Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Breaking Points. Crystal, I'm
Speaker 3: in for Sager, Thanks for.
Speaker 4: Having me always.
Speaker 2: Happy New Year, Emily, Happy New Year got off to
Speaker 2: a terrible bud event ful star to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: We had two violent incidents that the FBI is investigated.
Speaker 2: Are actually looking to see if there might be any
Speaker 2: link between the two. So far indications are no, but
Speaker 2: will break all of that down for you, both in
Speaker 2: New Orleans and also in Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: Trump did in.
Speaker 2: Publicly on New Year's Eve about the whole elon Musk
Speaker 2: h one b thing firmly signing with Elon Musk and
Speaker 2: indicating that actually, we need a lot more immigrants in
Speaker 2: the country. So a little bit different. Note that he's
Speaker 2: founding now versus when he was on the campaign trail,
Speaker 2: and certainly when he was on the trail back in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. We also have some drama
Speaker 2: in the Republican Caucus. Mike Johnson faces a speaker vote tomorrow,
Speaker 2: and he can only because the House Republican Caucus has
Speaker 2: such a narrow majority he can only lose one vote.
Speaker 4: He's already lost that vote.
Speaker 2: Thomas Massey said he's not voting for Mike Johnson, so
Speaker 2: if anyone else defects, he won't be able to get
Speaker 2: a majority. We'll be in another like negotiation. I'll Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 2: mag Gates, etc. So we'll see where all of that goes.
Speaker 2: They're also facing a hitting the debt ceiling very very shortly.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a look. Emily's gonna help me
Speaker 2: understand this. Blake Lively justin Baldoni thing. He's firing back
Speaker 2: both at Blake Lively and at The New York Times,
Speaker 2: suing the New York Times claiming that they're reporting was
Speaker 2: false and that they were cherry picking and actually altering
Speaker 2: communications that they use for their blockbuster report alleging that
Speaker 2: he had harassed her and also that he had retaliated
Speaker 2: against her. So like all of that down for you.
Speaker 2: The parents of the open AI whistleblower who was found dead.
Speaker 2: Authorities deem that as suicide. The parents don't buy it.
Speaker 2: They have hired a private investigator to look into exactly
Speaker 2: what happened there. So we'll bring you those details. And
Speaker 2: we also are going to have an American doctor from
Speaker 2: Texas join us who is just back from his second
Speaker 2: trip to Gaza. Obviously, we covered earlier this week the
Speaker 2: horrific latest raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning
Speaker 2: hospital in northern Gaza, has been destroyed. All the patients
Speaker 2: and medical staff forced to leave, some of them detained, etc.
Speaker 2: So he's going to tell us what he saw when
Speaker 2: he was in the Gaza strip before we jump into
Speaker 2: the latest that we know out of New Orleans and
Speaker 2: this horrific terror attack that occurred on New Year's Day.
Speaker 2: If you guys can help us out, help bring in
Speaker 2: the new year, help us be able to provide the
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Speaker 2: like and share our videos on YouTube. So with that,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and jump into the news.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's start in New Orleans Crystal, where the death
Speaker 3: hole has now risen to fifteen people from the horrific
Speaker 3: New Year's attack on Bourbon Street. Now you've all in
Speaker 3: the audience likely heard the basics of what happened. Obviously,
Speaker 3: a car we have some video of this we're going
Speaker 3: to show in just one moment, rammed into the packed
Speaker 3: crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans around three in
Speaker 3: the morning on New Year's Eve. But then really New
Speaker 3: Year's Day, people were still out in full force celebrating
Speaker 3: New Year's Eve. So it's clear that this attacker wanted
Speaker 3: to take out as many people as possible. Now, President
Speaker 3: Joe Biden late yesterday finally addressed the nation in some
Speaker 3: very crystal I was very strange. I mean, there's nothing
Speaker 3: strange really about the script, but certainly about the delivery.
Speaker 3: So let me go ahead right now and roll this
Speaker 3: video of Joe Biden addressing the nation from Camp David,
Speaker 3: which is where he was for the holiday. I'm going
Speaker 3: to get this on full screen so you can actually
Speaker 3: see his face up close. Here's Joe Biden from Camp
Speaker 3: David last night.
Speaker 5: Our hearts were the people of New Orleans after despicable
Speaker 5: attack that occurred in the early morning hours. To all
Speaker 5: the families of those who are killed, to all those
Speaker 5: are injured, to all the people of New Orleans. We're
Speaker 5: grieving today. I want you to know I a grieve
Speaker 5: with you. Our nation grieves with you. We're going to
Speaker 5: stand with you as you mourn and as you heal
Speaker 5: in the weeks to come. I want to thank our
Speaker 5: very first responders and law enforcement personnel who stopped the
Speaker 5: attacker in his tracks before he could kill or injured
Speaker 5: even more people. And I want to thank you to
Speaker 5: everyone at the Department of the Homeland Security, the Department
Speaker 5: of Justice, including the FBI, for working non stop to
Speaker 5: investigate this heinous act. The FBI is an investigation to
Speaker 5: determine what happened, why it happened, whether there was any
Speaker 5: continuing threat to public safety. Here's what we know so far.
Speaker 5: The FBI is reported to me. The killer was an
Speaker 5: American citizen born in Texas. He served in the United
Speaker 5: States Army in active duty for many years. He also
Speaker 5: served in the Army Reserve until a few years ago.
Speaker 5: The FBI also reported to me that mere hours before
Speaker 5: the attack, he posted videos on social media indicating that
Speaker 5: is inspired by ISIS, especially the desire to kill, the
Speaker 5: desire to kill. The ISIS flag was found in his vehicle,
Speaker 5: which he rented to conduct this attack. Possible explosives are
Speaker 5: found in the vehicle as well, and more explosive were
Speaker 5: found nearby. The situation is very fluid, and the investigation
Speaker 5: as a preliminary stage. And the fact is that right
Speaker 5: right now, excuse me, there you go, the law enforcement
Speaker 5: intelligence community continue to look for any connections, associations, are
Speaker 5: co conspirators.
Speaker 3: Well, Chris, I feel better.
Speaker 2: I mean like this is the least important part of
Speaker 2: this at this point, given the loss of life and
Speaker 2: et cetera. But it's unbelievable. This man is our president
Speaker 2: and that he thought still believes that he would have
Speaker 2: been able to be Donald Trump. But you know, clearly
Speaker 2: this was a horrific, intentional attack.
Speaker 4: We are learning.
Speaker 2: More about the suspect who was killed after you know,
Speaker 2: he fired at law enforcement, and law enforcement fire back
Speaker 2: and shot and killed him. But you know the ISIS piece,
Speaker 2: so an ISIS flag was found in his truck, and
Speaker 2: the president there indicates that, according to law enforcement, he
Speaker 2: had posted some video sympathizing with ISIS. The more we
Speaker 2: learn about this dude, the more it looks less like
Speaker 2: an instance of some sort of like you know, Islamic
Speaker 2: radicalization and more like some a dude who went through
Speaker 2: a divorce and lost his mind because apparently he had
Speaker 2: first threatened his own family and was thinking of killing them,
Speaker 2: and then decided got this ISIS inspiration idea instead and
Speaker 2: goes and murders a bunch of you know, innocent partygoers
Speaker 2: on celebrating the new year. So we can go ahead, Emily,
Speaker 2: I think you've got the TikTok video of this individual,
Speaker 2: born and raised in Texas, originally Christian, converted to Islam
Speaker 2: in the last number of years. According to his relatives
Speaker 2: and friends, had become sort of like increasingly devout and
Speaker 2: increasingly withdrawn. He'd gone through two divorces and had a
Speaker 2: very troubled relationship, in particular with I think the second
Speaker 2: wife it appears like, but this is a video of him.
Speaker 2: He was a professionally worked at Deloitte actually, and this
Speaker 2: is a video of him when he was going through
Speaker 2: a phase where he was launching trying to launch a
Speaker 2: real estate business. This in any cases, how he presented
Speaker 2: himself in the context of that business.
Speaker 6: So Ding Jabor, property manager with Blue Metal Properties and
Speaker 6: team lead at the Midas Group at Core Realty, I
Speaker 6: just want to say hello and let you know a
Speaker 6: little bit about me. So I'm born and raised in Beaumont,
Speaker 6: Texas and now live in Houston. And I've been here
Speaker 6: all my life, with the exception of traveling for the military,
Speaker 6: where I spent ten years as a human resources specialist
Speaker 6: and IT specialist, where I learned the meaning of great
Speaker 6: service and what it means to be responsive and take
Speaker 6: everything seriously, guiding eyes and crossing t's to make sure
Speaker 6: that things go off without a hitch. So I've taken
Speaker 6: those skills and applied them to my career as a
Speaker 6: real estate agent. Where I feel like it really sets
Speaker 6: me apart from other agents is my ability to be
Speaker 6: able to one.
Speaker 7: Be a negotiator.
Speaker 6: So not only do I brilliantly market your property to
Speaker 6: make sure it gets sold as quickly as possible or
Speaker 6: it gets leased as quickly as possible. But I'm also
Speaker 6: going to take every ounce of energy and putting it
Speaker 6: into negotiating for you and for your property to get
Speaker 6: the best deal.
Speaker 7: That you can possibly get for it.
Speaker 6: So once we get to the closing table, all the
Speaker 6: e's are going to be dotted, all the t's are
Speaker 6: going to be crossed. Everything's going to go off without
Speaker 6: a hitch. And that is my word that I'm given
Speaker 6: to you as your real estate agency.
Speaker 3: And Chris sol what I'm sharing right here is from
Speaker 3: the New York Times. They say a man they reported
Speaker 3: midday yesterday, man who know new shamsu Din Bahar Jabbars,
Speaker 3: tells us that Jabbar had converted to Islam and then
Speaker 3: began acting radically in recent months. As according to Mike Baker,
Speaker 3: the concerning behavior led to him having limited contact with
Speaker 3: his children. So certainly more reporting to that extent is coming.
Speaker 3: In no question about it. We're going to learn more.
Speaker 3: I just have to say. I mean as the lawn
Speaker 3: enforcement response Crystal transpired yesterday and the public eye started
Speaker 3: with a news conference in which the FBI said that
Speaker 3: they were not investigating an act of terrorism. We're going
Speaker 3: to get into some of this in just one moment.
Speaker 3: And then obviously they had covered up the ISIS flag,
Speaker 3: which is going to lead to a lot of questions
Speaker 3: for years to come, certainly. But then hours later, actually
Speaker 3: like moments later, pivoted to saying yes, they were investigating
Speaker 3: this as an act of terrorism, which all seemed to
Speaker 3: be adding up pretty quickly to the point where they
Speaker 3: should be able to confirm that. They then held a disastrous,
Speaker 3: disastrous midday press conference yesterday, and it wasn't just law enforcement,
Speaker 3: it was also Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, Senator
Speaker 3: John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana, involved in this press conference.
Speaker 2: It was honestly just bizarre. It was like bizarre, hardly combative,
Speaker 2: and for no reason at all.
Speaker 4: It was just weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was horrible. I honestly thought it was just
Speaker 3: a disgraceful display. They were combative with reporters. Kennedy told
Speaker 3: the boomer joke about like NBC being on the left
Speaker 3: and the right in the middle of the press conference.
Speaker 2: Right bodies were still really not the time when fifteen
Speaker 2: people are dead and many dozens more injured, and you're
Speaker 2: making like partisan, weird boomer jokes.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: Bodies were literally still on Bourbon Street at the time,
Speaker 3: which was another thing that they were confirming in that
Speaker 3: press conference. Is horrific. They did not want to answer questions.
Speaker 3: They all seem to be on completely different pages. They
Speaker 3: tried to end the press conference after delaying it for forever.
Speaker 3: They tried to end it like quickly into the questions
Speaker 3: a few questions in because they were threatening reporters, essentially
Speaker 3: saying like, you're not asking questions that we can answer,
Speaker 3: so we're just going to end it. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was outrageous how that happened. So let's take a look
Speaker 3: at some of the questions they were answering. One of
Speaker 3: the biggest questions that they've failed going into all of
Speaker 3: this is how did this happen? Was there not adequate security?
Speaker 3: New Orleans obviously was hosting the Sugar Bowl. There were
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of people in town for the Sugar Bowl.
Speaker 3: Supposed to be yesterday night, on New Year's Eve, they
Speaker 3: postponed it a day. That was an announcement from the
Speaker 3: press conference. We were just mentioning, but they're also hosting
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl and just plainly should be able to
Speaker 3: keep obviously people safe on Bourbon Street now on a
Speaker 3: New Year's celebration. Now, this is video, and it has
Speaker 3: some yellow boxes that you can follow of the car
Speaker 3: which was rented on the app turo. There's an electric vehicle.
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and watch follow those yellow boxes if
Speaker 3: you're watching this.
Speaker 4: Terrifying.
Speaker 3: So what we just saw there was the electric vehicle
Speaker 3: go around a squad car that we're now learning from
Speaker 3: authorities was there because they're working to get barricades, basically
Speaker 3: the types of barricades that you put up when you
Speaker 3: don't want traffic to come down a street and ram
Speaker 3: a street full of people. This is what they're saying.
Speaker 3: As of right now, they were using squad cars instead.
Speaker 3: But obviously you can drive around a squad car, and
Speaker 3: if you can get onto the sidewalk, then you haven't
Speaker 3: fully barricaded the street. Crystal. Their answers to this have
Speaker 3: been utterly unsatisfying thus far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently all they had up were just the
Speaker 2: little like orange gate barricades that you can easily barrel through.
Speaker 2: To your point, it seems like the most obvious thing
Speaker 2: in the world that if you're trying to block a
Speaker 2: street using a vehicle, which is a common practice. I've
Speaker 2: seen this in New York or I've seen this in
Speaker 2: DC where they're moving even some of the like you know,
Speaker 2: sanitation trucks to try to block off different areas, like
Speaker 2: you have to actually block off that area or else
Speaker 2: it doesn't serve much of a purpose. Also, the fact
Speaker 2: that he's able to just skirt right around it and
Speaker 2: there's not any you know, immediate reaction. Now I have
Speaker 2: seen video of local law enforcement, you know, immediately running
Speaker 2: into danger when they realized what was happening, and obviously
Speaker 2: they were able to neutralize the threat before it would
Speaker 2: caused even more loss of life. We should also mention
Speaker 2: in terms of the details here and part of what
Speaker 2: created this confusion around whether or not he was acting alone,
Speaker 2: confusion which I don't think has been completely resolved, although
Speaker 2: at this point it appears that the catch just showed
Speaker 2: up that he was acting completely alone. But there was
Speaker 2: uh an ied in addition to the firearms that he
Speaker 2: had in the truck, and then there was some indication
Speaker 2: that there might have been some other ied that was
Speaker 2: found around the city. So you know, there are some
Speaker 2: questions that still remain, but that you know, that's part
Speaker 2: of what's been confusing is initially they came out and said, oh,
Speaker 2: we're investigating these other individuals that we saw planting these
Speaker 2: devices around the city, and then had to come out
Speaker 2: and walk that no, no, no, Actually it turns out
Speaker 2: they weren't involved. So there was a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about the law enforcement response here.
Speaker 2: And we actually have a video of someone who was there,
Speaker 2: an eyewitness, who said that he was concerned from the
Speaker 2: jump about the seeming lack of security of this area
Speaker 2: that is, you know, obviously famous in terms of America.
Speaker 2: It's this cultural historical destination known for its you know, revelry.
Speaker 4: Obviously it's going.
Speaker 2: To be a hot spot on New Year's Eve, and
Speaker 2: the fact that security was so lax in and of
Speaker 2: itself raises massive questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go ahead and take a look at that
Speaker 3: video which is queued up right here. This is on CNN.
Speaker 3: We can go ahead and.
Speaker 8: The clip last Marti Gras.
Speaker 9: This happened to an extent, maybe not terrorism, but still
Speaker 9: people getting hit in mass population with the vehicles those
Speaker 9: barricades were not on period. They had the flimsy orange
Speaker 9: ones that you could just push over with your finger.
Speaker 8: We actually thought it was.
Speaker 9: Kind of odd because usually when you get to Bourbon
Speaker 9: Street you can turn your back to Canal and not
Speaker 9: worry about anything.
Speaker 8: You can just walk the street, especially.
Speaker 9: On New Year's and there was still vehicles to come
Speaker 9: in after eight pm.
