Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning everybody, Happy Thursday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have
Speaker 1: grissal Indeed, we do big breaking news for you this morning.
Speaker 1: Facebook slash Meta has decided to let the big guy himself,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump back on the platform. Not a huge surprise
Speaker 1: at this point. I mean, the guy is running again.
Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of pressure for them to
Speaker 1: ultimately do this. But we'll dig into the decision because
Speaker 1: they've thrown into caveats there as well, trying to kind
Speaker 1: of have it both ways same time. Huge huge news
Speaker 1: with regard to Ukraine, we have decided to send them tanks.
Speaker 1: That is a line in the sand that we'd drawn
Speaker 1: previously and even as recently as five days ago. There
Speaker 1: are all kinds of news articles that were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that. Well now we are,
Speaker 1: so talk about what that means. We also have some
Speaker 1: new financial disclosures from George Santos that, if anything, just
Speaker 1: deepened the mystery of where his cash that he put
Speaker 1: into his campaign actually came from. We've got the Mississippi
Speaker 1: auditor some incredible video of him sounding off on that
Speaker 1: Brett Favre welfare scandal. Nancy Pelosi caught in a gigantic
Speaker 1: trade just before major antitrust action against Google and in
Speaker 1: a related anti trust no. We also have Jim Kramer
Speaker 1: melting down on CNBC about government action against some of
Speaker 1: these big companies. We have Ryan Cooper on the show
Speaker 1: today to dig into an idea that has just been floated,
Speaker 1: which is using a sovereign wealth fund in order to
Speaker 1: fund social security. So be interesting get his take on
Speaker 1: all of that. Yeah, but let's start with Facebook. This
Speaker 1: is obviously huge in the realm of tech and censorship,
Speaker 1: so let's go ahead and put this up there on
Speaker 1: the screen. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, always have
Speaker 1: to say that is ending its suspension of Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: accounts with new guardrails to deter quote repeat offensive written
Speaker 1: by Nick Clegg, the former British politician the president of
Speaker 1: Global Affairs over at Meta, He says, quote, we will
Speaker 1: be ending the suspension of mister Trump's Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 1: accounts in the coming weeks. We have put in new
Speaker 1: guardrails to place to deter repeat offenses. The public should
Speaker 1: be able to hear what politicians are saying so they
Speaker 1: can make informed choices. Imagine what a controversial decision, So
Speaker 1: here's what they say. The public should be able to
Speaker 1: hear what the politicians are saying, the good, the bad,
Speaker 1: and the ugly, so they can make informed choices to
Speaker 1: the ballot box. I agree, but that does not mean
Speaker 1: there are no limits to what people can say on
Speaker 1: our platform when there's a clear risk of real world harm.
Speaker 1: A deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public
Speaker 1: disclosure we act now. Of course, that is an outrageous standard,
Speaker 1: one of which is deeply capricious, and of which is
Speaker 1: completely open to their own interpretation. Go through a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of fake legalies. And the reason I'm saying that
Speaker 1: is there's no law. All of this is contrived this
Speaker 1: blog post refers to its oversight board, to its internal processes. Listen,
Speaker 1: it's all fake. They claimed that, oh, well, after a
Speaker 1: rigorous standard put into place, we decided on January eighth
Speaker 1: to suspend Donald Trump's account on Facebook as if it
Speaker 1: was part of some long standing decision, and then finally
Speaker 1: enter that's outrageous. All of it was done in a
Speaker 1: completely supposedly uncoordinated act by Twitter, Facebook and many other
Speaker 1: big tech platforms with regards to Trump, and of kind
Speaker 1: of a post January sixth hysteria. But whenever they do
Speaker 1: restore the account, they say some things which we should
Speaker 1: hold them to account in the future. They say, quote,
Speaker 1: the normal state of affairs is that the public should
Speaker 1: be able to hear from a former president of the
Speaker 1: United States and a declared candidate for office again on
Speaker 1: our platform. Now that time period of suspension has elapsed,
Speaker 1: the question is not whether we choose to reinstate mister
Speaker 1: Trump's account, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that
Speaker 1: justify extending the suspension beyond the original two year period. Gristle.
Speaker 1: They say that they have now quote new guardrails in place,
Speaker 1: and that there will be a strike system, and that
Speaker 1: should he ever quote endanger the public again in the future,
Speaker 1: that they will take his account down. But look, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, this is all in Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's hand. He made the call to take it down,
Speaker 1: he made the call to put him back on. It's
Speaker 1: insane that this is even in the power of a
Speaker 1: single man. And I just hate all of the fake
Speaker 1: contrivance around who will now we have disci here's our protocols,
Speaker 1: as if they won't just completely dispatch with them or
Speaker 1: come up with some sort of tortured rationale for the
Speaker 1: next time they take action against this account. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean all of the legalies and the quote unquote guardrails
Speaker 1: that they put out here. It's just an attempt to
Speaker 1: quiet critics who want Trump to remain off of Facebook.
Speaker 1: They're trying to have it both ways, to try to
Speaker 1: you know, the other piece that we shouldn't ignore here
Speaker 1: is it's not just their assess men of like free
Speaker 1: speech and potential you know, acts of violence. They've also
Speaker 1: got a bottom line that they have to worry about.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump spends a lot of money on Facebook ads.
Speaker 1: So I heard Roconomy at this point, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a good one. It's not an accident that all
Speaker 1: of these social media platforms and Facebook in particular, because
Speaker 1: they probably got the most money from the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: Like the one year that they don't have them on
Speaker 1: is the year that it happens too. He's happens to
Speaker 1: be like irrelevant to the political process basically, and also
Speaker 1: irrelevant in terms of their bottom line because he's not
Speaker 1: wasn't running for anything. It was like the only year
Speaker 1: since he popped up on the scene where he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been spending really money with them anyway, So it
Speaker 1: was not any sort of loss to them. Well, now
Speaker 1: that he's ramping up his campaign, well now there's some
Speaker 1: money to lose, so that also has to weigh into
Speaker 1: some of these decisions as well. But yeah, ultimately this
Speaker 1: is all of oars. They will do with this account
Speaker 1: what they decide. It is in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1: He has previously concocted these sort of elaborate schemes to
Speaker 1: try to distance himself and make it like there's this
Speaker 1: Facebook Supreme Court and it's this independent board of arbitration. No,
Speaker 1: it's up to him. He made the decision. He will
Speaker 1: make the decision again. And all of this is just
Speaker 1: an attempt to apply at critics, which of course won't work.
Speaker 1: I mean, the people who won him off forever, they're
Speaker 1: going to continue to want them off forever, and that's
Speaker 1: not going to change, exactly. Correct. And Trump, to his credit,
Speaker 1: actually into some of this. Put this up there on
Speaker 1: the screen, he says, Facebook, which has lost billions of
Speaker 1: dollars in values since deplatforming your favorite president me, has
Speaker 1: just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a
Speaker 1: thing should never again happen to a sitting president or
Speaker 1: anybody else which is not deserving of retribution. Thank you
Speaker 1: to truth Social for doing such an incredible job. Your
Speaker 1: growth is outstanding in future limited And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about that part, but I am sure definitely that they
Speaker 1: did lose some money. And at the very least, look,
Speaker 1: he's not wrong. I mean, in terms of the way
Speaker 1: that we thought about these platforms, a lot of it
Speaker 1: was destroyed in twenty seventeen with deplatforming and in general
Speaker 1: really ramping up throughout those years. But the final act
Speaker 1: really was Trump, And actually, when really think about it,
Speaker 1: it was Trump in conjunction with Parlor. I still remain
Speaker 1: that Parlor was one of the most dangerous and censorious
Speaker 1: things that ever happened, because that was about the infrastructure
Speaker 1: of web itself, like with Amazon Web Services and the
Speaker 1: denial of servers that will literally allow a company to exist.
Speaker 1: That is where things really kicked into high gear. And
Speaker 1: I've done other monologues here since then about Andrew Tate.
Speaker 1: You can hate Andrew Tate, but simultaneous deep platform across
Speaker 1: the Internet, that's pretty insane. Kiwi Farms was another big one.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about d listing on Google like
Speaker 1: that's then we're talking about the very like ability to
Speaker 1: exist online. I'm not even saying I like any of
Speaker 1: these places, but it's not about like, it's like, how
Speaker 1: can this be in the hands of you know, of
Speaker 1: Sindhar Pachai over at Google, of Tim Cook the removal
Speaker 1: from the App Store that was another big one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe Apple has, if not a majority, near majority
Speaker 1: of control over cell phones in the United States. These
Speaker 1: are all things where and this is the classic example
Speaker 1: the phone company. The phone company doesn't care what you
Speaker 1: say on the phone, right if you break the law
Speaker 1: when you're on the phone, it's the government's job to
Speaker 1: go and get in a subpoena and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's breaking the law while he's on the phone. It's
Speaker 1: not AT and t's job to censor what you're saying
Speaker 1: to somebody else in a private phone call. Now you
Speaker 1: can say, yeah, but the Internet is different because you're
Speaker 1: talking to everybody. But not really. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: think about infrastructure, that's the whole point is the infrastructure
Speaker 1: is supposed to be completely content neutral, and where we
Speaker 1: escaped that on January eight, twenty twenty one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a little more complex than that, because
Speaker 1: I've almost everybody agrees there should be some limits to
Speaker 1: what people are able to say. I mean, threats of violence,
Speaker 1: docks like, you know, outright harassment, revenge, porn like. There
Speaker 1: are lines that I think society would want to draw,
Speaker 1: and that we draw with the First Amendment as well.
Speaker 1: But even a place like eight chan has some rules
Speaker 1: around what you can and can't post. So that's where
Speaker 1: things ultimately get complicated because then you have to ask.
Speaker 1: It's not like a phone company, because you have to ask,
Speaker 1: where do we draw that line? The problem is having
Speaker 1: the power to decide where do we draw that line?
Speaker 1: On something that ends up being really critical to our
Speaker 1: democratic infrastructure in the hands of a very few people,
Speaker 1: and it being a complete black box. I mean, before
Speaker 1: the Twitter files came out, we really had no insight
Speaker 1: into the internal process within Twitter, as one example for
Speaker 1: how they came to this decision, and once we did
Speaker 1: have some insight into how they came to that decision,
Speaker 1: it was exactly as we suspected. It was completely ad hoc.
Speaker 1: It was driven by a couple of ideological actors. It
Speaker 1: was driven by, you know, external pressure and the sense
Speaker 1: of employees at Twitter of like how the people around
Speaker 1: them in their lives would judge them if they didn't
Speaker 1: take action against these things. And so even though they
Speaker 1: had these stated rules governing the platform, ultimately when push
Speaker 1: came to shove, it just ended up being their own
Speaker 1: personal decision making that led to the outcome of Trump
Speaker 1: being banned from the platform. So, you know, that's that,
Speaker 1: to me, is the core of the issue, and in
Speaker 1: fact is quite relevant. We have a number of stories
Speaker 1: in the show today about antitrust actions being taken the
Speaker 1: attempt to curb and check some of the power of
Speaker 1: big tech, which obviously is relevant in terms of censorship
Speaker 1: but relevant in terms of all sorts of aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives on and off the Internet, and it really
Speaker 1: is the sort of crucial frontline battle of our time,
Speaker 1: and one that you know, fortunately there is some some
Speaker 1: genuine bipartisan bipartisanship on. There are plenty of people who
Speaker 1: just posture, you know, plenty of Republicans who just want
Speaker 1: to posture about the censorship. But then, like Jim Jordan,
Speaker 1: ultimately all they're doing is like carrying water for the
Speaker 1: tech companies. They don't actually care about the power piece.
Speaker 1: If you're not focused on the power of these companies
Speaker 1: when it comes not just to censorship, but all of
Speaker 1: the activities that they engage in all of their impact
Speaker 1: on public life, then ultimately you're not really serious about
Speaker 1: this important point. We're going to table this discussion. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk a lot more about about both the
Speaker 1: Google lawsuit that the Department of Justice, the second Justice
Speaker 1: Department lawsuit against that company, and all so about the
Speaker 1: overall reaction to anti trust and how things are changing.
