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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,

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Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of

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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Welcome to Counterpoints everyone. It's been an

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Speaker 1: extremely busy twenty four hours for breaking news, so shout

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Speaker 1: out to our team for being so easily adapt adapting

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Speaker 1: so easily to nimble wild news cycle. Yeah, Amble producers,

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Speaker 1: how are you doing? Ryan? Well, Kanye is just blowing

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Speaker 1: everything up. Huh, Kanye's blown everything up. We're actually going

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Speaker 1: to talk about Kanye. We are. We're going to get

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Speaker 1: to Kanye. We're going to get to the Georgia runoff.

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Speaker 1: We're going to talk a little bit about Disney. We're

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Speaker 1: covering all kinds of things on today's show, The Oathkeepers.

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Speaker 1: We're talking acome some Afghanistan news later in the show.

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Speaker 1: That's right, we'll have a guest on the Afghanistani somebody

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Speaker 1: with very direct knowledge of the negotiations over there. But

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Speaker 1: let's start with the rail strike. Huge news on this

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Speaker 1: front breaking in the afternoon on Thursday when the Senate

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Speaker 1: actually voted on the negotiation that Crystal and Sager have

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Speaker 1: been covering very closely, along with Max and other good folks.

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Speaker 1: But this is we want to start actually with Assat.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to play the video right now, here's

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Speaker 1: a one, and we'll react to it. On this vote,

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Speaker 1: the Ya's are fifty two, the nays are forty three.

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Speaker 1: Under the previous order requiring sixty votes for the adoption

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Speaker 1: for the adoption of this concurrent resolution, the concurrent resolution

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Speaker 1: is not agreed to, so that needed sixty votes to

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Speaker 1: overcome a filibuster that was to include seven days of

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Speaker 1: paid sick leave in the contract that they're forcing on

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Speaker 1: the workers and the companies through the Railway Labor Act.

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Speaker 1: It's the Bernie Sanders amendment to the negotiation that Joe

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Speaker 1: Biden punted to Congress in accordance with the real Act

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Speaker 1: of what nineteen twenty three right, right, it's because you

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Speaker 1: had fifty years of of labor of labor disputes on

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Speaker 1: railways that led to basically wars which were always crushed

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Speaker 1: violently by the federal government, you know, you know, never

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Speaker 1: never leading throughout the eighteen sixteen seventy any significant gains

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Speaker 1: for units. It was just absolute nightmare. Federal troops, local cops,

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Speaker 1: a vicious campaign of suppression. But it didn't stop workers

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Speaker 1: from continue to organize and push for their rights. And

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Speaker 1: so eventually, yeah, in the nineteen twenties they ended up

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Speaker 1: they passed this Railway Labor Act, which says that if

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Speaker 1: the if the bosses won't agree to a contract, the

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Speaker 1: President and Congress can come in and implement it. Thing

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Speaker 1: I learned today is that it actually was written by

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Speaker 1: union lawyers back in the twenties, like this was. This

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Speaker 1: was actually written as a union friendly law. But today

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Speaker 1: it operates as a stick that the companies can use

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Speaker 1: against the bargaining of the workers to say, look, here's

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Speaker 1: what we're going to offer, and if you don't like it,

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Speaker 1: we're just going to have the resident in Congress you know,

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Speaker 1: basically put whatever deal, you know, force whatever deal we

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Speaker 1: can down your throats. Now. So what the unions have

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Speaker 1: done is they try to get close to President Biden,

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Speaker 1: and they thought, Okay, well, Biden's our man lunch pail Joe.

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Speaker 1: He's going to he's going to be the one who's

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Speaker 1: going to actually force a better deal on us and

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Speaker 1: on them, because it's a forcing but it can go

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Speaker 1: either way. That didn't quite work. Biden made their deal

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Speaker 1: a little bit better. He gave them one personal one

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Speaker 1: paid personal day, which bizarrely, wildly was a red line

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Speaker 1: for these for these railroad companies, they did not want

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Speaker 1: to give a single day because their whole and we've

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Speaker 1: talked to Max Alvarez a lot about this, their entire

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Speaker 1: business strategy relies on bringing down the number of staff

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Speaker 1: on a train to as little as humanly possible. So therefore, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if somebody calls out their entire national system like falls apart,

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Speaker 1: it's a strategy that has them at little record profits.

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Speaker 1: And they, on the one hand want to say that

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Speaker 1: the record profits have nothing to do with labor. They're

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Speaker 1: just about our investments. But on the other hand, they

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Speaker 1: have cut something like thirty percent of rail workers in

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Speaker 1: recent years in order to optimize the how much weight

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Speaker 1: carry more freight with fewer employers employees and fewer cars,

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Speaker 1: so it's explicitly part of a strategy that makes it

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Speaker 1: more vulnerable to if somebody has to call out sick.

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Speaker 1: They actually require you to use a vacation day, and

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Speaker 1: you have to know like thirty days in advance you

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Speaker 1: have sick, right, so if you make a doctor's appointment,

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Speaker 1: you have to plan it for one of your days off,

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Speaker 1: or you have to if you get down to something,

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Speaker 1: you get really sick, you have to plan it for

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Speaker 1: a vacation. It obviously doesn't make any sense a lot

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Speaker 1: of workers that it contributed to the spread of COVID

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Speaker 1: on the rail because people were not going on sick

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Speaker 1: because you can't plan to get COVID. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: absolutely absurd, But that's why when they have record profits,

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Speaker 1: they've been happy, for instance, to agree to these pay raises.

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Speaker 1: I think the pay raises are still sort of and

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Speaker 1: reasonably meager. Twenty four percent over five years in an

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Speaker 1: environment with high inflation. Inflation isn't very meaningful. But the

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Speaker 1: one they're red line is the paid sick days because

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Speaker 1: while they can funnel their profits down to employees, what

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Speaker 1: they don't want to do is have to hire more

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Speaker 1: people because that's where the costs are really going to

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Speaker 1: go back up right, and so there are a whole

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Speaker 1: bunch of interesting political dynamics to sort through here. Let's

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Speaker 1: let's start with this that actually the fight is not over,

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Speaker 1: and this is some breaking news we can bring to,

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Speaker 1: you know, exclusive to Counterpoints. So a union source tells

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Speaker 1: me that the next phase of this fight for them

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Speaker 1: is going to be to pressure the Biden administration to

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Speaker 1: include railroad workers in the upcoming executive order that that

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Speaker 1: requires that federal contractors pay fifteen dollars an hour all

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Speaker 1: these different things. That requires paid sick leaves, So it

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Speaker 1: would require fifty six hours of paid six leave, which

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Speaker 1: would be seven eight hour shifts in twenty fires fifteen.

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Speaker 1: Believe this or not, When Barack Obama implemented this paid

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Speaker 1: sickly for federal contractors, they specifically cut railroad workers out

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Speaker 1: of it. Because of this system and because of the

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Speaker 1: way that the railroad companies, you know, have their fangs

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Speaker 1: into both parties. And so what they're now pushing the

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Speaker 1: Biden administration to do is to roll that back, say

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Speaker 1: no exception anymore for railroad workers. That brings us to

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Speaker 1: the question of the strategy over the last few days,

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Speaker 1: because I think learning that actually illuminates a little bit

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Speaker 1: why they went for the fight that they did. And

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Speaker 1: so what have you so, I mean, what have you

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Speaker 1: seen about? Like what are you curious about how this

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Speaker 1: has unfolded on the hill. Yeah, it's been interesting because

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Speaker 1: it ended up only getting the vote was final vote

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Speaker 1: was fifty two to forty three. One of the first

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Speaker 1: Republican senators, probably the first Republican senator to come out

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Speaker 1: against Biden's negotiation that punted the bill to congriss was

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Speaker 1: Senator Marco Rubio. He ultimately was followed by Ted Cruz,

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Speaker 1: who said the complaints of the let's put yeah there,

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Speaker 1: you can see it right there. Yep. That's a tweet

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Speaker 1: from more Perfect Union all vote that says all Democrats

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Speaker 1: voted yes except Mansion. All Republicans voted no except for six.

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Speaker 1: So you had Mike Brown of Indiana, Ted Cruz of

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Speaker 1: Texas who said that the union demands were quote quite reasonable.

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Speaker 1: Lizzy Graham, Josh Howley, John Kennedy, and Marco Rubio himself

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Speaker 1: all voted with the Democrats on this, But that still

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Speaker 1: leaves eight votes short. Five senators did not vote, three Democrats,

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Speaker 1: three Democrats leaven five short. It was Warnock, Chris Murphy

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Speaker 1: and someone someone else. But that's what happens. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: that's not entirely unusual. If they know a vote isn't

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Speaker 1: going to pass, they just don't necessarily break away from

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Speaker 1: what they're doing to come in and vote on it.

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Speaker 1: But it's interesting that no Republicans voted for this in

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Speaker 1: the House. I believe three. Yeah it was three, but

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Speaker 1: it was probably all go outgoing. Yeah, it was a

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Speaker 1: small It wasn't like a there was no significant Republican

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Speaker 1: coalition support. Interesting, which is super interesting. And Marco Ruby

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Speaker 1: kind of couched it in free market language, which is

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Speaker 1: also interesting to me too because he hasn't been afraid

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Speaker 1: in the well he it was. It was interesting. I

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Speaker 1: actually can pull up the press release. But what's interesting

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Speaker 1: to me is that you have a lot of employees

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Speaker 1: who have quit working in these conditions, like they have

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Speaker 1: just walked out and quit. And what's happening is Congress,

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Speaker 1: because of the Act from the nineteen twenties, is protecting

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Speaker 1: the large rail conglomerates. It's basically protecting their monopoly power

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Speaker 1: and protecting them against the forces of the free market

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Speaker 1: by allowing the market exactly by allowing Congress to step in.

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Speaker 1: And that's I don't know if that's the argument that

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Speaker 1: Rubio was going for, but from my perspective, there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of senators who I think really should have

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Speaker 1: gone for this bill. Yeah, so here's what Mark Rubio said,

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Speaker 1: by now everyone should realize, now good happens when Congress

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Speaker 1: gets involved in issues best left to the private sector.

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Speaker 1: So his argument against it was that this is Congress

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Speaker 1: overstepping the boundaries of the private sector to negotiate between

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Speaker 1: the companies and the unions. And so let's put up

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Speaker 1: a three. Also speaking of Ted Cruz, So Ted Cruz

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Speaker 1: you can see on the screen here if you're watching,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to see, but basically what you're going

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Speaker 1: to see is Ted Cruz wander up to where Bernie

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Speaker 1: Sanders is sitting at the very top and then end

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Speaker 1: up giving him a fist bump after voting yes, after

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Speaker 1: voting yes to go with the workers. So you've got

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Speaker 1: Cruse and the Democratic Socialist Solidarity being all buddy buddy together. No,

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Speaker 1: but that's the only way to look at that. I

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Speaker 1: think truly is glass half full, because ten years ago

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Speaker 1: this vote is totally different. Maybe you get Lindsay Graham,

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Speaker 1: maybe you get John Kennedy or something like that, although unlikely,

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Speaker 1: but the only way to look at that. I don't

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Speaker 1: mean in general the negotiations for the workers. I mean

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Speaker 1: the fact that where this vote ended up falling, that's

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Speaker 1: a glass half full that you are able to peel

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Speaker 1: off that many Republicans, and that's a low bar. I understand,

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Speaker 1: that's a low bar, and the Republican Party, there's an

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Speaker 1: open question as to whether there's durability to this trajectory.

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Speaker 1: They keep going in this direction. So if this vote

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Speaker 1: were to happen ten years from now, do you have

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Speaker 1: six Republicans or ten Republicans? Do you have twenty Republicans?

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but at least by the standards of

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Speaker 1: somebody like Saga or myself that's on the sidelines and

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Speaker 1: has that vantage point, that is an improvement from the

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Speaker 1: low baseline that the Republican has been Republicans have been

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Speaker 1: in the past, and having fifty two votes in the

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Speaker 1: Senate that means you have a bipartisan majority. You've got

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Speaker 1: six Republicans and a bunch of Democrats. That gives them actual,

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Speaker 1: real momentum when they now go to the White House,

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Speaker 1: and I think that what I was saying earlier, I

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Speaker 1: think that illuminates the strategy. And it also puts kind

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Speaker 1: of the Progressive Caucus and the Squad's kind of decision

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Speaker 1: making around strategy over the last few days in a

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Speaker 1: different light. And we'll see how successful they are to

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Speaker 1: get Biden. But they certainly have raised attention on this

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Speaker 1: issue and have shown that there's bipartisan support for it.

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Speaker 1: So not to dwell too long on the squad here,

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Speaker 1: but every issue in the House now immediately online becomes

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Speaker 1: a question of you know, did the squad sell out

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Speaker 1: yep or not? And so the immediate and the immediate

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Speaker 1: answer is almost from everybody is almost yes. So look

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Speaker 1: in this case, I don't think that they did so

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Speaker 1: on Monday, and I know that people it's a lot

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Speaker 1: easier to just lie and be like, yeah, squad's a

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Speaker 1: bunch of sellouts. But here are the facts of what

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Speaker 1: happened here. So on Monday, after Biden says we're going

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Speaker 1: to force this deal on the workers, Pelosi tells our caucus,

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Speaker 1: we're going to force this deal on the workers. There

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Speaker 1: will be no changes allowed. We're just going to vote

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Speaker 1: on it, and she had endless votes for this thing.

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Speaker 1: I think it ended up she ended up getting two

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Speaker 1: hundred and ninety votes. It wasn't close because you have

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Speaker 1: so many Republicans who were like, yeah, I'm not I'm

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Speaker 1: fine averting this strike. I'm not going to get blamed

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Speaker 1: for this economic catastrophe and I don't care about these workers.

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Speaker 1: So there then becomes a public push by Jamal Bowman

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Speaker 1: to say, if we're going to vote on this, let's

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Speaker 1: at least add seven sick days to it. And there

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Speaker 1: becomes enough pressure that in negotiations Policy says, Okay, if

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Speaker 1: everybody agrees to vote for this, then I will. I'll

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Speaker 1: allow it, but I'm going to put up two votes.

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Speaker 1: So the one vote on the tenet of agreement, the

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Speaker 1: second vote on the seven sick days. What that means

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Speaker 1: is that they both go together over to the Senate,

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Speaker 1: and then if the Senate rejects the seven six days,

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Speaker 1: they can still pass the original one and send it

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Speaker 1: off to Biden. Otherwise they would have to just basically

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Speaker 1: pass the tenet of agreement back to the House and

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Speaker 1: then the House passes it. But that's the flaw in

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Speaker 1: like believing that the squad had leverage here. They passed

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Speaker 1: it with eighty votes today the Senate did, so the

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Speaker 1: Senate could then just send it back to the House

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Speaker 1: and if the squad votes no, it still passes with

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Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty five vot in the House. So

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Speaker 1: you don't have any leverage other than public pressure. So

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Speaker 1: they brought shame and they bought brought public pressure. So

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Speaker 1: they win the vote in the House, knowing the symbolism

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Speaker 1: would be what was important, right, right, So they win

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Speaker 1: the vote in the House. Bill then it goes over

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Speaker 1: to the Senate, and there's a day or two of debating,

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Speaker 1: you know, and then you hear from Holly, you hear

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Speaker 1: from Rubio, Ted Cruz votes and then once and then

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Speaker 1: it fails. And then you say, look, look how much

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Speaker 1: support we have over here. Now we want Biden to

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Speaker 1: add us into this executive order. It would be it'd

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Speaker 1: be pretty impressive negotiating, actually, if they wind up with

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Speaker 1: all of the raises and also the sick days, because

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Speaker 1: if you were going to get the sick days, they'd say, well,

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Speaker 1: that's coming out of your raises. So if they wind

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Speaker 1: up with both, that'd be that'd be awfully interesting. Some

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Speaker 1: senators got interested in the last minute and this idea

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Speaker 1: of passing a bill that would kick the can down

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Speaker 1: the road for another sixty or ninety days for a

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Speaker 1: cooling off period, cooling down period, something like that, that

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Speaker 1: would allow the unions to continue negotiating with the companies

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Speaker 1: with President Biden and Marty Walsh. Obviously, some all Democrats

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Speaker 1: and Republicans sort of rejected that for what we have

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Speaker 1: by this vote at the end of the day, But

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Speaker 1: it's interesting to see how I mean, basically, if Ted

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Speaker 1: Cruz is saying that the demands are quote quite reasonable,

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Speaker 1: this should be something that gets the vote of not

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Speaker 1: just every Democrat, but every Republican as well, and Republicans

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Speaker 1: are sort of saying we shouldn't have Congress butting in

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Speaker 1: to these negotiations. That's a fig leaf. That's that there

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Speaker 1: are some people maybe who believe that sincerely, that this

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Speaker 1: is the business of you know, that maybe disagree with

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Speaker 1: the original Act, that this should be the business of

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Speaker 1: the negotiators, that Congress shouldn't step in. But at the

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Speaker 1: end of the day, this is people who are worked

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Speaker 1: like dogs asking for paid sickly. I mean, it's just insane.