Speaker 8: And then I mean the fact that they never raised them.
Speaker 9: That's how this guy was able to get down Bourbon
Speaker 9: Street so quickly and cause so much damage. Because there's
Speaker 9: other barricades past the Canal and Bourbon intersection. There's more
Speaker 9: like every two three blocks. So what was ten or
Speaker 9: fifteen dead and thirty one dude could have only been
Speaker 9: maybe five and fifteen. I mean, who can say, but
Speaker 9: it definitely would have been minimalized because this truck cannot
Speaker 9: go around those barricades. Everything in New Orleans in the
Speaker 9: French Quarter has about all the balconies have poll several steels,
Speaker 9: and there's there's.
Speaker 8: No going around anything. If that barricade's up, that's a wrap.
Speaker 8: That's your end.
Speaker 10: So just to be clear, you're saying that they were
Speaker 10: just flimsy, the flimsy orange barricades that weren't weren't up
Speaker 10: that they weren't the same barricades there as elsewhere.
Speaker 8: No, they were. The metal ones were absolutely not engaged.
Speaker 10: Well, And that struck you at the time, right, because
Speaker 10: there was that twenty seventeen incident with Marty Bras where
Speaker 10: a drunk driver or drove through. And so from what
Speaker 10: my understanding is, they increase security measures in that area
Speaker 10: because of what happened there. But what you're saying is
Speaker 10: that you didn't see the security that should have been
Speaker 10: there to protect the revelers.
Speaker 9: We were walking right across it, like as you walk
Speaker 9: down Bourbon, you cross like five of them, and then
Speaker 9: even when you turn off the side.
Speaker 8: Streets of Bourbon, there's more.
Speaker 9: Like there's the precautions are there and everything's implicated.
Speaker 8: You just have to use it.
Speaker 3: Now, just for a flavor of how the FBI's response
Speaker 3: changed over the course of the day, the Associated Press
Speaker 3: confirmed investigators have reviewed video of three men and a
Speaker 3: woman placing explosives in connection with the deadly car attacked
Speaker 3: in New Orleans French Quarter. The FBI does not believe
Speaker 3: the driver acted alone, so now there are three other suspects.
Speaker 3: This is in the middle of the day yesterday, there
Speaker 3: are three other suspects that are potentially being investigated as
Speaker 3: part of a terrorism cell and are loose ostensibly in
Speaker 3: the country, and the FBI then walks that back later
Speaker 3: in the day. So let's take a look at this
Speaker 3: report from CNN.
Speaker 8: Getting new information.
Speaker 9: You're getting some clarification from a law enforcement officials.
Speaker 8: What are you learning.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Well, for one of the things we have been
Speaker 11: focused on is the FBI certainly was looking at this
Speaker 11: surveillance video that at the time at least appeared to
Speaker 11: show that there were other people who may have been
Speaker 11: involved in placing devices in the French Quarter. Now we
Speaker 11: know that law enforcement now has determined that those people
Speaker 11: had nothing to do with this incident. At this point,
Speaker 11: it appears that those people seen on surveillance video did
Speaker 11: not have anything to do with replacing devices in the
Speaker 11: French Quarter, that this suspect was solely responsible, certainly for
Speaker 11: the attack, at least as we know it at this point.
Speaker 11: Now we should make clear that the FBI is still
Speaker 11: looking at possible associates. They're trying to see whether there's
Speaker 11: anybody who may have been involved in helping to create
Speaker 11: the devices, the IDs, whether those people, anybody who might
Speaker 11: have been involved in helping to plan the attack. But
Speaker 11: at this point, at least for the on the part
Speaker 11: of the surveillance video, they now believe that those people
Speaker 11: had absolutely nothing to do with this. At this actual
Speaker 11: attack that happened this morning, Well, all right, we're an
Speaker 11: information indeed.
Speaker 3: So Christal. It also appeared that reporters like Press actually
Speaker 3: got to the suspect's house in Houston before the FBI.
Speaker 3: That's so far we have yeah New York posts saying
Speaker 3: they were there before the FBI was there, before law
Speaker 3: enforcement was there. And just to go back briefly to
Speaker 3: the moment at the disastrous, insane press conference in the
Speaker 3: middle of the day yesterday when John Kennedy made his
Speaker 3: weird little joke, what he also did was basically box
Speaker 3: the FBI director out to get to the podium and
Speaker 3: make remarks. And the reason I think that's important is
Speaker 3: I can imagine if you're in Louisiana and your constituents
Speaker 3: are still lying on the ground on Bourbon, you are
Speaker 3: probably enormously frustrated with the FBI. It came out right
Speaker 3: away for some reasons, so that we weren't investigating it
Speaker 3: as terrorism. Then flipped immediately on it later in the
Speaker 3: day would do the same thing, like there's a level
Speaker 3: of incompetence that he may have been reacting there. Now
Speaker 3: that's we have no idea why he actually like boxed
Speaker 3: out the FBI director. But it was a horrible day
Speaker 3: for the FBI. Yes, there's absolutely no question about it.
Speaker 3: These things are incredibly difficult. Obviously, that's true. There's a
Speaker 3: few situation, thousands of people, there's lots of CCTV footage
Speaker 3: because it's Bourbon Street, there's lots of mobile phone video,
Speaker 3: obviously because it was New Year's Eve. That said, how
Speaker 3: you get from alerting the country to three possible terrorists
Speaker 3: being on the loose because you're seeing them plant IEDs
Speaker 3: and CCTV footage that you're confirming that to the press,
Speaker 3: and then hours later saying, oh, no, we don't think
Speaker 3: that they were planning IDs. That was stunning reversal after
Speaker 3: the other, stunning reversal and the terrorism question.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And the first thing that you know, even just as
Speaker 2: a you know, an analyst covering these things, is that
Speaker 2: the initial stories often change. Initial perception of what happened
Speaker 2: often changes. You would think the FBI would be the
Speaker 2: ones to you know, be most well aware of that.
Speaker 2: So to be leaking to journalists like, oh, I think
Speaker 2: it's this larger like isis terror cyle based on you know,
Speaker 2: a video that then they immediately go out and find out, Oh,
Speaker 2: now they were just you know, partygoers, like doing whatever
Speaker 2: they were doing.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 4: It's truly it's truly.
Speaker 2: Outrageous, and as I said before, I think they are.
Speaker 2: There are still some questions remaining about whether or not
Speaker 2: he acted alone, but at least according to NBC News,
Speaker 2: they said, the only indication that law enforcement had that
Speaker 2: he hadn't been the you know, the lone wolf here.
Speaker 4: Was that video.
Speaker 2: So if there is other evidence, you know, they hadn't
Speaker 2: uncovered it as of yet, that there were other people
Speaker 2: who were involved in this.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: The indications at least at this point are that you know,
Speaker 2: he lost his mind for whatever reason, decided to do
Speaker 2: some let me grab my ICEIS flag and do some
Speaker 2: you know, horrific attack on innocent people, and perpetrated this.
Speaker 2: Came up with this on his own, is what the
Speaker 2: indication is at this point. The other thing and this
Speaker 2: will help us transition into the other violent event. Yesterday
Speaker 2: on New Year's day. So there were a few things
Speaker 2: that surface level seemed to sort of connect.
Speaker 4: This attack with the this Vegas attacks.
Speaker 2: So you have someone who drove up in a cyber
Speaker 2: truck Tesla of course, manufacturer owned by Elon Musk manufacturer,
Speaker 2: the cyber truck outside of the Trump hotel and then
Speaker 2: detonates a bunch of explosives there, killing himself and injuring
Speaker 2: I think something like seven people who were nearby. So
Speaker 2: both vehicles were electric used in both attacks. Both attacks
Speaker 2: used vehicles, both rented from this same It's like a
Speaker 2: peer to peer rental car agency where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: you can personally say, hey, my car is available for
Speaker 2: you to rent. That's what this That's what this app
Speaker 2: effectively was. And then the other thing is they both
Speaker 2: are apparently former military. Now it doesn't appear thus far
Speaker 2: that there are actually any lengths these seem to be coincidences,
Speaker 2: but in any case, that's being investigated at this point.
Speaker 2: The fact that there were weirdly some surface level similarities
Speaker 2: between these two dispert attacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was as this was playing out yesterday,
Speaker 3: it was obviously you had the FBI saying there may
Speaker 3: have been multiple people involved, and then we start learning
Speaker 3: more about the cyber truck explosion outside of Trump Tower
Speaker 3: and Las Vegas, and it starts to look incredibly frightening,
Speaker 3: immediately frightening because it seems that there's like a chain
Speaker 3: reaction happening around the country potentially. And to your point, Crystal,
Speaker 3: we're going to learn a lot more about what radicalized
Speaker 3: this suspect, and that'll, I mean, that's an interesting and
Speaker 3: unanswered question right now is basically what the hell happened.
Speaker 3: This is somebody who was in the military, as you
Speaker 3: heard President Biden say just a few moments ago when
Speaker 3: we played the video from his Camp David press conference,
Speaker 3: somebody who was in the Army reserves until not that
Speaker 3: long ago, seemingly normal person who.
Speaker 4: Was working Malloy, born here, normal white collar job.
Speaker 3: I believe the suspect's parents were also born here. Not
Speaker 3: connected unless there are other suspects that we learn of,
Speaker 3: but not connected to any type of immigration. That was
Speaker 3: another thing that was playing out yesterday. The car itself
Speaker 3: had gone through Eagle Pass, Texas multiple times, that had
Speaker 3: he had rented on Tourow the app To your point,
Speaker 3: so there's so much more to the story. That we
Speaker 3: still don't know, but I do know one thing. A
Speaker 3: lot of people are not at this moment feeling probably
Speaker 3: very confident and what the FBI says as things transpire. Now,
Speaker 3: some breaking news. The FBI is set to brief Congress
Speaker 3: on Thursday, so there should be Congresses back in town,
Speaker 3: the new Congress in session. We're actually going to talk
Speaker 3: about how difficult that will be for Republicans in just
Speaker 3: a bit, because as they seek to turn the screws
Speaker 3: on the FBI and to get a new FBI director
Speaker 3: confirmed in the Senate, at least over on the House side,
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson has one vote margin. So a lot to
Speaker 3: come later this week, and a lot of questions that
Speaker 3: remain unanswered.
Speaker 2: All Right, So we've referred now a couple of times
Speaker 2: this other violent incident that occurred yesterday, which thankfully resulted
Speaker 2: in much lower loss of life than that vehicle attack
Speaker 2: down in New Orleans. But yesterday cyber truck pulled up
Speaker 2: outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas and then
Speaker 2: reportedly after sitting there for fifteen or twenty seconds, explodes.
Speaker 2: Now we have some video I can show you, so
Speaker 2: we'll ultimately the driver himself, who perpetrated what is being
Speaker 2: described as an intentional act. He's the only person who
Speaker 2: died in this attack. There were something like seven people
Speaker 2: who were standing nearby who were also injured, but thankfully
Speaker 2: again lower loss of life here. But in any case,
Speaker 2: let's take a look at this stunning video of what
Speaker 2: occurred here copy so you can actually see these like
Speaker 2: fireworks exploding. And sure enough, after the fact, when they
Speaker 2: got a look at the truck itself, you can see
Speaker 2: here them you know, carrying this tarp and revealing the
Speaker 2: contents of this truck. You can see these firework canisters,
Speaker 2: gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters, and they say large firework
Speaker 2: mortars in the back of this cyber truck that exploded.
Speaker 2: So Elon Musk got involved immediately and helped out law
Speaker 2: enforcement trying to you know, first unlock the car which
Speaker 2: had automatically locked, and then investigating to see, you know,
Speaker 2: was this some weird like Tesla problem where the vehicle
Speaker 2: just exploded out of nowhere and no, he says, we
Speaker 2: have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very
Speaker 2: large fireworks and or a bomb carried in the bed
Speaker 2: of the rented cyber truck and is unrelated to the
Speaker 2: vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time
Speaker 2: of the explosion, and as I just mentioned, Emily, you
Speaker 2: also had a law enforcement confirming that this was being
Speaker 2: investigated as an intentional act. And you know, obviously you
Speaker 2: could see the symbolism here. You've got the cyber truck,
Speaker 2: which is Elon Musk, who's obviously closely affiliated with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration. You got the Trump hotel, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: let's take a listen to a little bit of the
Speaker 2: reporting here.
Speaker 12: Let's talk about Las Vegas, because this has been a
Speaker 12: sort of interesting development.
Speaker 7: You know that the images of.
Speaker 12: The cyber truck parked outside the Las Vegas Trump property
Speaker 12: when viral, you know, sort of I think people thought
Speaker 12: it was an accident, and then it was heard and
Speaker 12: so there was a sort of bizarre symbolism and that
Speaker 12: it was a cyber truck, it was out Trump. As
Speaker 12: it's developed, it seems that this is being taken far
Speaker 12: more seriously. What do we learned about what authorities know
Speaker 12: and how they're investigating this.
Speaker 13: Right, Chris, So, according to the reporting of myself, my
Speaker 13: colleagues Andrew Blankstein and Kelly O'Donnell, right now, three senior
Speaker 13: US law enforcement officials say that this explosion of a
Speaker 13: Tesla cybertruck kind of in the portico there where you
Speaker 13: saw that smoke rising from in front of Trump's property
Speaker 13: in Las Vegas is being investigated in at least initially,
Speaker 13: is a potential act of terrorism, and that it was
Speaker 13: quote intentional.
Speaker 2: So there you go, another potential act of terrorism appears
Speaker 2: very much to be intentional when you're driving around with
Speaker 2: you know, a bunch of fireworks and yas canisters and
Speaker 2: other explosives would seem very much to indicate that this
Speaker 2: individual intended for this to happen. And I'll just give
Speaker 2: you the last couple pieces that we know here. As
Speaker 2: we mentioned before, you know, there are some surface level
Speaker 2: connections I don't want to say connections, but similarities is
Speaker 2: the better word, between this vehicle based attack and the
Speaker 2: other vehicle based attack in New Orleans. The most noteworthy
Speaker 2: of this was the fact that they both both vehicles
Speaker 2: were electric and both were rented through the rental car
Speaker 2: app Toro, where people can put up their own vehicles
Speaker 2: to rent out to the public. I don't know, perhaps
Speaker 2: that's just like they thought, both thought that this would
Speaker 2: be a way for the vehicles not to be tracked,
Speaker 2: or the easiest way to get the particular type of
Speaker 2: vehicle that they were looking to get. I don't know
Speaker 2: how easy it is to rent a cyber truck from
Speaker 2: a traditional rental agency. But in addition to them both
Speaker 2: using vehicles, both using these this rental car app they
Speaker 2: also both were former military. So this is who authority
Speaker 2: he said perpetrated this attack and ended up killing himself
Speaker 2: in this attack. Matthew Livelsberger, thirty seven, identified as the
Speaker 2: drive of the cyber truck that exploded in Vegas, listened
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn as an operations director and intelligence manager who
Speaker 2: apparently is former Green Beret. So at this point, that's
Speaker 2: about all we know about this particular attack in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: which killed the driver and injured a number of passers by.
Speaker 3: And both obviously used trucks as well. So those are
Speaker 3: I think more I mean, they're superficial to your point, Crystal,
Speaker 3: because they're all on the surface level, but they're pretty
Speaker 3: I think, interesting parallels. And it took a long time
Speaker 3: for people to talk about what was happening in the
Speaker 3: same breath yesterday. We didn't hear it from media and
Speaker 3: law enforcement, but it would seem to have been a
Speaker 3: fairly obvious question. Trump obviously was at mar A Lago.
Speaker 3: He was not at Las Vegas, so there's no threat
Speaker 3: to Trump himself. But I mean, just we may learn
Speaker 3: that they have apps nothing to do with each other.
Speaker 3: But the questions I think on the minds of a
Speaker 3: lot of the American people who now see two different
Speaker 3: things happening on two different coasts almost at the same time,
Speaker 3: or within hours of each other. I mean the I
Speaker 3: shouldn't say almost at the same time, but really within
Speaker 3: the twenty four hour span, really was within I think
Speaker 3: a twelve hour span roughly. That raises questions and the
Speaker 3: answer so far has been again entirely unsatisfying.
