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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Welcome to Breaking Points.
Speaker 3: Sager is out.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can disclose the reason that
Speaker 2: he's out.
Speaker 3: We can, oh, we can need just a message.
Speaker 2: Well, he just respond So he's recording with Tucker right
Speaker 2: now in Maine, reacting actually to the interview that Tucker
Speaker 2: just dropped with the President of Iran. So Sager will
Speaker 2: be back on Wednesday. So we've got the wonderful and
Speaker 2: brilliant Emily Tchishinski in today for Sager.
Speaker 4: You're welcome everyone, No, I'm excited to hear all about
Speaker 4: Sagers first. So I'm excited to listen to Sager's conversation
Speaker 4: with Tucker and to hear all about what went on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, And I'm going to try to get doctor
Speaker 2: Parcion also to react to that interview once we've had
Speaker 2: a chance to review it. But that certainly will be
Speaker 2: in the show tomorrow a lot in the show today.
Speaker 2: The death toll continues to rise after those horrific floods
Speaker 2: in Texas, So we'll tell you the latest there, show
Speaker 2: you some of the truly horrifying images and also all
Speaker 2: of the questions over whether the response was impacted and
Speaker 2: the death toll increased by those cuts made by Doge
Speaker 2: at the beginning of this administration. Speaking of Elon, he
Speaker 2: is officially launching the America Party, or at least he.
Speaker 3: Says that he is. What will that mean politically?
Speaker 2: We also have this is sort of an Elon linked
Speaker 2: story as well. Trump says Emily there is no Epstein conspiracy,
Speaker 2: the Trump DOJ saying there was no client list. He
Speaker 2: definitely killed himself releasing some video and a report. We
Speaker 2: can all just put that to bed. Nothing to see here.
Speaker 4: We've now had what ten hours of video they released
Speaker 4: last night. Yeah, so we'll get into it, but basically,
Speaker 4: this was a Sunday night news dump to Axios for
Speaker 4: some reason about how they're just fully closing the Epstein investigation. Yes,
Speaker 4: six months into the Trump presidency. No, no information, everything's fine.
Speaker 2: Right, No, no conspiracy, it's fine, it's fine. I don't
Speaker 2: know why Glade Maxwell's in prison. Then if there was
Speaker 2: no conspiracy, who was she trafficking to?
Speaker 4: I wish we will. That's not what Trump said a
Speaker 4: few years ago. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly what he said.
Speaker 2: And it's elon Links of course, because back when they
Speaker 2: originally had their big blow up, he said Trump is
Speaker 2: in the Epstein files, and that was sort of like
Speaker 2: the nuclear bomb. And so now they're feuding again and
Speaker 2: this is coming out and bb Nan Yahoo is in town, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, later in the show, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk to Jeremy Scalhill about the implications the potential for
Speaker 2: a ceasefire, what's going on with Iran as BBE comes
Speaker 2: back to town. We're also going to take a look
Speaker 2: at a couple of media stories. Zoran Mondani being attacked
Speaker 2: by the New York Times really interesting story.
Speaker 4: This one fascinating. Yeah, a lot of layers to peel back.
Speaker 2: There are, indeed, and this is all over the boxes
Speaker 2: he checked when he was applying to Columbia University School.
Speaker 2: By the way, he didn't even get into but there's
Speaker 2: a lot going on there. We also have Tim Dillon
Speaker 2: and Joe Rogan unhappy with the Trump administration over immigration specifically.
Speaker 2: Rogan also talking a bit about Gaza, so really interesting
Speaker 2: always to dig into that. And then Emily and I
Speaker 2: are going to do an AMA Live.
Speaker 3: After this show.
Speaker 2: For those of you who are not premium members, if
Speaker 2: you want to become premium members and be able to
Speaker 2: access all of those AMAS Breakingpoints dot com. We so
Speaker 2: appreciate all of your support. And with that, let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and jump into the very latest out of Texas,
Speaker 2: where we can put some of these images of the
Speaker 2: flooding and the aftermath of the flooding in Texas Hill
Speaker 2: Country right near San Antonio up on the screen. As
Speaker 2: of this morning, we know the death toll is at
Speaker 2: least eighty one. This marks one of the deadliest floods
Speaker 2: in this country in a century.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: This is an area where flooding is not a known
Speaker 2: but the rapidity and the extent of the flooding here
Speaker 2: was absolutely catastrophic, made worse by the fact that you
Speaker 2: had a lot of families on vacation in campers near
Speaker 2: this river, and also tragically a girl's summer camp. You
Speaker 2: can see here This is a father who is searching
Speaker 2: amid the debris here for his eight year old daughter,
Speaker 2: who continues to be missing. We know there are still
Speaker 2: dozens of people who are unaccounted for, including ten from
Speaker 2: this camp. I believe those were nine girls and one
Speaker 2: camp counselor who continue to be missing from that camp.
Speaker 2: And the death toll here obviously utterly devastating, and made
Speaker 2: even more so by the fact that so many children
Speaker 2: were impacted. We're going to get to some of the
Speaker 2: political questions here, of course, and immediately people to into Hey,
Speaker 2: you guys, Republican Trump administration, you just cut a bunch
Speaker 2: of positions at the National Weather Service. You just cut
Speaker 2: a bunch of positions at these local offices that are
Speaker 2: not only supposed to handle the weather forecast but also
Speaker 2: supposed to communicate with the community.
Speaker 3: Is that part of why this death toll is so high?
Speaker 2: But before we get to that, Emily just your reaction
Speaker 2: to the horror coming out of Texas right now.
Speaker 4: You know, I think, like a lot of people, I
Speaker 4: spent the weekend basically trying to avoid these stories. The
Speaker 4: father of the video of the father that we just
Speaker 4: saw in particulars is still unimaginable. Yeah, that one just
Speaker 4: stayed with me. We didn't hear it, but the audio
Speaker 4: he says something to the extent of I know she
Speaker 4: was here. And the fact that there are still ten
Speaker 4: girls on accounting for, or ten people on accounted for
Speaker 4: from the camp. Just thinking about what the families are
Speaker 4: going through as you're sifting through debris from a flood
Speaker 4: looking for little girls with the first responders whose job
Speaker 4: it is to look for these little girls in the floodwaters.
Speaker 4: Two of them, sisters were found clutching each other in
Speaker 4: their arms. I mean, this is one of the worst,
Speaker 4: one of the worst stories I think anyone can remember
Speaker 4: reading in a long long time or living in a
Speaker 4: long time.
Speaker 2: Hopes are fading that they're going to find additional survivors
Speaker 2: at this point, and the rescuers are concerned also because
Speaker 2: there's war rain in the forecast, another significant rainfall in
Speaker 2: the forecast for today, so you know, we are all
Speaker 2: certainly thinking about those families who are impacted, those families
Speaker 2: who are still holding out hope that their loved ones
Speaker 2: will be found. And there was one remarkable rescue story
Speaker 2: just recently, a young girl I think, who survived clinging
Speaker 2: to a mattress, so you know, and there have been
Speaker 2: obviously stories of absolute heroism from the rescuers. I know
Speaker 2: one in particular rescue like one hundred and fifty girls
Speaker 2: at this camp, so just absolutely horrific. At the same time,
Speaker 2: as I said, you know a lot of questions here
Speaker 2: what went wrong? And there's a lot of layers because
Speaker 2: first of all, you have the question of, okay, the
Speaker 2: forecast was wrong. The forecast underestimated the amount of rainfall
Speaker 2: by about half, and so you're talking about very different
Speaker 2: scenario when it's six inches of rain, still a lot
Speaker 2: of rain, versus twelve inches, which is what ultimately fell.
Speaker 2: You have questions about that, So that would be the
Speaker 2: National Weather Service. You also have questions about, okay, well,
Speaker 2: did the right warnings go out at the right time.
Speaker 2: This was all complicated by the fact that this was
Speaker 2: unfolding at nights, So of course you have people who
Speaker 2: are asleep, so it may not necessarily be receiving all
Speaker 2: of those alerts that are going out. And then the
Speaker 2: other layer is okay, then you also have in these
Speaker 2: local offices people whose job it is to communicate with
Speaker 2: the community and make sure the community is prepared in
Speaker 2: these events. So was that were those relationships still active?
Speaker 2: Was that communication happening in the way that it could
Speaker 2: so that the community community could fully prepare. Texas officials
Speaker 2: came out pretty hot blasting the National Weather Service for
Speaker 2: the inability to predict the amount of rainfall that actually
Speaker 2: fell here. Let's go ahead and take a listen to
Speaker 2: a little bit of fat.
Speaker 5: Original forecast that we received on Wednesday from the National
Speaker 5: Weather Service predicted three to six inches of rain in
Speaker 5: the Concho Valley and four to eight inches of rain
Speaker 5: in the Hill country. We worked with our own meteorologists
Speaker 5: to fine tune that weather statement, and as many of
Speaker 5: you know, and many of you in broadcast journalism indieurology,
Speaker 5: you can go back and look at your own forecast,
Speaker 5: and the amount of rain that fell in this specific
Speaker 5: location was never in any of those forecasts.
Speaker 6: This rain event sat on top of that and dumped
Speaker 6: more rain than what was forecasted on both of those forks.
Speaker 6: When we got the report, it was about seven feet
Speaker 6: or so on the South Fork, and within a matter
Speaker 6: of minutes it was up to twenty nine feet and
Speaker 6: all of that converged at the Guadalupe and that's where
Speaker 6: we saw those very quick rise and flood.
Speaker 5: But listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right,
Speaker 5: you all got it. You're all in media. You got
Speaker 5: that forecast. It did not the amount of rain that
Speaker 5: we saw.
