about the memory project nature of it all.
Speaker 14: You write in your book about your great grandfather. You've
Speaker 14: already mentioned Samuel Rothbert about how he painted these memory
Speaker 14: paintings to kind of resurrect the vanished world of Eastern Europe,
Speaker 14: and you've also kind of written this book in the
Speaker 14: same way.
Speaker 6: What do you think the relationship is between this.
Speaker 14: Kind of recovery of erased history and building a politics
Speaker 14: for the present.
Speaker 15: Thank you, I mean, I spent seven years on this book.
Speaker 15: I learned Yiddish.
Speaker 6: That's wild, by the way, that's amazing.
Speaker 15: I know, right, You know, I resented because I studied
Speaker 15: Arabic for so long and I like had finally gotten
Speaker 15: like I don't want to say good, but mediocre at it.
Speaker 15: And then I feel like Yiddish pushed it out of
Speaker 15: my brain and I'm just like, no, I want my
Speaker 15: Arabic back.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I studied, I learned Yiddish.
Speaker 15: I went to, you know, all the countries that I
Speaker 15: could that the boond was active in. I wasn't able
Speaker 15: to go to Belarus or Russia, but I went to
Speaker 15: like Poland, Latvia, Lithuania. I went to Ukraine during the
Speaker 15: Russian invasion. I translated so many books. I think I'm
Speaker 15: probably the only person who has read all five volumes
Speaker 15: of the terrifically boring geshichtefon Bound Official for History. And
Speaker 15: I felt like I was doing ncromancy, you know, I
Speaker 15: felt like I was in love with these rebel ancestors,
Speaker 15: these gun toting seamstresses, these lovers on the barricades, these
Speaker 15: stubborn people who constructed whole worlds out of love. And grit,
Speaker 15: even when siety wanted to crush them, I just like
Speaker 15: fell in love, and I didn't just want to resurrect
Speaker 15: them from erasure because their philosophy was apposed to Zionism,
Speaker 15: though that was also that was part of it. Of course,
Speaker 15: I wanted to resurrect them because the boond were amazing,
Speaker 15: because they fought back against every single bastard of their age.
Speaker 15: They fought for an ethos that was rooted in human
Speaker 15: dignity and in human flourishing and freedom, but also in
Speaker 15: economic justice and leftism. I just fell in love and
Speaker 15: I wanted them to live again. And you know, one
Speaker 15: of the things that the powers that be do is
Speaker 15: that they try to impose themselves onto the past. They
Speaker 15: try to say, because we won, now, it was inevitable
Speaker 15: that we would win.
Speaker 1: It was always going to be like this.
Speaker 15: There is no alternative, as Margaret Etcher said, And what
Speaker 15: you do when you preserve these repable histories is you
Speaker 15: show that that's not the case. It expands our capacity
Speaker 15: for fight, it expands our capacity for imagination. Things could
Speaker 15: have been differently and people still can change the world.
Speaker 14: Yeah, there's nothing inevitable, and you always have agency. I
Speaker 14: think that that's like the thing that like, I gang
Speaker 14: goose bumps thinking about when I think about these kinds
Speaker 14: of people, because they give you so much hope in
Speaker 14: the present that things could be different. Thank you so much, Molly.
Speaker 14: This has been such an interesting and provocative conversation.
Speaker 6: And thank you so much for learning.
Speaker 17: Yiddish and for tessetting all those books so that we
Speaker 17: can read your book.
Speaker 6: And we don't have to do all of that.
Speaker 15: Exactly, so you don't eat it out, have to suffer
Speaker 15: through the world's dullist socialist pro stylings.
Speaker 17: Yeah, no, You've done it for us. And I'm so
Speaker 17: excited for the book. I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 17: Everybody should read it. Thank you so much, Molly.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much, Danna.
Speaker 18: For decades, people in northern Nigeria have been suffering the
Speaker 18: violence of Jihadis. Groups in the region, more recently fall
Speaker 18: in the lobby in of some questionable interest groups and figures.
Speaker 18: In the United States, President Donald Trump has dropped American
Speaker 18: bos on Nigeria and soil. What exactly is happening in Nigeria? Hello,
Speaker 18: and welcomed it could happen here. I'm Andre's age Andrews
Speaker 18: on YouTube and I'm joined again by James.
Speaker 7: I'm glad we're doing this one.
Speaker 18: Yes to talk about what's been happening in Nigeria since
Speaker 18: it has captured Trump's attention and thus Western media interest
Speaker 18: as of late. So, first of all, what away is Nigeria?
Speaker 18: According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Nigeria's West African country with
Speaker 18: a diverse geography and an even more diverse population, hundreds
Speaker 18: of languages, one hundreds of ethnic groups, several religions in
Speaker 18: the most populous country in Africa and one of the
Speaker 18: most populous countries in the world. Over two hundred and
Speaker 18: thirty nine million people called Nigeria home, and the Nigerian
Speaker 18: aspora is well over ten million strong. Like much of Africa,
Speaker 18: Nigeria is rich in natural resources, particularly petroleum natural gas,
Speaker 18: but heavily exploited by international and local capital, thus much
Speaker 18: of its population. By some estimates, over half of its
Speaker 18: population is considered multi dimensionally poor. Modern Nigeria will stitched
Speaker 18: together from the British protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria
Speaker 18: and agains its political independence only recently in nineteen sixty
Speaker 18: and became a Republic in nineteen sixty three. That North
Speaker 18: South divide is particularly relevant because it continues to define
Speaker 18: Nigerian politics today. Nigeria split almost evenly between its Christian population,
Speaker 18: which dominates the South, and its Muslim population, which dominates
Speaker 18: the North. Alongside ethnic, linguistic and other political divisions, corruption
Speaker 18: and all the other baggage of a typical Neo colony
Speaker 18: has made Nigerian politics quite the powder keg of some time.
Speaker 18: They have been tragic and deadly episodes of political and
Speaker 18: religious violence throughout Nigeria's history, going in both directions, including
Speaker 18: the nineteen eighty seven crisis in Kaduna State and the
Speaker 18: early two thousands. Add several notorious riots and massacres as well,
Speaker 18: including the Yellow Massacre and the Josh Riots, linking the
Speaker 18: show notes for the details on those. Since those nine, however,
Speaker 18: militant Islamist group Bokoharam has engaged in a protracted insudency
Speaker 18: against Nigerian government and terrorized the Christian and Muslim population
Speaker 18: through bombings, assassinations, and abductions with the overall intent of
Speaker 18: establishing an Islamic breakaway state in North Nigeria. For the
Speaker 18: past few months, there has been a considered effort to
Speaker 18: paint a narrative of Christian genocide in Nigeria, a narrative
Speaker 18: that has long been co signed by the likes of
Speaker 18: Donald Trump. So back in twenty eighteen, Trump had actually
Speaker 18: called out the killing of Christians in Nigeria, yet stopped
Speaker 18: short of calling into genocide. But according to an article
Speaker 18: by Ayula Babolola on the myth of Christian Genocide, it
Speaker 18: was not long after Nigerian and Vice President Kashim Shatima's
Speaker 18: September twenty twenty five remarks at the eightieth Session of
Speaker 18: the UN General Assembly, where he reasserted Nigeria's long standing
Speaker 18: saw directy with Palestine, that the Western, largely pro Israel
Speaker 18: far right began the campaign of claiming Christian genocide in Nigeria.
Speaker 18: In his address, Shatima did mention the problem with Angeria
Speaker 18: has happened with extremism, but these commentators are run with
Speaker 18: a much more specific narrative. The same people who deny
Speaker 18: the Pastdinian genocide and prop up the mythical white genocide
Speaker 18: in South Africa have gone on to push this Christian
Speaker 18: genocide story. Bill Meyer, the guy who still can't prove
Speaker 18: the claims he made about October seventh, has gone on
Speaker 18: to tell people that what's happening in Nigeria is, to paraphrase,
Speaker 18: so much more of a genocide than what's happening in
Speaker 18: Khaza Endot. In late October and early November twenty five,
Speaker 18: Trump tweeted that Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,
Speaker 18: name Nigeria as a country of particular concern and announced
Speaker 18: to the United States was ready, willing and able to
Speaker 18: save our great Christian population around the world. And for
Speaker 18: some reason, Nicki Minaj is out there back in Trump's
Speaker 18: Christian persecution narrative as well. Perfect why are you in it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, just to be clear for Anyone's not the way.
Speaker 7: Nicki Minij not a person from Nigeria or with any
Speaker 7: particular insight into the situation there.
Speaker 18: She's also not Trinardi and I just want to clear
Speaker 18: that up. Yes, her certificate is from the Republic a
Speaker 18: Trinianto vehicle, but we do not claim her since her
Speaker 18: statements about how COVID and the vaccine and her cousin's
Speaker 18: balls like, from that moment onward, people who have been
Speaker 18: like distancing themselves from her enterdiddo.
Speaker 7: Anyway, I can see why.
Speaker 18: So in November twenty five, according to a BBC report,
Speaker 18: Trump also said that he would send troops into Nigeria
Speaker 18: guns are blazing if its government continues to allow the
Speaker 18: killing of Christians. Then in December twenty twenty five, according
Speaker 18: to another BBC report, the US has launched strikes on
Speaker 18: the twenty fifth of December as a Christmas present against
Speaker 18: militans in the Islamic State Group in northwestern Nigeria.
Speaker 5: What should be noted.
Speaker 18: Though, is they did not strike Bokoharam, which is based
Speaker 18: in northeast Nigeria.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was really interesting to look at the bill
Speaker 7: that I wrote about this bit for my newsletter. But
Speaker 7: the US was flying intelligence gathering flights essentially for some
Speaker 7: time of a Nigeria right. Clearly like they must have
Speaker 7: been some kind of agreement with the Nigerian government to
Speaker 7: allow this right, but they were clearly trying to identify
Speaker 7: like where it's what and Baccaharam were and like you
Speaker 7: could see them winding up to this strike. I guess
Speaker 7: they waited to Christmas day to go for it.
Speaker 18: Yeah, yeah, so there was the Christmas present of the
Speaker 18: US bodman there. Yeah, and this happened less than a
Speaker 18: week by the way, after the Alliance of Sahel States
Speaker 18: that'd being Bikina, Faso, Niza and Mali commissioned a joint
Speaker 18: military force of five thousand comment terrorists. And that move
Speaker 18: was following the Economic Community of West African States or
Speaker 18: equa's plan to launch a two hundred and six one
Speaker 18: thousand member conter terrorism for US. So there's a lot
Speaker 18: of military action happened in West Africa right now, coming
Speaker 18: from the inside and the outside. In a January twenty
Speaker 18: twenty sixth report, Trump claimed quote, I'd love to make
Speaker 18: it a one time strike, but if they continue to
Speaker 18: kill Christians, it will be a many times strike end Coote.
Speaker 18: Trump has also accused the Nigerian government, as I said,
Speaker 18: of repeatedly failing to protect Christians. So Trump is a
Speaker 18: known liar to take everything he says with a grain
Speaker 18: of salt, as is the rest of his administration generally
Speaker 18: really capturist politicians and pundits. So let me break down
Speaker 18: what is actually happening in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has
Speaker 18: said that Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike
Speaker 18: are targeted. According to a Yula Aabalula. The government of
Speaker 18: Nigeria is indeed feeling to adequately address the devastation being
Speaker 18: rought against communities in Nigeria. But critically, it is not
Speaker 18: religious nature, or rather religion is only a part of
Speaker 18: the picture. It can't be used to explain the whole
Speaker 18: story on the ground. So there are several groups where
Speaker 18: you can have In northern Nigeria, they have a few
Speaker 18: different Islamic state affiliated groups, yeah, fokah Aram which is
Speaker 18: the main one. And you also have the conflict between
Speaker 18: the Fulani hoods men who are mostly Muslim and various
Speaker 18: farming groups who may be Christian or Muslim. So where
Speaker 18: the hoodsmen are considered, that kind of conflict has actually
Speaker 18: been taking place between the hooders and the settled people
Speaker 18: for literal centuries. The only difference is that now you
Speaker 18: have them carrying ak forty sevens in served as sticks
Speaker 18: and machetes. Yea, how they got those Ak forty sevens
Speaker 18: is really thanks to the history of the West's intervention
Speaker 18: in Africa, but we'll get to that in a moment. Critically, though,
Speaker 18: if you step outside as the religious freemen, you would
Speaker 18: see a criminal, economic and political motivation behind these actions.