Speaker 2: So apparently law enforcement is investigating to see if there's
Speaker 2: any potential link between these two attacks. So far, they
Speaker 2: have not indicated that there are any other than these,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of surface level similarities. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: to your point when we were talking about the New
Speaker 2: Orleans attack, like there was a very scary period of
Speaker 2: time yesterday when law enforcement comes out and says, oh, well,
Speaker 2: there were actually this wasn't just this lone wolf and Orleans.
Speaker 2: We have video of these other accomplices who were still
Speaker 2: at large. And then that's at the same time that
Speaker 2: you're just starting to get these details that oh, the
Speaker 2: cyber truck didn't just randomly blow up, this was another
Speaker 2: intentional act potentially being investigated as terrorism. It certainly raised,
Speaker 2: you know, as there are there going to be a
Speaker 2: series of more attacks in the country. So far, there's,
Speaker 2: as I said, there's no indication the two were linked.
Speaker 2: It looks like two separate lone wolf psychos who decided,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason or whatever irrational reason their brain's concocted
Speaker 2: to try to hurt and kill innocent people who were
Speaker 2: just going about living their lives. But you know, that's
Speaker 2: still being still being investigated at this point to see
Speaker 2: if there's any potential connection here. But as best we
Speaker 2: can tell, you know, I think we have we have
Speaker 2: certainly more details about the attacker in New Orleans, and
Speaker 2: you know, looks like someone who was going about his
Speaker 2: life do and okay, and then hit a rough patch.
Speaker 2: She was also under financial distress, had this difficult divorce
Speaker 2: and appears to have just completely lost his mind and
Speaker 2: was thinking about killing his own family and then decides
Speaker 2: instead to kill a bunch of innocent, random civilians on
Speaker 2: you know, New Year's Day, early in the early mornings
Speaker 2: of New Year's Day. So welcome to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Not going so well, so so far?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, on that point, there was it was
Speaker 3: insane in like twenty four hours of New Year's where
Speaker 3: he had symbolically a little lightning strike hit the capital,
Speaker 3: hit the Washington Monument, and all of this happens like
Speaker 3: starts unfolding within like twelve hours of the New year.
Speaker 3: Not a great start, Crystal.
Speaker 4: But just even omen not yeah.
Speaker 3: Seriously, seriously, And just a last point on that former
Speaker 3: military I think is just cannot gloss over how important
Speaker 3: that is. And the time spin is enough that it
Speaker 3: potentially allows for thisman to have been the suspect in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas, to have been animated in some way. You know,
Speaker 3: we're likely dealing with somebody who had some level of
Speaker 3: mental illness but could have potentially been animated in one
Speaker 3: way or another by what happened in New Orleans. There's
Speaker 3: enough time that whatever the motivation was, maybe it's like
Speaker 3: something is a reaction in one way or another to
Speaker 3: what had happened in New Orleans. In the Las Vegas
Speaker 3: case as well. So a lot more to be, a
Speaker 3: lot more questions to be asked, and hopefully we'll get
Speaker 3: those answers sooner rather than later.
Speaker 2: So, guys, earlier this week we covered this whole in Bruglio.
Speaker 4: Is that how you say that word?
Speaker 2: I never know between Elon Musk and Vivek versus Laura
Speaker 2: Lumer and a bunch of other magatypes fundamentally of immigration,
Speaker 2: but specifically over H one B visas and quote unquote
Speaker 2: high skilled immigration. So at the time when we spoke
Speaker 2: to you last Trump had given some comments to The
Speaker 2: New York Post that we're I guess still a little
Speaker 2: bit cryptic, but he was like, I like H one
Speaker 2: B and in fact, I use many H one B
Speaker 2: visas on my own properties, which I don't even think
Speaker 2: is true. I think he means H two B visas.
Speaker 2: But in any case, seems very much like he was
Speaker 2: siding with Elon. However, I did see some of his
Speaker 2: supporters who are on the more like mega like anti
Speaker 2: immigrant right, who were kind of coping over this, saying
Speaker 2: until I hear from his mouth, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: believe anything, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Well he got asked about this.
Speaker 2: Trump did on New Year's Eve at his annual mar
Speaker 2: A Lago party and made it pretty clear where he
Speaker 2: stands on issue at this point.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen, change your mind.
Speaker 9: Changed.
Speaker 5: I've always felt we have the most confident people in
Speaker 5: our gunt.
Speaker 7: We need cooput in people.
Speaker 8: We each smart people coming in drug gun June.
Speaker 7: We need a lot of people coming in.
Speaker 14: We're gonna have jobs like we've never had before.
Speaker 2: But you choose, we need a lot of people coming
Speaker 2: in Emily. Now, I'm old enough to remember when at
Speaker 2: the r and C the crowd was holding mass deportation
Speaker 2: now signs. Jade Vance at the RNC gave a speech
Speaker 2: about how no longer would they let foreign workers come
Speaker 2: in and replace American workers. So, since getting Elon Musks
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty million dollars into his campaign, his
Speaker 2: tone does seem to have shifted a bit on this issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the mass deportations can theoretically exist alongside
Speaker 3: H one B visus, Like there's an ideological way that
Speaker 3: you can say we're deporting illegal immigrants and then we're
Speaker 3: going to bring in the best and the brightest. But
Speaker 3: that's not the position that Donald Trump has taken in
Speaker 3: the past, and it's not the position of people like
Speaker 3: Stephen Miller and people who are so hawkish on immigration
Speaker 3: that they believe in this is typically for cultural reasons
Speaker 3: and alongside labor reasons that they believe basically the country
Speaker 3: is full, is the way that they'll say it. We
Speaker 3: have to integrate people who are already here culturally and
Speaker 3: assimilar people who are already here culturally, and we cannot continue
Speaker 3: to import workers that are undermining American workers. So no immigration,
Speaker 3: full moratorium. Legal immigration has to be reduced dramatically, if
Speaker 3: not entirely curbed. You have to get rid of all
Speaker 3: of these visa programs. That is not something that can
Speaker 3: exist alongside H one B visa is without significant reform.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk you've probably seen this. Crystal has come out
Speaker 3: and said you, basically, we all believe that there should
Speaker 3: be reforms to H one BES, which is I think
Speaker 3: an easy thing to say. It's another question of what
Speaker 3: happens when people actually try to make those reforms and
Speaker 3: what they end up looking like, and who weighs in
Speaker 3: to potentially stop them if they are a threat to
Speaker 3: the way Silicon Valley does business, which this is important
Speaker 3: to their bottom line because they you can see just
Speaker 3: the reaction from people over the last both weeks how
Speaker 3: important it is to their bottom line.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a major issue for Silicon Valley. And
Speaker 2: you knew this back when Trump went on the All
Speaker 2: In podcast. And this is one of the things that
Speaker 2: he promised the tech bro crew, including you know, David
Speaker 2: Saxson and the rest of the gang there. This is
Speaker 2: like one of the things that he talked about and
Speaker 2: he promised, So for those of us who've been listening carefully,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a surprise that he had made this dramatic
Speaker 2: pivot from the way he had positioned himself back in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and twenty sixteen. You know, just to clarify
Speaker 2: again my position, I support more legal immigration, more pathways
Speaker 2: to citizenship high skilled and low skilled. But the problem
Speaker 2: with this program, and effectively with all guessworker programs, is
Speaker 2: it does create it that create this indentured servant class
Speaker 2: that is completely beholden to, you know, whatever, whether their
Speaker 2: corporate boss once in there, their immigration status depends on
Speaker 2: pleasing their corporate boss. They frequently are under paid. You know,
Speaker 2: they're also used as a tool to like, you know,
Speaker 2: bust unions, because if you've got this workforce there that is,
Speaker 2: you know, can only stay in the country so long
Speaker 2: as they keep the boss pleased, then they may not
Speaker 2: want to do something as adversarial as start a union,
Speaker 2: et cetera, join a union, et cetera. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: those programs are fundamentally exploited. It both for the workers
Speaker 2: themselves and also have a deliterious effect on the existing workforce.
Speaker 2: It's also worth really noting something that people been you know,
Speaker 2: pulling up and noting on Twitter. Tesla among other tech
Speaker 2: companies laid off thousands of American workers at the same
Speaker 2: time that they're claiming because you have to in order
Speaker 2: to you know, get one of these H one B
Speaker 2: visas that you can use for your company, you have
Speaker 2: to claim there's no American worker who can fill this role.
Speaker 2: And so at the same time they're claiming, oh, we
Speaker 2: can't get anyone to fill these positions, you're laying off
Speaker 2: thousands of American workers. So for Elon Musk, it's very
Speaker 2: clear what's going on here, you know, And for the
Speaker 2: rest of the tech oligarchs, it's very clear what's going on.
Speaker 2: They like having an exploitable, easily manipulated, lower paid workforce,
Speaker 2: and they consider that to be really important to them,
Speaker 2: and they're you know, capitalist bottom line. Just to show you,
Speaker 2: so to give you a little visual representation of Elon's influence,
Speaker 2: here can see him here, you know, vibing with little
Speaker 2: X on his shoulders, who is absolutely adorable. Starting with
Speaker 2: Trump at mar a Lago. There's a New York Times
Speaker 2: report that he just he's just staying at the cottage
Speaker 2: at mar Alago. I saw someone on Twitter. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, he's smart enough to realize Trump is very
Speaker 2: influenced by the last person he talked to, So he's
Speaker 2: just kind of post up and mar Alago and always
Speaker 2: be the last person who talks to Donald Trump. But
Speaker 2: even beyond that, I think this deal was already made
Speaker 2: back when Elon basically like rescued his campaign. And who
Speaker 2: knows if he would have want or not if Elon
Speaker 2: wasn't involved in his money, et cetera, et cetera. But
Speaker 2: certainly possible that that quarter of a billion dollars plus
Speaker 2: organizing efforts on the ground was determinative given how close
Speaker 2: a margin the race ends up ultimately being.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and that means there's a sort of debt
Speaker 3: of gratitude so to speak that you would imagine Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: oh was Elon Musk and in this case Crystal. There
Speaker 3: was some reporting several years ago it was a big
Speaker 3: controversy at the time that Disney had laid off American
Speaker 3: workers and actually had them training their replacements. Again, it
Speaker 3: was splashy at the time, but sort of faded from
Speaker 3: the headlines, as you can imagine. But what's important about that,
Speaker 3: in combination with something you just said, is that you
Speaker 3: have to say you can't hire Americans xy, like this
Speaker 3: is the most qualified person blah blah to get your
Speaker 3: h one B. That's already a protective measure intended to
Speaker 3: be in the law, and so when you come in
Speaker 3: and say I'm making reforms, this is going to be
Speaker 3: even more stringent. Value. If they stop protesting usually means
Speaker 3: they found a way around whatever the reform is. Usually
Speaker 3: means they feel comfortable that they can still continue to
Speaker 3: hire people with these ways that are like beneficial to
Speaker 3: their bottom lines and undercutting American workers. Because if you
Speaker 3: look at what happened with Disney, for example, it just
Speaker 3: raises this obvious point, which is if they can do it,
Speaker 3: why wouldn't they If they are about maximizing shareholder value,
Speaker 3: why would they not do that If they can do it,
Speaker 3: if they can get away with it. Obviously they don't
Speaker 3: want the negative media attention that was fairly disastrous for Disney,
Speaker 3: but now nobody even knows it really happened. So if
Speaker 3: they can do it, why wouldn't they, And that means
Speaker 3: they're always.
Speaker 2: As Trump's rationale too. I mean, he apparently has maybe
Speaker 2: a few, has applied for a few H one B visas,
Speaker 2: which are like the you know, knowledge workers. H two
Speaker 2: B is applies to hospitality and other seasonal work. So
Speaker 2: like hospitality, agriculture and things like that, he is long
Speaker 2: used at his properties many h to be visas. And
Speaker 2: so it's important for people to remember, in spite of
Speaker 2: the way Trump has brandoned himself, he ultimately you know,
Speaker 2: his class interest and ideological positioning are very much aligned
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk. So you know, for him to come
Speaker 2: out totally change his position and don't let him fool
Speaker 2: you like this is a change in position, no one
Speaker 2: should be surprised because he avails himself and benefits from
Speaker 2: this very same very exploitative system of visas which are
Speaker 2: tied to your employment, so if you piss off your employer,
Speaker 2: you get deported.
Speaker 4: That is a.
Speaker 2: Fundamentally exploitative relationship that you know, even lefties like me
Speaker 2: who think that immigrants are good for the country and
Speaker 2: want more pathways as citizenship, et cetera, like, this is
Speaker 2: a bad way to do immigration because it's bad for
Speaker 2: the person coming in and it's bad for the workers
Speaker 2: that you are undercutting with these lower wages and more
Speaker 2: exploitative labor practices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not as though there's no way to bring
Speaker 3: in the best talent in the world. I think that's
Speaker 3: entirely possible. But the way these laws are written, like
Speaker 3: you can pokem full of holes like Swiss cheese. If
Speaker 3: you have you know the resources, and you're a massive firm,
Speaker 3: multi billion dollar company or anything like that, you can
Speaker 3: you can find a way around all of these different
Speaker 3: things that might hurt mid size or smaller businesses who
Speaker 3: are trying to use the same practices. And that's why
Speaker 3: there's no like, yes, h one bv's is if you
Speaker 3: put Steven Miller in charge of them, that's a threat
Speaker 3: to Silicon Valley. But there's always a confidence in the
Speaker 3: industry that they're able to write these laws in a
Speaker 3: way that's still worse for them, even if there are
Speaker 3: restrictions or reforms or whatever. So that's why, you know,
Speaker 3: I take seriously the idea that the program should be
Speaker 3: reformed if it's espoused by or endorsed by people like
Speaker 3: Elon Musk. I think that's great, but incredibly incredibly suspicious
Speaker 3: that it would really happen in a way, a meaningful way.
Speaker 2: Let's take a look, just for the record, at a
Speaker 2: compilation of how Trump talked about this issue in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: how we talked about it in twenty twenty, and then
Speaker 2: we've already played for you what he just said, indicating quote,
Speaker 2: we need a lot of people coming in. Let's take
Speaker 2: a listen to this.
Speaker 13: Nobody knows the system better than me.
Speaker 8: I know the H one B, I know the H
Speaker 8: two B. Nobody knows it better than me.
Speaker 12: I know the H one B very well, and it's
Speaker 12: something that I frankly use and I shouldn't.
Speaker 7: Be allowed to use.
Speaker 8: We shouldn't have it very very bad for workers.
Speaker 15: As we speak, we're finalizing H one B regulation so
Speaker 15: that no American workers replaced.
Speaker 8: Ever, again, H one B should be used.
Speaker 13: For top highly paid talent.
Speaker 16: To create American jobs, not as an expensive labor program
Speaker 16: to destroy American jobs.
Speaker 2: So there you go, and then they just play the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four and he's not the only one. Emily,
Speaker 2: this is kind of funny. Who has really changed his
Speaker 2: tune with regards to this very specific topic. So Vivek Ramaswami,
Speaker 2: who on Monday, you probably recall, we covered he put
Speaker 2: out that tweet like attacking American culture as being mediocre
Speaker 2: and pushing great mediocrity because of our sitcoms that we
Speaker 2: watched in the nineties and hanging out at them all
Speaker 2: or whatever, all in order to back up Elon's position
Speaker 2: and now Trump's position on H one B visas back
Speaker 2: in October, not like years ago. I'm talking about literally
Speaker 2: this October twenty twenty four, he sounded.
Speaker 4: Very different on the topic. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 15: A lot of the people who have come here through
Speaker 15: the H one B system would tell you, as I would,
Speaker 15: that it is just a broken system.
Speaker 7: No matter who you're seeking to serve.
Speaker 15: For example, you want to talk about special interests in lobbying,
Speaker 15: this is direct Silicon Valley lobbying that said that if
Speaker 15: you get your H one bbs and you're hired by
Speaker 15: one company, you're effectively like a slave. You can't switch
Speaker 15: to a different company. That's not a free labor market.
Speaker 15: So there's so much that's broken and bureaucratized. Here's the
Speaker 15: next question about one visa system is why the heck
Speaker 15: do we do it on the basis of a lottery
Speaker 15: when you could actually just select the very best people.
Speaker 15: So there's a lot that's broken about the administrative state,
Speaker 15: the bureaucracy.
Speaker 8: My general approach is when something's.
Speaker 15: Broken in government, you can't really fix it when it's
Speaker 15: lasted that long. You need to shut it down, start
Speaker 15: with the blank slate, and rebuild from scratch. And that's
Speaker 15: just a stylistic point that I've applied to this issue
Speaker 15: as to any other.