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Speaker 1: And Ted Cruz is somebody who you know, knows which

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Speaker 1: way the political wins are blowing, right, So for him

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Speaker 1: two sense, I want to be on the side of

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Speaker 1: the workers here, suggest that at least there is that

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Speaker 1: energy on the Republican side that people feel like there's

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Speaker 1: some benefit there. No, And I mean he's also somebody's

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Speaker 1: who's generally been a proponent of like I'm sure he's

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Speaker 1: taken lots and lots of corporate money, just like you know,

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Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham has, just like Mike Braun has, I'm sure,

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Speaker 1: just like John Kennedy has. And you know, they're saying

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Speaker 1: it's in my interest politically or because you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: they sincerely believe this. They're saying it's in my interest

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Speaker 1: to take this vote. And the fact that you know, again,

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Speaker 1: like I think it's a sign of progress and a

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Speaker 1: good direction for the Republican Party. But it is pitiful

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Speaker 1: that you can only get six Republicans in the Senate

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Speaker 1: on a vote like this, when they'll they'll gladly vote

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Speaker 1: for crony subsidies. They'll do that all all day, but this,

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Speaker 1: oh no, no no, no, Congress shouldn't be involved. I guess

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Speaker 1: the last point I'd make on the on the squad

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Speaker 1: side is for people who think that this squad made

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Speaker 1: a mistake in promising the vote yes on the tenetive

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Speaker 1: agreement in order to get the seven day sick vote,

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Speaker 1: like would the unions. And by the way, the unions

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Speaker 1: were pushing for that strategy. That was the strategy that

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Speaker 1: they wanted at the last minute. That wasn't you know,

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Speaker 1: because Biden forced their hand. They're like, well, Okay, this

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Speaker 1: is the best we can do at this moment. So

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Speaker 1: if they didn't do that, if they said no, unions,

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Speaker 1: I don't think that this is the right play. We're

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Speaker 1: actually just going to vote no. We're not going to

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Speaker 1: force it's against our principles to force an agreement on

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Speaker 1: a union. So we're all we're voting no, and we're

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Speaker 1: not going to put the seven days sickly bill up

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Speaker 1: for a vote could because that would sully our conscience,

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Speaker 1: because that would that makes us complicit in breaking this strike,

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Speaker 1: in forcing a contract on workers who've rejected it. So

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Speaker 1: if they don't, if they don't do that, then this

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Speaker 1: week it just cruises through two hundred and eighty five

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Speaker 1: votes in the House, eighty votes in the Senate. It

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Speaker 1: goes to the White House, he signs it strike strike

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Speaker 1: as averted, and the union comes to Biden and says, hey,

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Speaker 1: we want to be uh you know, we want to

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Speaker 1: be written into this executive order. It's like, well, where's

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Speaker 1: your momentum here, where's your where's the fight? Like why

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Speaker 1: why why do you have capital at this moment that

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Speaker 1: we're going to spend on you? And I think that

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Speaker 1: they built up capital through this week that has that

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Speaker 1: has I think substantially increased their chances of getting into

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Speaker 1: this executive order. And if Joe Biden pushed really really

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Speaker 1: really really really really hard for paid sickly, if the

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Speaker 1: companies would have to take an l on it, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they absolutely would have to take it right in the

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Speaker 1: executive order. Then then then the Supreme Court could say

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Speaker 1: that they can't do it. But they've already said that

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Speaker 1: the other executive order is legit. So if they wanted

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Speaker 1: to push on this, it's not they're in The ball

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Speaker 1: is in their court. The ball is in the court

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Speaker 1: of Joe Biden and the government negotiators in this case,

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Speaker 1: it's not in the court of the companies because they

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Speaker 1: don't want to go into a strike situation. They don't

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Speaker 1: want to go into a shutdown such wish at all. Yeah, No,

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Speaker 1: they don't at all all. Right, In some Kanye West news,

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Speaker 1: So Kanye Kanye West made an appearance on a show

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Speaker 1: by a man who is no longer I think allowed

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Speaker 1: to appear on YouTube. Is that right? I believe that

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Speaker 1: is right. I'm actually going to talk a little bit

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Speaker 1: about that kind of thing in my monologue in most places.

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Speaker 1: In fact, Alex Jones, So Kanye westy, I think he

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Speaker 1: did what three hours or something on Alex Jones whatever

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Speaker 1: it is. It was long, and I was taping a

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Speaker 1: podcast and getting pings from you guys sending me these clips,

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Speaker 1: and I went back and watched them as it had happened,

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Speaker 1: like you guys were watching this stuff in real time.

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Speaker 1: I went back and watched them and just it was

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Speaker 1: a real journey from start to finish. Yeah, And we

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Speaker 1: should start with some significant disclaimers here that Alex Jones

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Speaker 1: A has been has lost multiple libel judgments against him

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Speaker 1: for defamation. Yes, and in order to prove defamation in

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Speaker 1: this country, you have to have engaged in the most

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Speaker 1: kind of reckless type of behavior, super high bar. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: It's it's hard. It's hard to lose defamation case as

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Speaker 1: a as anybody is a broadcaster. As a broadcaster in

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Speaker 1: this country, he's lost many. So the point here is

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Speaker 1: not that Alex Jones is some type of a credible figure. Here.

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Speaker 1: The point, and as we play some of these, is

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Speaker 1: that even Alex Jones in some of these clips, it's like, whoa,

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Speaker 1: this guy, this guy is going too far and this

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Speaker 1: isn't this is a national story, like in a bunch

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Speaker 1: of different senses. One it led to, bizarrely enough, did

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Speaker 1: you see this? I forget which Republican one of the

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Speaker 1: major kind of Republican Twitter accounts had tweeted something like

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Speaker 1: Kanye Kanye ion and Trump or something. They just deleted that,

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Speaker 1: And they hadn't deleted it prior this was his descent

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Speaker 1: into anti Semitic madness. They had not deleted that. And

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Speaker 1: so now finally I thought it was an odd place

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Speaker 1: to draw the line. If you're gonna draw the line, now,

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Speaker 1: let's let's show where Republicans drew the line to give viewers,

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Speaker 1: but the Twitter whoever operates the house, jop your Twitter

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Speaker 1: account so to give everyone a flavor, because it's hard

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Speaker 1: actually to encapsulate in a segment here exactly how bananas

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Speaker 1: and awful this conversation was. Let's start with B one.

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Speaker 1: You're not Hitler, You're not a Nazi. You don't deserve

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Speaker 1: to be called that and demonized. Well, I see, I

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Speaker 1: see good things about Hitler. Also the Jews. I love everyone,

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Speaker 1: and Jewish people are not gonna tell me. You can

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Speaker 1: love you know us, and you can love what we're

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Speaker 1: doing to you with the contracts, and you can love

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Speaker 1: what we're you know what we're pushing with the pornography.

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Speaker 1: But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone

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Speaker 1: that I use as musician. You can't say out loud

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Speaker 1: that this person ever did anything good. And I'm done

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Speaker 1: with that. I'm done with the classifications. Every human being

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Speaker 1: has something of value that they brought to the table,

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Speaker 1: especially Hitler really scraping the bottom of the barrel in

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Speaker 1: terms of anti Sumitic conspiracy theories. And I think Ryan,

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Speaker 1: we should just roll into B three, which is another SOT,

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Speaker 1: so keep the ball rolling on these clips while we're

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Speaker 1: at it. I don't like the word evil next to Nazis.

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Speaker 1: I think we need to look at Oh my goodness,

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Speaker 1: just because you don't like one group doesn't mean the other. Look,

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Speaker 1: I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis. Oh Man, Well,

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Speaker 1: I have to disagree with that, all right, so we

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Speaker 1: can put B two up on the screen. I do

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Speaker 1: have one reaction that I think might be this might

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Speaker 1: be one thing that is either controversial or maybe a

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Speaker 1: take that others don't have. I'm actually glad that Kanye

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Speaker 1: West is being confronted by Tim Poole, is being confronted

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Speaker 1: by Alex Jones in public view, so that he's not

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Speaker 1: saying this insane stuff to other powerful people in private,

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Speaker 1: that he's not putting his money privately into insane places,

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Speaker 1: and that we can see clearly the contrast. So when

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Speaker 1: the media tries to shut down Alex Jones, for instance,

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Speaker 1: and no legacy of journalist wants to talk to Alex Jones,

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Speaker 1: you end up with him never being confronted in person

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Speaker 1: and forced like he was in the Sandy Hook case,

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Speaker 1: and it crumbled, right, His narrative crumbled when he was

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Speaker 1: forced to confront the alternative argument you can see with

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Speaker 1: Kanye West here. I actually feel like through this segment

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Speaker 1: I got a lot of insight into wear his ideology,

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Speaker 1: this ideology of anti Semitism that particularly that he's been espousing.

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Speaker 1: I can sort of see the intellectual well that it's

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Speaker 1: sprung from, which is a poison well, and it's terrible,

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Speaker 1: But it's good to force him to explain himself and

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Speaker 1: go to the logical conclusions of these off awful arguments,

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Speaker 1: and to be confronted by Alex Jensen Tim Poole, I

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Speaker 1: think has showed a helpful contrast to anybody who might

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Speaker 1: be like, Hey, everybody's shutting Kanye down. That must mean

429
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: he's onto something he's not. Let let's play the third one.

430
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: The Nazis might be wre thugs that showed people down

431
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 1: in a lot of really bad things, but they did

432
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: good things too. We're gonna stop dissing the Nazis all

433
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:28,199
Speaker 1: the time, Okay, We're gonna get to that. Like is

434
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:32,120
Speaker 1: he serious? He is, because he then said he then

435
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:37,399
Speaker 1: went into full Holocaust denial mode, denying the six million number,

436
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:42,000
Speaker 1: which is like, I mean, flagrant, and he seems to

437
00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: be serious is an interesting word. He's clearly in the

438
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:53,120
Speaker 1: throes of a mental illness and that's extremely sad, and

439
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:56,399
Speaker 1: it's playing out in public view. It's hurting him, it's

440
00:23:56,480 --> 00:23:58,959
Speaker 1: hurting his family, And the bottom line is that one

441
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,399
Speaker 1: of the most popular artists, one of the most famous

442
00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:08,360
Speaker 1: celebrities of this century, is now espousing outright Nazism essentially,

443
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: not even essentially, it's like yeah, yeah, no, outright Nazism

444
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 1: essentially for the whole in front of the highways, the microphone,

445
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 1: I mean, the highway is not that great anyway, So

446
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: like that's that's all you've got, and the microphone, I

447
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: mean microphones. But I think I think we would have

448
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 1: a microphone without the Nazis it just not that I'm

449
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:34,960
Speaker 1: going to engage like in the point by point Well no,

450
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: but you know what, though, someone is like someone who

451
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: can can go through the history and like has the

452
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 1: time to do it and will do it, is going

453
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: to go through the history so that when people are

454
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: curious as to you know, Kanye West is being mocked

455
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: by all of the people that I distrust and all

456
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: the people I hate, Well, they can see these point

457
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: by point refutations and show the deeply anti Semitic well

458
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 1: that they spring from. Yeah, and I think that's a

459
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: good thing. I mean, I think it's all ultimately a

460
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:02,160
Speaker 1: good thing. And I think, you know, at a certain

461
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:03,880
Speaker 1: point it has to stop. At a certain point, You've

462
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 1: heard enough, right, at a certain point, he said all

463
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: that he can say, we understand. But I think this was,

464
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:15,719
Speaker 1: you know, a step towards showing exactly how gross this is.

465
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,479
Speaker 1: And I hope people connect to just how ludicrous it is,

466
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:23,520
Speaker 1: and rather than my big fear would be that people

467
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,399
Speaker 1: would see this and say, well, I love kanyem hm

468
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: and so then they then they like go down a

469
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:34,359
Speaker 1: rabbit hole themselves and come out the end with you know,

470
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: shrouded and all these like anti Semitic conspiracy theories that

471
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: that that to me is the biggest concern about the

472
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: platforming of this. But I hope that I hope that

473
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,119
Speaker 1: it goes the other way, that the sunlight kind of

474
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: exposes it for the evil and the insanity that it is,

475
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 1: and that and that people who would have been tempted

476
00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:56,480
Speaker 1: otherwise are like, oh okay, that that actually seems crazy,

477
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 1: Like he's on a sche mask like when you can

478
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 1: spout off. So I saw somewhere that Nick Flentis somebody

479
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 1: looked at the increase in his rumble views before Kanye

480
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: started aligning with him and with Milo at Yanapolis and after,

481
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:14,679
Speaker 1: and there was a big Spike. I think some of

482
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 1: that comes from like disproportionate media obsession, but not in

483
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 1: this case. I think it's it's very clearly Kanye West.

484
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 1: Like you blame Kanye West for that bump, because again,

485
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 1: one of the most successful artists of this century suddenly

486
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: starts hanging out with a guy named Nick Flentis. People

487
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: are going to go and check out what he's saying,

488
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: and you know, just statistically some people are going to say,

489
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,280
Speaker 1: especially on those videos where you just have one crazy

490
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: person talking into a microphone for a really long time,

491
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 1: When you just have one bigoted person talking into a

492
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: microphone for a really long time and just spouting off

493
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,919
Speaker 1: all this nonsense about highways at microphones, and you don't

494
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 1: have people being like, hey, wait a second, what book

495
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:05,479
Speaker 1: did you read that in? And then you sort of

496
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: everything can unravel. That's that is, you know, genuinely a

497
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 1: very very serious offense on Kanye West. Behalf just not alone,

498
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 1: not just what Kanye West himself has said, but by

499
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: boosting the profile of people like Fuentas, I guess we'll

500
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 1: get to find out what's big repercussions is going to be, Yes,

501
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: we will. Let's move on to Georgia, where the Senate

502
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: runoff is coming this Monday, Tuesday, December December six. Yeah,

503
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,879
Speaker 1: so the next day the big So we'll get to

504
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: some early voting numbers in a moment. But to start

505
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: with the funniest news out of this race, which has

506
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: been funny all the way through, has been Herschel Walker

507
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: straight up admitting that he does not live in Georgia

508
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,400
Speaker 1: during the campaign, and so K file that Andrew Gaz's

509
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: team over at CNN got obtained audio of him addressing

510
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 1: the Georgia Republican can put put one up here, one

511
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: that side or one that Yeah, so let's let's play

512
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: this audio. Uh, that's that CNN obtained of This is

513
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 1: Walker addressing Georgia College Republicans during the campaign for Senate

514
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Which is a key key point to bear

515
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: in mind as you listen to this. Why did I

516
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: run for a sea with you? This is never something

517
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: I've ever ever ever thought, And that's not a shout.

518
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: But as I was sitting in my home in Texas,

519
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I

520
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: was seeing what was going on in this country. Yeah,

521
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: I've lived in Texas. Yeah, I went down to the board.

522
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: Sometimes also reported. According to publicly available tax records that

523
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: Andrew and k File reviewed, Walker's listed to get a

524
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: homestead tax exemption in Texas in twenty twenty two. This

525
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: is C two, which saves him approximately fifteen hundred bucks.

526
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: Not a big deal in the networth of Virtel Walker,

527
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: but it still shows that he's claiming to get a

528
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: tax exemption that his primary residence is in Texas. And

529
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:31,200
Speaker 1: what I heard Walker saying that clip is lived in Texas.

530
00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 1: It sounds like he says I lived in Texas, not

531
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: I live in Texas. I listened to it a couple

532
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 1: of times. Either way, the tax exemption totally. It doesn't

533
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: matter if he said live or lived, and he's claiming

534
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 1: the tax exemption for a primary residence. I heard live

535
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 1: because I know to me the context fit where he

536
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: was saying, like, I live in Texas. And if it

537
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: was hard to hear I live in Texas, I've gone

538
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: down to the border a couple of times, and I

539
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: can tell you that the border is a terrible mess.

540
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 1: So he's like using his authority as a tex in

541
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 1: which he's been for twenty years, to then have a

542
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: claim about his position on the border. I don't think

543
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: this hurts Walker that much, except maybe a few people

544
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: who might have otherwise come out to voter. Like, you

545
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: know what, skip this. This is so absurd. I'm not

546
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: even gonna bother doing this. But like if you're if

547
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: this is the thing that gets you off the Walker train, well,

548
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: you know, he's like he is to Georgia what Marion

549
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: Barry was to DC. He's a Georgian for life. Yes,

550
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: well he also is a Georgian for life. You know

551
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: he's born in northern Georgia. Yeah, he was a high

552
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: school football star and he was in a star at Georgia.

553
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: So like those things I think in some ways make

554
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,360
Speaker 1: you Georgian for life. Like doctor Oz, this is anything

555
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: about Pennsylvania. We were when we were talking about this

556
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 1: segment earlier this week, it was an interesting we were

557
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 1: thinking it was an interesting contrast with what happened in

558
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania because it was absolutely hugely damaging to the Oz

559
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: campaign that he was not a Pennsylvanian, that he lived

560
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. Everyone sort of knew that he didn't

561
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: have any of the like real hallmarks of Pennsylvania residency,

562
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,680
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be all that familiar with the state.