Speaker 18: They may be going after land, or want to extract ransom,
Speaker 18: or pursue a particular political goal. The Muslims in North
Speaker 18: Nigeria are not safe just because they're Muslim. Bokoharam's victims
Speaker 18: are mostly Muslim because Bokharam's target is anyone who stands
Speaker 18: between them and their political aims. Everyone who isn't Pokoharam
Speaker 18: or aligned with Islamic state West African Province is considered
Speaker 18: an enemy. One article on Trump's beef with Nigeria by
Speaker 18: Yusuf Bangura talks about six types of violence in the country.
Speaker 18: We have the Bokharam Islamist inspired violence in the Northeast,
Speaker 18: whose main victims are Muslims who reject the group's is
Speaker 18: Limist ideology. They have the banditary in the Northwest, which
Speaker 18: affects Muslims and Christians in equal measure. You have the
Speaker 18: herd of farmer conflict in the Middle Belt, which affects
Speaker 18: Christians and Muslims, or the reports indicated Christians are the
Speaker 18: main victims of that violence. You have the herd of
Speaker 18: farmer violence in the Northwest, which is distinct from the
Speaker 18: hood of farmer violence in the Middle Belt. So the
Speaker 18: one in the northwest has full Lani hooders reportedly pitched
Speaker 18: against Hauser farmers, and both groups are Muslim. You have
Speaker 18: the violence inflicted by the indigenous people of Biafra and
Speaker 18: bandits in the east against their own people, Ebos, who
Speaker 18: are Christian. And you also have general panditry in large
Speaker 18: parts of the country which has rendered traveling by roads
Speaker 18: between cities very risky. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 18: Western attention drawing suggest some of the victims the churches,
Speaker 18: the church leaders, and the Christian communities, even though mosques
Speaker 18: and imams and Muslim communities and animists have also been devastated,
Speaker 18: and has turned a multifaceted violence into a narrative of
Speaker 18: targeted anti Christian violence, seemingly at least from the Trump
Speaker 18: and Zionist camp, for the purpose of demonizing Muslims, and
Speaker 18: I guess, in some convoluted way weakening global support for
Speaker 18: Palestinians because Parthians are also Muslims, so they're all the
Speaker 18: same man. That's just speculation in my cart. Even Christian
Speaker 18: leaders in Nigeria have been calling out this framement, though
Speaker 18: Archbishop Matthew man OsO Ndagoso was quoted extensively in an
Speaker 18: article for Aid to the Chase and Need, which is
Speaker 18: an international Catholic organization. Rather than pinning the blame on Islam,
Speaker 18: he said, in the Northwest, the farmers are mostly Muslims
Speaker 18: and they also have conflicts with the Fulani. As moved
Speaker 18: the Middle Belt. It is enhancing most by Christians, so
Speaker 18: there will most likely be a Christian farm. Religion and
Speaker 18: ethnicity have very sensitive problems in Nigeria. They're always used
Speaker 18: for convenience, but primarily this conflict is not religious. I
Speaker 18: am absolutely sure. If you apply for a job and
Speaker 18: you don't get it, you might say you were rejected
Speaker 18: because you are a Christian, and the same for Muslims.
Speaker 18: Opportunists such as politicians use these factors to their own advantage.
Speaker 18: But if you go to the route, you discover is
Speaker 18: little or nothing to his religion.
Speaker 7: End quote Sex and analysis from the Church. I'm surprised
Speaker 7: going from that source that I'm glad it, did you know?
Speaker 18: Yeah, Catholic change of all places. So he even claims
Speaker 18: that the kidnappings of priests have little to do with religion.
Speaker 18: And I'll quote him again. In the last three years,
Speaker 18: seven of my priests have been kidnapped, two have been killed,
Speaker 18: and one has been in captivity for three years and
Speaker 18: two months. Four released in fifty of my parishes. Priests
Speaker 18: cannot stay in directories because they are targets. They are
Speaker 18: seen as an easy source of money for a ranser.
Speaker 18: So he's emphasizing there that it's really about the money
Speaker 18: that the churches perceived to be able to provide to
Speaker 18: these canappers, more so than any religious targeting in particular.
Speaker 18: Of course, that is only one archbishop's perspective on the situation.
Speaker 18: I think Babelola makes an important point in his article
Speaker 18: on the myth that I would like to quote as well. Crucially,
Speaker 18: Christians at times become the chosen targets. In particular assaults
Speaker 18: churches have been attacked during worship, pre subducted an entire
Speaker 18: Christian villages raised in Plateau Venue and Southern Karduna. These
Speaker 18: episodes are not separate from the general crisis, but a
Speaker 18: rather moments when Christian identity is weaponized to mark a
Speaker 18: community for terror. In this sense, Christians bear both the
Speaker 18: general weight of insecurity shared by all Nigerians and the
Speaker 18: sharper trauma of faith based targeting in sydnem attacks, but
Speaker 18: Bablua doesn't forget that these groups terror as a severe
Speaker 18: impact on the Muslims as well. In fact, he makes
Speaker 18: an important comparison I wanted to highlight, which is that
Speaker 18: in areas ravaged by armed groups, the first victims tend
Speaker 18: to be those who have religious or ethnic groups in
Speaker 18: common with the militants, killed because they are seen as
Speaker 18: infidels or not noble enough or not committed enough to
Speaker 18: the ideals of that movement. If you look at the
Speaker 18: history of Zionism, it's released. For example, before they found
Speaker 18: in of the state of Israel, there were bombings of
Speaker 18: several Jewish heritage sites across the Middle East, and records
Speaker 18: have later showed that they were carried out by terroristic
Speaker 18: Jewish gangs who sort to instill a fair in Jewish
Speaker 18: communities across the region, to so discord between the Jewish
Speaker 18: communities and their neighbors for the purpose of forcing them
Speaker 18: to abandon these Middle Eastern states and relocate to Israel
Speaker 18: to further Israel's economic and geopolitical courts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's not.
Speaker 18: Unheard of for a group to target its own core
Speaker 18: religionists for its geopolitical economic combusures.
Speaker 7: If we talk about specifically the Islamic state in Iraq
Speaker 7: and Syria. Right, isis as opposed to the Islamic State
Speaker 7: in West Africa, like get killed more Muslims than anyone else, Right, exactly,
Speaker 7: those were the bulk of the people it murdered.
Speaker 18: We could even look at a very old historical example,
Speaker 18: the Latin Crusade. You had all these Christians from Europe,
Speaker 18: Goyana Crusade, and because they didn't get paid, they decided
Speaker 18: to ransack their core religionists in Greece and you know,
Speaker 18: in the wider Byzantine Empire, and eventually, you know, deconstruct
Speaker 18: business the empire entirely and establish their own Latin Empire.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 18: So I didn't want to gloss over the real challenges
Speaker 18: that Christians specifically are facing in North Nigeria. Though, since
Speaker 18: nineteen ninety nine, serial law has been introduced and enforced
Speaker 18: in twelve northern states, and according to the same archbishops
Speaker 18: that I quoted earlier, this has ensured that religious persecution
Speaker 18: in the North is systemic. He said, and I quote,
Speaker 18: I cannot build a church. Even if you buy a land,
Speaker 18: you can't get a permission of occupancy, and therefore you
Speaker 18: cannot build In many of these states, they don't allow
Speaker 18: the teaching of Christianity get the government's employees and pays
Speaker 18: emams to teach in schools every year. They have money
Speaker 18: to build mosques in the budget, but they will not
Speaker 18: let you build churches. If m I state, there's a
Speaker 18: university and across the street there are five mosques, no church.
Speaker 18: Who wanted to build one, they didn't allow it. If
Speaker 18: you build the church with a permission and the government
Speaker 18: can tear it down. And this is what we are
Speaker 18: going through. It is serious. We want our government to
Speaker 18: be held accountable for people to be treated equally end quote.
Speaker 18: So again, religious is still part of the picture, but
Speaker 18: not in the way that the Western governments are painted. What's
Speaker 18: happening is these issues of being amplified by opportunists and
Speaker 18: far right lobbyists. And as I established earlier, we should
Speaker 18: be addressed in where these terror groups have even come from,
Speaker 18: because the West hands are not clean in that picture either.
Speaker 18: Groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State have known
Speaker 18: connections in their history to Western Midland. An American policy
Speaker 18: in Africa has at least indirectly on these groups. Thanks
Speaker 18: to the fall of Gadaffi in Libya and the American
Speaker 18: Ladie stabilization of other Muslim countries in Southwest Asia and
Speaker 18: North Africa. The death squads are as Akys that is
Speaker 18: spersed across the Sahel region, victimizing Africans of World faith
Speaker 18: or at least some of their firepower to that Western
Speaker 18: intervenure to the flow of arms coming out of Libya.
Speaker 18: The West has repeatedly shown that it's not kay of
Speaker 18: people's lives. So what is the real beef that Trump
Speaker 18: and co? Have with Nigeria? While according to Bangoura's article,
Speaker 18: Trump is not feeling the fact that the US is
Speaker 18: dependent on China for what it is and Nigeria is very
Speaker 18: resource rich when it comes to earths like lithium, cobalt,
Speaker 18: nickel and all that other stuff. Chinese companies have invested
Speaker 18: more than one point three billion US dollars in Nigeria's
Speaker 18: lithium processing industry, and Russia has growing leverage in the
Speaker 18: region thanks to their involvement with Nizia, Bikina, Faso and Mali.
Speaker 18: So in an effort to wean America or of China,
Speaker 18: Tran has been trying to after the deal, the situation
Speaker 18: so he signed agreements in Southeast Asia to increase the
Speaker 18: production and processing of rats and exports the US. He
Speaker 18: stepped into a broker peace deals code and code between
Speaker 18: the DRC and Rwanda's the US can invest more in
Speaker 18: the DRC's minerals. And what Trump radio like in Nigeria's
Speaker 18: case is that Nigeria's President Tunubu is not playing ball
Speaker 18: with him, at least in this case in Trump's eyes,
Speaker 18: to will you not do enough to reverse Naja's military
Speaker 18: coup and to wo do not let the US relocate
Speaker 18: the Nigerian military base to Nigeria. Tunu Wu also didn't
Speaker 18: let Trump relocate to poorties to Nigeria even when Ghana, Rwanda, Esportini,
Speaker 18: Seladan and Uganda all accepted them. Furthermore, as established before,
Speaker 18: Nigeria continues to condemn Israel's genocide in Gaza now when
Speaker 18: it wants to, the US can intervene in other countries
Speaker 18: without the talk about humanitarian itself. Because look at Guatemala
Speaker 18: nineteen fifty four when they tried to implement some land
Speaker 18: reforms and that went against the United Food companies interests,
Speaker 18: So the US invaded, and you also had the US
Speaker 18: willing to simply support whatever opposition exists in the country,
Speaker 18: like in the Congo in nineteen sixty one against Patricial Mumba,
Speaker 18: in Chile in nineteen seventy three against savadoy Inde, and
Speaker 18: in Iran in nineteen fifty three against Muhammad Mosdeg So
Speaker 18: they will use humanitarian talk. Whether they use that talk
Speaker 18: or not, the results tend to be disastrous for the
Speaker 18: people in those countries. US intervention sucks pretty much everywhere Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan,
Speaker 18: Somalia and more. Besides, so we can count on whatever
Speaker 18: Trump attempts in Nigeria being an abject failure. More recently,
Speaker 18: the United States announced it will be sending a military
Speaker 18: team to Nigeria after a string of recent attacks. That'd
Speaker 18: be in two hundred troops. So we'll see what happens next.
Speaker 18: But it's clear that US intervention is not the solution.