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and talk about Ukraine. That's what
Speaker 1: we originally were going to start our show with before
Speaker 1: the Trump news broke last night. There's a major Titanic
Speaker 1: development here in Washington. The decision to send some dozen
Speaker 1: two dozen or so M one Abrams tanks to Ukraine
Speaker 1: on the battlefield in conjunction with Poland, with Finland, and
Speaker 1: with Germany, and the departure of tanks from all of
Speaker 1: these Western nations to try and help Ukraine in its
Speaker 1: offensive in the coming months. President Biden making this announcement,
Speaker 1: let's take a listen. Putin expected Europe and the United
Speaker 1: States to weaken our resolve. He expected our support for
Speaker 1: Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong. He was wrong.
Speaker 1: He was wrong from the beginning, and he continues to
Speaker 1: be wrong. We are united. America is united, and so
Speaker 1: is the world. We approach the one year mark as
Speaker 1: we do of the Russia full scale invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We remain united and determined as and our conviction and
Speaker 1: our cause. These tanks are further evidence of our enduring
Speaker 1: an unflagging commitment to Ukraine and our confidence and the
Speaker 1: skill of the Ukrainian forces. This is an important decision marker.
Speaker 1: It was one that was never contemplated by the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: by the Biden administration, and by Western officials, which changed
Speaker 1: all within the last month. So let's go all the
Speaker 1: way back. So, first, President Zelenski visits here in Washington.
Speaker 1: One of the two main asks that he asked President Biden.
Speaker 1: Number one was not just patriot missile system but more
Speaker 1: patriot missile systems. Number two is tanks and jets. Now,
Speaker 1: jets are off the table for now, but listen to
Speaker 1: this story. Because the tanks were completely off the table.
Speaker 1: Then what happens is that Poland has in possession some
Speaker 1: Leopard tanks that were given to it by Germany. Poland says,
Speaker 1: I want to give these tanks to Ukraine because of
Speaker 1: repeated requests by President Zelenski. Well, then what happens what
Speaker 1: they have to go to Germany because Germany is the
Speaker 1: one who gave them the tanks. Germany says, no, We're
Speaker 1: not going to give you those tanks, because then the
Speaker 1: decision is on us to allow pole And to do it.
Speaker 1: Chancellor Oloff Schultz says, the only way I'm giving these
Speaker 1: tanks to Ukraine is if you give tanks to Ukraine,
Speaker 1: because then it's a complete NATO decision, especially led by
Speaker 1: the United States, and not one that lands in Germany.
Speaker 1: Because Germany doesn't want to be the one that is
Speaker 1: retaliated against by Russia if such an attack to happen.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be out there on their own.
Speaker 1: Not to cut you short, but just to insert a
Speaker 1: little piece here. This is from politicos reporting about behind
Speaker 1: the scenes negotiations. This should make everybody very uncomfortable. Schultz
Speaker 1: was adamant in his discussions with Biden that's supplying Leopard
Speaker 1: tanks to Ukraine marks such a qualitatively new step that
Speaker 1: the US, as the world's biggest military power, but also
Speaker 1: Germany's guarantee for nuclear deterrence, must be involved. They also
Speaker 1: want to demonstrate unity toward Putin important to the Chancellor
Speaker 1: from the very beginning that we take every step with
Speaker 1: as much unity as possible, as spokespersons said. So they're
Speaker 1: basically like, listen, we don't feel like our nuclear deterrence
Speaker 1: is enough. We want the world superpower on our I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how provocative they ultimately view this step, and they'd
Speaker 1: really come to loggerheads because they're the military. In particular,
Speaker 1: Pentagon really did not want to send these tanks, and
Speaker 1: they put out there like, oh, it's because it's hard
Speaker 1: to train on whatever. You No, they saw this as
Speaker 1: a significant escalation. They also worry about our own readiness,
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about as well. Biden was reluctant,
Speaker 1: and effectively, Germany was under pressure and there was starting
Speaker 1: to be this ugly split in the NATO alliance, and
Speaker 1: Biden just caved and was like, all right, fine, Rather
Speaker 1: than have any demonstration of disunity, we're just going to
Speaker 1: go along with sending these tanks, something that they had
Speaker 1: completely ruled out early in this conflict. Because remember, it's
Speaker 1: easy to lose track of how these things all started.
Speaker 1: The original thought and the original what was sold to
Speaker 1: the American people, We will provide them whatever they need
Speaker 1: for their defense. Tanks are a strictly offensive capability. So
Speaker 1: this was previously like, you know, completely out of bounds,
Speaker 1: and now here we are. Well. The reason it also
Speaker 1: matters is the offensive itself. What is that offensive going
Speaker 1: to look like? Where you can combine that with some
Speaker 1: reporting that we brought to you all just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago about the US is warming to the
Speaker 1: idea of Ukraine taking back Crimea. Now look, I have
Speaker 1: no idea whether they even have that capability, And on
Speaker 1: the tank piece, it's important, so I asked some of
Speaker 1: my friends who work in the defense industry, and I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, what's actually the deal with these tanks?
Speaker 1: And they're like, look, we don't actually even know the
Speaker 1: detail of the tank itself. The tank itself is a platform.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of technology that goes into the US tank.
Speaker 1: There's in terms of the ones that we sell, we
Speaker 1: sell them all over the world. Some of them are
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties. Some of them you wouldn't like
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty three Abrams tank versus nineteen eighty tank,
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty three one is going to win every day,
Speaker 1: even though they look kind of similar. So the point
Speaker 1: is that that's actually unclear. They need to be specially
Speaker 1: manufactured in the next couple of months by the US
Speaker 1: defense industry. So congratulations to the makers here in Northern
Speaker 1: Virginia who are going to be supplying those tanks. So
Speaker 1: they're specially manufactured, they need to be trained on it.
Speaker 1: There's an entire logistical pattern that needs to develop in
Speaker 1: order to supply and keep up. These tanks are in
Speaker 1: general pretty advanced pieces of technology, so that's a piece
Speaker 1: of it. However, it was immediately noticed by Russia. Let's
Speaker 1: put this up there on the screen. The city of
Speaker 1: Kiev immediately under bombardment. That happened right after Kiev secured
Speaker 1: the tanks. And the reason here is that the US
Speaker 1: and Germany are sending these tanks. Immediately after this decision
Speaker 1: was made, the strike happened on Kiev. So when we
Speaker 1: put those two things together, clearly the Russians see it
Speaker 1: as something. Now, how exactly are they going to respond?
Speaker 1: We genuinely have no idea. I actually saw a really
Speaker 1: troubling headline this morning in the New York Times. It
Speaker 1: says that the Ukraine War or it says here's how
Speaker 1: President Biden reluctantly agreed to send tanks to Ukraine. But
Speaker 1: let me read you, guys the subhead It was just
Speaker 1: this morning the decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms
Speaker 1: from Europe and inched the United States and it's NATO
Speaker 1: allies closer to direct conflict with Russia. That is a
Speaker 1: that is literally, that's not me scaremongering or whatever. That's
Speaker 1: from the Times, probably one of the most hawkish outlets
Speaker 1: in this entire conflict. It also comes on the heels
Speaker 1: of the Doomsday clock, the famous clock about how close
Speaker 1: we are supposedly to nuclear war. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this video up on the screen. I can speak
Speaker 1: over it. From the Bureau of Atomic Scientists, they now
Speaker 1: say we are set one hundred seconds or sorry, ninety
Speaker 1: seconds to midnight, which is the closest to catastrophe that
Speaker 1: we have ever been in the history of the Bulletin
Speaker 1: of Atomic Scientists calling it, quote a global catastrophe. Look all,
Speaker 1: we're trying. We're trying to approach this in a very
Speaker 1: level headed way and not be skeptical. I'm even trying
Speaker 1: not to let my bias come in here. When it's
Speaker 1: Germany and I'm like, yeah, why don't you send them
Speaker 1: the tanks. I'm like, you're the one who's only like
Speaker 1: a couple hundred miles from there. It's your country, You're
Speaker 1: a continent. Why do we have to be the ones
Speaker 1: to do it. The reason why I think that this
Speaker 1: is significant and was regarded as such by President Biden,
Speaker 1: by General Mark Milly, by the Navy Secretary who said
Speaker 1: that we're going to have to start cannibalizing our own
Speaker 1: supplies if we continue to have to supply Ukraine, is
Speaker 1: that this could change the entire ballgame on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: because look at what happened with Russia. Russia's armored carriers
Speaker 1: and everything is breaking down, their global infrat or their infrastructure,
Speaker 1: military supply chain disaster. That's why they're so reliant on
Speaker 1: railroads like it's World War Two. They don't have the
Speaker 1: upkeep Ukraine capturing many of these things, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the ways that they were able to cripple
Speaker 1: the Russian offensive in the first place. Well, now, if
Speaker 1: they have sophisticated Western technology that can out match Russia
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, we're not talking just about breakthroughs, but
Speaker 1: you don't know where that's going to stop. And let's
Speaker 1: say that it stops in Crimea. Now what we're actually
Speaker 1: a completely different strategic situation. I'm not even saying I
Speaker 1: think Russia will should have Crimea. But what we're saying
Speaker 1: is they think they should have Crimea and they have nukes.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? Now? According to The Times,
Speaker 1: President Biden his advisors believe that the risk of the
Speaker 1: tactical nuclear weapon being used in Ukraine has gone down.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? I don't know. You know, the
Speaker 1: risk of everything seems to go down until it goes
Speaker 1: way up whenever the strategic situation changes, right, I Mean,
Speaker 1: they're logic here seems to be like, well, they haven't
Speaker 1: nuked us yet, so should be fine. Like I guess
Speaker 1: they're just not going to. And I do think it's
Speaker 1: a real myth the idea that Russia has not escalated
Speaker 1: in response to some of the actions that we have
Speaker 1: taken with regard to Ukraine. They did escalate. Now they
Speaker 1: didn't escalate to nuclear war yet, but they did escalate
Speaker 1: in terms of going back to attacking, keep going to
Speaker 1: attacking the energy infrastructure to try to make this winter
Speaker 1: as brutal and painful as Ukrainians as they possibly can. So,
Speaker 1: you know, they ultimately went forward with the draft, and
Speaker 1: there's rumors that they may do another round of conscription domestically.
Speaker 1: So I think even this mythology that Russia didn't respond,
Speaker 1: that there was no escalation is just factually inaccurate. And
Speaker 1: it also, as I said before, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: some of the conversations that came out in the WikiLeaks
Speaker 1: cables that were revealed by Bronco marcitic He talked about
Speaker 1: how there were a lot of people said all the
Speaker 1: Russians always say that about Ukraine and NATO and they
Speaker 1: never really do anything. So the fact that they didn't
Speaker 1: act instantly was taken as proof that like they're all
Speaker 1: blust or they're not ultimately going to move forward. That
Speaker 1: turned out to not be correct in reality. It was
Speaker 1: a red line for them in a reality. In reality,
Speaker 1: and this again bonus and burden and culpability fully on
Speaker 1: Putin and the Kremlin, etc. But they had drawn a
Speaker 1: red line, we ignored it, and that is part of
Speaker 1: the context of how we ended up ultimately in this place.
Speaker 1: And I just see a lot of echoes of that here.
Speaker 1: And the last thing that I'll put in here is,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of what they're trying to sell
Speaker 1: to the process, like, oh, well, this was all about
Speaker 1: unity with NATO and unity with Germany, and you heard
Speaker 1: that in the president's comments. There was a line though,
Speaker 1: in that Politico piece that just came out of the
Speaker 1: like inside story or whatever that really stuck out to
Speaker 1: me too, because part of the debate before they decided
Speaker 1: whether or not to send these tanks was about the
Speaker 1: capability of the tanks. If it really made sense in
Speaker 1: this context, some of the drawbacks of this particular type
Speaker 1: of tank and apparently, according to Politico, you'll love this.
Speaker 1: Those comments frustrated defense industry executives who felt the Pentagon
Speaker 1: was making disparaging remarks about US manufactured equipment. Weeks before,
Speaker 1: Laura Cooper, Pentagon official charge with overseeing Ukraine policy, had
Speaker 1: called the Abrams tanks a gas guzzler. The US does
Speaker 1: not have to advocate for sending the Abrams, when industry
Speaker 1: insider said, but administration officials shouldn't criticize the tank. That's
Speaker 1: especially true since another country in the region, Poland, is
Speaker 1: buying em once from General Dynamics. Other countries like Morocco, Iraq, Australia, Sauta, Arabia,
Speaker 1: and Egypt have purchased export versions of the tank as well.
Speaker 1: So they were also deeply concerned that this was impacting
Speaker 1: their bottom line and ability to sell weapons around the world.