563
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: He missed. He got the melody wrong. As Ryan reminded

564
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: me on flight spot during the debate, he just was

565
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: out of place and it felt exploitive and opportunistic. And

566
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: what was funny is that doctor Oz tried to like

567
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: he sprinted away from that right, like he didn't want

568
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: to talk about it at all, instead of just kind

569
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 1: of owning it and being like, yeah, well, you know,

570
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: I'm a super millionaire. I don't live here. Herschel He

571
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: spelled his alleged town wrong. Doctor Oz did right. It

572
00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: was his in law's house or something. Herschel Walker was

573
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: just like, Hey, I've lived in Texas for a long time.

574
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: He's claiming he's getting a tax exemption. The best case

575
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: you could make for him would be I was in

576
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: my Texas home and so what he's that's a rich

577
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: person who has like eight different homes and yeah and so,

578
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: but then when you take the homestead or primary exemption,

579
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 1: you kind of undermine yourself there. I want to put

580
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: CE four up on the screen. Ryan. This is something

581
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: you flagged and you've been looking at over the course

582
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 1: the last week and have found some I think interesting

583
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: data from it. This is early voting on the Republican

584
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: and Democratic side in Georgia general elections and runoffs over

585
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: the last four years, did what stood out to you here? Yes,

586
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: So if you want, if you want to follow along

587
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: at home, this is target Early dot targetsmart dot Com.

588
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: This is a democratic data firm. So they pulled together

589
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: lots of kind of consumer data. They pile it on

590
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: top of voter registration data and voter information and they

591
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: were the ones who really nailed the midterms. They were

592
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: getting made fun of as bongers of hopium and copium

593
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:49,719
Speaker 1: all throughout the election because they were saying, look, what

594
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: we're seeing does not comport with a red wave. So

595
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: what they're seeing right now, so far in the runoff,

596
00:32:57,240 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: and this is updated as of just now, it's one million,

597
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: one and forty five thousand votes, which is a ton

598
00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: so because if you look at it crazy, if you

599
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: look at the runoff from twenty twenty one, that was

600
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 1: a total of about four point five million votes. So,

601
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:19,240
Speaker 1: in other words, in only a few days, a quarter

602
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: of the number of people who voted in the Warnock

603
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: and us Off runoff elections two years ago have already

604
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: voted in this one. Now it's it's truncated. They had

605
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:35,479
Speaker 1: an extra month, so now you're going to have a

606
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:40,840
Speaker 1: ton of turnout, you know, pushed onto onto election day. Now,

607
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: a key thing to remember is that young people tend

608
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: to vote very late, like there, and so that's why

609
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: Democrats actually ended up as the republic went along. That's

610
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: the other thing. The Republicans tond to vote late, right,

611
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: so right, So both of those so that the young

612
00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: people in the Republicans voting late balances out bounces it out.

613
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: The remaining votes should lean Republican. But because young people

614
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: also vote late, that that hurts. That hurts Democrats. And

615
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:10,839
Speaker 1: here's an interesting thing to keep in mind. Tuesday night,

616
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: the next time we see you here, the election will

617
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: have been over. But actually no, that's not true. We're

618
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: filling in next to right. But the interesting thing to

619
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: watch for is that young people will vote, possibly by mail,

620
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:27,919
Speaker 1: on the last day. So that's where as you're looking

621
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: for returns. The Republicans may vote in person last day

622
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: in higher numbers, whereas young people may vote by mail

623
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: in higher numbers, and that will affect the numbers as

624
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: they're coming in. So according to the numbers that are

625
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 1: up so far, that target smart has here, so it's

626
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: fifty four to thirty eight. It's breaking down, so they

627
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 1: don't know who they voted for. But fifty fifty four

628
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: point one percent have been Democrats and thirty four thirty

629
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: seven point eight percent have been Republicans, which is what

630
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: about a sixteen point lead Republicans, Like I said, as

631
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,240
Speaker 1: you know on election day, that's a more Republican turnout

632
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: because they think voting by mail is fraudulent and all

633
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: the ballots are going to wide up in Venezuela and

634
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: so but to overcome with only three quarters of the

635
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 1: vote left to overcome a sixteen point gap is going

636
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 1: to be tough with a lot of the youth vote

637
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:25,839
Speaker 1: still out. Because they've also been able to model that

638
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: the youth vote that's in so far is significantly lower

639
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: than the youth vote that voted overall in Georgia. So

640
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 1: that means a lot of them are holding onto their ballots. Yeah,

641
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: and you know, keeping the momentum for a runoff is

642
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: obviously always a very difficult thing to do, but Republicans

643
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 1: are so A good example is Nevada. On election night,

644
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 1: you were saying you had sources in Nevada saying Laxalt

645
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: takes this if there's no snow, right, and then there's

646
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 1: snow on election day and Republicans, according to that theory,

647
00:35:55,840 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 1: turnout in lower numbers because of the snow on election day.

648
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:01,320
Speaker 1: A lot of people on the right have spent you know,

649
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: basically the last month saying early voting is not going anywhere. Adapter, guy, yeah,

650
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: do it. Last point on this thing. We move on.

651
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 1: For Democrats, they're they're they're a pretty united party at

652
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,439
Speaker 1: this point. You know, the center, the center, rights, center left,

653
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 1: the far left. They all like Warnock, like the Republicans,

654
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: Georgia not so much. So. Where where does not having

655
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: Camp on the ballot is? What is not having Camp

656
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 1: on the ballot or Raffensberger or these other other Republican

657
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,399
Speaker 1: kind of establishment figures that the suburban Republicans like, liked

658
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: and then let's say they come out they voted for them,

659
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: and then they're like, well, I like Walker better than Warnock,

660
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: so they cast their vote for Walker, but without them

661
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: being on the ballot this time. Will do you think

662
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 1: there's going to be less Republican turnouts as a result

663
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: from the people who are like, yeah, yeah, I mean

664
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:58,239
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, because comparing the like enthusiasm and

665
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 1: momentum for one candidate in a general as opposed to

666
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: another candidate in the general, and then comparing it to

667
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,719
Speaker 1: one candidate in a runoff, it's just hard because it's

668
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: probably going to be a different sample basically of people

669
00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: who are coming out. I mean, certainly it's going to

670
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:13,839
Speaker 1: be a different sample of people who are coming out.

671
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:16,879
Speaker 1: The question though, is whether Walker voters there are enough

672
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: like enthusiastic Walker voters. That's one thing that I would

673
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:24,840
Speaker 1: be looking at to kind of remember Alabama and with

674
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: the Roy Moore vote, there were a lot of people

675
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: and he obviously ultimately lost to Doug Jones, but there

676
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who, you know, we're coming

677
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: out might be Richard Shelby voters, Katie Britt type voters,

678
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: but we're coming out and saying we're just gonna go,

679
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 1: We're coming out. We don't want to do this, but

680
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: because of abortion, because of that specific issue, we're coming

681
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: out to vote for Roy Moore. And obviously herschel Walker

682
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: and Roy Moore are very different characters, but it's a

683
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of similar in the respect that

684
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:03,399
Speaker 1: you have the high profile high stakes type of one

685
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:07,600
Speaker 1: on one dynamic, and maybe that's enough to energize single

686
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 1: issue Republicans to go support Walker in high numbers and

687
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: we'll see. Yeah, it's a tough one. Let's move on

688
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: to Disney. Actually, speaking of Georgia, Disney has a great

689
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: relationship with the state of Georgia because of the crony

690
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:21,319
Speaker 1: subsidies that they dish out. We're going to be talking

691
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: about CEO here, Bob Iger, past CEO, now CEO once again.

692
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 1: They ousted the other Bob last week after disappointing earnings

693
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: over the last quarter, even though they had just voted

694
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: to reinstate him. Now Bob Iiger came out this week

695
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 1: and spoke to employees. Chris Ruffo got some video of

696
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: it and posted it to Twitter. So let's go ahead

697
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,479
Speaker 1: and roll d one here. There's a virtual question. Many

698
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:48,919
Speaker 1: cast members had wished that Disney stayed out of politics.

699
00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: Will Disney stay out of making political statements? You know,

700
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 1: I think there's a miss perception here about what politics

701
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:04,480
Speaker 1: is is and I think that some of the subjects

702
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 1: that have proven to be controversial as it relates to

703
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:11,240
Speaker 1: Disney have been branded political. And I don't necessarily believe

704
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 1: they are. I don't think when you're telling stories and

705
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 1: attempting to be a good citizen of the world that

706
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: that's political, just not how I view it. Do I

707
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: like the company being embroiled in controversy, of course not.

708
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: It can be distracting and it can have a negative

709
00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:29,360
Speaker 1: impact on the company, And to the extent that I

710
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,319
Speaker 1: can work to kind of quiet things down, I'm going

711
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: to do that. But I think it's important to put

712
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: in perspective what some of these subjects are and not

713
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: just simply brand them political. Okay, so can we put

714
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,640
Speaker 1: up D three please, because a lot of conservatives we're

715
00:39:44,680 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 1: doing victory lap, taking a victory lap after this, interpreting

716
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 1: it as the fact that Bob Iger said, to the

717
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 1: extent that I can quiet things down on the political front,

718
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: I will. They were interpreting that as him doing sort

719
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 1: of a pivot, a pivot from what his predecessor had

720
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: done when it comes to politics, getting entangled in the

721
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,399
Speaker 1: fight with Rond DeSantis over his bill and putting out

722
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: a couple of movies that inflamed people, the sort of

723
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: Christian groups, conservative groups with LGBT themes. I think what

724
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: Bob Iger is very clearly saying there, and it's one

725
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: of the most one of the biggest problems in our

726
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 1: politics right now, as I tweeted, the powerful proponents of

727
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: this cultural liberalism cultural progressivism don't see taking these stances

728
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: as political, and you probably agree with them on some

729
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: of those things, like taking a particular stance on LGBT

730
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: issues as a matter of human rights as opposed to politics.

731
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. I

732
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: think human rights are political, and there's really no way

733
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: to get around that. We've litigated that a million times

734
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 1: in our country. And I think what he's saying is

735
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: actually a great example of why this problem is going

736
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: to continue to be front and center for Disney, which

737
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: is that in this country people cannot even sort of

738
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 1: agree right now on what is basically like, what is

739
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: human rights, what is politics? What is violence? We're tussling

740
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: over that right now, and that's going to be a

741
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:13,080
Speaker 1: problem going forward. And so I think it's a what

742
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: you're seeing. I think I think there's a lot of

743
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:17,799
Speaker 1: truth to that, but I think it's a function of

744
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,319
Speaker 1: kind of our society's inability to do normal politics, like

745
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: normal politics would be, you know, fighting over the the

746
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: resources and the distribution of income pre post tax, Like, who,

747
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: you know what what what tax rate? Are we going

748
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:36,840
Speaker 1: to hit the rich with? You know, what should be

749
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 1: the minimum wage? You know? You know we we feel

750
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: like child poverty is a problem. We're going to deal

751
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:44,399
Speaker 1: with child property. And here's how we're going to deal

752
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: with that. Like, and we're going to have elections. People

753
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: are going to put up ideas about how we're going

754
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:53,280
Speaker 1: to make our country a better place for everybody. Uh,

755
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: those people will get elected, they will pass laws that

756
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: will happen. Like that's what we used to think of

757
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 1: as politics, but our political system has stripped all of

758
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 1: that away from the ballot, Like, you can't vote on

759
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: those things that aren't the court will decide, The Court

760
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 1: will decide, Congress will the Federal Reserve, the President will decide,

761
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: the parliamentarian will decide, the Apartment of Education, Philip the filibuster, Like, yes, right,

762
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay for that. You know, we've

763
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:27,400
Speaker 1: run out of time, Like the system just does not

764
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:32,680
Speaker 1: deliver the things that voters give lawmakers mandates to deliver on.

765
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: And here's another really important point, and Stoller has made

766
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 1: this about Disney under Bob Iiger. Matt Stoller has made

767
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:40,960
Speaker 1: this on his substack Goliath, which is or it's called Big.

768
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:43,919
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The book is glive about Bob Eiger a lot,

769
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 1: which is that he basically under iigre was he was

770
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: the CEO of Disney for a long time, transformed Disney

771
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 1: into like a hedge fund with an entertainment or with

772
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 1: theme parks, because what they did was just buy up

773
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:57,879
Speaker 1: all of this other stuff, and there was so much

774
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:03,279
Speaker 1: consolidation under Eiger. Similarly, while he was overseeing Disney, they

775
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: filmed Mulan in Shinjanng thanked Shinjang authorities at the end

776
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 1: of that film. That is where we know the oppression

777
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: of the Wiger Muslims is happening. Disney does that, and

778
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,919
Speaker 1: meanwhile he says, we're pulling out of Georgia because they

779
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 1: know he threatens to pull Disney's huge business out of Georgia.

780
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: They film a lot of stuff there because, as I

781
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: said earlier, Georgia does give really huge lucrative subsidies to

782
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:34,439
Speaker 1: Hollywood's Atlanta is basically like la at this point because

783
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: it's become so cheap to film there. He said, we're

784
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: pulling our business out because we don't like this abortion

785
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 1: bill that was passed, and he'll happily do the business

786
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:46,359
Speaker 1: that he does in China. Now, Ron DeSantis brings up

787
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 1: this issue of consolidation and monopoly power talking about a

788
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: tussle this week between Elon Musk and Tim Cook, because

789
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,240
Speaker 1: Tim Cook says, we're gonna, you know, if Elon Musk's

790
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: free speech stuff goes this way, maybe they don't belong

791
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 1: on Apple's app store. Well, that's a huge monopoly power

792
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: that Google and Apple sort of both have. But it

793
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: relates in the same sense that as DeSantis gets in

794
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: Apple right now has people fleeing a Fox con factory

795
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: in China because of the zero COVID policy and how

796
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,920
Speaker 1: like horrible it is to workers. And meanwhile, Tim Cook's

797
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 1: going to be like, oh, Elon Musk, he sort of

798
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: wants to bring back these different speech boundaries on Twitter.

799
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll take you off the app store, which apparently

800
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: was made up. Yeah, right, right, we didn't didn't actually happen, right,

801
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:37,960
Speaker 1: but let's pretend that it happened, because we all pretended

802
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 1: it was happening. And Ron de Santas responded to it,

803
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: and I think this is this clip from Ronda Sada

804
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:43,920
Speaker 1: is a great example of the way that our politics

805
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: has moved away from the actual and into the cultural

806
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: display this when you also hear reports that Apple is

807
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:54,280
Speaker 1: threatening to remove Twitter from the app store because Elon

808
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and

809
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 1: is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and

810
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:05,959
Speaker 1: illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID. That's

811
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:08,440
Speaker 1: like one of the main things that's being reinstated. So

812
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 1: many things these experts were wrong at, and you had

813
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: people on Twitter that were calling that out and Twitter,

814
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: the old regime in Twitter. Their response was to try

815
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:19,439
Speaker 1: to just suffocate the discent. And and Elon Musk knows

816
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: that's not a winning formula, and so he's providing free speech.

817
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:26,840
Speaker 1: And so if Apple responds to that by nuking them

818
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,640
Speaker 1: from the app store, you know, I think that that

819
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:30,880
Speaker 1: would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be

820
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think

821
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 1: would merit a response from the United States Congress. Would

822
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 1: it merit response in the United States Congress? Are you

823
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: kidding me? There is a bipartisan bill in Congress that

824
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: cracks down on exactly the thing that he's talking about

825
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: that Apple is doing. Ronda Santas has not endorsed this bill.

826
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: It's not even clear that he's even aware of it.

827
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: It's a huge deal. Chuck Schumer was protested on Thursday night.

828
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: Because Schumer is refusing to bring to a floor vote.

829
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 1: He was protested at a fundraiser on Wednesday night. Schumer's

830
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: daughters work for Facebook and my Amazon, I think Amazon,

831
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:11,879
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you saw it. This week

832
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 1: there was a group that's pushing for Schumer to put

833
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 1: this on the floor put out we don't have it here,

834
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 1: but they put out a deep fake with Mark Zuckerberg.

835
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 1: Did you see this? It's kind of disturbing. At the end,

836
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: he says thank you for helping me and all my friends,

837
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, that's not him. But I have friends.

838
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 1: Doesn't have friends. So there's all this pressure being put

839
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:32,680
Speaker 1: on Schumer to put this on the floor because if

840
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 1: it goes on the floor, and we've talked about this

841
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: on the show a bunch, if it gets to the

842
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:38,400
Speaker 1: floor in the light of day, it's going to be

843
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:40,799
Speaker 1: hard for senators to vote against it. It is hard

844
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: for Republicans to vote against it, and it is hard

845
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: for Democrats to vote against it, And so Ron DeSantis

846
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: could be putting pressure on Chuck Schumer to put that

847
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: on the floor because there's an actual thing that could

848
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: happen to address the thing that he claims he's upset about.

