Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 2: Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 2: Have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Crystal Inde, we do.
Speaker 1: We got some big breaking news this morning. Mayor Adams
Speaker 1: of New York City is indicted. Right now, the charges
Speaker 1: are sealed. We are awaiting them being unsealed. But we
Speaker 1: still have a lot of details that we can get
Speaker 1: into on that. Kamala Harris yesterday made a big economic pitch.
Speaker 1: She gave a big economic speech in Pittsburgh. She also
Speaker 1: sat for a hard hitting interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Rule.
Speaker 1: So you have something to say about that side.
Speaker 2: Just think I was forced to watch the whole thing,
Speaker 2: forced the stuffer through pharma commercials, and I didn't even
Speaker 2: get anything out of it. So I'm salty Dan that
Speaker 2: went to bed late, so there's too much goal.
Speaker 1: He became salty though, Yes, salt tax did come.
Speaker 3: Up, right, but no answer, but no answer.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it all right, so we'll show you highlights,
Speaker 1: low lights, all the lights from that. We're also keeping
Speaker 1: close eye on Lebanon and Israel is threatening a ground
Speaker 1: invasion there, so very serious and significant developments, deeply troubling.
Speaker 1: Of course. We're taking a deep dive this morning into
Speaker 1: the Senate map, which has some interesting, interesting developments on
Speaker 1: the Democratic side, which races they actually think are the
Speaker 1: most gettable in which they're kind of given up on,
Speaker 1: So we'll get into all of that. We've also got
Speaker 1: some rare good news. Overdoses are down. Overdose deaths are
Speaker 1: down significantly, so nobody knows exactly why. They're probably confluence
Speaker 1: of factors that go into that, so we will discuss
Speaker 1: and looking forward to speaking with my friend journalist Torre,
Speaker 1: who has some exclusive details for us about the abuse
Speaker 1: of Ditty. He's got a new piece up about Cassie
Speaker 1: in particular, but he also has a personal family member
Speaker 1: who had a run in with Diddy that was to
Speaker 1: call it a red flag would be a major understatement.
Speaker 1: So he'll give us all of those details. But before
Speaker 1: we get to any of that, we also have for
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Speaker 1: With that being said, let's go ahead and get into
Speaker 1: the show here. We can put this first element up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Everything we know about this indictment of
Speaker 1: Mayor Adams. This came down late last night, at least
Speaker 1: late in my book and in your book.
Speaker 3: Soccer n thirty late.
Speaker 1: That's pretty late.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in any case, he has been indicted on federal
Speaker 1: criminal charges. We have some indications it may be a
Speaker 1: fair of violation. I'll tell you more about that in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but officially the charges are right now sealed.
Speaker 1: There was also a search by federal agents of Gracie Mansion,
Speaker 1: that is the residence of Mayor Adams in New York
Speaker 1: City this morning early. Unclear specifically what charges or when
Speaker 1: he will surrender to authorities. Federal prosecutors are expected to
Speaker 1: announce the details of that indictment on Thursday. So we
Speaker 1: can put the next element up on the screen actually,
Speaker 1: which goes through some of the timeline. I recommend if
Speaker 1: you haven't been following the story, go back and watch
Speaker 1: the interview we did last week with Ross Barkin breaking
Speaker 1: down what the hell is going on here, because there
Speaker 1: has been a long, more than a year build up
Speaker 1: to this moment. First of all, you had his phones,
Speaker 1: Mayor adams phones seized in what appeared to be an investigation.
Speaker 1: They raided the home of his chief fundraiser. And this
Speaker 1: particular investigation, it appears to be around the allegation that
Speaker 1: Mayor Adams took money from Turkish government sources and then
Speaker 1: intervened with the Fire department as the Turkish government was
Speaker 1: trying to build a consulate in Midtown Manhattan and the
Speaker 1: fire department had safety code concerns and reportedly allegedly Mayor
Speaker 1: Adams intervened and pushed them to okay the opening of
Speaker 1: this building in spite of those safety concerns. That is
Speaker 1: the best that we know about the allegations that he
Speaker 1: is facing. But in addition to the focus on him,
Speaker 1: his administration has been besieged by four different federal investigations.
Speaker 1: Just in the past number of weeks. He's had four
Speaker 1: separate high level officials resign. He is himself facing calls
Speaker 1: to resign and was even before it became official that
Speaker 1: these indictments were coming down. So AOC actually got a
Speaker 1: little bit ahead of the curve. Just yesterday she called
Speaker 1: for his resignation. He sort of alleged that she was
Speaker 1: racist for suggesting that, But he will be the first
Speaker 1: sitting New York City mayor to actually face federal criminal charges,
Speaker 1: So this is quite significant. This is someone Sager, of course,
Speaker 1: who was once tod talked about as the future of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. He's a former cop. He won the mayoralty.
Speaker 1: Of course, all the action in the New York City
Speaker 1: at this point is on the Democratic side. So it
Speaker 1: was the primary that was the big deal, pretty crowded
Speaker 1: primary field. He was against Maya Wiley and another woman
Speaker 1: who was even further left. Her campaign kind of imploded
Speaker 1: there at the end. Don't know if your member there.
Speaker 3: Was her name, o god Arthia no Garcia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Cynthia Garcia. Something like that was my brain,
Speaker 1: Sorry whoever you are. In any case, I remember the
Speaker 1: primary quite well. It was a big deal that he won.
Speaker 1: He ran on this very like fund the police thing,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of centrist Democrats absolutely love that and
Speaker 1: thought this guy was the next, you know, the next
Speaker 1: Democratic superstar. They apparently undug much into him, both in
Speaker 1: terms of previous allegations of corruption and also just in
Speaker 1: terms of basic competence. One thing I've enjoyed about him
Speaker 1: is some of his like really bizarre content that he's produced.
Speaker 1: Just go and look at you know, Eric Adams being
Speaker 1: asked what was the best part of last year in
Speaker 1: one word? Or go and look at the compilations of
Speaker 1: him saying like, New York City is the Islamabad of America.
Speaker 1: New York City is the Kuala Lumpur of America, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But these are very serious allegations and a
Speaker 1: very serious situation for the City of New York, which
Speaker 1: even putting aside the corruption, this is one of the
Speaker 1: points that Ross Barkin made. It's not like he's done
Speaker 1: a good job as mayor. So it'd be one thing
Speaker 1: if you had a corrupt mayor. Many big you know,
Speaker 1: American cities do, but he was actually delivering for constituents.
Speaker 1: Ross pointed out, there is not one major initiative that
Speaker 1: you could point to that has really been a success
Speaker 1: under Mayor Adams. So there is nothing, so to speak,
Speaker 1: to sort of offset the clear swirling corruption throughout his administry.
Speaker 2: There are some other countries we've learned a little bit
Speaker 2: about this morning that the mayor is emburiled with. But
Speaker 2: before we get to that, let's look at his response.
Speaker 2: Very classic, maybe Trumpian. Some might say, yeah, let's take
Speaker 2: a lesson.
Speaker 4: My fellow New york Is it is now my belief
Speaker 4: that the federal government intends to charge me with crimes.
Speaker 4: If so, these charges would be entirely false, based on lies,
Speaker 4: but they would not be surprising. I always knew that
Speaker 4: if I stood my ground for all of you, that
Speaker 4: I would be a target, and a target I became.
Speaker 4: I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my
Speaker 4: strength and my spirit. If I'm charged, I know I
Speaker 4: am innocent, I will request in immediate trials so the
Speaker 4: New Yorkers can hear the truth. I have been facing
Speaker 4: these lies for months since I began to speak out
Speaker 4: for all of you, and their investigations started. Yet the
Speaker 4: city has continued to improve. Make no mistake, you elected
Speaker 4: me to lead this city, and lead it I will.
Speaker 4: I humbly ask for your prayers and your patience as
Speaker 4: we see this through. God Bless you, God bless the
Speaker 4: City of New York. Thank you.
Speaker 2: All Right, there you go. So Adams is now he's
Speaker 2: a Republican. He's basically like, because I courageously spoke out
Speaker 2: against the migrant crisis, That's why they're coming after me.
Speaker 2: Probably a little bit inconvenient that the investigation probably long
Speaker 2: predates a lot of at least the migrant situation in
Speaker 2: the City of New York. As we said, it's not
Speaker 2: just Turkey. Turkey seems to be the most ironclad, yeah one,
Speaker 2: but there are six other nations that they are looking into,
Speaker 2: and those include Israel, Qatar, China, South Korea, and Uzbekistan.
Speaker 2: That the mayor's dealings with those fine countries are also criminated.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say he is an equal opportunity, He's
Speaker 2: equal opportunity corrupt allegedly for the lawyers, and you know,
Speaker 2: I almost have to respect that now, as you said,
Speaker 2: he is the first mayor to be federally indicted while
Speaker 2: in office, probably not the first mayor who should.
Speaker 3: Have been indicted. But this will be very.
Speaker 2: Interesting for a variety of reasons, because I think what
Speaker 2: it comes down to with Eric Adams is not just
Speaker 2: the far violations that they seem to be exploring here,
Speaker 2: and the allegation specifically is that they funneled money not
Speaker 2: to himself personally, but to his campaign, which actually worse
Speaker 2: because FEC law is so iron glad that if you
Speaker 2: really did mess that up, or if they have evidence
Speaker 2: to that regard, you're dead. You know, in a federal court,
Speaker 2: it's almost impossible to beat a charge like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing, the weird thing about FEC laws is that,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, of course, we know money flows
Speaker 1: like wine throughout our campaign election system. Like if you
Speaker 1: follow the available loopholes, you can do almost anything you want.
Speaker 1: One of the red lines is foreign government, oh cash,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, it's you know, and of course is
Speaker 1: to be governed by New York State laws and New
Speaker 1: York City regulations as well. These are federal criminal violations
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here. Pharah, We've been throwing this
Speaker 1: term around for Foreign Agent Registration Act. That speaks to
Speaker 1: the you know, interactions with Turkey and other countries potential
Speaker 1: allegedly trading campaign contributions for favors for foreign governments. That's
Speaker 1: the core of what we know is likely to come
Speaker 1: out here. I was mentioning before he's had four major
Speaker 1: resignations in his administration. This investigation is far from the
Speaker 1: only one. There's all kinds of other alleged corrupt dealings
Speaker 1: going on, So it just seems like the whole thing
Speaker 1: is kind of rotten to its core in a variety
Speaker 1: of different ways. His chief counsel resigned, his police commissioner resigned.
Speaker 1: His education chancellor and health commissioner have both said that
Speaker 1: they are also resigning. So you also get to a
Speaker 1: point where it's like, Okay, dude, even if I believe you,
Speaker 1: which I don't, But even if I believe you, how
Speaker 1: are you going to function? Your administration is crumbling before
Speaker 1: our eyes? How are you going to be able to run?
Speaker 1: This has got to be one of the toughest jobs
Speaker 1: in all of politics, being New York City mayor. How
Speaker 1: when you already weren't doing a good job. Are you
Speaker 1: going to continue to execute on this very high level,
Speaker 1: very weighty, difficult position. And so you know, that's one
Speaker 1: of many questions that he is now faced with. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get a sense of what could happen here.
Speaker 1: So voters in New York City don't have an option
Speaker 1: to recall him, so that's not on the menu. He
Speaker 1: of course could resign if he does. Jimani Williams, who's
Speaker 1: the New York City Public Advocate and who's more of
Speaker 1: a left leaning figure and who has been a critic
Speaker 1: of Adams and has been calling for him to resign,
Speaker 1: and is also a likely mayoral candidate in the event
Speaker 1: that he does resign and there is a special election,
Speaker 1: he would fill that post until they do have a
Speaker 1: special election. There are a number of other people who
Speaker 1: also are likely to throw their hats in the ring.
Speaker 1: One of the people who is, you know, a high
Speaker 1: profile who may use this as an opportunity to make
Speaker 1: his political comeback, is Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York.
Speaker 1: So that's something I watch for here as all of
Speaker 1: this unfolds. There is this code on the books in
Speaker 1: New York that's been used very rarely and not since
Speaker 1: FDR with Governor of New York, where Governor Kathy Hokeel
Speaker 1: could actually force him out. There's a somewhat complicated procedure
Speaker 1: that she would have to follow. Like I said, it's
Speaker 1: almost unprecedented, but that is a theoretical possibility that exists
Speaker 1: as well. So those are some of the directions that
Speaker 1: things could head in next. But as you've heard from
Speaker 1: him as of now, defiant and not planning on resids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have even seen the other people in
Speaker 2: the New York City machine to build a Blasio was
Speaker 2: on CNN late last night and he was like, well,
Speaker 2: just remember innocent and proved till proven guilty.