Speaker 1: So they're putting pressure on the administration to make this
Speaker 1: decision from their own bottom line perspectives. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why I think this again is so important is
Speaker 1: they don't know how to make these tanks. They don't
Speaker 1: know how to do anything, and they don't have the
Speaker 1: money to buy them. That means that we're on the
Speaker 1: hook forever. Like a real nation, whenever it mounts a defense,
Speaker 1: it has an industrial base, it has an economy, it
Speaker 1: has a populace that is capable of mounting that singular defense,
Speaker 1: sometimes with allies, but not wholly reliant on them in
Speaker 1: order to mount it and defend its sovereignty. Ukraine has
Speaker 1: none of that. I mean they would not they wouldn't
Speaker 1: even deny it without NATO. In the Western countries, they
Speaker 1: failed to exist in a single moment. If we cut
Speaker 1: them off on ammunition, they're dead. It's over. And so
Speaker 1: when does it end? Like what does the actual an
Speaker 1: period look? Because even if they push Russia out, what
Speaker 1: are they going to do? Then they'll say, if you
Speaker 1: don't continue to get us all these things, then they're
Speaker 1: just going to come back. Yeah, so are what are
Speaker 1: we on the hook for fifty one hundred billion a
Speaker 1: year for every single year going forward? And I really
Speaker 1: cannot let the Europeans off the hook. This is Libya
Speaker 1: all over again. They're the ones who d I'm quoting
Speaker 1: Susan Rice, who herself was a complete hawk, who said, too,
Speaker 1: this is all in the transcript. You're not going to
Speaker 1: drag us into your shitty war in They didn't. Obama
Speaker 1: did not want to go into Libya. It's the Germans
Speaker 1: and the French who were like, no, we got to
Speaker 1: do it for human rights, all this stuff. Oh look
Speaker 1: at Benghazi, Gadafi, all this, and then now what's happening
Speaker 1: in Libya right now? They're literal slave markets that are
Speaker 1: over there. And ask the people who live in a
Speaker 1: literal like anarchy whether they prefer then or now. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying Goadafi was a good guy, but the point
Speaker 1: is like, should we have been the ones who determined
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on there? Is all during the
Speaker 1: promise of the Arab Spring? It was only ten what
Speaker 1: ten years ago that that happened, Like, how do we
Speaker 1: have collective amnesian I think it should scare everybody that
Speaker 1: they were not willing to do it without the burden
Speaker 1: on us, because listen, we're all in it now and
Speaker 1: we don't have any says. And this is also why
Speaker 1: I was always advocating for the Congress to step up
Speaker 1: to its constitutional responsibility and to write strategic provisions in
Speaker 1: the arms that are given to Ukraine and define the
Speaker 1: exact platforms and to take it out of the executive hand.
Speaker 1: Biden is an eighty year old man. He could drop
Speaker 1: dead tomorrow. Or the policy of the United States then
Speaker 1: is all in the hands of Kamala Harris. Are we
Speaker 1: comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with that? Like take
Speaker 1: away even the nuke button? Look at this. This is
Speaker 1: the extraordinary amount of responsibility that they have abdicated. I
Speaker 1: think it's really important. And again, let's s the next
Speaker 1: one up on the screen. It just shows you that
Speaker 1: this was just a couple days ago. Top US officials
Speaker 1: don't want to give Ukraine tanks despite German pressure five
Speaker 1: days ago. That's how quickly that we fold. And it
Speaker 1: shows you the power of the Ukraine lobby here in
Speaker 1: the United States. All right, let's go to the next
Speaker 1: one here because this is also important in terms of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: What's happening. Basically, let's put it up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Zelenski fired nine of his top officials after reports that
Speaker 1: members of his government went on vacation to Spain and
Speaker 1: France and took bribes during the war. These are the
Speaker 1: senior most officials in the top Ukrainian government who have
Speaker 1: been fired actually during the war. So let's look at
Speaker 1: who these people are four deputy men misters in the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian government, including five regional governors, were sacked by the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian cabinet. This was on Tuesday. The prosecutor Deputy prosecutor
Speaker 1: General also announced his resignation as a result of this,
Speaker 1: and it was because of internal investigations showing that some
Speaker 1: of them were going on lavish vacations using a Mercedes
Speaker 1: owned by a prominent Ukrainian businessman. A spokesperson for the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian Border Guard was maligned for partying in Paris as
Speaker 1: the war continued in Eastern Ukraine. Zelenski painted this as
Speaker 1: an anti corruption move. This is also after they talk
Speaker 1: about how the apparently the former deputy Defense minister resigned
Speaker 1: after the papers reported that he had purchased food for
Speaker 1: the military at prices inflated two or three times higher
Speaker 1: than what was actually in the grocery store, spending some
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty million dollars on food. Now, let
Speaker 1: me ask you who's dollars do you think that is?
Speaker 1: Because there is no such thing as Ukrainian economy right now,
Speaker 1: we are backstopping everything. So congratulations, American taxpayer, you're the
Speaker 1: ones who paid. Yeah, you've funded these all expenses paid
Speaker 1: vacations to Paris, Spain and wherever else. So way to go. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is one of the key things that
Speaker 1: the media has really gas led us on. Up until
Speaker 1: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there was all kinds of reporting
Speaker 1: and you were allowed to say, this is a nation
Speaker 1: that struggles with corruption. Yeah, the most oft entry in Europe,
Speaker 1: very corrupt nation. Okay, the minute that this happened, you
Speaker 1: were not allowed to say that anymore. That's why they
Speaker 1: deserve to be invaded, right, yes, of course, of course.
Speaker 1: But the reason that that became out of bounds in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, commenting on whatsoever, is because then
Speaker 1: that naturally raises questions in the minds of the American people. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what are we sending them and where's it going? And
Speaker 1: maybe let's have like an inspector general to keep track
Speaker 1: of where the weapons are going and with the money
Speaker 1: is funding, et cetera, et cetera. But that was that
Speaker 1: was out of bounds. You couldn't ask those questions, and
Speaker 1: so it was important to just pretend like Ukraine was
Speaker 1: this pristine beacon of democracy. And again, the fact that
Speaker 1: they had struggle with corruption, as you know, many nations
Speaker 1: around the world do, including our own. Doesn't mean they
Speaker 1: deserve to be invaded, doesn't mean that they were like
Speaker 1: you know, it's their fault, or that Russia has a
Speaker 1: point or any of that. But it should have been
Speaker 1: always part of the context to inform the debate, debate
Speaker 1: here domestically about what we wanted to do and how
Speaker 1: we wanted to do it. Instead, you know, Rand Paul's
Speaker 1: very reasonable proposal, Hey, let's have an inspector general to
Speaker 1: watch over where these funds are going and where these
Speaker 1: weapons are going, was completely voted down and dismissed as unreasonable. Yeah, exactly. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, is it too much to ask
Speaker 1: if you're going to give somebody a hundred billion, is
Speaker 1: it at least being spent on you know, Like, who
Speaker 1: do I feel for the most in this whole situation,
Speaker 1: actual Ukrainian people and soldiers. I mean, listen, one of
Speaker 1: the crazy things about warfare in the twenty first century
Speaker 1: is and I remember this during Syria, and I remember
Speaker 1: now you can watch some of these videos of guys
Speaker 1: getting ambushed on the front line, both Russian and Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It is terrifying, and it just shows you too. Like
Speaker 1: look war, for all the talk of tech, a lot
Speaker 1: of it is just two guys in a hole, and
Speaker 1: some of it comes down to like horrific hand to
Speaker 1: hand combat with bullets, and it is terrible. And you
Speaker 1: know the idea, I think a lot of us can
Speaker 1: take pride and it's like, all right, you know, these
Speaker 1: guys are fighting for the defense, they got weapons in
Speaker 1: their hands, and they're standing up to try and do
Speaker 1: something about it. But at least you want to make
Speaker 1: sure that that's actually happening, not that the rations that
Speaker 1: they're eating have been horrifically overpaid for by the American
Speaker 1: taxpayer so that some guy in Ukraine can take a
Speaker 1: vacation in Paris. That starts to really piss me off.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people should be really
Speaker 1: pissed off about what's going on there. And the fact
Speaker 1: is it's like look, in terms of the Western media, nothing,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, absolutely, no reporting. No, it's hard to
Speaker 1: find all these like vacations and whatever that we're apparently
Speaker 1: going on that Ukrainian government knew about. There was no
Speaker 1: reporting on that. I have to go to like Ukrainian
Speaker 1: sources or Russian sources and use the translate thing and
Speaker 1: be like all right, well I think that's what's actually
Speaker 1: going on here, and it's like all right, And this
Speaker 1: is also why, like do I know what's happening? The
Speaker 1: presumption that any of us know what's actually happening in
Speaker 1: Ukraine it's a farce, Like almost everything that you see
Speaker 1: in front of you, unless it's literal ravity. Even then
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, even in terms of questionable what they're
Speaker 1: bringing out and whether the translation is correct, it is,
Speaker 1: it shows you the difficulty that we face here and
Speaker 1: trying to give people a fullsome picture of what's going on.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think it's an important story. It's something
Speaker 1: that you got to track. I mean, Selenski's a guy,
Speaker 1: he's cracked on media, he's fired or does banned some
Speaker 1: opposition parties that were actually in Ukraine. In terms of
Speaker 1: the people he's replacing, I mean, who knows, like whether
Speaker 1: those people are good or not? Are they corrupt in
Speaker 1: the right way? That's always a real question. The bribes, etc.
Speaker 1: I've done my best to try so. For example, they
Speaker 1: talk about the bribe Mike, well, who bribed him? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking into it. Some one of these deputy ministers
Speaker 1: takes a four hundred thousand dollars, but nobody's naming the bribe. Mike, well,
Speaker 1: who is is it Russia? Is it Eastern Europe? Like,
Speaker 1: where's the money coming from? None of that is open
Speaker 1: in their board. We're going to stay on this because
Speaker 1: I actually do think it is really important. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just one more piece on you know, the incomplete picture
Speaker 1: and the lack of questioning that we get from the
Speaker 1: Western press. Year. There's some real questions about exactly what
Speaker 1: happened with regards to this apartment block that was hit
Speaker 1: with a missile, devastating attack on civilians there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, the Western press reported very definitively and conclusively
Speaker 1: that this was definitely a Russian missile strike. Well, go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up on the screen. A Ukrainian
Speaker 1: advisor actually suggested that it was not a Russian missile
Speaker 1: which hit that building, but that it was a Ukrainian
Speaker 1: attempt to disrupt that missile that ended up incidentally hitting
Speaker 1: this building. And Zelenski himself made some comments at the
Speaker 1: World Economic Form that seemed to suggest that was also
Speaker 1: a possibility. But this advisor resigned, apologized over the comments
Speaker 1: and Listen. I don't know what the reality is of
Speaker 1: what happened here with this apartment block, but I do
Speaker 1: know that there should be some curiosity in the press.
Speaker 1: Now listen. Ultimately, right, if Russia wasn't firing on this area,
Speaker 1: then this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. So, yes, still Russia
Speaker 1: is to blame. But there's a qualitative difference between Russia
Speaker 1: was trying to hit and you know, energy block and
Speaker 1: ends up you know, the Ukrainians and trying to disrupt
Speaker 1: that missile ends up with these casualties on the apartment building.
Speaker 1: That's a very different portrait being painted of this war
Speaker 1: versus Russia intentionally targeting civilians in an apartment right, Well,
Speaker 1: we have no idea. Again, I have no clue. Guess
Speaker 1: what I know. The Ukrainians lied and they said that
Speaker 1: it was Russia that fired on Pole, that accidentally hit
Speaker 1: those guys in Pole and kill two people, when it
Speaker 1: was actually adamant, right, they were adamant. They didn't admit
Speaker 1: it until we straight up had the forensic proof, and
Speaker 1: then even then they're like, oh, yeah, show is the proof,
Speaker 1: and they probably still deny it to this day. I
Speaker 1: guess we're all just not supposed to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Do I put it past Russia to hit civilians and
Speaker 1: kill them? No? Absolutely not. Of course, of course, you
Speaker 1: know why would we especially maybe it wasn't intentional, Maybe
Speaker 1: they're just guided systems or shit, which is also sad
Speaker 1: at war. We know this actually in terms of them
Speaker 1: hit they like try to hit a bridge and they
Speaker 1: end up hitting a park. I mean, you know, they've
Speaker 1: hit several civilians. This is part of the problem, which
Speaker 1: is you know, you shouldn't put anybody in a pedestal.