Speaker 2: So that particular, that last part where it is like
Speaker 2: there's no reform, you just got to get rid of it,
Speaker 2: is particularly important because people had surfaced some of his
Speaker 2: comments before that were critical of H one B's and
Speaker 2: he's like, I didn't change my position. I've always been
Speaker 2: for reform. I'm still for reform. But this makes it
Speaker 2: pretty clear, like, no, you weren't just talking about reform,
Speaker 2: you were saying a broken system. You really can't fix it.
Speaker 2: You just got to you just got to get rid
Speaker 2: of it all together. And so you know, he really
Speaker 2: is kind of caught here also, I guess, deciding to
Speaker 2: kowtow to his fellow billionaire. He is also a billionaire,
Speaker 2: although I guess a lesser billionaire than Elon musk Ski's
Speaker 2: mill near single or double billionaire as opposed to whatever
Speaker 2: Elon musk has, but you know, ultimately allowing aligning here
Speaker 2: with his own class interests.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was a fairly detailed and substantive, well thought
Speaker 3: out argument against Ahwan BB's there's no way around it.
Speaker 3: And what sucks for the American worker is it also
Speaker 3: used to be something that a lot of people, even
Speaker 3: like higher profile people Bernie Sanders on the left, used
Speaker 3: to make a substantive and serious argument against as well.
Speaker 3: And it just it's so to your point about Silicon Valley,
Speaker 3: it's so valuable to them that we've seen those arguments
Speaker 3: just sort of melt away, and this idea that it
Speaker 3: could be reformed without as vivaid I actually basically agreed
Speaker 3: with what he said in the conversation that we just played,
Speaker 3: because when you start quote unquote reforming things, you end
Speaker 3: up with those holes like Swiss cheese being poked in
Speaker 3: by lobbyists and industry, which is a system that we
Speaker 3: have now, it's a system likely we would have under
Speaker 3: a seriously reformed version of H one B visus. So
Speaker 3: to see the change in rhetoric is just a it's
Speaker 3: a small sample of what America workers have been dealing
Speaker 3: with for decades from the political class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is quite remarkable. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I think I think when we talk to Row, I
Speaker 2: think he's got some good ideas, working bipartisan in a
Speaker 2: way to reform the program. But as long as immigration
Speaker 2: status is tied to job status, that's going to end
Speaker 2: up in you know, that's going to end up in exploitation.
Speaker 2: So if you're someone who wants to have more immigration,
Speaker 2: whether it's high skilled, low skilled, whatever, I really don't
Speaker 2: think doing it through these guest worker programs, which is
Speaker 2: something that you know, the left has long critiqued the
Speaker 2: guessworker approach to immigration because of these labor dynamics that
Speaker 2: it ultimately sets up. So, you know, the the last
Speaker 2: thing that I'll say here is even though Trump has
Speaker 2: weighed in question, is not necessarily completely closed. Steve Bannon
Speaker 2: has been very much on the warpath, specifically against Elon.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing is like Laura Lumer all
Speaker 2: these people like they never really go directly at Trump.
Speaker 2: It's always like whatever proxy on the issue, and Trump's
Speaker 2: just being misled. And of course we love Trump and
Speaker 2: he would never do anything wrong, but like let me
Speaker 2: sort of like do a round about critique of him.
Speaker 2: But in anyway, in any case, Steve Bannon going very
Speaker 2: aggressively still on this issue, really declaring war on it.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and listen to some of his latest
Speaker 2: comments here.
Speaker 16: I've said many times that Elon came, and Elon's money helped.
Speaker 7: Organize the grassroots of it.
Speaker 16: In his engineering mind, he saw what the problem was
Speaker 16: as we saw it, and he supported it, and for
Speaker 16: that he gets a place at the table.
Speaker 7: There's no doubt you should.
Speaker 16: It's a quarter of a billion dollars in June, not
Speaker 16: an entire cycle in five months. But that dinner with
Speaker 16: sex and that check from Elon came at Biden's you know,
Speaker 16: when Biden, you know, in the debate or right before
Speaker 16: the debate and Biden, you know, they kind of saw
Speaker 16: the numbers where this thing was heading. They're recent converts,
Speaker 16: and we love converts. Hell, I'm gonna I'm a Catholic.
Speaker 16: We used to be in the convert business. Not so
Speaker 16: much anymore. We can't keep what we got. But in
Speaker 16: the old days, you know, half the Saints are missionaries.
Speaker 16: We loving converts. But the converts sit in the back
Speaker 16: and study for years and years and years and make
Speaker 16: sure you understand the faith, and you understand the nuances
Speaker 16: of the faith, and understand how you can internalize the faith.
Speaker 16: Don't come up and go to the pulpit in your
Speaker 16: first week here and start lecturing people about the way
Speaker 16: things are going to be.
Speaker 7: If you're going to do.
Speaker 16: That, we're gonna get and we're gonna rip your face
Speaker 16: off because you can't beat us.
Speaker 7: We're not beatable.
Speaker 16: This army of the awakens not beatable because we're relentless
Speaker 16: and we will never surrender and we will never slow down.
Speaker 4: So there there you go.
Speaker 2: We'll ripe your face off. We're not beatable, never surrender,
Speaker 2: never viv back down. I don't know what do you
Speaker 2: think is going to happen with this because I sort
Speaker 2: of feel like, now that Trump has ad his piece,
Speaker 2: they are going to just like get in line. And
Speaker 2: I also find it creepy to compare the support for
Speaker 2: a politician or political movement to like, you know, religion,
Speaker 2: being a convert to your religion. I find that a
Speaker 2: little disquieting myself. But anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's interesting that it gets to this question,
Speaker 3: how sincere their conversion to continue that to the Church
Speaker 3: of MAGA actually was you know Bannon there. Bannon is
Speaker 3: not gullible, He's not you know, sort of a silly
Speaker 3: person like he obviously understands that their conversion, the sincerity
Speaker 3: of their conversion is very much in question. What part
Speaker 3: of MAGA do they actually agree with? And they agree
Speaker 3: with kind of the doge part of MAGA, but the
Speaker 3: doge part of MAGA, and that don't touch in title.
Speaker 3: That's part of MAGA. That everyone will have healthcare part
Speaker 3: of MAGA, which means different things obviously depending on where
Speaker 3: you catch Trump and the Republican Party in any given day.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump tried to come to the table with Nancy
Speaker 3: Pelosi on DACA in his first term, which is easily
Speaker 3: forgotten what MAGA means to Donald Trump and what MAGA
Speaker 3: means to Steve Bannon and Steve Bannon's many many followers
Speaker 3: and listeners and the grass roots of the Republican Party
Speaker 3: tea Party activists who have been around the county Republican
Speaker 3: Party headquarters across the country for years. It means something
Speaker 3: very different to Elon Musk and to Steve Bannon and
Speaker 3: to Donald Trump than it does to those people. Steve
Speaker 3: Bannon is more sort of has his finger more firmly
Speaker 3: on the pulse of what that looks like to the
Speaker 3: actual party faithful and grassroots. So the question, I think
Speaker 3: crystal is where the stacks on priorities. So if Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and Elon Musk continue to say we're plowing ahead
Speaker 3: with H one b's, maybe they do lift the cap.
Speaker 3: Which is what this all off was the AI Appointment
Speaker 3: putting out a tweet that said we should lift the cap,
Speaker 3: we should have unlimited. Basically, if they did something like that,
Speaker 3: It's one thing to just go along with the existing system.
Speaker 3: It's another thing entirely to say we're blowing up the system.
Speaker 3: There's no caps anymore. We're bringing over all of these
Speaker 3: people to compete with the American workforce. If they did that,
Speaker 3: Bannon's going to continue to absolutely raise Hell, and Bannon's
Speaker 3: followers will continue to absolutely raise Hell. And I don't
Speaker 3: think it goes away if they just sort of keep
Speaker 3: the system as it is. I mean, then I think
Speaker 3: everyone just kind of goes along for the ride. But
Speaker 3: the question is what level of priority it stacks up
Speaker 3: as and that'll depend on I think what we see
Speaker 3: right away.
Speaker 2: Well, because they are going to do some day one
Speaker 2: executive orders in the direction of quote unquote mass deportation,
Speaker 2: you know, how aggressively they move in that direction or
Speaker 2: not is a you know, still open question. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you've still got Steven Miller in there effectively, and what's
Speaker 2: his face, Tom Holman, who's really, you know, very aggressively
Speaker 2: immigration hawkish restrictionists, who is the immigration czar. So you
Speaker 2: still have some very hardline people who are going to
Speaker 2: put together a series of very hardline policies with regard
Speaker 2: to deportations. So yeah, I think that'll you know, satisfy
Speaker 2: the Steve Bannons of the world. And frankly, I think
Speaker 2: most Trump supporters have proven themselves to not be particularly ideological.
Speaker 2: It is more of a cult of personality than it
Speaker 2: is a consistent ideological movement, because if it wasn't, like,
Speaker 2: he's already betrayed the supposed tenants of trump Ism many times,
Speaker 2: like you said, trying to make a deal with Nancy
Speaker 2: Pelosi on Dhaka in the first administration, making his primary
Speaker 2: achievement in the first administration a giant Paul Ryan tax
Speaker 2: cut for the rich. And there was never any revolt
Speaker 2: among the magabase over any of these things outside of
Speaker 2: like some minor complaints, minor bickering, And I don't see
Speaker 2: that as being any different this time around. The last thing,
Speaker 2: and I'll say on this with regard to the billionaires,
Speaker 2: is there's the reason why these billionaires flit back and
Speaker 2: forth between the parties. It's not because they're having some
Speaker 2: like based awakening. It's because they're going wherever they think
Speaker 2: they can get the best deal for themselves, Where they
Speaker 2: think that they're very consistent ideology of like enriching themselves
Speaker 2: and being able to, you know, have the type of captive,
Speaker 2: exploitable workforce that they want to have. They're going to
Speaker 2: go to whichever party they think is most primed to
Speaker 2: deliver those results for them. Or wherever they think is
Speaker 2: most likely to win, whoever they think they can have
Speaker 2: the most influence with, etc. And so you know, that's
Speaker 2: that's what's going on here with Elon and David Zax
Speaker 2: and all these people who have you know, made some
Speaker 2: sort of a lot of the tech right that used
Speaker 2: to be in the Democratic Party, Mark Andresen being another
Speaker 2: example of that. It's not that they've had some sort
Speaker 2: of you know, ideological conversion, although they may talk about
Speaker 2: being anti woke or whatever, but mostly they just use
Speaker 2: that as a cloak, like Mark Andresen does for pushing
Speaker 2: through whatever their sort of bottom line capital interests are.
Speaker 2: And I'm referring specifically to you know, when he goes
Speaker 2: on with Joe Rogan attacks the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
Speaker 2: which has been decidedly a positive thing for American consumers
Speaker 2: and has delivered money back to them when they've been
Speaker 2: defrauded by companies. And he's had some portfolio companies that
Speaker 2: have come into their crosshairs before having scammy practices. He
Speaker 2: doesn't like the CFPB, but rather than directly talking about
Speaker 2: what it is he doesn't like about it, which is
Speaker 2: that it, you know, this regulatory body was negative for
Speaker 2: him and his portfolio companies and his self interests, and
Speaker 2: steady cloaks it in this like, oh it's it's woke,
Speaker 2: and they're canceling conservatives and their debanking conservatives, which is
Speaker 2: total and complete nonsense. So you know, these guys are
Speaker 2: wolves in sheep's clothing. They don't align with by and large.
Speaker 2: There may be some areas where they have overlap with
Speaker 2: your interests, but they're looking out for themselves, whether they're
Speaker 2: glomming onto the Democratic Party or the glombing onto the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. The bottom line for them will always be
Speaker 2: the bottom line.
Speaker 3: And Bannon for a while said this is one maybe
Speaker 3: a crass way of putting it, but basically would look
Speaker 3: at all of these tech guys who were coming into
Speaker 3: the MAGA movement and said, you're our useful idiots, right,
Speaker 3: We're using your money to undermine your interests. Because Bannon
Speaker 3: is a populist on the cultural and economic level, he's
Speaker 3: not just anti woke, he's like genuinely anti late stage
Speaker 3: Western capitalism, and he would look at them that way.
Speaker 3: What he sees happening, I think accurately, is that MAGA
Speaker 3: is becoming the useful idiot of the money class. And
Speaker 3: that's that is a serious threat to Trump's second term.
Speaker 3: If you're a Steep Bannon type of populist, or if
Speaker 3: you're just an average American who saw in Donald Trump's
Speaker 3: somebody that would be extend to helping hand to you know,
Speaker 3: your interests. So yeah, if you're bringing these people into
Speaker 3: your movement and you think they're your useful idiots, you
Speaker 3: can very easily become their useful idiots. Oh yeah at
Speaker 3: a moment on a whim. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Elon did not give a quarter of a billion dollars
Speaker 2: to get nothing out of this deal. He is the
Speaker 2: wealthiest man on the planet. He is extremely powerful, like
Speaker 2: he maybe he rivals Donald Trump in terms of his
Speaker 2: level of power. And I think to not see that
Speaker 2: from the jump is and was foolish, which is why
Speaker 2: when Elon was and Vivigue, we're given their like doage
Speaker 2: Commissioner and was like, oh, they just gave them this
Speaker 2: make work project and it's like pathetic and good job
Speaker 2: for just kind of like pushing them to the side.
Speaker 2: I was always very skeptical of that because no, you
Speaker 2: are giving them this whole government mandate. The Trump administration
Speaker 2: has thought through specific legal mechanisms that they can use
Speaker 2: to try to effectuate some of the desires of Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: This person has the ear of the President and is
Speaker 2: in a very powerful position.
Speaker 3: And doesn't have to give up any of his business
Speaker 3: is in order to have advisory capacity.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, Whereas if he was directly in government, he
Speaker 2: would have to abide by these specific conflict of interest
Speaker 2: rules that any federal government appointee or employee has to
Speaker 2: deal with. So since he stays on the outside, he
Speaker 2: gets to keep all this stuff, but that does not
Speaker 2: mean that his power is ultimately diminished. And that's what
Speaker 2: really like outside the specific of H one bs and
Speaker 2: H two b's and all of the like, you know,
Speaker 2: the policy wonkery here, that's the meat of why this
Speaker 2: story is so important is because you have your first
Speaker 2: very clear ideological difference between the Steve Bann and Stephen Miller,
Speaker 2: you know, Laura Lumer and culture that wing of the
Speaker 2: party and the Elon Musk billionaire capitalist wing in the party.
Speaker 2: And Elon won and it wasn't close. Trump sided with
Speaker 2: him unequivocally. So if there was any question about how
Speaker 2: this was going to go, I think we got a
Speaker 2: pretty clear answer this time around, and there's no sign
Speaker 2: of you know, they're all this like, oh, maybe Elon's
Speaker 2: gonna overstep and Trump's not gonna like it, and blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. There's no sign of that. They seem to
Speaker 2: be getting along famously, fabulously. I'm not sure Trump really
Speaker 2: cares that much about what happens in this administration. He's
Speaker 2: staying out of jail. He doesn't have to run for
Speaker 2: reelection again. He can do what he wants to do.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have to care what Maga thinks of him
Speaker 2: or Steve Bannon thinks of him, ultimately, because he doesn't
Speaker 2: have to get re elected, and he rightly calculates that
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, they're all just gonna
Speaker 2: probably go along with what he does anyway. So I
Speaker 2: think that's, you know, it's a preview very much of
Speaker 2: things to come.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it would have been interesting actually to see if
Speaker 3: Donald Trump had disagreed with Musk on H one b's
Speaker 3: how Musk would have reacted to that. So, yeah, it
Speaker 3: is a lot on your line.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and move on to this
Speaker 2: other Republican intra party fight.
Speaker 3: Congress is returning to Washington, DC with an incredibly razor
Speaker 3: then margin for Republicans as they enter. I'll go ahead
Speaker 3: and share this first element. This is a story from
Speaker 3: Axios about basically what Mike Johnson has as he returns,
Speaker 3: which is a one vote margin. So just a little
Speaker 3: bit of context here, Axios writes House GOP hardliners continued
Speaker 3: hesitance to coalesce around Johnson suggests that President Like Trump's
Speaker 3: endorsement of the incumbent speaker has had little effect so far.