Speaker 3: So Emily.
Speaker 2: Look, sometimes weather forecasters sometimes they get it wrong. But
Speaker 2: you also can't help but look at the fact that
Speaker 2: the National Weather Service took significant hits from DOGE and
Speaker 2: asked the question, would they have been better able to
Speaker 2: estimate the amount of rainfall if they had full capacity here?
Speaker 2: So what is your you know, what is your reaction
Speaker 2: to that from these Texas officials, who, by the way,
Speaker 2: I mean many of these Texas officials are Republicans who
Speaker 2: supported the cuts. So the blame shifting here is also
Speaker 2: a little bit rich.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And in times like this, I always like to
Speaker 4: go to people in the area who have some like
Speaker 4: for Matt Lands as a meteorologist, a Texas based meteorologist,
Speaker 4: and he posted on x in response to the Homeland
Speaker 4: Security twitter feed. They posted this long thread about twelve
Speaker 4: hours ago saying the mainstream media is deliberately lying about
Speaker 4: the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas.
Speaker 4: He responds and says the quote MSM isn't lying, They're
Speaker 4: doing their job by asking completely and crucial questions since
Speaker 4: the admin has proposed ring out essentially all NA research
Speaker 4: in the twenty twenty six budget and as fire taken
Speaker 4: by out some hundreds of NWS and boys in recent months.
Speaker 4: He though, has an interesting take. He says, while the
Speaker 4: local NWS office did good work during this event, the
Speaker 4: reality is that these questions are perfectly valid and reasonable
Speaker 4: given the circumstances, and yes, the office is still understaffed,
Speaker 4: if not comparable to worse offices. He expanded on this
Speaker 4: in a super interesting substack where he has basically complicated
Speaker 4: meteorological language broken down in a more understandable way about
Speaker 4: how you had just this. You had such a I
Speaker 4: don't know, I'm trying to avoid using the first perfect storm,
Speaker 4: but like, really that's what you had for something between
Speaker 4: one and four in the morning to escalate like it
Speaker 4: did in ways that just you can predict. But it's
Speaker 4: such a when you have an area that's so prone
Speaker 4: to flooding, you have like eight out of ten times
Speaker 4: you get a flash flood warning, and sometimes it's bad,
Speaker 4: but it's never this bad. And so he says, did
Speaker 4: budget cuts play a role role? No, in this particular case,
Speaker 4: we have seen absolutely nothing to suggests that current staffing
Speaker 4: or budget issues with NAA and NW has played any
Speaker 4: role at all in this event. Then he goes on
Speaker 4: to say, in fact, weather balloon launchers played a vital
Speaker 4: role in forecast messaging on Thursday night as the event
Speaker 4: was beginning to unfold. But he said, use this event
Speaker 4: as a symbol of the value of NAA and NWS
Speaker 4: bring to society understanding that it's horrific and as this is, yes,
Speaker 4: it could have always been worse. So where I find
Speaker 4: myself as sort of I think the questions are entirely valid,
Speaker 4: especially because Christal you alluded to this just moments ago.
Speaker 4: It now seems like where the focus should be is
Speaker 4: on what happened after the forecasting and as these warnings
Speaker 4: were starting to hit. It's one in the morning, people
Speaker 4: are asleep there's summer camps, there are children along the
Speaker 4: river banks, was the message conveyed in ways that were reasonable.
Speaker 4: I think these like these are entirely, entirely legitimate questions.
Speaker 4: So we'll see as this comes out exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: But when Republicans talk about cutting the administrative state, when
Speaker 4: people like me talk about cutting the administrative straight administrative state,
Speaker 4: and events like this happen, you always have to own it.
Speaker 4: I mean, you'll always have to own it. When it
Speaker 4: looks like there's a correlation. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 4: convinced that there is in this case. And I don't
Speaker 4: have any particular position on whether the National Weather Service
Speaker 4: was overstaffed, no idea, but you always end up politically
Speaker 4: on the hook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go ahead and put the New York Times
Speaker 2: up on the specifics regarding those vacancies in the local offices.
Speaker 2: So they said, as flood's hit key roles were vacant
Speaker 2: at the weather surface, crucial positions at the local offices
Speaker 2: in the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall
Speaker 2: inundated parts of Central Texas. Their San Angelo office, which
Speaker 2: is responsible for some of the area's hit hardest by
Speaker 2: Friday's flooding, they were missing a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster,
Speaker 2: and a meteorologist in charge. According to the legislative director
Speaker 2: for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, that is the
Speaker 2: union that represents those workers. The nearby San Antonio office,
Speaker 2: which covers other areas that were hit by the floods,
Speaker 2: also had significant vacancies, including and this is the one
Speaker 2: that people have really focused in on, specifically, a warning
Speaker 2: coordination meteorologist and science officer. THEFF members in those positions
Speaker 2: are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan
Speaker 2: for floods, including when and how to warn local residents
Speaker 2: and help them evacuate. That office's warning coordination meteorologists left
Speaker 2: on April thirty after taking the early retirement package. So
Speaker 2: that was the member of the fork in the Road
Speaker 2: email that went out from Elon from DOJE.
Speaker 3: So this guy took that offer.
Speaker 2: They used that offer, of course, to reduce the number
Speaker 2: of federal employees.
Speaker 3: Overall, and they did not rehire.
Speaker 2: Someone, they go on to say, under the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: so overall, the Weather Service, like other federal agencies, has
Speaker 2: been pushed to reduce its number of employee.
Speaker 3: By this spring.
Speaker 2: Through layoffs and retirements, the Weather Service had lost nearly
Speaker 2: six hundred people. That's from a workforce that was only
Speaker 2: four thousand, So six hundred down to four thousand is
Speaker 2: a very significant cut. And so this individual in particular
Speaker 2: who took the early retirement package, you know, I watch
Speaker 2: videos of some of the local meteorologists talking about like,
Speaker 2: this is the guy we know. This is the guy
Speaker 2: we're constantly in communication with and talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: and this is the person that the community knows. So
Speaker 2: sometimes it is impossible to know what the impact is
Speaker 2: ultimately of that person's departure, because even if you had
Speaker 2: filled that slot, you don't have that individual who had
Speaker 2: all of these relationships over all of those many years
Speaker 2: and may have known to do something that was not
Speaker 2: strictly inside of the protocol, but would have been thinking,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this summer camp.
Speaker 3: I got to let them know.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of questions like that that I think
Speaker 2: will probably forever be unanswered about the actual impact of
Speaker 2: these cuts. Let's go ahead and put the local reporting
Speaker 2: the next piece up on the screen here, just to
Speaker 2: see how quickly this flooding escalated, which is horrifying. You
Speaker 2: can see this chart here. This is from the Texas Tribune.
Speaker 2: They say, in a Texas region prone to catastrophic floods,
Speaker 2: questions grow about the lack of warning. And you can
Speaker 2: see how quickly and how rapidly this escalated, with the
Speaker 2: river reaching its peak of thirty six feet in height
Speaker 2: at seven am on July fourth, leading to absolute devastation
Speaker 2: and catastrophe. And so you know, Texas Tribune is not
Speaker 2: just the New York Times and national outlets, it's also
Speaker 2: you know, Texas Tribune that are asking some of these
Speaker 2: same questions about whether or not these cuts played a
Speaker 2: role in the absolutely devastating toll again worst one of
Speaker 2: the worst floods in terms of death toll in a
Speaker 2: century that unfolded here. And of course, you know there's
Speaker 2: a climate change question to this as well, as we
Speaker 2: see these catastrophic extreme weather events, these once in one
Speaker 2: hundred year floods happening on now a decade by decade
Speaker 2: more and more frequently. That's, you know, a big piece
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 3: And then the other.
Speaker 2: Part as well is you have the Trump administration not
Speaker 2: only cutting FEMA, or sorry not in cutting the National
Speaker 2: Weather Service, but also wanting to cut FEMA so that
Speaker 2: in the wake of these horrific tragedies, you also have
Speaker 2: a lesson ability to help people who have survived and
Speaker 2: helped communities be able to rebuild. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: go to a four. Trump yesterday evening got asked some
Speaker 2: of these questions, both about FEMA and about whether the
Speaker 2: cuts impacted the response and you know, created more death
Speaker 2: and destruction in the.
Speaker 3: Wake of these floods. Let's go ahead and take a
Speaker 3: listen to that. Are you investigating whether some of the
Speaker 3: cuts to the federal.
Speaker 1: Government left tea vacancies of the National Weather Service or
Speaker 1: the emergency For me.
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you if you look at that that water situation,
Speaker 6: that all is and that was really Biden set up.
Speaker 3: That was not our setup.
Speaker 4: But I wouldn't blame Biden for it either.
Speaker 5: I would just say, this is one hundred year catastrophe
Speaker 5: and it's just so horrible to watch.
Speaker 3: Are you still planning to phase out FEMA?
Speaker 6: Well, FEMA is something we could talk about later, but
Speaker 6: right now they're busy working, so we'll leave.
Speaker 4: It at that.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, and Emily, to me, it's particularly sick because
Speaker 2: Trump ran aggressively on the response to Hurricane Helene, claiming
Speaker 2: that the Biden administration didn't do enough there, which there
Speaker 2: may well have been failures from the Biden administration, you know, FEMA.
Speaker 2: I'm honestly not certain if there was more that they
Speaker 2: could have done there or not. But he really positioned
Speaker 2: himself in the closing days of the campaign as someone
Speaker 2: who is going to be better on disaster preparedness and
Speaker 2: disaster recovery, and then as soon as he gets in
Speaker 2: office runs in the polar opposite direction. And not only
Speaker 2: has he been talking about getting rid of FEMA altogether
Speaker 2: and just sending it to the states, they're also diverting
Speaker 2: FEMA funds too, for example building Alligator Alcatraz right now.