849
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: But instead he just wants to have a press conference

850
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: and make a cultural grievance point. Well, if you take

851
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,799
Speaker 1: Twitter off the app store, be sure to be cool

852
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: if Congress did something about that, Like what you're so close,

853
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:10,920
Speaker 1: like you're Apple does indeed have too much power, Like

854
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 1: the fact that they can take people on and off

855
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: the app store with no check, that they can walk

856
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,760
Speaker 1: away with thirty percent of the revenue is absurd. Congress

857
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: should do something about it. Well, And that's one of

858
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:24,880
Speaker 1: the things here is like DeSantis is the least of

859
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: the least of my worries when it comes to this

860
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: particular bill, because obviously he can't vote on it, there's

861
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,800
Speaker 1: nothing really to do with it. But there are Republicans.

862
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: I think that Republicans who would love talk a really

863
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: big game about big tech and who understand all of

864
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:44,399
Speaker 1: the problems with the fact that Apple and Google wheel

865
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: this much power over the app stores. And one really interesting,

866
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 1: interesting thing Tristan Harris told me on my podcast over

867
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,120
Speaker 1: at Federalustradiar a couple months ago. He's from the Center

868
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: for a Humane Tech is basically that Apple has so

869
00:47:56,120 --> 00:48:00,080
Speaker 1: much monopoly power at this point they could refuse to

870
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: have apps on their app store that are intentionally addictive

871
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:08,120
Speaker 1: beyond reasonable boundaries, right, Like, they could turn that off

872
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: with the switch. But all our politics is talking about

873
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 1: is culture war stuff, right, Like we're mired in this conversation.

874
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 1: Is not to say that the monopoly power isn't important

875
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 1: because the consolidation has allowed them to do all of

876
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 1: this different stuff, but it's like we can see the

877
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: forest for the trees, and our politics is operating right now.

878
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:29,400
Speaker 1: Like it's actually kind of meta, not to no pun intended,

879
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 1: it's kind of meta, right that the reason we can't

880
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: have productive policy conversations about this stuff is because what

881
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: these apps are doing to our political discourse, period and

882
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 1: because our political system doesn't allow democratic participation to result

883
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: in actual things being done. Then you wind up just

884
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: lobbying Disney to do something, or you beg Apple to

885
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,360
Speaker 1: do something, or you buy Twitter. Well, and that's the

886
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,920
Speaker 1: same thing with Disney buying up all of these different places,

887
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 1: right like Disney, ABC, So that means ESPN, that means Hulu.

888
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:03,839
Speaker 1: They have huge stakes, controlling stakes in all of these

889
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 1: different places. And that means the same way that you

890
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 1: see Facebook snatching up Instagram and snatching up all of

891
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: these different things as well. What you have is then

892
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: a very small, a much smaller group of people is

893
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: in charge of way more of our political discourse. And

894
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: so what they think is going to be the boundaries

895
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: in a way that you know, what Bob Eiger thinks

896
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: is quote being a good citizen, what Bob Eiger thinks

897
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: is politics then becomes way more powerful than if Bob

898
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: Eiger is just overseeing theme parks and a film studio.

899
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: It has way bigger implications because then it trickles down

900
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 1: into ESPN, it trickles down into ABC, Good Morning America, Hulu,

901
00:49:42,400 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: like all of those things are going to be downstream

902
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: of what the c suite over at Disney thinks. And

903
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: Stoler makes this point a lot too. That is, from

904
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:56,400
Speaker 1: a conservative perspective, what that has done to our politics

905
00:49:56,400 --> 00:50:00,840
Speaker 1: has been from my perspective, horrific, right, And this the

906
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: wave of consolidation that Disney was was a huge part

907
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:07,920
Speaker 1: of is the thing that has created this this congressional pushback,

908
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: which I wonder and I'm curious for you're taking this.

909
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:14,399
Speaker 1: I wonder if the kind of tech stock crash has

910
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: taken a lot of the gas out of it, Like

911
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:23,000
Speaker 1: Facebook doesn't seem like the behemoth and the monster anymore

912
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:25,439
Speaker 1: in the in the some in the public, I would

913
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 1: imagine where, you know, several years ago when you're starting

914
00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 1: the drafting of this bill, now they still own What's app.

915
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: They still like, there's still an absolute behemoth. Yep. And

916
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:39,720
Speaker 1: the I don't think the regulation, the anti trust enforcement

917
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 1: is any less any less relevant. But I wonder if

918
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 1: publicly politically the collapse has led people to say, well,

919
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 1: I guess Facebook took care of itself. Zuckerberg broke up Facebook.

920
00:50:51,719 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: I mean, their mergers have already happened, and there's no

921
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: real you can unwind them. But there's been no real

922
00:50:58,600 --> 00:50:59,880
Speaker 1: movement on that front. That's the thing I was going

923
00:50:59,920 --> 00:51:02,959
Speaker 1: to say, Like, so their mergers have happened, and yeah,

924
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: a lot of people like Elizabeth Warren or I don't know,

925
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,280
Speaker 1: some Republicans will say break up Facebook. But in terms

926
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:14,359
Speaker 1: of like that actually happening and retroactively sort of. That's

927
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: one of the things, right, I have bet are off,

928
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:19,560
Speaker 1: like what the companies themselves, what's the app Instagram like?

929
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 1: They probably it feels like being under that one giant

930
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: Meta umbrella agree has left them to wither agree completely.

931
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: I mean, it gives them a lot more room in

932
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: their books to sort of experiment and and you know, Meta,

933
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,880
Speaker 1: for instance, with its its oculus like has taken a

934
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: hit recently, although I'm not as convinced that that's permanent

935
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: as as a lot of folks are. I think technology

936
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: is much more powerful than some people realize, and it

937
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:49,040
Speaker 1: is already there's already conversation. Actually, just this week, I

938
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 1: was reading a story about how they're they're already working

939
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: with different workplaces. We have an Oculus show eventually how

940
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: that's going to work. I think you can watch us

941
00:51:56,880 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 1: on the YouTube app on Oculus, but we won't be

942
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: like all around do. We would have to film with

943
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 1: the three sixty cameras to do that. But there's already,

944
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: like there are already divisions over at Meta working to

945
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 1: like integrate this into people's work lives, which is one

946
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: of the things that should be stopped immediately. All that

947
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: is to say they are I think what Eiger doesn't get,

948
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: but what he's flirting with in the same way you're

949
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: staying Republicans, you're so close to being there, an antitrust

950
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 1: what corporatists, you're so close to being there. Like, your

951
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:33,040
Speaker 1: business is not helped by making these sort of like

952
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:38,799
Speaker 1: genuflections that are obviously insincere. In so many cases, that

953
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,000
Speaker 1: is not helpful to your business. People just want to,

954
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:43,719
Speaker 1: you know, watch the NFL, to watch the NFL. You

955
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: can still be a good steward of your community and

956
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: of the country and socially responsible without shoving it down

957
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:52,960
Speaker 1: people's throats. But because some people were convinced at the

958
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: tippy tippy top that they had to do that. Yeah,

959
00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 1: And I think had there been more competition in that

960
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: space the last five years, I actually think a lot

961
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:04,800
Speaker 1: of this stuff, a lot of the kind of cultural strife,

962
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 1: would have been worked out in the marketplace. But consumers

963
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 1: don't have that power. They don't have the powered about

964
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: what their walts right now. Because what you're gonna boycott

965
00:53:11,960 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: Disney good luck like good luck right And there was

966
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: this moment where Elon Musk tried to Marshal that that energy.

967
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:21,719
Speaker 1: Remember he said he was going to name and shame

968
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:26,359
Speaker 1: all all the corporations that we're pulling their audience way.

969
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: It's like, eh, I'm not so sure that's going to work.

970
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 1: Like the right wing audience on Twitter is probably a

971
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: little bit older. Like it's not the it's not the

972
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:40,719
Speaker 1: demo that these these corporations are going for. They're not

973
00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: going to be browbeating in the actually making ads. It

974
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:46,279
Speaker 1: was funny because I've never seen that before. All all

975
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 1: the protests at all in the past had always been

976
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,760
Speaker 1: pressuring companies not to advertise, not to spend their money

977
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 1: on X, Y or Z. This one, this one was

978
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:58,200
Speaker 1: do spend your money. But in speaking of you, and

979
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:01,160
Speaker 1: we should say before we run that. He actually met

980
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: with Tim Cook this week after these reports surface, the

981
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: ones that DeSantis was responding the surface from Elon Musk. Yes, yes, exactly,

982
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 1: he said, among other things, Musk said, we resolved the

983
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:18,320
Speaker 1: misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the app store,

984
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: So all of this sort of came up to the

985
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 1: surface on Twitter, which again it's just such a meta

986
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: critique of Twitter, like it makes all this stuff impossible.

987
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: Met with Tim Cook resolved their differences, and that's everything

988
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: that played out this week. Basically, also ironic that Elon

989
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:39,800
Speaker 1: Musk would take what maybe was an automated message because today,

990
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:42,160
Speaker 1: for instance, or this this week, you've had a whole

991
00:54:42,160 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 1: bunch of liberals and leftists, whether accounts suspended, it created

992
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: all this like conspiracy theorizing about whether there was some

993
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: political agenda behind it. It looks like there was a

994
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: kind of a bot purge. Yeah, and they just got

995
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: swept up in like Dean Baker, it's like progressive economists,

996
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:01,200
Speaker 1: the amount of timecount suspend, the amount of times people

997
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:03,439
Speaker 1: have pitched me stories. And this is from the right

998
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: on like being shadow band. It's just like an algorithmic accident.

999
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It seems like

1000
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 1: that's basically what happened to Twitter and e Lenmask. Yeah,

1001
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:15,319
Speaker 1: like to ignore that email, man, you're not getting you're

1002
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: not You're not getting kicked off of the app store.

1003
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: They should still be busted up and regulated. Yeah, absolutely

1004
00:55:21,560 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 1: they should. All right, let's move on to the FBI

1005
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: and the oath keepers. For the New York Times, it's

1006
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 1: the development are actually per NBC News, a federal jury

1007
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,880
Speaker 1: in Washington on Tuesday found Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes

1008
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 1: and Kelly Meggs, another member of the far right organization,

1009
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:40,919
Speaker 1: guilty of seditious conspiracy and connection with a January sixth

1010
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: attack on a capital. A victory for the government in

1011
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:47,320
Speaker 1: a case that involved a rarely used Civil War era statute,

1012
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 1: and that Civil War era statute is seditious conspiracy was

1013
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 1: used in this case, obviously successfully. Three other members of

1014
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:59,360
Speaker 1: the group are on trial. Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson, Thomas

1015
00:55:59,360 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: Caldwell all found not guilty on the charge of seditious conspiracy,

1016
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:07,839
Speaker 1: but they were all five found guilty of obstruction and

1017
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,240
Speaker 1: aiding in a betting for what happened on January sixth.

1018
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: And then there's another trial that's starting early this month

1019
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:17,960
Speaker 1: in December, of four other Oathkeepers who were charged in

1020
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: conjunction with Rhodes. This comes on the heels of what

1021
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:27,560
Speaker 1: we learned last week that an FBI informant named Greg mcwerder,

1022
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:32,520
Speaker 1: who was an Oathkeeper's vice president, had been secretly reporting

1023
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:34,880
Speaker 1: to the FBI about the oath Keeper's activities. This is

1024
00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:36,440
Speaker 1: per The New York Times again in the weeks and

1025
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:39,360
Speaker 1: months leading up to the Capitol attack. He was called

1026
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:45,400
Speaker 1: to testify in this trial as a defense witness, but

1027
00:56:45,560 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: had a heart attack on a plane on the way,

1028
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,320
Speaker 1: and it was just he can't testify anymore. He was

1029
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 1: supposed to testify as a witness for Rhodes, and The

1030
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:57,840
Speaker 1: New York Times wrote, that's an unusual move that suggests

1031
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 1: mister Rhodes's lawyers belief he has information that could have

1032
00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:06,000
Speaker 1: helped Rhodes's case. But what the lawyer ended up saying,

1033
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 1: he'd been taken off a plane when he was traveling

1034
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 1: to Washington to testify after having a hard attack. Yeah,

1035
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:13,759
Speaker 1: I just can't make that stuff up. It's like you're

1036
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:17,800
Speaker 1: writing the script for people to be to believe everything

1037
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:23,360
Speaker 1: about everything. Stuff like that happens. But so it seemed

1038
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: like what the verdict was saying was that they did

1039
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 1: not believe. The jury did not believe that the specific

1040
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: act of sacking the Capitol was drawn up and executed

1041
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 1: kind of a to z, but that when that opportunity arose,

1042
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 1: they tactically maneuvered their way into a situation where they

1043
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:51,000
Speaker 1: could execute on that. And we're waiting for the word

1044
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: from Trump to arm themselves and to go further than that.

1045
00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:59,440
Speaker 1: And his argument was, hey, I was just supporting the president,

1046
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 1: and the president never told me to arm up, and

1047
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: so we we backed down. One thing, come on. One

1048
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:08,680
Speaker 1: thing that was very bad for their case is that

1049
00:58:08,680 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: they had a stockpile of weapons in Virginia immediately. I mean,

1050
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 1: and there were messages that were revealed as part of

1051
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:18,640
Speaker 1: the case where they were talking about like very violent

1052
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: things happening to Nancy Pelosi basically saying, you know, this

1053
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: is where we're in relation. Yeah, we're in revolutionary times

1054
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 1: similar to what our founding fathers were in, and you know,

1055
00:58:32,200 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: the president needs to know that we're ready to like

1056
00:58:34,640 --> 00:58:39,240
Speaker 1: fight all that kind of stuff. Now, mccuerter would have

1057
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: been an extremely interesting witness in this case because there's

1058
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:47,640
Speaker 1: the open question when we learned also this month that

1059
00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:50,320
Speaker 1: the FBI had as many as eight informants person Eric

1060
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: Times inside the Proud Boys in the months before January sixth,

1061
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 1: as many as eight, and so that's where I'm interested

1062
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: to know. My impression reporting on it as it was happening,

1063
00:59:03,280 --> 00:59:07,240
Speaker 1: is that it really was this like awful mob mentality

1064
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 1: that just snowballs out of control because bad actors were

1065
00:59:12,560 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 1: whipping people into a frenzy. The question of whether this

1066
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: was like actually that anybody had satisfied and architected it.

1067
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:24,640
Speaker 1: I think McWherter would have known, because he would have

1068
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: been relating that relaying that information to the FBI. So

1069
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 1: I would love to know what the FBI knew. We

1070
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: also learned this week that people who have been working

1071
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 1: for Liz Cheney on this elect committee looking into January sixth.

1072
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: This was reported in like CNN are upset because she

1073
00:59:43,480 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 1: has scuttled and she's a you know. Her spokesperson said

1074
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: that the reports of this were correct information about law

1075
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:55,480
Speaker 1: enforcement failures on January. Yeah, they declined to look at that.

1076
00:59:55,720 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: And that's where it's like, you're telling me a guy

1077
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 1: who might be testifying against the FBI and informant who

1078
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:03,560
Speaker 1: might have been testifying against the FBI has a heart

1079
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:07,280
Speaker 1: attack on his plane on the way to testify. It's

1080
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: very strange, obviously, but the broader point is that's where

1081
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 1: those informants, proud boys, oathkeepers. I would be really curious

1082
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: what they knew, because I also think it suggests that

1083
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: this was a case of mob mentality that got wildly

1084
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,640
Speaker 1: out of control. It doesn't say, as this verdict found,

1085
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that people weren't drawing up some plans,

1086
01:00:28,960 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 1: but a plan to intentionally sack the capital. I mean

1087
01:00:31,520 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: they may have had very violent they had a stockpile

1088
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 1: of weapons in Virginia. They may have had very violent plans,

1089
01:00:38,600 --> 01:00:43,040
Speaker 1: contingency plans, whatever it was, intentions, whatever it was, but

1090
01:00:43,160 --> 01:00:45,720
Speaker 1: specifically to sack the capital and to stop the vote.