Speaker 3: And I was like, h interesting. So you know, de Blasio,
Speaker 3: I guess is the price of me. I thought's the same.
Speaker 2: I thought he would have been an enemy of his,
Speaker 2: but may hey listen, you know he was also mayor
Speaker 2: of New York. So the movie doesn't want to normalize
Speaker 2: those people getting indicted. So anyways, from what we can
Speaker 2: tell so far is that of course he is fighting
Speaker 2: the charge or whatever. The eventual charge of this comment
Speaker 2: hasn't actually happened yet. All we know is that the
Speaker 2: mayor has been indicted, that his residence has been searched,
Speaker 2: his phone has been seized. There's widespread corruption allegations surrounding
Speaker 2: every person that is around him, and this really does
Speaker 2: just seem like a network of just complete chaos because
Speaker 2: he's facing, at least from what we see so far,
Speaker 2: this discreete far a charge, but many of the people
Speaker 2: around him are facing far more serious corruption allegations in
Speaker 2: terms of like the police commissioner involved in being some
Speaker 2: shakedown scheme with his brother. Again, you need to go
Speaker 2: and watch our segment with Ross bark And who does
Speaker 2: a good job of breaking all of this down.
Speaker 3: It just does seem that.
Speaker 2: It flowed from the top and there was a lucy
Speaker 2: goosey attitude. And this is something that has characterized Adams
Speaker 2: from the beginning, this whole like did he even live
Speaker 2: in New York City question, which is a legitimate question
Speaker 2: for a while, where he actually even lived in the
Speaker 2: city itself from the beginning, and then he has he
Speaker 2: what he I think he's gonna do. No Mayor, as
Speaker 2: I understand it, has done a more serious job of
Speaker 2: trying to cultivate the wealthy elite of New York City.
Speaker 2: So there's famous pictures going around now of him and
Speaker 2: Diddy whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, he isn't he the one that gave Diddy the key, the.
Speaker 2: Key to the city. Yeah, he literally gave him the
Speaker 2: key to the city. Not that long ago, obviously, since
Speaker 2: it was twenty one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by the way, there was some widespread allegations around.
Speaker 1: That already at that point.
Speaker 2: But I mean everything, he's got pictures with famous people, like,
Speaker 2: he really relished the ceremonial job. He obviously traveled the
Speaker 2: globe as the mayor of New York, and so I
Speaker 2: think he's going to try and leverage some of that
Speaker 2: fame and some of those contacts itself. I will be
Speaker 2: curious to see if he does become a Republican kind
Speaker 2: of ceremonial figure, because he's trying to use immigration as
Speaker 2: the reason.
Speaker 3: For why he got himself invited. It'll be fun, it'll watch.
Speaker 1: That's the move, deeply, honestly coming after Himyah, it was smart,
Speaker 1: that's if. I mean, that would be the corner to
Speaker 1: run to, Like, Democrats are not gonna defend you at
Speaker 1: the core point, they're done with you, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: Republicans will believe the like, oh, it's the deep state
Speaker 1: targeting me because I spoke out about them. They were
Speaker 1: a good number. We'll buy that. So if his political
Speaker 1: career is done in New York City anyway, that would
Speaker 1: be a good way for him to get a new
Speaker 1: sort of you know, national influencer gig or whatever on
Speaker 1: the right. So yeah, he'll be on Fox definitely guarantee.
Speaker 1: Oh you could guarantee they would eat that up all
Speaker 1: day long. Let's get to Kamala Harris with Stephanie Rule
Speaker 1: on MSNBC.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: Stayed up late last night to watch Kamala Harris on
Speaker 2: MSNBC's MSNBC Stephanie Rule. Interview is approximately a twenty five
Speaker 2: minute interview.
Speaker 1: Leola said, state up late and it happened at seven o'clock.
Speaker 3: Did have it?
Speaker 2: That's late, it's late. You shouldn't have a television on
Speaker 2: at seven o'clock or right, if you go to bed
Speaker 2: at eight o'clock, the TV's not supposed to be on
Speaker 2: two hours on red light classes anyway, we moved past that.
Speaker 2: So Stephanie Rules, she has the interview with Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: Like I said, approximately twenty five minutes. The focus of
Speaker 2: the interview was on the economy.
Speaker 3: Now buy and large.
Speaker 2: This was about a softball as it gets, with some
Speaker 2: mix of serious questions in there. There were no follow
Speaker 2: ups or any of that. Nonetheless, there were still some
Speaker 2: interesting moments. Perhaps the most interesting moment was, Hey, you
Speaker 2: say that you're better for the economy. Polling shows that
Speaker 2: Trump still looks like he's the one better to handle it.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that is? Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: The last four years there have been tremendous economic wins,
Speaker 5: and you've just laid out a big plan. But still
Speaker 5: polling shows that most likely voters still think Donald Trump
Speaker 5: is better to handle the economy.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that is?
Speaker 6: Well, here's what I know in terms of the facts.
Speaker 6: Donald Trump left us with the worst economy since the
Speaker 6: Great Depression. When you look at, for example, the employment numbers.
Speaker 5: It was during COVID and employment was so high because
Speaker 5: we shut down the government.
Speaker 3: We shut down the country.
Speaker 6: Even before the pandemic. He lost manufacturing jobs, by most
Speaker 6: people's estimates, at least two hundred thousand. He lost manufacturing plants.
Speaker 6: Asked the autoworkers how he lost autoplants? We have grown
Speaker 6: over twenty new auto plants. He has an agenda. Let's
Speaker 6: just deal with right now going forward, not to mention
Speaker 6: what happened in the past. He has an agenda that
Speaker 6: would include making him more difficult for workers to earn overtime,
Speaker 6: an agenda that would include cutting off access to small
Speaker 6: business loans for small businesses, an agenda that includes tariffs
Speaker 6: to the point that the average working person will spend
Speaker 6: twenty percent more on everyday necessities and an estimated four
Speaker 6: thousand dollars more a year on those everyday necessities, to
Speaker 6: the point that top economists in our country, from Nobel
Speaker 6: Laureates to people at Moody's and Goldman Sachs, have compared
Speaker 6: my plan with his and said my plan would grow
Speaker 6: the economy. His would shrink the economy. Some of them
Speaker 6: have actually assessed that his plan would increase inflation and
Speaker 6: invite a recession by the middle of next year. So
Speaker 6: the facts remain that Donald Trump has a history of
Speaker 6: taking care of very rich people. And I'm not mad
Speaker 6: at anybody for being rich, but they should pay their
Speaker 6: fair share. But tax cuts for the billionaire in the
Speaker 6: top corporations in our country and then not really paying
Speaker 6: much attention to middle class families.
Speaker 2: So obviously it was more of a dodge, and it
Speaker 2: was like, well, here's what I would do on the economy.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's like the worst thing in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: I am glad that she at least was like, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, on unemployment, they love to use this great
Speaker 2: depression line. It's just ridiculous because we're in the middle
Speaker 2: of a pandemic, and that was the government policy, was
Speaker 2: to furlough people and put them on unemployment.
Speaker 3: Whatever. We'll put that aside.
Speaker 2: The truth is is that that is probably the best
Speaker 2: that she can get. Another thing I took notice of
Speaker 2: is the word Biden was not mentioned once out of
Speaker 2: her mouth. I actually went back and checked just to
Speaker 2: make sure. Basically, she is running as far away from
Speaker 2: Joe Biden as you can without like hurting feelings. I
Speaker 2: think at this point she didn't run on any She
Speaker 2: didn't actually mention any of the signature Biden administration policies
Speaker 2: that have been put into place, none of the American
Speaker 2: Rescue Plan, nothing about the IRA. It was purely like
Speaker 2: looking forward. I think that's smart actually, because people do
Speaker 2: not look fondly at the Biden administration, and they really
Speaker 2: do blame them so she's trying to present herself as
Speaker 2: new blood. Something that I think that it comes back
Speaker 2: to in the debate was that it always felt like
Speaker 2: Trump was the incumbent, and it still feels like that
Speaker 2: right now in this interview. And I think that's must
Speaker 2: have been a strategic thing that the Trump people have
Speaker 2: had difficulty with, where they need to try and put
Speaker 2: her as the face of incumbascy and remind people that
Speaker 2: she's been in office now for three something years. Sure,
Speaker 2: she didn't have any powers to the vice president, but
Speaker 2: tying her to Biden is the best thing that they
Speaker 2: could possibly Yeah, for sure, and I strategically, I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously the pressed Stephanie in particular is like in her camp,
Speaker 2: so she's not going to do that. But that was
Speaker 2: the framework that I saw that and I was like,
Speaker 2: it literally feels like Trump is in office right now
Speaker 2: and she's running against that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're not running, but you've been you've been
Speaker 3: in the White House for three years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. And yeah, you can point
Speaker 1: to the media all you want, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously Steph Rowle and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: We will show you inhabitants.
Speaker 1: They knew that Kamlak could get away with dodging almost
Speaker 1: all the questions, essentially.
Speaker 2: Do you might support it or not? And she just
Speaker 2: moves right past it. I'm like, Stephanie, what are we
Speaker 2: doing here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I mean Kama is good at like delivering
Speaker 1: the talking point she has. She did perfectly find there
Speaker 1: with here's why I'm better than Donald Trump and Goldman
Speaker 1: sex is my economic plan is better, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But what a more uh flexible or skilled politician will
Speaker 1: do when they're dodging question is not just like from
Speaker 1: the outside avoid answering it. Bill did give some quick
Speaker 1: nod to an answer, and then they'll move into what
Speaker 1: it is they want to say right like you could
Speaker 1: say at the beginning of that listen, he's a businessman,
Speaker 1: and I get it. People just instinctively think that that
Speaker 1: makes you good on the economy. But here's why they're wrong.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah. And those are the sorts
Speaker 1: of things that someone who's a little bit quicker on
Speaker 1: their feet and a little more comfortable in these situations
Speaker 1: can pull off. And that's why they're very careful about
Speaker 1: who they put her on with and how often they
Speaker 1: put her out, because if you did have an adversarial interview,
Speaker 1: obviously they're going to follow up. Obviously they're going to
Speaker 1: try to hold your feet to the fire. Okay, well
Speaker 1: what about salt? You didn't answer my question? Well, why
Speaker 1: do you think it? Okay, that may be fine. You
Speaker 1: may think you're better than Donald Trump. The voters right
Speaker 1: now don't agree. So you didn't answer, you know why
Speaker 1: you think that that is. But she knew that, you know,
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, with any of the host on MSNBC, she
Speaker 1: wasn't going to get that, and so she was able
Speaker 1: to just kind of go through her talking points and
Speaker 1: so overall, like she did find in this interview, there
Speaker 1: were no catastrophes because it was a comfortable landscape on
Speaker 1: you know, turf for her to operate on. One of
Speaker 1: the things I'll say about the media strategy is it
Speaker 1: is a little perplexing why given that it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: the number one issue that voters have the voters you're
Speaker 1: still undecided. The biggest issue they have with her is
Speaker 1: they're still not totally sure what she's going to do.
Speaker 1: So you would think it'd be like Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: not comfortable with, at least put Tim Walls out there.
Speaker 1: Like every day on cable news. He's comfortable in these settings,
Speaker 1: day after day after day saying here's our top through ride.
Speaker 1: You know, it's gonna be housing, it's gonna be the
Speaker 1: told tax credit, it's going to be the small business
Speaker 1: and whatever. There's three like things they want to hit
Speaker 1: again and again and again. I don't know why they
Speaker 1: don't do that, at least with Tim Walls, Like I
Speaker 1: kind of get it with Kambloa because they're just nervous
Speaker 1: that she's going to screw it up and she why right,
Speaker 1: But to me, that's strategy. It's way too cautious. And
Speaker 1: then it makes all of these settings so much higher
Speaker 1: stakes for her When she does actually give an interview,
Speaker 1: even with a friendline.
Speaker 2: The entire media was watching this interview. Why because there's
Speaker 2: not that many interviews. So that's the risk, is that
Speaker 2: Trump does the flood the zone strategy. He's constantly even
Speaker 2: though he's doing way less rallies and all these other
Speaker 2: things than previously, he still does a decent number of rallies.