Speaker 2: So again, you not only have the Doge chainsaw that
Speaker 2: came in and cut the National Weather Service cut Noah,
Speaker 2: this has been a long time Conservative priority. By the way,
Speaker 2: it was in Project twenty twenty five. This didn't just
Speaker 2: come out of nowhere. But not only do you have
Speaker 2: the time, the way, Yeah, we can put that up
Speaker 2: on the screen. This is something actually Soccer and I
Speaker 2: were talking and I think you were talking about it too,
Speaker 2: even before Trump got elected. When we were talking about
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five. There's an ideological project, you know,
Speaker 2: an attack here on the National Weather Service which comes
Speaker 2: both out of an ideological commitment to just cutting the
Speaker 2: government overall, but also out of ideological opposition to doing
Speaker 2: anything about the climate crisis. And that's spelled on, you know,
Speaker 2: quite clearly here that they feel the National Weather Service
Speaker 2: is a key part of what they call the climate
Speaker 2: change alarm industry. And so there was, you know, a
Speaker 2: concerted effort to go after this, and so sometimes you know,
Speaker 2: I think some of the Elon cuts, Doge cuts were
Speaker 2: sort of random and haphazard. This one was planned out,
Speaker 2: This one was messaged in advance, not that they talked
Speaker 2: a lot about it on the campaign trail, but you know, Trump,
Speaker 2: of course they're just shifting it to the side and saying, actually,
Speaker 2: the water situation there is somehow Biden's fault.
Speaker 4: What's interesting also about this is people remember the leaked
Speaker 4: video of russ vote talking about how the goal was
Speaker 4: to demoralize bureaucrats. So we talked about some of the
Speaker 4: cuts Crystal earlier this year affecting tornado warnings, and I
Speaker 4: pulled up an Associated Press article from May that said,
Speaker 4: as of March some of the Weather Service offices issuing
Speaker 4: tornado warnings Friday and Sunday were above the twenty percent
Speaker 4: vacancy levels that outside experts have said as a critical threshold.
Speaker 4: So those are offices with twenty five nine thirty two
Speaker 4: percent vacancy rate and for example Wichita. And what's interesting
Speaker 4: about that vacancy rate, that's positions that are unfilled that
Speaker 4: they are trying to fill. That is not positions that
Speaker 4: were cut, which is really the sort of public marketing
Speaker 4: of DOGE is that we are slashing, kind of permanently slashing.
Speaker 4: The idea was the size of the federal government. These
Speaker 4: are people who were, in all likelihood to the point
Speaker 4: that we were just talking about in the Kervel area,
Speaker 4: they were driven out of the work. It took early retirements,
Speaker 4: they decided to go work in the private sector. And
Speaker 4: so I think it does crystal reflect on DOGE overall
Speaker 4: when you say these are positions that are actually not
Speaker 4: being cut, they're just vacant. They're just completely like they're
Speaker 4: some of these If it's a vacancy, that implies that
Speaker 4: they don't want to get rid of the position because
Speaker 4: they're still actively filling the position, which is very different
Speaker 4: from just slashing the size of the offices totally.
Speaker 2: What also speaks to so for this individual in particular,
Speaker 2: who was known for doing the local coordination and was
Speaker 2: a veteran and took the early buyout.
Speaker 3: It also speaks to the fact that a lot of
Speaker 3: the people that.
Speaker 2: Were pushed out were some of the most effective, some
Speaker 2: of the people that you would actually want to keep
Speaker 2: and prioritize keeping. So all the language about doj oh,
Speaker 2: we need to get back to merit, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: but then the actual program that they used to go
Speaker 2: about doing this was almost tailor made to push out
Speaker 2: some of the most senior and most valuable individuals throughout
Speaker 2: the federal government who would be the most difficult to replace.
Speaker 2: And I went and look this guy up. He's on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2: He's now doing Yeah, private consulting. Who went to private industry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened here. And so those vacancies continued
Speaker 2: to remain, But there's a hiring freeze at the agency,
Speaker 2: so it's not like they have the possibility of hiring
Speaker 2: it to fill these positions. Even and then they also
Speaker 2: things like the member there was that freeze on any
Speaker 2: sort of expense reimbursement so that there was an inability
Speaker 2: to travel, to coordinate between you know, from the state
Speaker 2: office to the local communities, et cetera. So you know,
Speaker 2: I was telling you I was watching the This is
Speaker 2: going to seem like a total diversion, but I promise
Speaker 2: it connects. I was watching the Titan Submersible right documentary
Speaker 2: on Netflix, And when you see that dude's Docton Rush
Speaker 2: who went down with the ship, the way he went
Speaker 2: about doing things, and just like there was no cost
Speaker 2: to all of the like I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: my submersible classed and inspected by the federal government. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to play by the rules. I'm an innovator.
Speaker 2: And he talked about how he molded himself after Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: There were so many personalities similarities there where it's just
Speaker 2: like these guys think that none of this stuff matters,
Speaker 2: Like there aren't going to be any real world impacts
Speaker 2: of their willingness to cut corners and do things however
Speaker 2: they want to do them. I mean, you see it
Speaker 2: with Elon too, with like the USAAD cuts. He's in
Speaker 2: total denial that that has impacted anyone's life lives. Obviously,
Speaker 2: even if you're someone who doesn't like USAID, you have
Speaker 2: to be honest and admit, of course, when you pull
Speaker 2: funding for medicine away from kids who need it, that's
Speaker 2: going to impact people's lives. And so there were huge
Speaker 2: warnings here about what this could ultimately mean for life
Speaker 2: and death. The living heads of the National Weather Service,
Speaker 2: all of the previous heads, they put out an open letter.
Speaker 2: We can put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 2: a seven warning of exactly this. They said that NWS
Speaker 2: staff will have an impossible task to continue their current
Speaker 2: level of service. Some forecast offices will be so short
Speaker 2: staff they may be forced to go to part time services.
Speaker 2: Not only are there fewer forecasters, there are fewer electronic
Speaker 2: technicians who are responsible for maintaining the critical nextroad radars.
Speaker 3: Our worst nightmare.
Speaker 2: Is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed there
Speaker 2: will be needless loss of life. We know that's a
Speaker 2: nightmare shared by those on the forecasting frontlines and by
Speaker 2: the people who depend on their efforts.
Speaker 3: So they weren't of this.
Speaker 2: There was actually a warning from a Florida forecaster, again,
Speaker 2: a veteran meteorologist down in South Florida. That went viral
Speaker 2: at the time and is now going viral again because
Speaker 2: he also is sounding the alarm about what these cuts
Speaker 2: could mean as we had right now we're already into
Speaker 2: hurricane season. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 7: When is it going to turn, John, It's not turning,
Speaker 7: It's coming straight to us.
Speaker 4: It's going to turn.
Speaker 7: The turn will come Monday afternoon, Monday evening into Tuesday.
Speaker 7: Remember that that was.
Speaker 4: About six years ago.
Speaker 7: That was Hurricane Dorian. As it was absolutely devastating the
Speaker 7: northwest Bahamas as a Category five sat over that region
Speaker 7: for two days. It was headed straight west. Lots of
Speaker 7: people in Florida were concerned the hurricane was heading here. Confidently,
Speaker 7: I went on TV and I told you it's going
Speaker 7: to turn. You don't need to worry. It is going
Speaker 7: to turn. And I am here to tell you that
Speaker 7: I'm not sure I can do that.
Speaker 4: This year.
Speaker 7: Because of the gut cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack
Speaker 7: on science in general. And I could talk about that
Speaker 7: for a long long time. Let's talk about the federal
Speaker 7: government cuts to the National Weather Service and to Noah,
Speaker 7: did you know that Central and South Florida National Weather
Speaker 7: Service offices are currently basically twenty to forty percent understaffed
Speaker 7: from Tampa to Key West, including the Miami office twenty
Speaker 7: to forty percent understaffed. Now, this type of staffing shortage
Speaker 7: is having impacts across the nation because there's been a
Speaker 7: nearly twenty percent reduction in weather balloon releases launches that
Speaker 7: carry those radio signs, and what we're starting to see
Speaker 7: is that the quality of the forecasts is becoming degraded.
Speaker 7: There's also a chance because of some of these cuts
Speaker 7: that NAWA Hurricane Hunter aircraft will not be able to
Speaker 7: fly this year, and with less reconnaissance missions, we may
Speaker 7: be flying blind and we may not exactly know how
Speaker 7: strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline, like
Speaker 7: happened a couple of years ago in Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico.
Speaker 4: What you need to do is.
Speaker 7: Call your representatives and make sure that these cuts are stopped.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Dire warning there that was I think back in February
Speaker 2: from that South Florida forecaster, and you know the immediate
Speaker 2: wake of these cuts, and there are a lot of
Speaker 2: questions about what happened here. And I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say we don't know at this point whether the
Speaker 2: cuts made a difference here or not, but a lot
Speaker 2: of questions you can't help but ask, did the cuts
Speaker 2: to the National Weather Service, these local offices, these vacancies,
Speaker 2: these individuals who had longtime expertise in this community, longtime
Speaker 2: relationships in this community. Could those people have made a
Speaker 2: difference here if they hadn't been pushed out, if these
Speaker 2: offices were not you know, understaffed, with these significant vacancies,
Speaker 2: And it's horrifying to see. And certainly this won't be
Speaker 2: the last time that these questions are raised, either with
Speaker 2: regard to National Weather Service or anything else. And you know, Emily,
Speaker 2: this is anecdotal, but I will say we were, you know,
Speaker 2: we were at the beach last week. We try to
Speaker 2: plan out like our daily schedule. The forecasts were the
Speaker 2: worst I have ever seen.
