Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning,
Speaker 3: Welcome to Counterpoints everybody. Emily, how you doing good?
Speaker 4: I like how you used your hands. If you're listening
Speaker 4: to this, you really missed out on some forceful gesticulation, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Trying to be excited. Yeah, well it's worth Everyboddy. So
Speaker 1: bizarrely we have Matt Walsh later in the show.
Speaker 4: Not so bizarre.
Speaker 3: Who's the Daily Wire guy? Right?
Speaker 1: He has a movie out following up on his question
Speaker 1: about what is a woman?
Speaker 3: What is a woman?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: He's asking, am I a rasis?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So we'll get the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: I don't have the whole right wing ecosystem mapped out,
Speaker 1: are you guys, friends, frenemies?
Speaker 3: What's the situation as we go in here?
Speaker 4: You know, I've interviewed him several time. I'm always fairly friendly.
Speaker 4: You know, he's probably further to the right than I am,
Speaker 4: all right way, so it'll be interesting. But he's very
Speaker 4: I mean, this is no surprise, but he's very, very,
Speaker 4: very popular with a big swath of people on the right,
Speaker 4: especially younger people on the right. So it kind of
Speaker 4: makes sense that the movie's doing pretty well. And apart
Speaker 4: from that, you and I can get into how we
Speaker 4: reacted to the movie. We'll save that. We'll save that
Speaker 4: till the end of the show.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, And we're also going to I also have
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve is meeting at two o'clock today, so
Speaker 1: we're not going to have a segment on that. They're
Speaker 1: going to announce whether or not they're going to be
Speaker 1: cutting rates a quarter percent or half a percent. That
Speaker 1: seems to be what people are guessing if they if
Speaker 1: they go a half percent, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: signal that they think the economy is a little bit
Speaker 1: more sluggish than if they go with a quarter percent.
Speaker 1: I'm putting my money on half. I'm going with a
Speaker 1: half point rate cut. I haven't actually put real money
Speaker 1: in that, but.
Speaker 3: Not until they cut the road today at.
Speaker 1: The near stock change and elsewhere, people just be gambling
Speaker 1: about whether it's going to be a quarter or a
Speaker 1: half the entire time.
Speaker 3: Where's your money?
Speaker 4: I don't know it's exactly and I think who knows
Speaker 4: is a good is as good as a guest as
Speaker 4: you can get.
Speaker 1: Right now, we also have over at drop site, based
Speaker 1: on a ream of new documents that we got out
Speaker 1: of Pakistan, a wild story that Pakistan has agreed to
Speaker 1: give China access to a naval base in the port
Speaker 1: of Guadar, which is a key demand that China has
Speaker 1: been making of Pakistan for many years now and is
Speaker 1: sure to raise the hackles of the United States.
Speaker 3: And it is.
Speaker 1: Another foreign policy failure on the part of the US
Speaker 1: because we have been we helped overthrow their last government,
Speaker 1: installed what is supposed to be appliant US government that
Speaker 1: has undermined democracy there, US friendly government there, and instead
Speaker 1: it's winding up.
Speaker 3: They're pushing them closer to China. Crazy how that works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Actually, I have
Speaker 4: a lot of questions for you based on that, and Ryan,
Speaker 4: we should probably start with the biggest news of the day,
Speaker 4: which is developments from the pager attack. That's probably the
Speaker 4: best way to put it. Sounds bizarre if you haven't
Speaker 4: been following the news, it sounds incomprehensible. But we can
Speaker 4: start looking at if you're watching this, we can start
Speaker 4: rolling footage. What are we looking at here, Ryan, So.
Speaker 1: What you saw there is what is most likely a
Speaker 1: Hesbela operative or employee who had a pager spontaneous, not spontaneously,
Speaker 1: but just suddenly explode and it sent chaos all through Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and there were reports of some explosions in Syria as well.
Speaker 1: So basically what happened here is that in the spring,
Speaker 1: Israel killed the chief of staff, Hesbela's chief of staff,
Speaker 1: and Nostralla, the leader of Hesbela, sent out a message
Speaker 1: saying cell phones. You guys are using your cell phones
Speaker 1: in a sloppy opsec manner and they have become two
Speaker 1: such of a risk.
Speaker 3: Stop with the cell phones.
Speaker 1: We need to go back to the basics, and we
Speaker 1: need to use handwritten notes, we need to use couriers,
Speaker 1: we need to use pagers. At around that time, and
Speaker 1: this is according to a lot of the reporting that's
Speaker 1: coming out of the region, and according to New York Times.
Speaker 1: They used a Taiwanese company for this. Hesbila ordered more
Speaker 1: than three thousand pagers to implement this new op SECT policy.
Speaker 1: The biggest probably not because you know, maybe hospitals or
Speaker 1: order well. I imagine that pages are ordered in bulk because
Speaker 1: because individual consumers aren't really ordering pagers anymore. If you're
Speaker 1: ordering them, it's because you have a system wide situation,
Speaker 1: you're going to force people to use them. And so
Speaker 1: somehow Israel got inside the supply chain from Taiwan into Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and it appears that they were able to install some
Speaker 1: small amount of explosive and they were able to also
Speaker 1: then you know, tamper with the pagers such that they
Speaker 1: could remotely trigger them. Initially, there was some thought that
Speaker 1: they had sent in malware that had raised the temperature
Speaker 1: of the lithium batteries until they exploded. But if you
Speaker 1: watch that clip again, you'll you'll see just a sudden explosion.
Speaker 1: And if it were just a battery heating up, you
Speaker 1: would first you would see or first you would feel
Speaker 1: it getting very hot. Sure, and some of them they
Speaker 1: would just smoke, because that's how these crazy malfunctioning cell
Speaker 1: phones blow up. They smoke for a while and then
Speaker 1: they blow up. These boom just blew up. What the
Speaker 1: reporting also says, and this is extra diabolical, is that
Speaker 1: the message had the pagers pinging like making a noise,
Speaker 1: you know, betpep, for a significant amount of time before
Speaker 1: they exploded, so that the people thought that there was
Speaker 1: a message from Hesbolo leadership. And so you're seeing an
Speaker 1: enormous number of injuries, more than three thousand so far,
Speaker 1: including I believe it was eleven dead at this point,
Speaker 1: including two children, because if this pager were in my house,
Speaker 1: for instance, and I was a HESBLO operative, my kids
Speaker 1: might be playing with it.
Speaker 4: Well, you can see actually if we can even roll
Speaker 4: a one again, if you're looking at it, this is
Speaker 4: they're surrounded at a market in this case, and you
Speaker 4: can see two little girls right there. There's two little
Speaker 4: girls on the other side of the fruit carts. So
Speaker 4: there are a lot of details about exactly how this
Speaker 4: was initiated and with what potential precautions. Who knows. Doesn't
Speaker 4: look like obviously when you see two little girls standing
Speaker 4: around across from the pager explodes so far, it seems preological.
Speaker 4: You can understand how children were affected by this. Now
Speaker 4: ran the Taiwanese company.
Speaker 3: Oh but just the finishings.
Speaker 1: That's why there's so many so many people went blind
Speaker 1: and so many people lost their hands because it appears
Speaker 1: that they were like looking at it like what's and
Speaker 1: they're like, what's wrong with this?
Speaker 3: And then it blows.
Speaker 4: Now the Taiwanese company, to your point about the supply chain,
Speaker 4: is saying, actually that they made a deal with the
Speaker 4: Hungarian company that they would use the Hungarian company would
Speaker 4: just use the Taiwanese companies branding. But they were in
Speaker 4: charge of these pagers and they're saying these are not
Speaker 4: our pagers. The Taiwanese company is saying these are not
Speaker 4: our pagers. These are in fact from Hungary.
Speaker 3: If you're the Taiwanese company, yeah.
Speaker 4: Well now we're the Hungarian company. But that does at
Speaker 4: a wrinkle to how this might have been pulled off
Speaker 4: to your point about infiltration of the supply chain, right, and.
Speaker 1: So what we have also learned is that the scheme
Speaker 1: was discovered this week or within the last week. A
Speaker 1: Hesbala operative became suspicious about the pagers and was planning
Speaker 1: to alert leadership about them. He was killed the reporting
Speaker 1: doesn't That reporting suggests that he was killed, was asassinated
Speaker 1: by Israel to stop him from telling the leadership. Then
Speaker 1: a second person found out about it and was and
Speaker 1: was planning also to tell leadership, and the plan would
Speaker 1: have been foiled at that point. And so that's when
Speaker 1: Israeli military leadership faced a dilemma. And it's a kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting philosophical question here, because all of the
Speaker 1: brutality that you see in war gets its just cause
Speaker 1: by the fact that it's happening, you know, within war,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to be aimed at combatants what happens,
Speaker 1: so so all right, so that's that's the that's the
Speaker 1: construct for this. This now is is an unprecedented attack,
Speaker 1: like we've never seen anything like this. Everybody now who
Speaker 1: owns a phone or a pager is wondering like, could
Speaker 1: this could this thing be remotely detonated against me for
Speaker 1: some reason?
Speaker 3: So Israel faced this question.
Speaker 1: Okay, the the pager plan was part of an invasion plan,
Speaker 1: like that's what the reporting says that the idea was,
Speaker 1: as you're launching the offensive, you blow up the communication
Speaker 1: system of Hesbola and at the same time Maime and
Speaker 1: incapacitate a massive portion of the operatives that that's and
Speaker 1: as a result, you then are more successful in your operation.
Speaker 1: Israel had was not ready to launch an operation or
Speaker 1: had decided for whatever reason, was not going to launch
Speaker 1: an operation. So their choice then is we allow this
Speaker 1: thing to be rolled up and discovered and we just
Speaker 1: you know, wasted this capacity that we.
Speaker 4: Had an enormous operation clearly no matter what I mean
Speaker 4: to be able to have this tack right.
Speaker 1: Or or the other choice is we pressed a button
Speaker 1: and we maim, you know, three thousand plus people, you know,
Speaker 1: kill You're definitely gonna kill some children and some innocent people,
Speaker 1: like there's just no question about it, because they're going
Speaker 1: to be near the pagers, but not for the operational
Speaker 1: value related to your invasion and so but it obviously
Speaker 1: would be a blow to Hesbela. But you're only in
Speaker 1: a kind of soft war with Hesbela. You're not in
Speaker 1: a hot, open war with Hesbela. And facing that choice
Speaker 1: of stepping back, not launching, not not pressing the button
Speaker 1: because it's not part of your operation, and maiming the
Speaker 1: three thousand plus people, they decided we're just gonna We're
Speaker 1: just gonna take the casualties, even if it's not part
Speaker 1: of any even I it's not part of our strategy,
Speaker 1: because because now it's just so, it's it.
Speaker 3: Now, it's just well, we.
Speaker 1: Could really hurt three thousand people or we could not,
Speaker 1: and we're going to go with we could. And I
Speaker 1: think what that shows is that there's really very very
Speaker 1: little contemplation about the idea of just coexisting. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because that's the other thing you could do, is you
Speaker 1: could say, Okay, you know what, we're actually going to
Speaker 1: sign the ceasefire deal, at which point Hesbelus stops launching
Speaker 1: its rockets. Hesbela has Hesbella has said that they will
Speaker 1: stop launching rockets if there's a cease fire deal reached.
Speaker 1: When there was a week long cease fire in November
Speaker 1: to exchange hostages, all the rockets from hesbel to stop,
Speaker 1: all the rocks from the Hohoties, stopped, all the rockets
Speaker 1: from the Syria and Irocky militias that are proxies of Iran.
Speaker 1: They all stopped it, which shows that like coexistence and
Speaker 1: peaces like it is possible, and it has to be possible.
Speaker 1: We live on this planet together, and I think what
Speaker 1: it showed, what this show is that they're like, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's just not and maybe that's maybe their calculation
Speaker 1: is correct. Co existence isn't possible, but then what a
Speaker 1: bleak world? So okay, so your country then is just
Speaker 1: going to exist on endless war against all of its
Speaker 1: neighbors forever, Like that's really your plan.
Speaker 3: It's paying for.
Speaker 4: That definitely, and it's you know, I take the cynical
Speaker 4: perspective on that. What do you make of So the
Speaker 4: Iranian ambassad Elebanon, according to reports, had a pager and
Speaker 4: was he lost one eye severely injured his other eye.
Speaker 4: That's quite interesting that the Iranian I mean, a lot
Speaker 4: of people would say that, of course the Iranian ambassador
Speaker 4: Lebanon had one of these pagers. But the geopolitical ripple
Speaker 4: effect of this, I mean, obviously, on the one hand,
Speaker 4: you know, it's hard to have a more targeted approach
Speaker 4: than literally the pager in someone's pocket. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: we know that you know, it's going to explode in
Speaker 4: a way that doesn't just affect that person, and if
Speaker 4: it's not in their pocket and their kids are playing
Speaker 4: with the obviously there are consequences that are beyond just
Speaker 4: taking out single individuals, but also just geopolitically, you know,
Speaker 4: they wipe out a huge amount of operatives. Why is
Speaker 4: or what what happens when you have the Iranian ambassador
Speaker 4: implicated in the amount of people who were taken out.
Speaker 3: Well, two things there.
Speaker 1: One is so it reminded me of Jeremy Skhal's interview
Speaker 1: with the second in command of p I J and
Speaker 1: he asked me, you know, he said, you know, people
Speaker 1: accuse you of being supported by Iran, right, and the
Speaker 1: guy said, yeah, of course, yeah, we're allies with Iran,
Speaker 1: like so, yeah, they support our cause.
Speaker 3: We appreciate that they support our cause.
Speaker 4: Right, Why would we not accept their supports that's from our.
Speaker 1: Perspective, that's great, and so yeah, Iran sports Hesbla. Iran's
Speaker 1: gonna therefore coordinate with Hesbelah. It is interesting that Iran
Speaker 1: hasn't even yet responded to the last provocation, right, the
Speaker 1: attack the assassination of Hondia outside of Tehran, And now.
Speaker 3: There's another one.
Speaker 1: And it is getting to a point where a lot
Speaker 1: of Palestinians and supporters of Palestine around the world are
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, Iran actually is apable. They don't
Speaker 1: think anymore of launching any kind of serious attack.
Speaker 3: That maybe that that.
Speaker 1: Very slow seventy two hour you know, drone attack that
Speaker 1: they launched in response to whatever previous provocation, Maybe that's
Speaker 1: what they've got.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they weren't holding back, and now Hesbola, you know,
Speaker 1: seems to be seriously weakened. Like I don't know how
Speaker 1: many operatives they have, and you can always recruit more.
