Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of this show.
Speaker 1: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 1: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 1: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and
Speaker 2: all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 1: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 1: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Good morning, everyone, Welcome to Breaking Points. Very excited about
Speaker 2: this show. We actually have a little bit of a
Speaker 2: global flare here, crossing three different continents with the guests
Speaker 2: that are going to be joining me. So first off,
Speaker 2: very special guest Saga is going to join it for
Speaker 2: the A Bloc to talk about the very latest with
Speaker 2: regard to tariffs. No baby yet, but he is very
Speaker 2: busy and occupied with preparing for the big day, so
Speaker 2: he's going to join us off the top. Then we're
Speaker 2: going to be joined by special guest host Special celebrity
Speaker 2: guest host fuldzerprizing journalist Glenn Greenwald. I want to get
Speaker 2: us take off the top of just you know, overall
Speaker 2: impressions of the Trump administration that I've got a bunch
Speaker 2: of news I want to dive into with him. This
Speaker 2: hoofy strike on the Israeli Ben Gurion Airport, the boycott's
Speaker 2: bill that actually was pulled, a very rare apac l here,
Speaker 2: So that's an interesting one to get into. There was
Speaker 2: a big deep dive into John Fetterman's mental and physical health.
Speaker 2: Almost appears like another democratic cover up of his specific situation.
Speaker 2: His staffers are speaking out, so a lot to get
Speaker 2: into there. Claudia Scheinbaum is hitting back at Trump after
Speaker 2: he offered to what an offer to send our military
Speaker 2: in to Mexico to fight the cartels. She is saying
Speaker 2: no thanks to that. At the same time, the Trump
Speaker 2: administration is wang designating suspected gang and cartel members as
Speaker 2: enemy combatants, potentially another path for them to attempt to
Speaker 2: deport people with no due process. So very interested to
Speaker 2: get Glenn's take on all of those things. Also going
Speaker 2: to have a journalist join us from Australia Australia has
Speaker 2: just sort of followed the footsteps of Canada with their
Speaker 2: election results. The Liberal the center left party coming from
Speaker 2: behind to really secure a landslide victory. The Prime Minister there,
Speaker 2: Tony Albanisi, is going to he was re elected his
Speaker 2: opponent actually again, like Canada, Canada not only lost the
Speaker 2: overall party election but also lost his own seat. And
Speaker 2: America and reaction backlash to Trump's policies has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with that. So really looking forward to getting
Speaker 2: the view from down under there. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: get to it. Very excited to announce a special edition
Speaker 2: of Breaking Points. Let's put this up on the screen. Guys,
Speaker 2: We've got the Baby Points edition. Sager is able to
Speaker 2: join us for the top of the show here as
Speaker 2: he navigates his life heading into a very very important day.
Speaker 3: It is lovely to see you, my friends.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the special graphic that honestly I needed
Speaker 1: that I needed. Thank you to the audience, and I
Speaker 1: just want to say this before we even get started.
Speaker 1: Thank you to the whole team, to everybody. It has
Speaker 1: been just an absolute roller coaster over here in the
Speaker 1: ingety household as we're dealing with the medical system and
Speaker 1: everything else, and just knowing that the team has my
Speaker 1: back and everybody else are producing a great show for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's just it's incredible. So seriously, thank you, especially the
Speaker 1: premium subscribers and others who enable this. And I am
Speaker 1: very glad to be able to hear to talk about
Speaker 1: tariffs and specifically about baby strollers. It's a very relevant
Speaker 1: thing in my life right now. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a good hook.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What was Trump's quoting was like everything's going down except
Speaker 2: the things that they carry the babies in.
Speaker 3: Or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which by which he means the strollers. Right today
Speaker 1: is May fifth, actually where one of the largest stroller
Speaker 1: companies here in the United States, called up a Baby,
Speaker 1: will actually be enacting all of its new price hikes
Speaker 1: part of the it's caused mass panic amongst a lot
Speaker 1: of my friends and others who are having children. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really great. And in addition, I'm sure that we'll
Speaker 1: play the clip of Trump. You know, we don't know
Speaker 1: the gender Jillian and I of what we're having, but
Speaker 1: if it is a girl, I guess I will only
Speaker 1: be able to buy was it three beautiful baby dolls,
Speaker 1: and because little girls notoriously do not need more than
Speaker 1: two or three little dolls. But yeah, okay, let's get
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure the Trump children, you know, they
Speaker 2: didn't have any access.
Speaker 1: Surely, of course not. They never had to tell more
Speaker 1: than they need. Have you seen the photo of Milania
Speaker 1: with literally a gilded baby stroller? So yeah, it must
Speaker 1: be nice. It must be nice not to have to
Speaker 1: worry about these things we are currently. I mentioned this
Speaker 1: last time, Crystal, I'll say to you, Jillian and I
Speaker 1: are spending our free time researching diaper supply chains just
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're going to be able to
Speaker 1: have access. That's just a really great addition to our
Speaker 1: new family life.
Speaker 2: You had anything else to worry about, Sager, So plenty
Speaker 2: of time on your hands, no other problems or challenges
Speaker 2: to worry about. So I'm sure that's how you want
Speaker 2: to spend your time. All right, let's get to We've
Speaker 2: got a couple of interesting comments here from Trump from
Speaker 2: this interview he did with Christen Welker over at NBC.
Speaker 2: This first one where he seems to indicate sort of
Speaker 2: downplay the possibility of a recession and what the impact
Speaker 2: of the recession would be let's go ahead and take
Speaker 2: a listen to that.
Speaker 5: I want to know what you think about that. Are
Speaker 5: you comfortable with the country potentially dipping into a recession
Speaker 5: for a period of time if you are able to
Speaker 5: achieve your long term goals?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say, well,
Speaker 6: I like to tell you something else. Some people on
Speaker 6: Wall Street say that we're going to have the greatest
Speaker 6: economy in history. Why don't you talk about them? Because
Speaker 6: some people on Wall Street say this is That's what.
Speaker 1: I'm getting at.
Speaker 5: That's what I'm getting at.
Speaker 6: Though there are many people on Wall streets say this
Speaker 6: is going to be the greatest windfall ever happened.
Speaker 5: And that's my question this long term. Is it okay
Speaker 5: in the short term to have a recessions?
Speaker 6: Look, yeah, everything's okay. What we are I said, this
Speaker 6: is a transition period. I think we're going to do fantastic.
Speaker 1: On the Trump economy.
Speaker 6: It partially is right now, and I really mean this.
Speaker 6: I think the good parts of the Trump economy and
Speaker 6: the bad parts of the Biden economy because he's done
Speaker 6: a terrible job. He did a terrible job on everything.
Speaker 1: Your thoughts soccer, Yeah, the Trump economy or the good
Speaker 1: parts of the Biden stock market, and actually it will
Speaker 1: remain in the Biden stock market until it starts to
Speaker 1: go up again. It's just preposterous now at this point,
Speaker 1: it is pretty crazy to be almost a month more
Speaker 1: than a month actually now at this point removed from
Speaker 1: Liberation Day, and for all of us to actually try
Speaker 1: and take a step back and realize, like what has
Speaker 1: now happened. We have a massive like market volatility. In fact,
Speaker 1: though the US economy is suffering one of the greatest
Speaker 1: like supply shocks in American history, almost comparable to COVID,
Speaker 1: except this is a self induced supply shock. And I
Speaker 1: know we've been warning about the shipping drop and how
Speaker 1: that wall manifest in terms of shelves and all of that,
Speaker 1: and that's just going to be ever present here because
Speaker 1: it's going to take months for us to see some
Speaker 1: of this. And already we're seeing this like crazy run
Speaker 1: on iPhones, on strollers, on other importable goods or important
Speaker 1: goods like things like television's consumer electronics. But what about
Speaker 1: six months from now. I'm also thinking about the fact
Speaker 1: that we're in May, so you know, six months from now,
Speaker 1: whenever we're in the holiday period of whenever people are
Speaker 1: going to be shopping for gifts, think about Cyber Monday
Speaker 1: and all these other things. Q four one of the
Speaker 1: most important quarters in all of retail. Just consider, you
Speaker 1: know what those recession comments and how they can come
Speaker 1: back to bite you. It is also fascinating because Trump's
Speaker 1: simultaneously is a student of like some political history. Now,
Speaker 1: he recently was talking about and texted new Ganggrich about
Speaker 1: read my lips, no new taxes. This was the infamous
Speaker 1: line that's sunk Judge George H. W. Bush. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you don't even think about your political fortune, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat in the future for the Democrats in the midterm elections,
Speaker 1: it's very obvious that that recession clip and others of
Speaker 1: him talking about this are going to be massively impactful
Speaker 1: for Republican chances. I know that there's a takeout there
Speaker 1: that Trump doesn't care about the midterms, But from a
Speaker 1: purely self interested level, it's like, dude, do you want
Speaker 1: to spend over one hundred and fifty million dollars in
Speaker 1: legal fees because you Pete Hegseth, Mike Wall, all these
Speaker 1: other guys like every elon, every you know, potential mini
Speaker 1: scandal or any of this other thing. You are going
Speaker 1: to spend your ass living before Congress and adjudicating contempt
Speaker 1: and you know, like subpoenas from the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: for your entire presidency. This is a tale as old
Speaker 1: as time from I remember Benghazi and all this other
Speaker 1: nonsense that we were forced to live through. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just classic waves of an administration. But I
Speaker 1: mean the only alternative is this is what he believes,
Speaker 1: and there is just no shaking, you know, his foundational belief.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while you're allowed to rushing into
Speaker 1: the Oval office and to cause the Trump truth or
Speaker 1: whatever that will implement a ninety day pause. By the way,
Speaker 1: where are the deals?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 1: I know, I've been gone for a while, but everyone
Speaker 1: said a checking where's the deal?
Speaker 7: I was talented?
Speaker 1: I know I haven't. I'm aware, and that's my point.
Speaker 1: You know, every morning I checked the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: of Financial Times at the very least, just checking for something.
Speaker 1: Even in India, Japan, the European Union, in fact, it
Speaker 1: feels like every other country is doing better than we are.
Speaker 1: I just read this morning European traders had their best
Speaker 1: year in a decade, and that foreign traders and others
Speaker 1: all trading off of the volatility and the currency shocks
Speaker 1: from the United States. So it seems like everybody else
Speaker 1: seems to be doing it actually pretty well. It seemed
Speaker 1: like a major shock to or actually politically, I know,
Speaker 1: you guys are covering to Australia today, it's like, oh cool.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like you're basically ushering in like global centrism.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was definitely the project of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: So it's just been a colossal failure, stupidity predicted. And
Speaker 1: it would be funny if there were not millions of
Speaker 1: people to be affected. Like I mean, the stroller thing
Speaker 1: is just a minute example, you know, for someone like me,
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, it's only what one of
Speaker 1: the most important periods of your entire life, and you know,
Speaker 1: just to think about people who are struggling, who are
Speaker 1: out there who need a stroll. You know, I've talked
Speaker 1: about this. You're not allowed to leave the hospital if
Speaker 1: you don't have a car seat. It's okay, good luck.
Speaker 1: Over ninety four percent of them come from China, so
Speaker 1: if you're having a kid six or seven months from now,
Speaker 1: I know you're probably not thinking like this, I would
Speaker 1: buy one today, and you know, if you can't afford
Speaker 1: it or something like that in the future, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to try and buy secondhand. That's not really
Speaker 1: something that I want people to have to do, right,
Speaker 1: And so these are really bad things that you're inflicting
Speaker 1: on people's lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know my view is, first of all,
Speaker 2: I think they just assumed that the terms are going
Speaker 2: to be a loss, and it is what it is.
Speaker 2: And for Trump, I think, yes, he likes tariffs and
Speaker 2: he likes power, and tiffts give him the ultimate power,
Speaker 2: you know. I think he even the comments in the
Speaker 2: Time magazine interview he was like sort of delighted that
Speaker 2: he had upended the election in Canada. He didn't care
Speaker 2: that it was in service of the opposite of his ideas,
Speaker 2: supposed ideological project.
Speaker 3: He just liked that it revolved around him.
Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, he made other comments
Speaker 2: in that interview about how he's like the you know,
Speaker 2: controls the world effectively, and I think that's the way
Speaker 2: that he feels about it, is he loves making the
Speaker 2: whole world dance to his tune, and that's really more
Speaker 2: than anything to me what this is all about. But
Speaker 2: we did, as you mentioned before, we did get some
Speaker 2: new guidance from the dear Leader about what sorts of
Speaker 2: toys and in what quantities and school supplies our children
Speaker 2: should be content with. Let's go ahead and take a
Speaker 2: listen to Trump on that.
Speaker 5: You are at your cabinet meeting. You said, quote to
Speaker 5: quote when you said, maybe the children will have two
Speaker 5: dolls instead of thirty dollars, and maybe the two dollars
Speaker 5: will cost a couple of bucks.
Speaker 1: More than they would normally.
Speaker 5: Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices
Speaker 5: to go up.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 6: I think the tariffs is going to be great for
Speaker 6: us because it's going to make us rich.
Speaker 5: But you said some dolls are going to cost more.
Speaker 5: Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices go up.
Speaker 6: I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's eleven
Speaker 6: years old, needs to have thirty dollars. I think they
Speaker 6: can have three dollars or four dollars. Because what we
Speaker 6: were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a
Speaker 6: trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.
Speaker 5: When you say they could have three dollars instead of
Speaker 5: thirty dollars, are you saying Americans could see empty store shelves.
Speaker 6: No, No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they
Speaker 6: don't need to have thirty dollars, they can have three.
Speaker 6: They don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils,
Speaker 6: they can have five.
Speaker 3: Five pencils.
Speaker 2: I get the good needs is the doll allotment has
Speaker 2: been increased from two to a max of four.
Speaker 1: So progress there. Yeah, I mean to borrow from Richard Nania.
Speaker 1: Like this is maga maoism, Like this is literal maoism
Speaker 1: in terms of yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well, actually I was thinking about that because I saw
Speaker 2: a lot of people saying like this is this is
Speaker 2: like communism, but at least in communism, the idea was
Speaker 2: like you're going to take from the wealthier people make
Speaker 2: everybody equal. This is like we're going to take from
Speaker 2: the poor to make the rich richer, and like make
Speaker 2: sure that Donald Trump and his oligarchic cartel are you know,
Speaker 2: wildly wealthy. Although you know, I see me shaking your head.
Speaker 2: It is true that the billionaires are getting hurt here
Speaker 2: now too. But the idea is if you're one of
Speaker 2: the insiders, you're going to be able to consolidate even
Speaker 2: more power because who's going to get decimated by these tariffs?
Speaker 2: Amazon and Walmart, they're going to have a bumpy path.
Speaker 2: They're going to make it through small and medium sized businesses.
Speaker 1: They're going to be destroyed. You know, I don't disagree.
Speaker 1: I was just I was just going to say that
Speaker 1: that actually was the net effect of the Soviet system,
Speaker 1: which is, yeah, everything's great, but actually, irl, what happens
Speaker 1: is a bunch of commissars and all those other people.
Speaker 1: So actually, I think the Mao analogy is accurate because
Speaker 1: really what it was is that Maoism the cultural revolution others,
Speaker 1: if we used ideology, I've got a good mouth book
Speaker 1: behind me actually, which was used as a tool of
Speaker 1: ideology to purge anybody who was not sufficiently like you know,
Speaker 1: who is not sufficiently like worshiping the culture personality around him,
Speaker 1: including some of the most effective people like Deng Jahouping
Speaker 1: and others, while cultivating this era of stupidity where it
Speaker 1: was all supposed to be in service of like the
Speaker 1: Great Cultural Revolution, of the peasant class and then that
Speaker 1: effect was like famine while a lot of these other
Speaker 1: people either lived large or a mass large amounts of power.
Speaker 1: I think the Soviet system very similar. So the stupidity
Speaker 1: and the corruption you know, within it, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of baked in I think to the general ideology. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, really what it comes down to is this
Speaker 1: is antithetical. I think to a lot of the reason,
Speaker 1: not only the reasons why trump Ism, if there is
Speaker 1: such a thing, was popular. I mean, if we really
Speaker 1: do think about why Trump even won the overall election,
Speaker 1: people were not just a set about inflation or up
Speaker 1: set about immigration. I think in general, you know, the
Speaker 1: American spirit has a lot of social libertarianism to it,
Speaker 1: where the idea is is that we don't want to
Speaker 1: tell you what to do, just go ahead and live
Speaker 1: your life. We want to make everybody rich and or
Speaker 1: better off so that they can be able to do
Speaker 1: whatever it is they want to do. And so it's
Speaker 1: pretty different. You know, whenever the president is telling you
Speaker 1: the number of pencils that your child is allowed to
Speaker 1: have at school or the number of toys that you're allowed, like, look,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe he's right crystally you know a lot
Speaker 1: better than I do. Maybe kids don't need a bunch
Speaker 1: of different Barbie doll But what if you want to
Speaker 1: buy it for him? Okay, you know what if you
Speaker 1: know I already know that. If you know, if you
Speaker 1: have a daughter and she's five and she's asking me
Speaker 1: for if I have the money, it's happening. All right,
Speaker 1: that's probably a bad thing. But like I'm going to
Speaker 1: buy it, and that's that. It's one of those where
Speaker 1: it's kind of grotesque, you know, to be lectured by
Speaker 1: the leader of the country as to what you're allowed
Speaker 1: to spend your hard earned money on now. And and
Speaker 1: you know, just finally, because now I've been beating this
Speaker 1: Trump for a month. If we wanted to start a
Speaker 1: program of building children's toys which are super safe with
Speaker 1: no lead, where we know exactly where they're made, and
Speaker 1: we're supporting like small businesses and people who are craftsmen
Speaker 1: and others who have been working on this for a
Speaker 1: long time, and it's somebody's dream, you know, to be
Speaker 1: able to open a store and they get a tax
Speaker 1: credit and all that, I would be all for it.