Speaker 3: They were.
Speaker 2: I was looking on the weather app which gets all
Speaker 2: of that information comes from the federal government, and it
Speaker 2: was just like, wildly wrong every single day. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I look again, weather forecasts in the best of funding
Speaker 2: times can be wrong.
Speaker 3: But I look at them.
Speaker 2: Like this could be doge, Like this could the reason
Speaker 2: that this is all wrong could very well be that
Speaker 2: they just don't have the resources to accurately forecast the
Speaker 2: way that they used to and it's you know, contributes
Speaker 2: to the sense of it. Also, like the loss of
Speaker 2: life here is obviously the critical thing to focus on
Speaker 2: in the fact that this is a major possibility again
Speaker 2: as we head into like the worst of hurricane season.
Speaker 2: I think this is a dire warning for the country
Speaker 2: about the track we're on.
Speaker 3: And it's also just this sense of decline.
Speaker 2: Like things that we used to be to do, used
Speaker 2: to be able to keep planes in there without like
Speaker 2: you know, crashing into each other, crashing into a helicopter
Speaker 2: or whatever. We can't forecast, we can't prepare the way
Speaker 2: that we could even a decade ago. I mean that
Speaker 2: is it's with horrifying and tragic consequences.
Speaker 4: Well, and I'm very curious to see if this creeps
Speaker 4: into the abundance conversation at all, given that Texas is
Speaker 4: such a focal point of the debate between Texas California
Speaker 4: as an argument for abundance. Because Mike Baker the New
Speaker 4: York Times runs down. Yeah, see he's been running down.
Speaker 4: He has a thread on X Ray. He's running down
Speaker 4: all of the apparent, ostensible local cracks that led to
Speaker 4: the situation that transpired on Friday, And it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: You know, the people didn't want to, for example, pay
Speaker 4: for what they saw is way too expensive warning signs
Speaker 4: or warnings sirens. So there are a lot of I
Speaker 4: think important questions that are going to be asked because
Speaker 4: of all of this. The quick thought on the political
Speaker 4: component that we were just talking about. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: sure that there are defensible cuts to the National Weather Service.
Speaker 4: I have no idea how many they are. I don't
Speaker 4: even know what they look like. I'm sure you can
Speaker 4: find an argument that there would be a more efficient
Speaker 4: NWS or Noah whatever with a couple of precise cuts scalpel,
Speaker 4: not sledgehammers, and not. What they ended up saying is
Speaker 4: those was sort of teetering on the brink. But the
Speaker 4: must mentality has probably damaged the project of making a
Speaker 4: more efficient federal government for a generation because now it
Speaker 4: is inextricably emotionally viscerally linked with everything that happens afterwards.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it'll be fair, sometimes it won't be fair. But
Speaker 4: either way, these the way that he I just wanted
Speaker 4: to make that point about Stockton Rush that you brought up,
Speaker 4: I think that's super incisive because it's this people who
Speaker 4: come from the tech world, who are super online and
Speaker 4: or the highest echelons of business, and you know, they're airs.
Speaker 4: I think Stockton Rush was an air, right, like yeah,
Speaker 4: it was yeah right, and just tinkering with life and
Speaker 4: death in a way that I think lacks the gravity
Speaker 4: and the consequence of the decision making, and that I
Speaker 4: don't know the project of like actually shrinking the scope
Speaker 4: of the federal government will ever recover from, at least
Speaker 4: in the next couple decades, not to mention.
Speaker 2: I mean, Elan, I'll tell you, first of all, they
Speaker 2: didn't save any money, no, no, none. They cost the
Speaker 2: federal government money to make it worse. They made the
Speaker 2: federal government worse and less efficient and it costs more money. Right,
Speaker 2: And they just passed the big beautiful bill which is
Speaker 2: going to blow up the den and the deficit. So
Speaker 2: if there was any pretense of, oh, this is all
Speaker 2: to get our spending under control, you know, because we
Speaker 2: have such a large debt and deficit, I mean no,
Speaker 2: you just you just made things worse.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's what you accomplished.
Speaker 4: That is the perfect segue into our next walk, which
Speaker 4: is the America Party is now I guess official, Crystal.
Speaker 4: We're going to learn more about filings and such in
Speaker 4: the days ahead, but let's put the first element on
Speaker 4: the screen. Elon Musk on the fourth of July tweeted
Speaker 4: Independence Days of the perfect time to ask if you
Speaker 4: want independence from the two party some would say uniparty system.
Speaker 4: He started tweeting, like Trump, it's interesting, should we create
Speaker 4: the America Party?
Speaker 3: You know, because just a pause on that. Sorry.
Speaker 2: One of my biggest pet peeves on the left, One
Speaker 2: of my biggest pet paves is these people who all
Speaker 2: will talk like Obama, Yes forever, Pete and Beato and
Speaker 2: Corey Booker, and there's Josh Pier or whatever.
Speaker 3: On the right.
Speaker 2: The way everyone posts like Trump and tries to talk
Speaker 2: like Trump is so annoying and grading, like can people
Speaker 2: please have their own personality?
Speaker 4: It's not only annoying and grading, it is also, I
Speaker 4: don't know, Crystal, a little homo erotic. I see a post.
Speaker 3: From how about all the Daddy posting about Trump? It's
Speaker 3: how about that?
Speaker 4: It's a lot sometimes, but sometimes you see a post
Speaker 4: from like I don't know, Charlie Kirk. He's really bad
Speaker 4: about it. He posts like when Trump started getting more
Speaker 4: and more popular back like ten years ago. Now his
Speaker 4: style changed so conspicuously on Twitter anyway, this is entirely
Speaker 4: beside the point. But like Elon is playing that game
Speaker 4: as well now. But his poll results on x This
Speaker 4: is another super Trumpian thing, right, Chris Well. Remember when
Speaker 4: Trump during the twenty fifteen to sixteen debates against other
Speaker 4: Republican candidates would constantly be citing Twitter polls, like in
Speaker 4: the debates and in media.
Speaker 3: Does this time, remember he was citing that cat Turn poll.
Speaker 4: Here you go by a factor of two to one.
Speaker 4: You want a new political party, Elon Musk says, and
Speaker 4: you shall have it because people who follow Elon Musk
Speaker 4: on Twitter he apparently got one point two million votes,
Speaker 4: said that they want a new political party. Now, that
Speaker 4: is not a question that says they want an America
Speaker 4: party necessarily, it says, you know, we live in a
Speaker 4: one party system, not a democracy. So that could mean
Speaker 4: a lot of different things. But it's really there's no
Speaker 4: point in parsing the seriousness of this pole at social media.
Speaker 4: But Trump responded to this and this is our next element.
Speaker 4: This is B one B with a very long post
Speaker 4: on X where he says, I am saddened to watch
Speaker 4: Elon Musk or on True Social Elon Musk go completely
Speaker 4: off the rails, essentially becoming a train wreck over the
Speaker 4: past five weeks. He even wants to start a third
Speaker 4: political party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded
Speaker 4: in the United States. The system seems not designed for them.
Speaker 4: Seems yes, excellent.
Speaker 3: Never is an overstatement that anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is from the Republican Party, which third parties. Yes,
Speaker 4: and then he goes on, I mean this is like
Speaker 4: a three hundred word post on True Social. He goes
Speaker 4: on to talk about the ev mandate. He says, my
Speaker 4: number one charge is to protect the American public. So
Speaker 4: they were trading barbs all weekend basically. Musk then went
Speaker 4: on to say the Republican Party has a clean sweep
Speaker 4: of the executive, legislative and judicial branches and still has
Speaker 4: the nerve to massively increase the size of the government,
Speaker 4: expanding the national debt by a record five trillion dollars. So, Crystal,
Speaker 4: this all happened as promised after Donald Trump on the
Speaker 4: fourth of July, he got his perfect ceremonial moment signed
Speaker 4: the one big Beautiful bill at the White House on
Speaker 4: the fourth of July. That is what Elon Musk said,
Speaker 4: basically would be the infantos for the America Party. And
Speaker 4: just very quickly the next element he is now saying
Speaker 4: that he could target just two to three Senate seats
Speaker 4: in eight to ten house districts by basically as this
Speaker 4: person he interacts with a lot on ex Mario Naffal, Yeah, says,
Speaker 4: skipping the national circuit hit where margins are razor thin.
Speaker 4: Now that's actually a very smart political strategy.
Speaker 3: But it's a.
Speaker 2: Smart political strategy if you want to hand Democrats those
Speaker 2: two to three Senate stats in eight to ten house districts.
Speaker 4: There it is, Yes, that's what you That's exactly what
Speaker 4: will in all likelihood happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Elon interacted with this post, which
Speaker 2: gave me the sense that this was at least somewhat
Speaker 2: in the ballpark of what is actually happening here. Because no,
Speaker 2: Fall is not always the most reliable character and it
Speaker 2: drives me crazy, like the so many digressions today, but
Speaker 2: the downgrading of links in the Twitter algorithm has made
Speaker 2: it so obnoxious so that you know, people like you
Speaker 2: can't go and check easily what people are actually saying
Speaker 2: with the used to be that you posted the links
Speaker 2: so you can go actually see anyway.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 3: So the Trump post is still very interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Because yes it's long and goes after Elon and says
Speaker 2: he's gone off the rails or whatever. It still feels
Speaker 2: so mild to me to what he says about you know,
Speaker 2: I remember how humiliated Ronda Santas came to me in tears.