Speaker 3: Now this is a quote from Ralph Norman to Axios.
Speaker 3: He says, a quote growing number of members want at
Speaker 3: minimum assurances from Johnson on meaningful cuts to spending before
Speaker 3: they vote to re elect him. Now I'm going to
Speaker 3: share a second story. This is Donald Trump backing Mike
Speaker 3: Johnson for House Speaker endorsement. As speaker. He said that
Speaker 3: on Monday on Truth socially referred to Mike Johnson enthusiastically
Speaker 3: actually as a quote good hard working religious man. He
Speaker 3: will do the right thing and we will continue to win,
Speaker 3: so said Donald Trump. Now this is interesting because there is,
Speaker 3: as Access reported, a movement among Freedom Caucus types or
Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus adjacent people like Thomas Massey also Chip Roy
Speaker 3: to block Mike Johnson from becoming speaker again. They're absolutely
Speaker 3: infuriated by how the omnibus negotiations transpired in late December,
Speaker 3: disgusted by it, said, we actually have the House of Representatives.
Speaker 3: You are the speaker. You are a Republican. Donald Trump
Speaker 3: just won what they believe was a mandate, and you
Speaker 3: are still governing like the political class has like you,
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson stood up against before you were speaker, and
Speaker 3: we're basically heading into crystal. What I think is another
Speaker 3: Kevin McCarthy's cycle here, where Mike Johnson is basically the
Speaker 3: only option that they have, so they're pushing right now.
Speaker 3: They were sort of testing the waters that looked like,
Speaker 3: for example, chip Roy was testing the water to see
Speaker 3: if Jim Jordan was a plausible candidate that they could
Speaker 3: quickly see if Jim Jordan had enough momentum to just
Speaker 3: be voted as speaker. But what I think we're heading
Speaker 3: towards more likely is another series of concessions from Mike
Speaker 3: Johnson to people like Chip Roy. They got some significant concessions,
Speaker 3: significant enough that McCarthy was ousted last time around by
Speaker 3: his own concessions to Matt Gates. One of the things
Speaker 3: was something called the very art like parliamentary arcane thing
Speaker 3: called the motion to vacate, which was always around until
Speaker 3: Nancy Pelosi hilariously got rid of this, or she added
Speaker 3: a threshold and they got rid of that, which is
Speaker 3: how Matt Gates ultimately was able to oust Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 3: by bringing a vote on the speaker to the floor. So,
Speaker 3: you know, Mike Johnson might be in a position where
Speaker 3: he has to make some concessions that could ultimately be
Speaker 3: his undoing. But Republicans right now know in their conference
Speaker 3: that they don't really have anyone to rally around. That
Speaker 3: is a consensus point between the Centrists and the Freedom
Speaker 3: Caucus people when you have such a thin, thin, razor
Speaker 3: thin majority. As they head back to Washington, DC, so
Speaker 3: Mike Johnson has already technically lost the votes. Thomas Massey says, no,
Speaker 3: that's all he can afford to lose. It looks like
Speaker 3: Chip Roy is a no as of right now, but
Speaker 3: we'll see what happens. There's a lot going on behind
Speaker 3: the scenes with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got to get to eighteen unless people vote president.
Speaker 2: The math is a little bit confusing, for this, but
Speaker 2: it's not enough to get a plurality. You have to
Speaker 2: get a majority of the members of Congress in the House,
Speaker 2: which is why he can only afford to lose one.
Speaker 2: So Thomas Massey is a definite no. If you're saying
Speaker 2: Chip Roy is also likely to know, then that's it.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have the votes. Now does that mean that
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson is not going to be the speaker? No,
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson is ultimately, unless something crazy happens, which you
Speaker 2: never know, Mike Johnson is ultimately going to be the
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House, but not before going through what
Speaker 2: I'm sure will be a very painful and public exercise
Speaker 2: of like you know, having to go back and forth
Speaker 2: and figure out what sort of concessions he's willing to
Speaker 2: give and what Thomas Massey at EL are willing to accept.
Speaker 2: And they have some bargaining chips to work with here. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, Trump has to be certified as president.
Speaker 2: We all became intimately familiar with this electoral certification process
Speaker 2: January sixth, four years ago, and so it's got to
Speaker 2: be proved by the House. And if you don't have
Speaker 2: a speaker, you can't do anything. So they need to
Speaker 2: get a speaker in place in order to certify the
Speaker 2: election results and make Donald Trump President of the United States,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure as part of what motivated Trump to
Speaker 2: weigh in on this fight and to try to close
Speaker 2: the door to any potential challengers, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So there's that. The other thing is, you do have
Speaker 2: a debt ceiling constraint here. You're about to reach here
Speaker 2: in early January. So Janet Yellen came out and Emily's
Speaker 2: got this up on the screen here. As soon as
Speaker 2: January fourteenth, the country could hit the debt ceiling limit.
Speaker 2: So in a previous deal, the debt ceiling had just
Speaker 2: been like suspended. By the way, debt ceiling is a
Speaker 2: stupid archaic thing. No other country has it, but we
Speaker 2: have it. It's like ridiculous. But anyway, so like Donald Trump, Crystal,
Speaker 2: it's true. I agree with Donald Trump when he says
Speaker 2: things like that. Anyway, it was extend, it was suspended.
Speaker 2: So they just like got rid of it temporarily until
Speaker 2: January first, because they're getting some refunds back and whatever.
Speaker 2: They're going to have enough money to not hit the
Speaker 2: debt ceiling until roughly January fourteenth. Even that is not
Speaker 2: a hard limit, because then they can do what's called
Speaker 2: extraordinary measures, which means they move around the order of
Speaker 2: the payments, et cetera, et cetera, to extend what period
Speaker 2: of time they have. However, it's kind of like once
Speaker 2: you hit January fourteenth through the twenty third, somewhere in
Speaker 2: that range, then the top clock is really ticking and
Speaker 2: you really actually have to deal with this. People like
Speaker 2: Thomas Massey, they'll go out and chip Roy they'll say,
Speaker 2: like oftentimes they're just like, I'm not voting for a
Speaker 2: debt ceiling increased period, end of story. We need to
Speaker 2: cut spending. That's their ideology, that's what they believe. They're
Speaker 2: pretty consistent about it. So that's part of why they
Speaker 2: were so upset about the omnibus. Trump was upset about
Speaker 2: the omnibus because it didn't extend the debt ceiling, which
Speaker 2: creates immediate problems for him as his administration is coming
Speaker 2: in that he has to deal with. But in any case,
Speaker 2: that's one of the sort of like chips that they
Speaker 2: can play in terms of trying to extract whatever concessions
Speaker 2: they want ultimately out of Mike Johnson. Then you have
Speaker 2: to remember, like it's not just the House that we're
Speaker 2: talking about here.
Speaker 4: Any sort of you know, spending cuts, etc.
Speaker 2: Like that also has to go through the Senate, where
Speaker 2: as of right now, you also have to get a filibuster,
Speaker 2: you know, proof sixty votes, which requires a collaboration of Democrats.
Speaker 2: So again, Mike Johnson's going to be speaker. But it's
Speaker 2: just illustrates there's a lot of tricky issues that Republicans
Speaker 2: are going to have to be dealing with. Ye're in
Speaker 2: the coming days. This first speaker vote happens literally tomorrow,
Speaker 2: in the coming days and weeks as Trump takes office.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to your point, Krystal, this is all everything
Speaker 3: you just outlined. That's leverage. That was leverage that they
Speaker 3: understood they had with Kevin McCarthy, and it's a leverage
Speaker 3: that they know for sure they have now. So some
Speaker 3: of this is them saying, I actually can't take a
Speaker 3: vote for you, Like my constituents do not want me
Speaker 3: to vote for you. They don't want me to vote
Speaker 3: for the debt ceiling, Like I can't do it. So
Speaker 3: you need to give me something so that I can
Speaker 3: tell them. You need to give me reason to make
Speaker 3: this okay. And so that's the leverage they have behind
Speaker 3: closed doors, and actually, you know, out in the open
Speaker 3: right now, you're seeing some of this this happen. What
Speaker 3: they can get from it is going to be fascinating
Speaker 3: because Mike Johnson is almost the only option. But you know, obviously,
Speaker 3: if you're you're shopping around Jim Jordan, you can say
Speaker 3: I'm voting for Jim Jordan. There's nothing you can do
Speaker 3: about it. Democrats are definitely not going to help Mike
Speaker 3: Johnson this summer. I THINKI Kim Jeffries has already said
Speaker 3: something to that extent, So good luck, Mike. I'm probably
Speaker 3: gonna have to give up a whole lot.
Speaker 2: I have to say, as you know, as a lefty
Speaker 2: like I'm jealous of the way that you know, the
Speaker 2: Freedom Caucus and the way Thomas Massey and others recognize
Speaker 2: these this leverage that they have and recognize how to
Speaker 2: use it for their own ideological ends, even though those
Speaker 2: ideological ends are not my own. I respect the tactics,
Speaker 2: and I'm jealous that there isn't anyone on the Democratic
Speaker 2: side willing to employ those tactics either. And I think
Speaker 2: that you know, the like it's become very clear that
Speaker 2: the tactical posture of the squad and a Bernie to
Speaker 2: let me, you know, play nice with the Democrats and
Speaker 2: let me see if that's the way that I can
Speaker 2: effectuate the most political change like that really defanged them
Speaker 2: and made them just another sort of rank and file
Speaker 2: Democratic estyle member. I'm still glad that they're there versus
Speaker 2: you know, another more corporate Democrat. You know, they're more
Speaker 2: likely to vote well on the issues that I care about,
Speaker 2: but it has completely defaning them and completely undermined there
Speaker 2: the places where they could have wielded power, and there
Speaker 2: are a lot of places, because you know in the Senate,
Speaker 2: but in particular in the House, when the Democrats have
Speaker 2: the majority is also a very slim majority, and so
Speaker 2: they could have employed some of these tactics to further
Speaker 2: left populist ideological interest and every opportunity effectively. I don't
Speaker 2: want to say it every that they never used any
Speaker 2: leverage whatsoever.
Speaker 4: That would be you know, a misstatement.
Speaker 2: But you know, they never were willing to go to
Speaker 2: the mat the way that the Freedom caucuses. They never
Speaker 2: were willing to really just aggressively be adversarial towards leadership
Speaker 2: the way that the Freedom Caucuses. And you know, the
Speaker 2: most important case in point of this is AOC. She
Speaker 2: wanted to be ranking Member on Oversight.
Speaker 4: It would have been a good.
Speaker 2: Position for her because it requires someone who could you know,
Speaker 2: communicate and be like mombastic whatever like. She would do
Speaker 2: well in that role. And Nancy Pelosi actively even after
Speaker 2: AOC did so much for the party and was a good,
Speaker 2: good girl and fell in line and did all the
Speaker 2: things they wanted her to do and advocated for Kamalin
Speaker 2: and back By and all that stuff. Even after all
Speaker 2: of that, and she reportedly promised I won't even primary
Speaker 2: I want even back primary challengers to incumb in Democrats.
Speaker 2: They still behind the scenes, Nancy Pelosi pushes for her
Speaker 2: chosen candidate, Jerry Connelly, and blocks AOC from that position.
Speaker 2: So it was a failed tactical decision. And I am
Speaker 2: envious of the Republicans' willingness to play hardball in these negotiations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Ryan and I pushed Greg Kassar, the
Speaker 3: incoming chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on exactly this.
Speaker 3: So if people want to see that sort of back
Speaker 3: and forth. Go check out Conference Friday from about a
Speaker 3: month ago, because I've always had the exact same question,
Speaker 3: and this gets to what I think might happen over
Speaker 3: of course, in the next couple of weeks with the
Speaker 3: Republican Conference, because fundamentally the post Tea Party is very
Speaker 3: much came out of the Tea Party. The post Tea
Speaker 3: Party attitude of people like chip Roy was bolstered by
Speaker 3: certain populist Republicans who came from the Tea Party wave
Speaker 3: themselves saying, oh, I know my constituents are behind me.
Speaker 3: And not only are they behind me, they don't want
Speaker 3: me to go in here and make bad deals with you.
Speaker 3: They want me to make either no deals or good deals.
Speaker 3: And that's why we may see people like chip Roy
Speaker 3: like it's actually possible that they don't go along to
Speaker 3: get along with Donald Trump. We saw Donald Trump actually
Speaker 3: attacking chip Roy a couple of weeks ago when the
Speaker 3: Omnibus was on the table and chip Row was threatening
Speaker 3: that they know fundamentally that their constituents are behind them
Speaker 3: when they block deals with the political establishment, so it
Speaker 3: gives them confidence and the squad should operate like that
Speaker 3: as well as sort of the post populist iteration of
Speaker 3: left populism in Congress. I shouldn't say post populist, but
Speaker 3: the populist wave iteration. And they should know that that's
Speaker 3: where their constituents are too. And just finally, that means
Speaker 3: that you know, if your constituents are fully behind Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: they're going to want to see you go along with Trump.
Speaker 3: And that's the question that the Chipwroys of the world
Speaker 3: have to ask themselves in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Yep, it'll be interesting.
Speaker 3: Well, Crystal, the saga of It Ends with Us starring
Speaker 3: Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, has officially crossed the threshold
Speaker 3: from a story of celebrity intrigue to one of greater
Speaker 3: import I think it's really becoming a story about the media.
Speaker 3: And to be fair, we always could see a little
Speaker 3: bit of the internal Hollywood pr machinations creeping into public view.
Speaker 3: So of the course of the last several months since
Speaker 3: the movie came out, and they famously did not promote
Speaker 3: the movie together, but it has since just in the
Speaker 3: last even forty eight hours, become a sposed me to
Speaker 3: story about how the media is handling allegations of sexual misconduct. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's becoming a fascinating story. But I think a really
Speaker 3: important one. One of the reasons that I love following
Speaker 3: celebrity gossips so closely, Crystal, is because it's a low
Speaker 3: stakes public relations game. And you see how journalists, and
Speaker 3: in this case, we were talking about the New York Times,
Speaker 3: We're not talking about TMZ, We're not talking about Pop
Speaker 3: Sugar or whatever else. We're talking about the New York Times,
Speaker 3: how easily they can be manipulated by powerful people in
Speaker 3: the public relations game. So right now, it's sort of
Speaker 3: a question of who's a jerk, Justin Baldoni or Blake Lively,
Speaker 3: And maybe the answer to that question is both of them.
Speaker 3: But just yesterday, Variety published a story that I'm going
Speaker 3: to share on the screen right now because this is
Speaker 3: a hugely significant story in that it is a quite
Speaker 3: a rebuttal to a New York Times story that really
Speaker 3: really took Blake Lively's side. So this is the headline
Speaker 3: for a Variety. Justin Baldoni files two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million dollar lawsuit against New York Times over break Blake
Speaker 3: Lively story, saying it relied on her quote self serving narrative.
Speaker 3: Now again, Crystal, I don't think we needed Justin Baldoni
Speaker 3: to file this suit to realize that it was relying
Speaker 3: on Blake Lively's narrative. Let me share the New York
Speaker 3: Times story right now. You can see we can bury
Speaker 3: Anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine that had the byline.
Speaker 3: You may recognize that byline. Viewers, listeners may recognize this byline.
Speaker 3: Megan Touhi, who was one of the famous New York
Speaker 3: Times Me Too reporters, very celebrated for me too reporting
Speaker 3: in the initial wave of the me too movement. And
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, Crystal, but as I was
Speaker 3: reading through the original New York Times story, it seemed
Speaker 3: to me, just as a casual reader who hadn't looked
Speaker 3: at any of these documents, that there was a huge
Speaker 3: context gap that a lot of the producer's texts that
Speaker 3: were being published. So the one that's in the headline
Speaker 3: it says, quote we can bury anyone, we were missing
Speaker 3: a lot of other parts of those conversations. So the
Speaker 3: New York Times is making it look as though Justin
Speaker 3: Baldoni had realized that Blake Lively was not happy with
Speaker 3: him and was going to run her own kind of
Speaker 3: campaign against him. Obviously, Millions and millions of dollars are
Speaker 3: on the line anytime you're promoting this. It's like a
Speaker 3: big product essentially, and so it means a lot to
Speaker 3: bottom lines for these big companies, and they treated really seriously.