Speaker 1: I would say that's fantastic. It's great, let's get it
Speaker 1: out of China. Let's make sure that these are actually
Speaker 1: to a very very high safety standard, unlike many children's
Speaker 1: toys that we have right now. But that's not what's happening,
Speaker 1: right you know, It's like instead, you're just cutting off
Speaker 1: from them, and then you're not really helping anybody over here.
Speaker 1: And in fact, you know who's the best off, Like
Speaker 1: you said, it's Amazon, and it's Walmart or any of
Speaker 1: these other places which are just gonna use loopholes to
Speaker 1: be able to stock pilot inventory. Or you know, right now,
Speaker 1: Walmart is actually discounting even though they're eating a ton
Speaker 1: of loss. Why to nuke everybody else because they can
Speaker 1: afford it. They have a tons of on their balance sheet.
Speaker 1: Same with Amazon. I don't know if you I talked
Speaker 1: about this on Wednesday. Amazon literally told it's we're not
Speaker 1: accepting price increases, right, which, yes, what You're screwed if
Speaker 1: you have a supplier you need to sell on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Good luck, team man, You're done. I'm already starting to
Speaker 1: see it. A few little products that I buy no
Speaker 1: longer available on Amazon. Oh wow?
Speaker 2: Really yeah, I mean, listen, on the critique of consumerism,
Speaker 2: there is a version of this I am open to, right,
Speaker 2: I wish we had a less sort of disposable society
Speaker 2: where you know the number of toys and books and
Speaker 2: clothes and whatever that just gets like, you know, basically
Speaker 2: tossed or or you know, taken to goodwill or the
Speaker 2: op shop or whatever. There's you know, we don't really
Speaker 2: value having a few quality, perhaps locally made things.
Speaker 3: But that is not that is not what.
Speaker 2: We're talking about here, right, there's no other part of
Speaker 2: that agenda that exists. In fact, dose just making sure
Speaker 2: we don't have safety regulators to make sure there's no
Speaker 2: lead in the toys. They're rolling back the provisions with
Speaker 2: regard to toxic chemicals, et cetera. So yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: like suffering for the sake of Trumpian power plays. This
Speaker 2: is an interesting and sort of complicated one. Let's put
Speaker 2: this up on the screen. We've been covering Timu and
Speaker 2: San and they're the way they're impacted by the TERRAF.
Speaker 2: So in addition to everything that's been done, Trump is
Speaker 2: now rolling back that deminimous loophole exemption that you have
Speaker 2: had your eye on for a while, Sager, that basically
Speaker 2: lets these low cost producers ship directly to consumers here
Speaker 2: in US, and so long as the amount is under
Speaker 2: eight hundred dollars, they have been, you know, been able
Speaker 2: to bypass any sort of customs, imports, duties, et cetera
Speaker 2: that is being rolled back. It's going to have a
Speaker 2: huge impact on Timu and Shan, but also it's going
Speaker 2: to have a huge impact on Google and Meta and
Speaker 2: any sort of online platform that depends on ad revenue,
Speaker 2: because the numbers around this are quite astonishing. They'd flooded
Speaker 2: Google in the US with ads for the goods they sell.
Speaker 2: Those started to disappear from the platform in April. On
Speaker 2: April fifth, t accounted for nineteen percent of all US
Speaker 2: ads the almost twenty percent of all US ads displayed
Speaker 2: on Google Google Shopping.
Speaker 3: Now that number is zero.
Speaker 2: Shean also went from around twenty percent to zero by
Speaker 2: April sixteenth. So there will be significant reverberating effects not
Speaker 2: just with T moon she In, but with the entire
Speaker 2: economy that revolves around advertising revenue, including yours.
Speaker 1: Truly. Yeah good low, yeah, good luck. Look, I'm for
Speaker 1: the Dominus thing. I'm for you know, Team Shoe. I
Speaker 1: think they're bad. I just think they're empirically bad. I
Speaker 1: think they're bad, bad for the American consumer. I think
Speaker 1: they're bad for the way that they use the Dominimus loophole.
Speaker 1: It effectively does punish people in the US. But again,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the point. It's not about you know,
Speaker 1: the te moon she and bad overnight cut them off
Speaker 1: good or not let them stay. It's about plan. It's
Speaker 1: about the fact, like you just said about advertising, it's
Speaker 1: like a fast fashion or making sure that people have
Speaker 1: access to bigger things or other things to be able
Speaker 1: to buy. You know, there's like a cultural component obviously
Speaker 1: the government can't get deeply involved in. But more broadly,
Speaker 1: the other thing with the Trump administration is you just
Speaker 1: never know if this is real or not, Like is
Speaker 1: this part of some sort of concerted strategy because de Minimus,
Speaker 1: we've covered here now for several months, has been on
Speaker 1: and off approximately five or six times. So if you're
Speaker 1: a company, like or anybody else who's thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, tema machine's going away, maybe we can start.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, what was that brand called American Apparel,
Speaker 1: something similar like a not fast fashion, but like a
Speaker 1: mid tier fashion band made in America. They had quite
Speaker 1: a bit of success actually, if I recall. But the
Speaker 1: point is that if you wanted to bet, you know,
Speaker 1: on building something here on Sore, how do you know
Speaker 1: that overnight Temy and Shean are not going to be
Speaker 1: able to come back. Look at the TikTok thing. It's
Speaker 1: literally a piece of legislation that Trump just decided that
Speaker 1: he's not going to enforce. Whether you like this or not,
Speaker 1: this is a ridiculous way to make policy. And the
Speaker 1: whole point is that it's just freezes investment all across
Speaker 1: the US. It punishes us consumer. They're seeing only things
Speaker 1: that are subtracted. There's nothing being added. There doesn't feel
Speaker 1: as if not only there's a steady you know, handed
Speaker 1: at the wheel, but they're just generally thrown into complete chaos.
Speaker 1: And that is just not really a way to live
Speaker 1: for people who are not you know, it sounds stupid
Speaker 1: about shopping or whatever, but you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: twenty percent reduction in Google AdSpend that has some pretty
Speaker 1: reverberating effects across the economy. Take us out of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you know how many I would venture
Speaker 1: to say that almost every American who owns stock probably
Speaker 1: owns some share of Google that's fifty sixty percent, whether
Speaker 1: you own it for this S and P five hundred
Speaker 1: or not. Think about if you live in an area
Speaker 1: which relies on Google, they build you know, data centers
Speaker 1: or anything. So that's the other thing is about the
Speaker 1: downstream overall economic effect of what this stuff looks like,
Speaker 1: is you know, their fiftieth and sixtieth order consequences to
Speaker 1: just sucking all of this money out of the US economy.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I really object to.
Speaker 2: Here Griffin was saying, it'd be pretty ironic of Trump
Speaker 2: and I'm destroying the US podcast class.
Speaker 3: That would be kind of funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it's funny though, because I think
Speaker 1: they would probably still be fine. Unfortunately, the sports gambling
Speaker 1: industry is still roaring, and they're the ones who are
Speaker 1: really propping them up along with the discount biagra pills,
Speaker 1: So I don't think they are going anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well we'll have to wait for the
Speaker 2: next maw it'ed move from Trump to go after those industries.
Speaker 2: Let's go and take a listen to the guy who
Speaker 2: runs the port in LA because there is perhaps no
Speaker 2: one who would have his finger on the pulse, more
Speaker 2: of what is headed our way and more importantly, what
Speaker 2: is not headed our way. Right now, let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and take a listen to what he has to.
Speaker 9: Say about a third of the import volume, which means
Speaker 9: give or take about fifty twenty foot equivalent units gone off.
Speaker 9: The arrivals coming in next week.
Speaker 10: So from next week is when you expect to say
Speaker 10: this really hit.
Speaker 9: That's correct, and that matches up the announcements back on
Speaker 9: April second, then on April eighth, a little bit of
Speaker 9: a change on everybody ex China, Mexico, Canada, and those
Speaker 9: arrivals are coming at us this weekend.
Speaker 10: Well, of course, dedicate time to you'll pull up. I'm
Speaker 10: just wondering how you anticipate in this rose and ripples
Speaker 10: through the economy from here, how it hits trucking when
Speaker 10: this turns up on the shaft. What's the distance the
Speaker 10: time from when you see a drop off in volume
Speaker 10: and when we as consumers say the shortages.
Speaker 9: So CEOs are telling me hit the pause button, right,
Speaker 9: I'm not going to import any more at these kind
Speaker 9: of prices. Let's wait and see. I don't know if
Speaker 9: it's going to be two hours, two days, or two
Speaker 9: weeks till I get some clarity, then hiring off the
Speaker 9: table for right now, capital investment pause, and the retailers
Speaker 9: are telling me that realistically, with even the ten percent,
Speaker 9: I'm going to have to pass it on to the consumers.
Speaker 11: So how much is this really coming from all over?
Speaker 11: It's not just about China. This is about really global
Speaker 11: trade coming to a standstill until there is a much
Speaker 11: greater degree of certainty and a much lower terror freight
Speaker 11: than even the baseline that's been put out there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, when I was last with you, at least I
Speaker 9: said global trade's going to slow, economies will follow, and
Speaker 9: that's exactly what we're seeing. Back in November, so many
Speaker 9: of us were wringing our hands about four percent inflation.
Speaker 9: We've just added ten percentage points to imports coming out
Speaker 9: of Southeast Asia for our port and these unbelievable numbers
Speaker 9: out of China.
Speaker 11: How much are you going to see a real decline
Speaker 11: in dock workers if this goes on?
Speaker 12: Yeah, this is the question.
Speaker 9: So the trucker hauling four or five containers today, next
Speaker 9: week she probably hauls two or three. The dock workers
Speaker 9: are no longer going to see overtime and double shifts.
Speaker 9: They're going to probably work less than a traditional work week.
Speaker 9: Starting right off the bat, every four containers meet a job,
Speaker 9: so when we start dialing this back, it's less job opportunity.
Speaker 11: And what happens if we get a deal.
Speaker 9: If we get a deal, it's going to take about
Speaker 9: a month.
Speaker 1: Let me walk you through that real quick.
Speaker 9: About two weeks to get the ships repositioned around these
Speaker 9: major ports from chin Dau to Shahai to jah Men,
Speaker 9: load up all those containers, and then another two weeks
Speaker 9: to steam across the Pacific to get to us. This
Speaker 9: is important because now we're talking about the spring and
Speaker 9: summer fashion, so we're kind of at a crux here
Speaker 9: that we've got to have something pretty quick and back
Speaker 9: to school, which is I think very critical when it
Speaker 9: comes to political pushback for this administration.
Speaker 2: It's interesting what he says. They're not just about the timing,
Speaker 2: but he's like this, we're not just talking about China here,
Speaker 2: and you know, let's just put our no up before
Speaker 2: I get your reaction to all of this saga. Who
Speaker 2: was talking about, you know, Japan. Originally the idea was
Speaker 2: that we're going to have this grand encirclement strategy. We're
Speaker 2: going to use Japan to agree to this to help
Speaker 2: to isolate China. Fast forward today, Japan is so antagonized,
Speaker 2: their publicly calling US proposals absolutely unacceptable and are threatening
Speaker 2: for the first time ever, and on national TV to
Speaker 2: sell their holdings of US treasuries as a tool of
Speaker 2: economic warfare against the US, in other words, of policy
Speaker 2: intended to isolate China as achieving the exact opposite outcome.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean I was flagging a lot. I could
Speaker 1: see that's coming from a mile away, you know. I
Speaker 1: saw the Japanese Prime Minister in the parliament and I
Speaker 1: was like, man, this is not good. Whenever you start
Speaker 1: hearing that type of rhetoric. These are very careful and
Speaker 1: reserve people. They know exactly what they're doing. That also
Speaker 1: as an indication not only of how they're feeling it
Speaker 1: at the governmental level, but broadly how they're seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to push back against the US as a
Speaker 1: democratic thing, which has really not happened in a long
Speaker 1: time in Japan's from an it's very isolating, you know,
Speaker 1: And so not only is about a failure of policy,
Speaker 1: but it also does show you that the amount of
Speaker 1: uncertainty now injected into global trade is such that the
Speaker 1: overall effect for the US consumer it takes months to
Speaker 1: shake out. And I think the most interesting part of
Speaker 1: the port of La Ceo there was him saying even
Speaker 1: if it were there was a pause on everything, that
Speaker 1: it would still take a month for it to come back. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is that like a lost quarter of
Speaker 1: overall US GDP? Like, that's a lot and we just
Speaker 1: had what the negative print on the number, and it's
Speaker 1: a little complicated, and I know you guys have talked
Speaker 1: about that in terms of the because a big part
Speaker 1: of is a number of imports and things like that.
Speaker 1: So it's not perhaps as catastrophic as people may think.
Speaker 1: But I'm very curious to see what that next figure
Speaker 1: looks like with this overall drop in trade. And I
Speaker 1: also feel for a lot of those dock workers, truck
Speaker 1: workers and others people who really I mean, they were
Speaker 1: going through it already, and you know it's already in
Speaker 1: terms of the decline, but you know, trucking, what is
Speaker 1: it the number one industry for non college educated men
Speaker 1: in the US be able to earn over one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per year it's why it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons is the most popular industry. Get paid a decent
Speaker 1: amount of money, you get to set relatively some of
Speaker 1: your own hours, and you have a decent amount of freedom.
Speaker 1: This is just takes it away from you and that's
Speaker 1: financially devastating, you know, for people, and then yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to start looking at other things. I saw.
Speaker 2: I wish I could remember the numbers, but the percent
Speaker 2: of people who live in and around LA who are
Speaker 2: somehow employed by the port ecosystem is just massive. And obviously,
Speaker 2: I mean LA is the biggest port in the country,
Speaker 2: but Glint is also huge. I mean, we have a
Speaker 2: number that would be massively impacted. And frankly, I think
Speaker 2: a month too. Like let's say there's a deal the
Speaker 2: executive director there are the Port of La saying would
Speaker 2: take a month to sort of shake things out based
Speaker 2: on COVID, I feel like that's kind of optimistic because
Speaker 2: there were so many reverberating impacts that, you know, because
Speaker 2: once you the truckers aren't getting enough work, then they
Speaker 2: leave and they go to other jobs, and then you
Speaker 2: don't have enough truckers, and then you know the dock
Speaker 2: where like, there's a whole compounding impacts that are hard
Speaker 2: to anticipate in advance, So I feel like a month
Speaker 2: is kind of a best case scenario, assuming that everything
Speaker 2: goes relatively smoothly in being able to unwind all of this.
Speaker 2: Two quick indications here before we moved onto Warren Buffett.
Speaker 2: We can put up McDonald's on the screen Burger Chains
Speaker 2: saying that terris are hurting sales after reporting largest decline
Speaker 2: since the pandemic. Apparently also their like biosque situation in
Speaker 2: the stores is also a big flop, which I would
Speaker 2: agree with. It takes so much freaking longer to order
Speaker 2: on those dang kios than just telling someone your order,
Speaker 2: So please bring back to human beings. In addition, Apple
Speaker 2: they say that the terriffs could cost them nine hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars almost a billion dollars just this quarter, and
Speaker 2: Tim Cook says there's actually some extraordinary factors that make
Speaker 2: that number less this quarter than it could be in
Speaker 2: quarters moving forward, and Sager remember Apple is one of
Speaker 2: the companies that has been a beneficiary of some of
Speaker 2: the larger exemptions to the tariff policy, so this is
Speaker 2: also being seen as a pretty dire indicator.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think one of you guys said that.
Speaker 1: It was like, this is one of the best managed
Speaker 1: companies in the world, with a shit ton of balance
Speaker 1: sheet cash, and you know, they're they're at global experts,
Speaker 1: at trade navigation and all of us. And for them
Speaker 1: to be, you know, ripping a billion a quarter, that's
Speaker 1: not a joke, not in terms of not only in
Speaker 1: terms of their inventory and how difficult it will be
Speaker 1: for them to navigate. But I think the point was, now,
Speaker 1: multiply that by the average fortune five hundred CEO and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, well, this is one of the best
Speaker 1: companies in the whole world. Then just think about what
Speaker 1: that's going to mean for so many others. I don't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they had already shifted.
Speaker 2: They had already shifted a significant amount to India and Vietnam,
Speaker 2: I believe, so they were sort of anticipating this and
Speaker 2: even so and got their exemptions because they're politically connected,
Speaker 2: and even so taking this kind of a hit. Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and move on to Warren Buffett, of course,
Speaker 2: legendary investor. He just announced that he is retiring. I mean,
Speaker 2: what's he's in his nineties, so certainly, yeah, he's certainly
Speaker 2: put in his time. We can go ahead and take
Speaker 2: a look. He got a ten minute standing ovation at
Speaker 2: the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting where this was announced. You
Speaker 2: can see, you know, see everyone standing there for him,
Speaker 2: and he made some interesting comments during his remarks here
Speaker 2: in addition to announcing his retirement on the trade war
Speaker 2: and on global trade in general. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: take a listen to that.
Speaker 4: We want a prosperous world. Eight countries with nuclear weapons,
Speaker 4: including a few that are what I would call quite unstable.
Speaker 4: I do not think it's a great idea to try
Speaker 4: and design a world where a few countries say, ha,
Speaker 4: we've won and other countries.