Speaker 2: It is us and he needs just like he knows
Speaker 2: how to absolutely humiliate people, and he doesn't really do
Speaker 2: that in fact.
Speaker 3: To be honest with you, I'm.
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't like either of these guys.
Speaker 2: I hope both of them fail. The points he made
Speaker 2: about Elon were pretty reasonable. He's like, oh, he's mad
Speaker 2: about his EV subsidies and he's mad that he didn't
Speaker 2: get his like handpicked guy in t NASA so that
Speaker 2: he could get whatever he wanted for SpaceX like.
Speaker 3: True, yeah, true, correct.
Speaker 2: Perfectly reasonable points there, and so I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: just interesting to me. And then this will tie into
Speaker 2: the Epstein black too, since Elon had floated previously like hey,
Speaker 2: Trump's on the you know, a pedo basically Trump's on
Speaker 2: the Epstein clientless and then once they sort of like
Speaker 2: calmed the waters, he deleted those posts and said he
Speaker 2: had gone too far.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. But in terms of the America Party.
Speaker 2: Do I think this is going to be some successful
Speaker 2: effort to supplant either of the two main parties, which
Speaker 2: is what a third party actually has to do in
Speaker 2: order to find significant success. No, I don't think so,
Speaker 2: especially because what is it even, Like what is the
Speaker 2: ideology here? I mean I got he's talking, yeah, deficit reduction, Okay,
Speaker 2: then like what are the other pieces that go along
Speaker 2: with that? And very unclear because Elon's ideology has been
Speaker 2: kind of all over the place. I saw we could
Speaker 2: put just to steal man the argument for this sort
Speaker 2: of like neoliberal austerity direction of a third.
Speaker 3: Party, which is not a new idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, go talk to the no labels people, go
Speaker 2: talk to the Third Way people like this is their
Speaker 2: whole bag. And there's very little public support, while I
Speaker 2: think there is massive public support for like, hey, we'd
Speaker 2: like we're frustrated with this political system. We are frustrated
Speaker 2: with these two political parties. We would like some options
Speaker 2: other than.
Speaker 3: D or R. That would be great.
Speaker 2: But then when you actually get down to the details
Speaker 2: of oh, it's going to be a neoliberal austerity party
Speaker 2: run by and for a billionaire, then that seems like.
Speaker 4: A little money in China, right, a little.
Speaker 2: Right the America Party by a billionaire who makes this
Speaker 2: money in China. I guess that is American actually, But
Speaker 2: in any case, you know, the public support for that
Speaker 2: starts to dwindle pretty quickly once you get into that territory,
Speaker 2: especially at a time when Elon Musk has completely nuked
Speaker 2: his own personal favorability ratings, certainly with Liberals but also
Speaker 2: with Republicans, with Maga Republicans. At this point, Nate content
Speaker 2: analysis saying, hey, you never know, this was from a
Speaker 2: little while ago.
Speaker 3: B five guys who could put this up.
Speaker 2: On the street, saying again, to steal me in the
Speaker 2: case this is Nate Code's analysis. He says, listen, if
Speaker 2: the two major parties truly go in this more populist
Speaker 2: direction where you know, you're doing tariffs and you're doing
Speaker 2: industrial policy, and you're doing you know, big spending, and
Speaker 2: you know maybe the Democrats actually go in a sort
Speaker 2: of like Zoron AOC direction.
Speaker 3: This was pree Zorn.
Speaker 2: But anyway, maybe the Republicans, you know, they actually go
Speaker 2: in this more populous nationalist stee Bannon type direction, and
Speaker 2: then you're left with these neoliberal business market types who
Speaker 2: don't really have a home. Then maybe there starts to
Speaker 2: be some logic for this centrist third party. But you know,
Speaker 2: to me where that analysis falls apart. It's like, I
Speaker 2: think neoliberals already have two parties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that continue to serve them.
Speaker 2: I mean, this giant bill that just passes a big
Speaker 2: tax cut for the rich. You know, the tariffs have
Speaker 2: ended up certainly not being the revolutionary change at this
Speaker 2: point that Trump had originally advertised.
Speaker 3: These backed off the most maximums.
Speaker 2: Position, and that's very responsive to the needs and desires
Speaker 2: of billionaire oligarchs.
Speaker 4: By the way, Yeah, that was big news over the weekend,
Speaker 4: right and it's unclear exactly what's going to happen as
Speaker 4: of right now, but they moved the July ninth tariff
Speaker 4: tariff deadline to August first, and they're saying many more
Speaker 4: deals are going to come. So for they have the
Speaker 4: UK Vietnam and China. But they right now are even
Speaker 4: as we speak, actually like trying to do what they've
Speaker 4: been doing since April at this point, right there was
Speaker 4: a July ninth deadline, and now it's it's suddenly August first,
Speaker 4: a couple of days beforehand. So it just underscores exactly
Speaker 4: what you were saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then so there's both the fact that I think,
Speaker 2: you know, neoliberals have plenty of places politically or not
Speaker 2: politically homeless far from it.
Speaker 3: And we'll see what happens the.
Speaker 2: Democratic primary in twenty twenty eight, whether there is any
Speaker 2: sort of significanthit.
Speaker 3: I think it's possible.
Speaker 2: I think there's a real rupture over a kind of
Speaker 2: actually litmus test around Gaza that may end up shifting things.
Speaker 2: But that's another conversation for another day.
Speaker 3: But the other question is, like the public is done
Speaker 3: with this.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you may have a lot of like rich
Speaker 2: business people, and this has always been the thing with
Speaker 2: Third Way and with no.
Speaker 3: Labels and whatever.
Speaker 2: The problem is not getting a bunch of rich business
Speaker 2: people to be like, hey, let's have tax gets and
Speaker 2: do regulation. The problem is that public support for that
Speaker 2: at a time when the ideology of you know, standard
Speaker 2: Reagan Clinton neoliberalism is so broken and failed, and what
Speaker 2: people are desperately questing for is something different that is
Speaker 2: actually going to work and be responsive to the concerns
Speaker 2: of a modern age.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is where I think Nate Cohn's analysis
Speaker 4: the history of it was I think really helpful context.
Speaker 4: But he says over the last few years a new
Speaker 4: constituency has begun to emerge. For now does not have
Speaker 4: a home in either party, and it's not clear that
Speaker 4: either party will be able to easily accommodate its demands.
Speaker 4: He says it favors things like deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade,
Speaker 4: and high skilled immigration. And Chrystal, I do not think
Speaker 4: that is a constituency that exists outside of Wall Street
Speaker 4: and Silicon Valley, right, That is not a mass constituency.
Speaker 4: And that's really the problem with quote unquote America Party.
Speaker 4: It's not that most Americans are satisfied with the two
Speaker 4: party system. Basically nobody is satisfied with the two party system.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean it's still the It doesn't win in
Speaker 4: a lesser of two evils versus some type of different
Speaker 4: system like UK or a lot of Europe. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, this idea that there's a massive appetite
Speaker 4: for what does keln say, deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade,
Speaker 4: and high skilled immigration. This is also interesting because that's
Speaker 4: basically the Republican Party that Donald Trump changed forever. Like,
Speaker 4: if you can describe it like that deficit reduction, deregulation,
Speaker 4: free trade, in high schilled immigration, that is what every
Speaker 4: other twenty fifteen twenty sixteen Republican primary candidate was saying
Speaker 4: that they were in favor of. Donald Trump created a
Speaker 4: third party within the Republican Party essentially, and its success
Speaker 4: is still post Trump up in the air, Like, we
Speaker 4: actually don't know what's going to happen to the Republican
Speaker 4: Party after Trump, and there's certainly no constituency for the
Speaker 4: old Republican Party. So the idea that maybe a bunch
Speaker 4: of billionaires, this is exactly what you're saying, could create AstroTurf,
Speaker 4: another no labels or third way. Yeah, of course you can.
Speaker 4: I mean you can pump a bunch of money into it.
Speaker 4: You can maybe win a couple of Yeah, you can
Speaker 4: win a couple of house races. Whatever. That doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that he's breaking the third party system. I just think
Speaker 4: that's the idea that that's actually gonna happen is obviously absurd,
Speaker 4: but yeah, it's got a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, he does.
Speaker 2: And listen, my fondest hope would be for all of
Speaker 2: the people that you mentioned to basically put themselves in
Speaker 2: some fringe third party and consign themselves.
Speaker 4: To a relegancy and elect Democrats in the process.
Speaker 3: Do that to go ahead.
Speaker 2: You gonna have Andrew Cuomo, you got Michael Bloomberg, you
Speaker 2: have Mark Cuban. There's all speaking. Mark Cuban, put B
Speaker 2: six up on the screen. He's very open to this.
Speaker 2: Andrew Yang also, come on, Andrew, Andrew, Liz, I have
Speaker 2: so much affection for Andrew m I absolutely do, and
Speaker 2: I genuinely, you know, and I still still talk to
Speaker 2: him like semi regularly, Like I genuinely think his focus
Speaker 2: is like we need to change it, like this system
Speaker 2: is not working. And so anybody who's like, let's let's
Speaker 2: do with something different things is like, yes, let's do it.
Speaker 2: But then Cuban, I mean, it's just too it's just
Speaker 2: too perfect. Cuban is out there like, oh, I can
Speaker 2: help you get ballid access.
Speaker 3: Good, go for it, buddy, do it, do it well.
Speaker 4: See, this is one of the problems that con identifies
Speaker 4: is that typically people who are dissatisfied with the two
Speaker 4: party system don't agree unmuch. Therefore, there's never a route
Speaker 4: really towards a third party because to cobble together the
Speaker 4: people upset about left and right, you have to also
Speaker 4: have some type of thread. You have to have some
Speaker 4: type of unifying factor other than we just don't like
Speaker 4: the other two parties. And if Musk thinks that it's
Speaker 4: the national debt, that's insane, Like it's another thing that
Speaker 4: people are upset about, of course, but it's nobody's priority, right.