Speaker 2: Last night, he actually made major news on Ukraine in
Speaker 2: his speech. My point is only just that people are
Speaker 2: not glued to the screen every single time Trump talks
Speaker 2: because he Trunk's Trump talks a lot more than her
Speaker 2: on average, and will eventually do media, press conferences and
Speaker 2: all that. With Kamala, she's the one where you it's
Speaker 2: a self inflicted wound when you set upset piece events
Speaker 2: and it just goes okay. And that's kind of how
Speaker 2: I would characterize this. I think it was okay. But
Speaker 2: if the number one reason that these uncommitted voters are
Speaker 2: wondering should I vote for you or not, a lot
Speaker 2: of it comes down to policy and actually answering questions,
Speaker 2: feeling you have command.
Speaker 3: And I didn't get a lot of.
Speaker 2: That, especially if we look at the specifics on some
Speaker 2: of her flagship proposals.
Speaker 3: She has a few memorized.
Speaker 2: She's like twenty four thousand dollars down payment, assistant's fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars small bills, but then Stephanie rules like, so
Speaker 2: what about the salt deduction? Nope, we're not talking about that.
Speaker 2: On taxes, she does that totally vague thing where she's
Speaker 2: just like nobody under four hundred thousand dollars a year
Speaker 2: will have their taxes raised, and like, well, what does
Speaker 2: that mean, Like, do you mean you're going to increase
Speaker 2: the individual rate over four hundred thousand? Does that mean
Speaker 2: you're actually she said, one hundred million Americans will get
Speaker 2: a tax cut.
Speaker 3: Well a tax cut?
Speaker 2: How how from the TCAJA, which specifically do you think
Speaker 2: you want to do? On the manufacturing stuff, she's like, again, tariffs,
Speaker 2: but she's very pro building American manufacturing. Like, wow, that's
Speaker 2: pretty you know, it doesn't really work out. And actually,
Speaker 2: even Stephanie Rule was like, come on, even Joe Biden
Speaker 2: has kept a lot of tariffs and increased tariffs while
Speaker 2: he's in office. So there's a lot of weird like
Speaker 2: ideology does not mix. There's a lot of talking points.
Speaker 2: I saw some of that in the price control answer,
Speaker 2: where again basically zero specifics on any of this. It
Speaker 2: was a lot of just righteous indignation, which is fine.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you're a politician, but I still think
Speaker 2: Americans are asking you for something. So just to show you,
Speaker 2: this is what she had to say.
Speaker 5: But a serious problem over the last few years has
Speaker 5: been inflation. Luckily it's cooling, but prices are still hot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 5: You've said, you want to take this on by going
Speaker 5: after those who engage in price gouging. But as somebody
Speaker 5: who supports free markets, who's a capitalist, how do you
Speaker 5: go after price gouging without implementing price controls Because once
Speaker 5: we get in the zone, people start to get worried
Speaker 5: and they say, I.
Speaker 3: Don't know what she's stands for.
Speaker 6: So, just to be very frank, I am never going
Speaker 6: to apologize for going after companies and corporations that take
Speaker 6: advantage of the desperation of the American people. And as
Speaker 6: Attorney General, I saw this happen in the midst of
Speaker 6: an emergency, whether it be an extreme weather event or
Speaker 6: even the pandemic. We saw it where those few companies,
Speaker 6: not the majority, not most, but those few companies that
Speaker 6: would take advantage of the desperation of people and jack
Speaker 6: up prices. Yeah, I'm going to go after them. Yes,
Speaker 6: I'm going to go after them. And that is part
Speaker 6: of a much more comprehensive plan on what we can
Speaker 6: do to bring down the cost of living, including housing,
Speaker 6: including the everyday needs of the American people.
Speaker 2: So what did you think of that, Crystal, Because the
Speaker 2: way I would answer that question is when a lot
Speaker 2: of undecided voters say that I think you're too liberal,
Speaker 2: and somebody tease it up for you. She should have
Speaker 2: said something like, do you think Arkansas or socialists? Because
Speaker 2: they have priceuging laws that are on the books, and
Speaker 2: that is the framework that I will use to make
Speaker 2: sure that people pay less at their grocery store.
Speaker 3: This was just I don't know, there was just there's
Speaker 3: nothing going on there.
Speaker 1: I mean, your answer is good, but to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I thought this was a great answer because
Speaker 1: normally I would expect her to kind of back down, Oh,
Speaker 1: we'll let you know I'm free market and do the
Speaker 1: whole leg Oh and Dick Cheney endorse made out socialists.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that speech.
Speaker 1: I actually thought that this was a fantastic answer. It
Speaker 1: was like, because Stephanie Rule is like CNBC on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: very closely like Wall Street a line. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys are remember she this whole like she
Speaker 1: was so mad at Joe Biden for going after Park
Speaker 1: Avenue in one speech where he sounded some populous notes
Speaker 1: like that's her, that's her orientation. So I was worried
Speaker 1: in this interview that Kamala would be looking too much
Speaker 1: to cater to that Wall Street orientation. And this answer,
Speaker 1: while yes, vegue and as like someone who's wonky and
Speaker 1: wants to know the specifics, etc. Doesn't get into that whatsoever,
Speaker 1: But as a political answer, I actually thought it was fantastic.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to back down. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be called when people are taking advantage of the American people,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go after them. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: tough on them. That's what I did as Attorney General.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's not even like really a left
Speaker 1: right thing. It's more of just like squarely leaning into
Speaker 1: a populist orientation. So personally I thought this was one
Speaker 1: of her better answers.
Speaker 2: To be honest, Yeah, I don't know. I just keep
Speaker 2: coming back. I understand where you're coming from. The more
Speaker 2: that I look at that and people are like, I
Speaker 2: think you're too liberal, I do think that this and
Speaker 2: the Dick Cheney stuff, I don't think that that works
Speaker 2: for the whole. I think you're too liberal. That's not
Speaker 2: something that people who are concerned about that are. What
Speaker 2: they're kind of looking at is probably both cultural and
Speaker 2: I think that the Arkansas framework or even some sort
Speaker 2: of specifics you could allay those concerns. She did show
Speaker 2: a lot of ideological flexibility in her speech. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if you caught that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and we'll get to that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, But this answer would pull it like eighty
Speaker 1: percent sure. I mean, if you look at the price gouging,
Speaker 1: her price gouging policy, it was literally supported by like
Speaker 1: eighty percent of people. So I don't think people think
Speaker 1: of this as like a liberal issue. I think they
Speaker 1: see it as like you're standing up for us, You're
Speaker 1: taking on and it's been the case throughout the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Even at the height of inflation, the American people were
Speaker 1: much more likely to blame greedy corporations than actually the
Speaker 1: Biden administration was so for me for her to lean
Speaker 1: into that and actually, you know, put some oof behind
Speaker 1: it and not back down even in the face of
Speaker 1: a somewhat adversarial question from Stephanie Rule. You know, I
Speaker 1: was heartened to see that, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great answer. I thought politically, I thought she was
Speaker 1: on very you know, strong ground there.
Speaker 2: Sticking with the MSNBC thing, regardless of how maybe one
Speaker 2: answer or not one reason that they decided to pick
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris was or sorry, Stephanie Rule was because literally
Speaker 2: just days ago she was on Bill mahersh show defending
Speaker 2: Kamala for not doing interviews, and by the way, after
Speaker 2: the interview was conducted, gave a glowing spot about how
Speaker 2: incredible she did in the interview. So just to give
Speaker 2: you a taste of who the interviewer itself was and
Speaker 2: what she most recent we said here it is.
Speaker 7: It's not too much to ask Kamala say, are you
Speaker 7: for a Palestinian state if Hamas is going to run
Speaker 7: that state?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 6: Yes or no?
Speaker 3: And let's say you don't like her answer. Are you
Speaker 3: going to vote for Donald Trump?
Speaker 7: No, I'm not going to vote.
Speaker 5: Not running for perfect She's running against Trump. We have
Speaker 5: two choices, And so there are some things you might
Speaker 5: not know her answer to.
Speaker 1: And in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Four, unlike twenty sixteen, for a lot of the American people,
Speaker 5: we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is,
Speaker 5: and the kind of threat he is to democracy.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's unfeared me to be more on the.
Speaker 8: Problem that a lot of people have with Kamala.
Speaker 7: Is we don't know her answer to anything.
Speaker 5: Okay, answer to everything, and.
Speaker 7: That's why I would never vote for him, and people
Speaker 7: should vote for him. But people also are expected to
Speaker 7: have some idea of what the program is of the
Speaker 7: person you're supposed to vote for. They're just not supposed
Speaker 7: to say, well, you have to vote for why because
Speaker 7: X is this, that and the other.
Speaker 3: Let's find out a little bit more.
Speaker 7: And I don't think it's a lot to ask her
Speaker 7: to sit down for a real interview as opposed to
Speaker 7: a pump case in which she describes like her feelings
Speaker 7: of growing up and openated, nice laws.
Speaker 5: Then I would just say to that, when you moved
Speaker 5: to Nirvana, give me your real estate broker's number and
Speaker 5: I'll be your next door enable.
Speaker 3: We don't live there, so there's your taste.
Speaker 2: Basically, not only does she openly support Kamala Harris, she
Speaker 2: was defending her for not doing interviews and for not
Speaker 2: having specifics.
Speaker 1: The best part, that's so embarrassed.
Speaker 3: That's humiliating.
Speaker 2: The best part, Crystal is that afterwards there was this
Speaker 2: weird after the interview aired, Stephanie was on with Chris Hayes,
Speaker 2: and of course I stayed up. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll keep watching this and she was like, you know
Speaker 2: what you had there. It was a real interview. It
Speaker 2: was a normal interview.
Speaker 3: If you're worried about taxes, you got your answer right there.
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, you didn't. Saying I won't raise.
Speaker 2: Your taxes under foreign k is the most meaningless sentence in.
Speaker 3: All of politics.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden said that I'm pretty sure Donald Trump has
Speaker 2: said something a version of that.
Speaker 3: Why should I believe you? What are you even talking about?
Speaker 2: So for her, in particular, to be a financial journalist
Speaker 2: whose entire.
Speaker 3: Job is literally about the specifics and.
Speaker 2: All this, to have done this spot and then get
Speaker 2: the interview confirmed with you what two days later, that's humiliating.
Speaker 2: And it's also humiliating for the network because they were
Speaker 2: touting this as like some big newsmaking event, and I
Speaker 2: was like.
Speaker 3: This, this is ridiculous. This is the whole thing is
Speaker 3: a farce.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, if you're just a political analyst and
Speaker 1: you're saying, you know what, I don't know that the
Speaker 1: voters really care that much about like the white paper
Speaker 1: on policies, that's fine. You know what, that might be true.
Speaker 1: That might be true.
Speaker 3: If you're Quentin Tarantino, that's fine, right.
Speaker 1: Although I do think that she's not even really right
Speaker 1: on that, because there is still this lingering sense of
Speaker 1: I really want to know what the priorities are, right,
Speaker 1: I need to know. It's not even so much about
Speaker 1: the policy details. It's just like a who are you
Speaker 1: at your core? What are you going to fight for?
Speaker 1: What is the Day one agenda? What is it? Really?
Speaker 1: That's the thing that still needs to be filled in.
Speaker 1: So I don't even totally agree with the political analysis,
Speaker 1: but as a journalist, as someone who's supposed to actually
Speaker 1: care about what are the policies that are going to
Speaker 1: be enacted? What was it going to mean for business?
Speaker 1: What is it going to mean for small business? What
Speaker 1: is it going to mean for regular people? How can
Speaker 1: you not push to get those answers? Because remember, this
Speaker 1: isn't someone who went through a primary process where we
Speaker 1: got to see debates, where she got to be pressed
Speaker 1: by other would be contenders on a debate stage. None
Speaker 1: of that happened. So all we have are these little
Speaker 1: glimpses of whatever it is they're gonna, you know, they
Speaker 1: deign to give us, And those answers can end up
Speaker 1: being very consequential if she is actually elected president, even
Speaker 1: if it isn't what everybody in the country is, you know,
Speaker 1: checking off their list. The Stephanie Rule talks about it
Speaker 1: at the end of that video. If you keep going
Speaker 1: even if it's not that you know. A student debt
Speaker 1: is a perfect example. Biden made certain promises on student
Speaker 1: debt that once you get an office. Got an office,
Speaker 1: he clearly did not want to do anything on student debt.