Speaker 1: But it's also a blow to their communication system because
Speaker 1: now what they do I mean, because they can go
Speaker 1: back to pagers, but now they're going to be you know,
Speaker 1: that'd be very careful about where they get their pagers from. Right,
Speaker 1: if they go back to phones, then that helps Israel,
Speaker 1: with its cyber technology, get closer to you know, more
Speaker 1: assassinations across the board. They've been assassinating Hasibel of leaders
Speaker 1: left and right. And there was a book a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago that we're helping turn into a podcast
Speaker 1: drops I called Palestine Laboratory, which is about how Israel's
Speaker 1: weapons industry is one of the world's most sophisticated because,
Speaker 1: as Israel puts it, they get to use the occupied
Speaker 1: territories as a laboratory for their weapons where they are
Speaker 1: using experimental weapons on civilian populations and also on militant
Speaker 1: groups and developing better weapons technologies as a result. And
Speaker 1: this is an interesting example of that. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really interesting We haven't seen the last of this.
Speaker 4: Probably we can put the next element up on the screen,
Speaker 4: just breaking down the various other aspects here. So Hasbla
Speaker 4: is vowing to respond, obviously at this point, so Ran,
Speaker 4: one of my questions for you is to the point
Speaker 4: about Iran not having responded to the assassination of Hanea
Speaker 4: outside Taran. Yet, what potentially could a response from Hasbela
Speaker 4: look like? What might be what should people perhaps expect.
Speaker 1: I mean, they supposedly have some significant kind of hypersonic
Speaker 1: missile technology that they've been saving, like, so everybody's been
Speaker 1: The thinking is that everybody's been holding back a little
Speaker 1: bit mm hmmm, because a they don't want a regional
Speaker 1: war and b they want to be they want to
Speaker 1: have their stockpiles if they do have a regional war.
Speaker 1: The Huthis sent a hypersonic missile into Tel Aviv several
Speaker 1: days ago, which caused significant damage, and they claimed that
Speaker 1: they're going to be sending dozens more in the coming
Speaker 1: days and.
Speaker 4: In actually we should put a three up. Four Israeli
Speaker 4: soldiers were killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters just
Speaker 4: yesterday as well, So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, including I believe, and five others wounded three three
Speaker 1: quite seriously as well as as well as another Israeli
Speaker 1: officer seriously wounded in a separate clash in Rafice. So this,
Speaker 1: this continues to go on. This uh, you know this
Speaker 1: appears too. This is one of the more significant you know,
Speaker 1: casual events for the IDF, you know, for four deaths
Speaker 1: and three serious injuries at a time in a in
Speaker 1: an ambush, which you know, shows that despite the incredible
Speaker 1: military superiority in eleven months in having troops amidst a
Speaker 1: population of one point five to two million people who
Speaker 1: are hostile to them, long term is going to continue
Speaker 1: to be extraordinarily difficult and lead to these types of casualties.
Speaker 4: And that brings us to the final element here. This
Speaker 4: is from drop site actually about the they'll just read
Speaker 4: the headline, you guys, a health numbers show. Israel kills
Speaker 4: two babies every day with no end in sight. Also,
Speaker 4: if you're just listening to this, the header photo on
Speaker 4: this Rhin is one.
Speaker 3: Of those mass graves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so Shreve hebdel Caduce, correspondent for drop site.
Speaker 3: You may have seen.
Speaker 1: He obtained the Health Ministry's latest data over the weekend
Speaker 1: and we converted it into a downloadable PDF form and
Speaker 1: a CSV that people can check out. Because it has
Speaker 1: of the forty thousand plus casualties, it has about thirty
Speaker 1: four thousand of them that have names and IDs and
Speaker 1: ages and birth dates and gender to them. There are
Speaker 1: obviously going to be some mistakes. People can go sift
Speaker 1: through it and might find duplicates here or there. There
Speaker 1: have been mistakes discovered in previous Ministry of Health data
Speaker 1: that they've put out, but they've been in the range
Speaker 1: of just a handful of names been mistaken. They then
Speaker 1: update and fixed that data. Kind of shocking that they're
Speaker 1: still able to even produce a document of this length
Speaker 1: and this this detail. That's a good point at this point, editions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's also just a just devastating indictment of what's
Speaker 1: been going on. It's the first I think fourteen pages
Speaker 1: are children under one.
Speaker 3: It just goes on and on and on and.
Speaker 4: On, Like the conflict itself, which to the point that
Speaker 4: this brings us to, which is there's really no end
Speaker 4: in sight.
Speaker 3: There seems to be nobody saying like, well, what if
Speaker 3: we don't do this, what if we if we just
Speaker 3: coexist here?
Speaker 1: Well, seems I think there is there is a deal.
Speaker 3: There is a deal to be had.
Speaker 1: Like Iran Lebanon the malicious who thies like they all
Speaker 1: have better things to do, like they all have domestic
Speaker 1: problems to deal with mm hm, Israel has better things
Speaker 1: to do, But there's just carry out a genocide inside
Speaker 1: it's occupied territories.
Speaker 4: I don't remember if this was one of in one
Speaker 4: of Jeremy Scale's interviews, but even the persistent point that
Speaker 4: people are making, you know, whether it's from Israel or
Speaker 4: from Postinians or Hamas leaders, is what's the point of
Speaker 4: a so called ceasefire when we know it's going to
Speaker 4: happen a month later, two months later, six months later,
Speaker 4: what's the point? And there's just no trust that the
Speaker 4: other side is not going to egregiously violate it under
Speaker 4: the auspices that something changed, even if those aren't legitimate.
Speaker 4: And that's basically what's been going on for half a century.
Speaker 1: Yes, and while while Hania was negotiating the ceasefire and
Speaker 1: then was assassinated.
Speaker 3: You know, he was then replaced as.
Speaker 1: The top leader of AMAS with yasm War Now who
Speaker 1: recently put out a statement saying that Okay, if there's
Speaker 1: not going to be a ceasefire, we the Hohu thies
Speaker 1: has Bela, the the Iraqi militias, We're going to continue
Speaker 1: fighting and we're going to do it until we've driven
Speaker 1: Israel completely out of the region, which you know that
Speaker 1: the Hamas Charters supports a two state solution like that
Speaker 1: they have they have.
Speaker 3: Been pressured into agreeing to that situation.
Speaker 1: Now under this conflict, they're saying, you know what, all right,
Speaker 1: if there's no seasfire, we're just of it's going to
Speaker 1: be a war of attrition.
Speaker 3: That there are.
Speaker 1: Their belief, or their stated belief at least, is that
Speaker 1: because so many Israelis have other passports, they can because
Speaker 1: they can move to the United States, they can move
Speaker 1: to Europe, that as the economy collapses and endless war continues,
Speaker 1: that those citizens are going to choose at that point
Speaker 1: to move to those safer places. Whereas the Palestinians in
Speaker 1: the West Bengaza don't really don'tly even have that option,
Speaker 1: Like they can't leave. You can, if you raise enough
Speaker 1: money on go fundme or have enough support somewhere potentially.
Speaker 3: Get to Egypt and then you can fight to go
Speaker 3: somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But it's a massive uphill climb for that to happen.
Speaker 1: Whereas from their perspective, all in Israeli has to do
Speaker 1: is just go to the airport and fly to where
Speaker 1: they have citizenship, which goes to their kind of fundamental
Speaker 1: ideological belief that half the countries aren't aren't legitimately native
Speaker 1: to the region anyway. And that's that's what you're seeing
Speaker 1: in that, in that thought that they where they believe
Speaker 1: they can win a war of attrition because they don't
Speaker 1: have anywhere to go, right. I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: right or not, but it's not pretty.
Speaker 4: In the context of the story that we just had
Speaker 4: up on the screen. Two babies every day.
Speaker 3: Every Yeah.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, here in the United States, jd Vance media critic,
Speaker 4: I should say. Jdvance put his media critic cat on
Speaker 4: yesterday in Sparta at an event in Sparta, Michigan, where
Speaker 4: the fallout from the cats and Dog meme cycle continues
Speaker 4: on the campaign trail. Let's go ahead and roll this
Speaker 4: clip of Vance criticizing media coverage of bomb threats that
Speaker 4: have come into various places in Springfield, Ohio. Since this
Speaker 4: really took off just in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Here's what JD. Vance had to say.
Speaker 6: A lot of people who pretend to be fair journalists,
Speaker 6: you know what they've been saying for the last few days.
Speaker 6: Springfield has been experiencing an unbelievable number, something like thirty
Speaker 6: five forty bomb threats in Springfield and just the last
Speaker 6: and just the last few days. And you know what,
Speaker 6: the governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said every
Speaker 6: single one of those bomb threats was a hoax and
Speaker 6: all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries. So
Speaker 6: the American media for three days has been lying and
Speaker 6: saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats,
Speaker 6: when in reality, the American media has been wandering foreign disinformation.
Speaker 6: It is disgusting, and every single one of them owes
Speaker 6: the residents of Springfield and apology.
Speaker 4: All right. Well, David from weighed in on this, and JD.
Speaker 4: Vancen responded to David from. Jadvance has been very online
Speaker 4: as of late to say the least, at least for
Speaker 4: a non Trump presidential Canada, that is to say, someone
Speaker 4: who is not Donald Trump himself. David Frum said, the
Speaker 4: difference the upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are
Speaker 4: not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance
Speaker 4: are true. Trump really did mount a violet coup against
Speaker 4: the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes
Speaker 4: in office, including from foreign governments, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: And Advance really did and by his own admission, intentionally
Speaker 4: quote creates stories for political advantage that put residents of
Speaker 4: his state at risk of physical harm. JD responded, I'd
Speaker 4: say the most important difference is that people on your
Speaker 4: team tried to kill Donald Trump twice. Ryan, What do
Speaker 4: you make of that back and forth? And not just
Speaker 4: JD versus David from but also JD versus the media
Speaker 4: rit large.
Speaker 3: What about either of those shooters?
Speaker 1: I'd say, what is makes some part of quote unquote
Speaker 1: David Frum's team? Also what is David who's David Frum's
Speaker 1: team Ukraine?
Speaker 4: So there might be something to that one. In the
Speaker 4: very very like zoomed out Advance an advantage point that
Speaker 4: this was this suspect has been obviously a Stager and
Speaker 4: Crystal have been covering the Ukraine nut Ukraine nut right,
Speaker 4: and a sort of the most intense version of a
Speaker 4: hawk that you could find on Ukraine, on China. I
Speaker 4: guess roughly aligned with David Frump probably on those two
Speaker 4: policies in the abstry.
Speaker 1: Maybe from needs to eat that one. The other guy,
Speaker 1: I don't know, not so sure about the other guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we still have no idea, which is strange in
Speaker 4: and of itself.
Speaker 3: But it does seem kind of funny that jd.
Speaker 1: Vance wants you know, accurate, you know, once you know,
Speaker 1: precision and accuracy in the reporting on the bomb threats
Speaker 1: and wants context as well. When his original story that
Speaker 1: he was telling which led to these bomb threats led
Speaker 1: to them, whether or not they were pranksters from the
Speaker 1: little Russian troll Army or whatever he's suggesting, it is, okay,
Speaker 1: that's funny by the bomb threats, right, Can we can
Speaker 1: we acknowledge that that's funny that he's saying it's like
Speaker 1: foreign interference?
Speaker 3: Yes in the election? Yes, okay, that's funny. Yes, that
Speaker 3: is funny.
Speaker 1: They did, they were triggered by the stories that he
Speaker 1: was telling. You know, he has said, look, I created
Speaker 1: this story. Now what he'll say is what I mean
Speaker 1: by creating it is I repeated the story some stories
Speaker 1: that I had heard from constituents.
Speaker 4: Right he was in context. That was one of the
Speaker 4: annoying things about the David Frum tweet is that he
Speaker 4: did that that legitimately if you watch that entire interview
Speaker 4: in context, he said that so poorly. I mean, just
Speaker 4: from a political standpoint, his com staffers were probably like
Speaker 4: groaning when they heard that. But in the larger context,
Speaker 4: he was saying, this is not a fabrication because my
Speaker 4: constituents have been coming to me for months, blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: So even if that, whether or not that's true, it's
Speaker 4: not actually what he was saying.
Speaker 1: Right, But the claims don't seem to be standing up
Speaker 1: like they have found no missing cats and dogs. The
Speaker 1: original store of that claim has apologized for circulating a
Speaker 1: bum rumor, and she should. It's sad that she has
Speaker 1: to apologize nationally for.
Speaker 4: She's posted something on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Posted something on Facebook that she heard from her daughter,
Speaker 1: who heard it from a cousin who heard it from
Speaker 1: a friend. Like not a good source, like, not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you would base a national story around.
Speaker 1: The whole twenty thousand number is also looks rather flimsy.
Speaker 4: Some of the New York Times.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, no.
Speaker 4: But that's what I'm saying. That's why I think it's
Speaker 4: that's why I think it's taken off.
Speaker 3: It's in the New York Times, well, right, but.
Speaker 4: The Times reported it, which is where a lot of
Speaker 4: people source the number too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the town manager, the mayor had
Speaker 1: said it like a year ago or something like that.
Speaker 3: They had My rule of.
Speaker 1: Thumb is be very skeptical of a nice round numbers,
Speaker 1: whether it comes to, you know, no contest bidding, like
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars from McKenzie as Matt Stoller reported, fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. Okay, what are you gonna do with that?
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. It's just two million bucks. We'll do
Speaker 1: something with it. Whenever somebody says another twenty thousand, the
Speaker 1: numbers twenty thousand, it's like, I'm not so sure that's
Speaker 1: actually based on anything other than let's let's put a
Speaker 1: number out there that is large enough to convey or
Speaker 1: the concern that we have for the growth in the
Speaker 1: population turned out, you know, they're not here illegally.
Speaker 3: That's that's complicated.
Speaker 4: Well and interesting.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, And so Jayvan's on the one hand, wants
Speaker 1: wants his bigger truth to withstand the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of what's underneath it isn't actually true.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to the.
Speaker 1: Bomb threats, he wants, you know, all of the motivations
Speaker 1: checked before people report that there was a bomb threat.
Speaker 1: If you're walking out of your school because the Russians
Speaker 1: called one in or because it was like a maga, dude,
Speaker 1: you're walking out of the school.
Speaker 3: Either way.
Speaker 4: I will say a lot of the media coverage the
Speaker 4: did implicitly or explicitly blame the bomb threats on jd
Speaker 4: Vance And that can that's an argument that can absolutely
Speaker 4: be made.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Jd Vance and Donald Trump were the ones.
Speaker 3: That, however, wouldn't be doing it without right.
Speaker 4: But here's where I think it gets especially interesting. And
Speaker 4: I'm just thinking about this from perspective obviously of a conservative.
Speaker 4: It's like Springfield, Ohio, the New York Timestead of follow
Speaker 4: up here. Estimates range between twelve thousand and twenty thousand.
Speaker 4: To your point, twelve thousand is a significantly different number
Speaker 4: than twenty thousand, although still a very significant number for
Speaker 4: the size of Springfield.
Speaker 3: There's a serious population there patients.