Speaker 4: Like again, if you polled most Americans and said, is
Speaker 4: the national debt a problem? And do you not like
Speaker 4: the two party system right now? People would be like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've got like, yes, don't like the two party system.
Speaker 4: National debt is a big deal. We're you know, we
Speaker 4: wish that the name should have had its fiscal house
Speaker 4: in order. Most Americans would absolutely agree with both of
Speaker 4: those things. That doesn't mean that it's their top voting priority. Well,
Speaker 4: that they're going to be coerced into voting for a
Speaker 4: third party when other people are speaking to their priority,
Speaker 4: not to mention.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, in theory just like those was kind of
Speaker 2: popular at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, should we cut the spent sure?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 3: Should government be more efficient?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Should we gut the National Weather Service and FEMA so
Speaker 2: that you know, little girls die in a flood?
Speaker 3: Should we do that?
Speaker 4: Or should we push the most expense or the most
Speaker 4: experienced people out out? Should we?
Speaker 2: Do you want your Social Security cut? Do you want
Speaker 2: your Medicare cut? Because Musk again is a gigantic federal
Speaker 2: government contractor with the with the Pentagon, So it's not
Speaker 2: going to be the military budget, I can tell you
Speaker 2: that much, which also did not happen underdos that were cuts.
Speaker 2: Yes to National Weather Service, No cuts the military.
Speaker 4: We just put a bunch of money into the military.
Speaker 2: Right, That's exactly right, Which is why just to go
Speaker 2: back to your point about Trump, you know, I think
Speaker 2: it is both fair to say to change the Republican
Speaker 2: Party and fair to say that there are a lot
Speaker 2: of just ramping up the previous Republican Party priorities in Trump.
Speaker 2: And I think BBB is the perfect example of that.
Speaker 2: The one big beautiful bill where you get you know,
Speaker 2: cuss the Social safetyment, very Paul Ryan, us cuss the
Speaker 2: social safety net.
Speaker 3: You get very.
Speaker 2: Paul Ryan tax CITs literally drafted by like Paul Ryan
Speaker 2: and his accolyadtes tax cuts that predominantly benefit the wealthiest
Speaker 2: among us. You get a massive escalation in the military budget. Again,
Speaker 2: these are key Republican priorities, and you know, Republicans have
Speaker 2: I think he has significantly upped the rhetoric and the
Speaker 2: I would say cruelty surrounding the immigration and deportation program.
Speaker 2: But that's also not entirely new to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: I think that is the part that maybe is the
Speaker 2: biggest break from the Republican Party the past, because I mean,
Speaker 2: making ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency, making that
Speaker 2: budget larger than the military budget of many significant countries
Speaker 2: like Brazil and Israel. Like that, I mean, that is
Speaker 2: that is truly different now. I think things like the terriffs,
Speaker 2: the difference different approach to China, those sorts of things
Speaker 2: are a genuine break. But it also can be overstated
Speaker 2: how much the Trumpian approach is truly a break from
Speaker 2: the Republican pass When you've got cuts to social safety net,
Speaker 2: tax cuts, for the rich and a giant national security state.
Speaker 2: That seems pretty consistent with the you know, Reagan era
Speaker 2: Republican Party all the way up till today.
Speaker 4: But Trump voters are probably not going to be super
Speaker 4: satisfied with it, and that'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 4: the Republican Party deals with going.
Speaker 3: Forward trying to get on board with it.
Speaker 4: You know, Well, the Trump base is different, things like
Speaker 4: the independence right, people who voted Trump or typical Republican
Speaker 4: voter whatever it is, or people who went like Obama
Speaker 4: Trump and are not big they're not going to the rallies.
Speaker 4: But then they realize the man who promised not to
Speaker 4: cut Medicaid now has a plan in place that requires
Speaker 4: them to jump through all these hoops. Plus they lose
Speaker 4: their medication something like that. Yeah, we'll see, because I
Speaker 4: think that's one of the biggest unanswered questions open questions
Speaker 4: in politics, is what happens after Trump to the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: What does it is just revert because one big, beautiful
Speaker 4: bill suggests potentially reversion in the future. Now, on the
Speaker 4: other hand, we got to roll this clip B three
Speaker 4: of Steve Bannon because this gets to the question what
Speaker 4: happens to the Republican Party after Donald Trump. One person
Speaker 4: who's not going anywhere is Steve Bannon, and he has
Speaker 4: a new nickname, and it's Elmo the Mook.
Speaker 8: That's always human nature.
Speaker 4: This is what we have here in the United States.
Speaker 8: You have MAGA, you have the hardest core opposition to MAGA,
Speaker 8: and you have a lot of people kind of in
Speaker 8: the middle scene which way the buffoon, Elmo the Mook,
Speaker 8: formerly known as Elon Musk, Elmo the Mock. He's today
Speaker 8: in another smear and this only a foreigner could do this.
Speaker 8: Think about it. He's got up on he's got up
Speaker 8: on h on Twitter right now, a poll abt starting
Speaker 8: an America Party, a non American starting an America party. No, brother,
Speaker 8: you're not an American. You're a South African.
Speaker 3: And if.
Speaker 8: We take enough time and proved the facts of that,
Speaker 8: you should be deported because there's a crime of what
Speaker 8: you did among.
Speaker 4: Many and so christ Oll Bannon, I would say, is
Speaker 4: arguably more so than Trump, uh the sort of primary
Speaker 4: gatekeeper champion of what the mega agenda should look like
Speaker 4: based on his sense of the mega base. And he
Speaker 4: has been critical of Dough, She's been critical of one
Speaker 4: big beautiful bill and you know, ultimately trusts Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: as he would say, But at the same time it
Speaker 4: is sort of signaling waving the red flag, the warning
Speaker 4: flags and being like this is veering off course. So
Speaker 4: the idea that Elon Musk, I mean, it all is
Speaker 4: so naive. And I think this is a fair criticism
Speaker 4: that Andrew Yang has gotten over the years. Like a
Speaker 4: bunch of Mark Cuban, there are a bunch of guys
Speaker 4: in the business world who for years have said, like,
Speaker 4: we just need to run the country a little bit
Speaker 4: more like a business. We need a break from the past.
Speaker 4: We can do this cash infusion and disrupt and all
Speaker 4: of that. But it's it's like turning the Titanic around.
Speaker 4: And Elon Musk thinking that because Donald Trump sort of
Speaker 4: surgically attached him to MAGA, meant that the MAGA base
Speaker 4: wanted to prioritize austerity and actually putting the debt first
Speaker 4: and foremost above anything else. That was just that was
Speaker 4: always crazy, Like the idea of the Republican Party was
Speaker 4: ever going to actually cut the debt is completely insane.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's the other thing is Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: not genuine about this. He doesn't have any problem with
Speaker 2: his subsidies that he gets for the federal government.
Speaker 4: It says he does, but he doesn't, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, Obama rescued SpaceX and Tesla Tesla. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know Elon is Look, I think the EV
Speaker 2: credits are good. I think we should have the EV credits.
Speaker 2: I think we should be doing industrial policy around electric
Speaker 2: vehicles and the energy generation of the future.
Speaker 3: Like Elon and I.
Speaker 2: Are aligned on that. But you know, these guys don't
Speaker 2: actually want small government. They want a government that gives
Speaker 2: them what they want. And that is exactly the problem
Speaker 2: with the government is that is way too responsive to billionaires.
Speaker 2: It has created these billionaires who have been able to
Speaker 2: generate I mean most of these billionaires, they have been
Speaker 2: able to rig the system and create monopolies. So it's
Speaker 2: not like they really want a fair and competitive playing field.
Speaker 3: Quite the opposite. Many of these people absolutely despise.
Speaker 2: Lena Khan and her efforts to try to create actual
Speaker 2: market competition. And the other big problem at the core
Speaker 2: of this of this government that I'm talking about I'm
Speaker 2: not just talking about the Trump administration now, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about over decades, is that they have outsourced any sort
Speaker 2: of values and principles to market logic and thought that
Speaker 2: the markets would just figure it out for them, you know,
Speaker 2: to the like extent that even the FAA basically like
Speaker 2: the airlines regulate themselves. I mean, this is the sort
Speaker 2: of thing that happened during the neoliberal era. We went
Speaker 2: way too far in the direction of catering to the
Speaker 2: Elon Musks and the Mark Cubans of the world. So
Speaker 2: that's what people are revolving against. The idea you're going
Speaker 2: to have any sort of grassroots, like, you know, mass
Speaker 2: support for this type of effort. I think it's preposterous,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't None of this is to say that
Speaker 2: it can't have some significant impact when you're talking about Look,
Speaker 2: what's the House margin at this point.
Speaker 3: Is like three seats or something. It's very close. In
Speaker 3: the House.
Speaker 2: There's another retirement, a guy in what Tennessee is retiring
Speaker 2: something like that. Anyway, there's another House Republican retirement. It's
Speaker 2: very narrow in the House. The Senate is also fairly narrow,
Speaker 2: although there's a bit more of an edge for Republicans there.
Speaker 2: If you field some candidates in a couple of key
Speaker 2: seats that can absolutely be enough to take away let's say,
Speaker 2: four percent from the Republican Party and hand some seats
Speaker 2: to Democrats. So I'm not saying that it won't have
Speaker 2: any impact. What I am saying is that it will
Speaker 2: not have the impact that Elon Musk is purporting that
Speaker 2: it will have.