Speaker 1: But because he had repeatedly promised certain things on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail, activists had a cudgel that they could wield
Speaker 1: to at least force him to try to do something,
Speaker 1: and they did alleviate some student debt. Now, he still
Speaker 1: didn't go as far as his campaign promises, and there's
Speaker 1: a whole reason, you know, they would blame it on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. We won't get into all of that,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty clear to me if he hadn't been
Speaker 1: forced to make those pledges on the campaign trail, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done any of it because he clearly didn't
Speaker 1: want to. So, yeah, it matters that you get her
Speaker 1: on the record on some key issues so that that
Speaker 1: can be used if she is president where you can say, hey,
Speaker 1: you promised to do this. You promised you wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: Why are you proposing this now? And that sort of
Speaker 1: pressure can actually effectuate some kind of change, So to
Speaker 1: just like throw up your hands and like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't even care. Why should we even try? I mean,
Speaker 1: the opponent's Donald Trump. It's just it's it's pathetic. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it's it's embarrassing. And you know, I suspect
Speaker 1: that this interview with Stephanie Ruhl was probably already in
Speaker 1: the works before this bill maher appearance happened, But it's
Speaker 1: illustrative of why she's chosen, right, It's I llustrative of
Speaker 1: why she's chosen. And then the other reason she's chosen
Speaker 1: is because Kamala Harris realizes, Okay, I think people who
Speaker 1: are going to vote on abortion, they already know who
Speaker 1: they're voting for. People who are going to vote on immigration,
Speaker 1: they already know who they're voting for. The remaining undecided voters,
Speaker 1: by and large, serreck. There's exceptions, but by and large
Speaker 1: is going to be about the economy. She has somewhat
Speaker 1: closed the gap from where Joe Biden was visa v. Trump.
Speaker 1: We actually have a Washington Post tear sheet. We can
Speaker 1: put up. This is a seven guys. So Trump had
Speaker 1: a twelve point lead over President Biden on who would
Speaker 1: be better suited to, you know, to handle the economy.
Speaker 1: He now averages only a six point edge on the economy,
Speaker 1: which is actually pretty solid for Democratic candidate, especially against
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Fox News found fifty one percent writer shared
Speaker 1: voters favor Trump on the economy, compared with forty six
Speaker 1: percent who favored Harris. There's a number of other poles
Speaker 1: a site here that show similar shifts towards her, even
Speaker 1: though he still holds somewhat of an edge. So the
Speaker 1: other reason Stephanie Rule gets chosen is because she is
Speaker 1: a financial journalist. She does have more of an economic focus,
Speaker 1: and it pairs with this Pittsburgh economic speech that Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris delivered on the same day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Let's get to some of that. Some
Speaker 3: of that speech.
Speaker 2: We have one clip of it here on manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: Now, look my opponent, Donald Trump, Well, he makes big
Speaker 6: promises on manufacturing. Just yesterday he went out and promised
Speaker 6: to bring back manufacturing jobs. And if that sounds familiar,
Speaker 6: it should. In twenty sixteen, he went out and made
Speaker 6: that very same promise about the Carrier plant in Indianapolis.
Speaker 6: You'll remember Carrier then offshore hundreds of jobs to Mexico
Speaker 6: under his watch. And it wasn't just there. On Trump's watch,
Speaker 6: offshore went up, and manufacturing jobs went down across our
Speaker 6: country and across our economy. All told, almost two hundred
Speaker 6: thousand manufacturing jobs were lost during his presidency, starting before
Speaker 6: the pandemic hit, making Trump one of the biggest losers
Speaker 6: ever on manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Not bad.
Speaker 2: I thought it was overall like a fine enough answer.
Speaker 2: I won't go into all the specifics whatever, But I
Speaker 2: think what it comes back to is not just the
Speaker 2: leaning of the speech. Keep in mind that was the
Speaker 2: Economic Club of Pittsburgh. That interview was also conducted in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: This is what they're leaning into, especially there they had
Speaker 2: the steel workers endorsement. There was actually an interesting question
Speaker 2: to Kamala on the steel workers and whether that US
Speaker 2: steel plant should have been sold to Nippon feel, which
Speaker 2: the Biden administration has decided to block. That's a policy
Speaker 2: that she came out in favor of. So I thought
Speaker 2: that was interesting. We have one more section here that
Speaker 2: we can play from the speech. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: As president, I will be grounded in my fundamental values
Speaker 6: of fairness, dignity, and opportunity, and I promise you I
Speaker 6: will be pragmatic in my approach. I will engage in
Speaker 6: what Franklin Roosevelt called bold persistent experimentation, because I believe
Speaker 6: we shouldn't be constrained by ideology and instead should seek
Speaker 6: practical solutions to problems, realistic assessments of what is working
Speaker 6: and what is not.
Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting, decality access of I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that is actually what I expected more from her.
Speaker 2: And listen, I mean we're to put my own politics
Speaker 2: and how I think about things to the side. I
Speaker 2: think that probably is on the mark of what people
Speaker 2: want to hear from her. The undecided economic voter is like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not ideological, I'm practical.
Speaker 3: People like that idea.
Speaker 2: Practical often meets billionaire like brother in law who was
Speaker 2: the council for Uber.
Speaker 3: But whatever, we'll put that to the side.
Speaker 2: My point is that rhetorically, I didn't think it was
Speaker 2: the worst thing, and that is something. Of course, you
Speaker 2: also get a lot of elite donors and other people
Speaker 2: who've been in her ear.
Speaker 3: Who are like this is what you need to say.
Speaker 2: So it was an interesting little flash in terms of
Speaker 2: the interview, particularly the price couching answer, like you said,
Speaker 2: but then also the way that she talks at the
Speaker 2: Economic Club of Pittsburgh. By the way, anything Economic Club
Speaker 2: is like full on the business community, yeah type thing.
Speaker 3: And that's typically where these types of speeches are given.
Speaker 1: I mean that it gives a little bit of Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: like I'm a progressive, gifts things done. Just give a
Speaker 1: little bit of that. I mean, listen, if you're gonna nitpick,
Speaker 1: you say, like, Okay, FDR is representative. She's citing FDR there,
Speaker 1: and he is representing a very specific, like ideological frame,
Speaker 1: one that I hoy support and one that's a good
Speaker 1: number of her policies also are quite in line with
Speaker 1: and some of the Biden Ara policies as well in
Speaker 1: terms of domestic economics. But then she's also claiming like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not ideological. I mean, you can see the poll
Speaker 1: testing of some people say you're too liberal. You need
Speaker 1: to position yourself at this sort of like tough, pragmatic,
Speaker 1: just competent figure. And so that's what she seeks to
Speaker 1: do in that speech. I watched the whole speech. I
Speaker 1: thought it was I thought it was pretty solid. She
Speaker 1: threw out it. In terms of her contrast with Trump,
Speaker 1: the clip we showed you Visa v. Manufacturing was a
Speaker 1: kind of a good example of the contrast she seeks
Speaker 1: to set up. We saw a lot of this, you know,
Speaker 1: in the debate in her DNC speech, et cetera, where
Speaker 1: it's like he's for the rich, for the middle class.
Speaker 1: She had this line about, you know, he's for the
Speaker 1: people who work in the skyscrapers, for the people who
Speaker 1: build the skyscrapers, which I thought was a pretty good contrast.
Speaker 1: And so that's what she's trying to set up with
Speaker 1: regard to what she talked about there with the carrier plan.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys remember that at the
Speaker 1: beginning of Trump's twenty term in office back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and there was a whole you know, he made a
Speaker 1: big show of trying to save these jobs at the
Speaker 1: carrier plant, and then after all the fanfare dies, they
Speaker 1: get outsourced anyway. And there's a few failures you can
Speaker 1: point to, you like that, Lord's Town being another one
Speaker 1: where a lot of promises were made to people and
Speaker 1: he didn't care enough to really follow for you to
Speaker 1: pay attention, and that fell apart. The Fox con facility
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin is another one. Her numbers are correct in
Speaker 1: terms of manufacturing under him versus under Biden. And it's
Speaker 1: particularly relevant right now because Sagery probably saw this right
Speaker 1: now Trump is doing it's a very Carrier esque move,
Speaker 1: So trying to recapture some of those twenty sixteen populous
Speaker 1: vibes where he's threatening John d with a two hundred
Speaker 1: percent tariff if they move more production to Mexico in particular.
Speaker 1: And so she's trying to point out, like, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: heard this before, but it never actually works out the
Speaker 1: way that he says because he doesn't follow through, he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a plan, he's not actually doesn't actually care
Speaker 1: about this stuff is just a show. So anyway, that's
Speaker 1: a contrast. She's trying to set up. The one thing
Speaker 1: I'll say about the limited media strategy, which I think
Speaker 1: is abhorrent for democracy, one thing they might be betting
Speaker 1: on is because there's like a scarcity of Kamala, it
Speaker 1: does mean that those speeches, this interview with Steffanie Rule,
Speaker 1: et cetera, become flag get more coverage like we watched
Speaker 1: it and we covered it, you know, in a way
Speaker 1: that Trump another Trump interview on Fox News would be
Speaker 1: like if something really pops, we'd cover it. But because
Speaker 1: there is such a scarcity of kamala, all of these
Speaker 1: things become bigger events and become a bigger deal. That
Speaker 1: may be part of the calculus that's going into this
Speaker 1: as well. So we've been tracking closely the escalating war
Speaker 1: Israel versus Hisbola in Lebanon and some deeply troubling news
Speaker 1: coming out just recently. As put this up on the screen,
Speaker 1: it appears that Israel is preparing for a potential ground invasion.
Speaker 1: This is from the Financial Times. They say Israel on
Speaker 1: Wednesday told troops prepare for a potential ground offensive against
Speaker 1: HESWLA in Lebanon, as Joe Biden warned, and all out
Speaker 1: war is possible, but pushed for a cease fire deal.
Speaker 1: Let me just continue to read some of the details
Speaker 1: here from the Financial Times, the IDF's chief of staff
Speaker 1: told troops airstrikes on Lebanon were not just aimed at
Speaker 1: degrading the Lebanese militant group, but to prepare the ground
Speaker 1: for your possible entry. Quote we are preparing the process
Speaker 1: of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering
Speaker 1: boots will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hesbela has
Speaker 1: prepared as a large military outposts. They also said that
Speaker 1: they were calling up two reserve brigades, although this is
Speaker 1: less of a show of force then prior to the
Speaker 1: grand invasion of Gaza, however, we've already seen massive carnage,
Speaker 1: somewhere around six hundred Lebanese people killed. The Lebanese Health
Speaker 1: Ministry is saying that a majority of those, if not
Speaker 1: all of them, those are their words, were civilians. We
Speaker 1: know quite a number of children and women are among
Speaker 1: those who were killed by the Israeli air strikes already.
Speaker 1: So we're looking here at a very likely potential even further.
Speaker 3: Escalation, very very very possible.
Speaker 2: And even worse is that we have basically a total
Speaker 2: failure of US diplomacy. We're already getting embarrassed on the
Speaker 2: national stage. So, for example, we have here Tony Blinken
Speaker 2: getting asked about the situation.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what he said.
Speaker 9: Does the US support what Israel is doing right now
Speaker 9: in terms of this escalation in order to later deescalate
Speaker 9: and get to the negotiating.
Speaker 10: What we support is solving the problem of making sure
Speaker 10: that people can go home. But we believe the best
Speaker 10: way to solve it is through diplomacy, not through war.
Speaker 9: Why does the US not have or use more leverage
Speaker 9: over Israel. It's ally we are the supplier of the
Speaker 9: bulk of its weapons of war. And yet there are
Speaker 9: countless examples and you probably know them better than I
Speaker 9: where Israel seems to flout what the US is asking
Speaker 9: or suggesting.
Speaker 10: Why is that we have a long standing relationship and
Speaker 10: security relationship with Israel, including making sure that it has
Speaker 10: what it needs to prevent the many enemies that it
Speaker 10: has from attacking it, to deter them, and that's important
Speaker 10: to avoiding.
Speaker 1: War as well.
Speaker 10: And in this instance, there is a real problem that
Speaker 10: needs to be solved. Again, from our perspective, the best
Speaker 10: way to do it is diplomatically. We're engaged with Israel
Speaker 10: on that, We're engaged with others in the region on that,
Speaker 10: and we need to, I think find the opportunity now
Speaker 10: to stop any escalation, prevent a full scale war, get
Speaker 10: people back to their homes.
Speaker 3: So that's what he has to say.
Speaker 2: And yet just this morning, after the US and France
Speaker 2: released some sort of tea spire proposal they tried to
Speaker 2: intimate it be if was on board, the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: at Israel's office in the middle of the night puts
Speaker 2: out this statement, the report about a ceasefire is incorrect.