Speaker 1: Nobody is you know, the hagiography of Ukraine is exactly
Speaker 1: what makes it so difficult to ask questions. But I'm optimistic. Look,
Speaker 1: we're a year into this thing, and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this tanks and all this stuff doesn't worry me. But
Speaker 1: people are asking more questions today than ever before, and
Speaker 1: one day we will get a real account, just like
Speaker 1: we did with Libya, just like we did with Iraq.
Speaker 1: And just remember what it was like in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three if this show had been on the air
Speaker 1: and we've been saying what we were saying, what we
Speaker 1: believed about Iraq, and then a year later you're totally
Speaker 1: and completely vindicated. So well, let me just say to
Speaker 1: offer the administration's perspective, what they would say back to
Speaker 1: us about the tanks in particular, is this is an
Speaker 1: all in an attempt to really strengthen the Ukrainian hands
Speaker 1: so they're in a better position to sit down at
Speaker 1: the table for Nego ultimately. But like you could make
Speaker 1: that argument indefinitely, right, But that's that's ultimately the case
Speaker 1: that they would put forward. All right, let's move on
Speaker 1: to American's America's Congressman George Santos aka Anthony Divalder aka Katara.
Speaker 1: This is a big deal. I mean, listen, all the
Speaker 1: lies and the like insanity of him claiming he's on
Speaker 1: the volleyball team, and the video of him as a
Speaker 1: drag queen and all of that stuff is you know, interesting, uh,
Speaker 1: And obviously I've been really fascinated by it. But the
Speaker 1: key question here has always been where did that money
Speaker 1: come from that you put into your campaign, buddy, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars, when there is no real track
Speaker 1: record of this business that you claim you ran doing,
Speaker 1: any sort of you know, actual business. It appears that
Speaker 1: up until very recently you had very little funds to
Speaker 1: your name. You were getting kicked out of apartments. You
Speaker 1: reported I think a fifty five thousand dollars income the
Speaker 1: last time you ran from Congress. So how did you
Speaker 1: suddenly have this big change of fortunes where now you're
Speaker 1: putting in seven hundred k to your own campaign. Well,
Speaker 1: the Santos campaign has now just filed an amended financial disclosure.
Speaker 1: This was with regard to their campaign expenditures. It's got
Speaker 1: to put this up on the screen. From Daily Beast.
Speaker 1: Late Tuesday afternoon, Santos afternoon, Santos's political operation filed a
Speaker 1: flurry of amended campaign finance reports, telling the FEDS, among
Speaker 1: other things, that a five hundred thousand dollars loon he
Speaker 1: gave to his campaign did not in fact come from
Speaker 1: his personal funds as he previously claimed. However, while the
Speaker 1: newly amended filing told us where the funds did not
Speaker 1: come from, it also raised a new question where did
Speaker 1: the money come from. While both the old new campaign
Speaker 1: filings claimed that the loans came quote from the candidate,
Speaker 1: the most recent amended filing had ticked the box for
Speaker 1: personal funds of the candidate, And on this new amended filing,
Speaker 1: that box is unchecked, so they are no longer claiming
Speaker 1: that this was personal funds of the candidate, So they're
Speaker 1: saying that it came from the candidate, but not from
Speaker 1: the personal funds of the candidate, which raises a whole
Speaker 1: slew of questions. Then again, where did the money come from?
Speaker 1: And effectively the only legal answer to that would be
Speaker 1: is if he got like a bank loan, you know
Speaker 1: that then proceeds go into his account and he uses
Speaker 1: that bank loan to fund his campaign. That is from
Speaker 1: what I read from other you know, campaign finance experts,
Speaker 1: et cetera. That is effectively the only legal answer to
Speaker 1: that question given these new revelations. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there was another one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: loan that they made the same change to unchecking that
Speaker 1: box saying that it came from the candidate's personal funds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really believe that this will be the downfall of
Speaker 1: Santos more than anything, just because it's you said, You're like, look,
Speaker 1: as long as you follow the rules, we have one
Speaker 1: of the most corrupt campaign finance laws in the entire world.
Speaker 1: But if you don't follow the rules, you are going
Speaker 1: to jail. Like it's like denetch deesuza right, Like one
Speaker 1: straw donation, that's it, you know, welcome to the federal penitentiary.
Speaker 1: That's part of the reason why I think SBF is
Speaker 1: screen even if he was not guilty of wirefraud, which
Speaker 1: I really allegedly but do believe that he is. It's like,
Speaker 1: if he they can prove even one straw donation, they'd
Speaker 1: have you the Feds. You're done. FEC violation is actually
Speaker 1: not hard to prove. It's part of the reasons why
Speaker 1: campaign spends so much time, energy and more investing and
Speaker 1: making sure they at least do follow the limited rules
Speaker 1: and at least go around the loopholes with five oh
Speaker 1: one c threes and fours right and all this. You
Speaker 1: got to know the way to work the loop right,
Speaker 1: But he didn't do right. You can do whatever you want,
Speaker 1: but you have to do it in the right way
Speaker 1: or else. Yeah, your face in prison time. And he
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to I mean, look like you said, unless
Speaker 1: he straight up took a bank loan. And who the
Speaker 1: hell is going to give Anthony divald or George Santos,
Speaker 1: a proven Ponzi schemer fell in whatever criminal history. Who's
Speaker 1: gonna give him a five hour, thousand dollars bank loan
Speaker 1: like it's maybe, Or but if he took it from
Speaker 1: somebody and reported it as personal, that's it. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you could try and revise the filing in but in
Speaker 1: the past, but you know, lying to the FBC is
Speaker 1: a very serious crime. Yeah, I very much think that
Speaker 1: this is gonna this is going to go down. I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I don't see how he gets out
Speaker 1: of this one or how he comes up with any
Speaker 1: sort of explanation that really makes sense, which is why
Speaker 1: I mean, this new filing is just honestly bizarre. Just
Speaker 1: to remind you of what he had said previously. Previously
Speaker 1: it's said that this was quote money I paid myself
Speaker 1: through the Devulter organization. He had confirmed to The Daily
Speaker 1: Beast last month that he withdrew money from his firm
Speaker 1: specifically to underwrite his campaign, reasoning he was the firm's
Speaker 1: sole owner. It was actually an LLC, not a sole proprietorship.
Speaker 1: But you know that you could you could maybe see
Speaker 1: if he was earning a bunch of cash into this
Speaker 1: company that is his company, and then he takes it
Speaker 1: in salary, which is kind of what he had claimed before,
Speaker 1: and then uses a big chunk of that to fund
Speaker 1: the campaign. You may say, like, well, that wasn't really
Speaker 1: that wise, given that you don't seem to have that
Speaker 1: many other funds. But okay, it may technically be legal
Speaker 1: now though if you're saying this wasn't actually your your
Speaker 1: money that you were putting in. Again, the only legal
Speaker 1: answer to what's going on here is that he got
Speaker 1: some kind of a bank loan. It can't have it
Speaker 1: can't have been you know, just passed through from some
Speaker 1: other rich person like that is not that is not
Speaker 1: going to pass muster. So he's under a lot of
Speaker 1: scrutiny there. At the same time, you know, we've been
Speaker 1: covering the fact that he has now been caught involved
Speaker 1: with what the SEC Securities Exchange commiss is accusing of
Speaker 1: being a Ponzi scheme and appeers based on the indictment
Speaker 1: that I read of very much being a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 1: Washington Post has new reporting on how Santos operated within
Speaker 1: this Ponzi scheme, the way that he worked to try
Speaker 1: to draw investors in, and it is really fascinating. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys watch that inventing Anna about
Speaker 1: Anna Deelvey, This like supposed this woman who portrayed herself
Speaker 1: as a German heiress and like really fooled a bunch
Speaker 1: of people in New York City, like almost got away
Speaker 1: with the whole scheme. There are a lot of Anna
Speaker 1: Delviy vibes contained in this Washington Post article. Is going
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. The headline here is,
Speaker 1: I felt like we were in Goodfellas. How George Santos
Speaker 1: would investors for an alleged Ponzi scheme. They open this
Speaker 1: article with a sort of like dramatic, dramatic description of
Speaker 1: him bringing in investors to this restaurant, one of the
Speaker 1: restaurants that he spent like tens of thousands of dollars in,
Speaker 1: by the way, in his campaign finance reports, and would
Speaker 1: pitch them and over multi course elaborate meals. Really sort
Speaker 1: of portrayed himself like he was this very wealthy, high
Speaker 1: up individual that he was hobnobbing with elites in the city.
Speaker 1: Which again, if you watch the Anadelvi thing, like that
Speaker 1: was her whole thing. It's just if you project that
Speaker 1: you are that and you have the right people around you,
Speaker 1: other elites will basically buy into this mythology that you're
Speaker 1: creating about yourself. So here's some of the details they
Speaker 1: say in internal Harbor City meetings. That's name of the
Speaker 1: Pazzi scheme. Santos refined his pitch braasily, offering stories he
Speaker 1: said he could tell investors to demonstrate his credentials or
Speaker 1: lighten the mood. According to zoom recordings that the Post obtained,
Speaker 1: some of the tales were self deprecating, but they delivered
Speaker 1: the same message that he operated in the orbit of
Speaker 1: the rich and powerful. For example, he told this story
Speaker 1: about I think it was the Blackstone CEO that Santos
Speaker 1: was in a meeting with him and fell over a
Speaker 1: table or something like that. So again it was like
Speaker 1: self deprecating, but it was like a humble brag. The
Speaker 1: bottom line of this story was, these are the sorts
Speaker 1: of people that I'm friends with, These are the sorts
Speaker 1: of people I know. Of course, is all completely completely
Speaker 1: made up. They also talk about the way that this
Speaker 1: the staff at this restaurant, which again he spent thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on in his campaign. According to his reports,
Speaker 1: they would welcome him and his clients he would order
Speaker 1: dish after dish, and one of the people that was
Speaker 1: involved said it really made her worry that he was
Speaker 1: trying to fleece this person that she had put him
Speaker 1: in touch with, and she said, I was so pissed.
Speaker 1: He did this nice show and dance. Everyone at the
Speaker 1: restaurant knew it. It felt like this was a routine
Speaker 1: he did, like this was not the first time. So
Speaker 1: also raises some questions there about whether he was using
Speaker 1: the campaign funds in order to finance these elaborate dinners
Speaker 1: that he was using to try to pitch people on
Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've also
Speaker 1: been fascinated by schemers. I've really just gone back to
Speaker 1: the case of made Off. Madeoff was also a genius
Speaker 1: exactly in this regard, in that even when he needed
Speaker 1: money desperately. One time he was like two hundred million
Speaker 1: in a hole and some guy came up to him
Speaker 1: was like, Bernie, I want to give you one hundred million.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's not going to cut it. And at
Speaker 1: a gala and you know, they're talking and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: what do I He's like, I've got longtime clients I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. For for me to do it,
Speaker 1: I'd have to put somebody away. And he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: two hundred million. He's like, no, no way, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: That's just not going to do it. He goes to
Speaker 1: two fifty, which is exactly what Bernie needs. He needs
Speaker 1: it in order to make his next withdrawal for one
Speaker 1: of his clients. He said, nah. He works him all
Speaker 1: the way up to four hundred million, and he's like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess I could make that work. And
Speaker 1: that it worked, I mean, that's there. It's like you
Speaker 1: read about it and you're like, that's just the craasiness
Speaker 1: of the lack of shame. I just can't. If he
Speaker 1: doesn't get this money around it, it collapses, the whole
Speaker 1: scheme collapses unless he gets that money today. It ended
Speaker 1: up collapsing like a couple of months later. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have that in me, man I.
Speaker 1: Whatever that is, it's a rare, rare quality, and it
Speaker 1: auto select for the Bernie maid offs for the rare quality.
Speaker 1: He doesn't feel ever right now, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: a rare quality. It's an amazing story. There's actually a
Speaker 1: movie on it where they dramatize that scene on HBO
Speaker 1: called Wizard of Lies. I gotta watch that. That is incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I really have been obsessed with
Speaker 1: this story, not even so much like the political implications whatever,
Speaker 1: Like politicians lie, We get it. You know, this guy
Speaker 1: part of why a lot of people feel like there's
Speaker 1: extra scrutiny on him or something because he's a Republican.