Speaker 18: Its intentions are definitely malicious. So what can the future
Speaker 18: be for the people of Nigeria? How can its people
Speaker 18: be free? Obviously, the battle against these reactionary forces rages on,
Speaker 18: but military solutions and militarization will not be In fact,
Speaker 18: it carries some serious risk in the region as a
Speaker 18: whole in terms of escalation. An article by Ayodele o'
Speaker 18: labi in Altera zero recognize that with Nigeria's entanglement with
Speaker 18: the US and the two hundred and sixty thousand strong
Speaker 18: Equa's force, the AES is going to feel threatened, you know,
Speaker 18: as it's trying to keep Western influence out of the region.
Speaker 3: So there's a.
Speaker 18: Danger of future EQUAS deployments overlapping with AS operations and
Speaker 18: potentially lead into clashes. And if there isn't the escalation
Speaker 18: of tensions between EQUAS and AS, we can end up
Speaker 18: seeing interstate wars that would devastate communities in the region
Speaker 18: and give the insurgents opportunities to expand. It could very
Speaker 18: well set up another proxy battleground for global powers and
Speaker 18: some kind of new Cold War.
Speaker 5: So they have to.
Speaker 18: Find some way of avoiding this clash and see if
Speaker 18: they can build a cooperative security framework despite their vastly
Speaker 18: different interests.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and to a degree, we already see like global
Speaker 7: powers right like Russia has been honing its most horrific
Speaker 7: war crimes in parts of West Africa for a long time,
Speaker 7: right with its like private military contractors exactly Ukraine has
Speaker 7: sent special forces to assist the people fighting against the
Speaker 7: Russian private military contractors, like we've seen Nigeria's own government
Speaker 7: kill its own civilians and its counter terrorism operation like
Speaker 7: all of this just makes life less livable for people
Speaker 7: who are already like on the thick end of climate
Speaker 7: change for one thing, and have suffered under centuries to
Speaker 7: colonialism for another.
Speaker 18: So that's a geopolitic analysis, and I suppose been the
Speaker 18: long term. I think there's much to be done to
Speaker 18: rebuild the revolutionary front within Nigeria, led by Nigerians themselves,
Speaker 18: to chart another path for the future of the country.
Speaker 18: Are we from the status of Vassalich?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 18: You know, Left and Left of Jason Wovemans were very
Speaker 18: diminished in relevance and credibility after the end of military
Speaker 18: rule in Ingerior in nineteen ninety nine due to several
Speaker 18: reasons that we could get into at another time. But
Speaker 18: by the time we got to the Ensar's movement in
Speaker 18: twenty twenty, Left forces were present but didn't have the
Speaker 18: level of organization and strategy necessary to rise the occasion.
Speaker 18: But according to an article in Progressive International by A.
Speaker 18: Euler Babbalola, there's potential for a resurgence. The End Bad
Speaker 18: Governance movement had demonstrations in August October twenty twenty four
Speaker 18: which saw leftist groups like Take It Back and the
Speaker 18: Socialist Workers League play a central role in organizing and
Speaker 18: mobilizing protests. Unlike earlier moments, these groups articulated clearer demands,
Speaker 18: coordinated protest strategies, had attempted to provide ideological direction. This
Speaker 18: is in spite of facing crackdowns and arrests of key
Speaker 18: figures and left and progressives faces. Of course, not everyone
Speaker 18: mobilizing against the Nigeria's struggle in economic and political conditions
Speaker 18: are committed to left or left adjacent ideas. Still, the
Speaker 18: question remains unresolved. Can this renewed street level influence be
Speaker 18: transformed into lasting organizational power or will repeat the cycle
Speaker 18: of hobialization followed by fragmentation that has littered movements before it.
Speaker 18: This violence taking place in Nigeria is bound up with
Speaker 18: the violence taking place across the world. Is bound up
Speaker 18: in imperialist interests and capless interest, in status interests, and
Speaker 18: in petty tyrant's interests, from Nigeria to Congo to Sedan
Speaker 18: to Palestine, violence and suppression tactics wee lied in one
Speaker 18: place often brought to another. Biblelula says in his article
Speaker 18: that could a genuine pursuit of justice must confront proximate
Speaker 18: perpetrators as well as the transnational systems of power that
Speaker 18: sustain them. What we must not allow is for the
Speaker 18: global perpetrators of criminality and terror to tell the world
Speaker 18: where to focus its attention end code. In other words,
Speaker 18: to all that the perpetrators of these violences tell you
Speaker 18: where to focus. We must look every where, look holistically
Speaker 18: at what's happening, and put the power and soliarity in
Speaker 18: the hands of the people affected to resist that violence.
Speaker 18: That's all I happened to as usual, all power, it's
Speaker 18: old people peace.
Speaker 11: This is it could happen here. In Executive Disorder, our
Speaker 11: weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the
Speaker 11: crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison
Speaker 11: Davis to name, joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and
Speaker 11: Robert Evans. This episode, we are covering the week of
Speaker 11: April first to April eighth. The DHS shutdown has surpassed
Speaker 11: fifty days. Last week, House Republicans tentatively agreed to the
Speaker 11: Senate deal to fund DHS without ICE and CBP, though
Speaker 11: this agreement is stalled while Congress is out of session
Speaker 11: till April fourteenth. Fox News has partnered with Calshi to
Speaker 11: incorporate its political betting data into news coverage. Fox joints CNNC, NBC,
Speaker 11: and the AP in entering into deals with the so
Speaker 11: called prediction market Calshi. Calshe announced quote, prediction markets at
Speaker 11: accountability by rewarding accuracy. That's why the three leading networks
Speaker 11: have chosen Calshi. No spin, no partisan lens, just incentives
Speaker 11: to be right unquote.
Speaker 2: It's just gambling.
Speaker 3: It's so cool that the whole world, all media is now.
Speaker 2: Just ESPN incentives to be right again, like people are.
Speaker 2: There's like one of the sub markets within Calshi is
Speaker 2: people like bringing in lawyers to make threats over like
Speaker 2: tiny differences in grammar that invalidate them either losing money
Speaker 2: or mean that they should have won the art like
Speaker 2: like none of this is about what actually happened. It's
Speaker 2: it's becoming as much about what you can game or
Speaker 2: like threaten the news into not reporting. As we talked
Speaker 2: about the week before last with that case in Israel
Speaker 2: and insider trading and insider trading.
Speaker 11: Yeah, no, it's it's just turning politics into like a
Speaker 11: corrupt casino.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just mob sports betting.
Speaker 11: It's worse than sports betting because sports betting is actually
Speaker 11: based on like real odds. Right, These odds are completely
Speaker 11: created by users with their money. Like it's it's it's
Speaker 11: completely manufactured. There's no actual basis for a lot of
Speaker 11: these bets, right, Like like the betting on the papal conclave.
Speaker 11: There's no basis for an American pope getting elected, right,
Speaker 11: there's no actual odds that were like mathematically certain.
Speaker 3: It's just created through through money. Well, to be fair,
Speaker 3: the sports odds are also just kind of made up.
Speaker 3: Yeah guys too, but like yeah, you no, real's just
Speaker 3: a tidy fit.
Speaker 7: Vibes based like it's people looking at horses. It's a
Speaker 7: lot of what's happening in sports betting, yes, making approving. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I think I saw that something close to a billion
Speaker 7: dollars was bet on oil prices as we approach Trump's deadline.
Speaker 3: We already had that just play the oil futures market too.
Speaker 11: Complicands for people. I guess God, damn it, No, it's
Speaker 11: really bad. According to a March poll from the Institute
Speaker 11: for a Middle East Understanding Policy Project sampling almost six
Speaker 11: hundred Texas Democratic primary voters, seventy six percent say Israel's
Speaker 11: committing Jena, Siden and Gaza, and eighty percent support ending
Speaker 11: weapons funding to Israel. Forty four percent of Tallarika voters
Speaker 11: said his criticism of Israel was important to them and
Speaker 11: swayed their vote over one in five voters. Twenty two
Speaker 11: percent said reducing support for Israel was one of their
Speaker 11: top three factors impacting their vote, while only two percent
Speaker 11: said the same about increasing or maintaining support for Israel,
Speaker 11: and eighty eight percent of voters said they agreed with
Speaker 11: the statement to Tallarico made during a primary debate about
Speaker 11: cutting off weapons to Israel. On Sunday night, thirteen gunshots
Speaker 11: were fired into the front door of Indianapolis City County
Speaker 11: council Ron Gibson, who just voted to approve a half
Speaker 11: a billion dollar data center. A note was left under
Speaker 11: the doormat that read no data centers quote unquote. Gibson
Speaker 11: and his son were home at the time of the shooting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these data centers are really staggeringly unpopular. There's been
Speaker 3: a bunch of reporting on even the ones that are
Speaker 3: attempted to be built, something like fifty percent of them
Speaker 3: are just not able to do it because of massive
Speaker 3: public local backlash.
Speaker 2: Because it makes life worse around them. Nakey power bells
Speaker 2: go up there loud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's like old school. It's like old
Speaker 3: school environmental nimbiism, sort of like I don't want these
Speaker 3: assholes in my small town stuff. There's just like the
Speaker 3: Antai sentiment in general, They're hideously unpopular and this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff is just going to continue as these data
Speaker 3: centers continue to be built.
Speaker 7: Okay, time for me.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 7: Donald Trump has said that he will discuss the United
Speaker 7: States withdrawal from NATO for those who work in the
Speaker 7: New York Times as a North Atlanta Take Treaty Organization
Speaker 7: with Mark Rutter, who is the NATO Secretary General, during
Speaker 7: their meeting, which will happen today which is Wednesday, April eighth.
Speaker 3: If question Mark this happens, it would be utterly aparcal,
Speaker 3: Like it would be one of the two things they're
Speaker 3: going to point out as like the dawning of the New.
Speaker 7: Era of Yes, seismic shift.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like what geopolitics is, this is like the fundamental
Speaker 3: basis of this in this week, or like ceasing to exist. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Shelly Kittelsen has been released by Katipos Bula after they
Speaker 7: made her read a video confession in which she confessed
Speaker 7: and to be very clear, this is very clearly extracted fashion. Yes,
Speaker 7: the thing in this is it is true. But in
Speaker 7: the video they made her confess to passing information to
Speaker 7: US consulate in Baghdad. In one point in the video
Speaker 7: she said she had been collecting information on leaders but
Speaker 7: forgotten their names, which is very credible and true.
Speaker 3: Most real con fashion, Yeah to Ludigris.
Speaker 7: Her release came after IRAQ released several catigue Has Boller members,
Speaker 7: so seems like a straight swap, which is what this
Speaker 7: was about in the first place. Right, it's not about
Speaker 7: her or her work per se, It's about her being
Speaker 7: a trading chip that they can create. Finally, Republican Brandon
Speaker 7: gil has sharply criticized the dignities like Dignity dald Act recently,
Speaker 7: and this has become like something of an online discourse
Speaker 7: topic on the right. I'm not exactly sure why it's
Speaker 7: happening now.
Speaker 3: Rep.
Speaker 7: Salazar from Florida has tried to introduce this act several
Speaker 7: times in the last few years. We've actually covered it
Speaker 7: when it was introduced in twenty twenty five on this show.
Speaker 7: It's a bipartisan act to reform the immigration system.
Speaker 3: That is bad.
Speaker 7: It creates what's called a dignity status, which is essentially
Speaker 7: like an underclass of people who there is no pathway citizenship,
Speaker 7: there is no pathway to voting, but it comes with
Speaker 7: the right to renew it and the right to residency right,
Speaker 7: so it creates it's like a sub citizen class. It's
Speaker 7: bad that it's not a progressive immigration reform.
Speaker 11: But is Brandon Gill criticizing it from the right?
Speaker 7: Gil is coming from another perspective, then, I am. They
Speaker 7: think it gives incentives for illegal immigration and it's an amnesty.
Speaker 11: Okay, Yeah, so he's criticizing from the right.