1091
01:00:46,360 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: I don't think that was ever the clear design of

1092
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: what they were going to do on January sixth, But

1093
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:53,919
Speaker 1: I do think a lot of them whipped the crowd

1094
01:00:53,960 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: into a frenzy when they realized it was attainable because

1095
01:00:56,960 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 1: of law enforcement failures. When you see them breaking past

1096
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: the small guards, the small number of guards that they had,

1097
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 1: throwing that female Capitol police officer to the ground where

1098
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: she cracks her head on the back of the steps,

1099
01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: they started to feel really emboldened. Yeah, you're right. So,

1100
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:16,560
Speaker 1: you know, if if if they did have detailed drawn

1101
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 1: up plans for you know, which doors they're going to

1102
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 1: hit and how they're gonna actually get into the Capitol

1103
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:24,920
Speaker 1: and they still came out with that tiny amount of

1104
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:29,960
Speaker 1: uh you know, capitol police protection, then that in itself

1105
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily scandalous, so that that that would be why

1106
01:01:33,800 --> 01:01:37,919
Speaker 1: a either they're gonna people like Cheney aren't gonna aren't

1107
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:39,800
Speaker 1: gonna look at look into that and aren't going to

1108
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 1: find the evidence of that, or more likely, I think

1109
01:01:43,880 --> 01:01:46,760
Speaker 1: people like Rhodes just didn't think it was reasonable to

1110
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:50,760
Speaker 1: expect that, uh, even thousands of people were going to

1111
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 1: be able to break through the Capitol because they've been

1112
01:01:53,760 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 1: to protests in Washington, d C. There's fay Lanks after

1113
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:03,040
Speaker 1: fay lanx of are armed riot police. If you're not who,

1114
01:02:03,080 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: You're not going to get through with a bunch of

1115
01:02:05,360 --> 01:02:09,040
Speaker 1: unarmed protesters. It's no easy feed. And that's but apparently

1116
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:13,280
Speaker 1: nobody at the FBI or at Capitol Police was checking

1117
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:16,840
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or parlor or anything else. And we've

1118
01:02:16,880 --> 01:02:19,400
Speaker 1: talked to people who've done some reporting over at the

1119
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:21,760
Speaker 1: Intercept about what happened in the Gretchen Whitmer case. What

1120
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:24,600
Speaker 1: we know is that the FBI informant was involved in

1121
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: the organization of the plot to kidnap Gretchen kidnap Gretchen Whitmer,

1122
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: and the intercepts reporting on all of those cases in

1123
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:33,400
Speaker 1: years past where it was happening to Muslims and the

1124
01:02:33,520 --> 01:02:36,080
Speaker 1: years after nine to eleven, it's a it's an echo

1125
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,600
Speaker 1: of that. And that's not to say the FBI organized

1126
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,640
Speaker 1: January sixth. There's an open question as to what the

1127
01:02:42,680 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 1: FBI knew was going to happen on January sixth, and

1128
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 1: whether law enforcement should have been much better prepared for

1129
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:54,280
Speaker 1: what was going to happen on January sixth, because mcquarter

1130
01:02:55,080 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: was the vice president of the oath Keepers. If the

1131
01:02:58,160 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 1: oath Keepers had a specific point to do this, he

1132
01:03:02,000 --> 01:03:05,439
Speaker 1: would have known, and if they didn't, he would have known,

1133
01:03:05,560 --> 01:03:08,840
Speaker 1: and thus the FBI likely would have known. So it's

1134
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:13,200
Speaker 1: just a really really messed up set of circumstances. And

1135
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: of course this is all being reported in the New

1136
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:16,439
Speaker 1: York Times now, but if you had said it before

1137
01:03:16,440 --> 01:03:18,920
Speaker 1: the New York Times touched it in the last several months,

1138
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:22,000
Speaker 1: you were a conspiracy theorists. And as the details have emerged,

1139
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:25,160
Speaker 1: it really looks like there was just a colossal failure

1140
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 1: of law enforcement. Yeap, Ryan, we have your points coming

1141
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 1: up next and they're in our they're in my home

1142
01:03:38,160 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: state of Wisconsin. So I'm looking forward to that. Yes, Indeed,

1143
01:03:42,720 --> 01:03:45,320
Speaker 1: today I am talking about your home state of Wisconsin,

1144
01:03:45,400 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 1: and specifically dun County, which is the trumpy area on

1145
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:51,320
Speaker 1: the western side of the state, not far from Central Minnesota.

1146
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:55,600
Speaker 1: So this year, Senator Ron Johnson notched a fourteen point

1147
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:58,480
Speaker 1: margin there, roughly the same that Trump put up in

1148
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:02,520
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Uncounty voters also had a unique referendum to

1149
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: vote on, asking them if they thought the federal government

1150
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 1: ought to fund a nonprofit national health insurance program. It

1151
01:04:09,040 --> 01:04:12,440
Speaker 1: ended up passing fifty one forty nine and ran eleven

1152
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:15,480
Speaker 1: points ahead of Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who was re

1153
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:19,040
Speaker 1: elected statewide, and sixteen points ahead of Democratic Senate candidate

1154
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: Mandela Barnes, who lost to Johnson. Now what constant is

1155
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:24,680
Speaker 1: one of just ten states left that has yet to

1156
01:04:24,720 --> 01:04:28,600
Speaker 1: accept the Medicaid expansion included in the Affordable Care Act Now.

1157
01:04:28,720 --> 01:04:32,560
Speaker 1: John Calabreezi, a dun County board supervisor, told me that

1158
01:04:32,600 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: the toll health insurance takes on the county budget helped

1159
01:04:35,600 --> 01:04:38,720
Speaker 1: persuade his fellow board members to allow the referendum to

1160
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:42,080
Speaker 1: go forward. The county has roughly three hundred and fifty employees,

1161
01:04:42,120 --> 01:04:44,720
Speaker 1: he said, and insuring them costs roughly a half million

1162
01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 1: dollars every month. On the day that the county heard

1163
01:04:48,000 --> 01:04:50,000
Speaker 1: arguments about whether or not they should put the measure

1164
01:04:50,040 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: on the ballot, residents showed up to tell stories of

1165
01:04:52,800 --> 01:04:56,960
Speaker 1: their nightmare experiences, either with insurance companies or without insurance.

1166
01:04:57,360 --> 01:05:00,000
Speaker 1: It also happened that the state had just released its

1167
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: annual health and Human services report, and a state official

1168
01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:07,520
Speaker 1: was on hand to walk the county lawmakers through the budget. Now,

1169
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 1: the board's most conservative member is a guy named Larry Buyork,

1170
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:13,120
Speaker 1: and when it came time for him to question the

1171
01:05:13,120 --> 01:05:16,800
Speaker 1: state official, that's when the tide changed in favor of

1172
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:20,680
Speaker 1: the healthcare program. Let's roll a bit of that, Supervisor,

1173
01:05:20,760 --> 01:05:25,160
Speaker 1: Larry Byork, Thank you, mister chairman. I was fortunate enough

1174
01:05:25,200 --> 01:05:28,960
Speaker 1: to serve on health and Human Services for a number

1175
01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:33,760
Speaker 1: of years and are really recognizes that the talents that

1176
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: Chris has, and she's heard me say many many times,

1177
01:05:37,440 --> 01:05:41,880
Speaker 1: where does the money go? Well, it blows my mind

1178
01:05:41,880 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: when I look at the financial statement, Chris, and we

1179
01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:51,360
Speaker 1: spend eight percent of our budget on behavioral health services

1180
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: and when in health and human services and we look

1181
01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:00,360
Speaker 1: at where the money goes, and we see the money

1182
01:06:00,360 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 1: going to other counties for bed space, for mental health.

1183
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: I guess my question to you is, in listening, in

1184
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:17,840
Speaker 1: listening to the presentations from the public today about universal

1185
01:06:17,880 --> 01:06:23,480
Speaker 1: health care, do you think there would ever be a

1186
01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:27,600
Speaker 1: universal Can the counties get out from underneath some of

1187
01:06:27,640 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: that thirty eight percent of mental health care by a

1188
01:06:30,200 --> 01:06:34,720
Speaker 1: federal program of any sort? So the state AGCs official

1189
01:06:34,720 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 1: and her answer talks about the details of the various

1190
01:06:37,160 --> 01:06:39,360
Speaker 1: programs for a while, and she also notes that before

1191
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:42,760
Speaker 1: Obamacare was passed Affordable Care Act, let's not get partisan here,

1192
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:46,280
Speaker 1: in the Wisconsin Dunn County boards, the county was spending

1193
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 1: about one hundred thousand dollars a year for uninsured patients

1194
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:51,800
Speaker 1: at local facilities, whereas that number is now down to

1195
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:55,640
Speaker 1: about ten thousand dollars. So she concludes with this, and

1196
01:06:55,720 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 1: in direct answer to your question, if people had affordable

1197
01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:04,160
Speaker 1: health insurance available to them and coverage to get them

1198
01:07:04,160 --> 01:07:06,840
Speaker 1: the care that they needed when it wasn't a crisis

1199
01:07:06,920 --> 01:07:11,520
Speaker 1: or emergency, it seems hard to not conclude that there

1200
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: would be cost savings to that. So on election night,

1201
01:07:15,480 --> 01:07:18,640
Speaker 1: organizers noticed a trend. The first was the obvious one

1202
01:07:18,680 --> 01:07:21,160
Speaker 1: that the referendum was doing better in the county seat

1203
01:07:21,200 --> 01:07:24,240
Speaker 1: of how do you say it? Mnemonee, nomine Menominee. Okay,

1204
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: it's a town of about sixteen thousand people that it

1205
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:29,960
Speaker 1: was doing outside of it. But they also noticed that

1206
01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:32,320
Speaker 1: in the small towns where they had taken a day

1207
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:35,160
Speaker 1: or two to talk to people, the numbers were startling.

1208
01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:38,720
Speaker 1: In Boyceville, Wisconsin, for instance, voters went two hundred and

1209
01:07:38,840 --> 01:07:41,720
Speaker 1: thirty nine to one hundred and thirty two for Ron

1210
01:07:41,800 --> 01:07:45,000
Speaker 1: Johnson over Mandela Barnes, but they supported single payer by

1211
01:07:45,040 --> 01:07:48,840
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty three to one seventy one. And Wheeler, Wisconsin,

1212
01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 1: Johnson won fifty two votes to Barnes's twenty seven votes,

1213
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: but the referendum carried by forty to thirty seven. In

1214
01:07:55,840 --> 01:07:58,600
Speaker 1: Elk Mound, Johnson won one hundred and ninety to one

1215
01:07:58,680 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two. Pretty comfortable will win there, but

1216
01:08:01,240 --> 01:08:05,040
Speaker 1: National Health Insurance won one eighty four to one twenty four.

1217
01:08:05,760 --> 01:08:08,440
Speaker 1: So Emily, after I wrote about this referendum for the Intercept,

1218
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: you responded to it by saying, this lack of Republican

1219
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:15,840
Speaker 1: attention to workable health insurance policy solutions will handicap the

1220
01:08:15,920 --> 01:08:18,960
Speaker 1: GOP for years to come. What did you mean by that,

1221
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:22,480
Speaker 1: and are Republicans at the top levels kind of recognizing

1222
01:08:22,520 --> 01:08:25,240
Speaker 1: this problem? Are you shouting into the void here? Shouting

1223
01:08:25,280 --> 01:08:27,720
Speaker 1: into the void? What was interesting is a consultant who

1224
01:08:27,800 --> 01:08:33,720
Speaker 1: works particularly what's your point today? So Google and YouTube are,

1225
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:37,719
Speaker 1: according to a new press release, quote investing in fact checking.

1226
01:08:37,920 --> 01:08:41,599
Speaker 1: The release announced the company was awarding, in its own words, quote,

1227
01:08:41,640 --> 01:08:44,320
Speaker 1: a thirteen point two million dollar grant to the International

1228
01:08:44,400 --> 01:08:47,679
Speaker 1: fact Checking Network at the nonprofit Pointer Institute to launch

1229
01:08:47,680 --> 01:08:49,599
Speaker 1: a new Global fact Check Fund to support their network

1230
01:08:49,600 --> 01:08:51,720
Speaker 1: of one hundred and thirty five fact checking organizations from

1231
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 1: sixty five countries covering over eighty languages. All right, so

1232
01:08:55,320 --> 01:08:58,880
Speaker 1: this sounds great, right. It sounds like corporate responsibility, like

1233
01:08:58,960 --> 01:09:01,519
Speaker 1: a massive tech company doing what it can to make

1234
01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:05,840
Speaker 1: its products less harmful. This donation basically doubles pointers twenty

1235
01:09:05,880 --> 01:09:08,400
Speaker 1: twenty one revenue, according to its nine to ninety form,

1236
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:12,120
Speaker 1: which reports about thirteen million in total revenue last year

1237
01:09:12,320 --> 01:09:15,439
Speaker 1: and about fourteen point six million the year before. Alphabet

1238
01:09:15,520 --> 01:09:17,920
Speaker 1: Google's parent company brought in some two hundred and fifty

1239
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:20,240
Speaker 1: seven billion in twenty twenty one. For what it's worth,

1240
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:23,479
Speaker 1: this grant is really no sacrifice for Google. It's a

1241
01:09:23,680 --> 01:09:27,040
Speaker 1: shrewd and cynical business move that will give the company

1242
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:30,559
Speaker 1: more cover for censorship on its platforms, and it will

1243
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:34,479
Speaker 1: make the media worse. Why because the Pointer Institute is

1244
01:09:34,560 --> 01:09:37,439
Speaker 1: one of the most poisonous peddlers of disinformation in all

1245
01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:41,320
Speaker 1: of media, despite being one of the loudest and most

1246
01:09:41,560 --> 01:09:46,240
Speaker 1: sanctimonious critics of it under the absurd pretense of nonpartisanship.

1247
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:48,759
Speaker 1: That's a quote from its nine to ninety Actually, Pointer,

1248
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:54,439
Speaker 1: which operates PolitiFact, undermines the credibility of journalism that cuts

1249
01:09:54,439 --> 01:09:58,559
Speaker 1: against the establishment narrative. Its fact checks are propaganda. They

1250
01:09:58,600 --> 01:10:01,599
Speaker 1: are used by major corporations like Google and Meta, which

1251
01:10:01,680 --> 01:10:04,400
Speaker 1: you'll be surprised to learn also funds the group to

1252
01:10:04,520 --> 01:10:09,200
Speaker 1: suppress counter narrative information. Pointer weaponizes its elite clout and

1253
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:12,800
Speaker 1: neutral pretense to enable big tech censorship. One study on

1254
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:16,519
Speaker 1: PolitiFact from the conservative group NewsBusters looked at the group's

1255
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:20,320
Speaker 1: record and found by simple counting that over Biden's first

1256
01:10:20,479 --> 01:10:24,080
Speaker 1: twenty months in office, he had gotten fifty eight fact checks,

1257
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:27,320
Speaker 1: while Biden critics had been fact checked three hundred and

1258
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:30,720
Speaker 1: thirty eight times. Overall. This is per NewsBusters, there were

1259
01:10:30,760 --> 01:10:33,960
Speaker 1: five point eight fact checks of Biden's critics for everyone

1260
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:36,560
Speaker 1: of the president himself. A lot of the problems with

1261
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: politifacts stem from what's called selection bias, choosing constantly to

1262
01:10:40,439 --> 01:10:44,000
Speaker 1: fact check every claim from anti establishment voices and not

1263
01:10:44,240 --> 01:10:47,360
Speaker 1: fact check every claim from, say, high profile Democrats. The

1264
01:10:47,439 --> 01:10:50,680
Speaker 1: fact checks themselves are terrible, too, often engaging in these

1265
01:10:50,760 --> 01:10:54,560
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics to give cover to Democrats and engaging in

1266
01:10:54,640 --> 01:10:58,679
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics then to undercut conservatives. Back in July, Robbi

1267
01:10:58,760 --> 01:11:02,160
Speaker 1: Suave in Reason Why walked through how PolitiFact fact checks

1268
01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:06,640
Speaker 1: on mask efficacy, COVID survivability, and even the definition of

1269
01:11:06,720 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 1: a recession were misleading at best and fled out wrong

1270
01:11:10,439 --> 01:11:13,800
Speaker 1: at worst. When PolitiFact rated a claim that said quote

1271
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:15,800
Speaker 1: the White House is now trying to protect Joe Biden

1272
01:11:15,840 --> 01:11:18,679
Speaker 1: by changing the definition of the word recession as containing

1273
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:23,760
Speaker 1: quote false information. That claim was then suppressed with disclaimers

1274
01:11:23,840 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Instagram, and they rely on pointner Pointer

1275
01:11:27,720 --> 01:11:33,000
Speaker 1: to credential official fact checking organizations. So Mark Zuckerberg outsourced

1276
01:11:33,040 --> 01:11:36,439
Speaker 1: fact checking to these groups to take some heat off

1277
01:11:36,479 --> 01:11:39,479
Speaker 1: of Meta. An analysis published last year in the academic

1278
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:43,280
Speaker 1: journal Journalism Studies found that out of an eight hundred

1279
01:11:43,280 --> 01:11:47,000
Speaker 1: and fifty eight sample of PolitiFact fact checks, thirty three

1280
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:50,920
Speaker 1: percent quote checked a complex proposition and assigned one truth

1281
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:53,599
Speaker 1: rating to it. This is problematic as the reader might

1282
01:11:53,760 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 1: interpret the truthfulness of an individual claim, the authors wrote,

1283
01:11:56,960 --> 01:11:59,960
Speaker 1: adding that eleven percent of the sample where fact checked

1284
01:12:00,160 --> 01:12:03,599
Speaker 1: the author deemed uncheckable. Uncheckable the authors of the study said,

1285
01:12:03,600 --> 01:12:07,360
Speaker 1: were uncheckable. Those were defined as statements quote whose truthfulness

1286
01:12:07,439 --> 01:12:10,639
Speaker 1: cannot be defined in practice, eg. Claims about the future

1287
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:13,920
Speaker 1: and vague claims. So that's forty four percent of the

1288
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:17,680
Speaker 1: sample in total, nearly half of the fact checks, then

1289
01:12:17,760 --> 01:12:21,320
Speaker 1: that are utilized by corporate gatekeepers. There are way too

1290
01:12:21,360 --> 01:12:23,479
Speaker 1: many examples to count, but let's look at one more.