Speaker 1: Are envious.
Speaker 4: So the main thing to do is not trade should
Speaker 4: not be a weapon. And the United States, United States,
Speaker 4: we've won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important
Speaker 4: country starting from nothing two hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 4: There's nothing that anything like it. And it's a big
Speaker 4: mistake in my view when you have seven and a
Speaker 4: half billion people that don't like you very well, and
Speaker 4: you got three hundred million are crowing in some way
Speaker 4: about how well I've done.
Speaker 2: And soccer I don't know that Warren Buffett's views on
Speaker 2: trade are exactly the same as my views on trade.
Speaker 2: But I do think that last point he makes it's
Speaker 2: a really key one, just in the way that this
Speaker 2: particular trade war has been executed. He's like, you're making
Speaker 2: the whole world hate you. The whole world, You're uniting
Speaker 2: the entire globe against you. Like this is not a
Speaker 2: good idea.
Speaker 1: I respect Warren Buffett. He's a classic, you know, neoliberal
Speaker 1: free trader, and he profited quite a bit off of
Speaker 1: the of the Chinese economy and all of this. So
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I don't want to you know, just
Speaker 1: besmirch or whatever, who I think is a very interesting man.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we'll put his views on trade aside. He
Speaker 1: is not incorrect, you know, broadly about not only the
Speaker 1: chaos and the isolation that has happened as we just
Speaker 1: discussed with Japan. But you know, we also should look
Speaker 1: to his financial strategy for if anything, let's disregard maybe
Speaker 1: his like broad ergy of political views, and we can
Speaker 1: say is definitely an expert in making money. If anybody
Speaker 1: ever wants, there's a great book about it him. I
Speaker 1: think it's called Snowball, which I read that and several
Speaker 1: years ago fantastic book just broadly about like who this
Speaker 1: guy is, what makes him tick, the strategy behind all
Speaker 1: of it. It's actually really Warren's life tracks the development
Speaker 1: of the modern US economy, and since he's one of
Speaker 1: the greatest investors on paper ever, you know, seeing his
Speaker 1: mind kind of work through those decision points at those
Speaker 1: critical moments in US economic history is just a great
Speaker 1: way for not only to understand Balfit, but also to
Speaker 1: understand kind of everything that's happened. But to take this
Speaker 1: out of it, look at what he is currently betting on,
Speaker 1: and his mind still works quite well. They're sitting on
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions of dollars in cash because of uncertainty,
Speaker 1: and that is a giant red signal right to the
Speaker 1: overall US, to the equities market, to the banking sector,
Speaker 1: to the consumers, investment investors, and others for how they
Speaker 1: should be thinking in terms of whether they should outlay anything.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of hold back for where if
Speaker 1: you have the cash, you should just go ahead and
Speaker 1: keep it. That's going to have big impacts no matter what,
Speaker 1: because people look to Berkshire Hathaway to make their own
Speaker 1: investment decisions. And I think that actually is the most
Speaker 1: critical part of Warren Buffett, at least in his importance
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you can't deny his track record in you know,
Speaker 2: investing and seeing trends and anticipating them, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: we can put put this element up on the screen, guys.
Speaker 2: This is something we've been tracking and covered previously, but
Speaker 2: it's worth updating you on Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway just
Speaker 2: announce they now hold a record three hundred and forty
Speaker 2: eight billion dollars in cash.
Speaker 3: It's twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Buffett's cash balance is up two hundred and thirty nine billion.
Speaker 2: He has net sold stocks for ten straight quarters. Their
Speaker 2: t bill balance is actually fifty six per cent higher
Speaker 2: than the FED itself, and that cash pile is now
Speaker 2: larger than the market cap of giants like Bank of
Speaker 2: America and Coca Cola. Now we don't know for sure
Speaker 2: whether there were any sales, you know, during this period
Speaker 2: recent period of market well not sales purchases during this
Speaker 2: recent period of market volatility to draw down on that
Speaker 2: cash balance, but based on the comments he made at
Speaker 2: that meaning, it seems like he's still very unimpressed with
Speaker 2: the direction of the market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary. And again, like people should take
Speaker 1: just general notice that one of the greatest investors doesn't
Speaker 1: think that this is a good time to buy and
Speaker 1: always holding a decent amount of cash, and you know,
Speaker 1: just broadly, and I think we have this element as well,
Speaker 1: just about all of these different billionaires who are disclosing
Speaker 1: plans to sell billions of dollars in their own stock.
Speaker 1: Bezos here selling about five billion in Amazon stock, and
Speaker 1: I believe the same is the case for some of
Speaker 1: the other major tech CEOs who have taken a massive
Speaker 1: hit to their balance sheet. So yeah, they're taking money
Speaker 1: off the table and they're hoarding cash. Just like Warren Buffett.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this if in an era of uncertainty,
Speaker 1: businesses hoard cash. When you hoard cash, you're not making
Speaker 1: investment or hiring employees or doing any other different things
Speaker 1: that you may do. And not good. Not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's that's exactly right. And I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you saw because you I think read all
Speaker 2: of Weisenthal's things as I do. But his theory is
Speaker 2: that part of why the market hasn't crashed as much
Speaker 2: as you may expect, although I will say, looking at
Speaker 2: ten thirty am right now, it is down this morning,
Speaker 2: but is because retail has been so conditioned to buy
Speaker 2: the dip that they are actually buoying the market, and
Speaker 2: that if you look at the much larger institutional investors,
Speaker 2: they are all extremely barish. And I think you know,
Speaker 2: Berkshire Hathaway here and Duck Bezos and other billionaires would
Speaker 2: be sort of emblematic of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't fault anybody for buying the
Speaker 1: dipper dollar cost averaging or you know, not making any
Speaker 1: big decison or not like deviating. I think on the
Speaker 1: institutional side, they also, as we're talking about just broadly,
Speaker 1: like they have investors, or they have shareholders, or they
Speaker 1: need to be able to plan for the future, They're
Speaker 1: not thinking about it similarly, and so for them, the problem,
Speaker 1: you know, the retail guys always discover is that those
Speaker 1: large forces are much more market moving and important than
Speaker 1: you are. You know, with your one hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: month or whatever that you're auto buying the S and
Speaker 1: P five hundred. And this is the problem, you know,
Speaker 1: with major capital and their control is that the hey
Speaker 1: are the ones you decide the fate really for all
Speaker 1: of us, they're major decisions and so whether we like
Speaker 1: it or not, they're the ones who are really pulling
Speaker 1: the strings here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I have to live in the reality
Speaker 2: as it currently exists.
Speaker 1: Sager.
Speaker 2: Lovely to have you, sir, Great to see you. Everybody
Speaker 2: is very excited about you being daddy to be and
Speaker 2: thinking a lot about you and Jillian as you go
Speaker 2: through this.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys. Yeah, just shout out to any other
Speaker 1: expected parents out there. It's not easy. Do your own research,
Speaker 1: stand up for yourself, be your own advocate, and just
Speaker 1: make sure that you know you're taking everything with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt and making sure that you're paying attention.
Speaker 1: That's what I really hope lock in. But yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're doing our best hanging on and I'll let everybody
Speaker 1: know as soon as I can when things are.
Speaker 3: In motion, all right.
Speaker 2: And lastly, we're bringing in, you know, some celebrity guest
Speaker 2: hosts to try their best to fill your shoes, and
Speaker 2: we're about to. I'm about to bring in Glenn Greenwald,
Speaker 2: who scarcely needs an introduction. Pulled surprise winning journalist, hosts
Speaker 2: of System, Update on Rumble, etcetera. Any advice for me
Speaker 2: or for him as we move into the oh, celebrity
Speaker 2: guest host portion of the show.
Speaker 1: I think just change things up. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the most fun things. Whenever you have different guest hosts,
Speaker 1: song with different perspectives, or different hosts or any other things,
Speaker 1: you know, it can just be u it can be
Speaker 1: something new, and I think that's refreshing sometimes, especially in
Speaker 1: a crazy time like this.
Speaker 2: All right, Sager, go take care of what you need to,
Speaker 2: and hopefully we'll see again soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Bye, Glenn Greenwald, Welcome, Thank you for doing this with us.
Speaker 7: I'm so happy to be here. I just wanted to
Speaker 7: say I'm very well prepared. I actually I don't know
Speaker 7: if you studied it, but I have a big believer
Speaker 7: in method acting, and I spent the last few days
Speaker 7: navigating life as Saga, like I dressed like Kim, had
Speaker 7: my friends and kids call me Sager.
Speaker 1: So I feel, oh, yeah, is no, I'm done.
Speaker 7: I had to come on as myself. You don't want
Speaker 7: to like show what you're doing, so oh in my
Speaker 7: pocket my pocket handkerchief as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm ready to embody Sager excellent. I'm looking
Speaker 2: forward to that. We actually Saga was able to join
Speaker 2: for the A Bloc, so the audience will be able
Speaker 2: to compare and contrast just how well you do excellent,
Speaker 2: And we.
Speaker 1: Already gave you all.
Speaker 2: Your accolades Politicerprize winning journalists, blah blah blah, So no worry,
Speaker 2: you're properly presented here. I've got a bunch of news
Speaker 2: stories I want to get to with you. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that is like right in your wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: But before we did that, I wanted to get your
Speaker 2: reaction to Trump gave an interview to NBC's Meet the
Speaker 2: Press Crystal Welker. There were a number of moments that
Speaker 2: were noteworthy, but I wanted to get your reaction this
Speaker 2: one specifically where he says he's not sure if he's
Speaker 2: got to follow the Constitution.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: Some of the worst, most dangerous people on earth. And
Speaker 6: I was a to get him the hell out of here,
Speaker 6: and the courts are holding me from doing it.
Speaker 5: But even given those numbers that you're talking about, don't
Speaker 5: you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?
Speaker 1: As President I don't know.
Speaker 6: I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant
Speaker 6: lawyers that work for me, and they are going to
Speaker 6: obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said
Speaker 6: is not what I heard. The Supreme Court said. They
Speaker 6: have a different interpretation.
Speaker 5: Is anyone in your administration right now in contact with
Speaker 5: El Salvador about returning a brigovarsiat?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 6: You'd have to ask the Attorney General of that question.
Speaker 2: So, Glenn, it doesn't surprise me to hear Trump saying like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I need to follow the constitution
Speaker 2: some aspects of his administration. I think I expected basically
Speaker 2: the direction that he's gone in. But I have to say,
Speaker 2: you know, as someone who was accused of having Trump's arrangement,
Speaker 2: Centerman is still accused of such things. It's actually been
Speaker 2: much worse than I anticipated. And so I was just
Speaker 2: curious your perspective on how this is going visa VI,
Speaker 2: your expectations. What parts of it are you know, pushing
Speaker 2: further the attacks on civil liberties, some of the authoritarian tactics,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Just what's your view of how this is
Speaker 2: all going now that we're more than one hundred days in.
Speaker 7: It's a little bit of a complex question for the
Speaker 7: following reason. Obviously, I have been extremely vocal in denouncing
Speaker 7: countless Trump policies that are clear violations on basic civil liberties,
Speaker 7: on core concepts of due process and free speech. It's
Speaker 7: like an onslaught against the Bill of Rights, against the
Speaker 7: whole idea of having three branches of Congress. These things
Speaker 7: are very concerning and very worrying and very dangerous. That said,
Speaker 7: I started to make two quick points about this. One
Speaker 7: was in that interview that you just showed with Meet
Speaker 7: the Press. I do think that a lot of times,
Speaker 7: so many of the scandals that became these kind of
Speaker 7: red alert you know, eleven on the outraged scale scambals
Speaker 7: are the byproduct of Trump either trolling or not being
Speaker 7: very clear. He's not Actually he's a very effective speaker,
Speaker 7: but he's not a very cogent or clear order of
Speaker 7: his thoughts. They often get very confused. He becumes from
Speaker 7: some in the middle of sentences. I think what happened
Speaker 7: there was not he wasn't saying I think that, oh,
Speaker 7: we may or may not have to abide other constitution.
Speaker 7: The context for that was the Brigo Garcia case, where
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court, by a nine to zero ruling, ordered
Speaker 7: the Trump administration to do everything to facilitate his return
Speaker 7: and then report to the courts what it is that
Speaker 7: they were doing to be able to prove that they
Speaker 7: were complying with the Supreme Court order. When President Trump,
Speaker 7: you know, days later, met with Bukeley in the Oval
Speaker 7: office and a reporter asked him about that, like, hey,
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court told you get him back. It was
Speaker 7: obviously he hadn't read the Supreme Court opinion. I don't
Speaker 7: think it comes to a surprise to anybody that Trump
Speaker 7: doesn't read Supreme Court opinions. And so he sort of said,
Speaker 7: I'm not sure, and then he asked Stephen Miller, and
Speaker 7: Steve Miller stood up and explicitly and directly lied to Trump, saying,
Speaker 7: President Trump, we won on a ninety zero ruling. It
Speaker 7: was ninety zero in our favor, saying we don't have
Speaker 7: to get him back. And I believe Trump believes that
Speaker 7: to this very day. So I think in the interview,
Speaker 7: when she was saying do we have to buy it
Speaker 7: by the constitution, that could be a question of do
Speaker 7: we have to obey lower court judges or does the
Speaker 7: constitution require you to get him back? But having said that,
Speaker 7: just on that one issue, I do think that there
Speaker 7: is this They came in very prepared, and I kept
Speaker 7: hearing that throughout twenty twenty four from Trump people. We
Speaker 7: know what we did wrong on the first term. We
Speaker 7: didn't know what Washington we had too many people in
Speaker 7: the administration and sabotaging us. They came in with a very
Speaker 7: clear plan, most of which Trump explicitly discussed during the campaign,
Speaker 7: and it was all about eliminating any impediments to what
Speaker 7: Trump wanted to do, not just in the executive branch,
Speaker 7: but in the entire country colleges and media outlets and
Speaker 7: dissidents and activists. And that is where I think have
Speaker 7: been so radical and so extreme, and a full scale,
Speaker 7: very well coordinate attack on anything that might impedede Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where you know, even on this comments
Speaker 2: like I hear what you're saying about, Well, he's clumsy
Speaker 2: and how he answered this, and sometimes he can be trolling.
Speaker 2: You know, he's also flirted with twenty twenty eight. But
Speaker 2: then in this interview is like, well, I'm not really
Speaker 2: that interested in that, et cetera. But when you also
Speaker 2: layer on top of that, he is also brazenly defying
Speaker 2: the Constitution any number of ways. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: they think they have a case that they can take
Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court about the Empowerment Control Act, but
Speaker 2: power of the purse is long rested with Congress, and
Speaker 2: they just feel like they can do whatever they want
Speaker 2: with regard to not spending funds that have been appropriated,
Speaker 2: fire whatever they want, run rough shot over the government. Obviously,
Speaker 2: with regard to the Alien Enemies Act, they just decided, like,
Speaker 2: we don't have to offer due process. Another brazen violation
Speaker 2: of the Constitution. The assault on free speech with regard
Speaker 2: to college campus is not just with regard to foreign students,
Speaker 2: but also with regard to pressuring universities to you know,
Speaker 2: withhold diplomas from American citizens.
Speaker 3: All of these things.
Speaker 2: Are Oh, there was a memo that came out from
Speaker 2: this government or their position officially is that they don't
Speaker 2: need a warrant to go into your home if you
Speaker 2: are suspected of being a gang member, and apparently being
Speaker 2: suspected of being a gang member just means like you're
Speaker 2: maybe from Venezuela and perhaps you have a tattoo so
Speaker 2: when you put the comments in the context of it
Speaker 2: doesn't seem like this administration does feel like they need
Speaker 2: to abide by the typical understandings of the Constitution. One
Speaker 2: of his very first executive orders was to say, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to end birthright citizenship, which the language of
Speaker 2: which is plaine of day, Plain is day inside the Constitution.
Speaker 2: That's one of the ways that I feel like Trump
Speaker 2: two point zero is different than Trump one point zero,
Speaker 2: where there was a lot of merit to the well,
Speaker 2: I'll take him seriously but not literally. This time, I
Speaker 2: feel like you do kind of have to take him
Speaker 2: literally based on the actions that they have taken thus far,
Speaker 2: which really have indulged his most maximalist instincts.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I agree with that absolutely. I should note that
Speaker 7: several times Trump has been asked in the first four
Speaker 7: to six weeks of his administration, if the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: rules against you, would you ever consider ignoring or violating
Speaker 7: a Supreme Court order? And he very explicitly said absolutely not,
Speaker 7: I would never do so. And the difference between the
Speaker 7: first so I'm not saying that means he won't, I'm
Speaker 7: just saying that that idea has been in his head in.
Speaker 2: Because he basically is right now right, especially with regard
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 3: I know they're trying to play this legally.
Speaker 2: Is oh, well, facilitate means we don't really have to
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 7: No, there's no question they're ignoring. Yeah, there's no quess right,
Speaker 7: zero question. And they're doing it brazenly and defiantly. When
Speaker 7: they go to a court, a lower court court or
Speaker 7: an appellate court, they're contempt for their idea that they
Speaker 7: have to justify what they're doing is palpable. So I
Speaker 7: agree with you about the difference between the first and
Speaker 7: second term. This is what I will say, though. I
Speaker 7: remember when Wolsonar got elected in Brazil in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 7: he had a long history of just the most alarming
Speaker 7: and disturbing statement to like, first thing I'll do is
Speaker 7: close the Congress. You know, Pinochet didn't throw enough people
Speaker 7: out of helicop on and on and on. And as
Speaker 7: it turned out, when he got into the question, was
Speaker 7: our Brazilian institution strong and willing enough to confront him
Speaker 7: even if it means risk, And the answer ended up
Speaker 7: being yes, he ended up being actually a very weak president.