Speaker 2: This is an American French proposal that the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: has not even responded to. The report about the purported
Speaker 2: directive to ease up on the fighting in the North
Speaker 2: is the opposite of truth. Think about that. So, not
Speaker 2: only so our Secretary of State Goo is on television
Speaker 2: We're about to get to this. Our president also went
Speaker 2: on television basically touting the ceasefire proposal and almost implying
Speaker 2: that they had agreed to it. And then the Israeli
Speaker 2: has come out and they're like, no, we're not an
Speaker 2: agree And by the way, not only do we not agree,
Speaker 2: we're actually not agreeing at all to any lack of
Speaker 2: escalation in fighting.
Speaker 3: So our troops are already on the way.
Speaker 2: We've got forty thousand at a minimum, there's probably gonna
Speaker 2: be fifty sixty thousand that are going to be somewhere
Speaker 2: in the region, and things are just very very close
Speaker 2: to popping off full scale. And meanwhile, you know, Tony
Speaker 2: blinkoln is on television just talking about how great it
Speaker 2: is to supply his row weapons. The President's on TV
Speaker 2: downplaying this entire thing.
Speaker 3: It's crazy. The whole situation is nuts. Yeah, it truly is.
Speaker 1: Forget my language. I mean, BB has turned Biden and
Speaker 1: Blincoln at all into his little bitches like that. From
Speaker 1: the beginning of this war, Biden has said, Blincoln has said,
Speaker 1: all of them have said, the top priority is to
Speaker 1: keep it to s from escalating into a regional war.
Speaker 1: By the way, we cross that bridge a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But now we're talking about massive bombing campaign in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: Lebanese civilians being guilt, threats of turning Lebanon into Gaza,
Speaker 1: which means utter and complete annihilation, and now a ground invasion,
Speaker 1: no end in sight. And the best they can do
Speaker 1: is go on television and say, well, they have the
Speaker 1: right to defend themselves. But I mean, I guess I
Speaker 1: kind of wish they would do it diplomatically, but like,
Speaker 1: we'll support them no matter what. It's like, what do
Speaker 1: you think you're going to get? By the way, these
Speaker 1: guys want Baby in particular, want Trump to be president.
Speaker 1: They would love nothing more for a big, messy Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern disaster in September and October to hand Trump the
Speaker 1: White House again. I just I mean, it's so absurd,
Speaker 1: it's so stupid, so morally depraved. I have no words
Speaker 1: for it whatsoever. And yet here we are. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened with the ceasefire proposal. If the
Speaker 1: US really genuinely thought Bibe was on board with it
Speaker 1: and then his ministers freaked out and he backed off
Speaker 1: of it, I don't know. But the truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is because the far right ministers in his government
Speaker 1: are willing to wield what power they have and threaten
Speaker 1: to collapse the government and for BB to pay a
Speaker 1: political cost. They have much more power in the situation
Speaker 1: than the superpower that of which Israel is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the client state that is arming and funding all
Speaker 1: of this, because they're not willing to use an iota
Speaker 1: of pressure. And I don't want to lose sight either
Speaker 1: of the fact that the willingness to continually ship arms
Speaker 1: with absolutely no conditions on Israel is a dramatically unpopular position.
Speaker 1: Newpole only twenty three percent of Americans. This was written
Speaker 1: up at Responsible Statecraft. By the way, only twenty three
Speaker 1: percent of Americans want the US to send uncondition aid
Speaker 1: to Israel, including a majority of Republicans, are opposed to
Speaker 1: sending unconditioned aid to Israel. And yet this is treated
Speaker 1: like you can't even float it, like it's impossible to
Speaker 1: even put on the table, And so the results are
Speaker 1: entirely disgraceful and entirely predictable, going back to like the
Speaker 1: utter humiliation here. Yet Biden on the View yesterday talking
Speaker 1: up this theoretical ceasefire that BB's already come out and
Speaker 1: shot down. Let's go ahead and take a listen to
Speaker 1: what he had to say on.
Speaker 11: All out war is possible. But I think there's also
Speaker 11: the opportunity we're still in play to have a settlement
Speaker 11: that could fundamentally change the whole region. And look, one
Speaker 11: of the things that I found is there's the Arab
Speaker 11: world very much wants to have a settlement because they
Speaker 11: know what it does for them. They're willing to make
Speaker 11: arrangements with Israel and alliances as if Isel changes some policies.
Speaker 11: And I've known bbing it now for a long long
Speaker 11: time and I'm a very strong support of Israel, and
Speaker 11: make no bones about it. I said years ago I
Speaker 11: was a Zionist. All the Zionist means is that there
Speaker 11: needs to be in Israel, and they have a possibility,
Speaker 11: I don't want to exaggerate it, but a possibility if
Speaker 11: we can deal with a ceasefire in Lebanon, that it
Speaker 11: can move into dealing with the West Bank. But we'll
Speaker 11: also have gossip to deal with. Yeah, and so, but
Speaker 11: it's possible, and I'm using every bit of energy I
Speaker 11: have with my team, and you know, from the Defense Department,
Speaker 11: you know it well.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we already know the answer to that
Speaker 1: one that didn't work out. I mean, the idea he
Speaker 1: still thinks that there's some broader solution here within the
Speaker 1: absence of him forcing it to happen and using pressure
Speaker 1: is just probably. You can't even believe that he believes
Speaker 1: it at this point, and so no, I can't actually
Speaker 1: really you think he's that foolish, rain ish shot.
Speaker 3: He lives in a fantasy world. Also, we're the laughing stock.
Speaker 2: I'm watching this British show right now called Industry, and
Speaker 2: they have this scene of the American President of the
Speaker 2: Treasury secretary being like, and we have a president who
Speaker 2: still thinks it war with Japan, and there the world
Speaker 2: is laughing at us, laughing. Bbe is laughing. Look at
Speaker 2: this meanwhile, you know's and you caught this. I I
Speaker 2: don't even know how.
Speaker 3: I missed it. You see that little Ukraine pin there.
Speaker 2: Our president is wearing the flag of a foreign nation
Speaker 2: on his lapel. Okay, you know, these are the types
Speaker 2: of things in the Obama era we actually used to
Speaker 2: care about. But the whole thing is just so insane
Speaker 2: because it's a client state, like you said.
Speaker 3: Where the superpower.
Speaker 2: Our Secretary of State, which used to mean something, goes
Speaker 2: on television and it's just humiliate. Our president goes on
Speaker 2: television whose brain is shot.
Speaker 3: And he's like, well, it's super possible to prevent an
Speaker 3: all at war.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, like, look at the actual
Speaker 2: things that are happening on the ground. Tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of American troops already there and or on the way
Speaker 2: to the region with one hundred percent commitment defending them
Speaker 2: against whatever situation that they get into.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's only one pact for all of America
Speaker 3: that that applies to. That's NATO.
Speaker 2: We don't even have a security guarantee with Israel in
Speaker 2: that regard, why.
Speaker 3: Do we do this. There's no reason for us to
Speaker 3: get into this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ryan and Emily covered yesterday which should be also
Speaker 1: a massive scandal, which is that the State Department producer
Speaker 1: report saying, which is kind of obvious, but anyway, saying
Speaker 1: that hey, Israel is blocking our aid, like they are
Speaker 1: the reason why our aid isn't getting to the people
Speaker 1: we want it to get to. That is extremely consequential
Speaker 1: because if that finding is determined, then you are not
Speaker 1: allowed by US law, forget about international law. By our laws,
Speaker 1: you are then prohibited from shipping arms to a nation
Speaker 1: that is blocking your aid, which I mean seems kind
Speaker 1: of logical, right. Tony Blinkin came in and said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that. I don't buy it, and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to make my own determination, and then disregards
Speaker 1: that report and goes to Congress and says, no, we
Speaker 1: think they're doing their best effectively to enable you know,
Speaker 1: the continued shipment of arms. This is a violation of
Speaker 1: our loss. It is illegal that we are shipping these
Speaker 1: arms to Israel. Forget about morality. Forget about strategic interest,
Speaker 1: forget about all of that. They are violating our own
Speaker 1: laws blatantly. In any sort of a sane society, this
Speaker 1: would be a massive explosive scandal. And instead, because the
Speaker 1: mainstream coverage and the corporate process is so you know,
Speaker 1: ideologically aligned, here, you'll barely hear anything about I believe
Speaker 1: is pro publica that broke the news on this, And
Speaker 1: so you know, here we are and Gaza is already annihilated,
Speaker 1: the West Bank is on its way to bet Gaza,
Speaker 1: and Lebanon's now on its way to be Gaza. And
Speaker 1: the best that our president can go out and do
Speaker 1: is like meekly float a ceasefire proposal on the view
Speaker 1: that immediately gets shot down. Brock Revied reported on this
Speaker 1: theoretical ceasefire deal could put this up on the screen,
Speaker 1: even though it's sort of pointless at this point. The
Speaker 1: idea was for some quote unquote pause, I guess, a
Speaker 1: humanitarian pause in the fighting, and lemanon resumption of negotiations
Speaker 1: in a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal. It has been
Speaker 1: apparent since October eighth that Biebe has no interest in
Speaker 1: a long term ceasefire deal that he would have to
Speaker 1: be dragged to it through the force of US pressure,
Speaker 1: and never along the way has the US decided, Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should switch strategies here. Maybe if we want
Speaker 1: a different outcome, we should try a different approach. Lastly,
Speaker 1: just in terms of some of the broader context of
Speaker 1: what this is going to mean, let's put this up
Speaker 1: from Times of Israel, which more of a right leaning
Speaker 1: English language publication in Israel. The headline here is Israel's
Speaker 1: pounding haswla but in war, the Iran backed force will
Speaker 1: be a lethal foe. You know, they're still outmashed. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're arming Israel, so superpowers arms to Israel. They've got
Speaker 1: a lot going for them, but they have quite a
Speaker 1: bit of capability, and they also have the inherent advantage
Speaker 1: of being the defending parties, so you know, it allows
Speaker 1: them strategic advantage. Just from the jump some of the
Speaker 1: reporting here, Heswela now has forty to eighty thousand short
Speaker 1: range unguided rockets, some sixty to eighty thousand long range
Speaker 1: unguided rockets that can reach one hundred kilometers. Ballistic missile
Speaker 1: Arsenal is smaller but can reach much further into Israel.
Speaker 1: We saw a missile that was shot down headed towards
Speaker 1: the God headquarters in Tel Aviv. In an all out war,
Speaker 1: They say Hesbla could use its firepower number of ways
Speaker 1: they could use unguided rockets against population centers to rode
Speaker 1: the public's will and trust in the government and to
Speaker 1: disrupt the functioning of the country. They also talk and
Speaker 1: this was interesting Sager about the way that how important
Speaker 1: drones are, but not the really big sophisticated drones. It's
Speaker 1: the fact that they have all of these smaller drones
Speaker 1: that they can use to potentially like swarm and overwhelm
Speaker 1: Iron Dome, and that they've been testing out some of this,
Speaker 1: you know, since two thousand and six. They haven't been
Speaker 1: just rusting on their laurels. They've been trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, how they could be more effective. So, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a much vastly more sophisticated adversary than Hamas
Speaker 1: in Gaza. You know, they have real weaponry from Iran
Speaker 1: and have built up their capabilities. Yes, they suffered a
Speaker 1: blow in those you know, pager in walkie talkie attacks
Speaker 1: which not only took out a number of their people
Speaker 1: but also has I'm sure made communication very difficult. But
Speaker 1: this is a much different adversary than what Israel has face.
Speaker 2: Look I keep saying this, you know, the drone point
Speaker 2: is very important. Russia is getting drones from where Iran
Speaker 2: has Bola is sponsored by who. Iran also has Bulla
Speaker 2: fought what a decade in the Syrian Civil War. Syria
Speaker 2: was the real experimental ground for the beginnings of this
Speaker 2: small Chinese drone warfare. Isis has Bola. All of these
Speaker 2: are their organizations. You can go watch it if you want.
Speaker 2: It's all right there on telegram. But then in Ukraine
Speaker 2: it got gasoline was poured on the fire, the technology
Speaker 2: got back, and then the widespread application of these and
Speaker 2: the use of them by the armed forces and by
Speaker 2: the like at the industrial state level in terms of
Speaker 2: launching them towards Ukraine, it's been a real way that
Speaker 2: they've been able to penetrate air defense systems. This is
Speaker 2: a massive problem, not just ra Israel, for all of
Speaker 2: us actually, if you think about it, because we have
Speaker 2: these super sophisticated systems which are supposed to against ICBMs,
Speaker 2: but it turns out these tiny, little cheap drones are
Speaker 2: very easy way to defeat those systems, and we don't
Speaker 2: have a particularly good answer. This is exactly what they
Speaker 2: would have to face, a much more technologically advanced enemy,
Speaker 2: much more capable of fighting force has been battle tested,
Speaker 2: far more battle tested than the IDF has and the
Speaker 2: people in Israel who actually have to fight they know this.