Speaker 7: It's interesting to see the split among Republicans on this,
Speaker 7: and that's why I wanted to bring it in. Right
Speaker 7: that we spoke last time about the Florida sheriffs breaking
Speaker 7: with Trump on mass deportations. There are a number of
Speaker 7: things which indicate that there is clearly a faction of
Speaker 7: the Republican Party, which is realized massive deportation of people
Speaker 7: who have not been accused or convicted of any crime.
Speaker 7: It's not a popular stance, especially when you keep killing people.
Speaker 7: On that note, actually, ice have shot somebody else that
Speaker 7: this broke relatively late on Tuesday night. They shot someone
Speaker 7: in Patterson, California. The person has been identified Carlos Iva
Speaker 7: Mendoso Hernandez. He's wanted in El Salvador for questioning a
Speaker 7: connection to a murder. It is another of those incidents
Speaker 7: in which they accused a person of weaponizing their vehicle,
Speaker 7: and there is a dash cam video which has been
Speaker 7: released which shows a person attempting to leave in a vehicle.
Speaker 7: It's a little hard to tell if the person who's
Speaker 7: attempting to weaponize their vehicle, but it doesn't look that
Speaker 7: way to me, so that person is trying to make
Speaker 7: an exit. We have seen a number of these right
Speaker 7: where federal immigration agents have shot people behind the wheel
Speaker 7: of their car. Yeah. I should add that his attorney
Speaker 7: claims that he is not wanted in connection with that
Speaker 7: murder and has provided a document from the government of
Speaker 7: El Salbador which seems to confirm that. So we have
Speaker 7: once again the DHS said versus what we seem to
Speaker 7: be seeing proved out by documents.
Speaker 11: Right before we get to Iran, which there's a lot
Speaker 11: to discuss, there is another news story a little bit
Speaker 11: closer to us that we think deserves some fair coverage.
Speaker 11: Statements made on a podcast last year by a top
Speaker 11: FEMA official resurfaced this last week. Greg Phillips, who is
Speaker 11: in charge of disaster response, claims that he once teleported
Speaker 11: to a waffle house in Rome, Georgia. Phillips also says
Speaker 11: he experienced a separate instant in which he teleported in
Speaker 11: front of a church. The fact that this was a
Speaker 11: waffle house does lend a story a bit of credibility.
Speaker 11: I have suspected for years there's some sort of paranormal
Speaker 11: field around waffle houses. Personally, I believe that when you
Speaker 11: walk into one, there is a small chance you could
Speaker 11: walk out of another in a separate location. The craft
Speaker 11: store Michaels has a similar has a similar energy to it.
Speaker 2: Look, anyone who's gone drunk to enough waffle houses knows
Speaker 2: that that's true.
Speaker 11: Right, So there is an aspect of the story which
Speaker 11: is very believable, but there's some details that Phillips has
Speaker 11: included that makes me a bit more skeptical of his
Speaker 11: characterization of this incident. Let's listen to his claim on
Speaker 11: this podcast right now.
Speaker 16: We had a teleport at incident, two of them, which
Speaker 16: transported me about forty miles from from where I was
Speaker 16: and near Albany, Georgia, to the ditch of a to
Speaker 16: the ditch of a of a church chained up at
Speaker 16: a waffle house like fifty miles away from where I.
Speaker 11: Was to that. So to defend these statements, Phillips has
Speaker 11: taken to truth Social to share biblical accounts of teleportation
Speaker 11: as supporting evidence of teleportation.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 11: Employees at the three waffle houses in Rome, Georgia were
Speaker 11: interviewed by The New York Times, and they say they
Speaker 11: do not recall anyone being transported there by means of teleportation,
Speaker 11: nor did they recognize pictures of Greg Phillips. But in
Speaker 11: a follow up statement by Phillips on truth Social, he
Speaker 11: said he was going through cancer treatment at the time
Speaker 11: of this alleged teleportation incident. Quote, I was healed of
Speaker 11: cancer and it was a miracle. The podcast at the
Speaker 11: center of this controversy was part of chronicling that journey,
Speaker 11: and during that journey things happened that I can't explain.
Speaker 11: I was in the opening days of intensive treatment, heavily medicated,
Speaker 11: not thinking about future headlines. That context was nowhere in
Speaker 11: the reporting. Unquote. I think it is important here that
Speaker 11: he says he was heavily medicated during the time around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I love how he uses cop voice like a teleportation incident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but however, I'm gonna point out that Garrison the
Speaker 3: next thing you're about to read, he was not heavily
Speaker 3: medicated when he said this, So.
Speaker 11: Phillips added to this truth quote, the word teleportation was
Speaker 11: not mine. It was used by someone else in the conversation,
Speaker 11: reaching for a language describe something with no easy name, which.
Speaker 3: Is not true. He said teleport.
Speaker 7: He said teleport.
Speaker 11: I think what he means is he didn't wasn't his
Speaker 11: like initial term, then started using it.
Speaker 3: Yes, he keeps using it, he continues.
Speaker 11: Quote.
Speaker 19: The more accurate biblical terms are translated or transported, not
Speaker 19: new ideas for people of faith. If you believe that
Speaker 19: God moves in ways we cannot fully explain, as I do,
Speaker 19: then having faith is not a SoundBite.
Speaker 11: It is the whole point. I believe in miracles. All caps,
Speaker 11: God bless America. He has risen unquote. Now, one detail
Speaker 11: from the podcast that has not been mentioned as much,
Speaker 11: I think offers to help some idea of what's what's
Speaker 11: really going on here.
Speaker 16: It was an incredibly frightening moment to experience yourself in
Speaker 16: your car flying through the air.
Speaker 5: It was possible, it was real.
Speaker 7: He was teleposted in his car.
Speaker 11: He was in his car, which for me changes this
Speaker 11: entire thing, because these headlines were kind of kind of
Speaker 11: imagine as if his body like dematerialized somewhere, remateialized in
Speaker 11: a waffle house something that's you know, you know, certainly he.
Speaker 2: Just blacked out while driving, which is very different, which
Speaker 2: is very different.
Speaker 7: When we were driving around Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I tell I teleported on Xanax one about thirty
Speaker 2: hours into the future.
Speaker 11: So the fact that he was owned doubt while driving
Speaker 11: and ended up at a waffle house much more, much
Speaker 11: more explainable. Because many many people in slightly and slightly
Speaker 11: all downright downright outside of waffle houses in their car.
Speaker 11: This is a very common occurred. This is probably about
Speaker 11: maybe ten to ten to thirty percent of the waffle
Speaker 11: house clientele shows up in this sort of environment where
Speaker 11: they are they are not operating on their full faculties,
Speaker 11: either through some sort of drugs, alcohol, medication, what have you.
Speaker 2: I've seen UFOs at a waffle house before.
Speaker 11: No, right, the wabble houses are you know, are have
Speaker 11: some kind of poll that I think attracts people like
Speaker 11: a magnet who are in US in an altered state,
Speaker 11: towards them as like a beacon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that poll is smothered and covered hash browns.
Speaker 7: Yes so. And the fact that I'm right open at
Speaker 7: four am.
Speaker 2: Oh, and bathrooms you can do heroin in don't forget
Speaker 2: that says it on the sign.
Speaker 3: I also want to make sure that we mentioned that.
Speaker 3: In the same week in which The New York Times,
Speaker 3: the guy who was writing the headline didn't know what
Speaker 3: NATO stood for. They also titled the initial title of
Speaker 3: the article they wrote about this was anti quote. FEMA
Speaker 3: official says he teleported to waffle house. Experts are dubious.
Speaker 3: This is this might be the worst. Experts disagree Headlight. Ever,
Speaker 3: I think this is good.
Speaker 11: I actually, out of out of the two poles of
Speaker 11: New York New York Times headlines this week, the data
Speaker 11: one is this one. Fully I fully agree with I
Speaker 11: fully agree with their their choice to say that experts
Speaker 11: are due because about teleportation.
Speaker 7: This does make me sad because in New York Times
Speaker 7: is also the outlet that ran what is, in my opinion,
Speaker 7: the best headline ever written. It was about the fact
Speaker 7: that moray good Okay. It was other subject of a
Speaker 7: scientific study which looked at moray eels and their ability
Speaker 7: to climb a ramp out of a pool to eat
Speaker 7: some food, which proved in theory that moray eels could
Speaker 7: hunt on land, and the headline was when an eel
Speaker 7: climbs a ramp to eat a squid from a clamp.
Speaker 3: That's a more ray title from a better time.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, what a different Yeah yeah whoever wrote that.
Speaker 7: I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 11: We will now teleport to an ad break and remterialize
Speaker 11: to discuss the back and forth ceasefire not ceasefire with Ron.
Speaker 2: We're back and depending on when you listen to this,
Speaker 2: we may either read back to War with Iran the
Speaker 2: straight up four moves could be closed or open. We're
Speaker 2: in like uh just this this beautiful? Like uh uh roadingers.
Speaker 2: No one knows where it's gonna.
Speaker 7: Go after this. Yeah, if you don't open your phone
Speaker 7: then and you never know how many wars since cease
Speaker 7: fires have started since the last time you opened your phone.
Speaker 2: That's right. They can't make you believe that a war
Speaker 2: is going on if you choose to not be informed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: other than by looking at gas prices.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that that is a thing.
Speaker 5: God.
Speaker 7: All right, let's let's try and do this in chronological order,
Speaker 7: because this week has been bonkers. So let's start with
Speaker 7: last Friday when you last listen to ed listening to
Speaker 7: Baby released a good Friday, And that is kind of
Speaker 7: important because a United States Air Force fifteen eighth Strike
Speaker 7: Eagle belonging to the forty eighth Fighter Wing, crashed in
Speaker 7: southwestern Iran last Friday after being hit by a manpad
Speaker 7: that the manpads is a shoulder fired surface to air missile.
Speaker 7: The plane carries a pilot and a WIZZO WSOS an ancronym.
Speaker 7: It means weapons systems officer or weapons systems operator. I'm
Speaker 7: just going to call them a weapons officer just to
Speaker 7: make it easier for everyone going forward. And both crew
Speaker 7: members safely self ejected from the plane. The United States
Speaker 7: very quickly launched a massive CISAR that's combat search and
Speaker 7: rescue operation involving helicopters, low flying aircraft and close air
Speaker 7: support from both MQ nine Reaper drones and eight ten aircraft.
Speaker 7: During this operation, in which the aircraft flew within small
Speaker 7: arms range of the ground in Kuzustan Province, several aircraft
Speaker 7: were damaged. One of the Jolly Green to rescue helicopters
Speaker 7: was hit with small arms fire, an eight ten thunderbolt
Speaker 7: crashed in the strait of horn Moves and the pilot
Speaker 7: was recovered. Another was hit and the pilot ejected over
Speaker 7: Q eight, but this effort did result in the safe
Speaker 7: recovery of the F fifteens pilot, but not the weapons officer.
Speaker 7: The following day, that happened during the day, right in
Speaker 7: daylight hours, which is remarkable. It is extremely rare to
Speaker 7: see this happening right like low flying helicopters over what
Speaker 7: is notion the enemy territory in the middle of the daytime.
Speaker 7: On Easter Sunday, the United States launched a huge operation
Speaker 7: which resulted in the recovery of the weapons officer. This
Speaker 7: was preceded by a disinformation campaign which hoped to make
Speaker 7: the Iranian state believe that they had extracted the weapons
Speaker 7: officer by land, which they hadn't. The operation involved a
Speaker 7: ton of Special Operations Forces as sets who flew to
Speaker 7: an agricultural airstrip outside Isfahan. This seems to have gone
Speaker 7: largely unremarked upon in the reporting. There is some crackpot
Speaker 7: theory that this was all cover for an operation that
Speaker 7: extracted enriched geranium from Isfahan because there is a nuclear
Speaker 7: research acility Isfahan. I have not seen any evidence to
Speaker 7: support that, but I think it is likely that they
Speaker 7: knew of this agricultural airstrip because of plans which were
Speaker 7: made for a potential raid on the Isfahan nuclear research
Speaker 7: facility during the operation m Q nine and ripa drone's
Speaker 7: bombed quote military age males who were close to the airmen.