Speaker 7: I think that happened in Trump point one two. There
Speaker 7: was such a mobilization of every institution to try and
Speaker 7: stop him, in my opinion, almost excessively. What we're seeing now, though, Crystal,
Speaker 7: is some serious pushback that I think can be meaningful.
Speaker 7: Like I said, Trump lost nine to zero in the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court. Yes, they're ignoring it. They're not facilitating his return.
Speaker 7: That's going to go back to the Supreme Court and
Speaker 7: we'll see what the Supreme Court does. You see other
Speaker 7: cases where they lost on a nine to zero ruling
Speaker 7: as well. With the Alien Enemies Act and whether due
Speaker 7: process is required before they can deport people in the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court said absolutely, not only that, but advance notice
Speaker 7: is required as well. A Trump appointed judge just you know,
Speaker 7: three days ago last week said he doesn't even have
Speaker 7: the right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act because we're
Speaker 7: at war. So I just think that a lot of
Speaker 7: what Trump is doing is extremely disturbing, extremely alarming. We're
Speaker 7: still in the first three months. We'll see if they
Speaker 7: run out of energy, if they start having internal dissent,
Speaker 7: but more importantly, whether our institutions can really confront it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I agree with that, and I think
Speaker 2: there's been more of a resistance that has been mounted
Speaker 2: in recent weeks, and the courts, you know, they take
Speaker 2: time to act. And one of the things that Trump
Speaker 2: two point zero has done, you know, very intentionally, is
Speaker 2: flood the zone. Is just take the chainsaw and just
Speaker 2: move and just act. You saw this very explicitly with
Speaker 2: the with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. They
Speaker 2: drafted it, they held it, they got the people they
Speaker 2: wanted to deport in place ready to board the planes
Speaker 2: before they released it publicly. You know, there were attorneys,
Speaker 2: who immigration attorneys who were starting to get wind of it.
Speaker 2: That's the reason they were able to cobble together this
Speaker 2: last minute hearing where the judge says, hey, you have
Speaker 2: to even if the planes are the air, you have
Speaker 2: to turn them around. And again they just ignore that
Speaker 2: and oh, well they were over international waters.
Speaker 3: We couldn't do anything at that point. So sorry.
Speaker 2: And by the way, since you issued that order from
Speaker 2: the bench, it doesn't really matter. But in any case
Speaker 2: that the point is just that, because they've been so
Speaker 2: willing to act aggressively and in ways that they themselves
Speaker 2: know are probably not going to hold up to judicial scrutiny,
Speaker 2: it has been very difficult for the courts to keep up.
Speaker 2: The Democrats have been utterly pathetic in almost all instances.
Speaker 2: I know is ye know who could have predicted that,
Speaker 2: But you know their initial instinct was to be really
Speaker 2: cowed by Trump two point zero. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the media's instinct has been to bend the knee
Speaker 2: and basically bribe Trump to leave them alone so they
Speaker 2: can get their mergers through, et cetera. You initially had
Speaker 2: a Columbia University really bending the knee in particular, and
Speaker 2: other universities getting to follow suit. Now you've started to
Speaker 2: have led by Harvard, You've started to have a little
Speaker 2: bit of backbone demonstrated with the universities, a little bit
Speaker 2: of backbone now starting to be demonstrated by the law
Speaker 2: firms as well. Still waiting a bit on the media,
Speaker 2: I guess we have a few signs of that as well.
Speaker 2: But you know, I agree with you that the now
Speaker 2: that Trump has become so unpopular, and I think the
Speaker 2: tariffs have been particular stapped of a lot of popular
Speaker 2: support and institutional support as well. I think there's more
Speaker 2: pushback than there was previously, but I'm concerned about how
Speaker 2: much damage they can do before things are rained in
Speaker 2: and as you know, because you've covered this better than
Speaker 2: probably anyone, once the executive claims a power for itself,
Speaker 2: Once an executive tramples on our rights, it's very hard
Speaker 2: to put that genie back in the bottle.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Usually you just go increasingly in that direction. Whatever power
Speaker 2: the last president grabs, the next president grabs that power
Speaker 2: and expands it even further.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So I just wanted to pick them on that
Speaker 7: last plant because I think it's such a crucial one.
Speaker 7: During the campaign twenty sixteen and then even during the
Speaker 7: Trump presidency, one of the things that bothered me and
Speaker 7: concerned me about the liberal reaction to Trump, you know,
Speaker 7: like the maximalists, hair on fire kind of reaction, and
Speaker 7: that just being things like Russia, eate, I mean, like,
Speaker 7: you know, just reactions to a lot of the policies,
Speaker 7: is that so often things were depicted as some sort
Speaker 7: of singular trumpy and evil that was this radical departure
Speaker 7: from the American tradition. I remember the first time I
Speaker 7: really was irritated by this was when Trump invited the
Speaker 7: Egyptian dictator Sissy to the White House and the media
Speaker 7: went berserk and said, this is no American president would
Speaker 7: have done this, embraced a dictator like this before, and
Speaker 7: I was like, what, that's the whole history of the
Speaker 7: post World War two era American presidents embraced dictators pretty
Speaker 7: much every month. It's what they wake up and they do.
Speaker 7: And there was a and so much of what I
Speaker 7: feel like going through these first three months of the
Speaker 7: civil liberties onslaught is it reminds me so much of
Speaker 7: those Bushheney years. You know, when I began writing about politics,
Speaker 7: where the big framework was is the administration could do anything.
Speaker 7: It could put people in prisons with no charges in
Speaker 7: the middle of an ocean, or kidnap them or torture them,
Speaker 7: or spy on people. And the if you raise questions
Speaker 7: about it, the answer always was, why are you defending
Speaker 7: the terrorists? And he would be like, what the whole
Speaker 7: point of what I'm saying is that you don't know
Speaker 7: if someone's a terrorist until they get due process. And
Speaker 7: that's and you know, they invented all these radical presidential
Speaker 7: theories about why they can ignore congressional law. And there's
Speaker 7: an article today by jack Oldsmith, the Bush Cheney DJ
Speaker 7: lawyer in the and Harvard law professor in New York
Speaker 7: Times basically saying that most of the policies Trump is embracing,
Speaker 7: all being radically extended in more dangerous form, come from
Speaker 7: precedents that Obama won, that Biden won, that George Bush
Speaker 7: one on the extent of presidential powers. And he says,
Speaker 7: that's really the main problem this country has is we've
Speaker 7: made the president into a king, which you know, is
Speaker 7: exactly what the founder sought to avoid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the last thing that we can move on
Speaker 2: to what's going on with Yemen and Israel and Iran
Speaker 2: some you know, very ominous developments that we'll track. The
Speaker 2: last thing I wanted to get you on is something
Speaker 2: that Michael Tracy has been talking about is the way
Speaker 2: that this Trump administration seems to think that national security,
Speaker 2: or deeming something a national emergency, as with the tariffs,
Speaker 2: is a kind of cheat code to be able to
Speaker 2: just do whatever you want without having to worry about laws, Congress, courts,
Speaker 2: due process, etc. You see that that's the Alien Enemies Act,
Speaker 2: that's the exploration of declaring cartel members any enemy combatants.
Speaker 2: That's the justification for the tariffs as well. And that direction,
Speaker 2: to me is also very unnerving because Historically, the courts
Speaker 2: have granted the executive a lot of bandwidth to declare
Speaker 2: what is and isn't a national security threat, what is
Speaker 2: and isn't a national emergency, etc. So they feel like
Speaker 2: they can just stretch that outrageously to be able to
Speaker 2: claim effectively wartime powers here at home, you know, with
Speaker 2: massive blowback on our own citizens, not to mention immigrants
Speaker 2: who are here as well.
Speaker 7: No, that is a massive concern, and that was part
Speaker 7: of what Professor Golsmith's article is about, was exactly that
Speaker 7: there's the set of precedents now, the idea that presidents
Speaker 7: have virtually unimited power and war, that's very embedded American culture. Obviously,
Speaker 7: you know, Lincoln notoriously suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Speaker 7: We obviously don't have anything remotely close to that. You know,
Speaker 7: FDR use the Alien Enemies Act to detain huge numbers
Speaker 7: of Japanese Americans and concentration camps on the grounds that
Speaker 7: they're alien enemies, and the courts have often approved of
Speaker 7: these over the decades, creating this you know, almost omnipotent presidency.
Speaker 7: But most presidents have had some restraints on what they
Speaker 7: were willing to do political ones or ethical ones or whatever.
Speaker 7: And Trump is taking that to the fullest extent. And
Speaker 7: you know, again in the War on Terror, that's what
Speaker 7: was happening. And well, and then finally you did have
Speaker 7: pushback from courts, like in two thousand and eight the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court rule that even Guantanamo detainees have a right
Speaker 7: of habeas corpus to go in and see the against
Speaker 7: them and to question it, and huge numbers prove their
Speaker 7: innocence from that, showing the dangers of just allowing the
Speaker 7: president to treat people as guilty before they've been found guilty.
Speaker 7: But again, I think that Trump is exploiting in a
Speaker 7: very dangerous way a long history of expanding executive powers,
Speaker 7: in part because people in Congress don't want that responsibility.
Speaker 7: They're happy to let the president make tough decisions because
Speaker 7: they just want to get reelected.
Speaker 2: That's a good transition to Yemen and the Hoofies, I
Speaker 2: would say, And we can go ahead and put these
Speaker 2: images up on the screen. So they were able to
Speaker 2: successfully launch a ballistic missile that struck near Israel's main airport.
Speaker 2: This just happened on Sunday. You can see the black
Speaker 2: smoke there rising in the air. This is, according to
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal, a significant target, a rare hit
Speaker 2: of such a significant target, and happened just hours before
Speaker 2: the Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to expand their war in Gaza.
Speaker 2: There were a number of injuries, no fatalities, however, and
Speaker 2: the Houthis are saying that they are going to continue.
Speaker 2: They're saying that they're instituting an air blockade. I don't
Speaker 2: think they have that those capabilities, but they certainly demonstrated here.
Speaker 2: The US and Israel attempted to intercept this missile. They
Speaker 2: were unsuccessful, and so you have it, you know, causing
Speaker 2: some damage to there near the airport.
Speaker 3: Glenn, what do you make of this?
Speaker 2: And also just I mean, this is again an escalation
Speaker 2: and continuation of the Biden policy visa VI what the
Speaker 2: US has been doing with the hoo Thi's of just hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to just keep bombing them rather and we
Speaker 2: know the one thing that worked you get the Houthis
Speaker 2: to stop doing the thing that they're doing was a ceasefire.
Speaker 3: But instead we're just.
Speaker 2: Going to keep bombing them, even though everyone knows this
Speaker 2: is not going to be successful. And yet somehow, you know,
Speaker 2: this was the topic that was in the signal Gate conversation.
Speaker 2: Everyone pretends like, if we just make a bomb go
Speaker 2: boom is somewhere in Yemen, that this is a quote
Speaker 2: unquote success.
Speaker 7: It's so interesting because the one of the worst humanitary
Speaker 7: crisis of this century was when Saudi Arabia aged all
Speaker 7: out war with the very direct and over help and
Speaker 7: cooperation with the Obomb administration on Yemen in an extent
Speaker 7: to exterminate the Houthis. It killed massive numbers of innocent people,
Speaker 7: It caused mass famine and Yemen, and yet it really
Speaker 7: didn't degrade the houth The's capability at all. They learned
Speaker 7: how instead to protect their military assets, how to bury
Speaker 7: them underground, how to disperse them. It really made them stronger.
Speaker 7: And it's so interesting that you say that throughout twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four, Biden was bombing the Houthis almost every day,
Speaker 7: not nearly to the extent the United States is now
Speaker 7: bombing them under Trump, but still nonetheless bombing the every day.
Speaker 7: And I don't know if you've seen it, but in
Speaker 7: mid twenty twenty four he did an interview Trump did
Speaker 7: with Tim Pole, who asked him about the bombing of Yemen,
Speaker 7: and Trump denounced Biden, saying, yeah, these democrats, they just
Speaker 7: want to go all around the world bombing people. It's
Speaker 7: totally unnecessary. Why would we bomb the houthis At least
Speaker 7: then from like an America first perspective or whatever, Hoothies
Speaker 7: really were attacking American ships because they blamed us correctly
Speaker 7: for arming and funding Israel's destruction of Gaza. Once that
Speaker 7: ceasefire happened, the who he said, We're not going to
Speaker 7: attack anybody anymore. Our cause is done, and they did stop.
Speaker 7: And then once Israel quickly violated the ceasefire agreement by
Speaker 7: blocking humanitarian need from entering the ceasefire required them to
Speaker 7: do so, they said, we're going to resume our attacks,
Speaker 7: but only on Israeli ships, so not on American ships.
Speaker 7: They hadn't attacked American ships for two months when Trump
Speaker 7: suddenly decided he was going to not only reinstate, but
Speaker 7: radically escalate the bombing campaign of in Yemen. And it
Speaker 7: is such an interesting test in some way for MAGA,
Speaker 7: in that they've claimed one of their main goals of
Speaker 7: their political movement is to end Middle East wars, and
Speaker 7: here you have Trump totally gratuitously restarting one, and there's
Speaker 7: been some muttering, but not very much pushback at all.
Speaker 2: Well, and this is one of the things that was
Speaker 2: most disturbing to me about Signalgate is when you look
Speaker 2: in all the people that are in that chat. You
Speaker 2: got Toulci Gabber, you got jd Vance, you got Joe Ken,
Speaker 2: all these people, number of whom are supposed to be
Speaker 2: maggot in America. First, Jade Vance puts up this like
Speaker 2: weird complaint about isn't this just too good for Europe
Speaker 2: that we're doing this. I mean, listen, I get it.
Speaker 2: He's trying to appeal to a certain audience. But once
Speaker 2: that gets swatted aside and Steven Miller comes in over
Speaker 2: the top and basically says, no, this is what the
Speaker 2: boss wants everybody. Okay, great, you know, fift pound fire,
Speaker 2: American flag emoji, et cetera. And that, to me was
Speaker 2: sort of lost in the also significant and serious conversation
Speaker 2: about use of signal and all these sorts of things
Speaker 2: and kind of the process of it. But the fact
Speaker 2: that there was next to no dissent about a policy
Speaker 2: that everyone knows to have failed, and also by the way,
Speaker 2: is illegal in my view, should be authorized by Congress.
Speaker 2: And you know, this all just played out in this
Speaker 2: very casual signal chat where we know now there have
Speaker 2: been massive strikes on innocent civilians. There was a migration
Speaker 2: center for a number of African migrants who were killed,
Speaker 2: and this just goes almost unremarked at this point.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, as Michael Tracy said, you could never
Speaker 7: go broke betting on the continuation of bipartisan foreign policy
Speaker 7: in Washington. No matter how many candidates who win say
Speaker 7: they're going to you know, revolutionize it and uproot it, it
Speaker 7: just sort of continues endlessly. You know, I think that
Speaker 7: signal chat is interesting. I mean, I think Jadvance I
Speaker 7: would give him a little bit of space in that
Speaker 7: he knew he was, you know, communicating with a bunch
Speaker 7: of people who don't care about civilian casualties at all,
Speaker 7: don't care about the implications of starting a war, so
Speaker 7: he was trying to kind of play into their you know,
Speaker 7: prejudices and beliefs. Maybe I'm being naive, but you know,
Speaker 7: he was trying to cater his argument to that crowd,
Speaker 7: saying I think this is a mistake. You know, he
Speaker 7: was clearly opposed to it, but it was a very timid,
Speaker 7: very meet. Soon as he got pushed back, he said, no, no,
Speaker 7: don't worry if it happens, all supported publicly. And then
Speaker 7: when Pete Haig says showed, look, we just you know,
Speaker 7: just destroyed this whole building, this residential building that they
Speaker 7: bombed an apartment building because they thought a hoothy commander
Speaker 7: was inside with his girlfriend. It was a residential building.
Speaker 1: JD.
Speaker 7: Van said, you know, awesome, and they all started putting
Speaker 7: up their muscle on American flag tap you know emojis,
Speaker 7: including Talsea, who I know for so long has been
Speaker 7: v a mainly outspoken against the bombing of Yemen, and
Speaker 7: now she too is a supporter of it. And I
Speaker 7: know we're talking about Mike Walts in a second, but this,
Speaker 7: to me is one of the most alarming parts of
Speaker 7: the Trump administration is you do have some ideological diversity
Speaker 7: and disagreement in some areas, but what has been made
Speaker 7: abundantly clear to everybody is that the only relevant metric
Speaker 7: is not where you stand in this issue, where where
Speaker 7: you stand that at you, but absolute loyalty to Trump.
Speaker 7: So when Trump speaks, you nod, you defend it, and
Speaker 7: you carry it out with your greatest enthusiasm, and the
Speaker 7: slightest hint of disloyalty puts you under suspicion or even
Speaker 7: getting fired. And that is the climate that I find
Speaker 7: so chilling, because it's not just for the White House,
Speaker 7: but they're trying to make it for the country as
Speaker 7: a whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's so well said.
Speaker 2: And the other part of the Houthi strike on Bengurian
Speaker 2: Airport that is playing out right now, I can put
Speaker 2: this next on piece up on the screen is Boebe
Speaker 2: is clearly trying to use this as a pretext to try,
Speaker 2: once again for the millions time, to pull us into
Speaker 2: war with Iran. So he says here he's quote tweeting
Speaker 2: an old post from President Trump. He says, President Trump
Speaker 2: is absolute right attacks by the Houthis emanate from Iran.