Speaker 1: But I gotta tell you, I mean, I think anyone
Speaker 1: who lied this brazenly and just invented these personas, there's
Speaker 1: just a public fascination with the way that you can
Speaker 1: navigate through the world making up elaborate lie after elaborate lie.
Speaker 1: And you know, ultimately he did. He did trick a
Speaker 1: lot of supposedly sophisticated people. You know, even with this
Speaker 1: Ponzi scheme, tricked at least some number of supposedly sophisticated
Speaker 1: investors to get in on this thing, tricked a lot
Speaker 1: of Republican elites. A least Dephonic apparently was a big
Speaker 1: sort of patron of his and sort of reviving his
Speaker 1: congressional campaign after some opposition. Some internal research that they
Speaker 1: had done revealed some of this stuff and a bunch
Speaker 1: of his campaign staff fled. Well she's the one that
Speaker 1: comes back in and her consultant gets on board, and
Speaker 1: that kind of enabled him to continue in this race
Speaker 1: in the way that he did and ultimately win it.
Speaker 1: So that's the part that is really fascinating to me,
Speaker 1: is like the psychology, what it says about the holes
Speaker 1: in our political system, what it says about like what
Speaker 1: people are vulnerable to in terms of the stories that
Speaker 1: get told. So it is remarkable, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Another fraudster, Brett Barv former you know, NFL Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame quarterback, etcetera, etcetera. So we dug deep into this
Speaker 1: story because it truly, truly is shocking. And just to
Speaker 1: remind you of some of the details, I did a
Speaker 1: long monologue on this if you want to go back
Speaker 1: and review all of the nitty gritty details. Bottom line,
Speaker 1: Brett Farv was involved in a scheme to steal millions
Speaker 1: of dollars from Mississippi's welfare fund. This is money that
Speaker 1: is supposed to go to poor people in a state
Speaker 1: where you have a lot of poor people. Number one
Speaker 1: and number two, where they are so stingy with distributing
Speaker 1: this money. It's almost like there is no welfare system
Speaker 1: in the state of Mississippi. Instead, multi multimillionaires like Brett
Speaker 1: farre were like pigs at the trough for this thing.
Speaker 1: He alleges no wrongdoing and I had no idea what
Speaker 1: was going on for the lawyers. Let me just put
Speaker 1: this out there. Well, the Mississippi Auditor is speaking out
Speaker 1: in a new interview on HBO talking about how this
Speaker 1: was the largest public fraud case in the history of
Speaker 1: the state. And it wasn't just far. There were other
Speaker 1: players involved who ultimately robbed this welfare fund of like
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars. Let's say, take a listen to
Speaker 1: what that Mississippi State Auditor is saying. What I can
Speaker 1: tell you is that this is the largest public fraud
Speaker 1: case in the history of the state of mississ Here,
Speaker 1: in the poorest state in America, money from the state
Speaker 1: welfare fund, intended to help alleviate poverty was instead being
Speaker 1: re routed by those in charge to their cronies and friends,
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred million dollars in all. They thought of
Speaker 1: this fund as not only their own fund to do
Speaker 1: what they wanted with, but they thought of it as
Speaker 1: a slush fund that no one was watching at all.
Speaker 1: They thought of it as a slush fund. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder on some of the details. Specifically with regard to FARV,
Speaker 1: he took five million dollars for a project to build
Speaker 1: a volleyball stadium at the university his daughter was attending,
Speaker 1: where he had also attended. That was like the big
Speaker 1: part of his involvement. But there was also and this
Speaker 1: is something he says, there there's a weird transaction involving
Speaker 1: one point one million dollars going directly to far where
Speaker 1: he was supposed to speak at three total speaking engagements,
Speaker 1: but he didn't show up to those events. So I mean,
Speaker 1: already disgusting that you, who are a very wealthy man,
Speaker 1: are taking this money to do these speaking gigs that
Speaker 1: are supposed to be about like motivation or whatever. That's
Speaker 1: the way that they justified taking this out of the
Speaker 1: welfare funds, which is disgraceful to start with. But then
Speaker 1: you don't even do the speaking gigs allegedly, Again he
Speaker 1: says there was no wrongdoing here, but this is having
Speaker 1: huge political reverberations. Also. Sober the former Mississippi governor was
Speaker 1: really implicated in all of this and had sort of
Speaker 1: like direct involvement. There were text messages that were revealed
Speaker 1: between him and some of the key players in this
Speaker 1: where he seemed to know exactly what was going on.
Speaker 1: He also denies the wrongdoing the current governor Tate Reeves
Speaker 1: Ryan Krim look alike in case you want an image
Speaker 1: in your head, and the previous governor. You know, they're
Speaker 1: really tight. He was sort of like an acolyte of
Speaker 1: the previous governor. They have of the same network of
Speaker 1: donors and social circles and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So he is also implicated here and seemed to be
Speaker 1: involved in what looked to be a cover up of
Speaker 1: this whole scheme during his time in office. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is the whole story of why
Speaker 1: the people in the state are not too us with
Speaker 1: Tate Reeves, but he's actually in a little bit of
Speaker 1: trouble for re election. Obviously, Mississippi deep red state. The
Speaker 1: idea that a Democrat could have any shot in this
Speaker 1: state is incredibly far fetched. I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: that the Democrat is going to win. The fact that
Speaker 1: even within striking range is quite remarkable. It's an article
Speaker 1: from the Hill, they say, Democrats, the Mississippi's governor race
Speaker 1: as ripe for an upset. He's got some of the
Speaker 1: lowest approval ratings Tate Reeves does in the entire country.
Speaker 1: Has been named checked, they say at times, in the
Speaker 1: state's long running welfare scandal. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the polling, you know the Democratic candidate is only a
Speaker 1: few points behind right now. So there's a real chance
Speaker 1: that if this thing continues to unravel the way that
Speaker 1: it has been, you know that people are just done
Speaker 1: with this dude. Again, wouldn't bet on it, but I
Speaker 1: think the fact that this is even a question mark
Speaker 1: right now shows you how devastating the scandal has been
Speaker 1: for him. In the entire Mississippi political class in that state,
Speaker 1: red blue, independent, everybody thinks it's pretty gross to use
Speaker 1: public funds that are allocated for single moths and poor
Speaker 1: people so that a one hundred millionaire can embezzle money
Speaker 1: and build a new volleyball stadium for his daughter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we can all just kind of come around
Speaker 1: that and say, yeah, this is pretty crazy. And look
Speaker 1: with Brett, they have these people dead to rise. So
Speaker 1: you got text messages, what do they say nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: find out about this, right, Yeah, that's right. It will
Speaker 1: never be Yeah, it's like the press is never going
Speaker 1: to know about this, right, Like yeah, yes, First of all,
Speaker 1: what are you doing planning the ever heard a signal?
Speaker 1: I don't really understand uh boomers, you know when? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's thinking that iCloud or whatever is safe.
Speaker 1: The Mississippi auditor here. Also, it's not like these are liberals,
Speaker 1: it's not like these are democrats. They're like, this is
Speaker 1: a horrific, massive public fraud case talking about millions of
Speaker 1: dollars where you're literally using welfare funds as a slush
Speaker 1: fund to build and spend on infrat structure projects that
Speaker 1: personally benefit you. This is corruption that you used to
Speaker 1: see in the United States in like the eighteen hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's really what it. In a way, it's analogous.
Speaker 1: You have a you know, a governor he thinks he's untouchable,
Speaker 1: Brett Fahr, he's like a king, right, He's I mean,
Speaker 1: look undeniable. He's like one of the most famous people
Speaker 1: in the United States from Mississippi's like it's one of
Speaker 1: the most famous people ever come out of the state. Ever,
Speaker 1: so he's probably like a god in Mississippi and that's
Speaker 1: how they treat him. And apparently he thinks he's above
Speaker 1: the law. Yeah, absolutely, ridiculous, absolutely, And I mean, I
Speaker 1: do think the fact that you have effectively, you know,
Speaker 1: well one party state in Mississippi at this point where
Speaker 1: they don't feel like there would ever be any sort
Speaker 1: of political accountability. Just to give you the numbers on
Speaker 1: Tate Reeves and what's going on here. Morning Consult poll
Speaker 1: released this month found him among the ten governors with
Speaker 1: the lowest approval rating in the country Mississippi Today Siena
Speaker 1: College poll found fifty seven percent of respondents, including thirty
Speaker 1: three percent of Republicans, want to see someone other than
Speaker 1: the governor as the state's top official. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: Mississippi was one of the last states to sort of
Speaker 1: transition from the era of like electing Democrats locally and
Speaker 1: like the Dixie Crab model and that whole thing. So
Speaker 1: it actually wasn't that long ago that the governor was
Speaker 1: a Democrat. But you know, in recent years, these are
Speaker 1: blowout elections. They're winning by twenty thirty points, so to
Speaker 1: have an even close at all, again, utter indictment and
Speaker 1: shows you how disgusted the public there is with this
Speaker 1: entire scandal. Yeah, and you know what, I really think
Speaker 1: that they should be So speaking of public corruption, scandals, fraud,
Speaker 1: and the history of the United States, it's all opportunity.
Speaker 1: Hear you know, I guess past speaker Speaker Pelosi, she
Speaker 1: no longer has as much of an impact, let's say,
Speaker 1: on public policy. But let's just say she's probably in
Speaker 1: the know as the representative from San Francisco. So we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about in the ticketmaster block, but really
Speaker 1: about anti trust, the government suing Google over its monopoly
Speaker 1: in the ad market, something we could probably talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of your breaking points with respect to YouTube. Well,
Speaker 1: right before that lawsuit came about whether it was public
Speaker 1: knowledge or not, who knows. Let's put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen. Nancy Pelosi reportedly with her husband sold
Speaker 1: three million dollars actually worth of the stock just four
Speaker 1: weeks ago. So the next one we could put up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. It actually shows you the exact
Speaker 1: trades that were disclosed in the periodic transaction report. You
Speaker 1: could see it right there, several trades all that just
Speaker 1: hit in the last weeks of December, and what do
Speaker 1: we see. We see trades between five hundred to five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand to a million dollars, all of Class A
Speaker 1: stock that were being made. And the real question is why.
Speaker 1: I mean, in many respects like we're talking here about
Speaker 1: people who literally run the government in the know representative
Speaker 1: here even from San Francisco. Let's even Crystal put aside
Speaker 1: the lawsuit. You represent a lot of people from Google.
Speaker 1: You should not be trading Google, period But then you
Speaker 1: add in the actual discussion, you add in or the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: you add in the potential of insider knowledge, and let's
Speaker 1: all be real here. The only reason that we even
Speaker 1: know is because of the toothless periodic transaction report that
Speaker 1: comes out the it's not even real time data. That
Speaker 1: none of them may really feel particularly compelled to fawed
Speaker 1: by the law. Right who fought the exact fo or
Speaker 1: who fought the idea of a stock trading ban until
Speaker 1: they were ridiculed publicly and it became a major kind
Speaker 1: of meme online. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: did the stock band pass that Congress? Well, no, I
Speaker 1: didn't listen. Both of these parties recognized that there was
Speaker 1: real public appetite for some anti corruption measures, in particular
Speaker 1: banning members from trading stocks. There was genuine bipartisan efforts
Speaker 1: working across the aisle at Agallanz Bamberger home in general,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of she was involved with a
Speaker 1: significant effort reaching across the aisle to come up with
Speaker 1: something that would actually have some real teeth on this.
Speaker 1: It was all there and lo and behold, not while
Speaker 1: Democrats had the House. And remember when Kevin McCarthy pretended
Speaker 1: like this was something he cared about. Hey, why isn't
Speaker 1: this one of the demands that the Kevin McCarthy holdouts
Speaker 1: wanted in terms of their negotiations when they were extracting
Speaker 1: their pound of flesh? Hey, why isn't Kevin McCarthy talking
Speaker 1: about the stock trade ban now that he's actually in
Speaker 1: a position of power. Lo and behold, these people have
Speaker 1: no interest in changing the rules because they're making them
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy. And you know the bottom line with this
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi stock trade and many others. Besides, it almost
Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether it was based on inside information or not.