1291
01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:27,439
Speaker 1: After the horrific shootings in Buffalo and Uvaldi earlier this year,

1292
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:31,320
Speaker 1: PolitiFact tweeted quote beware of misinformation about red flag laws,

1293
01:12:31,360 --> 01:12:33,880
Speaker 1: including critics who say they lack due process, which is

1294
01:12:34,000 --> 01:12:36,760
Speaker 1: not accurate. Another false claim is that the laws allow

1295
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:38,800
Speaker 1: people with a grudge, such as an ex spouse, to

1296
01:12:38,920 --> 01:12:42,519
Speaker 1: take guns away. Whatever you think about red flags, even

1297
01:12:42,560 --> 01:12:46,439
Speaker 1: the liberal ACLU has raised concerns in recent years about

1298
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:49,960
Speaker 1: due process and legislation in both Rhode Island and California,

1299
01:12:50,200 --> 01:12:52,479
Speaker 1: and as The Washington Examiner pointed out one study of

1300
01:12:52,520 --> 01:12:58,200
Speaker 1: Connecticut found thirty two percent of confiscation orders are ultimately overturned. Again,

1301
01:12:58,360 --> 01:13:00,720
Speaker 1: it does not matter whether you love or hate red

1302
01:13:00,760 --> 01:13:04,000
Speaker 1: flag laws. What matters is that PolitiFact and Pointer present

1303
01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:08,680
Speaker 1: themselves as neutral actors, and then corporations launder that neutrality

1304
01:13:09,080 --> 01:13:12,200
Speaker 1: to suppress the free press. The red flag tweet on

1305
01:13:12,280 --> 01:13:17,280
Speaker 1: its own is clear disinformation, whereas yet it's disinformation pedled

1306
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:21,040
Speaker 1: by the self appointed guardians of accuracy who are weaponized

1307
01:13:21,080 --> 01:13:24,720
Speaker 1: by corporations. It linked to guidelines from Pointer itself on

1308
01:13:24,840 --> 01:13:28,200
Speaker 1: how to cover firearm legislation. They're training materials which are

1309
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:31,639
Speaker 1: used by newsrooms around the world are garbage, and Google

1310
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:35,080
Speaker 1: is going to help spread those guidelines even further. I

1311
01:13:35,120 --> 01:13:37,559
Speaker 1: would actually have zero issue with all of this if

1312
01:13:37,640 --> 01:13:41,479
Speaker 1: PolitiFact and Pointer didn't claim to be nonpartisan and didn't

1313
01:13:41,520 --> 01:13:46,400
Speaker 1: do so in cooperation with ideologically monopolistic corporate actors. They're

1314
01:13:46,439 --> 01:13:49,080
Speaker 1: the useful idiots of corporate power that doesn't really give

1315
01:13:49,120 --> 01:13:52,080
Speaker 1: a damn about the free press. But they're also totally

1316
01:13:52,160 --> 01:13:55,080
Speaker 1: on the same page as they're billionaire benefactors when it

1317
01:13:55,200 --> 01:13:59,640
Speaker 1: comes to certain topics that demand rigorous journalistic scrutiny like

1318
01:13:59,760 --> 01:14:03,639
Speaker 1: cold and Russian collusion and puberty blockers. This week, when

1319
01:14:03,680 --> 01:14:06,519
Speaker 1: Bob Eiger was asked about his stance that Disney on

1320
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,240
Speaker 1: Disney in politics, he gave an answer some conservatives cheered, saying, quote,

1321
01:14:10,520 --> 01:14:13,040
Speaker 1: do I like the company being embroiled in controversy? Of

1322
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:15,479
Speaker 1: course not. It can be distracting, and it can have

1323
01:14:15,560 --> 01:14:17,880
Speaker 1: a negative impact on the company, And to the extent

1324
01:14:17,960 --> 01:14:19,639
Speaker 1: that I can work to kind of quiet things down,

1325
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:21,760
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that. But he also said, some

1326
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:24,680
Speaker 1: issues quote have been branded political when they're really just

1327
01:14:24,760 --> 01:14:27,960
Speaker 1: about being quote, a good citizen. That's where we get

1328
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:30,719
Speaker 1: to a deeper problem. We know the personal is political.

1329
01:14:31,040 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 1: Some people disagree with Disney's stance on LGBT issues, and

1330
01:14:34,200 --> 01:14:37,760
Speaker 1: some people think, though, that makes those folks bad citizens.

1331
01:14:38,120 --> 01:14:42,920
Speaker 1: But that question is absolutely a political one. Pointers guidelines

1332
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:45,880
Speaker 1: on trans athletes, for instance, are inherently opposed to the

1333
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:49,200
Speaker 1: stances people on the left, like Tulsa Gabbard have taken

1334
01:14:49,280 --> 01:14:51,960
Speaker 1: on that issue. Again, whether you agree with that position

1335
01:14:52,240 --> 01:14:55,560
Speaker 1: or not, it doesn't matter. Claiming the mantle of neutrality

1336
01:14:55,880 --> 01:14:59,160
Speaker 1: will taking a specific ideological stance is not healthy to

1337
01:14:59,240 --> 01:15:02,960
Speaker 1: the free press. It is actually wildly counterproductive. Doing all

1338
01:15:03,080 --> 01:15:06,680
Speaker 1: of this with admitted biases, because it is actually subjective,

1339
01:15:07,040 --> 01:15:10,759
Speaker 1: would at least be less destructive, but that would require

1340
01:15:10,800 --> 01:15:15,040
Speaker 1: people to acknowledge things they don't see as biases really are.

1341
01:15:15,520 --> 01:15:18,280
Speaker 1: In a twenty twenty one article on PolitiFact, watching a

1342
01:15:18,400 --> 01:15:21,519
Speaker 1: lab laque fact check, Matt Tayebi wrote, quote, when companies

1343
01:15:21,640 --> 01:15:24,120
Speaker 1: dragged fact checking out in public and made it a

1344
01:15:24,200 --> 01:15:27,800
Speaker 1: beast of burden for use in impressing audiences, they defamed

1345
01:15:27,880 --> 01:15:31,240
Speaker 1: the tradition. Google just boosted that defamation to the tune

1346
01:15:31,280 --> 01:15:33,760
Speaker 1: of thirteen million dollars, and the guardians of the fourth

1347
01:15:33,880 --> 01:15:36,680
Speaker 1: estate over at Pointer are proud to help. Meanwhile, all

1348
01:15:36,720 --> 01:15:39,080
Speaker 1: the politicians who take money from Google, which gives away

1349
01:15:39,120 --> 01:15:42,439
Speaker 1: campaign cash pretty equally, will either complain about the press

1350
01:15:42,680 --> 01:15:45,200
Speaker 1: or wax poetic about how essential it is to a

1351
01:15:45,280 --> 01:15:49,200
Speaker 1: functioning democracy. They're right on that count, of course, but

1352
01:15:49,240 --> 01:15:51,960
Speaker 1: they won't say anything about Google's thirteen million dollar grant

1353
01:15:52,479 --> 01:15:54,800
Speaker 1: to make the media worse. Ryan, you might disagree with

1354
01:15:54,880 --> 01:15:57,240
Speaker 1: me on some of that, but it is really concerning

1355
01:15:57,240 --> 01:16:02,200
Speaker 1: to me how corporation. About a year and a half ago,

1356
01:16:02,320 --> 01:16:05,800
Speaker 1: the US withdrew fully from Afghanistan as kabble fell to

1357
01:16:05,880 --> 01:16:09,760
Speaker 1: the Taliban, and one of the quiet moves that has

1358
01:16:09,920 --> 01:16:14,160
Speaker 1: had enormous repercussions since then came from the Biden administration

1359
01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:20,080
Speaker 1: when they froze the entire reserve fund of the Afghan

1360
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:24,479
Speaker 1: Central Bank and encouraged the European Union to do the same.

1361
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:28,599
Speaker 1: So froze seven billion dollars of Afghan central reserve currency

1362
01:16:28,720 --> 01:16:31,200
Speaker 1: here at the New York Federal Reserve and two billion

1363
01:16:31,320 --> 01:16:35,559
Speaker 1: over at the EU, which created a man made economic

1364
01:16:35,680 --> 01:16:38,719
Speaker 1: catastrophe the likes of which you perhaps hasn't been seen

1365
01:16:38,880 --> 01:16:44,400
Speaker 1: since the potato famine in the nineteenth century. Under under

1366
01:16:44,479 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: pressure the Biden administration, finally we can put up this

1367
01:16:48,400 --> 01:16:51,160
Speaker 1: element here, finally allowed some of the funds to be

1368
01:16:51,280 --> 01:16:56,559
Speaker 1: distributed to what they called a fund for Afghan people,

1369
01:16:57,520 --> 01:17:01,120
Speaker 1: which they set up in Switzerland. That would be a

1370
01:17:01,160 --> 01:17:03,400
Speaker 1: way of going around the Taliban to try to release

1371
01:17:03,439 --> 01:17:05,240
Speaker 1: some of these funds to help to do what a

1372
01:17:05,360 --> 01:17:08,360
Speaker 1: central bank is supposed to do, uh, you know, stabilize,

1373
01:17:08,479 --> 01:17:13,679
Speaker 1: stabilize the currency and do monetary policy. Now a board

1374
01:17:13,760 --> 01:17:17,600
Speaker 1: member of the Central Bank of Afghanistan is here to

1375
01:17:17,720 --> 01:17:21,439
Speaker 1: join us. This is Sham Robbie, who has also been

1376
01:17:21,520 --> 01:17:25,120
Speaker 1: named as the co chair of the board of Trustees

1377
01:17:25,200 --> 01:17:29,560
Speaker 1: of the Fund for Afghan People, which which met just

1378
01:17:29,920 --> 01:17:33,760
Speaker 1: what a week or so ago, doctor may Robbie, Yes,

1379
01:17:33,880 --> 01:17:40,040
Speaker 1: it was. The meeting took place on Monday, November twenty first, Geneva, Switzerland.

1380
01:17:40,880 --> 01:17:43,640
Speaker 1: So what can you tell us about, you know, the

1381
01:17:43,800 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: out the outlook for this for this fund and whether

1382
01:17:48,160 --> 01:17:51,400
Speaker 1: it's going to be able to meet the challenges of

1383
01:17:52,240 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 1: the the Afghan economy that were created by the seizure

1384
01:17:54,720 --> 01:17:58,680
Speaker 1: of these funds. The first meeting was they were not

1385
01:17:58,920 --> 01:18:05,040
Speaker 1: subsentitive issue discussed, more specifically the issue of dispersement UH.

1386
01:18:05,439 --> 01:18:09,320
Speaker 1: The would be discussed in detail later on. The policy procedures,

1387
01:18:09,880 --> 01:18:12,760
Speaker 1: all of that is going to be in discussed the

1388
01:18:12,840 --> 01:18:18,479
Speaker 1: next meeting. The first meeting obviously discussed mostly on trying

1389
01:18:18,560 --> 01:18:22,920
Speaker 1: to how to launch this foundation that has been structured

1390
01:18:23,479 --> 01:18:30,040
Speaker 1: UH in Geneva. Mostly discussion was on the UH legal

1391
01:18:30,160 --> 01:18:34,840
Speaker 1: services that are provided by the Swiss law firm and

1392
01:18:34,960 --> 01:18:37,800
Speaker 1: then also to make sure that there's a high degree

1393
01:18:37,840 --> 01:18:42,759
Speaker 1: of transparency. Hiring of an audit firm was the decision

1394
01:18:42,960 --> 01:18:48,519
Speaker 1: was made to hire a particular reliable UH firm as

1395
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:51,800
Speaker 1: well as the decision with regard to hiring someone to

1396
01:18:51,920 --> 01:18:56,040
Speaker 1: do the administrative work what we call the Executive Secretary

1397
01:18:56,600 --> 01:19:05,320
Speaker 1: UH and also UH the issue regard UH more specifically

1398
01:19:06,160 --> 01:19:10,720
Speaker 1: having or constructing a committee of Afghan people what was

1399
01:19:10,760 --> 01:19:14,720
Speaker 1: called advisory Commedea of Afghan Advisory Commedtee mostly consists of

1400
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:18,160
Speaker 1: almost all consists of Afghan. So the important issue of

1401
01:19:18,240 --> 01:19:22,479
Speaker 1: dispersement will be discussed later on as well as what

1402
01:19:22,640 --> 01:19:26,160
Speaker 1: we discussed also investments. So another important point was since

1403
01:19:26,800 --> 01:19:30,160
Speaker 1: the funds in the United States, based on the decision

1404
01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:33,840
Speaker 1: of UH of the Investment Commedia of the Avanassan Bank,

1405
01:19:34,240 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: they were invested in the portfolio consisted of UH UH

1406
01:19:39,920 --> 01:19:44,240
Speaker 1: instruments where it really allowed the high rate of return

1407
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:47,479
Speaker 1: to be earned, and the decision was made work to

1408
01:19:47,600 --> 01:19:52,320
Speaker 1: invest them within the structure of BIS and UH and

1409
01:19:52,439 --> 01:19:57,040
Speaker 1: then make certain that we pick up those diverse at

1410
01:19:57,120 --> 01:20:03,240
Speaker 1: least portfolio that will continue to allow that to earn.

1411
01:20:03,360 --> 01:20:05,760
Speaker 1: And I've got and I've gone fund to earn a

1412
01:20:05,920 --> 01:20:09,960
Speaker 1: high rate of return in a situation like this where

1413
01:20:09,960 --> 01:20:13,479
Speaker 1: the economic urgency is obviously paramount. What does the timeline

1414
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:16,360
Speaker 1: look like for the Afghan people? What does this sort

1415
01:20:16,400 --> 01:20:20,240
Speaker 1: of disbursement and investment timeline look like? Going forward, having

1416
01:20:20,800 --> 01:20:24,200
Speaker 1: gone through that first meeting, when can people start to

1417
01:20:24,280 --> 01:20:29,000
Speaker 1: expect that to sort of happen. Okay, the important point

1418
01:20:29,040 --> 01:20:31,840
Speaker 1: here is that to pinpoint that none of this fund,

1419
01:20:32,280 --> 01:20:35,559
Speaker 1: the three point five plus thirty six million dollars interest

1420
01:20:35,640 --> 01:20:38,120
Speaker 1: that was earned on this none of these funds will

1421
01:20:38,160 --> 01:20:41,600
Speaker 1: be used for humanitarian purposes. I think that's that this

1422
01:20:41,960 --> 01:20:46,680
Speaker 1: needs to be pointed out clearly, because I think there's

1423
01:20:46,760 --> 01:20:50,000
Speaker 1: misconception in the mind of many people that these funds

1424
01:20:50,040 --> 01:20:52,000
Speaker 1: would be used for eminitoring. So it will not be

1425
01:20:52,120 --> 01:20:54,840
Speaker 1: used for that. The main purpose of these particular funds,

1426
01:20:54,840 --> 01:20:58,120
Speaker 1: as I have argued all along, is to be used

1427
01:20:58,160 --> 01:21:04,080
Speaker 1: for price stability and reduction than volatility of exchangey. I

1428
01:21:04,120 --> 01:21:08,439
Speaker 1: think those are the main reasons why these funds were

1429
01:21:09,200 --> 01:21:13,800
Speaker 1: managed and invested by the Investment Committee, and the main

1430
01:21:13,880 --> 01:21:16,560
Speaker 1: purpose for why these reserves should be utilized for that

1431
01:21:17,080 --> 01:21:21,799
Speaker 1: for recapitalization of the Central Bank of Afghanistan. In the meantime,

1432
01:21:22,479 --> 01:21:26,320
Speaker 1: the purpose of the fund for Afghan people is to

1433
01:21:26,520 --> 01:21:31,280
Speaker 1: protect and preserve, and these funds tell the decision is

1434
01:21:31,360 --> 01:21:35,320
Speaker 1: made with regard to where should the dispersement be done. UH.

1435
01:21:35,640 --> 01:21:37,840
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal is to be able to help the

1436
01:21:37,920 --> 01:21:41,920
Speaker 1: economy and how can the economy benefit from this particular funds,

1437
01:21:42,080 --> 01:21:46,760
Speaker 1: But definitely not in the area of dispersement. Should not

1438
01:21:46,920 --> 01:21:50,600
Speaker 1: be geared to in the areas where the burden and

1439
01:21:50,680 --> 01:21:54,880
Speaker 1: responsibility of payment should be at the hands of the

1440
01:21:54,960 --> 01:21:58,960
Speaker 1: Ministry of Finance or equivalment to the treasury in this country.