Speaker 2: Israel respond to the hoothy attack against our main airport
Speaker 2: and at a time and place of our choosing to
Speaker 2: their Iranian terror masters. And the post that he, you know,
Speaker 2: he quote tweeted here says every shot fired by the
Speaker 2: Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward as
Speaker 2: being a shot fired from the weapons and the leadership of
Speaker 2: Iran and Iran will be held responsible and stuff for
Speaker 2: the consequences, and those consequences will be dire. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there are really there are ideological battles that are playing
Speaker 2: out within the Trump administration. We've seen this person in
Speaker 2: that person getting fired, Mike Will, most notably being, you know,
Speaker 2: given the much less prominent and significant role of UN ambassador.
Speaker 2: But some of these battles are also less about ideology
Speaker 2: and more about personality conflicts as well. So it can
Speaker 2: be kind of hard to suss out what exactly is
Speaker 2: going on here. But there's no doubt that BB is
Speaker 2: trying to do everything he can to draw us into
Speaker 2: war with Iran. President Trump so far has been interested
Speaker 2: in negotiating with Iran. I think that's one area of
Speaker 2: this administration that I can say, you know, that's to
Speaker 2: his credit, and I hope he continues in that direction.
Speaker 2: Nor do I have But it's not like I have
Speaker 2: a lot of confidence that we're going to have the
Speaker 2: patience to wait out what will undoubtedly be difficult diplomatic
Speaker 2: maneuvers here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think there's a clear split inside MAGA that
Speaker 7: is very genuine You've seen some very prominent MAGA voices
Speaker 7: or influencers that Trump cares about. I guess you could say,
Speaker 7: including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, who
Speaker 7: are essentially on a public and private crusade to make
Speaker 7: sure that Trump doesn't get pressured by Israel into going
Speaker 7: and attacking Iran, and JD. Vans is part of that.
Speaker 7: Donald Trump Junior is part of that. Make of these
Speaker 7: people what you will make of their motives, what you
Speaker 7: will The reality is that they have been on a
Speaker 7: very over coordinated campaign to try and persuade Trump that
Speaker 7: this will destroy his legacy and destroy his presidency. And
Speaker 7: then you have this other camp, of course, that Mike
Speaker 7: Waltz was in. That Marcar Rubio, though, is still in.
Speaker 7: Before we make too much of Mike Waltz's firing, his
Speaker 7: replacement is Mark Rubio and Cotton Lindsay Graham, that whole crowd,
Speaker 7: along with of course the Israelis Now, I do think
Speaker 7: you know, I'll just tell you this story. I debated
Speaker 7: Alan Dershowitz about seven months ago in New York, and
Speaker 7: the proposition was something like the us of Bambaran's new
Speaker 7: Court facilities, and I knew I was going to come
Speaker 7: and say, Yeah. I knew he was going to come
Speaker 7: and say, of course, because he's Alan Dershowitz and he's
Speaker 7: an Israel supporter. Aaran is like six and a half
Speaker 7: seconds away from having a NUCRO weapon. So I wanted
Speaker 7: to come and show how long those warnings, those same
Speaker 7: exact warnings have been emanating from Israel supporters, and it
Speaker 7: actually shocked me. You go back to like the late
Speaker 7: nineties throughout I mean, it's been like twenty five years
Speaker 7: that Netnyahu and his loyalists inside the United States have
Speaker 7: been trying to learn the United States into a war
Speaker 7: with Iran by saying over and over, you remember that chart,
Speaker 7: that that primitive cartoon that Netnya who brought to the
Speaker 7: un of the ticking time bomb. They are desperate and
Speaker 7: have been desperate to get the United States to go
Speaker 7: and destroy This is not about destroying the Nucro installations.
Speaker 7: They want to change the regime and reinstall the Shah,
Speaker 7: the Chavon's Sun. And I do think there's a part
Speaker 7: of Trump instinctively that would like his legacy to be
Speaker 7: like I ended Wars. I was the peacemaker. I think
Speaker 7: some of the blocosity we saw exactly the same thing
Speaker 7: from Pete has Hexstts this weekend, where he, you know,
Speaker 7: basically said exactly what Nanya who said, Aaron be unnoticed.
Speaker 7: We're going to pick a time in place of our
Speaker 7: choosing to make you pay for arming these. Hopefully that
Speaker 7: instinct that I really do believe is real and Trump,
Speaker 7: with conflicting instincts, will be able to be kind of manipulated.
Speaker 7: The problem is, as you know, Crystal, they withdrew from
Speaker 7: the Iran deal, and so any new deal has to
Speaker 7: be significantly stronger than the Iran deal for just Trump
Speaker 7: to justify why he pulled out. But that's very hard
Speaker 7: because the Iramians had negotiated to their fullest extent and
Speaker 7: got to the own point where they wouldn't go any further.
Speaker 7: And the question is how do you get in some
Speaker 7: middle brown where you're not going to warp but getting
Speaker 7: an Iran deal that isn't the Obama deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think they could probably get away
Speaker 2: honestly with just basically having the Obama deal, but with
Speaker 2: some space saving bullshit that Trump could point to. I
Speaker 2: don't think it would I don't know, just something that
Speaker 2: would have to be yeah that different that they could
Speaker 2: just be like, oh and look we crafted this gold
Speaker 2: Trump statue and he'll be like, look, this is so
Speaker 2: much better than the other deal that Obama did, or something.
Speaker 1: Of that nature.
Speaker 2: I do want to quickly get to the Mike Waltz thing.
Speaker 2: This is Extuner's report from the water jampost that Trump
Speaker 2: got pissed off at him. This is also encouraging, by
Speaker 2: the way, because he was seen as having acted too
Speaker 2: much in coordination with BB and it was just too
Speaker 2: overt that he was trying to push Israeli interests over
Speaker 2: US interests. Headline here is inside Waltzs's alister before Signal Gate.
Speaker 2: Talks with Israel angered Trump, And to your point, I
Speaker 2: was like, good that Mike Waltz is out. Now we
Speaker 2: have Marco Ruvio in. That's not really an improvement. And
Speaker 2: put the next one up on the screen. They're talking
Speaker 2: about Stephen Miller being the potential replacement for Mike Waltz,
Speaker 2: and Miller's the guy who in the Signal Gate chat
Speaker 2: is ultimately sort of the decider and seemed to be
Speaker 2: the one who was representing the position of the Boss.
Speaker 2: To your point earlier about I do think that Trump
Speaker 2: just believes whatever Stephen Miller is telling him with regard
Speaker 2: to the Alien Enemies Act and what the Supreme Court said.
Speaker 2: I think he even believed Stephen Miller just telling him like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah that his knuckles totally said MS thirteen, even
Speaker 2: though it was the most embarrassing photoshop of all time.
Speaker 2: So in some way, Steven Miller already occupies this position
Speaker 2: of extraordinary power. But he is I mean, he is
Speaker 2: an extremist. He has been aggressive about wanting to deport
Speaker 2: anyone who's pro Palestine. He, like I said, was the
Speaker 2: one who came in and said, yes, let's bomb yem
Speaker 2: and let's go forward.
Speaker 3: We're good with this, this is what the Boss wants, etc.
Speaker 2: So it certainly doesn't give me any comfort that it
Speaker 2: would be potentially Stephen Miller occupying this post if they
Speaker 2: don't just keep it with Rubio indefinitely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I read the Washington Post over the weekend where it
Speaker 7: basically said that Trump advisors were telling the media that
Speaker 7: Waltz had stopped serving or working for the president of
Speaker 7: his country and began working for the president of another country,
Speaker 7: which isn't quite technically treason, but it has the very
Speaker 7: core spirit of being that yeah, I remember.
Speaker 3: Quite traitorous at the very least.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I mean plotting against your own president by
Speaker 7: consulting and conspiring with a foreign leader. That's like the
Speaker 7: definition of it. If it had been any other country,
Speaker 7: people would be immediately understanding of that. But I also thought,
Speaker 7: like anyone who reads that Washington Post, and Washington was thinking, wow, there,
Speaker 7: but for the grace of God, go I because when
Speaker 7: is the last time that was punished conspiring with Israel
Speaker 7: to advance and prioritize interests, its interest over American interests.
Speaker 7: But again this I found this encouraging too, Crystal, even
Speaker 7: though Mark Rubio is his replacement, even though Steven Miller
Speaker 7: and a bunch of other you know, radical zealous defenders
Speaker 7: of Israel are very much lurking in high positions of power.
Speaker 7: Because I think what irritated Trump is not just the
Speaker 7: disloyalty part of it where he met with that Yahoo
Speaker 7: kind of behind Trump's back in a way that Trump
Speaker 7: perceived it, but also you know, obviously he talks to
Speaker 7: Mike Waltz every day about key foreign policy decisions. That's
Speaker 7: what that job is, And it seems like every day
Speaker 7: Mike Waltz kept pushing Trump and pushing Trump and pushing
Speaker 7: Trump to ignore a deal, just saying, forget a deal,
Speaker 7: it's not even worth it. You can't trust the Iranians.
Speaker 7: That is the Tom Cotton Lindsay Graham position. And I
Speaker 7: think Trump has decided no, he wants to do a deal.
Speaker 7: He's going to do everything possible to do a deal.
Speaker 7: I do think there'll be a war after if they
Speaker 7: don't get one done. But when you have the person
Speaker 7: next to you pushing you to war, and there's all
Speaker 7: these comments, remember the list trainy comments. He gave big,
Speaker 7: big speech about MEO cons how there's a pathology in
Speaker 7: Washington of people who just constantly want wars. And I
Speaker 7: think he came to see Mike Waltz as one of
Speaker 7: those people three months late. He's always been that person,
Speaker 7: but I think that in this particular case, it just
Speaker 7: became too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Ukraine Hawks have been kind of smarter about
Speaker 2: the way they've approached Trumpian psychology, where they like, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can do this minerals deal with Zelenski.
Speaker 3: It's a deal. You like deals, right, am? I?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And it de facto though, acts as a security guarantee
Speaker 2: and an indefinite US commitment to Ukraine. So Lindsey Graham
Speaker 2: is delighted. He's crafting a new like all out sanctions
Speaker 2: on Russia bill, which I didn't even know there were
Speaker 2: possible sanctions that we haven't levied together yet. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: I'm like, what else can you possibly do? But he's
Speaker 2: got some ideas. Apparently that's got possibly a filbuster proof
Speaker 2: majority in the Senate if they choose to bring it up.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I think the uh, I guess the
Speaker 2: Iranian the the desire for war with Iran was a
Speaker 2: little too aggressively pushed by Mike Waltz. He didn't quite
Speaker 2: understand the Trumpian psychology and how to handle this appropriately.
Speaker 2: And apparently he also pissed off Susie Wilds and treated
Speaker 2: her like she was a staffer. And so she was like, Okay, buddy,
Speaker 2: have fun at the UN Let's go ahead and get
Speaker 2: to this, this Boycott's bill that I know you've been
Speaker 2: tracking really closely. In fact, Glenn, why don't you go
Speaker 2: ahead and set up what this bill was meant to do,
Speaker 2: because it is, unfortunately in line with some other legislation
Speaker 2: that has previously been passed into law. Seemed like I
Speaker 2: had a head of steam co sponsored by Mike Lawler
Speaker 2: and Josh Geidheimer, so you had bipartisan support, and yet
Speaker 2: it ended up being, at least for now, they pulled
Speaker 2: the vote, and looks like APAC may take a rare
Speaker 2: l on this one.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I think that if I just give the brief
Speaker 7: history of context, I think it's so interesting and so important. Yeah,
Speaker 7: which is you know how there was just like a
Speaker 7: whole industry of quote unquote ANTII woke pundits or whatever
Speaker 7: who incessantly focused on college campuses and you're like, why
Speaker 7: are you so worried about like college sophomores at over Ruin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a little familiar with that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you you've heard a little
Speaker 7: bit about that, maybe you mentioned it a few times.
Speaker 7: One of the main reasons if you look at most
Speaker 7: of those people whose careers were built on that, they're
Speaker 7: very strong Israel supporters. Israel identified like ten or fifteen
Speaker 7: years ago that one of the main threats to their
Speaker 7: ability to dominate and repress their neighbors is that there
Speaker 7: was a growing boycott movement centered on American campuses that
Speaker 7: they were afraid of because it was modeled after the
Speaker 7: one in South Africa in the eighties that was driven
Speaker 7: by campus activism and that took down the apartheid regime.
Speaker 7: And they set out to decide, we have to put
Speaker 7: an end to this whole idea of advocating a boycott.
Speaker 7: They got the EU to criminalize advocacy of boycott's as
Speaker 7: the anti semitic. They got that expanded definition of anti semitism,
Speaker 7: and now they're doing the same thing in the US.
Speaker 7: The thing that always made amazing me Crystal is so
Speaker 7: few people know that in thirty seven American states, mostly
Speaker 7: Red states but not all, it is a requirement if
Speaker 7: you want a contract with the state that you have
Speaker 7: to sign a loyalty O saying you do not support
Speaker 7: and have never participated in a boycott of Israel. You
Speaker 7: can boycott American states or other countries, just not Israel.
Speaker 7: And now that law was the basis for what Trump
Speaker 7: did in a twenty eighteen which is he said it's
Speaker 7: now a felony if a company participates in a boycott
Speaker 7: sponsored by another country that the US government doesn't support.
Speaker 7: So let's say, like Iran wants to boycott Israel, and
Speaker 7: some company participates in that boycott even though the US
Speaker 7: government isn't. That's a felony to do. And now this
Speaker 7: new bill would expand it to include not just government,
Speaker 7: not just led by or advocated by foreign governments, but
Speaker 7: also international organizations, and it would include people who are
Speaker 7: boycotting Israel out of conscience and conviction, and it would
Speaker 7: turn them into felons. And I think, finally, this is
Speaker 7: almost like a bridge too far for a lot of
Speaker 7: people in the Senate, who, by the way, are also
Speaker 7: angry that the HI definition prohibits anybody from saying that
Speaker 7: Jesus participated in the killing of Jews, even though the
Speaker 7: Bible kind of implies that in some ways. Yeah, so
Speaker 7: I think they're kind of going too far.
Speaker 2: Finally, interesting, let's put let's put see one up on
Speaker 2: the screen. This is from drop site, which did a
Speaker 2: fantastic job covering this And actually Ryan was saying the
Speaker 2: amount of social media attraction they got from covering this
Speaker 2: bill was like extraordinary, So I think there likely was
Speaker 2: a massive effort, like a huge number of people probably
Speaker 2: called their congressman, and we're saying do not vote for
Speaker 2: this bill, and you know, on both sides of the aisle,
Speaker 2: so I think there might have been a public pushback
Speaker 2: here that was important too. You can see the Democratic
Speaker 2: co sponsors. You got a handful of them here, Gotttheimer, Moskowitz,
Speaker 2: morel Davis, and Gillen. You have a longer list here
Speaker 2: of Republican co sponsors, I mean, and the primary sponsor
Speaker 2: is this guy, Mike Lawler. It's also interesting to me
Speaker 2: this is a blatantly unconstitutional and extremist bill, and yet
Speaker 2: Lawler is seen as this quote unquote moderate. He's in
Speaker 2: a swing district in New York. I think he's very
Speaker 2: much in jeopardy for election this time around. He's just
Speaker 2: got re elected, so he's been there a relatively short
Speaker 2: period of time and is the type of district that
Speaker 2: could easily flip in a wave election year. But in
Speaker 2: any case, you know, I thought this thing was going
Speaker 2: to sail through, and now they've at least pulled the
Speaker 2: vote for today. I did not think it would get
Speaker 2: through the Senate because I didn't think they'd be able
Speaker 2: to garner enough Democrats to overcome a filibuster. But you
Speaker 2: did start to get You had Marjorie Tayler Green and
Speaker 2: can see two up on the screen. She I think
Speaker 2: was the first person who came out and said, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to vote for this.
Speaker 3: I'll be voting no.
Speaker 2: It is my job to defend Americans' rights to buy
Speaker 2: or boycott whomever they choose with not the government harshly
Speaker 2: finding them or prisoning them. But what I don't understand
Speaker 2: is why we are voting on a bill on behalf
Speaker 2: of other countries and not the president's executives' orders that
Speaker 2: are for our country. You had Thomas Massey, who has
Speaker 2: been quite principled, you know, when it comes to free speech.
Speaker 2: He came after Marjorie Taylor Green says I agree, I'll
Speaker 2: be voting no on this bill as well. And you
Speaker 2: had Charlie Kirk also chime in and weigh in on
Speaker 2: this debate with his commentary. There was one piece of
Speaker 2: this that kind of irritated me. But we'll see if
Speaker 2: you had the same reaction to it, he says. Tomorrow
Speaker 2: the House will vote on HR. Eight sixty seven, a
Speaker 2: bill that will criminalize private boycotts of Israel finds up
Speaker 2: to a million dollars in prison time up to twenty
Speaker 2: years bills like this only create more anti Semitism. I
Speaker 2: think that's true, and play into growing narratives that Israel's
Speaker 2: running the US government.
Speaker 3: Also so true.
Speaker 2: In America, you're allowed to hold differing views, You're allowed
Speaker 2: to disagree in protests. We've allowed far too many people
Speaker 2: who hate America to move here from abroad. But the
Speaker 2: right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.
Speaker 2: That's the point that part that annoyed me. Because of
Speaker 2: courts First Amendment, free speech rights apply to everyone who's here.