Speaker 1: The outcome is just as damaging to the American public
Speaker 1: because no one is going to look at this and
Speaker 1: think like, oh, this is all just like fair and
Speaker 1: above board and based on public information. Bullshit, When three
Speaker 1: weeks later this lawsuit is real yield to the public
Speaker 1: and we know how close you are with the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: and we know how much insider knowledge you ultimately have,
Speaker 1: Like no one is going to buy and Google stock dropped,
Speaker 1: you know, immediately after the lawsuit. I mean, not like
Speaker 1: aren't they why, Like what exactly is going on here?
Speaker 1: And it's not just you know, it's not just Pelosi.
Speaker 1: There's so many of them. There's like so many accounts
Speaker 1: these days. I just found one guy on Instagram. He
Speaker 1: does a bunch of these videos. The Nancy Pelosi stock
Speaker 1: trader account actually does Republicans as well, and they disclose
Speaker 1: and they show all kinds of trades. I mean, the
Speaker 1: fact that any of this is legal is insane. And
Speaker 1: you know, I was talking with some people on the
Speaker 1: Hill and you know, they've even brought it up to
Speaker 1: their bosses. They're like, hey, like what are you doing
Speaker 1: And the bosses are like, oh what, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm and they were like no, dude, They're like, unless
Speaker 1: unless you can prove you're innocent, you're guilty. And I
Speaker 1: actually think that's the exact right way to approach a
Speaker 1: public politician, somebody with so much power, so much influence
Speaker 1: on the decision, unless you can literally prove. And then
Speaker 1: again to point to the fact that we're not even
Speaker 1: talking about ETFs. We're not talking about the Dow Jones
Speaker 1: or s and P five hundred. We're talking about direct
Speaker 1: stocks directly impacted by US government decisions of which you know,
Speaker 1: she was one of the most powerful members and she
Speaker 1: was actually the speaker at shell. Is you think she's
Speaker 1: not you know, King Jeffries is her hand righted successor. Yes,
Speaker 1: you don't think that there he's doing the things that
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi strongly suggests that he should do. No, you're right,
Speaker 1: she's still in charge over in the Democratic side, no doubt.
Speaker 1: I should note that the trades were all made technically
Speaker 1: while she was still speaker and would have been privy
Speaker 1: to a lot of the discussion. So there you go.
Speaker 1: You can take that to the bank. This is corrupt
Speaker 1: as hell, and I really just can't believe that we
Speaker 1: just continue to let it happen. It's outrageous. Yes, So
Speaker 1: on a more positive side of things, there are two
Speaker 1: areas where I really think the Biden administration deserves some credit,
Speaker 1: and both of them have less to do actually with
Speaker 1: Biden himself and more to do with people that he
Speaker 1: put in some key posts. So you know, I've been
Speaker 1: very improssed with the head of the NLRB, the National
Speaker 1: Labor Relates Board, in terms of, you know, really trying
Speaker 1: to rebalance the scales with regard to corporations and labor.
Speaker 1: The other areas anti trust, where you had Tim Woo,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Cantor, and Lena Khan who have really sought to
Speaker 1: usher in a new era where we actually care about
Speaker 1: corporate power and we actually attempt to check corporate power.
Speaker 1: There has been This obviously, is something that Stolar attracts
Speaker 1: very closely and has done a phenomenal job educating a
Speaker 1: lot of people, myself included. On and this week in particular,
Speaker 1: there were a few things that were quite significant in
Speaker 1: the anti trust news. Number one is there were Senate
Speaker 1: hearings with regard to Ticketmaster and the whole Taylor Swift debacle,
Speaker 1: which led to a lot of justified questions about this
Speaker 1: monopoly and the way that they gouge consumers and screw
Speaker 1: artists and have total control over so much of the
Speaker 1: live performance market. We'll get to that in a moment
Speaker 1: with Ticketmaster. And the other piece was that the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice announced a big lawsuit again Google, and they're
Speaker 1: having some success there ultimately, so folks over at the
Speaker 1: NBC they're very unhappy about this whole development, and in
Speaker 1: particular Jim Kramer, bless his heart, having total meltdown on
Speaker 1: air and also, by the way, getting a bunch of
Speaker 1: key facts just straight up wrong in his Google lobbyist
Speaker 1: talking points that he's parroting. Here. Let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to what he had to say. This is the most
Speaker 1: ideological anti trust department I have seen since and you'll
Speaker 1: get this standard oil and in Teddy Roosevelt that is
Speaker 1: their ideology. David, that's an ideology. I remember I took
Speaker 1: marks and angles. Remember when when Angles said to people's lot,
Speaker 1: people are like a sack of potatoes. After she was
Speaker 1: speaking of the peasantry understood and under Andy trusts law,
Speaker 1: it may be very difficult for them to prove a
Speaker 1: case that said, there is most shortage that she is
Speaker 1: anti the man. It's a real throwback. We're not used
Speaker 1: to it. Because Obama wasn't like this, right, but they
Speaker 1: lost the House representatives, so they go real hard. They're hard.
Speaker 1: Ohbama wasn't like that. I've read Mark first of all,
Speaker 1: I highly doubt the actually effort Marx Andegra. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's ever wrote a book ever that said
Speaker 1: I mean, look, that's the finance industry getting pedaled. Really
Speaker 1: what they see is they're calling it ideological. Whenever you're
Speaker 1: talking about straight up literal I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: things that's important A he misses who's actually doing the suing.
Speaker 1: But like the investigation itself is pretty clear. Read the
Speaker 1: facts that are laid out in the lawsuit. They're like,
Speaker 1: by our estimation, you have a monopoly, which is against
Speaker 1: US law. It's now on the government to actually prove
Speaker 1: those facts in a court and convince somebody that it's true,
Speaker 1: and then we can figure out what exactly it looks
Speaker 1: like on the other end. But you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about this, I think in one of our last shows.
Speaker 1: Does anybody think the promise of the internet actually came true?
Speaker 1: I remember being online in two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: I remember just being like wow, man, like anything is possible,
Speaker 1: Like MySpace and Facebook and all this the idea of
Speaker 1: meeting all these people, Like, did we really imagine that
Speaker 1: we would have centralized choke hold points of Like, that's
Speaker 1: not really what was promised. Now we're in the middle
Speaker 1: of the AI Revolution, and I don't know. At first
Speaker 1: I was skeptical, but increasingly the way I see a
Speaker 1: lot of institutions behave I'm like, you know, I think
Speaker 1: this is great. Like when I'm watching these professors lose
Speaker 1: it that they can no longer just assign busy work
Speaker 1: and then try and put They're like, oh, we made
Speaker 1: actually do something and you know, have oral examine it, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think is fantastic. I think oral
Speaker 1: examination and all that is really important in terms of
Speaker 1: what you're actually going to take away, and maybe even
Speaker 1: the idea of credentialism and life scales and what a
Speaker 1: lot of busy work even looks like in the workplaces,
Speaker 1: being miserable can be taken away. That's all a result
Speaker 1: of monopolization, which is being enormously profitable for Google, for Facebook,
Speaker 1: a few select companies. And I think it's a very
Speaker 1: open question, like do we want that. We had a
Speaker 1: big fight in this country about that with railroads, which
Speaker 1: we recognize as infrastructure. We had the same fight with banks.
Speaker 1: We kind of forgot that lesson a little bit two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. But why should we Why should we
Speaker 1: forget that lesson? It's important, this is our country. Why not.
Speaker 1: There's so much say about the Pramer piece. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, as you point out, it just straight
Speaker 1: up got a number of the facts wrong. I thought
Speaker 1: it was Lena Khan that was involved in the suit. No,
Speaker 1: was Jonathan Cantor of the Department of Justice, number one,
Speaker 1: number two. This was also not just this Justice department.
Speaker 1: This was also a group of eight states, So it's
Speaker 1: not just like one crazy idea log or whatever. And
Speaker 1: there are other lawsuits against Google that also involve a
Speaker 1: lot of states, including like Texas and Ken Paxton hardly
Speaker 1: some like hard left maniac that's number one, number two.
Speaker 1: And this was something a stolar flag for me as well.
Speaker 1: Is Lena Kahn actually was at odds with a lot
Speaker 1: of labor activists who also you would say, you know,
Speaker 1: broadly oftentimes on the left over Microsoft and Activision because
Speaker 1: she was opposed to that going through. Of course, they
Speaker 1: liked the idea of some people on the left like
Speaker 1: the idea of large corporations, because then that gives you
Speaker 1: one node that you can organize and can make it
Speaker 1: easier for Labor United to gain support. So even the
Speaker 1: idea that everybody on the left has one view of
Speaker 1: how this should all go, even that basic fact is
Speaker 1: not true. But the bigger context for all of this
Speaker 1: is the fact that these mergers and acquisitions are big
Speaker 1: business and big bonuses for Wall Street. So Kramer's friends
Speaker 1: who are still working on Wall Street and still very
Speaker 1: much in the industry, their paychecks depend on these you know,
Speaker 1: big paydays from mergers going through ultimately. And so since
Speaker 1: there's been a slowdown in that kind of activity because
Speaker 1: the government is applying new and long overdue, frankly scrutiny
Speaker 1: to these companies getting larger and larger and larger and larger,
Speaker 1: and the impact that has on our society overall, that's
Speaker 1: upsetting Kramer and I'm sure upsetting a lot of his friends.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the context here is he feels
Speaker 1: that there's you know, a lot of money at stake
Speaker 1: that people are losing out on because they can't just
Speaker 1: continue the industry of growing every thing larger and concentrating
Speaker 1: more and more power in these industries, and not just
Speaker 1: tech either. If you look at agriculture, if you look
Speaker 1: at basically any industry, meat packing, any industry in this country,
Speaker 1: the amount of power and consolidation in the hands of
Speaker 1: a very few people is really disturbing. It's bad for labor,
Speaker 1: it's bad for competition. It's the opposite of having an
Speaker 1: actual like free and fair market. Yeah, but it is
Speaker 1: great for stockholders, right, That's really what it's all abo
Speaker 1: about Wall Street. And when we think about it too,
Speaker 1: Ticketmas this is one other reason we should be hopeful. Look,
Speaker 1: the entire Congress basically was unified essentially against Ticketbaster in
Speaker 1: their hearings. I know Ryan and Emily covered it, but
Speaker 1: I just think it is astounding to watch this mashup
Speaker 1: of senators from all sides, you know, using the tailor
Speaker 1: Swift doing the tail Swift tobacle, and sure it's cringe
Speaker 1: watching old people do it. That's like Taylor Swift. Should
Speaker 1: we care? I mean, they're trying to capture the public
Speaker 1: imagination in order to bring good to our industry. So
Speaker 1: that's a good thing in my opinion. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster Auto look in the mirror and say I'm the problem.
Speaker 1: It's me once again. She's cheer captain and among the bleachers.
Speaker 1: So as a ode to Taylor Swift, I will say,
Speaker 1: we know all too well, tarma's a relaxing thought. Aren't
Speaker 1: you envious that? For you? It's not. That's all I've
Speaker 1: got to say. So what do you see there? I mean,
Speaker 1: we literally have Mike Lee, we have Republicans, Democrats all
Speaker 1: quoting Taylor Swift, and through the quotes what's actually coming through.
Speaker 1: They're all against the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger, which at
Speaker 1: the time only a couple of bands spoke out. Nobody
Speaker 1: in Congress thought about it. Obama gives it the rubber stamp,
Speaker 1: and now here we are, it's like a complete catastrophe.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the artists who testified before the
Speaker 1: Congress just did a really fantastic job like laying out
Speaker 1: how much that it's hurt him. And this is somebody
Speaker 1: who's actually I mean, he's not like a household name
Speaker 1: per se, but gets a lot of views on Spotify
Speaker 1: and elsewhere, and he was just showing exactly the problems
Speaker 1: that it has faced his industry. Taylor Swift is just
Speaker 1: the bleeding Ageum, I was just in Mexico listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of Bad Bunny. Apparently they even screwed up
Speaker 1: a Bad Bunny concert in terms of their admittance there.
Speaker 1: And the important point actually Matthew Zeitlin pulled this, which
Speaker 1: is over on TikTok. People are unironically like posting a
Speaker 1: clip of Josh Holly going after Ticketmaster. I don't even
Speaker 1: think they know anything about Ticketmaster or even or sorry,
Speaker 1: they don't know anything about who Josh Holly is. But
Speaker 1: the clips on Congress of Ticketmaster getting flamed is really
Speaker 1: touching a cultural nerve. Here's an example of that. You're
Speaker 1: forcing everybody who just wants to get this ticket on
Speaker 1: the resale market, who hasn't bought from you suberctad to
Speaker 1: begin with, You're forcing them to become your customer in
Speaker 1: order to take possession of this ticket. I mean that's
Speaker 1: really something. I mean, hats off to you, I guess
Speaker 1: for being innovative and using your monopoly, But I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, from a competition standpoint, this really really
Speaker 1: worries me. So what do you see there? It's like
Speaker 1: whoever put those and overlight that on it? It's clearly
Speaker 1: becoming like a meme. It's something that really was felt.