Speaker 4: Right yeah, according to city officials who have spoken with
Speaker 4: The Times, and those estments are based on data from
Speaker 4: the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Springfield's public schools, healthcare providers,
Speaker 4: and social service agencies. So in the big picture, there's
Speaker 4: obviously a story here of strain and social on a
Speaker 4: social and economic level from this influx of migrants. And
Speaker 4: that's a story that can be glass empty or goss
Speaker 4: half full, depending on how you look at it. You
Speaker 4: could say, these strains are what we've always done in
Speaker 4: America as we accommodate new populations who come in and
Speaker 4: do great jobs in the factories and build theirs way
Speaker 4: into middle class lives. Or you could say these are
Speaker 4: tax payers who are having trouble with overcrowding in schools
Speaker 4: and housing costs going up, and they have all of these,
Speaker 4: like perfectly well intentioned objections to what's happened over the
Speaker 4: course of the Biden Harrison administration. So you can see
Speaker 4: that from different perspectives no matter what, but one thing
Speaker 4: is true, and that's Basically, the press didn't talk about
Speaker 4: this story until JD. Vance and Donald Trump started talking
Speaker 4: about it in outrageous these outrageous, outrageous contexts. And one
Speaker 4: thing to the story that I would say is not
Speaker 4: in defense of politicians lying hard like, of course not.
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, the sort of legacy press
Speaker 4: does not do itself any favors by ignoring some of
Speaker 4: these bigger plot lines for ideological reasons, because that's what
Speaker 4: like things boil over in the absence of attention on
Speaker 4: what is legitimately a newsworthy story, and then we end
Speaker 4: up it makes the Donald Trumps and Jadvances of the
Speaker 4: world more and more likely to talk in like massively
Speaker 4: exaggerated terms. That's not a defense of them talking in
Speaker 4: massively exaggerated terms whatsoever. It is though, just to say
Speaker 4: there's some responsibility on part of the media to dedicate
Speaker 4: proportional coverage here and to cover immigration much better than
Speaker 4: it does. It's just sort of for me, like crying
Speaker 4: over spilt milk. When they start to whine about JD.
Speaker 4: Vance and Donald Trump, it's like, well, you're part of
Speaker 4: creating an atmosphere that makes this more and more likely,
Speaker 4: and it's an unforced error, because your job is to
Speaker 4: cover this stuff fairly.
Speaker 1: But while it's true that they haven't covered Springfield, Ohio
Speaker 1: because it's a town of roughly fifty thousand people or
Speaker 1: whatever as a national story, I think they have covered
Speaker 1: immigration in a pretty hawkish way.
Speaker 4: I don't think they've done a very good job of
Speaker 4: covering when.
Speaker 1: The border like I I mean, Democrats talk about how
Speaker 1: the border is a complete disaster, Republicans talking about how
Speaker 1: the border is a complete disaster. The mainstream news media
Speaker 1: covers the border as a complete disaster, and related to
Speaker 1: that is the suggestion that there's like hordes.
Speaker 3: Of people coming up.
Speaker 1: I think from like an immigration hawks perspective of the
Speaker 1: media is serving up all the hysteria that you could want. Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now they're talking about Springfield in particular, But have they
Speaker 1: really been well ignoring the question of the border.
Speaker 4: Well, the question of I think integration of this Like
Speaker 4: that's what I think has been I don't think the
Speaker 4: corporate press has been entirely ignoring the question of the border,
Speaker 4: but the question of what happens once people get over
Speaker 4: the border and then seek to integrate in sometimes mid size,
Speaker 4: mid range communities Springfield Dayton area. That story is I think,
Speaker 4: very rarely covered, and it's an interesting story actually from
Speaker 4: the left and.
Speaker 1: Over this one, the claim was that they're not integrating
Speaker 1: into the community, right, and the evidence for that was
Speaker 1: that they're stealing and eating like dogs and cats.
Speaker 4: Well, no, I mean there are people talking at all
Speaker 4: those time console meetings about housing costs going up, about
Speaker 4: the problems with schools, about like I mean, those people
Speaker 4: being forced out of housing situations. I mean those there
Speaker 4: weren't just people repeating the dogs and cats stuff at
Speaker 4: those meetings. It was everything else too. And that's why
Speaker 4: I think it's unfortunate because even from the perspective of
Speaker 4: the left, there's a lot that could be said about
Speaker 4: what are these factory workers being taken advantage of? Are
Speaker 4: they union? Are they like? What are these conditions fair
Speaker 4: and acceptable for people?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: And what would what would the city look like without them? Right?
Speaker 4: No, Seriously, I think that's super interesting and it doesn't
Speaker 4: have to be right wing. But I think like a
Speaker 4: lot of journalists are just stuck in this rut we're criticizing,
Speaker 4: and there are certain countries in Europe that have gotten
Speaker 4: out of that reflex. But criticizing mass immigration, which has
Speaker 4: clearly objectively happened, and I didn't say mass illegal immigration.
Speaker 4: I think that's important because a lot of the Haitian migrants,
Speaker 4: you look at their papers, and they're perfectly legal. They're
Speaker 4: making asylum claims and waiting for them to be adjudicated
Speaker 4: in the asylum courts, and they have work permits and
Speaker 4: all of that, and it's a perfectly legal form of
Speaker 4: immigration because they're making asylum claims in mass so it's
Speaker 4: not just like illegal immigration. It's going through legal pathways
Speaker 4: that we've expanded. So there's just a super i think,
Speaker 4: super legitimate and interesting questions that don't have to result
Speaker 4: in necessarily like conservative arguments. But the media is just
Speaker 4: in this reflexive rut of being disinterested in anything that
Speaker 4: might be highly critical of mass migration. The New York
Speaker 4: Times did do an excellent series on children who were
Speaker 4: being exploited, that had been traffics over the border and
Speaker 4: we're missing DHS, just missing thousands of migrant children. That
Speaker 4: was a great series. But there's so many different stories
Speaker 4: like that and different sort of downstream effects that I
Speaker 4: just rarely see covered.
Speaker 3: And just to check out.
Speaker 1: So I just googled the number of journalists in Ohio,
Speaker 1: and the first thing that comes up is from twenty
Speaker 1: twelve to twenty nineteen, Ohio lost forty three percent of
Speaker 1: its newspaper journalists. From twenty nineteen until today, you can
Speaker 1: imagine that the number collapsed much further.
Speaker 3: I imagine if you looked at whatever.
Speaker 1: The newspaper situation is in Springfield, the news situation is
Speaker 1: in Springfield ten fifteen years ago, and what it is
Speaker 1: more broadly from the Ohio papers, the Dayton Paper and
Speaker 1: also like the Toledo Blade and the others who cover
Speaker 1: the state more broadly, you'll see probably a ninety percent
Speaker 1: collapse in journalistic capacity totally. And when that happens, you
Speaker 1: only have time to cover the weather, traffic, new businesses
Speaker 1: that are opening, sport.
Speaker 3: Local sort local sports, and a lot of times.
Speaker 1: But like actual reporting on anything that takes effort, that
Speaker 1: what they call that enterprise at those newspapers enterprise reporting
Speaker 1: and takes enterprise to go and do it.
Speaker 3: That is the thing that gets cut.
Speaker 4: Right, and it often ends up coming from a bureau
Speaker 4: in a city tens like dozens of miles away at least,
Speaker 4: if not those bureaus.
Speaker 3: Are shut right, So like those are the first ones
Speaker 3: that get shut down.
Speaker 4: You have you know, the Cleveland reporters or the Columbus
Speaker 4: reporters reporting on Springfield Dayton as opposed to having a
Speaker 4: robust local paper and Dayton. This was one of the
Speaker 4: big things I think during the sort of school culture
Speaker 4: wars during COVID, I think it did a monologue on this.
Speaker 4: If we had more robust local news, that used to
Speaker 4: be the pipeline where a lot of the stuff got
Speaker 4: worked out before it ended up in the national media.
Speaker 4: Because some of these conversations would be by the free price,
Speaker 4: Like the free price would facilitate sharing relevant information to
Speaker 4: the community, and the community would come together and sort
Speaker 4: of figure out a solution. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: these school board confrontations would have stayed local instead of
Speaker 4: being blown up into divisit national news cycles. I could
Speaker 4: not agree with that more so it's just.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it looks like Springfield was a victim of
Speaker 1: corporate consolidation from Cox Enterprises, which is this you know,
Speaker 1: you know Cox. It's like this gigantic behemoth of that
Speaker 1: gobbles up local news and then basically gets rid of
Speaker 1: all the.
Speaker 3: Local in it.
Speaker 1: Centralizes it at the top, combines it with radio and
Speaker 1: other local newspapers and basically just gives the same news
Speaker 1: with a slight tweak maybe one person in Springfield.
Speaker 3: So that's this maze the Springfield Sun. It looks like.
Speaker 1: In late twenty ten, Cox Enterprises merged all of its
Speaker 1: local media holdings under the CMG Ohio brand and consolidated locations.
Speaker 1: In addition, it's Prince Publications holds include a bunch of.
Speaker 3: Different like radio and local TV.
Speaker 1: So they're just consolidating at all and getting rid of
Speaker 1: all the workers lovely and then yeah, you're not going.
Speaker 3: To get You're not going to get.
Speaker 1: You know, you get what you pay for, or you
Speaker 1: get what you allow the oligarchs to control as this
Speaker 1: democratic society.
Speaker 4: So let's watch this Hillary Clinton clip, which is a
Speaker 4: little bit of a pivot but gets into the broader
Speaker 4: conversation about disinformation. So this was Hillary Clinton on Rachel
Speaker 4: Maddow talking about what consequences should come to people who
Speaker 4: are allegedly disseminating Russian propaganda.
Speaker 7: I think it's important to indict the Russians, just as
Speaker 7: Muller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in
Speaker 7: direct election interference and boosting Trump back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 7: But I also think there are Americans who are engaged
Speaker 7: in this kind of proper aganda, and whether they should
Speaker 7: be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is
Speaker 7: something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians
Speaker 7: are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever
Speaker 7: stand trial in the United States. You know, they're not
Speaker 7: going to be going to a country where they can
Speaker 7: be extradited or even returning to the United States unless
Speaker 7: they are very foolish. So I think we need to
Speaker 7: uncover all of the connections and make it very clear
Speaker 7: that you could vote however you want, but we are
Speaker 7: not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran,
Speaker 7: or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to
Speaker 7: how we should vote in picking our leaders.
Speaker 4: You can vote however you want.
Speaker 3: You just can't say whatever you want in a nice concession. Yes,
Speaker 3: we appreciate that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's willing to compromise when they come to the table.
Speaker 4: You can vote however you want.
Speaker 1: Now you know that in her heart of hearts, she
Speaker 1: thinks it should be a crime to a vote.
Speaker 4: For Donald, to vote for Donald Trump right, because you're
Speaker 4: absolutely a Russian puppet and we can't stand for that.
Speaker 1: And for her to go on television and float that
Speaker 1: some Americans should perhaps be charged criminally for repeating what
Speaker 1: she calls Russian talking points is amazing. It's utterly amazing.
Speaker 4: Where is old leftist Rachel Maddow to jump in and say,
Speaker 4: excuse me, ma'am former secretary of state, what exactly are
Speaker 4: we talking about here?
Speaker 1: I guess we don't look to former secretaries of the
Speaker 1: state to uphold principles of democracy anywhere around the world,
Speaker 1: so we might as well not look for it here
Speaker 1: at home.
Speaker 3: But good lord.
Speaker 4: Glenn had a great point. He said, if Hillary's Glenn
Speaker 4: Greenwell posted, if Hillary's insanely repressive measure were implemented, people
Speaker 4: Spring Disinformation could be in prison. The first two people
Speaker 4: to share a prison shell should be her and Maadow,
Speaker 4: who dround the country and Steele Dossier, Alpha Bank Service
Speaker 4: and other dementa debunct lies, which by the way, could
Speaker 4: easily have been Russian disinformation that was funneled intentionally to
Speaker 4: Christopher Steele, As Steele would be the sort of useful
Speaker 4: idiot he's out with a new book. Maybe we can
Speaker 4: get him on.
Speaker 3: All we can do is let a joy sort it out.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right. Disinformation very real. Punishment for disinformation
Speaker 4: also increasingly very real. And these two things are not
Speaker 4: necessarily or should not necessarily be related.
Speaker 3: Well, well, amazing.
Speaker 4: You have to have some tolerance for disinformation in a
Speaker 4: free society, of course, but I guess we're losing that
Speaker 4: muscle memory. Let's move on to Kamala Harris, who has
Speaker 4: done six interviews since being named the presidential nominee after
Speaker 4: President Joe Biden stepped down. Three of them have been
Speaker 4: with friendly radio hosts. I think we all remember how
Speaker 4: some of those radio interviews have been handled in the past,
Speaker 4: but she did sit down yesterday for fairly long back
Speaker 4: and forth. In addition to the Dana Bash interview, she
Speaker 4: did one other interview, this one.
Speaker 3: With the local Philadelphia TV reporter.
Speaker 4: So this one was really the longest exchange I think
Speaker 4: that she's had at least live since being named the
Speaker 4: presidential nominee. And this was at the National Association of
Speaker 4: Black Journalists. In conversation at an NABJ event. We all
Speaker 4: remember how Donald Trump's and ABJ said, down went, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was perfect it was a perfect phone call. So
Speaker 4: let's take a listen to this answer that Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: gave on the economy yesterday.
Speaker 5: We had been a lot of work to do to
Speaker 5: clean up a mess. As of today, we have created
Speaker 5: over sixteen million new jobs, over eight hundred thousand new
Speaker 5: manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest Black unemployment rate in generations.
Speaker 5: We have invested in small businesses and I'm to the
Speaker 5: benefit of many people, but including black small businesses. Some
Speaker 5: of the highest rate of creation of new Black small
Speaker 5: businesses in years. We have done the world of capping
Speaker 5: the cost of prescription medication for our seniors for issues
Speaker 5: like insulin.
Speaker 4: And again I'm.
Speaker 5: Speaking to the black journalists who care about all people,
Speaker 5: but in particular I'll talk about the impact.
Speaker 4: On black people.
Speaker 5: Clear we know black folks are sixty times more likely
Speaker 5: sixty percent excuse me, more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes.
Speaker 5: And we have now finally capped the cost of insulin
Speaker 5: for our seniors at thirty five dollars a month, cap
Speaker 5: the cost of prescription medication for our seniors at two thousand.
Speaker 4: Dollars a year.
Speaker 5: Because we, unlike the former president who promised to do it.
Speaker 5: We finally have allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices against
Speaker 5: the big pharmaceutical companies. And these are just some of
Speaker 5: the accomplishments. Is the price of grocery still too high?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Do we have more work to do?
Speaker 4: Yes? All right, do we have more work to do?