Speaker 2: In any case, this bill should not pass. Any Republican
Speaker 2: that votes for this bill will expose themselves. We will
Speaker 2: be watching very closely. So I guess I am kind
Speaker 2: of curious what is going on here because if you
Speaker 2: look at Marjorie Taylor Green's record, if you look at
Speaker 2: Charlie Kirk's record, Thomas Massey put in a little different category,
Speaker 2: like they're all on board with kidnapping students off the
Speaker 2: street for daring to publish an op ed that.
Speaker 1: Was critical of Israel.
Speaker 2: It's not like they've been real consistent on the free
Speaker 2: speech part. Marjorie Taylor Green sponsored a Central Resolution against
Speaker 2: Rashida Talib for daring to participate in pro Palestine protests
Speaker 2: and called those protests, you know, insurrections. So it's not
Speaker 2: like she's been principled here. So where do you think
Speaker 2: that this is ultimately coming from?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 7: It was so interesting when when the Ukraine War happened.
Speaker 7: I had a lot of people in Congress who are
Speaker 7: MAGA affiliated or MAGA adjacent, and they were all against
Speaker 7: the Ukraine War. And I would love I did it
Speaker 7: with R. FK. Junior two ones. I would have them
Speaker 7: come on and be like, why against the Ukraine War,
Speaker 7: you know, and they would all say, it's enough. Enough
Speaker 7: is enough with funding the militaries and wars of foreign countries.
Speaker 7: We have so many problems in the United States. We
Speaker 7: can't afford to keep doing this. It's time to cut
Speaker 7: off all these wars that were fighting, that are earned
Speaker 7: in our interest and keep the money at home. And
Speaker 7: I would always say, oh, that's so persuasive. Does that
Speaker 7: apply to the financing and army of Israel as well?
Speaker 7: And of course they would start studying and trying to
Speaker 7: find reasons why somehow they ration out was different, when
Speaker 7: of course it so blatantly wasn't. I think what you're
Speaker 7: starting to say. And there was another Marjorie telling Green
Speaker 7: tweet about Iran, very you know, vocally saying we cannot
Speaker 7: go to war with Iran. We are sick of supporting
Speaker 7: a fighting wars for other countries in the Rea that
Speaker 7: have huge nuclear arsenals, which obviously means Israel. We're sick
Speaker 7: of fighting words for Israel. You know, chrise if you look.
Speaker 7: And this struck me the other day. Almost every day,
Speaker 7: literally there's some major event that comes from Washington, like
Speaker 7: a policy initiative or an executive order or a resolution,
Speaker 7: or a press conference or some big social media campaign
Speaker 7: from our politicians in Washington that are all about Israel.
Speaker 7: Like it's every day they talk about Israel. Every day
Speaker 7: they want to do something for Israel. And I do think,
Speaker 7: like those free speech abuses, it's starting to create this backlash, Like,
Speaker 7: wait a minute, I thought our whole movement was about
Speaker 7: America first, Like We're going to focus on the forgotten
Speaker 7: person and the working class and the downtrodden in the
Speaker 7: industrialized cities, and instead we're spending all this time on Israel,
Speaker 7: in attacking American civil liberties, on behalf of this foreign country.
Speaker 7: And I do think it's starting to create some real resentment,
Speaker 7: not like in little spaces, but some growing resentment. Rampaul
Speaker 7: a huge speech on the State for about the attacks
Speaker 7: and free speech from thishri Bill, and those are significant.
Speaker 7: Once that starts happening within a movement, many respected and
Speaker 7: influential voices within the movement saying the same thing, it
Speaker 7: can really spread quickly, and let's hope this does.
Speaker 2: I think you were right to point to that provision
Speaker 2: that you know, Christians really took umbrage at, felt like
Speaker 2: that was constraining what they could say about their own faith.
Speaker 2: But I also think we have to be honest about
Speaker 2: the fact that there is a growing, like overtly anti
Speaker 2: Semitic part of the republic. I mean thing I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about nickqwent tests very popular overt Nazi ideology, right, And
Speaker 2: I wonder I don't want to put that label on
Speaker 2: like you know, Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever. I don't
Speaker 2: know what's in our heart, But how do you feel
Speaker 2: about the fact that there is kind of a horseshoe
Speaker 2: with people who hold of you like Nick Fuentes and
Speaker 2: those of us who are trying to be principled about
Speaker 2: free speech and principled about Hey, let's not like endlessly
Speaker 2: bomb babies. This seems really bad. How do you intellectually
Speaker 2: gropple with that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: I think this is true of almost every issue, where
Speaker 7: people on the same side of the issue have sometimes
Speaker 7: differing motives or even radically antithetical movement motives. You know,
Speaker 7: you could have people who are concerned about the influx
Speaker 7: of people legally over the border because they're just white
Speaker 7: nationalists and don't want brown people in the country, and
Speaker 7: there are a lot of those, And you can have
Speaker 7: people with like good faith concerns. I mean, like people
Speaker 7: on the left used to worry about how it would
Speaker 7: drive down wages for the American worker, or how it
Speaker 7: would make cities incapable of absorbing them all in a
Speaker 7: humanistic way. And the fact that some people are on
Speaker 7: one side of the debate and who have really malicious
Speaker 7: ideas and others have well intention ideas, I think you
Speaker 7: just have to separate them out. But it doesn't impugne
Speaker 7: the fact that there's this coalition itself. And you know,
Speaker 7: you could say that on the other side of the
Speaker 7: that issue too, people who want open borders were big
Speaker 7: corporate interest and now there's a lot of liberals who
Speaker 7: believe that are not open borders but far less repressive
Speaker 7: and restrict ones. So on the one hand, I get
Speaker 7: what you're saying. And this whole idea of America First,
Speaker 7: you know, goes back to Charles Lindberg and the isolation
Speaker 7: is for World War Two, who thought we were getting
Speaker 7: involved in World War Two because the Jews were kind
Speaker 7: of prompting us to do so. So that is the
Speaker 7: tradition out of which America First non interventionism grows. But
Speaker 7: I also think these people do have a because if
Speaker 7: it were only if they were only applying it to Israel,
Speaker 7: I would say, Okay, this is probably driven by anti Semitism.
Speaker 7: They're also against the US involvement in Ukraine. They think
Speaker 7: that's just as much of a violation of the America
Speaker 7: First ideology that it's globalism. Pretty much, any military invention
Speaker 7: around the intervention around the world, that's how they see it.
Speaker 7: So yes, of course there's lurking anti Semitism, like every
Speaker 7: other bigotry and every faction. I personally don't think that's
Speaker 7: the driving thrust of all of this. I think they're
Speaker 7: starting to make it's becoming unsustainable to keep saying America
Speaker 7: first on the one hand, and keep voting one bill
Speaker 7: after the another in putting attacks on a civil American
Speaker 7: about this one single foreign country.
Speaker 2: I think it's becoming increasingly unsustainable. With the base, I
Speaker 2: would say, and we've seen. Look, Republicans are far more
Speaker 2: supportive of I'm talking about base. Republican voters far more
Speaker 2: supportive of Israel than Democratic base. But Democrats have basically
Speaker 2: fully turned on Israel at this point. Some eighty percent
Speaker 2: or something say we should not be shipping weapons anymore.
Speaker 2: The real core demographic that still supports this view are
Speaker 2: basically boomer Republicans. But even among Republicans, there's been a
Speaker 2: shift in public sentiment. And I do think that there
Speaker 2: is power in It's just so brazenly incompatible to say
Speaker 2: I'm America first, and yet I spend all my time
Speaker 2: thinking about talking about and passing legislation for the nation
Speaker 2: of Israel and hanging to it or where an IDF
Speaker 2: soldier uniformed into the halls of Congress or whatever you know,
Speaker 2: like it. Just I think from a public perspective, it's
Speaker 2: very hard to sustain that position, and so I do
Speaker 2: think you see some representatives who are having to bend
Speaker 2: some to that reality. I'm just you know, on a
Speaker 2: whole I'm just much more cynical about these people, just
Speaker 2: based on the track record. Yeah, I mean, they're still
Speaker 2: all voting for more weaponshipments to Israel in lockstep, like
Speaker 2: there is no dissent on that whatsoever. They're all on
Speaker 2: board with, Hey, let's just disappear any college student who
Speaker 2: participated in a protest we don't like, Let's just disappear
Speaker 2: and detain them and deport them and do whatever we
Speaker 2: can and attack the universities in this like in this
Speaker 2: the ultra the Wokesters could never have dreamed of the
Speaker 2: authoritary tactics being used to constrain speech at universities in
Speaker 2: defense of this one supposedly oppressed minority group, right, And
Speaker 2: so I just don't see anything approaching a consistent principle
Speaker 2: being applied here, which is why it's almost confusing to
Speaker 2: me that there was any descent on this bill whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And I didn't expect it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, just on that stuff. I mean, if
Speaker 7: you listen to Israel supporters and the way they argue,
Speaker 7: they have verbatim copied the script that they were kind
Speaker 7: of the character of the script of the woke left
Speaker 7: that they had spent years mocking, you.
Speaker 3: Know, in this one minority victim group.
Speaker 7: Yeah, save spaces. They had that like twenty two year
Speaker 7: old's college kid come from the universityild I am not
Speaker 7: safe while I stood by Mike Johnson, you know, hate
Speaker 7: speech codes to protect this minority group. Plus like the
Speaker 7: instant resorting to calling everybody a racist and bigot the
Speaker 7: minute you disagree. This is all like woke caricature of
Speaker 7: woke one oh one that they've been mocking that they
Speaker 7: now adopt completely. That said, you know, you mentioned these polls,
Speaker 7: and there's clearly a very substantial decline which we haven't
Speaker 7: seen in decades in American support for Israel. And while yes,
Speaker 7: a big part of that is due to almost uniform
Speaker 7: Democratic reversal on this, a big part of it as
Speaker 7: well are younger Republicans, Republicans under the age of fifty,
Speaker 7: who have had a massive jump. I think it's now
Speaker 7: a majority of people who say they disapprove of Israel
Speaker 7: is really just it's like older Fox News watching Republicans
Speaker 7: who still have maintained their support for Israel. And if
Speaker 7: there's one thing politicians know it's public opinions, so I'm
Speaker 7: sure they go to their town halls and are constantly
Speaker 7: asked about this. Of Apak is not going to disappear overnight,
Speaker 7: the Israeli lobby is not going to disappear overnight, nor
Speaker 7: is these decades long dogmas about how we have to
Speaker 7: protect Israel. But I do think that these things happen gradually,
Speaker 7: you know, through these incremental changes. And then also I
Speaker 7: do think once people get desperate, like once Israel supporters
Speaker 7: really believe they're losing the debate, they resort to increasingly
Speaker 7: extreme tactics like censorship and other things in a desperate
Speaker 7: hope to win, and it fuels the backlash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think that's right. And so you have
Speaker 2: two key constituencies apparently supporting Israel in lockstep right now.
Speaker 2: That would be Boomer Republicans watching Fox News. So this
Speaker 2: is an extraordinary piece from New York mag. Obviously, Senator
Speaker 2: John Patterman Pennsylvania wins. Is this kind of progressive every champion.
Speaker 2: You know, this is someone I was excited about seeing
Speaker 2: in the Senate. He positioned himself as a kind of
Speaker 2: like Bernie Sanders adjacent mayor of a steel town, declining
Speaker 2: steel town, et cetera great profile. Then tragically, during his
Speaker 2: campaign suffers a pretty severe stroke, is still able to
Speaker 2: defeat doctor Oz even after having a debate performance which
Speaker 2: was very clear this stroke had significantly affected him, and
Speaker 2: then once he gets into the Senate, his politics almost
Speaker 2: completely change. Now in fairness on Israel, and Ryan did
Speaker 2: all the reporting on this, he had even before the
Speaker 2: stroke been like, I'm pro Israel. And by the way,
Speaker 2: you know APAC and your affiliated groups, just tell me
Speaker 2: what you want me to say.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say it.
Speaker 2: Because he wanted to also make sure that they didn't
Speaker 2: get involved against him in his primary with Connor Lamb,
Speaker 2: who seemed like he could be a strong challenger in
Speaker 2: that Democratic primary at this point. But you know, we're
Speaker 2: just talking about members of Congress who seemed to spend
Speaker 2: all their time thinking about this foreign nation. And Richitaas
Speaker 2: and this guy are like pac in point number one
Speaker 2: and number two. So let's put this article up on
Speaker 2: the screen. Because some of Fetterman's staffers decided to speak
Speaker 2: to New York Magazine about what they are seeing behind
Speaker 2: the scenes. And you know, if you take them at
Speaker 2: their word, they're basically describing another health cover up, kind
Speaker 2: of akin to what we saw with regard to Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: where the stroke did really change his personality, made his
Speaker 2: views more extreme. Also have created, you know, this pattern
Speaker 2: of really erratic and frankly dangerous behavior at the headline
Speaker 2: here all by himself, John Fetterman insists he is in
Speaker 2: good health, but staffers pass and present say they no
Speaker 2: longer recognize the man they once knew, They say. His
Speaker 2: sixteen hundred word email this is Fetterman's, came with the
Speaker 2: subject line concerns contained a list of them. Sorry, this
Speaker 2: is one of his staffers who was sending an email
Speaker 2: of their concerns. From the seemingly mundane, he eats fast
Speaker 2: food multiple times a day to the scary, we do
Speaker 2: not know if he is taking his meds, and his
Speaker 2: behavior frequently suggests he is not. Often see the kind
Speaker 2: of warning signs we discussed. Gentlelsen wrote Conspiratorial Thinking Megalomania.
Speaker 2: For example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source
Speaker 2: on Israel and Gaza around, but his sources are just
Speaker 2: what he reads in the news. He declines most briefings,
Speaker 2: never reads memos high high as low lows, long, rambling,
Speaker 2: repetitive and self centered monologues, lying in ways that are painfully,
Speaker 2: awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room. It's got to
Speaker 2: put the next piece up on the screen. Members of
Speaker 2: his team told this journalist this was an early warning
Speaker 2: sign that something was off with their boss. In early
Speaker 2: February twenty twenty three, after Fetterman had indeed been sworn in,
Speaker 2: members of the Senate gathered the Library of Congress for
Speaker 2: a caucus retreat. Betterman, fresh off a hard fought victory
Speaker 2: in the Cycles Marquis Race, should have been riding high,
Speaker 2: only he wasn't. Stafford recalled getting a text from a
Speaker 2: person the retreat asking if their boss was okay. Betterman
Speaker 2: was sitting at a table by himself, slowly sipping a
Speaker 2: coke and refusing to talk with anybody. Later that day,
Speaker 2: another staffer heard an alarming report from a journalist Betterman
Speaker 2: had just walked obliviously into the row and was nearly
Speaker 2: struck by a car. Fetterman went on to make statements
Speaker 2: that shock people. In opposing a ceasefire. With regards to Gaza,
Speaker 2: he said, let's get back to killing. Person who heard
Speaker 2: the conversation told me, he said, kill them all. In
Speaker 2: a statement, Fetterman denied the account, adding any reference to
Speaker 2: killing was solely about Hamas and I do support the
Speaker 2: destruction of that organization down to its last member and Glenn.
Speaker 2: In another part of this article, they describe his wife
Speaker 2: being in tears. You know, she's a sort of liberal humanitarian.
Speaker 2: She was upset over his position on Israel and Gaza,
Speaker 2: to the point of, you know, being quite emotional about
Speaker 2: it and saying, listen, they're bombing babies. You can't have
Speaker 2: this position.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: She denies that there's been any changes in his health status,
Speaker 2: but when you read the details here, including of his
Speaker 2: stay at Walter Reed, you come away with a quite
Speaker 2: clear impression that he is not well, that it's impacted
Speaker 2: his ability to serve his constituents, that it has fundamentally
Speaker 2: changed his positioning and his approach to a number of
Speaker 2: issues that voters elected him, you know, to have a
Speaker 2: certain ideological viewpoint.
Speaker 7: On Yeah, you know, just to address the leading example
Speaker 7: you raised, of course, it is true that you know,
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty two and elsewhere, Feedeman sort of gave
Speaker 7: lip service to the idea that he was in favor
Speaker 7: of Israel, I think most people understand that if you
Speaker 7: want to win statewide office, especially in a state like
Speaker 7: Pennsylvania where there's a very heavy pro Jewish pro a
Speaker 7: Jewish contingent pro Israel contingent, you can't just be like
Speaker 7: waving a Palestinian flag. So I think people kind of
Speaker 7: dismissed that. But what we've seen from him is not
Speaker 7: just like sort of pro Israel lip service, but like
Speaker 7: almost like a psychotic joy in seeing the destruction, wanting
Speaker 7: it to continue, on top of an extremely hostile posture
Speaker 7: to anybody who raises it with him. You know, he
Speaker 7: tries to be just as kind of offensive and alienating
Speaker 7: as possible in the ways that he speaks, which I
Speaker 7: don't think was the John Fetterman that we saw regularly
Speaker 7: prior to this stroke. I'm always a little hepotant to
Speaker 7: comment in someone's mental health or or psychological state, in
Speaker 7: part because I'm not a professional, but also because it's
Speaker 7: hard to assess people from a distance, but I do.
Speaker 7: It is so interesting to me, you know, when he
Speaker 7: had that stroke, every Republican I know was saying, you know,
Speaker 7: he's a vegetable, how can he possibly run yet alone win?
Speaker 7: And the minute he comes out and says I'm a
Speaker 7: big supporter of Israel. They're all like, Wow, his brain recuperated.
Speaker 7: He's one of the most sensible people in all of Washington.