Speaker 1: So Taylor Swift situation, I think just happened really at
Speaker 1: the exact right time. Your entire job of Celtic is
Speaker 1: you literally can't even do that in a competent manner.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot more that's been going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes over a decade. And if this is the
Speaker 1: one heartening area where we can say like something is changing,
Speaker 1: good reward politicians for this instead of like, you know,
Speaker 1: his January sixth to fist point good point. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: you can go the cynical place to ultimately take a
Speaker 1: stand up. Sometimes you can go viral whenever you do
Speaker 1: good things. So listen, it's a message of hope. I
Speaker 1: think Bush all right, Zager, what are you looking at it? Well.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that gas prices matter politically is
Speaker 1: the simple fact that most Americans just drive past it
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis. You drive one day,
Speaker 1: you see the price go up. You do it every
Speaker 1: single day for a month. You pull in, you see
Speaker 1: a bill higher. Then you just say, what the hell's
Speaker 1: going on in this country? It's a relative in a
Speaker 1: lastic product. Most of us needed on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to adjust to when you see even
Speaker 1: massive increases in price. But gas it's not the only
Speaker 1: product that's doing that, so is the grocery store. And
Speaker 1: while we focus a lot on the grocery store bills
Speaker 1: and the aggregate, let's zoom in on something that a
Speaker 1: lot of you have taken notice of. Eggs. Eggs are interesting.
Speaker 1: Most Americans buy them on a weekly basis. In fact,
Speaker 1: the average American consumes nearly three hundred eggs per year,
Speaker 1: and actually the amount of eggs that we eat has
Speaker 1: significantly gone up in the last few years to the
Speaker 1: highest level in over fifty years. Eggs are and I've
Speaker 1: always been an important part of the American diet, from
Speaker 1: its inclusion in baked goods to the quintessential breakfast, which
Speaker 1: is why the price increase over the last few years
Speaker 1: or so has been so devastating to a lot of
Speaker 1: households and shocking. As you can see in the chart
Speaker 1: before you, before the pandemic, eggs were roughly the same
Speaker 1: price as the nineteen eighties. There was minor price improvement
Speaker 1: in two minor price movement in twenty fifteen, but by
Speaker 1: and large it was like a reliable, staple, stable product.
Speaker 1: Relative productivity increases in the egg industy actually kept the
Speaker 1: price down over time. It's part of why Americans could
Speaker 1: be so reliant on eggs as a cheap way to
Speaker 1: feed their families. That is, of course, until twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and now twenty twenty three. As the chart shows, the
Speaker 1: national retail price of eggs is over four dollars a dozen,
Speaker 1: when just a year ago it was a buck seventy nine.
Speaker 1: What accounts for a two hundred percent increase in the
Speaker 1: price of eggs, Well, if you ask the egg industry,
Speaker 1: they will tell you bird flu. Seems simple though, right.
Speaker 1: A historic bird flu outbreak that is killing hens means
Speaker 1: less supply while demand is high hans the price. But
Speaker 1: is that everything that's going on? If you read deeper,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really appear to be the case. While bird
Speaker 1: flu is definitely bad, the total flock size of egg
Speaker 1: layers across the country has actually only gone down by
Speaker 1: four to five percent. A four to five percent reduction
Speaker 1: in the number of hens laying eggs does not even
Speaker 1: come close to explaining that price increase. In fact, the
Speaker 1: largest US producer of eggs, cow Maine, Foods is the
Speaker 1: perfect illustration. Last month, it reported its overall sales dollar
Speaker 1: volume rose to a nearly one billion dollars over the
Speaker 1: last quarter, helping it generate one hundred and ninety eight
Speaker 1: million dollars in profit. So how much profit did they
Speaker 1: make the year before, Well, it was a million dollars.
Speaker 1: So are you starting to get the picture? You have
Speaker 1: a two hundred percent increase in the price and then
Speaker 1: you have a two hundred percent increase in profit. Interesting,
Speaker 1: but it's bird flu that's the largest segg producer. Though
Speaker 1: to be fair, it hasn't been so easy for egg
Speaker 1: producers in the last year or so. The Russian invasion
Speaker 1: of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on the Russian economy
Speaker 1: have actually pushed grain prices to sky high levels, leading
Speaker 1: to an immense increase in the cost for egg producers
Speaker 1: to feed their hens. When you add on top the
Speaker 1: immense amount of petroleum product needed for transportation, farm equipment,
Speaker 1: natural gas, and all of that redirected into a refrigeration,
Speaker 1: and you get the result of what we have right now.
Speaker 1: Really bad news is that while prices appear to be
Speaker 1: receding from their December high, that's peak egg demand during
Speaker 1: the holidays, the price effect is actually still being felt
Speaker 1: heartily at the grocery store. Worse, we are beginning to
Speaker 1: see the same thing that we did with gas at
Speaker 1: five dollars a gallon. When gas got to the highest
Speaker 1: point in modern history, people just started driving a lot less,
Speaker 1: not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
Speaker 1: They stopped going out to eat, reduce their lifestyle. They
Speaker 1: were just more miserable reduce their savings. Same things happening
Speaker 1: right now with eggs. Putting aside the nineteen nineties idiotic
Speaker 1: thinking about cholesterol, eggs are actually very good for you.
Speaker 1: They're relatively fresh, natural and a complete protein filling. There's
Speaker 1: a reason that a lot of people eat them for breakfast.
Speaker 1: But as egg prices increase and people adjust, they're naturally
Speaker 1: going to reduce their consumption of food in favor of
Speaker 1: what is cheap. What's cheap you already know process fast food,
Speaker 1: anything instant. It's probably processed as hell, designed to be hyperpalatable,
Speaker 1: more likely to be less nutritious. What says cheap in
Speaker 1: bad times versus what gets expensive actually tells you a
Speaker 1: lot about society and what it's designed for. The simple
Speaker 1: truth appears to be. We are designed to make sure
Speaker 1: the lowest common denominator of price is the least nutritious.
Speaker 1: Thus the poorous and most vulnerable amongst us are pushed
Speaker 1: to process food. At the outbreak of COVID, I actually
Speaker 1: have a lot of hope come together, as we did
Speaker 1: in previous national crises, wake up to our lack of resilience,
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't make anything here anymore. Our
Speaker 1: hyper concentrated economy designed for just in time and not
Speaker 1: for the flourishing of our people. But we didn't wake
Speaker 1: up to any of that. We didn't get good leadership
Speaker 1: under Trump or Biden. We're just left to fend for ourselves.
Speaker 1: That's why people are so angry right now. They're not stupid.
Speaker 1: They know what's going on is not right. It's just
Speaker 1: that nobody is looking to actually do anything about it.
Speaker 1: It's really frustrating. That's the interesting thing about eggs. I
Speaker 1: love that statistic where they're liking and if you want
Speaker 1: to hear my reaction to Sagre's monologue, become a premium
Speaker 1: subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Chrystal, what do you
Speaker 1: take a look at? Well, guys, Joe Rogan recently floated
Speaker 1: a conspiracy for what is really behind the Biden document scandal.
Speaker 1: Take a listen. If I had to guess they're trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of him, Yeah, that my guess would
Speaker 1: be they're trying to get rid of him. If all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, his own aids are sending these instead
Speaker 1: of like taking these classified documents which you have located
Speaker 1: and go well, let's not do that again and fucking
Speaker 1: locking them up somewhere, his own aids self reporting. Dude,
Speaker 1: Come on, that sounds suss Well, no one self reported
Speaker 1: that fucking laptop. I know that was that was Russian disinformation.
Speaker 1: That reeks ovation. They got a hold of the social
Speaker 1: media companies and lied to them. They did whatever the
Speaker 1: fuck they could to keep that from happening. And even this,
Speaker 1: they discovered this before the midterms. Now, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that any of the people around Biden are actually clever
Speaker 1: cunning enough to pull off this elaborate plot, but Rogan
Speaker 1: is picking up on something that is a real dynamic here.
Speaker 1: Biden is not in a great position politically in general,
Speaker 1: and the continued fallout from this document scandal has been
Speaker 1: an absolute catastrophe for him. On a substantive level, there
Speaker 1: remain real questions about how the hell this all happened,
Speaker 1: the level of airlessness it implies, the real possibility of
Speaker 1: national security compromise, the arrogance of expecting a separate system
Speaker 1: of justice for yourself. On a political level, though, if anything,
Speaker 1: the situation is even worse. Why because Biden's document scandal
Speaker 1: hits him right where it matters the most, electability, and
Speaker 1: there were already some real warning signs for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in that buried department. Stretch your memory way back to
Speaker 1: the days of the twenty twenty Democratic primary. Pete and
Speaker 1: Kamala and Beto and John Delaney. They were all there.
Speaker 1: Bernie too, of course, but in the end one figure
Speaker 1: stood alone, Joseph Robinette Biden. It wasn't that voters were
Speaker 1: particularly enthusiastic about Biden's policy positions. They did have some
Speaker 1: warmth for him personally, but they preferred Bernie on any
Speaker 1: number of issues. Ultimately, though, they came to believe Biden
Speaker 1: was best on the issue that they put above all others, electability,
Speaker 1: And they were right, sort of, because he completed the mission.
Speaker 1: He did beat Donald Trump, although it was ultimately really
Speaker 1: too close for comfort. Now Biden is facing his reelect,
Speaker 1: and in some ways, up until recent that squishy pundit
Speaker 1: defined quality of electibility looked relatively intact strengthened even first
Speaker 1: and foremost, he is the incumbent president that typically does
Speaker 1: count for something. But he also defied history in the midterms,
Speaker 1: avoided the absolute democratic she lacking that looked imminent and
Speaker 1: which had become a sort of political custom for the
Speaker 1: party in the White House. Sure voters consistently told pollsters
Speaker 1: they would love some options other than Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Sure Democratic voters consistently said they did not
Speaker 1: actually even want Biden to run for president again. But
Speaker 1: in the wake of the midterms, it felt like those
Speaker 1: lingering doubts would surely be assuaged. But the truth is,
Speaker 1: although the midterms might have shut up the press and
Speaker 1: the Democratic politicians who distanced themselves from Biden leading up
Speaker 1: to November, they didn't actually quiet the public's doubts. For
Speaker 1: an incumbent president. Biden continues to be in a very
Speaker 1: weak position with regards to his own Democratic base. As
Speaker 1: a shocking example of how that weakness shows up in
Speaker 1: the numbers, there's a new poll that just came out
Speaker 1: testing a hypothetical twenty twenty four Democratic primary in the
Speaker 1: key state of New Hampshire. Overall, you're ready for this,
Speaker 1: sixty six percent of New Hampshire Democrats say they are
Speaker 1: opposed to Biden running for a second term. Plus and
Speaker 1: this makes me throw up a little bit in my
Speaker 1: mouth to say, but it's got Pete Boodhagic beating Biden
Speaker 1: by five points. What's even more notable is that Biden's
Speaker 1: actually lost ground in this pole since the last time
Speaker 1: they tested the water so that was back in July.
Speaker 1: Back then, Biden only trailed Pete by one Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: and Bernie Sanders they have also seen their support rise now.
Speaker 1: Biden's erosion in this poll is counter to the media
Speaker 1: narrative that the midterms basically shored up his standing and
Speaker 1: erased any lingering Democratic doubts. The result is even more
Speaker 1: worrying for Biden given what a colossal mess Pete has
Speaker 1: made lately with his unwillingness to hold the criminal airlines
Speaker 1: to account. They're losing to that guy. Now. It's true
Speaker 1: that New Hampshire is not a great state for Biden.
Speaker 1: He does better with black and Latino Democrats than with
Speaker 1: the overwhelmingly white population of New Hampshire, but he continues
Speaker 1: to show plenty of weakness at the national overall level. Two.