Speaker 2: They have to call up already multiple reservists. It would
Speaker 2: devastate their economy even more than it already has.
Speaker 3: Don't forget.
Speaker 2: I mean, this war has been a disaster for them.
Speaker 2: It's cost them hundreds of billions of shekels and decimated
Speaker 2: their workforce. They still have that controversy where like half
Speaker 2: their population doesn't even have to fight, so this would
Speaker 2: be huge. I mean, they haven't lost all that many
Speaker 2: soldiers in Gaza relatively compared to what they would in
Speaker 2: a real Lebanon conflagration. So I'm worried about it, I
Speaker 2: really am. And already they shot down this ceaspar proposal,
Speaker 2: even though you have what the US, Japan, the UA,
Speaker 2: like all of these major powers that have signed on
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. They just don't care.
Speaker 1: They don't care, and why should they. Why should beb
Speaker 1: in particular, because you know, when he sees very clearly
Speaker 1: what his political imperative is. And so listen, it's one thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Israel just using their air force to go
Speaker 1: in and balm, that's you know, warfare on easy mode.
Speaker 1: But if there's an actual ground invasion, they're going to
Speaker 1: suffer losses of you know, the sort that they have
Speaker 1: not yet had to suffer in the context of this war.
Speaker 1: And it's just you know, then you're inviting. Okay, is
Speaker 1: Iran getting pulled directly into this? How are we impacted,
Speaker 1: how our troops in the region impacted? How much more
Speaker 1: directly do we get pulled in? And then the you know,
Speaker 1: the level of suffering is just unending, and as I
Speaker 1: keep saying, no end inside. So that's what we're looking
Speaker 1: at today. So apologies, guys, we talk too much. We
Speaker 1: got two into the other stories. So we're going to
Speaker 1: do the Senate breakdown of where things stand next week
Speaker 1: in the show, but we wanted to make sure to
Speaker 1: get this rare good news into the show. We can
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Overdose deaths. After a
Speaker 1: rapid escalation and a terrifying trend, we finally see a
Speaker 1: downward decline and it's quite significant so far this year,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's been a roughly ten point six
Speaker 1: percent drop in overdose deaths, and actually some researchers think
Speaker 1: that when the data is completely in that it's going
Speaker 1: to show an even larger decline than that ten percent.
Speaker 1: One researcher thinks they may see twenty percent. In some areas,
Speaker 1: they're seeing as much as thirty percent. In fact, specifically
Speaker 1: in the state of Ohio, which is a state that
Speaker 1: has been heavy hit by hard hit by opioid deaths,
Speaker 1: overdose deaths are down thirty one percent. Missouri seeing a
Speaker 1: similar trend. They've seen overdose deaths in the beginning part
Speaker 1: of this year falling roughly thirty four percent. That builds
Speaker 1: on some progress that was made last year as well.
Speaker 1: And Saga, there's a lot of nobody really knows why. Right,
Speaker 1: There's a basket of potential plausible causes. One of them
Speaker 1: is just COVID is behind us. The pandemic was part
Speaker 1: of but you have to look. You know, the deaths
Speaker 1: were skyro before COVID as well, so that can be
Speaker 1: the entire explanation. You had the Biden administration making a
Speaker 1: lot of moves to make the overdose reverse drugs Narcan
Speaker 1: is the sort of most common brand name. The lock
Speaker 1: Zone is the name, I believe of the actual drug itself,
Speaker 1: and suboxone, which is meant to reduce opioid cravings. They've
Speaker 1: done a lot to make that more widely available and
Speaker 1: to make Narcan in particular available over the counter, and
Speaker 1: also pressured a lot of businesses and whatever to have
Speaker 1: it on hand, et cetera. I think that's certainly a
Speaker 1: part of what's going on here. There's also a study
Speaker 1: that came out this morning that said it looks like
Speaker 1: ozeenpic may lead to reduction in opioid overdoses, so that's
Speaker 1: interesting something to look into as well. And then there's
Speaker 1: also been a difference in the mixing of street drugs.
Speaker 1: Sentanel is now being cut frequently with a different drug
Speaker 1: that doesn't lead to those cravings and that sense of
Speaker 1: withdrawal kicking in quite as quickly. So part of it
Speaker 1: may be people are going longer between their dosages, leading
Speaker 1: to fewer overdose deaths. But you know whatever, the pieces
Speaker 1: are certainly good to see a little bit of good
Speaker 1: news on this front, because the numbers have been so
Speaker 1: devastating and so catastrophic.
Speaker 2: It was a number one cause of death I believe,
Speaker 2: for even surpassing car accidents for younger people in America.
Speaker 3: So it was a total disaster. I'm of a couple
Speaker 3: of minds.
Speaker 2: I'm very happy that people are not dropping dead, but unfortunately,
Speaker 2: all the data says that most of these people are
Speaker 2: still using drugs. And if you're using fentanyl, opioids or whatever, yes,
Speaker 2: it's great that you're not, you know, dropping dead, but
Speaker 2: you're going to die very very soon. I mean, like
Speaker 2: the data is clear about infection, about HIV, about hepatitis,
Speaker 2: about that life that they're living. It's almost certainly going
Speaker 2: to lead to crime that you're going It's almost an
Speaker 2: inevitability from what I've seen so far in terms of
Speaker 2: like long term usage, committing petty crime. You're going to
Speaker 2: end up yourself from present. You're going to ruin your
Speaker 2: life and ruin their lives of a lot of people
Speaker 2: around you. So I'm up two minds of it. I'm
Speaker 2: very very happy that people are not dying of fentanyl
Speaker 2: with drugs. It does appear that fentanyl reduction and supplies
Speaker 2: to you appears to have played some part in this.
Speaker 3: But the knock stone and.
Speaker 2: The wide availability and all this, but America is still sick.
Speaker 2: You know, the number of drug users has not gone down,
Speaker 2: if anything, actually probably gone up. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the fentanyl usage and all that, it's almost even
Speaker 2: sick because now people are not dying. There almost seem
Speaker 2: to be like managing it, right. But that's all I'm
Speaker 2: saying is there's no managing just not dying. Like there's
Speaker 2: a whole realm of misery and all that. Go to
Speaker 2: the downtown of any major city and you'll see it
Speaker 2: for yourself. People really bent over, you know, doing the
Speaker 2: fentanyl lean It's everywhere, and it still makes me really sad.
Speaker 1: Of course, the problem is not solved. No one's saying that,
Speaker 1: But I mean the idea of harm reduction, which I
Speaker 1: certainly support and which certainly played you know, at least
Speaker 1: some role in the reduction and depth is that you
Speaker 1: just you live to fight another day. You live to
Speaker 1: have that opportunity to get into recovery and to get
Speaker 1: your life together and to get clean and sober. You
Speaker 1: just you know you're able to continue that fight. And
Speaker 1: you know the fact that that play to key part
Speaker 1: in this I think is really important. But it is
Speaker 1: of course not the end of the story. I mean,
Speaker 1: still recovery programs are dramatically you know, underfunded, there are
Speaker 1: not enough beds available, and you know, you still have
Speaker 1: the underlying whatever, the underlying problems of despair and inequality
Speaker 1: and housing on affordability and homelessness, like those things have
Speaker 1: not gone away. So obviously this is not to clear
Speaker 1: mission accomplished. But when you see a significant drop like this,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to stop and take a look
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, well what worked here, what's repeatable? You know,
Speaker 1: what can we say about how we're able to accomplish
Speaker 1: this reversal of a trend that until just two years
Speaker 1: ago seemed like it was just on a continual literal
Speaker 1: death march forward. So that's why I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that we talk about it, because even if you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: like I said, no one's declaring mission accomplished. But when
Speaker 1: you see a thirty percent drop in certain states in Ohio,
Speaker 1: Missouri and other places, twenty percent drop, ten percent drop,
Speaker 1: and potentially more overall, that's something significant that is happening,
Speaker 1: and that is a lot of lives saved by some
Speaker 1: confluence of factors here. And I think the availability of
Speaker 1: nilock zone being one of the factors that's contributed.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, one theory I s offloaded is that harm reduction
Speaker 2: may not have had to do all that much with it,
Speaker 2: is that the drug cartels have just remixed because they're
Speaker 2: like fentanyls, bringing too much heat to the drug industry.
Speaker 2: That was a theory I sto offloaded by some law
Speaker 2: enforcement I know, it actually seems very plausible.
Speaker 1: Other very grim theory is just that so many people
Speaker 1: already died. That like a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: were the most likely to be vulnerable have already died,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly dark. But so there'll have to be
Speaker 1: a lot of research about what contributes to this declinent.
Speaker 1: And you know, just like with the the rise and
Speaker 1: fall of violent crime, which we're now on another major
Speaker 1: down swing in terms of violent crime. Sometimes these like
Speaker 1: the causes are debated for decades. There still isn't a
Speaker 1: consensus about why crime declined so suddenly in the nineties.
Speaker 1: There's a variety of contested theories, but there still isn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, something rock solid that people can can point to.
Speaker 1: Some people point to the removal of lead, and it.
Speaker 3: Might and I actually think there's a huge I actually
Speaker 3: think that.
Speaker 1: Is too and the reduction and violent crime right now,
Speaker 1: again it may just be like, oh, we're not in
Speaker 1: the pandemic anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, people are contesting those numbers.
Speaker 2: From what I understand that the violent crime because this
Speaker 2: is a big, big I've been thinking about doing monologue
Speaker 2: on this, just because I love crimes. Is that allegedly
Speaker 2: FBI reports that there's been a three percent drop in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three from the year before in terms of
Speaker 2: violent crime. So that is the official FBI number, but
Speaker 2: there apparently has been a reduction in the number of
Speaker 2: cities that report crime to the FBI.
Speaker 3: So the FBI crime stats themselves can be very easily juiced.
Speaker 2: If people remember, I've done multiple milogues about mass shootings.
Speaker 2: If you classify a mass shooting as three people as
Speaker 2: opposed to four, it all changes And then if you're like,
Speaker 2: is it really a mass anyway? All I'm saying is
Speaker 2: be careful in terms of siding that I do think
Speaker 2: crime has gone down relative to where it was, but
Speaker 2: you know, some of the drops that people are talking about,
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure.
Speaker 3: But point is only just that I don't know. I
Speaker 3: have a hard time.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I'm worried about it because if you
Speaker 2: still have hundreds of thousands of people who are addicted
Speaker 2: to street drugs, like just because you're not dropping dead today,
Speaker 2: like your your life is over to a certain extent
Speaker 2: if you keep using for the next four to five years,
Speaker 2: just from what we see with the infection data and
Speaker 2: all of the other like horrible diseases that you're likely
Speaker 2: to contract with living this life. So this is my
Speaker 2: general problem with harm reduction is that most people who
Speaker 2: are for it do not support the regime that they have.
Speaker 1: I don't think that, no, I mean most people are
Speaker 1: for harm reduction are also for a broader expance, but they're.
Speaker 3: Not for punished like I said, in.
Speaker 1: Portugal are treating it as a health crist.
Speaker 3: But that's my point.
Speaker 2: In Portugal, if you shoot heroin up on a bench,
Speaker 2: you're going to jail or rehab. You don't have a choice,
Speaker 2: like you should be locked up if you're using street
Speaker 2: drugs on the street. Most people are just not for that.
Speaker 2: Who are quote unquote for harm reduction, like you need
Speaker 2: a significant punitive regime people who are addicted.
Speaker 1: We've had a significant imputative virgin yeah, but that has
Speaker 1: not been effective.
Speaker 2: But I mean, you have to have some if you
Speaker 2: want to have a legalization regime, you can't have it
Speaker 2: where it is right now, where people who are just
Speaker 2: on the street using drugs, even if you give them
Speaker 2: a hotel room, they're still going to use drugs in
Speaker 2: the hotel room, and they're going to ruin their life,
Speaker 2: they're gonna burn through all of their savings. So I mean,
Speaker 2: the truth is that in Europe they have a very
Speaker 2: paternalistic attitude towards this, where they're like, yeah, it's fine,
Speaker 2: you can use, but if you're using in public and
Speaker 2: you're causing disorder, it's.
Speaker 3: Over for you. You're going to rehab or you're going
Speaker 3: to jail. We don't have that.