Speaker 4: That's one way to kind of handle questions about how
Speaker 4: you're part of an administration in which people still see
Speaker 4: grocery prices as being too high compared to the administration
Speaker 4: that came immediately before it. Now. Kamala Harris also commented
Speaker 4: on was asked actually about what she makes of trends
Speaker 4: that are showing up in polls among black men, in
Speaker 4: particular being sort of pulled towards Donald Trump, and some
Speaker 4: numbers that just Republicans aren't used to seeing Democrats aren't
Speaker 4: used to seeing. It's hardly going to be a landslide
Speaker 4: for Donald Trump among black men, but the patterns are
Speaker 4: interesting enough to warrant further speculation, of course. So here's
Speaker 4: how Kamala Harris responded to.
Speaker 8: That you have engaged black men and sinswered them and
Speaker 8: your economic opportunity tour, But polling shows that some black men,
Speaker 8: particularly a young black men are considering voting for Donald Trump,
Speaker 8: and they see him as better for the economy. What
Speaker 8: is your message to young black male voters who feel
Speaker 8: left out of this economy, and how can your economic
Speaker 8: policies materially change your lives.
Speaker 5: So I appreciate the spirit of the question, but I'll
Speaker 5: tell you I've often been asked this question in a
Speaker 5: way that I've had to respond by saying, then, I
Speaker 5: think it's very important to not operate from the assumption
Speaker 5: that black men are in anybody's pocket. Black men are
Speaker 5: like any other voting group. You got to earn their vote.
Speaker 5: So I'm working to earn the vote, not assuming I'm
Speaker 5: going to have it because I am black, but because
Speaker 5: the policies and the perspectives I have understands what we
Speaker 5: must do to recognize the needs of all communities, and
Speaker 5: I intend to be a president.
Speaker 4: For all people. So I have to actually thought that
Speaker 4: was a pretty good answer, partially because of what Nina
Speaker 4: Turner said. Nina Turner during the DNC told the Free
Speaker 4: Press that the Democratic Party kind of emasculates black men.
Speaker 4: From Nina's perspective, at least, I think there's probably some
Speaker 4: truth to that, and Kamala harrisoning I'm not taking anything
Speaker 4: for granted was probably the best way that she could
Speaker 4: respond to that. I don't know, what do you think, Ran.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And on the previous clip, I would love to have
Speaker 1: a politics where people are constantly competing for who can
Speaker 1: take on big Pharma.
Speaker 3: More.
Speaker 1: Yes, like Biden pushing through with the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 1: Medicare negotiation after the Democrats had ran on it in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, and then when they took over
Speaker 1: the White House in two thousand and nine and had
Speaker 1: both Houses of Congress, they traded it to pharma in
Speaker 1: exchange for pharm and support for Obamacare, and then they
Speaker 1: and then they're like, it's just a one year deal
Speaker 1: after this and we're back at it. And then they
Speaker 1: claimed they were going to do it, you know, for
Speaker 1: the next ten years. But then they finally did it,
Speaker 1: and it you know, it took them fifteen years. But
Speaker 1: it's you know, a real credit to the advocates who
Speaker 1: were pushing for it, to you know, seniors who have
Speaker 1: been organizing around that issue because you're up against one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Like, I think
Speaker 1: they have something like five or six lobby for every
Speaker 1: single member of Congress. The amount of money that they
Speaker 1: have to spend because of federal policy is ungodly, and.
Speaker 3: They did beat them.
Speaker 1: And the Medicare negotiations, the insulant cap is a life,
Speaker 1: literal life saver, and the negotiations estimated save something like
Speaker 1: seven eight billion dollars for both Medicaren and seniors and
Speaker 1: also pushes down prices for everybody.
Speaker 3: But it also is a huge kind of toe in
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 1: So to have them I would love to see then
Speaker 1: Trump come back and be like, no, I'm actually going
Speaker 1: to be tougher on big farm.
Speaker 3: And when I come in, he never does.
Speaker 4: That's as you were outlining that I find it. You know,
Speaker 4: we've talked about this before, but it is so interesting
Speaker 4: that and Matt Sellier has actually gone back and listened
Speaker 4: to Trump's speeches from twenty sixteen and compared them to Trump'
Speaker 4: speeches from twenty twenty four. He was constantly railing not
Speaker 4: just against like elites, but against other corporate elites. And
Speaker 4: I say other because he would say I know the
Speaker 4: system and like these guys are and they're fleecing you.
Speaker 4: And he's never really gone in on that with big
Speaker 4: farm at all. Despite the mounting opposition to pharma ag
Speaker 4: health industry from conservatives, Tucker has platform these conversations on
Speaker 4: his show that have really resonated with a lot of
Speaker 4: people on the right. You just don't hear from Trump
Speaker 4: at all, despite the fact that it is really a
Speaker 4: massive opening. And if there was anything that could shake
Speaker 4: the Republican Party out of its absurd blind spot and
Speaker 4: inability to come to the table on healthcare, which is
Speaker 4: repeatedly in polls shows up as one of the most
Speaker 4: important issues for voters, it would have been Donald Trump
Speaker 4: coming in and just taking a bulldozer to corporate allegiances
Speaker 4: in the Republican Party. And it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they already have old people, so locked those
Speaker 1: old people in. He did do an executive order that
Speaker 1: had a voluntary price cap on insulin at thirty five
Speaker 1: dollars for seniors, which did help some seniors. And I've
Speaker 1: seen Trump try to take credit for what happened later
Speaker 1: in the Inflation Reduction Act. But you know, a voluntary
Speaker 1: executive order that applies just to seniors is totally different
Speaker 1: than a law that applies for everybody.
Speaker 3: Across the country.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I like to see Trump like upset by
Speaker 1: the fact that he got outflanked on that, because then
Speaker 1: hopefully it shows Republicans like this is a winning political issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: clearly make people's lives better on a daily basis and
Speaker 1: then brag about it like that would be a cool politics.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, there's really interesting studies of happiness in indigenous
Speaker 4: communities that have been basically isolated from technology, So people
Speaker 4: living like they did thousands of years ago, and one
Speaker 4: of the biggest sources, you know, they have pretty high
Speaker 4: levels of happiness. There are sources of stress or things
Speaker 4: that contribute to unhappiness are community and health. So it's
Speaker 4: kind of interesting, right that you can have all of
Speaker 4: your needs met, you can feel content across the board,
Speaker 4: but if health is a concern for you, it will
Speaker 4: drag down your levels of happiness. It's one of the things,
Speaker 4: in addition to community, that can really drag down a
Speaker 4: person's level of happiness, and Republicans just have zero idea
Speaker 4: what to do about it, in zero interest in talking
Speaker 4: about it. So n let's pivot to what Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: said when she was entertaining questions on Israel Palestine. This
Speaker 4: was the she was asked about the ceasefire and ongoing negotiations.
Speaker 4: Let's just roll the clip.
Speaker 9: But matter of fact, President, just to follow up really quickly,
Speaker 9: is there a specific policy change that you, as as
Speaker 9: president of the United States, would say you would do
Speaker 9: that would help this long Because you know, you've gotten
Speaker 9: a lot of credit for emphasizing the humanity of Palestinians.
Speaker 9: But what I often hear from folks is that there's
Speaker 9: no policy change that would that either you or the
Speaker 9: President President Biden have gone and said they would do.
Speaker 9: Is there a specific policy change as president that you
Speaker 9: would do in our helping of Israel?
Speaker 5: We need to get this deal done, and we need
Speaker 5: to get it done immediately, and that is my position
Speaker 5: and that is my policy.
Speaker 4: We need to get this deal done.
Speaker 9: But in the way that we send weapons, in the
Speaker 9: way that we interact as their ally, are there specific
Speaker 9: policy changes?
Speaker 5: Well, Eugene, for example, one of the things that we
Speaker 5: have done that I am entirely supportive of is the
Speaker 5: pause that we've put on the two thousand pound moms.
Speaker 5: And so there is some leverage that we have had
Speaker 5: and used, But ultimately, the thing that is going to
Speaker 5: unlock everything else in that region is getting this deal done.
Speaker 5: And I'm not going to disclose private conversations, but i
Speaker 5: will tell you I've had direct conversations with the Prime Minister,
Speaker 5: with the President of Israel, with Egyptian leaders, and with
Speaker 5: our allies, and I think we've made ourselves very clear
Speaker 5: this deal needs to get done and the best interest
Speaker 5: of everyone in the region, including getting those hostage, is
Speaker 5: out who I mean, we saw the latest example of
Speaker 5: what happened with the sixth most recently, one of whom
Speaker 5: was an American citizen.
Speaker 9: But what do you say to those that say that's
Speaker 9: not enough, that stopping the two thousand pound pounds the
Speaker 9: one time wasn't enough, that this administration, your possible administration,
Speaker 9: has to do more.
Speaker 5: Well, we are doing the work of putting the pressure
Speaker 5: on all parties involved to get the deal done.
Speaker 4: And that one kind of reminds me of Trump saying
Speaker 4: that he has concepts of a plan. Yeah, what did
Speaker 4: you make of Kamala Harris's response?
Speaker 1: You make yourself either look like a liar or like
Speaker 1: you're just terribly weak and incompetent.
Speaker 4: A caricature of a politics, or I.
Speaker 1: Mean as a as a States person like, because either
Speaker 1: either you're lying and you completely support this war effort
Speaker 1: and are sending the weapons so that your weapons can
Speaker 1: continue to be used, which is the most logical reason
Speaker 1: you would send weapons to someone, or you're just such
Speaker 1: an incompetent moron that you that you run the most
Speaker 1: powerful empire in the history of the world and you
Speaker 1: can't figure out how to get a country of like
Speaker 1: seven million, eight million people to do what you want
Speaker 1: it to do, despite the fact.
Speaker 3: That you fund and arm that country, right, Like, if you.
Speaker 1: Can't figure out how to do that, how can you
Speaker 1: do anything difficult in the in when it comes to
Speaker 1: world affairs. So it either makes you look like you
Speaker 1: are completely weak and just getting steamrolled by Israel, or
Speaker 1: that you're completely comfortable and complicit in what is being done.
Speaker 1: He the Eugene just kept pushing like, is there anything
Speaker 1: you would do differently than the Biden administration anything? And
Speaker 1: to his credit, you know, she tried to use the
Speaker 1: two thousand bomb two thousand pound bomb. Point he pointed
Speaker 1: out that that was one time and limited, so they're
Speaker 1: not even doing that anymore. They just dropped three of
Speaker 1: those a week ago and shredded dozens of children, those
Speaker 1: two those exact two thousand pound bombs that she's over
Speaker 1: here trying to claim and would have that claim would
Speaker 1: have hung out there as unchallenged if Eugene hadn't contested it.
Speaker 1: The support for Biden's policy is in the like twenties.
Speaker 1: She also is struggling to find ways to distance herself
Speaker 1: from Biden.
Speaker 4: Yes, from the Biden Harris administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And here's here's a policy that's not working and
Speaker 1: is in the twenties, and you won't divorce yourself from it. Therefore,
Speaker 1: you're either complete more on or you actually think it
Speaker 1: is working and you like what's being done.
Speaker 3: Like there's really only those are the only two options.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's true. It's a failure by their
Speaker 4: own terms. It's either a failure by their own terms,
Speaker 4: or their own terms are.
Speaker 3: Accept stature actually fine the status.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly know what I mean. Again, Like we
Speaker 4: heard all DNC week about how close we were to
Speaker 4: a ceasefire, and I think they like having the ceasefire
Speaker 4: on the table politically because it makes them look like
Speaker 4: they're working for something better and I'm not. I'm just
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to you know, impugne anyone's motives, but
Speaker 4: I do think politically during the presidential election, having the
Speaker 4: ceasefire on the table allows Kamala Harris to get away
Speaker 4: with these sort of laughable two sided statements where in
Speaker 4: one breath she will say something that isolated, uh, the
Speaker 4: sentiment is totally pro Israel, and then the next breath
Speaker 4: she will just say a sentence that isolated, the sentiment
Speaker 4: is totally propalised that It's just a complete force. It's
Speaker 4: like a political force. It's almost like satire. And I
Speaker 4: think having the deal in negotiation is sort of a
Speaker 4: tool for them to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Remember when you had Biden licking the ice cream and
Speaker 1: being like, oh, yeah, we're getting a deal by Friday.
Speaker 4: Yeah, watch this drive basically yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: That was I forget what month. That was many many
Speaker 3: months ago.
Speaker 1: Jake Sullivan told net Yahoo in this cabinet back in November,
Speaker 1: like this has to be over by the end of
Speaker 1: the year.
Speaker 3: That was twenty twenty three, Right.
Speaker 4: We're closer every day, Ryan, Yeah, closer every day. All right, Well,
Speaker 4: you have some great reporting on Pakistan that we should
Speaker 4: get to tell you, so let's pivot.
Speaker 3: Fascinating one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's pivot to Pakistan.
Speaker 1: So over at drop Site News, my colleague Martaza Hussein
Speaker 1: and I have a fascinating news story on the way
Speaker 1: that Pakistan is stuck in the middle of the superpower
Speaker 1: struggle between China and the United States. We can put
Speaker 1: this element up on the screen headline over there. Pakistan
Speaker 1: promised China a new militarized naval base, leaked documents reveal,
Speaker 1: And so I want to unpack what's going on here.
Speaker 3: But let's roll back a little bit.
Speaker 1: So one of the best examples of the United States
Speaker 1: shooting itself in the foot geopolitically came in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three through nineteen seventy nine. So nineteen fifty three, Iran,
Speaker 1: and I mean the US and the British go in
Speaker 1: and they overthrow the Iranian prime minister. There, the Runian
Speaker 1: prime minister had been saying like, hey, we got all
Speaker 1: this oil. Shouldn't this oil be benefiting the Iranian people,
Speaker 1: not just Western companies like British Petroleum, And we said no,
Speaker 1: in fact, it should be benefiting Western countries. Overthrow the
Speaker 1: installed an autocratic regime, the Shah, and we all know
Speaker 1: how that ended. Oh yeah, nineteen seventy nine, you get
Speaker 1: the Iranian Revolution It's going great, which has created an
Speaker 1: enemy in the region ever since for really no reason.
Speaker 3: So, in other words, not only.
Speaker 1: Did we betray our democratic, our ostensible democratic values, we
Speaker 1: didn't even get the thing that we wanted, which was
Speaker 1: a pliant kind of client regime that is going to
Speaker 1: be friendly to Western interests.
Speaker 4: There are, despite Kermit Roosevelt's.
Speaker 1: Despite Kermit Roosevelt's best efforts, there are so many examples
Speaker 1: of this throughout American history.
Speaker 3: Today's story brings it up to the present.