Speaker 4: If it has impact, it will be disproportionate to the
Speaker 4: actual national appetite for what he's calling for, because it'll
Speaker 4: be like massive cash infusions that throw races in one
Speaker 4: direction or the other, not that capture the imagination of
Speaker 4: millions of Americans who want the debt to be prioritized
Speaker 4: in their political lives.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And it's one of the saddest things about the situation
Speaker 4: our political leads have put us in is that you
Speaker 4: now have, for example, Trump voters who are on Medicaid
Speaker 4: who again, just as an example, let's say they think
Speaker 4: the national debt is way too high. But at the poll,
Speaker 4: you now have a billionaire demanding that they put this
Speaker 4: abstract question of the national debt, which you know, I
Speaker 4: agree with Elon Musk and others that it has a
Speaker 4: serious effect on inflation. I don't think you can really
Speaker 4: say it doesn't. It's like pretty obvious that the higher
Speaker 4: the debt goes, the more that our budget is like
Speaker 4: paying interest on the national debt. That yes, prices are
Speaker 4: higher because of all this, and that is a significant problem.
Speaker 4: But you're asking people then to table their immediate urgent interests.
Speaker 4: It's the billionaire who can afford us, you know, to
Speaker 4: feed his family even though it's massive, and put food
Speaker 4: on his table and pay all of his bills, saying
Speaker 4: that the American people should should table their immediate, every
Speaker 4: day kitchen table issues in the interest of this like
Speaker 4: abstract question of the national debt that just is not
Speaker 4: a constituency that exists.
Speaker 2: Well, and they're going to ask you to sacrifice they're
Speaker 2: not going to well, yeah, of course they're not going
Speaker 2: to sacrifice their federal government subsidies. They're not going to
Speaker 2: be willing to pay any more. In tact, it's all
Speaker 2: going to come out from the people who can afford
Speaker 2: it the least, which is why it's such a thoroughly
Speaker 2: should be a thoroughly discredited political project.
Speaker 4: And when they fuck up, they get bailed out. Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley Bank. I mean, it's absolutely over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it's insane. Finally, Musk did complain, well, he's had
Speaker 4: some a couple of interesting moments of self awareness, like
Speaker 4: you could just see like a glimmer of self awareness.
Speaker 4: A couple of times since he's gone back to posting
Speaker 4: a bunch on X and one of them was him
Speaker 4: saying that the chainsaw in retrospect actually looked like it
Speaker 4: lacked empathy, no kidding, caancing around with the chainsaw at seapack.
Speaker 4: But another one was him saying that Trump was happy
Speaker 4: to have him when his poll numbers were higher, but
Speaker 4: now that they're lower and Musk is less popular, you know,
Speaker 4: Trump is less inclined to keep him around. And Nate
Speaker 4: Silver does have an interesting net favorability of chart of ELM.
Speaker 4: Muss dating back to before he endorsed Trump, starting in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, and he is he does have a
Speaker 4: higher net favorability. It was up around like at its
Speaker 4: highest in twenty twenty four seven plus seven percent. In
Speaker 4: January twenty twenty four, right before he endorses Trump, it's
Speaker 4: like plus four percent, and it actually though declines after
Speaker 4: the Trump term begins, so it sort of stabilizes between
Speaker 4: the endorsement and the election, but after Trump takes office
Speaker 4: and Doge becomes an actual government program, which it was
Speaker 4: only supposed to be this outside advisory council. It starts
Speaker 4: to dip precipitously, like that's when it starts. Is really
Speaker 4: when Doge becomes real. So Musk, you know, kind of
Speaker 4: has himself to blame for the situation he finds himself in.
Speaker 3: I would say so for sure.
Speaker 2: All right, So we talk about this latest with regard
Speaker 2: to Epstein, because this is just you can't make it up.
Speaker 2: And as I said before, it connects to Elin because
Speaker 2: he threw out there. Oh, by the way, Trump is
Speaker 2: on the Trump is in the Epstein files, which Trump
Speaker 2: and Epstein were friends. Trump was on Epstein's plane multiple times.
Speaker 2: Trump is pictured at parties with Jeffrey Epstein, so he
Speaker 2: is in Epstein files. Exactly what that entails maybe another matter.
Speaker 2: In any case, we now have gone from the Trump
Speaker 2: administration promising doing their big photo op with the influencers,
Speaker 2: remember this where they got their binders Epstein files Phase
Speaker 2: one and Pambondy out there saying I've got the client
Speaker 2: list on my desk, I'm reviewing thousands of hours of videos.
Speaker 2: We're going to get you the truth to Now let's
Speaker 2: put this up on the screen. They're saying, nothing to
Speaker 2: see here, nothing to see here whatsoever. The DOJ and
Speaker 2: the FBI conclude Epstein had no client list.
Speaker 4: There was no client list, no client list.
Speaker 3: He committed suicide.
Speaker 2: Absolutely no indication that he was killed and that he
Speaker 2: had any sort of black mare material on any powerful people.
Speaker 2: They sound say, specifically, investigators found quote no incriminating client
Speaker 2: list of Epstein's.
Speaker 4: Pause right there. Yeah, the language, this is written by
Speaker 4: lawyers the Department of Justice. No incriminating clientient list, which
Speaker 4: is not the same thing as no client list. Incriminating
Speaker 4: is a very subjective term, which could mean that there
Speaker 4: are a bunch of names in the Epstein book. Basically,
Speaker 4: we know this, and it's true that not all of
Speaker 4: those people are incriminated by Jeffrey Epstein mingling with them
Speaker 4: at a Harvard business fundraising lunch and taking their number down.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely, that is a hell of a wiggle word,
Speaker 4: right there.
Speaker 2: So, no incriminating client list, no credible evidence that Epstein
Speaker 2: blackmailed prominent individuals, and no evidence that could predicate an
Speaker 2: investigation against uncharged third parties.
Speaker 3: And this there you go.
Speaker 4: As by the way, Pam Bondy said just a couple
Speaker 4: of months ago that the Epstein client list was on
Speaker 4: her desk. Now the DOJ is saying there is quote
Speaker 4: no incriminating client list, which has been interpreted as them
Speaker 4: saying there's no client list, understandably because you would think
Speaker 4: that a client of Epstein would be not just a
Speaker 4: financial client of Epstein. But it's implied when Pam Bondi
Speaker 4: says she has the quote unquote client list on her
Speaker 4: desk just a couple of months ago, that is sex
Speaker 4: trafficking clients of Jeffrey Epstein. That's what she was implying
Speaker 4: when she said it. So for the DOJ to now,
Speaker 4: just a couple of months later say there's no incriminating
Speaker 4: Epstein client list is an incredibly suspicious I don't even
Speaker 4: need to say it, but it's an incredibly suspicious flip
Speaker 4: flop that is being done with some careful language, and
Speaker 4: absolutely nobody is buying it. People in MAGA world are
Speaker 4: not buying it. Nobody is buying it. The question is
Speaker 4: how important it is to the people who are not
Speaker 4: buying it, And I think it's going to be pretty
Speaker 4: damn important. You think so, yes, I think so, based
Speaker 4: on what I've seen so far? What have you seen
Speaker 4: so Robbie Starbuck, Mike Cernovich. A lot of these online
Speaker 4: and MAGA influencers are absolutely furious. And of course they're
Speaker 4: taking it out more on Pam Bondy than they are
Speaker 4: on Donald Trump, more because Bondi has so far and
Speaker 4: some of that actually might be reasonable. Julie K. Brown,
Speaker 4: who has done some of the most important Epstein reporting,
Speaker 4: posted back in February. It's interesting to note that Pam
Speaker 4: Bondi was Florida's attorney general from twenty eleven to twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: a period of time when Jeffrey Epstein's plane records became public,
Speaker 4: victim's lawsuits were filed, and a lot of new evidence
Speaker 4: against Epstein's surface. So questions should be asked about why
Speaker 4: she didn't take up the case or launch a probe
Speaker 4: when she was attorney general in Florida. And this is
Speaker 4: a persistent problem for the Trump administration. This happened, actually
Speaker 4: the suicide, the quote unquote suicide of Jeffrey Epstein happened
Speaker 4: on Trump. And by the way, Bill Barr's watch, Bill
Speaker 4: Barr's dad was the first person to give Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 4: that job. At a private boarding school. Despite the very
Speaker 4: strange qualifications he would have very very strange. It happens
Speaker 4: on Bill Barr's watch. He is Attorney General of the
Speaker 4: United States. Alex Acosta, donald Trump's first labor secretary, was
Speaker 4: involved in the Sweetheart play deal in Florida and said
Speaker 4: at the time he was told Jeffrey Epstein belonged to
Speaker 4: intelligence and to leave it alone. Pam Bondi was ag
Speaker 4: from twenty eleven to twenty nineteen. Trump himself was obviously,
Speaker 4: as Crystal mentioned earlier, very friendly with Epstein.
Speaker 3: Epstein said they were besties for a decade.
Speaker 4: It's the evidence is to suggest that there's something deeper
Speaker 4: going on. My personal theory, Crystal is not that it's
Speaker 4: related to Donald Trump himself. I think it's very unlikely
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump himself was out there talking about how Epstein,
Speaker 4: openly talking about how Epstein like quote unquote likes him
Speaker 4: young and hanging out with him when NBC News was
Speaker 4: profiling Trump at man A Lago. And this is personally implicated.
Speaker 4: But the Bill Bar stuff goes way deep. I mean
Speaker 4: we're talking like way decades. That stuff goes decades back,
Speaker 4: So I think it might be more like Trump's orbit
Speaker 4: and people that he's protecting that he's hired because it
Speaker 4: comes back to him for having hired them, that it
Speaker 4: happened on his watch. That they just released what footage
Speaker 4: of surveillance cameras? I pulled up an Inspector General report
Speaker 4: from twenty twenty three, the.