Speaker 7: Iran had offered a reward of sixty thousand dollars for
Speaker 7: capturing this person before the United States got to them.
Speaker 7: And it is common for people in this area who like,
Speaker 7: if you're like herding animals, right to carry a gun,
Speaker 7: like to protect their animals or to protect themselves. There
Speaker 7: were some kind of propaganday videos of like local people
Speaker 7: looking for the m and right, they were carrying like
Speaker 7: Iranian flags and they're like antiquated bolt action rifles. But
Speaker 7: it's also very possible that some of these drone strikes
Speaker 7: may have occurred against people who were just going about
Speaker 7: their business in the region, right, Like if they didn't
Speaker 7: they said military age males that it's a broad remit.
Speaker 7: Any anyone who would out there being a shepherd would
Speaker 7: be a military age.
Speaker 11: Male, right, would be a military aged Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like one of the most sickening terms
Speaker 3: US warfare is invented.
Speaker 7: Yeah, military age mail is like anyone anytime people are
Speaker 7: using that, like you got a doesn't pass the SNIF test.
Speaker 11: No, it could be anyone from to like fourteen years
Speaker 11: old to like sixty nine exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You'll be surprised who looks like an adult when you're
Speaker 2: a scared man with a gun.
Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, or looking from thousands of feet up on
Speaker 7: its own camera.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a term invented for we are just going to
Speaker 3: start shooting at the people. We have no idea who
Speaker 3: they are, were just going to kill them. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it's hideous.
Speaker 7: I was recently rereading I think it's called a Theory
Speaker 7: of the Drone. It's a philosophy book about drones and
Speaker 7: drone warfare, and there's a scene in the opening of
Speaker 7: that which I think is which you can probably get
Speaker 7: the free preview of the book if you have a
Speaker 7: kindle and read that scene. But it's very illustrative of
Speaker 7: how vague this term can be. The rescue operation saw
Speaker 7: the planes land at an airstrip. Then a little bit
Speaker 7: helicopter took off collected the airmen who had been evading,
Speaker 7: capturing a mountainous area. He was then carried back by
Speaker 7: the helicopter to the airstrip where the two larger aircrafts
Speaker 7: that had bought the helicopter and all the personnel had
Speaker 7: become stuck.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I guess normally they would do some
Speaker 7: kind of soil sampling, but I think there probably just
Speaker 7: wasn't time. Yeah, So the United States elected to destroy
Speaker 7: those aircraft in place and send three more aircraft to
Speaker 7: recover their personnel. And we can see that Iran has
Speaker 7: published footage to that. Right, it seems that they also
Speaker 7: destroyed the Little Bird helicopters. I've seen some reporting that
Speaker 7: the Little Bird helicopters were just like on a one
Speaker 7: way flight, that they flew into Iran knowing that their
Speaker 7: range wasn't long enough for them to fly back, and
Speaker 7: that they always plan to destroy them. I don't think
Speaker 7: that's the case. I think they got them out the
Speaker 7: back of the sea one thirties and assembled them quickly.
Speaker 7: That that is a thing they have the capacity to do,
Speaker 7: and that is what makes the most sense. So on
Speaker 7: that same day, Easter Sunday, kind of a big deal
Speaker 7: for the Christian folks, Donald Trump truth the following quote,
Speaker 7: Tuesday will be power plant Day and bridge Day all
Speaker 7: wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing
Speaker 7: like it. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or
Speaker 7: you will be living in hell.
Speaker 3: Just watch.
Speaker 7: Praise be to Allah.
Speaker 2: I love the president.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that is a that is the leader of
Speaker 7: the free world. Yeah.
Speaker 3: My extremely low staged conspiracy that this was not Trump.
Speaker 3: This was written by Trump's staff because it's slightly off,
Speaker 3: it could have been.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like him, really.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's not normally a like he gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of stuff isn't really him. No, that's
Speaker 2: a weird thing for him to throw it.
Speaker 11: I can very easily believe that this is that this
Speaker 11: is him like going nuts on something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like he could have done possible. I think there's
Speaker 3: a low chance that this was what this was like
Speaker 3: a staff written thing.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's it's weird wording from him, like
Speaker 2: it's a strange message, although the last couple from him
Speaker 2: have all seemed kind of strange.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is just out of it.
Speaker 2: The one he put up after the ceasefire announcement where
Speaker 2: he's like where he puts in quotations that the navy
Speaker 2: will be hanging round. Yeah, yeah, that's that's not doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like him much either, But also like who else
Speaker 2: would he let write that? It's He's it's just but
Speaker 2: it is weird, right, that does not sound like any
Speaker 2: previous Trump post hanging round to say fuck.
Speaker 7: In a Trump in a presidential tweet, Like, I don't
Speaker 7: know why a stuffer would do that.
Speaker 3: No, and I.
Speaker 2: Agree with you, Jays.
Speaker 11: These things are usually transcribed like usually he reads these
Speaker 11: out loud and someone writes them down and then he
Speaker 11: looks at them and and then and then and then
Speaker 11: they hit post like that. That's that's how all of
Speaker 11: his truths were structured in that documentary.
Speaker 7: Yes, does he dictate the capitalization.
Speaker 11: When he looks them over like he may.
Speaker 7: Okay, because he has a fascinating and quite unique approach
Speaker 7: to capitalization.
Speaker 11: Like specifically like there will be nothing like. It is
Speaker 11: definitely like a Trump a Trump verbal text.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a super Trump line.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But then like the next part, I is weird.
Speaker 2: But hanging round that's that's not really a Trump sounding line.
Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, it's weird. We we've all been distracted.
Speaker 7: So to talk about what he said on Tuesday, Power
Speaker 7: Bridge Day. Yeah, he said, quote A whole civilization will
Speaker 7: die tonight, never to be bought back again.
Speaker 2: That's a Trump line.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However,
Speaker 7: now that we have complete and total regime change where different,
Speaker 7: smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something maybe something way. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know. I'm not so sure. Maybe something revolutionarily
Speaker 7: wonderful can happen. Who knows. We will find out tonight
Speaker 7: one of the most important moments in the long and
Speaker 7: complex history of the world. Forty seven years of extortion,
Speaker 7: corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great
Speaker 7: people of Iran. Real journey that you go on, Yeah,
Speaker 7: from a civilization will die tonight to God bless the
Speaker 7: great people of Iran nightmarish. I don't know what to
Speaker 7: make of that, Like it seems like he's just they
Speaker 7: obviously striking civilian target. It is a war crime. It
Speaker 7: is a war crime Israel does all the time. We
Speaker 7: covered that last time we spoke a whole civilization will
Speaker 7: die tonight. Seems borderlin like genocidal as a threat. Yeah,
Speaker 7: that's that's not borderline.
Speaker 3: I think that is. I think that's a threat of genocide. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like this has been which by the way, is also
Speaker 3: like if you say this and then kill one person,
Speaker 3: like you are guilty of the crime of genocide. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: like the genocide.
Speaker 7: Like it's not good. It is not good. Let's talk
Speaker 7: about what actually happened. Right since then, just before the deadline,
Speaker 7: a huge number of strikes hit a run, including the
Speaker 7: Ministry of Intelligence building at Chiraz. There's some evidence that
Speaker 7: may have had some tunnels underneath it, Aerospace Research Institute,
Speaker 7: bridges and aluminium factory. Brigadier General Majid Hademi, who is
Speaker 7: the head of IOGC Intelligence was also killed in the
Speaker 7: targeted strike, and we hit carg Island again. Good, finally,
Speaker 7: yeah yeah. Let a lot of people think that this
Speaker 7: might have been a precursor to some kind of US
Speaker 7: land operation however.
Speaker 11: Or nuclear weapons a lot, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, we've seen this right again. When the president's
Speaker 2: saying you're gonna wipe out it doesn't make me feel calm.
Speaker 2: You should you should assume that the president might actually
Speaker 2: try to wipe out a culture. I mean, I like
Speaker 2: that is my strong stance on this, is that based
Speaker 2: on what he's saying, it is not unreasonable for people
Speaker 2: to flip out over this statement. It's absolutely not People
Speaker 2: should be outraged that a president said he they're pretty
Speaker 2: strong enough. It's really bad, like like it's very bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like he should be hauled up in front of
Speaker 3: a tribunal like Meloshovic, Like I am not on team.
Speaker 2: We should just move past.
Speaker 7: This, like it's easy because everything's so insane to be
Speaker 7: like another insane thing everything. This is a guy who
Speaker 7: has the trigger for all the nukes saying he's going
Speaker 7: to wipe out a civilization, like I would love.
Speaker 2: To be the nothing ever happens. Nothing happened here, it's fine, Like,
Speaker 2: don't don't yield to Trump? Derangement syndrome. Guy, because it's
Speaker 2: a lot easier, but like this is not something anyone
Speaker 2: should move past. He should go on trial for like this,
Speaker 2: like outside of the other stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Each of these tweets would constitute a reason for
Speaker 7: a trial in any previous presidency. Since then, Pakistan offered
Speaker 7: to mediate a ceasefire and these are negotiated Toro on
Speaker 7: going as Donald Trump was true thing. Iran reportedly made
Speaker 7: a list of its own demands. This is a translation
Speaker 7: from Persians, so not a word for word quotation, right.
Speaker 7: It listed these in its telegram channels as control passage
Speaker 7: through the Strait Offorn Muse in coordination with Iran's arm forces,
Speaker 7: the necessity of ending the war against all components of
Speaker 7: the Axis of Resistance, that withdrawal of US combat forces
Speaker 7: from all bases and deployments in the region, establishing a
Speaker 7: secure transit protocol and the straight ofform Mouse that guarantees
Speaker 7: Iranian control, full payment of damages to Iran, removal of
Speaker 7: all primary and secondary sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian
Speaker 7: assets and property abroad, and the ratification of all these
Speaker 7: items in a UN Security Council resolution. The parties that
Speaker 7: agreed to a two week ceasefire. Trump again shared the
Speaker 7: news of this on Truth's social kind of done reading
Speaker 7: out trees. I'm going to skip that one. That was
Speaker 7: a hanging around one. Very Shortly thereafter, Israel began a
Speaker 7: massive bombing campaign in Lebanon, and Iran continued to launch
Speaker 7: missiles at the occupied territories. Carolin Leavitt has said that
Speaker 7: Trump refused the Iranian plan.
Speaker 20: The Iranians originally put forward a ten point plan that
Speaker 20: was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable, and completely discarded. It was literally
Speaker 20: thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team.
Speaker 20: Many outlets in this room have falsely reported on that
Speaker 20: plan as being acceptable to the United States, and that
Speaker 20: is false.
Speaker 7: So she was pretty emphatic about that. Trump attacks CNN
Speaker 7: for publishing the plan this morning. Trump has said that
Speaker 7: the Israeli attacks on Lebanon were quote a separate skirmish.
Speaker 7: Striket Lebanon a hundred times in just over ten minutes
Speaker 7: today they dropped whole tower blocks in Beirut.
Speaker 3: That that is not a skirmish.
Speaker 7: Now he said they're not part of the deal because
Speaker 7: as Buller's not part of the deal. Of course, in it.
Speaker 7: Ran state media are pushing that they've they have somehow
Speaker 7: achieved all of their ten points, which I think were
Speaker 7: their sort of goals for negotiation or a basis for negotiation.
Speaker 7: Trump has said to one reporter that the tolls on
Speaker 7: the street could be a joint venture between the United
Speaker 7: States and Iran.
Speaker 11: Which suggest there are some parts of this of this
Speaker 11: deal that that are that are true, that he has
Speaker 11: kind of agreed.
Speaker 7: On, that are at least on the table. Right, Like
Speaker 7: these are the bases, which was how they were initially
Speaker 7: reported by CNN and others, that these have been accepted
Speaker 7: as a basis for negotiation. They had not been accepted
Speaker 7: whole cloth. Some people of some whom I think are
Speaker 7: acting in bad faith, have said since this more warning.
Speaker 7: The Wall Street Journal has reported that the tolls will
Speaker 7: be paid in cryptocurrency or Chinese one yeah, and that
Speaker 7: around it is broadcasting VHF messages. It's very high frequency.