Speaker 3: And that's where celebrity gossip becomes a product in and
Speaker 3: of itself as well. So yeah, and you know, these
Speaker 3: allegations are that Baldoni was walking in on Blake Lively
Speaker 3: while she was breastfeeding, allegations that he bit her lip
Speaker 3: during a kissing scene, basically that he acted like a jerk.
Speaker 3: Nothing here I think constitutes like assault obviously, But he
Speaker 3: was also sort of walking around clothing himself as in
Speaker 3: the sort of like moral garb of male feminism. So
Speaker 3: then it's like he seems to be orchestrating or his
Speaker 3: people seem to be orchestrating a social media campaign to
Speaker 3: take clips of Blake Lively and disseminate them and make
Speaker 3: it look like an organic uprising of people realizing that
Speaker 3: Blake Lively has always been sort of a jerk. And
Speaker 3: then he comes in with this lawsuit against the New
Speaker 3: York Times and gives evidence to variety suggesting the New
Speaker 3: York Times, believe it or not, Crystal was overly gullible,
Speaker 3: And a lot of people will look at that more
Speaker 3: cynically and say, was you know, taking is like some
Speaker 3: type of orders from Blake Lively or something in return?
Speaker 3: But I think what it looks like is they got
Speaker 3: drip drip drip bits from Blake Lively's team and did
Speaker 3: not confirm the context or were ideologically sort of wedded
Speaker 3: to the Lively narrative and to her side of the
Speaker 3: story that they weren't interested in the other context. Because
Speaker 3: what Baldoni is doing, I don't think he may get
Speaker 3: a settlement. You're not gonna win. I think the suit
Speaker 3: against the New York Times, And as a journalist, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think he should win the suit against the
Speaker 3: New York Times, because they're free to publish whatever nonsense
Speaker 3: they want to, and we're free to say that it's nonsense.
Speaker 3: But it looks like some of these things, at least
Speaker 3: from a journalistic standpoint, were would have been served by context,
Speaker 3: better context. And so the question now becomes whin the
Speaker 3: New York Times had that context? So Crystal, what do
Speaker 3: you make of what we learned yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to back up for people who are
Speaker 2: like me and we're not really following the story outside
Speaker 2: of my sixteen year old being like, oh my god, mom,
Speaker 2: what do you think about this?
Speaker 4: Like what do I think about it? I don't even
Speaker 4: know about it. Who's Blake?
Speaker 2: That's where I had to start with, is like who
Speaker 2: is Blake Lively? And who is Justin Beldoni? That was
Speaker 2: where I had to start with all of this. But
Speaker 2: effectively there are co stars on this show movie it
Speaker 2: ends with us. Yeah, okay movie, and the movie one
Speaker 2: of the central themes also is around domestic violence. So
Speaker 2: that's how Justin Baldoni comes to like cloak himself in
Speaker 2: this like I'm an ally and I'm against toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2: And he's doing a podcast with Liz Plank, who's noted feminists,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So he adopts this whole mantle, and during
Speaker 2: the promotion for this film, neither one of them. They
Speaker 2: won't appear together. And also the entertainment media picks up
Speaker 2: on the fact that a bunch of cast members have
Speaker 2: unfollowed him, so there seems to be some rift between
Speaker 2: him and everyone else. So then according to you know,
Speaker 2: some of the texts that have been released. He starts
Speaker 2: to panic of like, obviously she's not happy, they're not
Speaker 2: happy with us, Like they could really smears in the press.
Speaker 2: What can we do to get ahead of that? And
Speaker 2: I think even without you know, some of the ways
Speaker 2: that the Times characterized it, obviously like they screwed up right,
Speaker 2: Like for example, that quote you know about we could
Speaker 2: bury anyone, et cetera, et cetera, left out the emoji
Speaker 2: that would have indicated to readers that they were being sarcastic.
Speaker 2: And they also left out a text that indicated directly
Speaker 2: that this PR team was actually not responsible for this
Speaker 2: specific article that appeared. But nevertheless, even put in that aside,
Speaker 2: he enlisted PR professionals to basically try to get out
Speaker 2: of the story and flip the narrative. So at some
Speaker 2: point there seems to be this online organic like we
Speaker 2: don't like Blake Lively and she's kind of a bitch
Speaker 2: and she was a bit in this interview, and why
Speaker 2: she's just out there promoting her like alcohol company when
Speaker 2: you know alcohol can be linked in domestic violence and
Speaker 2: she doesn't talk about domestic violence at all. There seemed
Speaker 2: to be this organic anti Blake Lively narrative that took
Speaker 2: hold in the public. And so when she gets her
Speaker 2: side of the story out in this New York Times piece,
Speaker 2: she alleges, with the aid of New York Times that effectively,
Speaker 2: like number one, you were inappropriate on this side in
Speaker 2: any number of ways. You mentioned a few of them
Speaker 2: coming into my trailer when you know, at different times
Speaker 2: when I was naked, there were some allegations of like
Speaker 2: body shaming, she just had a baby, there were allegations
Speaker 2: that there were different boundary violations, and they both they
Speaker 2: had sex scenes in this movie. So you know, it's
Speaker 2: very fraught, and she's married and her husband apparently berated
Speaker 2: Baldoni at one point. So any in case she llegis
Speaker 2: that that happened, then that there's this orchestrated campaign of
Speaker 2: retaliation against her.
Speaker 3: Okay, so now I'm just put up on the screen here.
Speaker 3: You can see from Variety as an example, one of
Speaker 3: the juiciest tidbits from the New York Times story was
Speaker 3: this allegation that Baldoni had basically stormed in on Blake
Speaker 3: Lively while she was breastfeeding on the side of the
Speaker 3: movie and versus the Variety story that I know you
Speaker 3: were just about to get to, which says, well, the
Speaker 3: context there they have text messages of Blake Lively saying
Speaker 3: I'm just pumping in my trailer if you want to
Speaker 3: work out our lines, and Baldoni saying copy eating with
Speaker 3: crew and we'll have that way.
Speaker 2: So effectively, from these texts, it's like, oh, she was like,
Speaker 2: come on over, I'm just here like pumping, meaning breast
Speaker 2: milk in my trailer if you want to work out
Speaker 2: on lines, like, come on over.
Speaker 3: And at the very least that context was it should
Speaker 3: have been been in the New York Time story, right,
Speaker 3: So maybe he's still barged in or whatever, and maybe
Speaker 3: there are more text messages saying not before you come
Speaker 3: in or whatever, there's a whatever. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 3: that should have been in the New York Times story, right.
Speaker 2: And then another instance where there was missing context was
Speaker 2: they say in the New York Times story that she
Speaker 2: alleges he.
Speaker 4: Showed her naked a naked video.
Speaker 2: Of his wife, which like, that's like, what are you
Speaker 2: doing there? And it turns out not that I still
Speaker 2: still wouldn't be really cool with this, but it turns
Speaker 2: out the naked video was of her during a home birth,
Speaker 2: so like the least sexual you know, like connotation or
Speaker 2: context for a nude vie that you could possibly get.
Speaker 2: That also left out of the New York Times piece.
Speaker 2: So you know, he had his little PR campaign which
Speaker 2: was successful in start of turning the public against her.
Speaker 2: Then she fires back with this New York Times story
Speaker 2: that The New York Times was far too credulous about
Speaker 2: at best, at worst, like actively hid and manipulated some
Speaker 2: of the things that would be more favorable towards him.
Speaker 2: And now he's firing back with this lawsuit, which also
Speaker 2: you have to assume, right it's his lawsuit. This article
Speaker 2: is based on his side of the story. Is also
Speaker 2: likely cherry picking and leaving out some of the less
Speaker 2: flattering details for him as well. So some of the
Speaker 2: core themes here are number one, like, you know, he
Speaker 2: went out and draped himself in very intentionally, Like that
Speaker 2: was part of the PR campaign. Drapes himself very intentionally
Speaker 2: in this. I'm an ally of women. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm against toxic masculinity. I'm going to speak out against it.
Speaker 2: You should never harm women. Blah blah blah. He's doing
Speaker 2: this as part of a PR campaign to undermine this
Speaker 2: very specific woman.
Speaker 4: So you've got that aspect.
Speaker 2: Then you have her basically engaging in some of the
Speaker 2: same behavior in the media credulously picking it up, so
Speaker 2: you have that aspect, and then of course you just
Speaker 2: have you know, the whole specter of the way these
Speaker 2: two individuals who are human beings, yes, but also brands
Speaker 2: with a whole circle of people invested in their brands,
Speaker 2: who are waging like PR wars against each other. And
Speaker 2: you know, the public is being manipulated in any number
Speaker 2: of ways, and I think that part is very real.
Speaker 2: And also like you know, to go and even layer deeper,
Speaker 2: and we're about to talk about OpenAI and some of
Speaker 2: these AI stuff, Like one of the possibilities here is
Speaker 2: even that chatbots were potentially wielded in this war between
Speaker 2: Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, and it it does just
Speaker 2: make you like, this is kind of you know, it's
Speaker 2: not that consequential of a story ultimately what happened on
Speaker 2: the set between these two individuals, but it does also
Speaker 2: make you question, like how much of what we're being
Speaker 2: fed by the media, fed on social media like these
Speaker 2: you know, interactions that appear to be real and a
Speaker 2: peer to be organic. How much of this is already
Speaker 2: just fake, already just you know, astroturfed, already just completely
Speaker 2: concocted by somebody for some reason to manipulate you and
Speaker 2: your perception of reality. And to me, that's like the
Speaker 2: most kind of like dystopian angle of this, is that
Speaker 2: we really don't know how much of what we're already
Speaker 2: consuming on the web in media is real and how
Speaker 2: much is just literally generated, like falsely out of whole cloth.
Speaker 3: That's why this is damning for the New York Times,
Speaker 3: because if there's something that should stand between smear campaigns,
Speaker 3: information operations and the public, it's the free press. And
Speaker 3: for the New York Times, they're defending it and saying,
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't defend any specifics, to be clear,
Speaker 3: but they said, you know, we stand by our reporting.
Speaker 3: But this is a celebrated me two reporter of the
Speaker 3: New York Times who seems to have been at the
Speaker 3: very least taken for a ride by the extremely powerful
Speaker 3: public relations team of Blake Lively that I guarantee you
Speaker 3: weaponized the reporters me too connections and feminist bona fides
Speaker 3: against them and for the benefit of the Blake Lively
Speaker 3: smear campaign. And we started this just by talking about
Speaker 3: how entertainment media is often just like a lower stakes
Speaker 3: example of what happens in political media. So if you imagine,
Speaker 3: remember a lot of people probably do like you were
Speaker 3: talking about your daughter. These clips of Blake Lively going
Speaker 3: viral around the premiere of It ends with us. Their
Speaker 3: allegation is that Baldoni sort of his team Whether or
Speaker 3: not he knew about it is a different question, but
Speaker 3: his team astro turfed this viral momentum against Blake Lively
Speaker 3: by sort of creating accounts or feeding accounts these old videos.
Speaker 3: And we actually have one right here that will go
Speaker 3: ahead and roll for everyone just for a taste, because
Speaker 3: you probably a lot of people probably remember seeing this
Speaker 3: stuff go viral at the time. But here we go.
Speaker 3: This is an interaction that Blake Lively had.
Speaker 6: Your little bump.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that was just like a short clip, but
Speaker 3: it was being used to say like, oh, look at
Speaker 3: Blake Lively gets congratulated by a reporter on her baby
Speaker 3: bump and then turns it back around on the reporter
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: It is basically like you're fat yeah, it seems crystal
Speaker 2: like a not a very kind thing to do. And yeah,
Speaker 2: well and but then here's where things get even more
Speaker 2: again complicated. That particular you know, I guess she's like
Speaker 2: an entertainment reporter, YouTuber whatever her last name.
Speaker 4: I think she's nor regional last it was like flaw.
Speaker 2: There's also a question about what her incentives were in
Speaker 2: resurfacing this interview, because she resurfaced this and did this
Speaker 2: whole like the interview that made me want to quit
Speaker 2: my job blah blah blah. And she also so she
Speaker 2: also had been very much pro Johnny Depp in the
Speaker 2: Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial and that whole drama and
Speaker 2: lo and behold, Baldoni and Depp repped by the same
Speaker 2: PR agents. So now she denies that she says she
Speaker 2: did this organically blah blah blah. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: a question there too of whether or not she had
Speaker 2: some incentives. And maybe those incentives were just like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've built this particular audience, and here's a way that
Speaker 2: I can you know, like get in on a similar
Speaker 2: storyline that may have a similar hook, etc. But this
Speaker 2: is also a potentially motivated actor in this whole thing
Speaker 2: as well. So, yeah, these things that can seem like
Speaker 2: they just sort of like organically popped out of the
Speaker 2: ether and there's some public reaction against it. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: did that really happen or did you really have like
Speaker 2: an army of boths and some highly motivated influencers and
Speaker 2: Credul's journalists to push a particular view of the world
Speaker 2: that may or may not be accurate.
Speaker 3: So on that point, on that exact point, this is
Speaker 3: we were going to talk about this story before the
Speaker 3: Variety exclusive on Baldoni's lawsuit dropped. Because the New York
Speaker 3: Times piece was so conspicuously fed by Lively's team. And
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that Lively is wrong and that Justin
Speaker 3: Baldoni is a jerk or a saint. It doesn't mean
Speaker 3: any of that. What it means is that you could
Speaker 3: see in the sort of anatomy of the New York
Speaker 3: Times piece that it was coordinated by a public relations
Speaker 3: team on behalf of Blake Lively because it was so
Speaker 3: conspicuously missing context. And again, that's fine if you are
Speaker 3: a feminist metio reporter who wants to stand with Blake Lively,
Speaker 3: and that's just your opinion, You've reviewed the text messages
Speaker 3: the team sent, you've asked the questions you feel irrelevant. Whatever, Fine,
Speaker 3: go ahead and do it, but don't do it and
Speaker 3: act like this is the objective or the most neutral
Speaker 3: version of the story. If you're leaving out context or
Speaker 3: not asking questions that would help you ascertain that context,
Speaker 3: that is being conspicuously hidden from you by Lively's team.
Speaker 3: And again, yeah, to Crystal's point, these are multi billion
Speaker 3: dollar businesses. These are important, like the celebrity stuff. It's
Speaker 3: lower stakes obviously than politics, but it's important to their
Speaker 3: bottom lines, the health of their companies, to their shareholders,
Speaker 3: and so they treat this stuff like it's widgets. They
Speaker 3: treat these human interactions like these like their widgets. And
Speaker 3: the actors all know that the actors are investors. They're
Speaker 3: part of that producers, executive producers. So they play the game.
Speaker 3: They understand what they are in all of this. They're
Speaker 3: making a lot of money off of it. But now
Speaker 3: put this to politics, and it's maddening to watch to
Speaker 3: see stories like this about any given topic. A Crystal
Speaker 3: from your perspective the New York Times coverage of Gaza,
Speaker 3: or from my perspective New York Times coverage of any
Speaker 3: immigration story or you know something dumb that Trump said,
Speaker 3: Like you can just see you can see the fingerprints.
Speaker 3: The cheap fake stories were a great example ahead of
Speaker 3: the debate about how the Republican Party was circulating these
Speaker 3: cheap fake videos. You could see in the New York
Speaker 3: Times coverage at the time the fingerprints of the Biden
Speaker 3: White House and the DNC on those stories. And you
Speaker 3: have that perspective when your media and you do this
Speaker 3: for your job. But this is the best example if
Speaker 3: you're a member of the public and you want to
Speaker 3: like see how the media came into feel like truth
Speaker 3: and information, read both of these stories and it'll be
Speaker 3: really eye opening. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, like, okay, so even if you
Speaker 2: took out or even if you included the context that
Speaker 2: the Baldoni people say was missing of like, well, she
Speaker 2: was being sarcastic here, and they actually said one text
Speaker 2: earlier that like they weren't responsible for this story, but
Speaker 2: they kind of wish they were. You know, like, even
Speaker 2: if you added all that context, it still doesn't look
Speaker 2: good for him. It's still a story. Yeah, he still
Speaker 2: very much paints a picture of he was worried that
Speaker 2: she was going to say some bad things about him,
Speaker 2: So he cloaks himself in this hole. I'm the women's
Speaker 2: ally and I'm against toxic. He cloaks himself in all
Speaker 2: of this, runs around talking about, you know, pretending like
Speaker 2: he really cares about domestic violence, and meanwhile, I was
Speaker 2: launching this pr campaign of retaliation against her. Like even
Speaker 2: if you add the context, that is all very clear.