Speaker 3: NB two up.
Speaker 2: This is the video from outside of Epstein's cell. They
Speaker 2: released like ten hours of video that shows no one
Speaker 2: going into the cell that is supposed to definitively prove
Speaker 2: that he did, in fact, quote unquote kill himself.
Speaker 4: And this is the available footage that again an Inspector's
Speaker 4: General report from twenty twenty three talked about. They said
Speaker 4: the available recorded video footage from the one SAHU camera
Speaker 4: captured a large part of the commentary of the Sahu
Speaker 4: and portions of the stairways leading to the different tiers,
Speaker 4: including Epstein's cell tier. Thus, anyone entering or attempting to
Speaker 4: enter Epstein's tier from the commonary would have been picked
Speaker 4: up by that video camera and Epstein's cell door was
Speaker 4: not in the camera's field of view. And reviewed the
Speaker 4: video and found that between approximately ten forty and six
Speaker 4: thirty no one was seen entering Epstein cells here from
Speaker 4: that commentary. So again, we've known this stuff since twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three. The question is if Epstein cell door is
Speaker 4: not on the camera's field of view, what is going on?
Speaker 4: The question is why If you look at the letter
Speaker 4: that the DOJ put out, they say that they are
Speaker 4: not going to release any of the allegedly thousands They
Speaker 4: say they have thousands of videos of Jeffrey Epstein and images,
Speaker 4: some of which involve victims. They say they're not putting
Speaker 4: any of it out because it would be inappropriate to
Speaker 4: put basically this disgusting material into the public view, retraumatizing victims.
Speaker 4: Absolutely true. But to say that we are literally closing
Speaker 4: the case and you are not getting a single shred
Speaker 4: of evidence from this trove that we apparently have, some
Speaker 4: of which is just Epstein, I guess talking to a camera.
Speaker 4: That's insane. Right, We don't even need to say that
Speaker 4: it's insane, but it's worth saying, like, this is so insane.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so we've got a few things going on here.
Speaker 2: We've got number one, the Trump Epstein connections, which you know, look,
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon himself said he thought that Jeffrey Epstein was
Speaker 2: the only person who could take Trump down. So there
Speaker 2: you know, long relationship who knows okay, And you have
Speaker 2: as Emily very effectively put out all of these different
Speaker 2: Epstein connected people in the first Strump administration and in
Speaker 2: this one. And you also have so you've got the
Speaker 2: battle with Elon Musk erupting again and Elon had threatened
Speaker 2: previously basically like oh, by the way, Trump's in the
Speaker 2: Epstein files accusing him of being a pedophile. And then
Speaker 2: you have baby Nottanyahu in town exactly. And there are
Speaker 2: a lot of suggestions that what Epstein was really up
Speaker 2: to is he wasn't just freelancing as you know, horrifying
Speaker 2: sex trafficking, pedophile monster, but he was linked to masads
Speaker 2: specifically and was trying to gather information about various powerful
Speaker 2: people so it could be used to coerce and inflow
Speaker 2: American policy and foreign policy around the world. We know that,
Speaker 2: you know, he had connections with Ahod Barock, invested in
Speaker 2: some Israeli defense startup. Glene Maxwell's father appears to have
Speaker 2: been linked to massades. So there's that's always been sort
Speaker 2: of I mean, the part about what powerful people were
Speaker 2: in stare obviously that's important. This like criminal mass enterprise,
Speaker 2: obviously that's important. But even more significant in terms of
Speaker 2: our ongoing foreign policy and the type of tactics that
Speaker 2: be deployed would be information around whether he was, in
Speaker 2: fact and a massad asset, who was, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to entrap people and coerce them and be able to
Speaker 2: drive American foreign policy. So it was also not lost
Speaker 2: on me that this nothing to see here, no incriminating
Speaker 2: client list case closed comes the night before ving Yahu
Speaker 2: arrives into town and at the time that he is
Speaker 2: having this with Elon Musk. That timing seems so incredibly suspicious.
Speaker 4: It is also quite interesting that on a Sunday night
Speaker 4: they gave Axios the exclusive on the story. It is
Speaker 4: beyond bizarre. Alex Eisenstadt obviously good for him forgetting the scoop,
Speaker 4: But on a Sunday night, the administration gives a memo
Speaker 4: saying they're just closing up the Epstein file. To Axios,
Speaker 4: they just have their big victory, one big beautiful bill,
Speaker 4: generational piece of Republican legislation as they see it, that
Speaker 4: they sign on the fourth of July. A couple of
Speaker 4: days earlier, they have Netta Yahu coming on Monday. What
Speaker 4: a great time if you're a political strategist to bury
Speaker 4: a piece of news like this, or to attempt to
Speaker 4: bury a piece of news like this, and the Masad
Speaker 4: connections cannot be understated. I'm reading from the Times of
Speaker 4: Israel here. The Times of Israel mentioned that Robert Maxwell,
Speaker 4: who many people actually think was killed by Massad. But
Speaker 4: we don't have to even go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 4: He's buried on Jerusalemsmount of Olives. Many members of the
Speaker 4: Israeli intelligence community attended his funeral, so did Yitzak Shamir.
Speaker 4: Israel's then Prime Minister. Shmir eulogized the British tycoon for
Speaker 4: the political connections he brought to Israel during the nineteen
Speaker 4: eighties and for the money he invested in it. That's
Speaker 4: obviously Gillian Maxwell's father, as Crystal noted, is someone that
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein knew.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And for people out there who would say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: if there's anything anything bad about Trump in this information,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't the Democrats, why wouldn't have Joe Biden have put.
Speaker 3: This out previously?
Speaker 2: This is the answer is because they also I mean
Speaker 2: First of all, it's a bipartisan affair, like we know
Speaker 2: about Bill Clinton being on the plane and whatever as well, right,
Speaker 2: But second of all, no Republican or Democratic administration is
Speaker 2: going to want to reveal the truth if the truth
Speaker 2: is in fact that Jeffrey Epstein is a Masad asset
Speaker 2: or was a Masad asset. So I don't know, guys.
Speaker 2: I mean it just to me too, just the political stupidity.
Speaker 2: It's so so suspicious to be like on Eva bb Net,
Speaker 2: noawho coming to town while I'm having this fight with Elon
Speaker 2: and after my base has been really very interested in
Speaker 2: this whole case, to just be oh, nothing to see here,
Speaker 2: case closes, we're not giving you any evidence, and we're
Speaker 2: moving on after. By the way, we didn't play this up,
Speaker 2: but Pam Bonni had literally said just months ago, I
Speaker 2: had the Epstein client list on my desk.
Speaker 4: She said it on Fox News.
Speaker 2: On Fox News she says this, and you know, it
Speaker 2: indicates she's going through thousands of hours of material and
Speaker 2: it's all going to be revealed in the influencer Binder situation.
Speaker 2: That was just phase one, and she's going to get
Speaker 2: to it. And now she's gone from client list on
Speaker 2: my desk to there was no client list actually.
Speaker 4: And Cash Btel and Dan Bongino were pretty vocal members
Speaker 4: of the oh yeah, MAGA community, insisting that there was
Speaker 4: something weird about Epstein going on and that if they
Speaker 4: were putting government implications, that will come in and we'll
Speaker 4: be We're going to reveal the truth a parent and yeah,
Speaker 4: tell the public.
Speaker 2: Even though Trump himself was always very very squeamish, true
Speaker 2: country yes question.
Speaker 4: Rachel Campos Duffy asked him that question on Fox News,
Speaker 4: and you could see the squeamishist from Trump at that
Speaker 4: point where he said he was going to be open
Speaker 4: about RFK files and JFK files and MLK files and
Speaker 4: then Epstein, well, they will take a look at it.
Speaker 4: You'd have to go back and watch the video, but
Speaker 4: it was conspicuous at the time, and they.
Speaker 2: Edited it to make it look like he was just
Speaker 2: like yeah, but he goes, yeah, well we have to
Speaker 2: look and private people may be involved, and that's a
Speaker 2: tougher one.
Speaker 3: That's a tougher one.
Speaker 4: And he also people remember, as we're just like listing
Speaker 4: all of the interesting moments and connections from Trump World
Speaker 4: and Epstein world, he wished Gallaine Maxwell well when he
Speaker 4: got a question about her being in prison. This was
Speaker 4: I want to say, this was early twenty twenty, around
Speaker 4: that time.
Speaker 3: It was towards the end of his first administration.
Speaker 4: And then you have Cash Hotel going on, Joe Rogan
Speaker 4: and Dan Bungeno and Cash Hotel doing that joint. I
Speaker 4: think it was a Farm's News interview together looking like
Speaker 4: they were ash and faced and pale and just insisting
Speaker 4: that they absolutely there was nothing to see. No, they're there.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just it's Chris. You started this spot
Speaker 4: by saying you couldn't write this. Technically, you could write this.
Speaker 4: It's just that everyone would be like they couldn't. They
Speaker 4: wouldn't be that dumb, right, It couldn't.
Speaker 3: Be that I do a little bit, a little bit
Speaker 3: better than this.
Speaker 4: You would think the strategy would just be to like
Speaker 4: not just say you're working on it. Yeah, just over
Speaker 4: and over say you're working on it, and it'll wear thin.
Speaker 4: But it's not a two term administration in all likelihood,
Speaker 4: just try to run out the clock. From a political
Speaker 4: cynical political strategy perspective, I can't even do that incredible
Speaker 4: boot to put