Speaker 7: It's radio frequency warning non paying ships crossing the straight
Speaker 7: of home moods that they will be targeted. Trumpet provitly
Speaker 7: said the straight offor moves is open. This doesn't seem
Speaker 7: like that.
Speaker 11: The tolls about like two million, right.
Speaker 7: Well, there have been various proposals. Some I said two
Speaker 7: million dollars. I've seen different dollar sums per barrel of
Speaker 7: oil transiting the straight. I guess it would depend if
Speaker 7: it's if it's if the US Iranian partnership. You know
Speaker 7: how we're going to account for the exchange rate. Everyone
Speaker 7: has to get their peace right. Yeah, but yes, the
Speaker 7: two million dollars number was thrown around a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's worth noting that the strait is not
Speaker 3: open now. It is simply not.
Speaker 2: The number isn't a lesson stopp launching strikes.
Speaker 7: Well, even if they wanted to open it right now,
Speaker 7: they would have to remove the mines that they've put
Speaker 7: in it.
Speaker 2: Right, We don't know how many minds there are.
Speaker 3: If there are, so there are still ships going through,
Speaker 3: there's not many of them, like there's I think it was.
Speaker 3: The number I saw for today was four. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: like so like like it is technic, it is possible
Speaker 3: to go through. But four is like one of the
Speaker 3: lowest numbers that has happened since the Strait was first closed.
Speaker 3: So it has has simply not been reopened. Trump says
Speaker 3: this constantly.
Speaker 7: It's down to one channel, would be my guess, right, Like,
Speaker 7: it's because and then that they're advising those ships. I'm
Speaker 7: guessing we're sending a pilot craft perhaps to go between
Speaker 7: the mines.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen any reporting on how they're getting them through.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 2: The extent to which they've laid minds is really unclear. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like all we know is that they have the capacity
Speaker 2: to do so, in that the US has been striking
Speaker 2: craft that are set to lay minds. But like, I
Speaker 2: haven't heard of any evidence of a ship getting hit
Speaker 2: with the mine yet.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, neither of I s Perhaps they haven't.
Speaker 2: Laid any or we don't know what they've done. They
Speaker 2: may have decided that that was more of than they
Speaker 2: needed to do at this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so far, all of the attacks on ships
Speaker 3: have been with other more conventional weapons.
Speaker 7: Yeah, either sea drones or missiles of various kinds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shooting them with guns in a couple of cases.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Garrison, let's start with this clip of JD.
Speaker 7: Vance talking about the inclusion of Lebanon in this ceasefire.
Speaker 21: First of all, I actually think and there's a lot
Speaker 21: of bad faith negotiation and a lot.
Speaker 3: Of bad faith.
Speaker 21: You know, propaganda going on. I think this comes from
Speaker 21: a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the
Speaker 21: ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. We never made
Speaker 21: that promise, We never indicated that was going to be
Speaker 21: the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would
Speaker 21: be focused on Iran, and the ceasefire would be focused
Speaker 21: on America's allies. Both Israel and the Golf are of states.
Speaker 7: So yeah, let's talk about Israel, right, a country which
Speaker 7: famously loves to respect a ceasefire. Israel has continued to
Speaker 7: strike inside Iran. It has not stopped since the announcement
Speaker 7: of this ceasefire, right, it has shown no indication of
Speaker 7: wanting to stop. It is also continued, as I said,
Speaker 7: it's massive bombing campaign side Lebanon. It seems to be
Speaker 7: the case that whatever was negotiated, the Israelis do not
Speaker 7: perceive the ceasefire as applying to them, or at least
Speaker 7: the IDF does not, I should say, rather than the
Speaker 7: ralis right, and therefore Iran does not perceive it as
Speaker 7: being obliged to no longer strike Israel.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, the whole situation right now is very
Speaker 11: unclear and is literally changing by the hour.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like by the time we're done recording this.
Speaker 11: Right, Yeah, so we're recording this Wednesday afternoon. By the
Speaker 11: time this comes out Thursday night slash Friday morning, there
Speaker 11: could be a whole different situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll try and record a pickup if we have to.
Speaker 11: But yeah, as of as of Wednesday afternoon, this is
Speaker 11: what the sort of ambiguity around around the deal looks
Speaker 11: like and the level of compliance regarding Israel and the
Speaker 11: United States.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there are two more things I want to talk
Speaker 7: about that have been reported on the list. Obviously, this
Speaker 7: has been reported on widely because it is a threat
Speaker 7: to all of our lives if we're going to start
Speaker 7: a nuclear war. The pak is Curtis Down Freedom Party,
Speaker 7: says it's leaders headquarters. This was interally reported as home.
Speaker 7: They did send me a text to use the word
Speaker 7: home WhatsApp, but I think, judging by what I have
Speaker 7: heard from other reports in a region, it's better described
Speaker 7: as headquarters. Were struck with several Iranian missiles. This came after,
Speaker 7: according to Fox News, the President claimed that the United
Speaker 7: States sent weapons to protesters in Iran in January, but
Speaker 7: that quote the Kurds kept them. Now, a video of
Speaker 7: Trump addressing the issue does not explicitly name the Kurds,
Speaker 7: it does imply that they.
Speaker 22: Don't have guns. You know, we send some guns the
Speaker 22: group that was supposed to give which I said, what
Speaker 22: happened to my people? I said it.
Speaker 5: I called it exactly.
Speaker 3: We sent guns, a lot of guns.
Speaker 22: They were supposed to go to the people said they
Speaker 22: could fight back against these ducks. You know what happened.
Speaker 22: The people that they sent them to kept them because
Speaker 22: they said, what a beautiful gun.
Speaker 8: I think I'll keep it.
Speaker 22: So I'm very upset with a certain group of people,
Speaker 22: and they're going to pay a big price for that.
Speaker 22: But the Iranian people who will fight back as soon
Speaker 22: as they know they're not going to be shot and
Speaker 22: as soon as they can get weapons.
Speaker 7: This is one of the most seed It's up there
Speaker 7: with him threatening to new Karam the Easter Bunny, and it's.
Speaker 11: I hesitate to use the word Lynchian because that work
Speaker 11: gets misapplied a lot.
Speaker 7: And Tufa asks him, and this is not a perfect.
Speaker 11: Invocation of Lynchian either, but it's getting closer with the
Speaker 11: sort of one of the.
Speaker 7: More Lynchian things to have pay real life.
Speaker 11: It's incredible up with like the Easter jazz in the
Speaker 11: back crash of vibes. Yeah, as there's like flowers over
Speaker 11: the archway. Yeah, I think half co No, there's sort
Speaker 11: of the sort of juxtaposition, right, which I think is
Speaker 11: that is the key part of leedge is like is
Speaker 11: this surreal with the mundane and you have parts of
Speaker 11: this here where you have this sort of intensity of
Speaker 11: the stuff Trump's talking about with the Eastern jazz and
Speaker 11: his like purple tie and the easter like decorations in
Speaker 11: the background. This is this is a stunning piece of media.
Speaker 2: Stunning piece of history.
Speaker 7: God yeah, I saw this yesterday and I thought I
Speaker 7: need to expose my colleagues to this, like one of
Speaker 7: the most incredible thirty seconds of video. To come back
Speaker 7: to topic at hand, various Rogulati groups have denied this,
Speaker 7: and it would be an extreme logistical challenge to provide
Speaker 7: weapons to Curdish arm groups, most of whom have most
Speaker 7: of their personnel in Iraq, and for them to transit
Speaker 7: those weapons to Tehran. I don't belie believe that that
Speaker 7: would have been something that any US administration would entertain.
Speaker 2: What guns would they give them that they don't because
Speaker 2: if these groups tend to be pretty well supplied with
Speaker 2: small personal arms we're talking about like your battle rifles
Speaker 2: and you know, long range precision rifles and the like,
Speaker 2: what they lack is man portable anti aircraft and man
Speaker 2: portable anti armor. Those are kind of some of the
Speaker 2: most precious pieces of gear to them, and I doubt
Speaker 2: Trump was offering to send that into Iran, among other things.
Speaker 2: We probably don't want to be sending a bunch of
Speaker 2: man portable anti aircraft into Iran.
Speaker 7: Right now, Like that s babfire.
Speaker 2: But that's the only shit I could see these different
Speaker 2: groups wanting to take for themselves.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's especially strange because, like I watched a lot
Speaker 7: of videos of armed attacks on uh, like Iranian police
Speaker 7: in January of this year, and they were using very
Speaker 7: basic weapons, to include quite a few of the pak
Speaker 7: using pumpacked shotguns.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I don't think the US sent them pump action shotguns.
Speaker 2: No, that would be a weird We don't. The US
Speaker 2: military doesn't have a lot of pump action shot is
Speaker 2: just laying around. Yeah, that's not like the first gun
Speaker 2: they'd have a bunch of to hand over to somebody.
Speaker 2: They've probably got more ak's than that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and like there were ak's used as well, but
Speaker 7: like these are very basic episodes, as you say, like
Speaker 7: this doesn't seem like anything that would come from the US.
Speaker 7: Also in Kurdistan and Iranian drones struck Zagazawi village, killing
Speaker 7: Musa anwar Rasul, aged thirty nine, and his wife Musta
Speaker 7: Asad Hassan. Their children both survived. This is really heartbreaking,
Speaker 7: and like there were really horrible videos of their children,
Speaker 7: like like confronting the fact that they are now orphans, right,
Speaker 7: and because of stories like this one, which I do
Speaker 7: not see any basis for. In fact, Kurdistan is being
Speaker 7: absolutely hammered by Iranian bonds, right, the little children are
Speaker 7: losing their parents, and like I'm really dist but just
Speaker 7: I say, every week by the campus tendency to ignore
Speaker 7: this or to say that it has to happen because
Speaker 7: the Kurds don't have a state, or even the sort
Speaker 7: of blue wave tendency to sort of handwave this and say, well,
Speaker 7: Donald Trump started the war, so Ryan gets to murder
Speaker 7: Curtis Villians. Like I just find it so heartbreaking. And
Speaker 7: Robert and I have both spent time in Kurtis down
Speaker 7: and a kind of funness sort of people there, but
Speaker 7: makes me mad.
Speaker 2: It's all pretty bleak and disappointing.
Speaker 7: Well, you know what else disappointing. Every week we have
Speaker 7: to do this. It's an ad break.
Speaker 11: All right, we're back. We still have three or four
Speaker 11: important stories that we're gonna do here before we close. James,
Speaker 11: want to start with your section on the threat to
Speaker 11: press freedom.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I think this is import President Trump has
Speaker 7: said that his DOJ will seek to prosecute the person
Speaker 7: who quote leaked the information that the fifteen's weapons safety
Speaker 7: officer was missing an evading caption in Iran. Quote we're
Speaker 7: going to go to the media company that released it,
Speaker 7: or we're going to say national security, give it up,
Speaker 7: or go to jail, Trump said, quote The entire country
Speaker 7: of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was
Speaker 7: somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.
Speaker 7: Wasn't pilots, it was a weapons officer, but airmen.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: I can't quite find who broke the story because it's
Speaker 7: not really a story that broke. It didn't require anyone
Speaker 7: to leak anything to know that someone was missing, because
Speaker 7: the wreckage and without seeing the wreckage. People weren't really
Speaker 7: willing to publish the story rights they had no confirmation
Speaker 7: In Iran says wild shit all the time. Yeah, the
Speaker 7: wreckage was photographed and published by presumably Iranian sources, and
Speaker 7: it very clearly showed the livery of a US Air
Speaker 7: Force fifteen based out of late and Heath, which is
Speaker 7: near Cambridge in the United Kingdom. There were some very
Speaker 7: early reports before we foll photos that the plane should
Speaker 7: shut down was an F thirty five and that would
Speaker 7: have been a single seater, right, But as soon as
Speaker 7: the images came out, everyone knew that wasn't the case.
Speaker 2: Was an F fifth Strike Eagle.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and there are single seat to F fifteen variants,
Speaker 7: but I don't believe any of them are active. Dut
Speaker 7: US Air Force Strike Eagles will always have two people.