Speaker 2: It's just they wanted it to be a less nuanced
Speaker 2: and more clear cut in of him. They wanted the
Speaker 2: quote about we can bury anyone to stand on its
Speaker 2: own without having the you know, the supporting context, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And by doing that, by reaching further than
Speaker 2: what was you know, organically, they're and honest, as best
Speaker 2: we can tell at this point in this story, they
Speaker 2: really you know, they really end up undercutting her because
Speaker 2: now people just say, well, look, you did include that,
Speaker 2: so obviously this is just a hatchet job, like it's
Speaker 2: just bullshit, where I don't think it is all just bullshit,
Speaker 2: Like I think the general the basic contours of she
Speaker 2: was unhappy with him. He wanted to get ahead of it.
Speaker 2: He launched this pr campaign of retaliation to get Like,
Speaker 2: I think that is all true.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's really deniable at this point. But
Speaker 2: because they wanted to go that extra mile and really
Speaker 2: paint him in this sort of like one dimensional villainous way,
Speaker 2: they end up overreaching and undercutting their entire story. So
Speaker 2: but not that I think they'll learn any lessons from this.
Speaker 3: They won't, but anyway, No, but big question could come
Speaker 3: is what the New York Time saw and if this
Speaker 3: suit proceeds, we will learn a lot more.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the discovery process could be interesting, yes.
Speaker 3: And sadly the winner from all this might be Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 3: who is able to then say, you know, as egregious
Speaker 3: as what he clearly did was that, you know, this
Speaker 3: is the same thing to your point, Crystal, like, some
Speaker 3: of these stories can be real and newsy, and then
Speaker 3: because the media does such a bad job with them,
Speaker 3: they end up uttercutting actual victims and true. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: that there's much more to come from this, to be sure,
Speaker 3: and it's more than celebrity gossip at this point.
Speaker 2: So Saga and I brought you recently the news that
Speaker 2: and a whistle blower who had previously worked at open
Speaker 2: AI who had raised concerns about the way that they
Speaker 2: may be potentially violating patent and trademark agreements. That that
Speaker 2: whistleblower had been found. Now authorities deemed it a suicide.
Speaker 2: But now we have the parents of that whistleblower, whose
Speaker 2: name is Sucier Bology, raising questions and saying that they
Speaker 2: are going to hire a private investigator in order to
Speaker 2: try to get to the bottom of what really happened here.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen to a part of their press conference.
Speaker 3: Last person to talk to him, he was happy, more
Speaker 3: is not a depress or anything, and it was his
Speaker 3: birthday week.
Speaker 17: He made plans of going to see us in January.
Speaker 17: That was the last home conversation he had with him.
Speaker 17: Even he went into his apartment, never came out. There
Speaker 17: was no suicide notes left, and there's nobody else in
Speaker 17: the scene. That doesn't mean they can just come to conclusion.
Speaker 17: And we have seen the bloodshots in the bathroom, signs
Speaker 17: of fight in the bathroom.
Speaker 12: Vigil organizers say they're honoring Bilagi's bravery and raising awareness to.
Speaker 7: Corporate account in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Obviously, I mean AI is the highest sticks game that
Speaker 2: exists in the world right now. The amount of resources,
Speaker 2: government and corporate resources that are being poured into AI
Speaker 2: development is we genuinely don't even know how much money
Speaker 2: is going into this. There is an arms race going
Speaker 2: on right now to develop AI. Some of this is public,
Speaker 2: like the war between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Some
Speaker 2: of it is not public. Peter Teel has funded a
Speaker 2: number of stealth companies. You've got DARPA, which is a
Speaker 2: secretive agency within the US government that is funding research
Speaker 2: and development Israel, China, like, the list goes on of
Speaker 2: actors and interested participants here. So the amount of money
Speaker 2: at stake here is truly truly mind blowing. I mean
Speaker 2: probably somes that we've never seen in history. Is not
Speaker 2: an eager exaggeration. Just to give you a sense of
Speaker 2: some of what he was sounding the alarm over, and
Speaker 2: in particular we were talking about The New York Times.
Speaker 2: In particular, was featured in a New York Times story
Speaker 2: raising concerns about what he had seen when he was
Speaker 2: at OpenAI. He elaborated on that interview in this post.
Speaker 2: He said, I recently participated in New York Times story
Speaker 2: about fair use and generative AI and why I'm skeptical
Speaker 2: that fair use would be a plausible defense for a
Speaker 2: lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog
Speaker 2: post about the nitty gritty details of fair use and
Speaker 2: why I believe this. To give some context, I was
Speaker 2: at open Ai for nearly four years, worked on chat
Speaker 2: GPT for the last one and a half of them.
Speaker 2: I initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, etc.
Speaker 2: But became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against
Speaker 2: gen ai companies. When I tried to understand the issue better,
Speaker 2: I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems
Speaker 2: like a pretty implausible defense of a lot of generative
Speaker 2: AI products for the basic reason that they can create
Speaker 2: substitutes that compete with the data they're trained on. I've
Speaker 2: written up the more detailed reasons for why I believe
Speaker 2: this in my post. Obvious say, I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 2: but I still feel like it's important for even non
Speaker 2: lawyers to understand the law, both the letter of it
Speaker 2: and also why it's actually there in the first place.
Speaker 2: That being said, I don't want this to read as
Speaker 2: a critique of chat, GPT or open ai per se,
Speaker 2: because fair use and generative AI is a much broader
Speaker 2: issue than anyone product or company. I highly encourage mL
Speaker 2: researchers to learn more about copyright. It is a really
Speaker 2: important topic and precedent that's off it cited like Google
Speaker 2: Books isn't actually as supportive as it might seem.
Speaker 4: Feel free to.
Speaker 2: Get in touch about this if you'd like to chat
Speaker 2: about fair use mL or copyright. And this is a
Speaker 2: central issue he's touching on here, Emily, because all of
Speaker 2: these large, large language learning models, all of them are
Speaker 2: trained on whatever data they can gobble up, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the critical components in how they learn
Speaker 2: and are able to produce the products like chatchept and
Speaker 2: other products that we're all now able to use. And
Speaker 2: so we're talking books, we're talking transcripts of YouTube videos,
Speaker 2: we're talking literally anything they can get their hands on.
Speaker 2: And without that data, they're unable to train these lms
Speaker 2: and push them out into the world. So this is
Speaker 2: not a side issue. This is, you know, alongside like
Speaker 2: having sufficient you know, electricity and having the computational power.
Speaker 2: These are the key ingredients for the development of AI.
Speaker 2: And you know, he was outspoken on it. And now
Speaker 2: his parents who listen. You know, these are grieving parents
Speaker 2: who I'm sure nobody wants to think that their son
Speaker 2: or daughter was so unhappy as to commit suicide and
Speaker 2: to end their own life. So you know, we always
Speaker 2: always have to keep that in mind. But it's worth
Speaker 2: taking seriously this investigation simply because this is one of
Speaker 2: a you know, relatively small number of whistleblowers who we've
Speaker 2: seen said, you know what, what is being done here
Speaker 2: is wrong and I'm not going to be associated with it.
Speaker 3: Determines whether AI is built on a house of sand
Speaker 3: or like a really well built foundation. AI can be
Speaker 3: a house of cards if their fair use argument is erupted,
Speaker 3: and whether that's legally or in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 3: AI generative ailms will be a house of sand if
Speaker 3: they can't defend their fair use practices. So obviously what
Speaker 3: he was doing was very high stakes and a notable
Speaker 3: point from his parents there. They say there was no
Speaker 3: note and also they believe what they saw was a
Speaker 3: sign of struggle. So the police obviously ruled this, as
Speaker 3: you mentioned, crystal suicide. But if the parents are saying
Speaker 3: the police ruled it a suicide despite there being signs
Speaker 3: of struggle, that's I think something just in the investigation
Speaker 3: stage people will be looking at very closely, and we
Speaker 3: will be looking at very close if there are serious
Speaker 3: signs of struggle that still resulted in the investigation being
Speaker 3: concluded as a suicide. That's a hugely significant piece of
Speaker 3: information from the parents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'd be remiss if I didn't note that
Speaker 2: there were two Boeing whistleblowers who were found dead and
Speaker 2: was also deemed suicide. And in one of those instances
Speaker 2: in particular, and you know, same thing, friends and family said,
Speaker 2: he seemed vine no indication of depression, no indication of
Speaker 2: you know, anything that would lead directly to him taking
Speaker 2: his own life. Authorities deemed it a suicide. That's where
Speaker 2: things stand as of now. But this is one we'll
Speaker 2: we'll definitely keep our eyes on.
Speaker 3: And just one more point about Bellagi's last post. He
Speaker 3: was actively soliciting information, So that's that's just something to
Speaker 3: keep in mind. That last poster he's saying, get in
Speaker 3: touch with me. I want to hear your thoughts. That's
Speaker 3: a sort of active process of learning more coming to
Speaker 3: different conclusions to undermine the sort of fundamental the foundation
Speaker 3: really of LM so you can see where that would
Speaker 3: be of interest to people who have a lot of
Speaker 3: interest in those llms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to tie this whole conversation, you're zooming
Speaker 2: out from this whistleblower back to what we were talking
Speaker 2: about with Elon and Trump and David Sachs and all
Speaker 2: these people. Like the H one B fight is a
Speaker 2: side shoe to the main event, which is AI development.
Speaker 2: The resources that are being thrown into this truly arms race,
Speaker 2: both between nation states and between corporations to be you know,
Speaker 2: the furthest to head an AI to achieve was called
Speaker 2: a GI artificial general intelligence, to be the first to
Speaker 2: develop that. This is all going on. Some of it is,
Speaker 2: you know, you can you can read about in the press,
Speaker 2: but there is not nearly enough media coverage, democratic debate
Speaker 2: transparent about what the plans are for this technology, how
Speaker 2: it will be deployed in our lives, what that will
Speaker 2: look like, how will upend the labor force We're talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, potentially greater than Industrial revolution level change over
Speaker 2: a much shorter period of time. That's the real like
Speaker 2: undercurrent of the political games that are being played right
Speaker 2: now and the political moves that are being made obviously
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a big player in that. Sam Altman
Speaker 2: of Open AI a big player in that. Noteworthy to
Speaker 2: me that after Trump wins, Sam comes in, It's like,
Speaker 2: let me give a.
Speaker 4: Million dollars to your inauguration, right. They have so much
Speaker 4: at stake.
Speaker 2: Here, Zuckerberg as well, Zuckerberg absolutely Zuckerberg as well, all
Speaker 2: of the big tech players massively invested and betting.
Speaker 4: On this AI future. And partly because.
Speaker 2: I mean the you know chat GPT like it's fun
Speaker 2: and seems harmless and I use it and whatever, Like
Speaker 2: it's hard to wrap your head around the scale of potential,
Speaker 2: just like incredible disruption that we could be facing, and
Speaker 2: even darker scenarios that you know are truly dystopian that
Speaker 2: if I you know, lay them out right now, you're
Speaker 2: going to think I sound like a crazy person. But
Speaker 2: that AI researchers take very seriously as a possibility. This
Speaker 2: is all happening effectively behind closed doors, with a few
Speaker 2: comparatively small number of scientists and technologists who are making
Speaker 2: these decisions that could completely upend all of our lives.
Speaker 2: And so you know, this incident with this whistleblower is
Speaker 2: just a tiny window in to the stakes of this
Speaker 2: game and how much is happening and how consequential.
Speaker 4: It could be. It truly is like the biggest.
Speaker 2: And most existential political question of our time, and it's
Speaker 2: not being treated or debated that way. So I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: like I'm trying to learn as much as I possibly can,
Speaker 2: because I do think that the stakes are potentially that
Speaker 2: high and that's significant. Like I said, this is just
Speaker 2: like one little, one little window into some of the
Speaker 2: concerns about AI and the way that it could transform
Speaker 2: our entire economy.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, the story, even just the fate of
Speaker 3: Bolagi himself. There's a lot more, a lot more to
Speaker 3: be learned about that, given the the what we just
Speaker 3: sawt from the parents, basically the commitment and the commitments,
Speaker 3: the idea that this is not what he would have done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, much more to come. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's go ahead and transition to American doctors
Speaker 2: just back from Gaza, who has a message to share
Speaker 2: with the world.
Speaker 4: Let's get to that.
Speaker 2: We are very grateful and fortunate to be joined this
Speaker 2: morning pie at doctor Muhammad Khalil. He is American doctor
Speaker 2: based in Texas, a surgeon actually, who has just returned
Speaker 2: from his second trip to Gaza and wanted to share
Speaker 2: with us and our audience what he experienced there and
Speaker 2: his concerns based on what his colleagues are continuing to
Speaker 2: tell him are happening there on the ground.
Speaker 4: Doctor.
Speaker 2: Great to great to see you, Great to meet you,
Speaker 2: and thank you for joining us this morning.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, so just tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: of about the context of your visit and some of
Speaker 2: the things that you saw there operating on the ground.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 14: So I went with a humanitarian group into Gaza. I
Speaker 14: had actually been there the first time in April at
Speaker 14: European General Hospital and saw, you know, a lot of
Speaker 14: lower extremity injuries, a lot of I think we signed
Speaker 14: this letter to the New York Times about all the
Speaker 14: sniper shots that were that we saw in children, a
Speaker 14: lot of you know, U targeted to Taxis in discriminate bonding.
Speaker 14: This time, I went up north in November to the
Speaker 14: Ali Hospital, which, if you remember, was the first hospital
Speaker 14: that was attacked, and there was a lot of questions
Speaker 14: as to whether a hospital would be attacked by the
Speaker 14: Israeli military and uh, this this experience was completely different,
Speaker 14: just a lot of death and destruction. We did, you know,
Speaker 14: quite a bit of operating ortheedic surgery, surgery just you know,
Speaker 14: there's a lot of uh stabilizing fractures and unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 14: in this setting, there were a lot of amputations, just
Speaker 14: a ton of blast injuries.
Speaker 7: Up North.
Speaker 14: Though it's a very different type of warfare, you can't
Speaker 14: it's shake the feeling that the North is almost a
Speaker 14: testing ground for technological warfare. We saw a number of
Speaker 14: drones that were dropping bombs, and then off the back
Speaker 14: of those drones they've got quad copters that come down
Speaker 14: and shoot anything that's left moving. We had a number
Speaker 14: of children telling us that they would just have to
Speaker 14: lay there after an explosion so that they wouldn't move
Speaker 14: and get shot. I think there's a lot of a
Speaker 14: sense that this is, you know, very much kind of
Speaker 14: utter destruction. What I would say is in April we
Speaker 14: saw a genocide. In November it just seemed like a
Speaker 14: full on holocaust. Everything is destroyed up North. There's really
Speaker 14: barely any buildings left that are standing, and the ones
Speaker 14: that are are partially destroyed, and people are trying to
Speaker 14: live in those in a makeshift environment.
Speaker 3: What can you tell us about how you saw the
Speaker 3: ratio of civilians. Obviously, this is very hard civilians to combatants.
Speaker 3: You know, you're not interrogating people when you're treating them.
Speaker 3: But in terms of like women and children that you saw,
Speaker 3: what do you make of the Israeli line that they are.
Speaker 3: You know, this is a defensible ratio of civilians to combatants.
Speaker 14: We did not see anyone that you could clearly identify
Speaker 14: was a combatant. I assume that you know, they're they're
Speaker 14: probably seeking help in other environments. Uh, because pretty much
Speaker 14: everyone that we treated was a non combatant. A number
Speaker 14: of them were actually family members of the medical providers
Speaker 14: in the hospital.
Speaker 7: I know one of one of the nurses that was
Speaker 7: working with us in the o R, his brother, his
Speaker 7: entire family. Uh.
Speaker 14: Most of them were dead, but a few people survived
Speaker 14: and we saw them in the er and you know,
Speaker 14: this was in the middle of the night, and then
Speaker 14: the next morning that nurse was back in the r
Speaker 14: with us, you know, just getting back to work.
Speaker 7: And it's it really is.
Speaker 14: If somebody was a combatant, they would I assume they
Speaker 14: were seeking help in other locations. Because pretty much the
Speaker 14: majority of people that we treated were children. Uh women
Speaker 14: or known family members of people that we.