1441
01:22:00,160 --> 01:22:05,519
Speaker 1: And more specifically for example payment of areas that was

1442
01:22:06,600 --> 01:22:12,640
Speaker 1: the Intertolermant administration already paid the last arera for the

1443
01:22:12,720 --> 01:22:17,320
Speaker 1: World Bank in June, and now the new are that

1444
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:20,920
Speaker 1: is doing December. That negotiation is going on so that

1445
01:22:21,040 --> 01:22:23,719
Speaker 1: they would as long as they fulfill their partical obligation,

1446
01:22:24,360 --> 01:22:28,320
Speaker 1: then this should not be any need for this particular

1447
01:22:28,720 --> 01:22:33,040
Speaker 1: reserve to be utilized for any other purpose but capitalization

1448
01:22:33,120 --> 01:22:36,400
Speaker 1: of the Central bank in for auction purposes to bring

1449
01:22:36,479 --> 01:22:40,240
Speaker 1: about price stability. Yeah, and just to underscore that point

1450
01:22:40,320 --> 01:22:42,559
Speaker 1: for people here, I think a lot of people when

1451
01:22:42,600 --> 01:22:46,760
Speaker 1: they hear humanitarian funds or humanitary relief, they think good,

1452
01:22:47,000 --> 01:22:49,920
Speaker 1: that must be a good thing. But in fact, what

1453
01:22:50,160 --> 01:22:55,080
Speaker 1: the situation was such that the Biden administration, by seizing

1454
01:22:55,120 --> 01:23:01,280
Speaker 1: these funds, created this absolutely enormous finance catastrophe, and then

1455
01:23:01,360 --> 01:23:04,120
Speaker 1: to come in on the backside with a couple hundred

1456
01:23:04,160 --> 01:23:08,360
Speaker 1: of million million dollars to then feed people or do

1457
01:23:08,920 --> 01:23:13,880
Speaker 1: humanitarian gestures. Is a a little bit cynical, but be

1458
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:17,599
Speaker 1: not long term thinking, because yeah, right, it's a band

1459
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:19,320
Speaker 1: aid and eventually you run out of band aids, the

1460
01:23:19,360 --> 01:23:21,680
Speaker 1: reserve funds will be gone, and you still have the

1461
01:23:22,040 --> 01:23:25,479
Speaker 1: you'd still have the fundamental economic crisis going on. But

1462
01:23:26,479 --> 01:23:28,920
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk a little bit about how the

1463
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:34,200
Speaker 1: price stability crisis and some of the other volatility may

1464
01:23:34,280 --> 01:23:37,360
Speaker 1: have been alleviating a little bit what you were recently

1465
01:23:37,520 --> 01:23:41,920
Speaker 1: in cobble what like? What is what is cobble like today?

1466
01:23:43,160 --> 01:23:45,559
Speaker 1: I think this is a good question. I was very

1467
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:50,559
Speaker 1: surprised and happy to see the environment that was safe,

1468
01:23:51,479 --> 01:23:56,600
Speaker 1: at least clearly by you. By my observance, Remember this

1469
01:23:56,760 --> 01:23:59,120
Speaker 1: is anecdotal. I didn't spend that my time. I was

1470
01:23:59,200 --> 01:24:01,840
Speaker 1: mostly meeting, but at least when I when I was

1471
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:08,520
Speaker 1: driven to different meetings, I saw people were very comfortable

1472
01:24:08,640 --> 01:24:13,840
Speaker 1: in roaming around without at least what Western media has

1473
01:24:14,920 --> 01:24:18,600
Speaker 1: at least categorized as unsafe environment. I did not see that.

1474
01:24:18,760 --> 01:24:24,639
Speaker 1: I saw cordial greetings by the police, much cordial than

1475
01:24:25,479 --> 01:24:30,000
Speaker 1: encounter that were done by the prior administration police uh

1476
01:24:30,240 --> 01:24:33,639
Speaker 1: and then also in my hotel, I saw many women

1477
01:24:33,760 --> 01:24:36,840
Speaker 1: who were eating breakfast, young women as well as during

1478
01:24:36,880 --> 01:24:41,559
Speaker 1: the night many women with their family children and husbands

1479
01:24:41,760 --> 01:24:44,160
Speaker 1: who were eating dinner. So those are some of the

1480
01:24:44,560 --> 01:24:48,360
Speaker 1: and also obviously the girls issue needs to be resolved

1481
01:24:48,520 --> 01:24:53,840
Speaker 1: and the schools need to be open. Clearly, I released

1482
01:24:53,880 --> 01:24:57,400
Speaker 1: that particular issue at the Ministry of Finance, Administry of

1483
01:24:57,520 --> 01:25:01,920
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs at the higher level and they clearly at

1484
01:25:02,000 --> 01:25:06,120
Speaker 1: least that they are working on coming up with a

1485
01:25:06,200 --> 01:25:10,000
Speaker 1: path to open this and most of the bottleneck has

1486
01:25:10,040 --> 01:25:15,120
Speaker 1: been created as a result of at least not completion

1487
01:25:15,400 --> 01:25:19,560
Speaker 1: of some of the construction of new school building that's

1488
01:25:19,640 --> 01:25:22,920
Speaker 1: are currently underway. At least that was explanation given to

1489
01:25:23,040 --> 01:25:26,439
Speaker 1: me overall. And as far as the safety as a

1490
01:25:26,520 --> 01:25:30,320
Speaker 1: chair of other committee, as I've said, our audit department

1491
01:25:30,760 --> 01:25:34,240
Speaker 1: continuously had they have to go ahead and perform audits

1492
01:25:34,640 --> 01:25:38,080
Speaker 1: of the administration and operation of the not only the

1493
01:25:38,200 --> 01:25:41,519
Speaker 1: central office of the Avannason Bank, but also all the

1494
01:25:42,240 --> 01:25:45,280
Speaker 1: branches that exist in Theory four provinces. They could not

1495
01:25:45,439 --> 01:25:48,400
Speaker 1: do that in the prior administration. Now they are freely

1496
01:25:48,560 --> 01:25:52,960
Speaker 1: able to go ahead and visit all these branches and

1497
01:25:53,120 --> 01:25:55,759
Speaker 1: make certain that the laws and regulation of the Avana

1498
01:25:55,840 --> 01:25:59,080
Speaker 1: Zone banks are followed and not here to. So that

1499
01:25:59,280 --> 01:26:01,640
Speaker 1: was another important the point. The other thing that I

1500
01:26:01,760 --> 01:26:04,000
Speaker 1: saw there was a lot of construction was going on.

1501
01:26:04,400 --> 01:26:09,400
Speaker 1: I usually walk in the morning or jog in the morning,

1502
01:26:09,720 --> 01:26:13,800
Speaker 1: and I was pleasantly surprised to see the construction of

1503
01:26:14,520 --> 01:26:20,120
Speaker 1: the at least of the park that was total. The

1504
01:26:20,280 --> 01:26:25,479
Speaker 1: kay that they were being asphalt in, work was going on,

1505
01:26:26,000 --> 01:26:30,320
Speaker 1: that they were necessary, repairs were made. And as a

1506
01:26:30,360 --> 01:26:33,160
Speaker 1: matter of fact, the other thing was that the bathrooms,

1507
01:26:33,720 --> 01:26:39,360
Speaker 1: which is very important, is that they were very clean.

1508
01:26:39,520 --> 01:26:42,479
Speaker 1: I was trying to look at all those areas on

1509
01:26:42,600 --> 01:26:46,400
Speaker 1: some improved. But also the other point that I was

1510
01:26:46,760 --> 01:26:50,080
Speaker 1: somewhat of surprise beside the park construction is the new

1511
01:26:50,160 --> 01:26:55,360
Speaker 1: construction that were going on and then the old buildings

1512
01:26:55,600 --> 01:26:59,400
Speaker 1: they were refurbished. So that's another thing that I saw overall,

1513
01:26:59,479 --> 01:27:03,240
Speaker 1: beside the fact that, uh, there was also less pollution.

1514
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:07,000
Speaker 1: There are not those gas guns at that existed in

1515
01:27:07,080 --> 01:27:10,360
Speaker 1: the bureaucrats who were driving them, they were they were

1516
01:27:10,439 --> 01:27:13,040
Speaker 1: all gone. There was a small cars of Toyota's and

1517
01:27:13,600 --> 01:27:17,439
Speaker 1: on this that were on streets, but there were not

1518
01:27:17,600 --> 01:27:20,040
Speaker 1: as many. So there was a less pollution and there

1519
01:27:20,160 --> 01:27:22,760
Speaker 1: was a clear sky, blue sky that I used to

1520
01:27:22,800 --> 01:27:27,320
Speaker 1: see when I was a child in Afghanistan. And those

1521
01:27:27,360 --> 01:27:29,960
Speaker 1: are those are some of the points. No, No, that's

1522
01:27:30,040 --> 01:27:32,080
Speaker 1: really interesting. A lot of people would hear that and

1523
01:27:32,160 --> 01:27:36,840
Speaker 1: they would think a more a healthier sort of economy

1524
01:27:37,080 --> 01:27:41,680
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan means a more powerful Taliban, and a more

1525
01:27:42,080 --> 01:27:46,719
Speaker 1: powerful Taliban may feel more emboldened to encroach on human

1526
01:27:46,840 --> 01:27:50,240
Speaker 1: rights et cetera, et cetera. Having actually been in Kabble

1527
01:27:50,720 --> 01:27:52,960
Speaker 1: and been involved in these negotiations where I'm sure the

1528
01:27:53,000 --> 01:27:56,000
Speaker 1: Biden administration has raised plenty of concerns to that effect,

1529
01:27:57,160 --> 01:28:02,640
Speaker 1: what degree of concern should exist on that question? And

1530
01:28:02,720 --> 01:28:06,719
Speaker 1: it's obviously a really sad sort of situation in line

1531
01:28:06,800 --> 01:28:10,880
Speaker 1: to have to walk in general that people's economic stability

1532
01:28:11,760 --> 01:28:15,160
Speaker 1: would then be sort of seen and wielded in national

1533
01:28:15,240 --> 01:28:19,519
Speaker 1: security terms. But what concerns should people have when it

1534
01:28:19,600 --> 01:28:25,160
Speaker 1: comes to that dynamic. Well, this is my main, at

1535
01:28:25,240 --> 01:28:28,439
Speaker 1: least professional job, is to be able to make certain

1536
01:28:29,000 --> 01:28:33,560
Speaker 1: that Afghans do not suffer from paying higher prices for

1537
01:28:34,240 --> 01:28:37,720
Speaker 1: necessary items that they need to have access to. I'm

1538
01:28:37,760 --> 01:28:43,680
Speaker 1: talking about food, oil, sugar, cooking, oil and fuel. And

1539
01:28:43,920 --> 01:28:47,680
Speaker 1: at this stage, while the prices have or not that

1540
01:28:47,880 --> 01:28:51,479
Speaker 1: the fifty two percent that existed a few months ago,

1541
01:28:51,880 --> 01:28:54,679
Speaker 1: there is some reduction. The price is nevertheless the prices

1542
01:28:54,760 --> 01:28:58,000
Speaker 1: of some twenty seven percent that is very high at

1543
01:28:58,040 --> 01:29:01,960
Speaker 1: the time when unemployment is only high. So that that

1544
01:29:02,800 --> 01:29:06,400
Speaker 1: I want to soundbank, the central bank is one of

1545
01:29:06,479 --> 01:29:09,120
Speaker 1: the main responsibility of that entity is to be able

1546
01:29:09,200 --> 01:29:13,960
Speaker 1: to make sure that the prices stability and the prices come,

1547
01:29:14,080 --> 01:29:20,320
Speaker 1: that inflation is reduced, to make all items available affordable

1548
01:29:20,400 --> 01:29:24,960
Speaker 1: for people, and that you know, because inflation hurts most

1549
01:29:25,000 --> 01:29:29,559
Speaker 1: of these people, the women and children who cannot afford

1550
01:29:29,640 --> 01:29:34,439
Speaker 1: to pay for bread and as a matter of fact,

1551
01:29:34,479 --> 01:29:36,719
Speaker 1: many of the bakery. That's one thing they also noticed

1552
01:29:37,240 --> 01:29:39,439
Speaker 1: was that the bakries you saw a lot of women

1553
01:29:39,520 --> 01:29:42,920
Speaker 1: and children were begging and trying to get access to

1554
01:29:43,400 --> 01:29:45,920
Speaker 1: a piece of bread, or those who are purchasing and

1555
01:29:46,000 --> 01:29:48,880
Speaker 1: had the ability to purchase for them to hand out

1556
01:29:49,240 --> 01:29:52,639
Speaker 1: some of the particul a piece of bread or loaf

1557
01:29:52,640 --> 01:29:55,880
Speaker 1: of bread for them. So while this could be this

1558
01:29:56,080 --> 01:30:00,560
Speaker 1: will relieve some of the hardship that exists on of

1559
01:30:00,680 --> 01:30:04,560
Speaker 1: young people. I think the central Bank, as based on

1560
01:30:04,680 --> 01:30:09,080
Speaker 1: our Consultation had done a fairly good job in terms

1561
01:30:09,120 --> 01:30:13,000
Speaker 1: of auctioning golf in the last few months, almost six months,

1562
01:30:13,280 --> 01:30:17,560
Speaker 1: between thirteen to seventeen million dollars have been auctioned. That

1563
01:30:17,800 --> 01:30:21,040
Speaker 1: brought some degree of stability in the exchange rate to

1564
01:30:21,160 --> 01:30:25,080
Speaker 1: a level where the exchange rate of Afghani two dollars

1565
01:30:25,280 --> 01:30:29,120
Speaker 1: is somewhere between eighty six to a eight now it's

1566
01:30:30,040 --> 01:30:34,240
Speaker 1: today was eighty eight point one seven and so on.

1567
01:30:34,640 --> 01:30:37,960
Speaker 1: So those are the way that you can reduce the

1568
01:30:38,080 --> 01:30:42,920
Speaker 1: hardship on people, on women as well as on children. Now,

1569
01:30:43,000 --> 01:30:46,400
Speaker 1: the other part of the moving away from the data area,

1570
01:30:46,840 --> 01:30:50,679
Speaker 1: then the expenditure and the area of fiscal area where

1571
01:30:50,840 --> 01:30:53,600
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Finance is responsible. At least they have

1572
01:30:53,720 --> 01:30:59,000
Speaker 1: been addressing the issue of education and health quite vigorously

1573
01:31:00,160 --> 01:31:07,000
Speaker 1: or making the payments. And also the World Bank help

1574
01:31:07,160 --> 01:31:10,360
Speaker 1: with regard to payment to the personnel and the health

1575
01:31:10,439 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: sector had resumed and that has also been instrumental in

1576
01:31:14,400 --> 01:31:18,800
Speaker 1: reducing some of the hardship on people. And also the

1577
01:31:18,960 --> 01:31:25,160
Speaker 1: cash inflow BYMA in the United Nations for payment of

1578
01:31:25,240 --> 01:31:28,600
Speaker 1: the employees and other expenses have also brought about some

1579
01:31:28,760 --> 01:31:32,519
Speaker 1: degree of stability in the exchangery, And did did I

1580
01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:34,360
Speaker 1: hear you right that you said that you were talking

1581
01:31:34,400 --> 01:31:38,360
Speaker 1: to top officials at the Finance minister, top Taliban officials

1582
01:31:38,360 --> 01:31:41,360
Speaker 1: of the Finance ministry, and that they're they're moving towards

1583
01:31:41,960 --> 01:31:45,840
Speaker 1: reopening schools for girls, And do they understand that as

1584
01:31:46,439 --> 01:31:49,800
Speaker 1: something of a kind of condition for global acceptance? Is

1585
01:31:49,840 --> 01:31:54,240
Speaker 1: that is that what's pushing them in that direction? The

1586
01:31:54,360 --> 01:31:58,639
Speaker 1: reasons for what I do not know the reasoning behind

1587
01:31:59,240 --> 01:32:02,760
Speaker 1: what explanation was given to me when you go to

1588
01:32:02,840 --> 01:32:06,439
Speaker 1: the schools opening, they said that we have we are

1589
01:32:06,479 --> 01:32:10,160
Speaker 1: in the process of trying to construct buildings because there's

1590
01:32:10,240 --> 01:32:14,840
Speaker 1: going to be schools will be segregated. You will have

1591
01:32:15,400 --> 01:32:20,280
Speaker 1: different schools, separated school for male and female. And they

1592
01:32:20,320 --> 01:32:22,880
Speaker 1: are two obstacles they say they're confronted with. One is

1593
01:32:22,960 --> 01:32:26,120
Speaker 1: that they're in the process of completing construction of new

1594
01:32:26,160 --> 01:32:29,560
Speaker 1: building and second to get personnel to be able to

1595
01:32:29,640 --> 01:32:33,880
Speaker 1: teach females separately the male in both of these these

1596
01:32:34,280 --> 01:32:38,720
Speaker 1: tasks take time, takes time, but they are moving at least.

1597
01:32:38,760 --> 01:32:42,040
Speaker 1: This is the explanation for Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is

1598
01:32:42,120 --> 01:32:45,840
Speaker 1: that they are moving in this aggressively and trying to

1599
01:32:45,960 --> 01:32:50,080
Speaker 1: address this issue, so the school could open take it

1600
01:32:50,120 --> 01:32:52,160
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, but that'd be encouraging if

1601
01:32:52,240 --> 01:32:56,799
Speaker 1: that happens. Last quick question, what about the migration crisis.