Speaker 7: It's not a single seater, right, So nobody had to
Speaker 7: leak that information for it to be obvious that if
Speaker 7: they had collected one person, then there was still one person.
Speaker 7: This does represent quite a serious attack on the First Amendment.
Speaker 7: People are killing and dying over Irun, and our tax
Speaker 7: dollars are supporting that have a right to know. Journalism
Speaker 7: has played a role in the way Americans perceive conflict
Speaker 7: for a very long time. Right, we can think about
Speaker 7: the Napalm Girl photo. Understand that photo now has disputed authorship.
Speaker 7: We can think about well to cronkite Vietnam War, think
Speaker 7: about I have a great hib There is no federal
Speaker 7: press shield law, though, and journalists have been held in
Speaker 7: contempt for refusing to reveal sources on that security issues before.
Speaker 7: This is a serious threat and it's one that I
Speaker 7: think everyone should take very seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Well, and it's a very important part of the of
Speaker 11: the last little section of the Newsroom TV show. There's
Speaker 11: a whole plot line about death and at shows. Yes, yes, yes, Gareth,
Speaker 11: they're sure is so I just thought that's worth mentioning.
Speaker 7: You guys have told me not to watch Size. It'll
Speaker 7: make me angry, and I've respected that that.
Speaker 2: You should not James Will, you will lose your mind.
Speaker 2: It's not good for you.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of stuffs making me angry right now.
Speaker 7: So I'm going to give that one.
Speaker 2: Too much sork In at the moment is very quickly
Speaker 2: becomes toxic.
Speaker 7: Too much. Sorkin has really fucked up a lot of
Speaker 7: people in this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of things that will really fuck you up,
Speaker 2: are beautiful tariff music, right.
Speaker 8: Locking, locking.
Speaker 2: Lockingspot Ah, So glad that we're back to talking about tariffs.
Speaker 3: So okay, if we have a couple of a wrong
Speaker 3: related tariff things, Garrett, are we playing the nightmare clip?
Speaker 11: We have to play the nightmare clip.
Speaker 3: We're playing the nightmare clip? Okay, this is okay. When
Speaker 3: when inevitably, in the course of humanity they have to
Speaker 3: make a museum to explain to people what capitalism was,
Speaker 3: this is what they are going to show.
Speaker 11: This is a clip from the quote unquote news agency CNBC.
Speaker 14: Deadline that President Trump has sat a PM has threatened
Speaker 14: to destroy a civilization.
Speaker 7: How how does how does an investor process that?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 6: Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk?
Speaker 2: Big upside risk, onside risk to genocide?
Speaker 7: She kind of looks up and then just goes right in.
Speaker 3: Like when when they have to like explain to people, right,
Speaker 3: like how how eight billion people were like consumed into
Speaker 3: these like roles that they were forced to inhabit by
Speaker 3: the machinations of capital. This is gonna be the one.
Speaker 11: Oh god, it turns out, uh, the markets responded very
Speaker 11: positively to Trump's threats to destroy a civilization.
Speaker 3: It's I, you know, what if what if we didn't
Speaker 3: have market? What if what if there wasn't a line?
Speaker 3: I oh god, okay, so speaking of bad things, I
Speaker 3: guess so. On Wednesday, Trump posted on truth Social quote
Speaker 3: a country capital CE country supplying capital M military weapons
Speaker 3: to Iran will be in immediately tarriffed on any and
Speaker 3: all goods sold to the United States of America fifty
Speaker 3: percent effective immediately. There will be no exclusions or exemptions.
Speaker 3: So can he do this? Yes? Key nined Listeners may
Speaker 3: remember that the legal authority he was claiming to have
Speaker 3: to do this the Supreme Court made go away, So
Speaker 3: can you do this? Look okay. The way he's describing
Speaker 3: this right sounds like he's using trade authority. It may
Speaker 3: be that buried somewhere deep in the annals of like
Speaker 3: sanction policy or some shit. Maybe there's something I went
Speaker 3: through all of the trade authority that I know of
Speaker 3: to try to find any legal authority for this. The
Speaker 3: short version is there isn't. The long version is okay,
Speaker 3: So I guess in theory, maybe if you squint right,
Speaker 3: you could use Session three oh one of the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy four Trade Act, but that's supposed to be a
Speaker 3: national security risk from unfair trade practices. So it could
Speaker 3: technically work. But the thing is you also have to
Speaker 3: that specific one. We've talked about this on the show before.
Speaker 3: You have to like set up a commission and do
Speaker 3: a trade study, and there's like all the stuff, so
Speaker 3: it can't work immediately.
Speaker 11: No, and Trump doesn't seem like a big set up
Speaker 11: a commission guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, thing is that they actually have done
Speaker 3: this for China already. But I don't know if you
Speaker 3: squint like really hard, like like if you like really
Speaker 3: really squint at like section two thirty two, like maybe
Speaker 3: in theory, like but like no, like if you're really
Speaker 3: willing to believe that, like the president has the ability
Speaker 3: to be like this is what the law says, then
Speaker 3: maybe the only way I can see this working is
Speaker 3: if he invokes section three thirty eight, which is the
Speaker 3: this is like the remaining part of the Smoot Holly tariffs.
Speaker 7: Now fantasy good sme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like, okay, there is a small chance that,
Speaker 3: like you, the listeners may have heard of the Smoot
Speaker 3: Holly tariffs, and that's because it's the one that made
Speaker 3: the Great Depression worse. Yep, and no one's ever used
Speaker 3: them since it's not even clear if they're on the
Speaker 3: books anymore, because like this is a legitimate thing of
Speaker 3: academic discussions like whether these are even still in effect
Speaker 3: because they haven't been used, they're technically still there, but
Speaker 3: also no one has like ever used them. And also
Speaker 3: there's been like subsequent laws regulating trade. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: there's no way he can do this legally that wouldn't
Speaker 3: immediately fall apart. It wouldn't fall apart eventually to a
Speaker 3: court challenge except maybe the like Smoot Holly like nuclear
Speaker 3: bomb desperation thing. I don't know. It's very unclear to
Speaker 3: me whether any of this is ever even going to
Speaker 3: be attempted to be implemented. He shouldn't be able to
Speaker 3: do this. It's just calvin ball bullshit. But who knows?
Speaker 7: It would be China era pajamas what he's going for there?
Speaker 7: Right in China's so weapons to Ryan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like there's also a lot of speculation, like
Speaker 3: I think Reuters reported this that this might be a
Speaker 3: thing because there's going to be a trade summit with Beijing,
Speaker 3: but if you're a trade person in Beijing, you also
Speaker 3: know that he can't do this, so it's not real leverage.
Speaker 3: I don't know, nightmare. Let's talk about some relatively fun
Speaker 3: I guess news back at home.
Speaker 11: Interesting certainly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of the things that happened this week
Speaker 3: was there was a series of elections and the result
Speaker 3: of those elections was the Republicans got absolutely hammered, like
Speaker 3: all up and down the ballot in Wisconsin. They did.
Speaker 3: They performed terribly in Georgia. So the big Democratic win
Speaker 3: was in Wisconsin. So polls had Chris Taylor, who was
Speaker 3: the Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, up by
Speaker 3: about seven or eight percent. Chris Taylor won this election
Speaker 3: by twenty oh wow. Yeah. There was also a full
Speaker 3: sweep of the whole like Moms for Liberty school board
Speaker 3: slates in a bunch of elections in very conservative Wakeisha County.
Speaker 3: The specific one where every single one of them lost
Speaker 3: and they've fully cleared out all of the monster liberty
Speaker 3: people was a very specifical one that was famous for
Speaker 3: doing a whole bunch of these right wing book bands
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and they're they're all gone. And
Speaker 3: this is this is, you know, a continuation of a
Speaker 3: trend that we've seen over the past couple of years
Speaker 3: really were like year year and a half where all
Speaker 3: of these weird monster liberty widers just get clobbered. Now,
Speaker 3: also in that same county, in the actual like mayoral
Speaker 3: election of Wakisha, like the city of Waksha, the Democrats
Speaker 3: won that election, which they haven't done in ages.
Speaker 11: Yeah, this is like one of their biggest Republican like
Speaker 11: stronghold victories, and like they will always win this seat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and this is something that like everyone
Speaker 3: from wast also we're talking about, which is if they
Speaker 3: can't win here, they can't win Wisconsin at all. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's there's no way, right. And again, like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get into this more in a second, but
Speaker 3: like the Democrats were projected to win this seat and
Speaker 3: this is obviously a by election, and this this is
Speaker 3: this the Supreme Court seat that they won is like
Speaker 3: them getting to five two. So it wasn't like the
Speaker 3: majority seat in the way that the last one of
Speaker 3: these elections were. But they were projected to win by
Speaker 3: like seven and they won by twenty. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's big.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 3: Which is astonishing part.
Speaker 2: Of Again you mentioned the a bunch of these, like
Speaker 2: school board elections in Wisconsin. It's not just Wisconsin, I
Speaker 2: mean in a lot of the most conservative tarot to
Speaker 2: the most conservative counties in Texas. Over the last like year,
Speaker 2: basically every school district that was taken by the Moms
Speaker 2: for Liberty types has been completely like they have been
Speaker 2: completely thrown out. And that has been happening around the country.
Speaker 2: There's a lot that people are focusing on when looking
Speaker 2: at like why are numbers so fucking dogshit for Republicans
Speaker 2: White night right now? Why are they getting beaten by
Speaker 2: such wide margins? And it's certainly way more than one
Speaker 2: thing is responsible. But I think something that has not
Speaker 2: gotten enough attention that has been dooming them Republicans electorally
Speaker 2: is that they got what they wanted in the branch
Speaker 2: of the chunk of our government. That is hardest to
Speaker 2: ignore for the average American, which is like what's happening
Speaker 2: to their kids in schools, And a bunch of regular
Speaker 2: people who were not all that political saw that, like
Speaker 2: my kid can't like check books out any the fuck
Speaker 2: is happening here?
Speaker 3: And they went crazy.
Speaker 2: They not crazy, They got really pissed off, rightfully, so,
Speaker 2: and I think this is going My hope is that
Speaker 2: this turns out to be one of their worst strategic
Speaker 2: missteps in this period of time, is their belief that
Speaker 2: we can just go fucking ape shit on schools and
Speaker 2: no one will care.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and this brings me back to something I've
Speaker 3: been talking about for a while, which is that, so, like,
Speaker 3: what of the other results that we're sort of looking
Speaker 3: at here. So, there was an election in Georgia in
Speaker 3: this like as a Stev's special election for the seat
Speaker 3: that was Mergory Taylor Green's old district. This is like
Speaker 3: one of the most unhinged Republican districts in the entire country.
Speaker 3: Trump won it by forty and the Republican Clay Fuller,
Speaker 3: did win, but he only he won by twelve points
Speaker 3: in a county that Trump carried by forty. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's like it's like it's like a twenty eight point shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's it's unbelievable. Now, obviously they didn't win here,
Speaker 3: but there's been a lot of stuff about how, okay,
Speaker 3: well this is just because democrats. Democrats do better among
Speaker 3: high information voters. Those are the people who vote in
Speaker 3: these off cycle elections that aren't during the normal election cycle.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. There's a lot of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: That's a kind of stuff that puts you ahead, as
Speaker 3: as the polls were showing in Wisconsin, that puts you
Speaker 3: ahead by like seven That does not explain a thirteen
Speaker 3: percent over performance. Yeah, yeah, right. And I think what
Speaker 3: is happening here is something I've said consistently, and this
Speaker 3: is something that I think Robert is sort of explaining
Speaker 3: why this is happening, is that polars are still using
Speaker 3: they're still using as as their basis for what they
Speaker 3: assume the electure is going to be. They're using the
Speaker 3: data from the electorate from the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 3: because that's that's the standard practice, right, you use as
Speaker 3: a sample, you know, and you make some like adjustments
Speaker 3: because it's a by election and stuff like that. But
Speaker 3: like they're using as as a sample base of voters
Speaker 3: the people from twenty twenty four, and that electorate does
Speaker 3: not exist anymore because it's been completely destroyed. Right, all
Speaker 3: of these people have suddenly been mobilized, Like the whole
Speaker 3: city of Minneapolis has been like turned into this like weird.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean that's not negative. It's like
Speaker 3: there's like Minneapolis has had a level of mobilization that
Speaker 3: is like possibly has never been seen before in US history.