Speaker 7: Were working with.
Speaker 4: Doctor.
Speaker 2: We covered earlier in the week the raid and destruction
Speaker 2: of Kamal odd One Hospital, which was in the north.
Speaker 2: My understanding was it was really the last functioning significant
Speaker 2: hospital in northern Gaza. You know, what can you tell
Speaker 2: us about the state of the healthcare system in northern
Speaker 2: Gaza when you were there, both in terms of facilities,
Speaker 2: personnel and also supplies.
Speaker 14: The We were actually north of the Netzeram corridor, so
Speaker 14: we were in what was considered northern Gaza above the
Speaker 14: Netzerm border, so that's in Gaza City. Kamala Dwan was
Speaker 14: about another ten minutes north of us, and Kamala Dwan
Speaker 14: and Indonesian are the only two hospitals up there, and
Speaker 14: they're completely non functional. Now, there was a discussion of
Speaker 14: having our group go up to Kamaladwan because one of
Speaker 14: the purposes that we serve as European and American teams
Speaker 14: is sometimes we can be protective for the people that
Speaker 14: are at the hospital. I think there's the you know,
Speaker 14: when we left European Hospital and in Gaza in April,
Speaker 14: I was one of the part of the discussion is
Speaker 14: once the team stopped showing up. Then we know we're
Speaker 14: about to be attacked, and so going up to kamadwe
Speaker 14: was not not an option. And we knew that hospital
Speaker 14: was under sage the whole time we were there. And
Speaker 14: there were a bunch of messages because everyone knows doctor
Speaker 14: Hasama Viasafia up in the in the area, and you know,
Speaker 14: we're what's that messaging him and stuff and kind of
Speaker 14: getting an update. But it was it was not very
Speaker 14: functional even back in November. Now it's completely non functional
Speaker 14: after having been invaded and destroyed.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and let me ask about another line of argumentation.
Speaker 3: You hear a lot from Israel and extra from the
Speaker 3: United States as well about hospitals in particular being used
Speaker 3: as hamas strongholds or places of strategy organization for hamas
Speaker 3: sort of using hospital patients as human shields. What did
Speaker 3: you see to that extent, if anything, and what do
Speaker 3: you make of that line? Doctor?
Speaker 14: I think at this stage that is a hard thing
Speaker 14: to continue to uh.
Speaker 7: To push that narrative.
Speaker 14: I mean, so many hospitals have been destroyed and nothing
Speaker 14: has been found or at least, you know, shown to
Speaker 14: have have have actually been uncovered. The actual hospital functions
Speaker 14: are what are getting limited. I think the death count,
Speaker 14: the death tolls and the counts that we're hearing are
Speaker 14: horribly underwhelming. You know, every night that you're at the hospital,
Speaker 14: you see them bring the dead bodies to the area
Speaker 14: where they will wash them and then bury them, and
Speaker 14: it's it's I mean, on average you're probably seeing twenty
Speaker 14: to thirty at night, and the death toll has kind
Speaker 14: of been stalled for for many months now. The use
Speaker 14: of human shields, I think is a is a very
Speaker 14: tenuous argument. A number of the nurses and doctors that
Speaker 14: we talked to were there actually at the Ul Shifa
Speaker 14: invasion and during that siege they were actually drinking ringers,
Speaker 14: lactate and normal sailing to you know, get hydration. And
Speaker 14: there were a number of the providers that they recounted
Speaker 14: stories of being being told to undress and then they
Speaker 14: would have to go room to room and basically search
Speaker 14: the hospital for the Israeli military with a drone and
Speaker 14: a dog following them.
Speaker 2: So they were effectively being used as human shields by
Speaker 2: the IDF.
Speaker 14: Exactly exactly, and as far as the the hamas using
Speaker 14: human shields there, if you taught the challenges is that
Speaker 14: right now? I think there is no real evidence that
Speaker 14: that is being done because at least in the hospital setting,
Speaker 14: because for pretty much, you know, since a month or
Speaker 14: two into this war, there have been medical teams in
Speaker 14: a number of these hospitals, and I don't think there's
Speaker 14: been one story from any of the American, European or
Speaker 14: foreign medical providers of the Hamas coming in and using
Speaker 14: human shields in the hospital.
Speaker 2: Doctor, what can you tell us about, you know, the
Speaker 2: availability of food, of clean water, of basic sanitation at
Speaker 2: this point in northern Gaza.
Speaker 7: It's incredibly limited.
Speaker 14: I mean, I think you know, from our standpoint, you know,
Speaker 14: we go in to try to help and provide medical relief,
Speaker 14: but we really learn so much from the medical providers
Speaker 14: that are there already in Gaza.
Speaker 7: I mean, it is.
Speaker 14: A masterclass and taking care of people with very limited resources.
Speaker 14: So you know, right now, just equipment wise there when
Speaker 14: we were up north, there's basically no external fixators like
Speaker 14: we were using in the South. They're reusing external fixator
Speaker 14: equipment that's taken off of other patients when they get
Speaker 14: fixed or when they pass away. There's no intermedullary nails
Speaker 14: like the nails that we put down the shaft of
Speaker 14: a bone to stabilize it. No pedical screws. I mean,
Speaker 14: it's just very limited from a medical supply standpoint. Food
Speaker 14: is also incredibly limited. Like I actually turned I had
Speaker 14: my birthday there when I when I was there in November,
Speaker 14: and they they they kind of made the joke that, uh,
Speaker 14: you know, we would get you a cake, but there's
Speaker 14: no there's no sugar and no eggs in Gaza every
Speaker 14: every and there.
Speaker 7: It's incredible how much, how what.
Speaker 14: Great lengths they go to to try to provide you
Speaker 14: food when they have so little. So we would we
Speaker 14: would have pew bread and and one of the other
Speaker 14: visiting teams brought olive oil. Uh, and so we would
Speaker 14: have Peter bread and olive oil in the mornings with
Speaker 14: the with the team.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 14: So many of the people have lost an incredible amount
Speaker 14: of weight. I actually, you know, before I turned forty,
Speaker 14: I tried to I got on a healthcake and lost
Speaker 14: a bunch of weight, and so I was I just
Speaker 14: shared my overweight photos from the past just to kind of,
Speaker 14: you know, uh, show them where I was.
Speaker 7: But every single person.
Speaker 14: We had like a kind of a humorous moment, like
Speaker 14: in between cases where everybody was showing me their pictures
Speaker 14: when they were big and how how skinny they are now,
Speaker 14: and it's just like it was kind of an interesting
Speaker 14: way to kind of relate to the people there. But
Speaker 14: obviously my weight loss was intentional and for a lot
Speaker 14: of these guys it isn't.
Speaker 3: And what was your experience with like creator seeing what
Speaker 3: aid's able to get through, what medical assistant's able to
Speaker 3: get through. Obviously you're based in Texas and you were
Speaker 3: able to get over there, but I imagine they're very
Speaker 3: short staffed when it comes to hospital positions, doctors, medical care.
Speaker 3: In addition to them, you know, you probably saw a
Speaker 3: lot of malnourishment and food shortages. So what was what
Speaker 3: was it like sort of watching people try to get
Speaker 3: medical aid, even just yourself and food into gaza.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so the first time we went in April, it
Speaker 14: was actually we went through the Rougha border and we
Speaker 14: were able to bring in you know, I think we
Speaker 14: had like ninety suit cases full of not just equipment,
Speaker 14: but also so emergency food packs. Uh, you know, baby formula,
Speaker 14: feminine supplies. All those things were able to get in
Speaker 14: because when you go through the rougher border, there was
Speaker 14: a year there was an Egyptian entry in an Israeli entry,
Speaker 14: and the doctor the medical teams could go through the
Speaker 14: Egyptian entry, so we were able to bring in a
Speaker 14: bunch of stuff. This time you're going through Crem Shalom
Speaker 14: and you're not really able to bring in anything other
Speaker 14: than personal.
Speaker 7: Supplies, so to one suitcase.
Speaker 14: And one carry on, and so we really weren't able
Speaker 14: to bring as much. You're just kind of bringing in
Speaker 14: your own your own stuff there. You know, we did
Speaker 14: bring a lot of One of the suitcases is full
Speaker 14: of you know, emergency food supplies and like protein bars
Speaker 14: and stuff like that. So brought in a surplus so
Speaker 14: that we could hand some of that out. But there
Speaker 14: is an incredible limitation and resources. I think the other
Speaker 14: thing is the limitation and money being brought in.
Speaker 7: It's I mean, we.
Speaker 14: Talk about inflation at a an astronomical level, like I mean,
Speaker 14: you know, a gallon of gas is about eighty dollars
Speaker 14: or you know, a gallon of diesel, and it's it's
Speaker 14: it's remarkable how everything is in shekels or US dollars.
Speaker 7: There's no profession of any other form of currency. The
Speaker 7: first time I went.
Speaker 14: I brought some Egyptian currency and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 14: we can't, we can't use that here. It's just everything
Speaker 14: is incredibly inflated, and it's interesting when you go north.
Speaker 14: I think it's a sad marker of how much the
Speaker 14: population has thinned. The aid that does get in. There's
Speaker 14: you know, if you talk to the people on the ground,
Speaker 14: there's this suspicion that the aid is that is being
Speaker 14: brought in is being given to businessmen and not necessarily
Speaker 14: people on the up and up, so that they can
Speaker 14: take the aid, mark it up and try to sell
Speaker 14: it to people. And they feel that that's being conducted
Speaker 14: through contacts in the Israeli military. If you ask the
Speaker 14: individual people on the ground, the supply is act better
Speaker 14: in the north because the demand has gone down and
Speaker 14: south prices have skyrocketed. So it was a very interesting
Speaker 14: thing when we went into the south. You know, we
Speaker 14: prayed behind one of the guys that runs the morgue
Speaker 14: was leading prayer, and so after his prayer, like he
Speaker 14: put up his hands and specifically made a prayer for
Speaker 14: the people in the north because there's there's you know,
Speaker 14: it's known that there's so much death and destruction there.
Speaker 14: But then when we went north and then we're coming
Speaker 14: back down south, they actually a lot of people in
Speaker 14: the North wanted to give things to us to take
Speaker 14: to their family in the South because they're going to
Speaker 14: die here and this this stuff needs to get to
Speaker 14: our family, and things are so expensive down south that
Speaker 14: they can't they can't get anything. So the supply is
Speaker 14: actually lower in the South and demand is higher, so
Speaker 14: the prices are just skyrocketed.
Speaker 2: Doctor, What are people what hope are they holding on too?
Speaker 2: Because you know, at this point, like just for me personally,
Speaker 2: I feel like there was a huge college protest movement
Speaker 2: in terms of the US contexts like that didn't move
Speaker 2: the needle. You know, there was some hope that perhaps
Speaker 2: Spiden and Harris could be pressured in some way that
Speaker 2: obviously didn't move the needle. Now you have an incoming
Speaker 2: administration that you know, is has long been very hostile
Speaker 2: basically long done what you know, the Israelis have wanted
Speaker 2: them to do. So what if people want us to
Speaker 2: know and what hope are they hanging on to at
Speaker 2: this point?
Speaker 7: It depends on who you ask.
Speaker 14: So, you know, when we were meeting with one of
Speaker 14: the guys that does run the morgue and he gets
Speaker 14: a lot of the you know, the the bodies to prepare.
Speaker 14: And then Barry, he's a very upbeat guy and was
Speaker 14: joking around and you know, very social and one of
Speaker 14: our teammates asked him give us a message of hope
Speaker 14: for the people out out in the world, and he's like,
Speaker 14: what hope.
Speaker 7: There is no hope. We're all going to die.
Speaker 14: We just have to do our best while we're while
Speaker 14: we're here, and you know, it's it's very humbling to
Speaker 14: year someone as upbeat as that saying something like that.
Speaker 7: But then, you know, on the flip.
Speaker 14: Side, whenever the election results got announced, everyone's kind of
Speaker 14: joking in the O R and in the UH. In
Speaker 14: the courtyard of the hospital, you know, one of the
Speaker 14: nurses daughters was killed, and so his other daughter and
Speaker 14: sons were playing by the you know, because they bury
Speaker 14: everybody in the courtyard or right outside the hospital. It's
Speaker 14: just graves as far as you can as you can see.
Speaker 14: And this, you know, one of the nurse's sons is
Speaker 14: a teenager and he was just like, he's like, you're
Speaker 14: going to beat Trump. He's like, if you tell, if
Speaker 14: you see Trump tell him, guys, is not just gonna
Speaker 14: free Palistine, It's going to free the whole world. I
Speaker 14: think there's this sense that even though Trump, you know,
Speaker 14: one of the doctors is like Trump has a son
Speaker 14: in law that's Lebanese, maybe he's going to be a
Speaker 14: little more more uh favorable. I think that the general
Speaker 14: sense is that even though you know, Trump has been
Speaker 14: pretty derogatory in the way that he's talked about Palestinians,
Speaker 14: I think the thought is that you can't really appeal
Speaker 14: to his humanitarian side, but you might be at least
Speaker 14: appealed to his ego to not look subservient to nen
Speaker 14: Yahoo and Israeli leadership in perpetuity. I mean, I think
Speaker 14: on the Kama Harris and Biden's side, there just seemed
Speaker 14: to be no light at the end of the tunnel
Speaker 14: in terms of them ever standing up to know what
Speaker 14: was being done in Israel, even if it violates our
Speaker 14: own laws.
Speaker 7: But with Trump, perhaps you can count on his ego
Speaker 7: eventually taking over.
Speaker 2: Doctor Khalil, thank you so much for spending some time
Speaker 2: with us, and thank you so much again for the
Speaker 2: work that you do, which to me is unimaginable. Your
Speaker 2: level of personal courage and ethics and morality to go
Speaker 2: and put yourself in such a difficult and dangerous situation.
Speaker 4: So we're really grateful. Is there anything.
Speaker 2: Anything else you want to share or anywhere you want
Speaker 2: people to go to follow what's happening on the ground.
Speaker 7: Yeah, No, I think I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 14: I mean, when we're there's I've never felt the feeling
Speaker 14: of survivor's guilt before, but this is something that that
Speaker 14: you get. You really hits home when you're when you're
Speaker 14: leaving Gaza, and as much as we you know, uh,
Speaker 14: as much as it may take, you know, kind of
Speaker 14: putting your your fears to the side to go there,
Speaker 14: you're just humbled by how brave the people that are
Speaker 14: there actually are. Like I mean, it's they literally tell
Speaker 14: you they won't even tell you the number of family
Speaker 14: members that they've lost unless you ask them, and then
Speaker 14: they just they they take it so well and then
Speaker 14: continue to work to help people even without pay, like
Speaker 14: in the hospital.
Speaker 7: It's truly unimaginable.
Speaker 14: And I think, like you know, anything that all I
Speaker 14: can tell people is, you know, if the money and donations,
Speaker 14: if you can find organizations like you know, World Central
Speaker 14: Kitchen Rama.
Speaker 7: Keep donating. But the biggest thing is I think.
Speaker 14: Speaking up, like I don't know how long this can
Speaker 14: continue to happen, but at some point it's got to stop.
Speaker 14: And I think, like you know, a lot of the
Speaker 14: attention on this has been diverted. Now after a year
Speaker 14: of this going on, it's kind of hard to keep
Speaker 14: focused on it. But just you know, anyone who's got
Speaker 14: an interest, please just keep educating people.
Speaker 4: Doctor, thank you so much, and happy New Year to
Speaker 4: you as well.
Speaker 7: Thank you guys.
Speaker 2: All right, everyone once again, Happy new year to you.
Speaker 2: Here we go twenty twenty five, ready or not. And Emily,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for hosting with me today. Monday,
Speaker 2: Soccer will not be back, but Emily's a little busy
Speaker 2: that day, so I'm going to book a bunch of
Speaker 2: really interesting guests. We're going to do a show. I'll
Speaker 2: be back in the studio for that and Ben Soccer
Speaker 2: will return. We'll get back to the regular scheduled programming.
Speaker 2: But always a pleasure, Emily. We always talk too much,
Speaker 2: though I.
Speaker 3: Know we always do it. You can always it's so stereotypical.
Speaker 3: Although sometimes the bro shows go along. That's true, not
Speaker 3: quite this long.
Speaker 4: That is true. That is true.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, thank you so much for watching, and
Speaker 2: enjoy your weekend. I'll see you back here next week.