Speaker 7: That really is all it takes to cure your mental
Speaker 7: health and still problems.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I'll tell you.
Speaker 2: I have to say, Glenn, I hear you on like
Speaker 2: being reluctant to comment on someone's mental Like I'm also
Speaker 2: not an expert, but I feel less that way post
Speaker 2: Biden because the like, if you're hiding from us, what
Speaker 2: your capacity is, that has a direct impact on all
Speaker 2: of us. I mean, not just constituents. Pennsylvania senators are
Speaker 2: very powerful individuals. He has become an extremely prominent voice,
Speaker 2: held up by people like Bill Maher as a potential
Speaker 2: presidential canon. Now I think that's preposterous because much of
Speaker 2: the Democratic base hates this guy at this point. But
Speaker 2: you know, so That's why I don't I don't have
Speaker 2: any reluctance about it because I think there has been
Speaker 2: such an inclination among both parties, but in particular Democrats
Speaker 2: have had some of the worst examples lately. If you
Speaker 2: think about Feinstein, if you think about Biden as well,
Speaker 2: of trying to cover the reality of members and the
Speaker 2: president himself who were in decline, who were really not
Speaker 2: capable of fully functioning in the job. And I think
Speaker 2: it's an outrage to democracy, and I think it's an
Speaker 2: outrage to you know, Americans who deserve capable representation.
Speaker 7: No, it's a great point. I mean, I think the
Speaker 7: hiding of Biden's cogetive of the client, even though the
Speaker 7: entire public side saw it, the hiding of it within
Speaker 7: the DC press and political so of the Democratic Party
Speaker 7: is is a massive scandal. And it's one of the
Speaker 7: reasons why presidents have a duty to dispose their medical records,
Speaker 7: because of course it is relevant. And then it's the
Speaker 7: same for senators. I think the only difference I would
Speaker 7: put there is that the reason Americans concluded that Biden
Speaker 7: had those problems was because they sow it for themselves.
Speaker 7: And we've seen some public, publicly disturbing behavior from Fetterman.
Speaker 7: There was that you know, video circle circulating of him
Speaker 7: refusing to put on a seat belt and God and
Speaker 7: giving aggressive about it. Yeah, but no, I agree, it's
Speaker 7: it's a it's a huge issue, and I think you
Speaker 7: can see major changes in fetterman.
Speaker 2: And I mean he fell asleep behind the wheel. He
Speaker 2: fell asleep behind the wheel coming.
Speaker 7: Back and killed somebody and almost killed.
Speaker 2: Somebody, right not to mention like himself and his wife
Speaker 2: who was in the back seat after insisting his staff
Speaker 2: tried to insist on picking him up from the airport.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 2: direct seems like a direct safety risk, but also obviously
Speaker 2: has consequence in terms of a public policy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I just like to see, like somebody of professionals,
Speaker 7: like you know, examine him or I do think it
Speaker 7: warrants you know. I don't think we should just forget
Speaker 7: about it and be like, oh that's not a business
Speaker 7: or we don't we're not capable. It is alarming, and
Speaker 7: you can see it in some ways. And like I said,
Speaker 7: the way he talks about Israel to me that in
Speaker 7: and of itself is some sort of mental health problem.
Speaker 7: Like it's one thing to say I support Israel, I
Speaker 7: care deeply for the Palestinian civilians, this needs to end, whatever,
Speaker 7: But he talks about it with this like glee that
Speaker 7: Palestinians are being killed, not just a moss but in
Speaker 7: the most horrific ways possible, and that to me is
Speaker 7: mentally disturbing.
Speaker 2: Let me see it gets your reaction to Simone Sanders
Speaker 2: D three get guys put up on the screen. So
Speaker 2: you know, she's gone from being a paid spokes political
Speaker 2: spokesperson and operative to now a quote unquote journalist over
Speaker 2: at MSNBC. And she's reacting to this, she says, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you care about someone you know them,
Speaker 2: personally airing your grievances in the page of the paper
Speaker 2: just doesn't sit right with me. But to each their own,
Speaker 2: I guess. And then she got pushed back from a
Speaker 2: lot of people, but Josh Barrow in particular, she responded to,
Speaker 2: is put D four up on the screen here as
Speaker 2: well as she says, here's the thing, Josh, I'm consistent
Speaker 2: and consistently I have the soul of giving people dignity
Speaker 2: my fall up questions as did or did Sharif Street,
Speaker 2: the chair of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania know about this?
Speaker 3: Was Schumer aware?
Speaker 2: Senate leadership alerted, I'm not saying no one should say anything. Frankly,
Speaker 2: that's a wilful misread of my statement. Why I am saying,
Speaker 2: is how one goes about it matters. Ben did his
Speaker 2: job as a journalist. But the staff who seemed to
Speaker 2: say their only recourse was Ben terras, I'm not buying it,
Speaker 2: and I'm fine to have my opinion about that. Lastly,
Speaker 2: not sure why you felt the need to attack me
Speaker 2: because of what I used to do. Regardless, that says
Speaker 2: more about you than me. So basically, she's saying, you
Speaker 2: should have raised these concerns with Chuck Schumer. But if
Speaker 2: the problems are as severe as is being depicted here,
Speaker 2: there's no one in the Democratic caucus who doesn't know
Speaker 2: there are issues, and none of them has chosen to
Speaker 2: do anything or say anything because you know, it's a
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania swing state seat, difficult to win, etc. So, and
Speaker 2: he's more or less a reliable Democrat vote, so they
Speaker 2: just kept their mouths shut.
Speaker 7: I think, I actually think there's a big problem with media.
Speaker 7: You know, we've always had like people who were in
Speaker 7: government sort of migrate sometimes to media. Bill Moyers was
Speaker 7: the press secretary from Lyndon Johnson and became, you know,
Speaker 7: a great television journalist. It's noting it can't happen. The
Speaker 7: problem is with the dominance of cable news in twenty
Speaker 7: four to seven coverage, that's pretty much all you have.
Speaker 7: And then so many times people who have been political
Speaker 7: hacks or parties spokespeople in apparatics or government officials end
Speaker 7: up not just appearing on these networks but as hosts.
Speaker 7: So now they're supposed to have a much different role.
Speaker 7: But you know, you look at Jen Saki or Simone Sanders,
Speaker 7: there's plenty of them on Fox. They're exactly this same.
Speaker 7: I mean, I listened to Gen Saki. It sounds like
Speaker 7: she's giving White House, you know, press prefings, and of
Speaker 7: course Simone Sanders is there as a Democratic Party representative.
Speaker 7: And the idea that if you have somebody like this
Speaker 7: in your cauctus, it's fine to talk about it privately
Speaker 7: but not publicly is such except it's such contempt for
Speaker 7: the American people, you know, like we close ranks, we
Speaker 7: cover things up, and especially after watching what happened with
Speaker 7: Biden and how destroyed how you know, credibility that destroyed,
Speaker 7: destroying that was for Democrats and the election in the media,
Speaker 7: it's amazing they sell think that way.
Speaker 2: I know, it really is incredible, and it does speak
Speaker 2: to you a problem specifically of like, you know, I
Speaker 2: have no problem. I have a perspective. You have a perspective.
Speaker 2: I think we're pretty upfront about that. But if you've
Speaker 2: been paid to be, you know, an operative for a
Speaker 2: specific political party and you're still close with the people
Speaker 2: that are that's where you really start to have these
Speaker 2: you know, these issues, and you know you see it
Speaker 2: with the crossover with Fox News. You see it with
Speaker 2: the crossover with MSNBC in particular, and I think it
Speaker 2: comes out here. I mean the instinct to care, I
Speaker 2: get it on like a human level, but the instinct
Speaker 2: to think that like protecting the feelings of Joe Biden
Speaker 2: was more important than defeating Trump if that's your view,
Speaker 2: or you know, of advocating for issues that you're not
Speaker 2: going to be able to if there's not a Democrat
Speaker 2: in the White House, or just the interest of public,
Speaker 2: the public having transpad garancy around what's going on with
Speaker 2: the President of the United States, then I think you've
Speaker 2: got your your priorities pretty screwed up for someone who
Speaker 2: is holding themselves down as like a neutral journalist and analysts.
Speaker 3: At this point, I.
Speaker 2: Want to get to one last story here with with
Speaker 2: you Glenn before we let you go, because I think
Speaker 2: this is extraordinary, and you know, I'm just really interested
Speaker 2: what you think about it. So Claudie Schenbaum, who's the
Speaker 2: very popular president of Mexico, who Trump seems to for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, kind of like we could put her image
Speaker 2: up on the screen here. She recently confirmed that Trump
Speaker 2: had generously offered to deploy US troops in Mexico in
Speaker 2: order to combat the cartels. She said no, and told
Speaker 2: him Mexico's sovereignty is inviolable and it is not for sale.
Speaker 2: We will never accept a US military presence in our territory.
Speaker 2: This is something that Trump and this is part of
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five. A lot of Republicans have been
Speaker 2: talking about, Hey, we're going to designate the cartels as
Speaker 2: terrorists and then we're going to be able to use
Speaker 2: these powers that presidents have grabbed Post nine to eleven
Speaker 2: in order to basic wage war without having to get
Speaker 2: permission of Congress. Trump also yesterday evening confirmed that he
Speaker 2: had made this generous offer to Mexico. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and take a listen to that.
Speaker 8: Mexico is saying that I offered, you said, US troops
Speaker 8: into Mexico to.
Speaker 7: Take care of the cartels. He wants to know, isn't
Speaker 7: that true? Do you think I'm going to.
Speaker 8: Answer that question.
Speaker 7: I will answer it. It's true, absolutely, Youcani, they should be.
Speaker 8: They are horrible people that have been killing people left
Speaker 8: and right, that have been they made a fortunate selling
Speaker 8: drugs and destroying our people. We lost three hundred thousand
Speaker 8: people last year, two fitted all in drugs. The man knows, Yeah,
Speaker 8: that's true. If Mexico wanted help with the cartels, we
Speaker 8: would be honored to go in and do it. I
Speaker 8: told her that I would be honored to go in
Speaker 8: and do it. The cartels had tried to destroy our country.
Speaker 8: They're evil, and you know, we had three hundred thousand
Speaker 8: people died last year from.
Speaker 2: End and all in all, what do you make of
Speaker 2: all that? Glennon in particular, that connect to the War
Speaker 2: on Terror.
Speaker 7: Is an obvious replica of the War on Terror. Right
Speaker 7: that we've identify these groups, these kind of shady transnational
Speaker 7: groups not part of the government, but that are in
Speaker 7: certain countries, and then we just go in a way
Speaker 7: to war supposedly on those groups. That ends up being
Speaker 7: a war in that country. You know, and of course
Speaker 7: it would have all the same failures. Have been extremely
Speaker 7: well armed groups, like way more well armed than the Taliban,
Speaker 7: and we couldn't win after fighting the Taliban for twenty years.
Speaker 7: I think the broader issue here is this is a
Speaker 7: difference with Trump point two point zero, is that he's
Speaker 7: so high on his own victory, his stature in the world,
Speaker 7: that when he speaks, he really does speak as if
Speaker 7: he's kind of the leader of the world. Like he
Speaker 7: talks about, you know, he said, I want this, I
Speaker 7: want this, I want this, Panama, Greenland, ecent ter of Canada.
Speaker 7: But also when he talks about like getting the war
Speaker 7: in in Ukraine, he'll say, Boutin needs to change this.
Speaker 7: I don't like this, and then he'll turn around and
Speaker 7: tied the Ukrainians so that they're all competing for his approval.
Speaker 7: And this mentality is really alarming, Like we want to
Speaker 7: go do this in Mexico, they better say yes. And
Speaker 7: I think the requirement of absolute loyalty to Donald Trump
Speaker 7: inside the White House makes all of that so much
Speaker 7: worse because he just gets that reinforced every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. I also think the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court immunity decision probably makes him feel more yolo as well. Certainly,
Speaker 2: the efforts that were made in the off season to
Speaker 2: strip away any of the factors of resistance that previously
Speaker 2: stood in his way. I mean, that was their learning
Speaker 2: from Trump one point zero was basically like, you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't go far enough, we didn't indulge Trump's instincts enough.
Speaker 2: And so the Republican movement, not just Trump, but the
Speaker 2: Republican movement really set out on an explicit project to
Speaker 2: make sure that would not be the case this time around.
Speaker 2: And so this bombing the cartel's policy flows directly out
Speaker 2: of that. And we could put this next piece up
Speaker 2: on the screen as well, which is also extremely troubling.
Speaker 2: So they are exploring labeling some suspected cartel and gang
Speaker 2: members inside the US as quote unquote enemy combatants. Me
Speaker 2: just read a little bit of this article. So they
Speaker 2: say this is a possible way to detain these individuals
Speaker 2: more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment.
Speaker 2: According to multiple people with knowledge, the enemy combatant designation
Speaker 2: could also be applied to suspected narco terras outside the US,
Speaker 2: The people said, as a way to potentially give the
Speaker 2: US justification to conduct lethal strikes against them. And so
Speaker 2: this reads to me, Glenn as basically the courts have
Speaker 2: struck down the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. I
Speaker 2: do suspect when that ultimately gets to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: they are probably also going to say this was an
Speaker 2: improper invocation on the merits. But in addition, they've been
Speaker 2: blocked from continuing to use this in various jurisdictions. The
Speaker 2: Supreme Court has said, you have to to facilitate release,
Speaker 2: you have to give some form of reasonable notice and
Speaker 2: due process, even for the individuals who you want to
Speaker 2: be able to sweep up in this. So they're saying, okay, well,
Speaker 2: that pathway is maybe not really working out, so instead
Speaker 2: we'll use this enemy combatants designation to do a different
Speaker 2: and run around the Constitution and not provide any sort
Speaker 2: of due process. Expanding on some of the actions that
Speaker 2: were taken, you know, starting in the Bush administration and
Speaker 2: all this of course comes in the context of their
Speaker 2: analysis of who is a suspected alien enemy. Who is
Speaker 2: a suspected Cartelo gang member could be something as simple
Speaker 2: as like a tattoo or that you hail from a
Speaker 2: certain part of Venezuela or they suspect you do.
Speaker 7: You know this, Crystal is why I have been so
Speaker 7: nauseated and disgusted by that whole never Trump movement that
Speaker 7: came out of the Bush Cheney faction that did so
Speaker 7: much of the war on Terror is because so much
Speaker 7: of what they claim to dislike about Trump, beyond like
Speaker 7: the decorum and co departmental or ethical issues, is a
Speaker 7: replica of exactly what they did. This all sounds so
Speaker 7: familiar to me. I spent years and wrote books on
Speaker 7: all these issues, you know. I remember David Frump had
Speaker 7: to cover story in the Atlantic and it was something
Speaker 7: a huge picture of Trump and it said like, this
Speaker 7: is how authoritarianism is created. And I was like, is
Speaker 7: that like a playbook from your knowledge in the Trump
Speaker 7: in the Bush administration, because these are all the things
Speaker 7: that you did. A lot of this did get some restraint,
Speaker 7: but it is true. They're playing on a vulnerability in
Speaker 7: American in American politics, which you referenced earlier, that the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court becomes extra deferential to the president when he
Speaker 7: has claims of national security and war and we're waging
Speaker 7: you know, we're in a war. An enemy combatant is
Speaker 7: who we're killing, because it basically eliminates all constraints and
Speaker 7: it has all the same problems, all the same damages,
Speaker 7: all the threats to liberty that the War on Terror had,
Speaker 7: and if you add on top of that, like an
Speaker 7: actual military action with our southern neighbor in Mexico that
Speaker 7: they don't want, that would be one of the gravest
Speaker 7: violations of sovereignty in many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. What would it take for you to
Speaker 2: forgive the number Trumper's Glenn? What would they need to do?
Speaker 7: You know, every religion, every ethical system teaches that a
Speaker 7: prerequisite to forgiveness is an admission of guilt and an
Speaker 7: apology for it. None of them have done that with
Speaker 7: respect to these issues. I'm not saying they didn't say,
Speaker 7: oh yeah, the Rack War was improperly executed, but with
Speaker 7: all the whole other Guantanamo torture, et cetera, unitary president,
Speaker 7: none that I know have acknowledged that or that they're
Speaker 7: that they caused a lot of the problems. Now, so
Speaker 7: I think forgiveness should be you know, kind of off limits.
Speaker 2: We need like a bush, then we needed like bushare
Speaker 2: our Truth and Reconciliation Commission for them to come clean
Speaker 2: admit their sins so we can move forward.
Speaker 7: We have to look forward, not backwards. So we never
Speaker 7: got that.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, next time, Next time, maybe, Glenn, anything
Speaker 2: else that you're taking a look at that you want
Speaker 2: people to be aware of today.
Speaker 7: No, I think you did a great job covering it
Speaker 7: as you probab. I mean, we're going to find some
Speaker 7: Glen issues and I think you did an excellent job
Speaker 7: of doing that. So no, I feel like we cover.
Speaker 1: The gambit all right.
Speaker 3: Glenn, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it's always fun getting your perspective and
Speaker 2: just a pleasure, sir.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 7: You know I love the show, so I'm really happy
Speaker 7: to be here. Thanks for asking my pleasure.
Speaker 2: So we are very excited to be joined by Anthony Klan,
Speaker 2: who is an independent journalist. He's the editor of The
Speaker 2: Clackson Down in Australia to break down some pretty stunning
Speaker 2: election results there.