Speaker 1: Because now you have the United States intervening in Pakistan's
Speaker 1: democratic affairs to oust Imran Khan to then bring in
Speaker 1: a more pliant kind of military regime which we assume
Speaker 1: is going to be more sympathetic to US interests. Instead,
Speaker 1: despite all of our support for the democratic backsliding going
Speaker 1: on in Pakistan, we have internal documents showing that a
Speaker 1: very desperate Pakistan has has now granted one of China's
Speaker 1: long standing demands of its Pakistani allies, which is to
Speaker 1: allow China to build a naval port and in Guadar
Speaker 1: and a militarized naval port. And to understand just how
Speaker 1: significant this is. We could put up a couple of
Speaker 1: maps here, so you see it's over Gwadar is over
Speaker 1: on the western side of Pakistan, over near if what's
Speaker 1: called the Strait of Hormuz. So if you look all
Speaker 1: the way to the left of that map, that's one
Speaker 1: of the kind of most important strategic locations on the
Speaker 1: entire globe. If you show the next map, it will
Speaker 1: immediately become clear.
Speaker 3: You know why this is so important.
Speaker 1: To the west, there is the Persian Gulf, so you
Speaker 1: get around this straight you're.
Speaker 3: Heading into there's the Ue, there's Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: That this is where you know, an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: the world's shipping, not you know, oil in particular, but
Speaker 1: shipping in general flows through and so control of this
Speaker 1: sea route is critical, not just you know, strategically economically,
Speaker 1: but also militarily in the event of a war. And
Speaker 1: so if you look at that port over there, you
Speaker 1: can see that it is, you know, one of one
Speaker 1: of the most important locations that you could possibly have.
Speaker 1: It is something that the United States has been eyeing
Speaker 1: warriley for many many years that they have known that,
Speaker 1: you know, Pakistan and China have a close relationship. They
Speaker 1: have known that China has wanted to militarize this port
Speaker 1: for its and also develop it strategically economically, and this
Speaker 1: is a huge.
Speaker 4: Player in the Huti situation as well. Right fears that
Speaker 4: this could escalate into the Strait of Harmuz, right.
Speaker 1: Right, that, and you've had all sorts of right literally
Speaker 1: right now economic difficulties around the world because of the
Speaker 1: way that the Hoodys have been able to shut down
Speaker 1: shipping around that area shows shows how, you know, shows
Speaker 1: how important this entire region is. So if you if
Speaker 1: you roll back a little bit, what's happening in Pakistan,
Speaker 1: and people should read the entire story to get the
Speaker 1: get the full.
Speaker 3: Context of what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, Pakistan, the kind of prime minister has has
Speaker 1: had dominion over dominion is too strong a word, but
Speaker 1: has had influence over domestic policy. Whereas the military traditionally
Speaker 1: managed foreign affairs here in the United States, you know,
Speaker 1: the civilians are supposed to manage everything.
Speaker 3: That's how and that's how it ought to work.
Speaker 1: That the compromise those the military allowed and Pakistan's We'll
Speaker 1: let the prime minister do a few things internally, Imran
Speaker 1: Khan did things like brought about like a version of
Speaker 1: Medicare for all, like expanded healthcare to people. And they're like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, and do that as long as
Speaker 1: we can still have our graft and we still control
Speaker 1: foreign policy. Fine, But then Imran Khan started getting involved
Speaker 1: in foreign affairs. He had a good relationship with the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Interestingly, even that the Trump administration was in
Speaker 1: the middle of enacting, you.
Speaker 3: Know, a Muslim band.
Speaker 1: But they got along well, the two of them, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration and in Ron Khan not so well. He
Speaker 1: famously tried to get a call from Biden after Biden
Speaker 1: was elected.
Speaker 3: Couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Like it just there was something about that relationship that
Speaker 1: the Biden administration wanted distance in. So then in June
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, he sits down with Jonathan Swan of
Speaker 1: Axios actually Axios at the time, and Swan asks, you know,
Speaker 1: if the Taliban takes over in Afghanistan, you know, will
Speaker 1: you allow you know, drone flights out of Pakistan. That
Speaker 1: was a key element of the Biden administration is what
Speaker 1: they called over the horizon approach.
Speaker 3: They said, we're going to project power over the horizon.
Speaker 1: We don't need to occupy Afghanistan because our over the
Speaker 1: horizon capacity is unparalleled. Key to that over the horizon
Speaker 1: capacity was being able to operate out of Pakistan in
Speaker 1: ron Khan said absolutely not.
Speaker 3: I'm not doing that, and so that is that was
Speaker 3: looked at by the United States.
Speaker 1: As a as a major affront to them. Then, in
Speaker 1: February of twenty twenty two, i imron Khan had a
Speaker 1: long planned state visit to Moscow that coincided with the
Speaker 1: invasion Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The US tried to put
Speaker 1: pressure on him to turn around, come back, cancel the trip,
Speaker 1: or at minimum denounce the Russian invasion.
Speaker 3: Imroan Khan refused.
Speaker 1: He said, at a rally, he said, what are we
Speaker 1: your slaves that we're going to just do?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 3: Do what you tell us?
Speaker 1: He said, We're going to remain neutral. We are friends
Speaker 1: with Ukraine, we are friends with Russia. This is a
Speaker 1: war between them because Pakistan desperately needs you know, grain
Speaker 1: from both, energy from both, like they don't. It's not
Speaker 1: in their interest to get in the middle of that conflict.
Speaker 1: Around this time, the State Department official Don Lu two
Speaker 1: weeks later, meets with the Pakistan ambassador and says, listen,
Speaker 1: we are very bothered by this what he calls aggressive
Speaker 1: neutrality that Imran Khan is taking between Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 1: But the United States believes that it is a policy
Speaker 1: of the Prime minister alone, not a policy of you know,
Speaker 1: Pakistan government more broadly, and if Imran Khan is removed
Speaker 1: and a no confidence vote, all will be forgiven from
Speaker 1: the United States and everything will be cool. Just days later,
Speaker 1: weeks later, the army chief gives a televised address where
Speaker 1: he denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so breaking with
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister, the army then orchestrates the no confidence
Speaker 1: vote that the US had said it wanted to see happen.
Speaker 1: They put pressure on a number of Imran Khan's part
Speaker 1: officials who had been who had links to the military,
Speaker 1: and who had who could be compromised by the military.
Speaker 1: They flipped their votes, they ousd they oust Imran Khan,
Speaker 1: and then they start shifting back toward the United States.
Speaker 3: So, if you remember, Nancy.
Speaker 1: Pelosi travels to Taiwan October September August September of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, and this is after they have ousted in
Speaker 1: Ron Khan and China goes to all of its allies
Speaker 1: and they want a full throated denunciation of Nancy Pelosi's
Speaker 1: visit to Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Pakistan demers.
Speaker 1: They put out a little statement that's extremely mild, and
Speaker 1: it kind of infuriates the Chinese, like you're not gonna
Speaker 1: stand with us like you are we haven't. They call
Speaker 1: it an iron brotherhood they're supposed to have between Pakistan
Speaker 1: and China. In October of that year, as we report
Speaker 1: in this article, Badua, who's the military chief, finally gets
Speaker 1: what he's been banding of the United States or begging
Speaker 1: of the United States.
Speaker 3: Which which is a state visit to the to the US.
Speaker 1: While he's in Washington, he gets to meet with the
Speaker 1: top officials he also at at the Pakistani at Pakisian
Speaker 1: ambassador's residence. He meets with a bunch of kind of
Speaker 1: foreign policy heads here in Washington, and he tells them
Speaker 1: he doesn't really like the Chinese. They've always loved the
Speaker 1: United States. And he says two things that really raise eyebrows.
Speaker 1: To make the point, he says he loves American sitcoms
Speaker 1: from the nineties, many such cases. His favorite Married with Children,
Speaker 1: Married with childrens married with children, which is excellent.
Speaker 4: By the way, I'm surprised that you're willing to go
Speaker 4: to the mat for married with children given the various
Speaker 4: political incorrectness.
Speaker 1: Satire, it's satire, absolutely genius, genius show. And he adds
Speaker 1: he doesn't even like Chinese food, so he's he's sending
Speaker 1: a very clear.
Speaker 3: Very clear. This leaks out, of course, to the China,
Speaker 3: to the Chinese establish them as well.
Speaker 1: And back in New York, the the Pakistani representative to
Speaker 1: the UN starts getting chided by the Chinese representative. They're
Speaker 1: like these sarcastic comments about no, you're best friends.
Speaker 3: No, the US, like what you know, what happened to us?
Speaker 1: At the same time, China keeps telling Pakistan, look, we
Speaker 1: do not see ourselves as in a cold war, a
Speaker 1: zero sum cold war with the United States, Like it
Speaker 1: is okay, if you want to have good relations with
Speaker 1: the United States, that does not mean you have to have.
Speaker 3: Bad relations with us. We don't see it that way.
Speaker 1: But what our reporting shows is that Pakistan understands that
Speaker 1: that's how the United States sees it, that they have.
Speaker 3: To pick one or the other.
Speaker 1: And so this whole time they're having very they're they're
Speaker 1: very difficult balance, but they choose the United States. They
Speaker 1: figure the United States is the way to go, and
Speaker 1: at first it starts to pay off.
Speaker 3: As we also.
Speaker 1: Reported, Pakistan not only stops becoming neutral, they start producing
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty five millimeters shells for Ukraine because
Speaker 1: they're very good at making these low grade, crappy shells,
Speaker 1: which are the kind of shells they're important for this
Speaker 1: kind of stalemated war in Ukraine. We're just you're just
Speaker 1: lobbing endlessly, endless, cheap munitions at the other side.
Speaker 4: And it's a boost to the Pakistani.
Speaker 1: Econoy bost to pakistan economy, and the US secretly agrees
Speaker 1: to let Pakistan use this clandestine weapons program as basically
Speaker 1: collateral financing for an IMF loan that comes in, and
Speaker 1: so the IMF loan is supposed to help stabilize things
Speaker 1: cases the IMF loan because Pakistan is such a basket
Speaker 1: case and because it's not following through on any of
Speaker 1: its commitments when it comes to reforms, doesn't fully come through,
Speaker 1: and the economy keeps collapsing, and because it keeps spiraling
Speaker 1: out of control, they have to go back to China
Speaker 1: and so, and that's where our story comes in.
Speaker 3: They go back to China and they're like, look, we
Speaker 3: love Chinese food.
Speaker 1: We love Chinese food, married with children, really kind of
Speaker 1: problematic in some of its depictions.
Speaker 3: Not a huge fan love you guys, What can you do?
Speaker 1: And basically, the what that they need is they China
Speaker 1: has lent them a bunch of money that is coming due.
Speaker 3: They need that.
Speaker 1: They need those loans refinanced at a nice rate or
Speaker 1: else they're you know, completely screwed because they're not getting
Speaker 1: money in from anywhere else.
Speaker 3: And so China is like, well, you know what.
Speaker 1: We want, like, we want access to this this port
Speaker 1: at Gwadar, and also we want you to start protecting
Speaker 1: our Chinese citizens who are in Pakistan doing the Belton
Speaker 1: Road construction projects and which Pakistan had not been doing effectively.
Speaker 1: You keep having these terrorists attacks, you know, hitting these
Speaker 1: Chinese officials of Chinese started to think that. At first,
Speaker 1: they're telling them, okay, here's here's where the Chinese workers
Speaker 1: are going to be. Make sure they're protected, and then
Speaker 1: it seems like they were more likely to get hit
Speaker 1: when they told them. So they get what's going on here,
Speaker 1: it's a compromise. They're leaking this out. So now they
Speaker 1: want private security, they want joint security, they want the
Speaker 1: Chinese want.
Speaker 3: They don't trust the Pakistanis anymore to.
Speaker 1: Do the security. They want their own security forces. But
Speaker 1: that's a huge affront to sovereignty. It's Pakistan saying that
Speaker 1: they can't protect the Chinese civilians within Pakistan's borders and
Speaker 1: then have to allow foreign government to have its own
Speaker 1: security forces in there, which they would already be doing
Speaker 1: with a militarized port of Guadar. And meanwhile, because Pakistan's
Speaker 1: position is now so weakened, Pakistan didn't even get anything
Speaker 1: for this concession.
Speaker 3: It's just just a concession now.
Speaker 1: The documents also suggest that there is no timeline for
Speaker 1: the execution of this, that Pakistan is going to continue
Speaker 1: to try say, Okay, yes we've agreed in principle and
Speaker 1: this is going to happen quote in due time, as
Speaker 1: one of the documents says, but that doesn't mean necessarily tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And now that this reporting is out, I'll be the
Speaker 1: State Department later day asking them about this. The US
Speaker 1: is going to, I'm sure, raise significant concerns, but then
Speaker 1: it raises the question, what on earth is the United
Speaker 1: States getting out of supporting basically a military dictatorship that
Speaker 1: is like embarrassing it on the international stage because you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to sanction Venezuela, trying to sanction Georgia for
Speaker 1: democratic backsliding, while Pakistan is engaged in just you know,
Speaker 1: complete evisceration of its own democracy and they're not even
Speaker 1: getting a military ally out of it. They're handing this
Speaker 1: key port over to China instead. Just complete debacle on
Speaker 1: on every level.
Speaker 4: And can you maybe give some contacts on the state
Speaker 4: of the Pakistani economy, because I think that gets to
Speaker 4: the motivations of Pakistan and navigating the difficult relationship or
Speaker 4: trying to balance US interests Chinese interest with its own interests.
Speaker 1: So the IMF just announced that within a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks they're going to go to their final executive board
Speaker 1: meeting with a seven billion dollars.
Speaker 3: What they call e f F.
Speaker 1: A bailout, which right now, you know that the economy
Speaker 1: is a complete disaster, rampant joblessness. They recently put in
Speaker 1: a new firewall to try to censor the media, ran
Speaker 1: a lot of I think it was it.
Speaker 3: Was time to some of our articles.
Speaker 1: They've band drop site news inside Pakistan and it slowed
Speaker 1: the internet to a complete crawl. You've got constant blackouts,
Speaker 1: like the heat waves. They are insane, like they're getting
Speaker 1: hit with climate change, you know, worse than most other
Speaker 1: countries because of just where they are are geographically on
Speaker 1: the planet and what their climate already was. And so
Speaker 1: right now, the military basically controls the entire economy, and
Speaker 1: so it is you have, you know, fifty percent of
Speaker 1: literacy and a completely stifled population.
Speaker 3: It's very much like Egypt where the.
Speaker 1: We've got these like military run corrupt companies that are
Speaker 1: are that are just that just exists to basically, you know,
Speaker 1: make the generals get richer, and the generals then take
Speaker 1: their money. This is what's fascinating about the international relations.
Speaker 1: And they stash it in London and the US through
Speaker 1: properties and other other holdings. And so, yes, it's true
Speaker 1: that the Bodua likes married with children and doesn't like
Speaker 1: Chinese food. And he talked to about his culture. He
Speaker 1: was trying to say, I like America better, right, and
Speaker 1: who can blame him?