Speaker 2: We have the streets of San Francisco, but that's also
Speaker 2: Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It's also part of harm reduction because you're right, if
Speaker 1: you're just buying street drugs, you're at greater risk because
Speaker 1: unless you're testing, and that's actually another thing that they
Speaker 1: made more available testing strips. But unless you're testing to
Speaker 1: know what's exactly in those drugs, you are putting yourself
Speaker 1: at greater risk. But you know, as I said, before
Speaker 1: step one is just keeping people alive. But it's only
Speaker 1: step one, that's just the beginning of the of the journey.
Speaker 1: But to see this significant downward decline as something definitely
Speaker 1: too I'm encouraged by.
Speaker 2: I'm happy about it, but you know, at the same time,
Speaker 2: like I don't want to just be like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: mission accomplished, should give out free needles. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: you people need to go to rehab, Like we got
Speaker 2: to clean up our streets and make sure that this
Speaker 2: is not acceptable. And a lot of the drug addicts
Speaker 2: are quoted in that NPR story are like, yeah, we
Speaker 2: used together. Now I'm like, this is horrible, Like we're
Speaker 2: creating like fentanyl circles so that people can just.
Speaker 3: Well the reasons together.
Speaker 1: The reason they say that is so that if somebody
Speaker 1: overdoses right when dying, someone kind of and minister in narcan.
Speaker 2: Right, but they're still using that fentanyl and street drafts
Speaker 2: and living this horrible lifestyle like that is something that
Speaker 2: needs to end. And so that's just when I think
Speaker 2: that a lot of people think that this is the
Speaker 2: correct end state where it's like, oh, just give everybody narcan,
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, we actually need to get people
Speaker 2: not addicted to opioids. Ope, he's got an eighty eighty
Speaker 2: something percent recidivism rate right now. Like the level of
Speaker 2: punitive measure that needs to be put into place actually
Speaker 2: force people for withdrawal and even ninety days is not
Speaker 2: even close. So anyways, people are getting an insight into
Speaker 2: the big debates around this.
Speaker 1: But do you support the wider availability of narcan?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, of course, but it has to be paired with again,
Speaker 2: just giving narcan to a sixteen year old McDonald's employee
Speaker 2: and being like, hey, if somebody overdoses in the bathroom,
Speaker 2: just hit him with some narkhan and then everyone county
Speaker 2: police is like, oh, we got another one. And then
Speaker 2: even if you do go to jail for petty crime,
Speaker 2: you get released and you're back on drugs and very
Speaker 2: likely to part of the stork.
Speaker 1: It's not just narcan, it's also the increase availability of suboxone,
Speaker 1: which reduces cravings for oloids. You support that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So anything method ons to box zone and the
Speaker 2: lack zone, all of those other things. Great management programs
Speaker 2: have mixed results in terms of how they actually lead to,
Speaker 2: like long term lack of ricidism, My point is that
Speaker 2: there needs to still be much more punitive measures on
Speaker 2: forcing people to go to very extensive rehabilitation, not of
Speaker 2: their choice. Ninety days is simply not enough. There's not
Speaker 2: enough state resources behind this. And then the other flip
Speaker 2: side of that is that people just let these people
Speaker 2: live in squalor in these like crime written you know,
Speaker 2: like what skid row in Los Angeles, and just because
Speaker 2: they're not dying in skid row does not mean that
Speaker 2: that's still not like an imminent crisis. That's the point
Speaker 2: that I'm just trying to make, is that there still
Speaker 2: needs to be a significant change in the justice system
Speaker 2: to actually force a lot of these people to go
Speaker 2: through the choice. A.
Speaker 1: Is that the is that a health system health crisis.
Speaker 3: No, it has to come through the justice system.
Speaker 2: Because if you just give people like, oh, you can
Speaker 2: go to re have if you want, a lot of
Speaker 2: these people like using drugs, let me the.
Speaker 1: Bad part again, drugs are still criminalized, so we have
Speaker 1: the system that you seem to want to have.
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Drugs are still criminalized and we don't have enough recab.
Speaker 2: They're criminalized or they de facto legal in the state
Speaker 2: of California, which they are, which is these people just living.
Speaker 3: Are we just taller and they don't get arrested?
Speaker 1: I mean, are well for one thing, Gavenusom is doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that you would want them
Speaker 1: to do, not yet. But we're also not just talking
Speaker 1: about California. In fact, California isn't one of the states
Speaker 1: that has the highest rate of overdose death. Those are
Speaker 1: primarily red states. Is the Apalachian States. It's Tennessee, West Virginia,
Speaker 1: and Ohio. I believe that have the highest rates of
Speaker 1: opioid overdoses. I don't think anyone would accuse them of
Speaker 1: being like, you know, no coastal liberals with their drug policy.
Speaker 2: Well, in fact, they have a worse attitude, right like
Speaker 2: I just said about somebody like, oh, these idiots are
Speaker 2: doing it again, and they just let them live in
Speaker 2: basic squalor in these houses and shoot up and nobody
Speaker 2: really does.
Speaker 3: Anything about it.
Speaker 2: I think, Look, I'm not saying it's the only answer.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that you still have to have a lot
Speaker 2: more punitive measure, and that's simply just celebrating the fact
Speaker 2: that there's still hundreds of thousands of people addicted to
Speaker 2: street drugs is bad.
Speaker 1: It just seems like you're like not really encouraged at
Speaker 1: all by the fact that there's been something implemented that
Speaker 1: actually work to keep people alive, because I think it's
Speaker 1: what you want them to do.
Speaker 2: Because I think this is the end state that a
Speaker 2: lot of the pro drug people want. They want people
Speaker 2: to just not die of drugs, but they're fine if
Speaker 2: people are addicted to drugs. I don't think that's an
Speaker 2: acceptable that's outcome.
Speaker 1: I think what we've seen is that our regime of
Speaker 1: criminalization hasn't hasn't been effective. And you know, we've had
Speaker 1: this regime of the War on Drugs and the criminalization
Speaker 1: of drugs for you know, one hundred years. You know,
Speaker 1: that regime was in place as the spike was going on.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of places where drug use is very
Speaker 1: much punished and there is a punitive approach to it,
Speaker 1: and this is the first time we've seen something that
Speaker 1: has really worked. So to me, that's incouraged.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: But they legalized drugs in the state of Oregon and
Speaker 2: it was a complete disaster and they literally had to
Speaker 2: reverse it because the population saw what the results of
Speaker 2: that were. So I'm just saying, you know, it's not
Speaker 2: all rosy. On the other end of that too, I
Speaker 2: think the current drug regime.
Speaker 1: I'm just trending angry by the data.
Speaker 3: I'm not angry by the data, and so like I.
Speaker 1: Thought this would be something and be like, Wow, it's
Speaker 1: something encouraging that happened. What happened here?
Speaker 2: I think I watched with a great dismay at the
Speaker 2: celebration of just the fact that it's like, oh, it's great,
Speaker 2: this is it. We basically problem I.
Speaker 1: Just has any who has said that. I've literally not
Speaker 1: seen anyone be like this is great, problem solved. It's
Speaker 1: just like, Okay, we made one step forward, what worked?
Speaker 1: What can we build on? How can we continue this trend?
Speaker 1: I have maybe you can name some names, but I
Speaker 1: don't see anyone doing like a mission accomplished banner right now.
Speaker 2: You're right, it's I guess it's more about the trend
Speaker 2: and the overall project of the so called harm reduction movement,
Speaker 2: which is just something I really don't agree with in
Speaker 2: terms of the philosophy of it just needs to be
Speaker 2: safe to be able to use drugs. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: using drugs is bad. Living this lifestyle is bad. There's
Speaker 2: safe heroin addict that lives out there. Like guess if
Speaker 2: you're getting clean heroin in Portugal, you're still ruining your life.
Speaker 3: But it's true.
Speaker 1: The bottle are staying alive, absolutely, of course. And you
Speaker 1: support harm reduction, you just want it to be compared
Speaker 1: with more criminalization.
Speaker 3: I mean you're I mean again, yes, where you're talking about.
Speaker 2: If you support the Portuguese model, you support a highly
Speaker 2: punitive system, which is one where drugs are legal. But
Speaker 2: if you are outwardly using them in public where they
Speaker 2: are right now, you have serious legal consequences. Right You're
Speaker 2: going to fit Well, I don't where's the serious legal consequences,
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Well, but in Portugal there's managed, state administered sites, yes,
Speaker 1: where you can go and basically get your dose. You
Speaker 1: support that?
Speaker 2: No, not really, especially right now with the current system.
Speaker 2: If we got to a place where we had the
Speaker 2: punitive measures in place, then yeah, I've said this before,
Speaker 2: if we were going to lag.
Speaker 3: Drugs, we'd have to actually do the Portuguese model.
Speaker 2: What I see right now is instead of preference for
Speaker 2: the so called like harm reduction, which is not paired
Speaker 2: at all with any of the punitive measures of the
Speaker 2: force rehabilitation that they have in the countries where they
Speaker 2: do have a much.
Speaker 3: More relaxed drug regime. Well, we can't have one of
Speaker 3: the other, right.
Speaker 1: With that, I actually but I actually think it's not
Speaker 1: the worst of all worlds because at least people are
Speaker 1: staying alive. So do I think it's you know, the
Speaker 1: end all be all? Are there more things I would
Speaker 1: like to see done, of course? But do I think
Speaker 1: it's a significant step forward that fewer people are dying?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And if harm reduction alone, and again I think it's
Speaker 1: too simplistic to even say that that was the only
Speaker 1: factory here, but I think it clearly was a factor
Speaker 1: in what's going on here. Do I consider that progress
Speaker 1: even just alone, even if you don't do the whole
Speaker 1: comprehensive Yeah, I can. I absolutely am very pleased to
Speaker 1: see this. And I don't see it as like a
Speaker 1: double edge sort or anything like that. I just think
Speaker 1: it's better that people are alive and have that chance
Speaker 1: for another week, another month, another year, another decade to
Speaker 1: be able to you know, get clean and get their
Speaker 1: life together, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I'm very glad that I'm glad that people
Speaker 2: are alive and they're not dying and it's not the
Speaker 2: number one cause of death. The dismay that I have
Speaker 2: is that this would norm what is happening right now.
Speaker 2: For example, cocaine. Cocaine used is actually quite down right now,
Speaker 2: and it's because people are afraid of fentanyl. So are
Speaker 2: they going to read this study and they're like, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's cool, we can just start using cocaine again. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: cocaine is bad. Actually, Like I didn't think you'd have
Speaker 2: to say that, and so it's.
Speaker 1: Not always bad.
Speaker 3: Well no, I think, Okay, you know what, go out.
Speaker 2: There, try it for yourself. Ten years, let's check in
Speaker 2: and let's see what he's doing better in life.
Speaker 1: Look, well, alcohol is incredibly degus drug that I'm completely
Speaker 1: societally sanctioned. So some of the judgment that we put
Speaker 1: on different drugs is more about like our conception in
Speaker 1: society than the reality of the cocaine is worse, dangerous
Speaker 1: and real for them. But in any case, harm reduction
Speaker 1: was effective here. I'm glad they're doing it. I hope
Speaker 1: it continues, and it's one step but not the whole program.
Speaker 3: Oh well, believe it there. Okay, let's get to Ditty.
Speaker 1: So, guys, of course we've been covering the downfall of
Speaker 1: Sean Dittycombs, including the new indictment that we've learned a
Speaker 1: lot of details about. But we're lucky to be joined
Speaker 1: this morning by a longtime friend of mine and fantastic journalist, Torre,
Speaker 1: who has a new substack. Tell people where to find
Speaker 1: your new work.
Speaker 8: Tore Culture Fries is the name of the substack. It's
Speaker 8: Torre dot substack dot com. Doing a lot of reporting
Speaker 8: on the Ditty situation there amazing.
Speaker 1: So Tori has a new report up this morning that
Speaker 1: looks specifically at some exclusive details of how R and
Speaker 1: B singer Cassie was trapped in what you describe as
Speaker 1: a ten year nightmare. In the headline, you say how
Speaker 1: did he used her album to control her? And you
Speaker 1: were able to speak with some folks who were close
Speaker 1: to Cassie, So it talked us about some of these
Speaker 1: new details that have yet to be revealed.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I have. I had a long conversation with a
Speaker 8: longtime friend of Cassie's. She was working on an album
Speaker 8: for ten years. This is an incredibly long time to
Speaker 8: work on an album. She thought she was really working
Speaker 8: on an album. She had songwriters, she had hot producers,
Speaker 8: she had big artists coming in, rappers and singers to
Speaker 8: collab with her. They made a lot of songs, but
Speaker 8: there was never a release date, there was never a title.