1602
01:32:57,560 --> 01:32:59,920
Speaker 1: There had been reports previously of up to a mill

1603
01:33:00,080 --> 01:33:04,120
Speaker 1: in Afghan's fleeing because of the economic crisis. What's your

1604
01:33:04,200 --> 01:33:08,759
Speaker 1: what's your sense of of what the outflow of migration

1605
01:33:09,200 --> 01:33:12,880
Speaker 1: is now? Well one of There are many reasons for

1606
01:33:13,000 --> 01:33:17,720
Speaker 1: why people migrate. Obviously, the there's lots of jobs, uh

1607
01:33:17,880 --> 01:33:21,800
Speaker 1: and unemployment is very high and that is prompting many

1608
01:33:21,840 --> 01:33:26,439
Speaker 1: people to go to Iran to Pakistan, and Iran has

1609
01:33:26,560 --> 01:33:31,719
Speaker 1: been actually sending them back, so there hasn't been clearly

1610
01:33:32,920 --> 01:33:37,640
Speaker 1: a smooth flow of migrant to to to reside in

1611
01:33:37,720 --> 01:33:43,080
Speaker 1: Iran for a long period of time. That is, again

1612
01:33:43,280 --> 01:33:47,519
Speaker 1: has created a lot of hardship on many families because

1613
01:33:47,560 --> 01:33:50,360
Speaker 1: of lack of job and lack of income that the

1614
01:33:50,840 --> 01:33:55,120
Speaker 1: current government cannot provided. A private sector has been not

1615
01:33:55,640 --> 01:34:01,000
Speaker 1: very forthcoming and creating job yet because the uncertainty in

1616
01:34:01,040 --> 01:34:04,120
Speaker 1: the mind of some and the investment obviously has declined.

1617
01:34:04,200 --> 01:34:07,920
Speaker 1: So there's and another reason for this migration. Obviously, some

1618
01:34:08,120 --> 01:34:12,439
Speaker 1: are been helped and encouraged by many different groups to

1619
01:34:12,960 --> 01:34:18,439
Speaker 1: move out of Afghanistan, and whether it's United State government

1620
01:34:18,680 --> 01:34:23,320
Speaker 1: or those proxy groups within this country in Europe have

1621
01:34:23,560 --> 01:34:26,599
Speaker 1: also been instrumental in trying to get some people. Based

1622
01:34:26,640 --> 01:34:29,320
Speaker 1: on the explanation that I was given that one of

1623
01:34:29,360 --> 01:34:32,520
Speaker 1: the reasons for brain Green has been because the encouragement

1624
01:34:32,960 --> 01:34:39,519
Speaker 1: by Western countries to allow these people a speedy except

1625
01:34:39,760 --> 01:34:44,000
Speaker 1: from Afghanistan, and that has created some degree of at

1626
01:34:44,120 --> 01:34:52,439
Speaker 1: least green issue within certain ministries. Well. Doctor may Robbie

1627
01:34:52,479 --> 01:34:54,720
Speaker 1: is a member of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, co

1628
01:34:54,920 --> 01:34:56,680
Speaker 1: chair of the board of Trustees of the Fund for

1629
01:34:56,720 --> 01:34:59,839
Speaker 1: Afghan People, and a professor of economics at Montgomery College

1630
01:35:00,200 --> 01:35:04,599
Speaker 1: here in suburban Maryland. Really, thank you for joining us.

1631
01:35:05,240 --> 01:35:07,800
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for inviting me. Good talking to you.

1632
01:35:09,000 --> 01:35:10,320
Speaker 1: So what do you what do you make of that?

1633
01:35:10,439 --> 01:35:18,120
Speaker 1: It feels like so he's in any What's I don't

1634
01:35:18,160 --> 01:35:19,800
Speaker 1: want to get ahead of my skis here. What do

1635
01:35:19,880 --> 01:35:22,560
Speaker 1: you think? I think it's really tough because there's a

1636
01:35:22,680 --> 01:35:30,960
Speaker 1: humanitarian crisis that our military operation in Afghanistan. Absolutely, our

1637
01:35:31,040 --> 01:35:36,000
Speaker 1: botched military engagement in Afghanistan over the last at least

1638
01:35:36,080 --> 01:35:40,000
Speaker 1: five years, if not more exacerbated, and then our Bosch

1639
01:35:40,240 --> 01:35:44,600
Speaker 1: exit exacerbated. At the same time, I think it is

1640
01:35:44,800 --> 01:35:49,639
Speaker 1: true that an empowered Taliban will be an empowered hostile

1641
01:35:50,120 --> 01:35:53,240
Speaker 1: power that is pressive to its own people. And the

1642
01:35:53,360 --> 01:35:57,479
Speaker 1: reports about how the Taliban, and not just in Western media,

1643
01:35:57,520 --> 01:36:00,839
Speaker 1: but the reports about how the Taliban is treating political dissidence,

1644
01:36:01,160 --> 01:36:05,360
Speaker 1: treating women are harrowing, And so I understand why the

1645
01:36:05,400 --> 01:36:08,760
Speaker 1: Biden administration is hesitant in this case. But even though

1646
01:36:08,800 --> 01:36:13,160
Speaker 1: this isn't humanitarian aid, a stable functioning economy is a

1647
01:36:13,320 --> 01:36:19,519
Speaker 1: humanitarian cause. So it's incredibly difficult. It's an incredibly difficult

1648
01:36:19,560 --> 01:36:22,680
Speaker 1: situation all the way around. And the way that we

1649
01:36:22,840 --> 01:36:28,400
Speaker 1: handled our military engagement in Afghanistan is how we got here. Yeah,

1650
01:36:28,920 --> 01:36:33,160
Speaker 1: to me, I just feel like it's it's not our business,

1651
01:36:33,280 --> 01:36:38,400
Speaker 1: like it. I'm glad that we're returning the Central Bank funds.

1652
01:36:38,800 --> 01:36:42,760
Speaker 1: If I think if the Taliban shows any signs that

1653
01:36:42,800 --> 01:36:45,280
Speaker 1: they're going to harbor al Qaeda terrists who are going

1654
01:36:45,360 --> 01:36:48,320
Speaker 1: to attack us like like happened on nine to eleven,

1655
01:36:48,400 --> 01:36:50,479
Speaker 1: then then I think it becomes it very much becomes

1656
01:36:50,520 --> 01:36:55,720
Speaker 1: our business. But if if if the Taliban is you know,

1657
01:36:56,000 --> 01:37:00,400
Speaker 1: is governing in a way that offends our sensibilities, we

1658
01:37:00,560 --> 01:37:03,240
Speaker 1: have ways that we can, you know, pressure that we can.

1659
01:37:04,000 --> 01:37:07,960
Speaker 1: We can like, you know, the ways that an empire does.

1660
01:37:08,000 --> 01:37:10,320
Speaker 1: We can tell the World Bank we want to put pressure.

1661
01:37:10,760 --> 01:37:13,439
Speaker 1: And it seems like actually some of that is working.

1662
01:37:13,800 --> 01:37:18,040
Speaker 1: Like if if what they said to Sham Robbie is

1663
01:37:18,200 --> 01:37:22,040
Speaker 1: correct that they're planning on building girls schools, that the

1664
01:37:22,120 --> 01:37:25,759
Speaker 1: way that they're getting around uh, their their queasiness around

1665
01:37:26,320 --> 01:37:28,439
Speaker 1: that sexism is that they're going to do separate but

1666
01:37:28,520 --> 01:37:33,519
Speaker 1: equal schools. Then okay, like that's better than that's better

1667
01:37:33,600 --> 01:37:36,200
Speaker 1: than no schools. And and is it is it worth

1668
01:37:36,280 --> 01:37:39,840
Speaker 1: a twenty year occupation? Right? Well, yeah, exactly, And that's

1669
01:37:39,920 --> 01:37:43,439
Speaker 1: that's the key question. And you get into obviously al

1670
01:37:43,520 --> 01:37:48,040
Speaker 1: Qaeda harboring terrorists, aiding in a betting terrorists is our

1671
01:37:48,080 --> 01:37:52,000
Speaker 1: business because there are no borders anymore, essentially in this world,

1672
01:37:52,080 --> 01:37:55,679
Speaker 1: where you can attack a country as a foreign power,

1673
01:37:55,800 --> 01:37:58,479
Speaker 1: not just a rogue agent. You can attack a foreign

1674
01:37:58,520 --> 01:38:02,960
Speaker 1: country with out a military occupation. You can fly planes

1675
01:38:02,960 --> 01:38:06,600
Speaker 1: and diffle things you can do like terrorism on the

1676
01:38:06,680 --> 01:38:10,599
Speaker 1: ground in another country without having to have some giant

1677
01:38:10,640 --> 01:38:13,840
Speaker 1: military operation or anything like that. So that does become

1678
01:38:13,880 --> 01:38:15,880
Speaker 1: our business. And I think there's a serious concern that

1679
01:38:17,000 --> 01:38:21,920
Speaker 1: the Taliban will posture to get money and to sort

1680
01:38:21,960 --> 01:38:26,720
Speaker 1: of get all of that situated and then turn and

1681
01:38:26,960 --> 01:38:29,360
Speaker 1: we don't see any of the promises fulfilled when it

1682
01:38:29,400 --> 01:38:31,400
Speaker 1: comes to anything else, I don't know the answer to

1683
01:38:31,439 --> 01:38:34,800
Speaker 1: that question, I think is real concern. I don't think though,

1684
01:38:35,360 --> 01:38:39,360
Speaker 1: that the money that we froze is I think the

1685
01:38:39,479 --> 01:38:42,560
Speaker 1: right thing to do is obviously unfreeze the funds. In

1686
01:38:42,680 --> 01:38:45,360
Speaker 1: this case, given the way that we ended up in

1687
01:38:45,439 --> 01:38:47,960
Speaker 1: this situation with the funds. It reminds me a little

1688
01:38:47,960 --> 01:38:52,720
Speaker 1: bit of when I went to Vietnam in the mid

1689
01:38:52,800 --> 01:38:57,200
Speaker 1: two thousands, so this would have been thirty years after

1690
01:38:57,320 --> 01:39:01,800
Speaker 1: we left. We're booted out, and I remember looking around.

1691
01:39:01,880 --> 01:39:07,080
Speaker 1: It's there's, you know, giant like lit up corporate signs

1692
01:39:07,640 --> 01:39:10,240
Speaker 1: all over their central squares, and like I remember thinking,

1693
01:39:10,360 --> 01:39:15,360
Speaker 1: like what was this for the most frightening things? All

1694
01:39:15,400 --> 01:39:17,760
Speaker 1: the trees were the same height and they looked about

1695
01:39:17,800 --> 01:39:21,640
Speaker 1: thirty years old, like we had just we just completely

1696
01:39:22,680 --> 01:39:27,439
Speaker 1: completely denuded the land top to bottom. And for what

1697
01:39:28,280 --> 01:39:33,240
Speaker 1: we lost, Vietcong took over and they got a functioning country.

1698
01:39:33,320 --> 01:39:36,360
Speaker 1: Is it the exact country that we would have liked? Maybe?

1699
01:39:36,400 --> 01:39:39,280
Speaker 1: Maybe not? Although the right wing brutal dictatorship that we

1700
01:39:39,360 --> 01:39:43,080
Speaker 1: were propping up, you know, might not have you know,

1701
01:39:43,920 --> 01:39:45,840
Speaker 1: might not have done any better by the Vietnamese people.

1702
01:39:46,280 --> 01:39:49,439
Speaker 1: But even if they, even if they would, like, what

1703
01:39:49,640 --> 01:39:52,320
Speaker 1: was it for all those American lives, all those Vietnamese lives,

1704
01:39:52,360 --> 01:39:55,519
Speaker 1: all those Afghan lives. What for if if the Taliban

1705
01:39:55,680 --> 01:39:57,960
Speaker 1: is going to take control of the country and it's

1706
01:39:58,000 --> 01:40:00,160
Speaker 1: going to deliver services in a way that that that

1707
01:40:00,680 --> 01:40:04,080
Speaker 1: cobble is stable and that there's and people are no

1708
01:40:04,200 --> 01:40:08,960
Speaker 1: longer worried about geting their doors kicked in. A couple

1709
01:40:08,960 --> 01:40:11,639
Speaker 1: of us went viral one time of you saying something

1710
01:40:11,760 --> 01:40:14,360
Speaker 1: like we were talking about this last week, but what

1711
01:40:14,439 --> 01:40:16,360
Speaker 1: we were talking about is a tweet that Ilhan omer

1712
01:40:17,520 --> 01:40:19,280
Speaker 1: and you said, like, we'll wait until you find out

1713
01:40:19,280 --> 01:40:21,479
Speaker 1: who funded the Taliban. And the answer to that is like,

1714
01:40:23,160 --> 01:40:25,439
Speaker 1: at the same time that all of this is going down,

1715
01:40:25,479 --> 01:40:27,120
Speaker 1: I think I agreed with it at the time, although

1716
01:40:27,200 --> 01:40:33,600
Speaker 1: some people cut the clip without without my agreement. But

1717
01:40:34,000 --> 01:40:39,519
Speaker 1: that's the same thing. It's like, we have so much

1718
01:40:39,680 --> 01:40:43,439
Speaker 1: culpability in the suffering of these people, and that does

1719
01:40:43,560 --> 01:40:47,120
Speaker 1: not mean that their own bad leaders don't share in

1720
01:40:47,240 --> 01:40:50,439
Speaker 1: some of the culpability of those problems. It doesn't mean

1721
01:40:50,840 --> 01:40:54,639
Speaker 1: that America should be dismissed as a force for good

1722
01:40:54,760 --> 01:40:57,240
Speaker 1: anything like that. It doesn't mean that. But it does

1723
01:40:57,400 --> 01:41:00,519
Speaker 1: mean that we do share culpability in what happened, and

1724
01:41:00,640 --> 01:41:04,320
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and Vietnam both are clear examples of that. Yeah,

1725
01:41:04,400 --> 01:41:07,280
Speaker 1: and our seizure of those funds has led to people

1726
01:41:07,360 --> 01:41:09,599
Speaker 1: starving to death, like the people that he talked about

1727
01:41:09,640 --> 01:41:13,680
Speaker 1: outside the bakery, begging for food like that is a

1728
01:41:14,400 --> 01:41:16,920
Speaker 1: that is a direct result of basically seizing what was

1729
01:41:17,000 --> 01:41:19,600
Speaker 1: the federal reserve. We built their Central Bank of Afghanistan,

1730
01:41:20,000 --> 01:41:23,479
Speaker 1: and then we shut it down and their economy completely collapsed.

1731
01:41:23,520 --> 01:41:26,799
Speaker 1: Prices went absolutely through the roof. Nobody had cash, people's

1732
01:41:26,840 --> 01:41:30,000
Speaker 1: paychecks weren't people weren't getting paid who were going to work.

1733
01:41:30,960 --> 01:41:35,240
Speaker 1: Things shut down, and people were selling kidneys, you know,

1734
01:41:35,400 --> 01:41:41,240
Speaker 1: selling furniture, burning furniture to stay warm. Just absolutely bleak.

1735
01:41:41,520 --> 01:41:45,960
Speaker 1: A situation that was a man made economic crisis. And

1736
01:41:46,120 --> 01:41:48,639
Speaker 1: so I'm glad that this money is starting to flow

1737
01:41:49,360 --> 01:41:52,880
Speaker 1: and we'll see if it brings about any you know,

1738
01:41:53,520 --> 01:41:56,120
Speaker 1: good behavior on behalf of the Taliban, but at least

1739
01:41:56,120 --> 01:41:58,160
Speaker 1: hopefully it can get some bread in the hands of

1740
01:41:58,160 --> 01:41:59,960
Speaker 1: people who are starving. I mean, as of a few

1741
01:42:00,080 --> 01:42:03,400
Speaker 1: years ago, the Washington Post was reporting that CIA produced

1742
01:42:03,479 --> 01:42:08,360
Speaker 1: textbooks we're still in use in Afghanistan, that we're encouraging

1743
01:42:09,640 --> 01:42:15,720
Speaker 1: particular ideology in Afghanistan, still in circulation. They went, well,

1744
01:42:16,040 --> 01:42:19,559
Speaker 1: Talban likes those ones. Yeah, they went back and got them. Yeah,

1745
01:42:19,720 --> 01:42:22,840
Speaker 1: still in circulation. Great work CIA. They just got a

1746
01:42:22,880 --> 01:42:26,880
Speaker 1: wellness chief, wellness officer, first one, so that should help.

1747
01:42:27,320 --> 01:42:29,920
Speaker 1: So that'll be good. Anyway, So next week we'll be

1748
01:42:29,960 --> 01:42:33,040
Speaker 1: here a couple of times filling in for crystalin soccer

1749
01:42:33,080 --> 01:42:35,519
Speaker 1: because they'll be doing their live shows as they as

1750
01:42:35,520 --> 01:42:37,960
Speaker 1: they remind you of, right, they're on tour. You don't

1751
01:42:37,960 --> 01:42:41,400
Speaker 1: miss that. We'll be here, what Tuesday and Thursday, something

1752
01:42:41,479 --> 01:42:45,280
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, so counter of points Tuesday, counterpoints Thursday.

1753
01:42:45,439 --> 01:42:48,439
Speaker 1: This was counter points Friday. That's right. I hope everybody

1754
01:42:48,439 --> 01:42:50,040
Speaker 1: has a great weekend. Have a good weekend.