Speaker 3: It's we're great over it's great over here. We love it.
Speaker 1: But what is really also going on is that their
Speaker 1: children are being educated here and their illicit gains are
Speaker 1: housed here, and that means we can snatch them. The
Speaker 1: Russian oligarchs learned that the hard way after Putin's invasion.
Speaker 1: You know, the UK and the US seized a bunch
Speaker 1: of oligarch property, and so.
Speaker 3: We really have them.
Speaker 4: Pakistani elites are tiled to the US.
Speaker 1: We have the Pakistani elites kind of captured in the
Speaker 1: sense that it might not be in the interest of
Speaker 1: Pakistan itself to continue to have this tight relationship with US,
Speaker 1: but it's in their personal interest because we can just oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: is that your penthouse apartment?
Speaker 3: Yeah, your yacht not anymore?
Speaker 1: Another your sanctioned boom and once you're sanctioned, once it's snatched,
Speaker 1: you're done.
Speaker 3: So we'll see, which which is why.
Speaker 1: It will be difficult for them to actually execute and
Speaker 1: China knows it actually ex cute on this promise that
Speaker 1: they've now made.
Speaker 4: One of the more interesting subplots of the war in
Speaker 4: Gaza right now is how China has distanced itself from
Speaker 4: Israel in the aftermath of the invasion. After October seventh,
Speaker 4: China sort of is trying to make inroads literally in
Speaker 4: roads with a lot of different countries around the world
Speaker 4: and sort of curry favorability and realized that it couldn't
Speaker 4: continue having this friendship between Net Yahu and Stujen Pang
Speaker 4: that was playing out very publicly. I mean net and
Speaker 4: Yahoo would rebuke the United States by turning to China
Speaker 4: before October seventh in various ways. That was like sort
Speaker 4: of a strategic maneuver that he was very intentionally making.
Speaker 4: And I'm curious Ran what you think about how this
Speaker 4: was playing out in the context of Gaza, which is
Speaker 4: obviously very important to countries like Pakistan, and it is
Speaker 4: important to China given its reputation being on the line
Speaker 4: as it tries to make again literal inroads pun please
Speaker 4: excuse the pun. It's in different countries as a critical
Speaker 4: mission to its own self interest on a world stage
Speaker 4: going forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Publicly Pakistan doesn't recognize Israel and is critical, but
Speaker 1: privately it is quite friendly and on good terms on
Speaker 1: the size, on good terms with with Israel. Whereas Moron
Speaker 1: Kong would have you know, if he were free now
Speaker 1: he's in prison, you would be one of the most
Speaker 1: vocal critics of of what's going on.
Speaker 4: There, as would his supporters if you were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but as it is, it's it's new, you know,
Speaker 1: the country is neutralized when it comes to that comes
Speaker 1: to that question. But I think what from China's perspective,
Speaker 1: Africa plays a huge role in this in the Global
Speaker 1: South more generally that China sees uh China. China believes
Speaker 1: that the Global South and the bricks countries see US
Speaker 1: agemony as not beneficial to them, and see the rise
Speaker 1: of China and multipolarity as potentially beneficial in giving them
Speaker 1: more room to maneuver and be and actually care and
Speaker 1: actually have a sense of their own agency and nationalism.
Speaker 1: And there they see Israel as a bulwark of American
Speaker 1: gemony and and see siding with the Palestinians there as.
Speaker 3: Favorable to a rise of multipolarity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's so many layers to this, so fascinating, great story,
Speaker 4: interesting stuff. A lot of people won't be able to
Speaker 4: read it. In Pakistan unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Well they call it Vpnistan because everyone there has a
Speaker 1: VPN So I think people are gonna find ways to
Speaker 1: get to it, and.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they will. All right, So coming up, we
Speaker 4: have an interview with Matt Walsh about his new film,
Speaker 4: and it's going to be quite an interesting conversation Ryan, so.
Speaker 3: Sure well looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: We are joined now by Matt Walsh, who is out
Speaker 4: with a new movie called Am I Racist? That is
Speaker 4: in theaters around the country. Matt obviously hosts upon him
Speaker 4: as show with the Daily Wire. Matt, thank you for
Speaker 4: joining us.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me of course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now the movie's doing pretty well. One of the
Speaker 4: I don't know if it was a coincidence or fate,
Speaker 4: whatever it was, as it happened when your movie was
Speaker 4: released last week, everyone was debating whether a very particular
Speaker 4: post on social media was racist. So we thought we
Speaker 4: would play a little game of was it racist with
Speaker 4: Laura Lumour's infamous curry tweet. If Kamala Harris wins, the
Speaker 4: white House will smell like curry and white House speeches
Speaker 4: will be facilitated by a call center. The American people
Speaker 4: will only be able to convey their feedback through a
Speaker 4: customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that
Speaker 4: nobody will understand. One of the interesting things about your movie,
Speaker 4: which I really enjoyed. Brian might have something to add
Speaker 4: on that. We might disagree on it. I really enjoyed
Speaker 4: it is getting to the bottom of the kind of
Speaker 4: the industrial complex that's been built up around race relations
Speaker 4: that often will advance this silly, incoherent, elite definition that
Speaker 4: used to be prolific in academia and then leaked out
Speaker 4: into the rest of the world. So, by the sort
Speaker 4: of definition of racism that you're challenging in this film,
Speaker 4: is that Lord Lumer tweet racist. And then by the
Speaker 4: kind of definition that you're trying to promote of racism,
Speaker 4: which maybe you have a way to explain it, I
Speaker 4: would define I don't want to put words in your
Speaker 4: mouth as a sort of like genuine discrimination based on
Speaker 4: this belief that people of a different race are somehow inferior.
Speaker 4: Is this post racist?
Speaker 10: I mean, by the definition advanced by the DEI industry,
Speaker 10: it certainly would count as racist. I wouldn't call it race.
Speaker 10: I think it's just kind of a dumb joke, not
Speaker 10: very helpful joke. And also, by the way, I like
Speaker 10: Indian food, so I think when things mell like curry,
Speaker 10: I'm a huge fan of curry personally, so I don't
Speaker 10: see that as an insult.
Speaker 3: But look, someone.
Speaker 10: Engaging in stereotypes, it might be insensitive, it might be
Speaker 10: unhelpful politically, but it's not necessarily racist. In fact, I
Speaker 10: would say it's often not racist, because to me, what
Speaker 10: racism means is that you hate people of another race
Speaker 10: and or you think that they're inferior to you in
Speaker 10: some way inherently because of their you know, immutable characteristics.
Speaker 3: So that's racism.
Speaker 10: And as long as you don't feel that way about
Speaker 10: another race of people, then you're not racist. You might
Speaker 10: you might have stereotypical views about another group of people.
Speaker 10: Everybody does, but it's not automatically racist if you don't
Speaker 10: also harbor that ill will towards them. And as far
Speaker 10: as whether or not, sort of the real answer is
Speaker 10: that with the Laura lumertweet, I wouldn't say that it's racist.
Speaker 10: The only person who can answer whether it's racist is her.
Speaker 10: We'd have to ask her, well, do you hate people
Speaker 10: of Indian descent? Do you think that they're inferior to
Speaker 10: you in some way? If the answer is yes, then yeah,
Speaker 10: that's racist, But she'd probably say no. And if she
Speaker 10: said no, then I'll have to take her word for it.
Speaker 10: She's the only one who can speak to her own
Speaker 10: you know what's going on in her own mind and
Speaker 10: her own heart.
Speaker 1: Although she's a Trump supporter, she wants Colma to lose.
Speaker 1: Presumably she's making the point in a negative way. Right,
Speaker 1: this is a bad thing. That's a call center, and
Speaker 1: she's saying these are all bad things.
Speaker 4: This is an interesting point about stereotype.
Speaker 3: By your definition, make.
Speaker 4: It, cause stereotyping is often leveraged to say that there's
Speaker 4: something negative that is generally attributed to someone of a
Speaker 4: different race.
Speaker 3: Right, that's it's great, it's negative.
Speaker 10: She means that it a negative, right, because we can
Speaker 10: assume that she thinks things smelling like curry is a
Speaker 10: bad thing. I guess not a fan of Indian food.
Speaker 10: But you can believe, or engage in, or repeat negative
Speaker 10: stereotypes and not be racist. You might just happen to
Speaker 10: think so. For example, I give another example, somebody might say,
Speaker 10: you know, Asians are bad drivers. I don't know if
Speaker 10: that's actually true that I'm not sure. But if you
Speaker 10: happen to believe that it's true, does.
Speaker 3: That mean that you hate Asians?
Speaker 10: No, it just means that you think that Asians buying
Speaker 10: larger bad drivers.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you hate them.
Speaker 10: It doesn't mean that you're racist against them.
Speaker 4: Although it could mean that you think there's like an
Speaker 4: intellectual inferiority, or it can mean you think there's a
Speaker 4: cultural reason that they're about at driving in Western countries.
Speaker 3: That could be.
Speaker 10: I mean, and no one thinks that Asians are or
Speaker 10: intellectually inferior. I think everybody understands that they're that's one
Speaker 10: of the other. Because stereotypes can be positive to another
Speaker 10: stereotype is that they're very good at math and science
Speaker 10: and that.
Speaker 3: Sort of thing.
Speaker 10: So you know, there are generalizations you can make about
Speaker 10: groups of people that.
Speaker 3: That can be largely true.
Speaker 10: And you know, I'm not sure I've ever heard of
Speaker 10: stereotype or I thought to myself, well that.
Speaker 3: Bears no resemblance to reality.
Speaker 10: I don't know one of you could think I've never
Speaker 10: heard of a stereotype, where I said, I don't even
Speaker 10: know where that comes from.
Speaker 3: That's just falling out of the sky.
Speaker 10: Usually stereotypes arise because you know, society has observed things
Speaker 10: about groups of people, and they could be negative, they
Speaker 10: can be positive, But I don't see them as inherently racist.
Speaker 4: Now, we have a clip from the film that we
Speaker 4: want to roll here, let's go ahead and play this.
Speaker 4: This is from the dinner scene. Matt. You've probably seen
Speaker 4: this one hundred times by now, but sometimes let's take
Speaker 4: a watch.
Speaker 11: I used to be a white woman, an unsuccessful one
Speaker 11: for many decades, and it was a miserable experience. And really,
Speaker 11: the hatred of yourselves and each other is like the
Speaker 11: most the not seeing your power, the being afraid. Like
Speaker 11: all you do is talk about each other, talk shit
Speaker 11: about yourself.
Speaker 3: My god, fat, that's all they do. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: he's a white woman.
Speaker 4: But that's it. I'm so fat, I'm so stupid. I'm
Speaker 4: blah blah blah.
Speaker 12: Sorry, your kids are watching you, and they're watching you
Speaker 12: talking shit about each other, you know, raging against the
Speaker 12: machine or being silent or whatever the hell it is
Speaker 12: that you're doing or not doing, and they know that
Speaker 12: you're not doing shit for them.
Speaker 3: Important. That is so important what you just said, it's
Speaker 3: it's really important.
Speaker 4: You may have to add.
Speaker 3: I would love to take a seat.
Speaker 4: You're not allowed to.
Speaker 3: How did you get the cameras in there? By the way, Like,
Speaker 3: what's the set that up for us? Yeah, they're not
Speaker 3: hidden cameras that obviously they're like cinematic level. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: everybody knew. Everybody's miked up, and everybody's.
Speaker 10: Miked Everybody knew they were being filmed, and they thought
Speaker 10: they were being filmed for a documentary about anti racism,
Speaker 10: which they were, because that is what we made do
Speaker 10: uh so we you know, that's what we told people
Speaker 10: were making a documentary on anti racism.
Speaker 3: They know you were involved in it. Probably not, probably not.
Speaker 1: So like this, so this waiter, like, they didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't know the way that the waiter was part of
Speaker 1: the film.
Speaker 3: No, No, they didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't, but they knew you had to be miked
Speaker 1: up because everybody in the kitchen and everywhere else had
Speaker 1: signed the thing.
Speaker 3: Is that how that worked?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I know, I don't think they knew that I had
Speaker 3: a mic on and we tried.
Speaker 10: I wanted to sit at the table at the race
Speaker 10: to dinner and be a part of the conversation, but
Speaker 10: we were told that they only accept women to be
Speaker 10: at the table, which I thought was interesting because then
Speaker 10: our next question is, well what is a woman, which
Speaker 10: kind of harkens back to our first film, and.
Speaker 3: Later do sit down in that scene?
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, I kind of invited my I earned my
Speaker 10: seat at the table, I invited myself to be a
Speaker 10: part of the dinner and I felt.
Speaker 3: As a man does painful Yeah.
Speaker 10: Did a little man splaining to the women, and they
Speaker 10: seem to really enjoy it.
Speaker 4: It's weird to me because they famously I guess it's
Speaker 4: not so famous, but they back in. I mean this
Speaker 4: was years ago, this was pre COVID. There was a
Speaker 4: podcast called Femmesplainers that Danielle from Crittenden Crittenden from and
Speaker 4: Christina hoff Summer's hosted where they had a similar experience
Speaker 4: with Cyral Raw over the race to dinner stuff. And
Speaker 4: you'd think they would be way more careful, but it
Speaker 4: seems as though maybe they let their guard down.
Speaker 10: I don't know, Yeah, that is I guest. Of course,
Speaker 10: I get this question all the time. It's like, how
Speaker 10: did they not recognize me? Or how did they not
Speaker 10: ask more questions? And I guess I don't know the
Speaker 10: answer to that question, but I do think that the
Speaker 10: answer I generally give, I think it's correct, is that
Speaker 10: a lot of these people live in kind of a bubble.
Speaker 10: So number one, they're not as aware of you know,
Speaker 10: people outside that bubbles we.
Speaker 3: Assume they are.
Speaker 10: So me, as someone in conservative media, I'm actually outside
Speaker 10: of their bubble, which is weird to me because I
Speaker 10: know everybody in liberal media because I keep I want
Speaker 10: to know what they're saying.
Speaker 3: So I kind of assumed that they do the same.
Speaker 4: You're familiar with Ryan Grimm, noted liberal journalist Ryan grim.
Speaker 10: So he's right about twelve percent of the time, which
Speaker 10: I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: But they so they're kind of in this interesting.
Speaker 10: Bubble that they don't not only I didn't know who
Speaker 10: I was, but also I think it was kind of
Speaker 10: inconceivable to them that they would ever find themselves in
Speaker 10: a room with someone who doesn't agree with them. I
Speaker 10: think it just never occurred to them because this's never
Speaker 10: happened before. Angel appears later in the film, and I
Speaker 10: think me sitting in the room with her was probably
Speaker 10: the first time in like twenty years that she's actually
Speaker 10: sat across the room from someone who doesn't already agree
Speaker 10: with everything that she thinks.