Speaker 3: All of these like people who had been you know,
Speaker 3: just like not political at all. And this is the
Speaker 3: other thing with like the school board election, is that
Speaker 3: these are mostly people who were not political people at all,
Speaker 3: who just swept in because they like their school's got
Speaker 3: fucked with. The entire electorate has changed.
Speaker 11: It's just there's like a deep fluidity here. Right, There's
Speaker 11: a lot of people who supported Trump because of economic
Speaker 11: conditions which were blamed on the Democrats, and they moved
Speaker 11: for Trump, and there was a lot of these same
Speaker 11: people are not like Trump or Republican loyalists. They're they're
Speaker 11: reacting to the economic conditions and the messaging from each party.
Speaker 11: And this is reflected in you know, the number of
Speaker 11: Trump's Zorn voters, even the number of people who vote
Speaker 11: Trump and AOC in New York.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: Yeah, they're not like mega loyalists, right, But but it's
Speaker 11: showing how there is a big fluidity among among the
Speaker 11: types of people that do decide elections.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then there's all. There's also and this is
Speaker 3: I think the the other side of this too, right,
Speaker 3: is that there's once people who haven't voted, just didn't
Speaker 3: give a shit at all, and those people are suddenly
Speaker 3: being mobilized, and this is turning into like the Democrats
Speaker 3: are like winning a whole bunch of like rural counties
Speaker 3: in these elections. Right, yeah, yeah, And now I think
Speaker 3: the last thing I want to talk about in sort
Speaker 3: of this kind of section of everybody hates the Republicans
Speaker 3: is that the issues in Insights CPP survey for April
Speaker 3: shows Trump with a thirty nine percent approval rating. This poll,
Speaker 3: which is done a bunch of times every year, they
Speaker 3: give they give like a bunch of topics where they
Speaker 3: give a through F rankings from like immigration, to the
Speaker 3: economy to like the wars in Iran Ukraine and like
Speaker 3: a plarality of the votes were an F on every single.
Speaker 11: One, even immigration.
Speaker 3: Immigration was the one that was kind of close, okay,
Speaker 3: between that and like a every single other one was
Speaker 3: down double digits. Okay. If you look at like CDF
Speaker 3: versus like AB or if you like ignore c right,
Speaker 3: it's so much more in the category of like d's
Speaker 3: and f's.
Speaker 11: On the negative side in general.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, like this is for every single issue. I'm
Speaker 7: guessing it's kind of a binary distribution, right, like a
Speaker 7: lot of a's or a lot of f's and not much.
Speaker 3: There's actually a surprising number of b's, but that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like a decent number of d's. But yeah, it
Speaker 3: was like mostly f's and then everything else is kind
Speaker 3: of spread up between other ones. I mean, all of
Speaker 3: this is before the like I'm a civil stationable die tonight.
Speaker 11: Stuff, which which did cause negative reactions from people in
Speaker 11: the in the conservative base. Yeah, and people voting in
Speaker 11: Georgia and and Wisconsin. I want to play this clip here.
Speaker 11: This was a clip from from from Georgia of a
Speaker 11: Georgia voter who was interviewed on election day.
Speaker 10: It's giving war crime. You can't do that. We don't
Speaker 10: just annihilate people because we can and you know, make
Speaker 10: a grab for the money and the old and that's
Speaker 10: what we've done in Venezuela, and that's what we're doing
Speaker 10: in Orion.
Speaker 2: It's giving war crime.
Speaker 11: It's giving war crime.
Speaker 2: I need to take it.
Speaker 11: This is this is it's beautiful positive.
Speaker 7: Yes, that's message and the Democrats to come up with
Speaker 7: on this.
Speaker 11: This is this is like a well then in her
Speaker 11: thirties or forties holding holding a kid at nine. This
Speaker 11: broadcast was at nine thirty three am in Rome, Georgia,
Speaker 11: on election day. Yep, it is it's giving war crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, if you look at that, like
Speaker 3: the yug of Economist poll, which is from like April first,
Speaker 3: but like even at April first, he had just an
Speaker 3: atrocious thirty five percent approval rating, which is that's like
Speaker 3: that's like end of the Bush administration shit. All of this.
Speaker 3: The important part of this is that like the Democrats
Speaker 3: are still really historically unpopular right now because everyone's piss
Speaker 3: at them for not doing anything, but the actual mass
Speaker 3: of people in this country fucking hate all of this.
Speaker 3: They're pissed off at everything that is happening. Everything you
Speaker 3: ask about that Trump is doing they are fucking angry about.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is this is this is the
Speaker 3: kind of anger and the kind of just generalized rays
Speaker 3: that I think there's no really good way to measure
Speaker 3: outside of the tools that we've developed for elections, or
Speaker 3: in terms of just like you know, sometimes you get
Speaker 3: treatments like this anger like is the defining thing of
Speaker 3: the United States right now. So everybody's hissed the fuck
Speaker 3: off about this, and yeah, and every opportunity they get
Speaker 3: to express that this shit fucking sucks, they do. This
Speaker 3: is what American politics is, even as everything is unbelievably
Speaker 3: hideously bleak from all of the shit that people are doing.
Speaker 11: Speaking of people who are pissed off, there's one final
Speaker 11: story that I'll go through pretty quick before we close
Speaker 11: this episode. Last Wednesday, to celebrate April Fool's Day, Trump
Speaker 11: fired Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Trump told Bondi about
Speaker 11: his plan to fire her while in the car together
Speaker 11: to watch the Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship.
Speaker 2: Why Jesus, there's video of it. There's video of it.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, like credit to Fox, but they got a
Speaker 2: shot of them in the limo and Trump is clearly
Speaker 2: telling her, and it's when we know he was telling her.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing little artifact. All you can make out
Speaker 2: is their faces kind of and their body language. But
Speaker 2: it rips it's so funny.
Speaker 11: Bondi tried to convince Trump to let her stay on
Speaker 11: till at least summer, but to no avail. Trump appointed
Speaker 11: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to serve as acting Attorney
Speaker 11: General until the President nominates a full replacement. On Tuesday,
Speaker 11: Blanche said, quote nobody has any idea unquote why Bondi
Speaker 11: was fired except for President Trump. Those sources close to
Speaker 11: the White House have told multiple outlets that Trump had
Speaker 11: a growing frustration with Bondi for a while, especially related
Speaker 11: to her failure to successfully prosecute certain political enemies and
Speaker 11: the fallout from her handling of the Epstein files. Environmental
Speaker 11: Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zelden has been floated as a
Speaker 11: prospective replacement for Attorney General. At the EPA, Zelden has
Speaker 11: led efforts to roll back environmental regulations and climate protections
Speaker 11: related to in endangered species, wetlands, and emissions before working
Speaker 11: in the second Trump administration. Zelden lost the race for
Speaker 11: New York governor to Kathy Hochel by seven percentage points,
Speaker 11: a relatively close race for New York. Zelden is a
Speaker 11: Trump loyalist, fought against the presidents to impeachments while in
Speaker 11: Congress and refused to certify the twenty twenty election results.
Speaker 11: Great Zelden's a retired US Army lieutenant colonel who served
Speaker 11: four years in active duty as a military intelligence officer,
Speaker 11: federal prosecutor, and military magistrate, and twousand and six was
Speaker 11: deployed with the eighty second Airborne Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Speaker 3: Wait, so he's a troop cop, military magistrate, troop judge.
Speaker 11: He's he's served in a few roles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's troop cop. Shit.
Speaker 11: He served as a prosecutor and a judge.
Speaker 7: They hated and reviled troop cop. He looks like maybe
Speaker 7: he at some point went to law school there, right.
Speaker 11: He went to law school in New York, either during
Speaker 11: that time or beforehand. It all kind of takes place
Speaker 11: around because I think he got out of law school
Speaker 11: around thousand and four. At at the time he was
Speaker 11: the youngest person to finish law school in New York.
Speaker 11: Oh wow, he was in his early twenty After he
Speaker 11: got out of the military or out of active duty,
Speaker 11: he briefly served as an attorney for the Port Authority
Speaker 11: of New York and New Jersey and also private practice
Speaker 11: for a little bit before he went into the State
Speaker 11: Senate and then eventually US Congress. Now before Bondie's firing,
Speaker 11: Pambondi was scheduled to testify in front of the House
Speaker 11: Oversight Committee about the Epstein files on April fourteenth. Now,
Speaker 11: Democrats on the committee still want her to testify, as
Speaker 11: she holds relevant knowledge, but on Wednesday morning, the Justice
Speaker 11: Department released a statement saying Bondi would not appear at
Speaker 11: the hearing on the fourteenth quote since she is no
Speaker 11: longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as
Speaker 11: attorney general unquote. This is a little bit untrue. She
Speaker 11: was not subpoenaed by her title as Attorney General. She
Speaker 11: was subpoenaed by name as Pam Bondi. Now Oversite Commitee
Speaker 11: Democrats have responded by saying if Bonnie does not comply
Speaker 11: with the bipartisan subpoena addressed to her by name, they
Speaker 11: will quote begin contempt charges unquote. Republican Nancy Mace has said,
Speaker 11: quote Pambondi cannot ass gape accountability simply because she no
Speaker 11: longer holds the office of Attorney General. Our motion to
Speaker 11: subpoena pan Bondy, which was passed by the overst Committee,
Speaker 11: was for a Bondi by name, not by title. She
Speaker 11: will still have to appear before the Oversight Committee for
Speaker 11: a sworn deposition. The American people deserve answers, and we
Speaker 11: expect her to appear as soon as a new date
Speaker 11: is set unquote. So it appears they will try to
Speaker 11: reschedule her for a new date. Bondie's firing is interesting
Speaker 11: in the context of Christy Nomes firing, as for the
Speaker 11: first year or so of Trump's second term, he really
Speaker 11: resisted making changes to his cabinet.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: These these sorts of frequent changes were a hallmark of
Speaker 11: first of his first term. Yeah, and for the start
Speaker 11: of his second he seemed to not want to do
Speaker 11: that and instead got like his ranks of loyalists that
Speaker 11: he was going to work with. But since Christi Nomes firing,
Speaker 11: that has clearly changed, and this is prompted speculation about
Speaker 11: who could be next, from people like Tulci Gabbard to
Speaker 11: Cash Bettel or Pete Haig Seth. Think Gabbard is is
Speaker 11: certainly certainly one of one of the people. If I
Speaker 11: was one of these three, I would I would be
Speaker 11: most nervous if I was Gabbard. Hotel's an odd is
Speaker 11: an odd character. I'm really am not sure what's in
Speaker 11: the future for him a podcast, and I think that
Speaker 11: what happens eventually in Iran will determine what goes on
Speaker 11: with HeiG Seth.
Speaker 7: There have been rumors that some of the reason that
Speaker 7: heg Seth has been sort of purging high command in
Speaker 7: the military is that he has concerned that those people
Speaker 7: would be his replacements, like alternates for him sec death. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: Ptel was under more heat. I feel like during following
Speaker 7: the shooting of Charlie kirk Great the assassination and that
Speaker 7: their failure to find the assassin for some time.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and his and his UH plane tickets and his
Speaker 11: trips with his girlfriends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the failure with Savannah Guthrie too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Trump Trump did not like that clip of him in
Speaker 11: the hockey locker room.
Speaker 7: H yeah, yeah. There have been quite a few. Now
Speaker 7: you mentioned them.
Speaker 11: Before we go, we should mention there's bill about a
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Speaker 11: All right, that doesn't for us here at it could
Speaker 11: Happen here.
Speaker 3: Put a transgirl on your couch.
Speaker 11: We reported the news.
Speaker 3: We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes. Everyone week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
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