Speaker 8: It was never intended to come out. It was a
Speaker 8: giant pacifier to keep her happy in between the times
Speaker 8: when Ditty was ready to do freak offs, and it
Speaker 8: became this carrot of if you want to continue doing
Speaker 8: the album which you love, then you got to do
Speaker 8: the freakofs It has to be both. It can't be
Speaker 8: one or the other. And this is a way that
Speaker 8: he controlled a lot of people. If you want to
Speaker 8: stay around me, you got to participate in this over here,
Speaker 8: whatever it is that I want you to do, And
Speaker 8: that way you get to continue pursuing your professional dream.
Speaker 8: So it's really tragic. The best years of her creative
Speaker 8: life were spent thinking she was working on her sophomore
Speaker 8: album and about to blow up great label. Ditty's behind me,
Speaker 8: We're going to be huge. But it was all a sham.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so just so people recall, I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, Cassie had some certified bangers, some great hits,
Speaker 1: super talented, beautiful, I mean, she had everything that it took.
Speaker 1: And then she also is in part the person who
Speaker 1: helps to kick off this whole series of events that
Speaker 1: leads to the federal charges against Ditty, because they had
Speaker 1: that look back law in New York that allowed her
Speaker 1: to file civil charges against him. He settles quickly, but
Speaker 1: not before a lot of the details emerge of her
Speaker 1: allegations of years and years of torture and abuse by Ditty.
Speaker 1: She also is the woman who appears in that horrifying
Speaker 1: hotel security camera footage where he is beating her and
Speaker 1: dragging her back to the hotel room. So Cassie is
Speaker 1: really central to this, and I think what's part of
Speaker 1: what's been important about your reporting and your reporting here
Speaker 1: in particular, is that it centers the survivors here as
Speaker 1: well and really helps to share the level of abuse
Speaker 1: and try that they went through over years. Oh and
Speaker 1: she also is the one who you know, possibly did
Speaker 1: he may have blown up her boyfriend Kid Cutty's car
Speaker 1: in the driveway too, because we have the arson charges
Speaker 1: in this federal indictment that haven't been detailed yet.
Speaker 8: You know, part of the thing is that people are saying,
Speaker 8: how did this happen? How did Cassie rise up to
Speaker 8: stand up to him when so many other people wanted
Speaker 8: to and didn't feel comfortable. Because Ditty was so powerful,
Speaker 8: she's able to escape from him when kim Porter suddenly
Speaker 8: passes away. He's so bereft and upset about that that
Speaker 8: he's not really paying attention to anything, and so she's
Speaker 8: able to escape. Within a few months of basically running
Speaker 8: away from him, she's pregnant, she's in a committed relationship.
Speaker 8: She ends up marrying this man. At the end of
Speaker 8: the year, she has his baby, and by then she's
Speaker 8: in a whole thing. She has a whole new life,
Speaker 8: and she is too far gone for Diddy to be
Speaker 8: able to get her back. And in that moment, going
Speaker 8: through rehab, going through therapy, having her parents, her friends,
Speaker 8: a husband who's supportive, children, she changes and she grows,
Speaker 8: and she's saying to herself, I want to be the
Speaker 8: stand up person that I want my kids to be.
Speaker 8: I want to be a good example for them, and
Speaker 8: that leads her to say, I have to stand up
Speaker 8: for the girl I was, because the girl I was
Speaker 8: who he controlled and beat up I'm not that person anymore,
Speaker 8: and I need to stand up for her. And at
Speaker 8: that point she says, I'm going to stand up to him,
Speaker 8: and so many people were afraid to do that, and
Speaker 8: she breaks that glass ceiling and pushes in there. She
Speaker 8: says to him, look, I wrote a book for thirty
Speaker 8: million dollars. You can have the book. You'll have my silence.
Speaker 8: Nobody will have to know what happened. But this person, Puffy,
Speaker 8: is surrounded by enablers, and nobody around him who might
Speaker 8: Anybody around who might say no is pushed off. And
Speaker 8: so he's surrounded by enablers. An this is an odd deal.
Speaker 8: Thirty million is nothing to him. He's a billionaire. At
Speaker 8: this point, he says no, and then she goes far
Speaker 8: with the lawsuit. Then everybody hears what happens. Then the
Speaker 8: federal government's like wait, wait, wait, wait, what happened? And
Speaker 8: then all this and all this starts. But he could
Speaker 8: have stopped this, but he never thought that she was
Speaker 8: strong enough to actually stand up to him, because I.
Speaker 2: Never well, yeah, it's decades of the abuse that he had. Tori,
Speaker 2: you got quite a bit of attention. You put out
Speaker 2: a TikTok that detailed the ditty story and how it
Speaker 2: was actually personal to you. Why don't we take a
Speaker 2: listen to some of that. That's going to be f
Speaker 2: two guys, and we're going to get your reaction.
Speaker 8: The Diddy situation is personal for me. I take no
Speaker 8: joy in the man's downfall. I just want to see justice.
Speaker 8: But I too felt his wrath. I knew this man
Speaker 8: for decades. I interviewed him many times. I went to
Speaker 8: some of his PG rated parties. We had a professional
Speaker 8: relationship until something happened.
Speaker 3: So tell us a little bit about that. Can you
Speaker 3: expand on what happened?
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I had a family member who was
Speaker 8: trying to break into the entertainment business. I felt like
Speaker 8: this is a situation where I should use my connections.
Speaker 8: I called Puff. I had never asked him for a favor.
Speaker 8: We didn't have like a personal relationship. We didn't hang out,
Speaker 8: but we had a definite, years long professional relationship. Will
Speaker 8: you please, you know, hire my family member to be
Speaker 8: an intern in your situation, you know, because I thought
Speaker 8: that would be good for him break into the music business.
Speaker 8: For about three months, it was very excited.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: They had a great time traveling around go to the
Speaker 8: mansions whatever. And then the whole internship suddenly stopped, and
Speaker 8: I'm calling and saying, Hey, what's going on? How come
Speaker 8: you're not going to the internship, You're not going to work?
Speaker 8: And it was silenced for years. I did not find
Speaker 8: out until years later that Puffy had said to him,
Speaker 8: you know, either you come home with me tonight or
Speaker 8: the internship is over. And at that point I was
Speaker 8: blown away that that had happened, that that had been said.
Speaker 8: You know, my family member said no, which ended the internship,
Speaker 8: and you know, I was shocked. I was hurt. I
Speaker 8: was blown away that that that Puffy would be would
Speaker 8: do that.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that's emerged now is if this
Speaker 1: was just like an open secret in the industry, I mean,
Speaker 1: the number of people who were likely involved, the number
Speaker 1: of other individuals who had stories similar to the one
Speaker 1: that you were privy to, or worse. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you have been around this scene, You've interviewed a lot
Speaker 1: of the major players. Was that your sense was that
Speaker 1: this was sort of an open secret? Had you heard
Speaker 1: other rumors within the industry?
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 8: To a certain extent, Surely, if I thought that I
Speaker 8: was putting my beloved family member who I'm very close
Speaker 8: to and loved immensely. If I thought I was putting
Speaker 8: them in any sort of danger of the sort we
Speaker 8: now know is possible, I wouldn't have done this at all. Right,
Speaker 8: So I could not have known the extent of what
Speaker 8: we're talking about at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did I hear route?
Speaker 8: I mean, I don't know. I don't really remember feeling like,
Speaker 8: oh my god. I know everybody is saying, oh my god,
Speaker 8: I heard back when I was in middle school, this
Speaker 8: is going on. I really don't know how prevalent this
Speaker 8: was as far as the rumors getting around. We knew
Speaker 8: about his violence. We knew, you know, he threatened me,
Speaker 8: He threatened Danielle Smith at Vibe, he threatened he beat
Speaker 8: up Steve Stout, you know, I mean, like we knew
Speaker 8: that he had this massive temper.
Speaker 3: He threatened me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, yeah, he There was a record review
Speaker 8: that I wrote where I criticized one of the lines
Speaker 8: that he said, and he called me and he was
Speaker 8: very nice and saying, can you please remove that line
Speaker 8: because that is annoying and hurtful to me, And I'm like, no,
Speaker 8: I'm not going to remove that line, and then he
Speaker 8: starts screaming and yelling at me and like I'm going
Speaker 8: to ruin your career and all this stuff, and like
Speaker 8: I kind of stopped listening because it was a very loud,
Speaker 8: angry volume, like oh my god, like whatever. And then
Speaker 8: he sort of and I'm not really responding to that,
Speaker 8: and then he sort of comes down emotionally and he's like,
Speaker 8: so can we remove that line? And I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 8: we cannot just remove that line.
Speaker 3: And that ended that.
Speaker 8: But I thought that we had gotten back to a
Speaker 8: place of equanimity. Like he pushed me, challenged me, I
Speaker 8: stood my ground. And then and not long after that,
Speaker 8: I got invited to a white party in the Hamptons,
Speaker 8: which was this fabulous daytime affair, everyone wearing white. It
Speaker 8: was very cute, but.
Speaker 3: This is he ended up.
Speaker 8: He was sitting right next to me and dressing me
Speaker 8: down quite forcefully, and he was very upset with me,
Speaker 8: and you know, it was it was one of those
Speaker 8: things that I was like, wow, like he's got quite
Speaker 8: a temper.
Speaker 1: Oh so he invited you there basically to like humiliate
Speaker 1: you effectively, or to have a chance to yell at
Speaker 1: you in public.
Speaker 9: I don't.
Speaker 8: I don't know. I don't know if it was that.
Speaker 8: You know, this is a person who's very mercurial and changes.
Speaker 8: He could have screamed at me in a way that
Speaker 8: caused others to look. I don't think others who are
Speaker 8: at that party would would remember or were conscious of, Oh,
Speaker 8: Puff has given it to Torre. Yeah, he have said
Speaker 8: all right, forget it, let's move forward and embrace him
Speaker 8: and help make him think like he's still cool with us. Interesting,
Speaker 8: and then saw me and got mad and that, you know,
Speaker 8: I mean I saw multiple emotional reactions in the phone conversation.
Speaker 1: Right like, yeah.
Speaker 8: So I don't know that it was a setup. I mean,
Speaker 8: that would be a long way to go first set.
Speaker 8: I don't think it was that. I think that he
Speaker 8: just changes emotionally from moment to moment. There's so many
Speaker 8: moments when he does something he gets super triggered and
Speaker 8: his explodes and then next thing you know, he's on
Speaker 8: his knees begging someone to please forgive him for what
Speaker 8: he did. So there's rapid emotional changes coming from this
Speaker 8: person and Tori.
Speaker 1: There's obviously a lot of chatter about who could potentially
Speaker 1: be caught up in this next. Are there other big
Speaker 1: name celebrities who may also be implicated, who may also
Speaker 1: go down? Because, I mean, the federal government is alleging
Speaker 1: this is a racketeering scheme, like this was a criminal enterprise.
Speaker 1: Do you have any insight into who's getting nervous, who
Speaker 1: should be nervous, if anyone's nervous any of that.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's one name. I mean, you know, Cuba
Speaker 8: Gooding Junior did some things that should have him nervous.
Speaker 8: These are in a criminal complaint that's already a lawsuit
Speaker 8: that's already out there. But here's the thing. A lot
Speaker 8: of people seem to think that Puff will be able
Speaker 8: to snitch on others and thus reduce his time or
Speaker 8: get out of this entirely, and that completely misunderstands the
Speaker 8: situation that we are in and what it means to
Speaker 8: cooperate with the government. He would have to say, I
Speaker 8: can tell you about a massive criminal conspiracy, far bigger
Speaker 8: than the one that I am involved in, and one
Speaker 8: that you need me to help you. Like if he's
Speaker 8: a mid level mobster and the government is like, we
Speaker 8: don't know how to get the top guy, and he's like,
Speaker 8: I can explain to you how to get the top guy,
Speaker 8: or I can explain to you how to take down
Speaker 8: this other family that is something, but Puff cannot say, Hey, hey,
Speaker 8: you know what, this rapper, this basketball player, this governor
Speaker 8: whatever came to my party and he did X, Y
Speaker 8: and Z. Okay, that's a year off your sentence. No, no,
Speaker 8: no, no no. You are the regular leader of this. You
Speaker 8: are the facilitator, creator of the situation. There's no way
Speaker 8: that he's going to be able to talk his way
Speaker 8: out of this.
Speaker 1: Gotcha?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, go give Tori a followers subscribe on substat
Speaker 1: culture fries and also over on TikTok, where people have
Speaker 1: been very interested in what you have to say, as
Speaker 1: we are here as well, and very grateful for your time.
Speaker 1: Always great to see you, my friends.
Speaker 2: Banks Man, thank you our pleasure. Thank you guys so
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