Speaker 1: Part of the twelve percent that I've been right about
Speaker 1: over the years, I think has been that I do
Speaker 1: think this entire DEI industry is a grift and it's
Speaker 1: just milking corporations, and also that you've written about that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that it is actively harmful in the sense that
Speaker 1: when like corporations. Actually, I actually do believe that corporations
Speaker 1: oftentimes internally do have racist structures set up within them.
Speaker 1: And also they all operate sometimes in racist ways. And
Speaker 1: when they get sued for that and they're facing the
Speaker 1: consequences of that, one of the things that they do
Speaker 1: is they hire these DEI consultants and say, well, you
Speaker 1: can't come after us.
Speaker 3: Actually, how could we possibly be racist?
Speaker 1: Like we spent this money to bring these consultants in,
Speaker 1: and the consultants then are then cover for they're more
Speaker 1: systemic racism to be allowed to continue without being interrogated.
Speaker 1: What it does is it turns the interrogation inward, where
Speaker 1: you say, well, these structures and.
Speaker 3: These corporations can't be challenged.
Speaker 1: What we really need to do is look inside and
Speaker 1: find our own racism. And because we're all born with
Speaker 1: it or whatever, it's just inculcated in us, none of
Speaker 1: us are then responsible for it, and so therefore we're
Speaker 1: not responsible for actually changing anything on a system wide basis.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, has somebody who spent so much time
Speaker 1: within this grift of a system.
Speaker 3: Like, what was your take on these folks, like.
Speaker 1: Do they believe what they're saying or have they found
Speaker 1: like a consultancy that is that they're able to get
Speaker 1: money on and they're kind of now locked into it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's well, the short answer is, I don't know
Speaker 10: exactly if they believe what they say, but I but
Speaker 10: it strikes me that they probably don't believe much of it,
Speaker 10: especially the parts of it that are so absurd on
Speaker 10: their face. But there's a lot of money in it,
Speaker 10: as we discovered making the film. And then of course
Speaker 10: there's a lot of power and influence, and also there's
Speaker 10: the it must feel very good for them to be
Speaker 10: consulted as these kind of moral experts.
Speaker 3: And so that's what they that's what they get out
Speaker 3: of it. So it's actually not very complicated.
Speaker 10: That's why they're in this because they go money, power, influence, Right,
Speaker 10: it's the tales told as time. Now on the other hand,
Speaker 10: you've got so that's like the Robind'angelo's of the world
Speaker 10: selling the books, making millions of dollars. But then you've
Speaker 10: got the people that are actually buying the books and
Speaker 10: who are going to the race dinner and going to
Speaker 10: these seminars that we kind of crashed for our film.
Speaker 10: They're a more interesting case because they're not getting any
Speaker 10: money out of They're spending money and they don't they're
Speaker 10: not getting influence out of it. So for them, I
Speaker 10: think part of it's like a virtue signal. They want
Speaker 10: to be able to tell their friends that hey, I
Speaker 10: went to race to dinner and it was so life changing.
Speaker 10: But then most of it for those people is that
Speaker 10: I think they actually do believe it.
Speaker 3: It is speaking to something. There's like something going on
Speaker 3: inside them.
Speaker 10: I don't know if it's just like a kind of
Speaker 10: guilt or something that they carry around.
Speaker 3: And a lot of them are secular.
Speaker 10: They don't have religion, and so this becomes kind of
Speaker 10: like a replacement for religion.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's part of it. I think
Speaker 3: it's probably part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like those people have kind of correctly
Speaker 1: identified that they were raised in a society that still
Speaker 1: does have racism as part of it.
Speaker 4: As I think and multiicocial society always will.
Speaker 1: Well, it's their way of kind of trying to confront it.
Speaker 1: I think it's ill thought out, But I understand where
Speaker 1: they're coming from.
Speaker 10: But what I would say to, yes, there's still racism
Speaker 10: in society. There always will be. I mean, as long
Speaker 10: as there are different races and is living together, you
Speaker 10: can have racism. I think we have a lot less
Speaker 10: of it than pretty much anywhere else on earth. But
Speaker 10: the whatever racism you find in society now is individual.
Speaker 10: It's not systemic. It's not in the system that these
Speaker 10: systems are not set up to disadvantage quote unquote people
Speaker 10: of color. In fact, the only real systemic racism you
Speaker 10: find anymore is the kind that's targeted at white people
Speaker 10: and also Asians.
Speaker 3: That's what affirmative action is like that.
Speaker 10: The only time you ever find a policy that specifically says,
Speaker 10: here's an advantage that you can't have if you're a race.
Speaker 10: The only time it ever says that is if it's
Speaker 10: singling out white and or Asian people. It doesn't go
Speaker 10: the other way anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, so what about even people on the right now
Speaker 4: are saying Republicans have singled out Haitians. And this is
Speaker 4: an interesting segue because we're just talking about multiculturalism and
Speaker 4: how wherever you have different people from different backgrounds races,
Speaker 4: ethnicities put together be some types of discrimination, and the
Speaker 4: goal of the culture should be to minimize that. Has
Speaker 4: there been legitimate racism directed by high profile Republican lawmakers?
Speaker 4: This is the accusation on the table towards the Haitian
Speaker 4: community of the United States, and particularly in Springfield, Ohio,
Speaker 4: in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 10: No, absolutely not. I haven't heard it. Everything I've heard
Speaker 10: has been critical of the fact that we're importing, you know,
Speaker 10: thousands of people from the Third World who are coming
Speaker 10: into communities and.
Speaker 3: Look, America.
Speaker 10: Nobody thinks that it will benefit America to become more
Speaker 10: like Haiti.
Speaker 3: Nobody thinks that.
Speaker 10: Or I would challenge anyone if they do think that,
Speaker 10: to explain how that's the case, Like, in what way
Speaker 10: could this country be improved by making it more like Haiti?
Speaker 10: When you look at Haiti, what part of Haiti are
Speaker 10: you saying to yourself we need more of that?
Speaker 4: Beaches?
Speaker 10: Well, we have more beaches and then too, right, don't
Speaker 10: we We're much bigger counts.
Speaker 1: We don't want a marine invasion and occupation of the
Speaker 1: United States that constantly decapitates governments and takes takes the
Speaker 1: money out of the country, and yeah, saddles us.
Speaker 3: We don't want the Clinton's debt from a revolution. Yeah right,
Speaker 3: although I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: So you were saying that we wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: like basically a colony that the entire West spends two
Speaker 1: hundred years punishing after the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 3: I get that.
Speaker 10: I understand that, but also at a certain we wouldn't
Speaker 10: want that. No, yes, we wouldn't want that, But I
Speaker 10: would also say that that, uh, that's not entirely why
Speaker 10: Haiti's in the position that it's in. I meane, at
Speaker 10: a certain point, as a country, you have to stand
Speaker 10: on your own two feet and take care of yourself.
Speaker 3: But what point is that. Let's say they they elect Aristete,
Speaker 3: and we overthrow Aristete, then they elect joven el Mois.
Speaker 1: Joven El Moy's is assassinated a bunch of a bunch
Speaker 1: of people with American connections, and then we install in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, like the United States installed the prime
Speaker 1: minister that we just ousted, like so we could say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to get over the you know, two hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, but like we're still doing it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, and I'm not in favor of I
Speaker 10: I'm very non interventionist in my policies, so I'm not
Speaker 10: in favor of most of the things that we're doing
Speaker 10: in other countries.
Speaker 1: We just made the new government in Haiti in a
Speaker 1: hotel room in Jamaica, and then we insisted that whatever
Speaker 1: government we made in Jamaica had to allow Kenyan police,
Speaker 1: Kenyan troops to come in under the flag of the
Speaker 1: UN in order to go to war with the gangs.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I'm not Look, I'm not interested in if it
Speaker 10: were up to me, I'm not interested in doing anything
Speaker 10: in Haiti like let Haiti be Haiti and take care
Speaker 10: of That's sort of my whole point here. Let them
Speaker 10: take care of themselves and their own problems. I'm also
Speaker 10: not saying that there's like never a scenario where we
Speaker 10: let someone from Haiti into the country.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't have to just be about Haiti.
Speaker 10: But when you're throwing open the gates and just inviting
Speaker 10: any one in particular, you know.
Speaker 1: Your assumption there was that it is Haitian people that
Speaker 1: are creating the conditions on Haiti, and then that if
Speaker 1: the Haitian people come to Springfield, they will recreate the conditions.
Speaker 1: But I don't think any in Springfield, Whereas what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that it's actually the US that is.
Speaker 10: I don't think you can entirely like largely, but it's
Speaker 10: still a country comprised of people, right, but.
Speaker 3: Without its own autonomy. Okay, but you can't.
Speaker 10: I don't think you can entirely put it on the
Speaker 10: United States like Haitian people have nothing to do whatsoever
Speaker 10: with the state of.
Speaker 3: Their own country. Nothing.
Speaker 10: I mean, I think that's a bit absurd. I'm I'm
Speaker 10: perfectly willing to, as I said, agree that a lot
Speaker 10: of the United States sort of adventurism and the interventions
Speaker 10: in other countries has been unwise. And I'd prefer for
Speaker 10: us to focus on our own country and not try
Speaker 10: to build governments in other countries. But at the same time,
Speaker 10: I think that you can't completely absolve the people of
Speaker 10: any country of the problem. Just like in this country,
Speaker 10: the problems that we have in our country, we can
Speaker 10: point to the government, we can point to immigration, we
Speaker 10: point to all those things, but ultimately, like the people
Speaker 10: of the country have to be responsible for their own nation.
Speaker 3: And I say that of all nations.
Speaker 1: You said earlier that we have less racism here than
Speaker 1: lots of other countries, which I think is we have
Speaker 1: their fair point to make. And obviously you would acknowledge
Speaker 1: that at some point in our history we had lots
Speaker 1: of racism.
Speaker 3: Sure, lots of racism, then less racism.
Speaker 1: Now, so when did we get to a point where
Speaker 1: it wasn't systemic and it was no longer a problem
Speaker 1: that we as a democratic society need to deal with?
Speaker 3: Like, what was the moment in your mind?
Speaker 10: Well, I'm not sure that you could point to one
Speaker 10: exact moment in time when when it goes from a
Speaker 10: systemic issue to not systemic anymore. But what we know
Speaker 10: for sure is that right now we are certainly in
Speaker 10: the moment where it's not systemic.
Speaker 3: Any time in history, well i'll answer your question.
Speaker 10: Yeah, any at any point history when you can go
Speaker 10: back and look at actual laws and policies that were
Speaker 10: in place that deprived Black Americans or any other group
Speaker 10: of rights, well, that was a time when you had
Speaker 10: systemic right and we know that that existed historically. So
Speaker 10: if you wanted to point to an exact moment, I mean,
Speaker 10: I guess the most obvious moment would be the you know,
Speaker 10: the Civil Rights Act, But of course these are changes
Speaker 10: that happen gradually over time, just like with slavery. You know,
Speaker 10: you can't even with slavery, you can't really People like
Speaker 10: to point to the Emancipation Proclamation as the moment when
Speaker 10: slavery was ended. Of course, we know that wasn't when
Speaker 10: it ended. So we know we don't have slavery anymore.
Speaker 10: But if you were to ask me, what's the exact
Speaker 10: moment when slavery stopped, well, it wasn't an exact moment.
Speaker 10: It was a gradual ending of that horrific institution. But
Speaker 10: certainly now it doesn't exist anymore in this country anyway.
Speaker 10: And I'd say the same thing with systemic racism as well,
Speaker 10: that there's not nobody is creating policies again that are
Speaker 10: deliberately intended to create disadvantages for.
Speaker 3: Quote unquote people have.
Speaker 4: Called I have a question about that. A lot of
Speaker 4: conservatives will say there is one policy, and this is
Speaker 4: you know, you're about as anti abortion and prole life
Speaker 4: as it gets. A lot of conservatives will say a
Speaker 4: remaining institution of systemic racism is abortion because it disproportionately,
Speaker 4: as conservatives make this argument, affects black children and black
Speaker 4: families is that an example of systemic racism or racism period?
Speaker 10: And I think it's a mistake when conservatives make that point,
Speaker 10: because I think conservatives are very desperate to be able
Speaker 10: to do the whole thing where they turn back on
Speaker 10: Democrats and say the Demons are the real raceist. Yes,
Speaker 10: And I just think that's a lame move, and you're
Speaker 10: trying to use the left zone language against it, which
Speaker 10: I think, I think it doesn't work because you're accepting
Speaker 10: sort of their premise. So what I'd say about abortion is, no,
Speaker 10: it's not systemically racist. It does disproportionally impact the black community,
Speaker 10: no question about it.
Speaker 3: But does it exist for that really?
Speaker 10: Is planned parentod? Is that why they exist right now?
Speaker 10: Because they want to kill black babies? No, planned parent
Speaker 10: exists because they want to kill babies and they don't
Speaker 10: care what color the baby is. They just want the
Speaker 10: money that comes from it. But it just so happens
Speaker 10: that that ends up disproportionally impacting the black community. And
Speaker 10: this goes to the disproportion of impact thing, which I'm
Speaker 10: glad you brought that up, because that's usually what's used
Speaker 10: to support the theory of systemic racism, as they say, well,
Speaker 10: but these policies disproportionately impact certain groups.
Speaker 3: They might, but that doesn't mean that they're intended to
Speaker 3: do that. You know, just.
Speaker 10: A disproportionate number of Black Americans end up in prison,
Speaker 10: Does that mean that prison that that's why the prison
Speaker 10: is there to put Black Americans in it? No, the
Speaker 10: reason why disportionate number of Black Americans un under prison
Speaker 10: is that, unfortunately, this proportionate number of Black Americans commit
Speaker 10: violent crime.
Speaker 3: That's just what the stats show.
Speaker 1: And so but so, there's an argument that a system
Speaker 1: is what it does and that claiming otherwise is just
Speaker 1: kind of hocus pocus, just magic. Like if the system
Speaker 1: produces a certain result, but you, as an observer of
Speaker 1: that system, say, well, actually, that's not what the system.
Speaker 3: Is supposed to do. Those words are just meaningless.
Speaker 1: What about the system just chews them up and spits
Speaker 1: them out and produces and continues to produce the result
Speaker 1: that it produces its like, for instance, doin Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: you know, pre Civil Rights Act, You've got laws on
Speaker 1: the books that are systemically racist that allow for you know,
Speaker 1: straight up racist results.
Speaker 4: And when it comes to design of the system, was
Speaker 4: explicitly zion.
Speaker 1: System is aimed at producing segregated schools and low income
Speaker 1: household I mean low income neighborhoods that are predominantly or
Speaker 1: almost exclusively populated by Black Americans. Right, you then pass
Speaker 1: laws that reform those laws, that make it so that
Speaker 1: you can't legally do those things anymore. Yet the power
Speaker 1: structure broadly remains in place, and the results stay the same.