Speaker 3: Welcome Anthony.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 12: Great to be with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, so a lot of people are saying
Speaker 2: that a lot of echoes of what just happened in
Speaker 2: Australia with what previously happened in Canada sort of a
Speaker 2: come from behind in your case, really landslide victory for
Speaker 2: the incumbent party, the center left party, big disappointment from
Speaker 2: Conservatives who had previously seemed like they could surge and
Speaker 2: pull off a victory. Not only that the leader of
Speaker 2: the Conservative Party confusingly Liberal party in Australia. But in
Speaker 2: any case, Peter Dunton, just like Pierre Pauliev in Canada,
Speaker 2: actually lost his own seat. That's how bad the jobbing was.
Speaker 2: So just set up the dynamics here and give us
Speaker 2: a sort of top level view of what happened.
Speaker 12: Of course, so the election, the federal election. Australia's federal
Speaker 12: election was held on Saturday. The leading the government of
Speaker 12: the days the Labor Party, which is sort of center left.
Speaker 12: It's been in power for three years. The center right Party,
Speaker 12: much the same as Canada, was the opposition it came
Speaker 12: in It was, it had quite strong, it was quite
Speaker 12: strong in the polls. It was looking like it was
Speaker 12: quite a good contender and perhaps even going to win
Speaker 12: in around November December, about the time that Donald Trump
Speaker 12: came to power, and very similar to us we saw
Speaker 12: in Canada, which was also a center right opposition. The
Speaker 12: party sort of slumped in the polls over the early
Speaker 12: part of the year and particularly part of the campaign,
Speaker 12: the electoral campaign the opposition he did particularly poorly. But
Speaker 12: it was an absolute drubbing. It was blood on the streets.
Speaker 12: It's an electoral wipeout. So there's sort of questions at
Speaker 12: the moment in Australia regarding the future of this Conservative Party.
Speaker 12: Obviously it's still going to be there, but it's the
Speaker 12: number of seats has just been pretty much wiped out.
Speaker 12: So we saw obviously, we saw in Canada the Conservative
Speaker 12: Party there was unsuccessful and that the leader lost his seat,
Speaker 12: same as in Australia. It's actually been quite a bit
Speaker 12: worse than Canada. There was talk of the government, current
Speaker 12: government in Australia being forced into a minority government rather
Speaker 12: than a majority of government. But it's a majority government
Speaker 12: and by a long way by about twenty seats, so
Speaker 12: it's been quite quite the outcome.
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead, guys.
Speaker 2: Input off one up on the screen its ad tear
Speaker 2: sheet of one of the articles your outlet wrote in
Speaker 2: advance of the election. You said coalition as the opposition
Speaker 2: party headed for disaster, worst result in eighty years.
Speaker 3: According to this Yugo Paul.
Speaker 2: Of course, US Americans love to think that everything is
Speaker 2: about us, but it does seem like Trump's policies and
Speaker 2: a backlash tos such did some reverberations in terms of
Speaker 2: this election, So help us understand how significant those dynamics were.
Speaker 12: For sure, So there's quite a few issues at play here.
Speaker 12: So it wasn't just this the Trump effects as they're
Speaker 12: as they're calling it, but it definitely had a substantial impact.
Speaker 12: And it's difficult to know exactly what caused people to
Speaker 12: vote on the day, but clearly, I think over the
Speaker 12: President Trump's first one hundred days since inauguration, you've seen
Speaker 12: international markets, stock markets royaled a lot of uncertainty, and
Speaker 12: in those situations, people have voted for the incumbency, voted
Speaker 12: for the existing government whoever concerns with that sort of instability.
Speaker 12: In the threats, it was also raised quite a lot
Speaker 12: regarding President Trump's threats against Canada regarding tariffs. But also
Speaker 12: you know, the sort of the talk around annexing and
Speaker 12: that sort of thing made a lot of Australians a
Speaker 12: bit nervous thinking, Look, you know, we're a very close
Speaker 12: partner with the US, as is Canada. You know this
Speaker 12: could be US, So I think that had quite a
Speaker 12: big impact. It's also noteworthy the opposition leader here, he
Speaker 12: was very keen towards the end of last year, sort
Speaker 12: of set up to this sort of maga side of
Speaker 12: things making America great again. He was sort of very
Speaker 12: quite happy to be associated with that as the winds
Speaker 12: were to his back and to Donald Trump's back. But
Speaker 12: then as things sort of started to fall apart a
Speaker 12: bit and the wheels sort of started to fall off
Speaker 12: in the US regarding some of the more extreme statements
Speaker 12: from the president, we've seen that our opposition party sort
Speaker 12: of trying to backpedal a bit and sort of said, oh, look,
Speaker 12: well no, we're different. But by then it was very
Speaker 12: much in train. One particular noteworthy point during the campaign
Speaker 12: was we had the opposition leader standing next to a
Speaker 12: senator from his party and he sent it and said,
Speaker 12: look i'm here.
Speaker 7: She said, i'm here.
Speaker 12: I want to make Australia great again. And that sort
Speaker 12: of caused quite an issue because it was you know,
Speaker 12: that's maga right there, and she immediately said, look, no,
Speaker 12: it's not me. The media is obsessed with Donald Trump,
Speaker 12: and within twenty four hours. There was a photo of
Speaker 12: her with a Make America Great Again cap holding a
Speaker 12: miniature Donald Trump that surfaced from a few months before.
Speaker 12: So that was an interesting.
Speaker 2: Point to the point of who's obsessed with her with
Speaker 2: that one? Well, it is interesting because you know, with Canada, obviously,
Speaker 2: like you were saying, the threats have been really over,
Speaker 2: you know, Canada and US huge trading partners, and especially
Speaker 2: the threats to invade annex Canada as the fifty first state.
Speaker 2: Really obviously Canadians were not thrilled about that, and anyone
Speaker 2: who seemed like they were even tangentially associated with Trump
Speaker 2: and his politics then sort of, you know, paid a
Speaker 2: price for that. You know. I was listening to some
Speaker 2: Australia voters talk about why they voted the way that
Speaker 2: they did, and certainly the roiling of the markets and
Speaker 2: the way that's affecting people's you know, uh, market accounts,
Speaker 2: et cetera. That was certainly a part of it, but
Speaker 2: it also just seemed like a general reaction against what
Speaker 2: was perceived to be an extreme direction from the US.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you could tease some of those things
Speaker 2: out as well. What were some of the things that
Speaker 2: Australians felt were coming from the US that were contrary
Speaker 2: to their values.
Speaker 12: Yeah, for sure. Look, I think so of this this
Speaker 12: conservative populism, and there was quite a it was going
Speaker 12: it was taking off quite well. There's quite a bit
Speaker 12: of it going on last year, but it's often it's
Speaker 12: difficult to tell. The polls were reflecting that the public
Speaker 12: wasn't as adverse to it as the actual electoral outcome states,
Speaker 12: but I think people were increasingly uneasy about this sort
Speaker 12: of this populism and this sort of extreme right wing,
Speaker 12: extreme right wing activity, as well as there's a lot
Speaker 12: of US style sort of disinformation groups, AstroTurf groups whatever
Speaker 12: you want to call them, that are sort of set
Speaker 12: up and pretend to be grassroots movements of ordinary Australians,
Speaker 12: when in fact they're sort of run by fossil fuels
Speaker 12: entities and sort of bad actors pretending to be someone
Speaker 12: there not. So we've seen a lot of that surfacing
Speaker 12: in Australia the past twelve months particularly, and I think
Speaker 12: people have become increasingly aware of that. And we obviously
Speaker 12: have much smaller market in Australia, so when you have
Speaker 12: this sort of activity happening it's easier when it is
Speaker 12: called out. It's easier for the broader public to see
Speaker 12: what's going on. Because we're much smaller, there's many fewer
Speaker 12: moving parts. So I think a lot of that's played
Speaker 12: a part as well. People have looked at some of
Speaker 12: the issues in Australia. We have very similar issues going
Speaker 12: on as on the East coast of the US there
Speaker 12: in particularly regarding offshore wind turbines. Now quite a few
Speaker 12: studies and experts have been looking into this area. We're
Speaker 12: finding a lot of disinformation groups are AstroTurf groups in
Speaker 12: the US that have sort of been pretending to be
Speaker 12: environmental groups but are actually fossil fueled back fighting against
Speaker 12: these offshore wind turbines, obviously because fossil fuels want to
Speaker 12: continue their business model. A lot of those same groups,
Speaker 12: same entities, and same methods are being used on the
Speaker 12: East coast of Australia. So I think a lot more
Speaker 12: people were sort of waking up to that and combining
Speaker 12: those two together, sort of recoiled somewhat and voted for
Speaker 12: the existing government.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that we've been trying
Speaker 2: to wrap our heads around here is how much sort
Speaker 2: of a revocable damage. Trump is doing it. It's one
Speaker 2: thing the trade war. Okay, a new president can come in,
Speaker 2: they can change the policy, etc. But Mark Carney in
Speaker 2: his victory speech really spoke about a sense of real
Speaker 2: betray rail and a sense that even if the particular
Speaker 2: politician and the White House changes or the policy changes,
Speaker 2: that there's been a breach in the relationship that is
Speaker 2: going to cause Canada to go in another direction sort
Speaker 2: of regardless of what happens from here on out. And
Speaker 2: I was just wondering what the view is from Australia
Speaker 2: about the US and whether there's been sort of an
Speaker 2: aravocable change in the way that the US is viewed
Speaker 2: by Australians.
Speaker 7: I think it's much less.
Speaker 12: It's not as as hectically viewed as the Canadians have
Speaker 12: viewed it. Obviously, it's been a bit of a there's
Speaker 12: been a very different relationship between the way that the
Speaker 12: President has treated Canada and Australia, at least vocally so far.
Speaker 12: I think the Australian public and in the Australian authorities
Speaker 12: is sort of thinking, hang on, we need to reconsider
Speaker 12: a bit our position. We've sort of relied extremely heavily
Speaker 12: on the US as a security partner and partner and
Speaker 12: that sort of thing. I think the relationship will remain regardless.
Speaker 12: It's strong, it's you know, it's not going anywhere. But
Speaker 12: I think it's sort of made people think a little
Speaker 12: bit hang on, maybe we should stand on our own
Speaker 12: two feet a little bit more, which you know, to
Speaker 12: some degree that's obviously a good thing. And look, I
Speaker 12: don't think there's any sort of terminal, long term damage
Speaker 12: done there. It's just made people sort of wake up
Speaker 12: a little bit there.
Speaker 2: And what is what was the view of Anthony albany
Speaker 2: c prior to this election? What are people's sense of
Speaker 2: his governance?
Speaker 12: So he was swept to power, came to power last
Speaker 12: three years ago. We have three year terms, which is
Speaker 12: quite unusual on the international stage, but three year terms.
Speaker 12: He came to power. It had been nine years of
Speaker 12: the Conservative government in power before then. Now they'd sort of,
Speaker 12: as many many governments do, they've fallen into the trap
Speaker 12: of cronyism and then corruption in parts. And during that period, interestingly,
Speaker 12: Australia fell further towards corruption than any other OECD nation
Speaker 12: according to Transparency International. Over that nine year period, and
Speaker 12: that's with the exception of Hungary, with which Australia tired,
Speaker 12: So it's not very well known. But during that period
Speaker 12: we're obviously fairly high base. But we fell we fell
Speaker 12: down the list a substantial and a lot of that
Speaker 12: was due to Australia not having a National Integrity Commission,
Speaker 12: being a national body that oversees corruption or alleged corruption
Speaker 12: involving politicians. So the Albanezy government he came to power,
Speaker 12: he promised this brand new National Anti Corruption Commission that
Speaker 12: was going to set up and have transparent hearings and
Speaker 12: all the rest of it to hold government officials to account. Now,
Speaker 12: he brought one of these bodies in, but they sort
Speaker 12: of kneecapped it behind the scenes and made it have
Speaker 12: actions all in secret. Basically, well it's hearings in secret,
Speaker 12: so you don't know what it's doing. And it's been
Speaker 12: pretty much a major flop and it's been criticized from
Speaker 12: all sides. So I think a lot of people were
Speaker 12: very disappointed in that. He sort of made a lot
Speaker 12: of promises for his first term he didn't come through with.
Speaker 12: It was all about transparency and accountability, but as soon
Speaker 12: as he got in that all went out the window.
Speaker 12: But I think what's happened over the past six months,
Speaker 12: with what's happened in the US and the Trump factor,
Speaker 12: that people have thought, well, look, you know, we'll kind
Speaker 12: of forget about that for now. We've got bigger issues.
Speaker 12: We don't want this conservative government coming in. And it's
Speaker 12: basically a few issues with the Conservative government. They're sort of,
Speaker 12: as the public's pointed out, they behind in the Times,
Speaker 12: looking to rewind Australia a little bit. Rather than embracing
Speaker 12: renewable energy, of which we have plenty plenty of sun
Speaker 12: and wind, they were looking at actually introducing nuclear power
Speaker 12: in Australia for the first time, despite the fact that
Speaker 12: it was going to cost between two and five times
Speaker 12: as much for no real reason. It was just sort
Speaker 12: of an ideological issue. So people were sort of not
Speaker 12: particularly happy about that. But so it wasn't a good
Speaker 12: opposition for starters, but the Trump effect obviously played a
Speaker 12: pretty big role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I read what Duntin had said
Speaker 2: something about having a nuclear reactor in his writing that
Speaker 2: his opponent sees done and how long he had held
Speaker 2: that seat for what twenty four years something like that.
Speaker 12: That's right, yeah, more than two decades, and it had
Speaker 12: been on a small margin. He had by about one
Speaker 12: point four percent I believe, the seat of Dixon in Brisbane,
Speaker 12: which is halfway up the Australian coast. So there were
Speaker 12: a few questions as to whether he was going to
Speaker 12: hold that seat, but he's lost it quite convincingly, of
Speaker 12: about six percent swinging against him. Now, this issue with
Speaker 12: the nuclear reactors was something that's picked up We picked
Speaker 12: up on quite early on in the piece, and it
Speaker 12: was coming from a lot of the same actors, the
Speaker 12: fossil fuels groups. One of these in particular in Australia
Speaker 12: is called the Institute of Public Affairs. Now it's sort
Speaker 12: of a proxy almost for fossil fuels interests, and this
Speaker 12: is where Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, launched his nuclear
Speaker 12: reactive policy about eighteen months ago. So he actually launched
Speaker 12: at this fossil fuels lobby group and you're looking at
Speaker 12: these things of the small modular nuclear reactors that he
Speaker 12: was spooking. They don't actually exist anywhere in the world
Speaker 12: in a commercial basis, and they were going to cost
Speaker 12: about six times more than normal electricity anyway. So it
Speaker 12: was pie in the sky sort of stuff, and it
Speaker 12: was seen by many experts as just the way of
Speaker 12: prolonging fossil fuels. So obviously they opened themselves up to
Speaker 12: this whole huge issue of nuclear power in Australia. And
Speaker 12: beyond the economics of it, you've got the issue of
Speaker 12: we haven't had nuclear power before. So a lot of
Speaker 12: people sort of a bit uneasy about the idea, and
Speaker 12: it brings up the whole spectrum of nuclear energy. And
Speaker 12: obviously he left himself open there and the question was, hey, look,
Speaker 12: you know, would you have a reactor in your in
Speaker 12: your backyard and your electorate? He said, of course. And
Speaker 12: obviously people in these electorates were so.
Speaker 2: Keen about that, they were not too excited about that idea.
Speaker 2: Last question for you, how did some of these independent
Speaker 2: movements like the Teals, how did they play into these
Speaker 2: election results?
Speaker 12: Yes, so Australia has much the same as the US,
Speaker 12: two major parties, not quite as not quite as tight
Speaker 12: in as the US, but we have two major parties.
Speaker 12: Last election, there's a group of independents that was that
Speaker 12: came about the look they'll call the community two hundred independents. Basically,
Speaker 12: fundraising model was set up to get independence into government
Speaker 12: because usually you've got all the same actors, the fossil fuels,
Speaker 12: the big banks, et cetera. They are funding the two
Speaker 12: major parties. So this is sort of a new model
Speaker 12: that came in and they were very successful and they
Speaker 12: called it the Teal Wave. Last time, around half a
Speaker 12: dozen and more independence came into power. This time around,
Speaker 12: those same independents are there. There's been a landslo to
Speaker 12: the ALP to the existing government which is center left.
Speaker 12: They have a majority of power, but the independence from
Speaker 12: last time, the Till Wave, is still there. Most of
Speaker 12: those people, if not all of them, are back in again,
Speaker 12: as well as a couple of other gains, and that's
Speaker 12: more of a long term strategy to get more independence
Speaker 12: into into government into Australian government, with the idea being
Speaker 12: there's less power to the original backers, the original donors
Speaker 12: of the two major parties.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you Anthony so much for joining us and
Speaker 2: helping us to understand what's going on there. Tell people
Speaker 2: where they can find you and follow your work.
Speaker 12: Oh thank you. You can find us at the Clackson
Speaker 12: k l A XO N dot com dot au and
Speaker 12: we're an investigative news site covering all the other the
Speaker 12: stories that the other majors aren't.
Speaker 2: Thank you, fantastic, great to meet you, and thank you
Speaker 2: again for joining us.
Speaker 12: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, that does it for today's global edition
Speaker 2: of Breaking Points. Thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 2: and I just want to give a shout out to
Speaker 2: everybody who's been signing up as a Premium member. We've
Speaker 2: had a huge surge of support, think attributable to know
Speaker 2: stitment around the Friday Show and just all that's going
Speaker 2: on in the news and our efforts to cover it.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much for supporting us. It makes
Speaker 2: a huge, huge difference and we'll see you guys tomorrow