Speaker 1: In a new Emerson pole, a sizable minority forty two
Speaker 1: percent of Democrats say they want a different nominee. That
Speaker 1: same pole finds Biden losing a head to head matchup
Speaker 1: against DeSantis, but even more disturbing, it's got him trailing
Speaker 1: Trump by forty four to forty one. Now this comes
Speaker 1: on the heels of a separate Harvard Harris pole, which
Speaker 1: found Biden trailing Trump by five. Since Democratic voters selected
Speaker 1: Biden for his electability, it then makes sense that their
Speaker 1: continued support of him would rise and fall with their
Speaker 1: sense of whether or not he can win again, whether
Speaker 1: or not he is the best candidate to take on
Speaker 1: a Trump or a DeSantis, And they have some good
Speaker 1: reason at this point to be a little doubtful. For one,
Speaker 1: Biden ain't getting any younger or any more capable. His
Speaker 1: ability to do the job for another four year term
Speaker 1: has long been one of the top concerns of Democratic
Speaker 1: voters and general election voters alike, But now Biden is
Speaker 1: in a terrible position to make a strong case against Trump.
Speaker 1: It's going to be Hillary Clinton all over again. Try
Speaker 1: and attack Trump on his character but being two flowed,
Speaker 1: but personally for any of it to really land and stick,
Speaker 1: there's no way that Biden can use Trump's own document
Speaker 1: malfeasans against him now, Not to mention, the fact that
Speaker 1: Biden now Pence had been caught in very similar misdeeds
Speaker 1: makes it so much less likely that Trump is going
Speaker 1: to be indicted. Listen, not long ago, I thought that
Speaker 1: was really little likelihood that Trump could make it back
Speaker 1: into the White House again. Now I am not so
Speaker 1: sure whatsoever. Republicans did not stick the knife in and
Speaker 1: Biden's thrown him a massive lifeline. Biden's supposed delectability saved
Speaker 1: his political career in twenty twenty, but in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four he's going to have to sell something else to
Speaker 1: Democratic voters because far from a strong contender, he looks very,
Speaker 1: very vulnerable and there's a bit of an intrad democratic
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Ryan
Speaker 1: Cooper is The Prospect's managing editor and also author of
Speaker 1: how are you going to pay for that? Smart answers
Speaker 1: to the dumbest question in politics. Great to have you, Ryan, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Good to see you man, Glad to be here. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So you wrote an intelligent piece about this new idea
Speaker 1: that was proposed by Bill Cassidy and Angus King. Let's
Speaker 1: go and throw this up on the screen. The headline
Speaker 1: here from the Prospect is the smart bipartisan plan to
Speaker 1: shore up social Security. Bill Cassidy and Angus King propose
Speaker 1: an American Social Wealth Fund. So I would love it
Speaker 1: if you could just start with the very basics of
Speaker 1: what is a social wealth fund and why is this
Speaker 1: even being contemplated at this point at all. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: a social wealth fund is quite simple. It's just a
Speaker 1: government investment account. Basically, you know, the government finds a
Speaker 1: source of revenue from somewhere and they use it to
Speaker 1: buy buy up some kind of investment stocks, bonds, real estate.
Speaker 1: Alaska actually has one of these. They seeded it with
Speaker 1: their oil money, but it's not the They pay a
Speaker 1: dividend out of that to every Alaskan. The money doesn't
Speaker 1: come directly from the oil. It's important to understand it
Speaker 1: comes from the investment returns of the fund they have
Speaker 1: about I think the current total is about seventy five
Speaker 1: billion dollars right now. So anyway, it's it's as simple
Speaker 1: as that. It's just like any wealthy individual they has
Speaker 1: stuff like this. This will be just doing it on
Speaker 1: a government scale. And the proposal is to just use
Speaker 1: that as a source of revenue to basically bolster the
Speaker 1: finances of Social Security, find another revenue stream for it,
Speaker 1: as it were. And so they proposed to not take
Speaker 1: the existing Social Security Trust Fund, but to find some
Speaker 1: money from somewhere else, in this case by borrowing actually
Speaker 1: and invest it in stocks or I think that's mainly
Speaker 1: what they proposed. But you know, theoretically you could put
Speaker 1: it and whatever you wanted to, right So, Ryan, I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the arguments against this? I guess one of
Speaker 1: them would be, at least with Social Security, it's a guarantee,
Speaker 1: you know, stop s and P five hundred returns like whatever,
Speaker 1: thirteen percent on average, but sometimes it drops by twenty
Speaker 1: two percent and sometimes it got up by forty sight.
Speaker 1: What would you do? How do you mitigate the downside
Speaker 1: risk I guessed to taxpayer money and to the overall
Speaker 1: benefit well, there's a risk with everything, you know. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons we have this problem right now, which
Speaker 1: is that the Social Security Trust Fund is scheduled it'll
Speaker 1: they estimate it will be exhausted by about twenty thirty
Speaker 1: four or so, is because that the money has been
Speaker 1: invested in this hyper conservative account, which is all Treasury bonds.
Speaker 1: And as you say, you know, there's an enormous difference
Speaker 1: over the last like thirty years, is about an eight
Speaker 1: percentage point difference between the return on the S and
Speaker 1: P five hundred and the return on the United States debt.
Speaker 1: So you know there is a risk, but you know
Speaker 1: there's also a risk to not doing it, which is
Speaker 1: that you know you're leaving money on the table. And
Speaker 1: one of the nice things about a government is that
Speaker 1: you have a theoretically infinite time horizon, and so if
Speaker 1: there's a bad turn in the market, you can usually
Speaker 1: just wait it out. You know, this is this These
Speaker 1: are usually transitory things that only last a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and so you can you can basically sit on your hands.
Speaker 1: You could in the case of an you know, extreme event,
Speaker 1: just like bolster it up with some extra borrowed money
Speaker 1: or something like that. And just wait for things to
Speaker 1: turn around. So you know, it's not like a person
Speaker 1: where they you know, you absolutely must get your money
Speaker 1: out when you need it. You know, the government can
Speaker 1: shore things, you know, paper over the cracks for a
Speaker 1: long time. Got it. How do you like this idea
Speaker 1: as opposed to what Senator Sanders has long proposed and
Speaker 1: others And apparently Joe Manchin just came out in support
Speaker 1: of the idea of lifting the income cap. So right
Speaker 1: now there's a limit to the amount of wage income
Speaker 1: that is actually taxed to go into the Social Security
Speaker 1: Trust Fund. The idea is like, why are we giving
Speaker 1: this tax break to the wealthy? Basically that is undercutting
Speaker 1: the ability to make sure that social security benefits will
Speaker 1: be there for retirees into the future. What do you
Speaker 1: make of that proposal? Instead? I think that's great. You know.
Speaker 1: The reason I would say I mainly like this social
Speaker 1: security you know, investment scheme is that it puts the
Speaker 1: idea of a social wealth fund on the table, and
Speaker 1: I think if you're actually going to do it, you know,
Speaker 1: the way to do it would be like Alaska. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know, you're taking some of the capital income of
Speaker 1: the country, the income from investment returns. This is about
Speaker 1: thirty percent of national income goes overwhelmingly to the richest
Speaker 1: people in the country, and just like getting the government's
Speaker 1: fingers in that particular, you know high and you know,
Speaker 1: you could do it for social security, or you could
Speaker 1: do a universal basic dividend like my friend Matt Brunnick proposes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't think these necessarily trade off. I
Speaker 1: would also raise the get rid of that peril tax cap,
Speaker 1: and that would I think shore up the social securities
Speaker 1: finances indefinitely as well. So you know we could do
Speaker 1: we could do both and and in fact boost social
Speaker 1: security benefits higher than they are now, which is probably
Speaker 1: a good idea. Do we have any examples of other
Speaker 1: nations you know that are able to do I know
Speaker 1: Norway has a good one, but again that's kind of
Speaker 1: oil related. Is there anybody on par with us that
Speaker 1: has a similar financing scheme? Yeah, I mean Norway's the
Speaker 1: big one. They own like one point three percent of
Speaker 1: all the stocks in the world, which is crazy when
Speaker 1: you think about small the country is. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, petro states have them. Alaska. Alaska's
Speaker 1: probably the the single most relevant example I believe North
Speaker 1: Dakota has one as well. And as you say, you know,
Speaker 1: these these tend to come from from oil rents because
Speaker 1: the it's it's much more easily politically to do it
Speaker 1: that way, you know, because it's like the oil is not,
Speaker 1: you know, being created by a capitalist or something like
Speaker 1: that sort of you know, the heritage of everyone. But
Speaker 1: you know, the guy who set up Alaska's dividend thing,
Speaker 1: he tried that multiple times with different sources. He wanted
Speaker 1: to do it with fish taxes, and then he wanted
Speaker 1: to do it just with tax money. And there's no
Speaker 1: reason why you couldn't just use regular government money, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that you know that buy is just as
Speaker 1: good as anything else. You know, it's just a question
Speaker 1: of getting the politics squared away. And you know, eight
Speaker 1: percentage points of investment return is is really that's a
Speaker 1: that's a huge you know, imagine being a Wall Street
Speaker 1: trad and you're looking at something like that. Just being
Speaker 1: able to borrow at these rock bottom prices and invest
Speaker 1: in the market. I mean, you know, it's a total
Speaker 1: no brainer. Yeah, good point. Last question to you, Ryan.
Speaker 1: Part of why there's all this discussion now of social
Speaker 1: security and Medicare is because you have some in the
Speaker 1: Republican caucus who are once again back to floating cuts
Speaker 1: to quote unquote entitlement programs. Joe Biden seems a newly
Speaker 1: reformed man, but he has in the past been open
Speaker 1: to these cuts as well, including during the Obama administration
Speaker 1: when they floated insanely this grind bargain, which the only
Speaker 1: reason we didn't end up with it is basically because
Speaker 1: the Tea Party at the time was like, no, this
Speaker 1: doesn't even go far enough. So, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this debt sealing situation coming up where the Republicans are
Speaker 1: very committed to holding the country hostage in order to
Speaker 1: extract some sort of spending cuts, maybe with entitledment spending
Speaker 1: quote unquote, maybe in some other area. What is your
Speaker 1: level of confidence in the ability of this administration, led
Speaker 1: by Joe Biden, to sort of hold firm to their
Speaker 1: current position that we are not going to negotiate on
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling whatsoever. I am semi confident. You know,
Speaker 1: Biden's a party guy at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and you know the party has totally come away from
Speaker 1: the position of Obama in twenty eleven, when as you say,
Speaker 1: he was putting like eight hundred billion dollars in Social
Speaker 1: Security and Medicare cuts on the table, you know, to
Speaker 1: give to the to the Tea Party. By twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Obama was proposing an increase in Social Security benefits, you know,
Speaker 1: pressed by Elizabeth Warren and other folks at Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: as well. The other thing about Joe Biden, though, is
Speaker 1: he he tends to be a little bit of a
Speaker 1: flap jaw who just sort of say stuff without you know,
Speaker 1: really thinking it through. And I've heard from people inside
Speaker 1: the Congressional you know, staffers on the Hill are who
Speaker 1: are afraid that he'll just get to talking with the
Speaker 1: Republicans just randomly proposed some like big bargain. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, social Security and Medicare
Speaker 1: are so popular, you know, Pupil from a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago said seventy four percent of Americans do not
Speaker 1: want social Security benefits to be cut. I think Biden
Speaker 1: is a savvy enough politician that he knows that that
Speaker 1: would be horribly unpopular and it would be a terrible
Speaker 1: precedent to give the Republicans anything in return for like
Speaker 1: holding the Global economy hostage, so you know, fingers crossed basically. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: especially when you have Trump actually already out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was one of the ways he broke rents with
Speaker 1: Republican orthodoxy in twenty sixteen, and he's already come out
Speaker 1: and said you should not put penty of cuts from
Speaker 1: Social Security Medicare on the table. So it'd be terrible
Speaker 1: position for Biden to be in going into reelective. He
Speaker 1: is up against Trump again to be to let Trump
Speaker 1: get to the left of you on those issues. Thank
Speaker 1: you for breaking all of this Downforce. We really appreciate Ryan.
Speaker 1: Thank you Ryan by pleasure. Absolutely, thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for watching. Really appreciate it was man, it was
Speaker 1: fun show today. It was a long show. That's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about. It always happens, and whenever we
Speaker 1: got to break stuff down, we got breaking news all
Speaker 1: of that. I hope you guys do it. Enjoyed the
Speaker 1: counterpoints yesterday, We certainly did. They did a phenomenal job.
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