Speaker 1: You still have, you know, broadly speaking, massive low income
Speaker 1: areas predominantly populated by black families, and you have continue
Speaker 1: to have segregated schools when and so a person who
Speaker 1: was born into this country at like two day, if
Speaker 1: they're black, they're more likely to grow up in one
Speaker 1: of those neighborhoods, are more likely to go to terrible
Speaker 1: schools rather than good schools. They're more likely to end
Speaker 1: up in prison in part of the system. And so
Speaker 1: you would step back and say, well, the system is
Speaker 1: still doing what it is.
Speaker 3: The system never stopped doing it.
Speaker 1: There was never a day from Monday to Tuesday to
Speaker 1: Wednesday that all of a sudden the system stopped working
Speaker 1: in the same racist way, which we acknowledge was racist
Speaker 1: when it was written into the law. Although the system
Speaker 1: and it's not because we you know, struck through that
Speaker 1: one line.
Speaker 10: But if we agree that the you say, the system
Speaker 10: is what it does, I probably disagree with you on that.
Speaker 10: I mean, what the system is intended to do is
Speaker 10: what it certainly matters here, but.
Speaker 1: Why But what also, like, why would it matter what
Speaker 1: we intend a system to do, Like because the.
Speaker 4: System produces a robust Nigerian middle class, like people who
Speaker 4: come here from Nigeria. Tomsul makes this point, it's a
Speaker 4: point that's popuable.
Speaker 3: Then that's a defense of the system because that's what
Speaker 3: it does.
Speaker 4: Right, That's what I'm saying. So does that go both ways?
Speaker 1: No, because the intent of this my point is that
Speaker 1: the intent whatever you intend a system to do is meaningless.
Speaker 1: Like if you if you intend for a house to
Speaker 1: have a roof and a second floor that is sturdy,
Speaker 1: but when you walk into the second floor you fall
Speaker 1: through it.
Speaker 4: But that doesn't reflect on you. But that doesn't reflect
Speaker 4: on your anti roof sentiments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also doesn't matter.
Speaker 10: And also to use your analogy, if you walk into
Speaker 10: a house and uh, there's a problem in the house,
Speaker 10: you can't automatically assume that it's the fault of whoever
Speaker 10: built the house. It could be depending on the problem.
Speaker 10: But you also have to look at who's living in
Speaker 10: the house, who's supposed to be maintaining the house. And
Speaker 10: if you're living in a house and you're not taking
Speaker 10: care of it, and in fact you're mistreating the house
Speaker 10: and it goes to hell, and then you turn around
Speaker 10: and blame whoever built the house one hundred years ago, well,
Speaker 10: I'm going to say, like, well, this is at some
Speaker 10: point you got to take responsibility for your own house.
Speaker 10: And so that's that's my point with the black community
Speaker 10: as it stands right now in America. Yes, as we've
Speaker 10: already established, there was systemic, actual stomach RaSE against the
Speaker 10: black community for a long time. It's a terrible evil thing.
Speaker 10: Everybody agrees on that point. I don't think anyone disagrees
Speaker 10: that is over now. There is there is, there is
Speaker 10: no longer a system in place that is designed to
Speaker 10: deprive Black Americans of rights.
Speaker 3: I mean, would you agree with that at least? No?
Speaker 1: I do think it's still designed that way, but it's
Speaker 1: designed in a way where it can't be litigated because
Speaker 1: it's not so in law.
Speaker 3: Okay, but that's so.
Speaker 10: Can you point to me an exact point of the system,
Speaker 10: an exact place in the system, a policy that is
Speaker 10: designed to deprive Black Americans.
Speaker 3: Of rights, the.
Speaker 1: Same people that design the system to protect the wealth
Speaker 1: of the upper class, you know, in the forty you know,
Speaker 1: throughout American history, like continued to be in condition.
Speaker 3: But now you're talking about class, not race.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about race, right, But how do you disrupt
Speaker 1: class if you're so segregated by I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you disrupt race you're just so segregated by class.
Speaker 10: Well, but I don't think you can bring class into
Speaker 10: this because I mean, I would agree that there's we
Speaker 10: could talk about class. We could I agree that there
Speaker 10: are elites who care about themselves and don't care about
Speaker 10: the lower class. I would say that those people are
Speaker 10: are are just as unconcerned with a white person in
Speaker 10: trailer park in Appalasia as they are unconcerned with the
Speaker 10: black person in the inner city. You know, because so
Speaker 10: it is class. We could talk about that. But but my
Speaker 10: question was where, Because we talked about the system, it's
Speaker 10: a broad concept here, So let's narrow it down. Let's
Speaker 10: find a piece of the system that we can point
Speaker 10: to and say, well, this is this is designed to
Speaker 10: hurt black people.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you go to Georgia, for instance, after
Speaker 1: they implemented desegregate school desegregation, what they started doing is saying, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we can't legally keep black people out of our neighborhoods
Speaker 1: or out of our schools, but what we can do
Speaker 1: is we can secede from our neighborhoods. You've been to
Speaker 1: the Atlanta suburbs like every four fortunately, like every four
Speaker 1: like every four blocks. For for a long time, you
Speaker 1: had like new school districts, and they would be drawn.
Speaker 1: They would be basically jerrymandered, like they would know where
Speaker 1: the white people were, and they would jerrymander the school
Speaker 1: district so that only white people would be a part
Speaker 1: of this degregation. No, no, this is what they're doing now,
Speaker 1: like this is up to up to today. Like so
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're saying, Okay, these are the
Speaker 1: new laws in place. However, we like our system of
Speaker 1: segregation and racism that we have here, So how do
Speaker 1: we hire the best lawyers or show that? But it's
Speaker 1: also about race.
Speaker 4: Well, but what I'm saying, do you think primarily in
Speaker 4: the minds of the designers of the system, are they
Speaker 4: are they actually discriminating intentionally on a class.
Speaker 3: Basis pre race pretty race driven?
Speaker 12: I don't.
Speaker 10: I don't think that there's any evidence in it. I think,
Speaker 10: like an example you give, it's class. It's people wanting
Speaker 10: to avoid crime written impoverished areas, not you know, maybe
Speaker 10: someone doesn't want to send their kids to school in
Speaker 10: a place that's high crime. There's gonna be a lot
Speaker 10: of delinquency and everything in the school system. I don't
Speaker 10: think it's because the kids are black. It's just because
Speaker 10: of that. And also the other thing is when we
Speaker 10: talk about but at what point it's like when we
Speaker 10: talk about school districts or the way communities are set up.
Speaker 3: Here's another point that rarely comes up. Pretty simple.
Speaker 10: You can move right, so you can always move. I mean,
Speaker 10: if you live in a community where you're claiming it's
Speaker 10: been set up systemically to disadvantage it it I don't
Speaker 10: buy that, But if I did, I would say, well,
Speaker 10: you should probably move from that community. I mean, you
Speaker 10: can go somewhere else. It's not there's no law saying
Speaker 10: you can't. And if there was, I mean, if there
Speaker 10: was a law saying.
Speaker 3: Some hoa situations will like act try to but they're
Speaker 3: not going to say you can't move here if you're black.
Speaker 4: It's also why a lot of black community groups support
Speaker 4: voucher systems to allow like work with conservatives on voucher
Speaker 4: systems to allow kids to get to different schools.
Speaker 1: So so when you see stats to say, like a
Speaker 1: black home a black homeowner who's trying to get a mortgage,
Speaker 1: who has a higher credit score and higher income gets
Speaker 1: a higher interest rate from the average bank than a
Speaker 1: white applicant. A bunch of these studies have been done
Speaker 1: where they'll they'll put in like a black sounding name
Speaker 1: and higher credit scores, higher income, you know better, better
Speaker 1: candidates on paper other than their name, and they get
Speaker 1: a overall like there have been so many studies that
Speaker 1: have replicated this. They get a higher interest rate, which
Speaker 1: means their cost of borrowing hire, means the mortgage is higher,
Speaker 1: which means you have to have that much more money
Speaker 1: to move into the neighborhood that you'rre timeless. Systemically, it
Speaker 1: doesn't say, well, if you're black, you can't live here,
Speaker 1: But systemically what it does is it makes it easier
Speaker 1: for white people to move into these wealthier neighborhoods. Harder
Speaker 1: for black people to move into those neighborhoods. And that's
Speaker 1: before you even get to the wealth effect Jim Crow
Speaker 1: only ended recently, which means that if you look at
Speaker 1: the kind of savings rates and the inheritance rates for
Speaker 1: the average black family, it's close to nil, especially after
Speaker 1: the subprime mortgage wipe out of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: compared to white families which can go to mom and
Speaker 1: dad and grandma grandpa and say, can you help put
Speaker 1: my kids in private school?
Speaker 3: Can you pay the down payment?
Speaker 1: You know, twenty percent is an awful lot for this
Speaker 1: mortgage generational wealth. Yeah, So you combine the fact that
Speaker 1: they get they have to pay higher interest rates with
Speaker 1: the fact that there's lack of generational wealth.
Speaker 3: That's that to me is systemic.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious specifically on the interest rate question, what's
Speaker 1: going on there and should that be a problem now
Speaker 1: we as a democratic society should address, like why are
Speaker 1: black loan applicants paying higher mortgage interest rates across the board?
Speaker 1: And that is replicated across the economy.
Speaker 10: Okay, I'd have to look at the studies you're talking about.
Speaker 10: You say that they've been replicated at time and time again,
Speaker 10: there's no issues with the studies and there's no issues methodolo.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that people could pick some of the studies apart,
Speaker 1: but they it's well accepted.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I'd have to know who is accepted by exactly.
Speaker 10: But so for the sake of argument, let's say that
Speaker 10: that those studies are totally legit. I would still go
Speaker 10: back to a class issue on that. And the reason
Speaker 10: is that, look, banks, but the white can we explain
Speaker 10: like banks care about the money. That's all they care about.
Speaker 10: They don't care about These banks are not being run
Speaker 10: by people who are saying, you know, we got to
Speaker 10: keep black people poor. I don't care about that. I
Speaker 10: don't think they care about anybody. They care about the money.
Speaker 10: And so if that's happening, they're making stereotypical assumptions, class
Speaker 10: based assumptions that I believe they would probably also make
Speaker 10: if they if if somehow they got they had the
Speaker 10: impression that this was say a white quote unquote white
Speaker 10: trash as they're often called from the trailer park.
Speaker 3: You know, if if I think.
Speaker 10: That the banks would have the same sort of skeptical,
Speaker 10: discriminatory attitude in that case as they would to someone
Speaker 10: who they're assuming is from the inner city.
Speaker 1: Let's say, right, but so the other. The other word
Speaker 1: for that would be implicit bias. So let's say the banks,
Speaker 1: we have a heart, but let's say that. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we got to wrap in a second. But let's say
Speaker 1: the banks you only do care about money. That's reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to say. So then what could explain why they
Speaker 1: would treat them treat the two differently would have to
Speaker 1: be like you're saying, but what you're saying is there
Speaker 1: might be some implicit bias toward if they could identify
Speaker 1: some poor white guy, which goes to the point though,
Speaker 1: of how it's easier for poor whites, which I was one,
Speaker 1: used to be one of, but it was easier for.
Speaker 3: Me to migrate out. My head is Ryan. Great.
Speaker 1: I don't even think it's you can't even tell that
Speaker 1: I was white trash, right. I mean you can if
Speaker 1: you like, you know me pretty well, but you can't
Speaker 1: tell on a resume or an applicant.
Speaker 10: This is a record, Yes, you were in a tie
Speaker 10: and everything there you go could have fooled me.
Speaker 3: What I would even call it implicit bias.
Speaker 10: I think it's just like banks, Uh, they are biased
Speaker 10: against people they don't think that.
Speaker 3: They don't think we'll pay their mortgage.
Speaker 1: Basically right, and so why don't they think a person
Speaker 1: with the black name will pay their mortgage?
Speaker 3: Because I think in that case, spite a high credit
Speaker 3: score and a highest income, if.
Speaker 10: That is true, then they're making assumptions about they're making
Speaker 10: class based assumption. This is someone for this, a lower
Speaker 10: income person coming from a low income neighborhood, even if
Speaker 10: their current income is you know, the same as uh
Speaker 10: that that's the background, and.
Speaker 3: So people sounds like those people face a systemic pub well.
Speaker 10: Class based But that's that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: You're getting told, yeah, we're gonna be in the year. Matt,
Speaker 4: thank you so much. Is a fascinating conversation. I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed the movie.
Speaker 3: Ryan, wou'd you think it's funny. I'll acknowledge that the
Speaker 3: movie is funny. Then these guys are cloud on the poster.
Speaker 3: Guys are total clowns.
Speaker 4: Matt Welsh, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you appreciate it well, Ryan, I actually.
Speaker 4: Thought that was really interesting. We had a lot of
Speaker 4: questions that we couldn't quite get to because that exchange.
Speaker 4: We wanted to sort of let it play out, and
Speaker 4: I think the reason for that, and we wanted to
Speaker 4: ask about anti semitism and abortion, and Matt's actually coming
Speaker 4: on my Unheard show tomorrow, so I'll probably try to
Speaker 4: I'll even take questions from Ryan Graham if you have
Speaker 4: remaining ones. But I actually think that exchange that you
Speaker 4: guys were having was so rare and well worth playing
Speaker 4: out because it is incredibly rare that two people engage
Speaker 4: on good faith on what the question or what the
Speaker 4: sort of semantic debate over systemic racism is, and that
Speaker 4: is at the heart of so many disagreements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I just think if you're a black
Speaker 1: person born in this country, you face systemic difficulties that
Speaker 1: a white person doesn't.
Speaker 4: I think that's true. Yeah, I think that's true. You'll
Speaker 4: probably get him to agree with that to some extent too.
Speaker 4: It's just I think it's a question over the scale.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day, we disagree over like
Speaker 4: maybe the scale or the scope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Supers.
Speaker 4: I thought that was even going to be like, I
Speaker 4: don't know that. I thought that was just really even
Speaker 4: listening to your rebuttals was I think so helpful. And
Speaker 4: I hope everybody in the audience enjoyed it as well.
Speaker 3: Hope so too.
Speaker 4: All right, well, thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 4: for this week's edition of.
Speaker 3: Counterpoints Friday Show. Right with that as the Friday show.
Speaker 4: Right, we did a we wanted to get this out today.
Speaker 4: We didn't want to wait until Friday to get this
Speaker 4: interview out, so we just attached it to the regular show.
Speaker 4: So we will be back here next Wednesday, of course,
Speaker 4: with more Counterpoints. Subscribe over at breaking points dot com
Speaker 4: you can get early editions of the show. You get
Speaker 4: the full edition of the show straight to your inbox early,
Speaker 4: so it's a great deal.
Speaker 3: Who wouldn't want that? See you guys next week.