Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: One of the most trusted journalists at Comedy.
Speaker 3: Central a very special special report.
Speaker 4: The Daily Show presents Inauguration Conyny Bull. That the and
Speaker 4: likely final from Inauguration with.
Speaker 2: Your host John Stuart Boom Father, Hi, welcome, Welcome to
Speaker 2: The Daily Show.
Speaker 1: My name is uh hold on, my.
Speaker 5: Name is My name is John Stewart. I'm your host.
Speaker 5: Most historic vibe shift of day.
Speaker 2: Donald J. Trump, the forty fifth.
Speaker 5: President of the United States, a man who's licentious and
Speaker 5: felonious behavior has been well cataloged and documented, returned to
Speaker 5: the Capitol of Rotunda just four short years after inspiring
Speaker 5: in that very place a day of riotous.
Speaker 3: Shickfre.
Speaker 1: Shitury. Return to the exact same room.
Speaker 5: Now, generally, if this were a dateline documentary, he would
Speaker 5: return to that room to express a form of repentance,
Speaker 5: in maturity and acknowledgment of pain that had been wrought
Speaker 5: on that terrible day. But in this show that we're
Speaker 5: filming now, it's to be sworn in as the forty
Speaker 5: seventh President of the United States, And as with most,
Speaker 5: returning to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 1: It began with tea with the people you tried to
Speaker 1: steal it from a short time ago.
Speaker 6: President Joe Biden greeted mister and Missus Trump at the
Speaker 6: White House for tea, an inaugural tradition.
Speaker 5: It's always important to keep up the tea tradition when
Speaker 5: you hand over the keys to I'm sorry, what did
Speaker 5: you call them?
Speaker 2: Hitler, But gotta be a good host.
Speaker 5: And the WiFi password his White House, but I change
Speaker 5: the eye to a one.
Speaker 1: I hope that's not weird.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying Biden should have done his own insurrection,
Speaker 5: but there's got to be a happy medium between storming
Speaker 5: the Capitol and would.
Speaker 1: You like a crumpet?
Speaker 2: But everyone showed up. Yes, it's the Supreme Court taxing in.
Speaker 2: Oh please, they're taxing in.
Speaker 5: Like the private jets some of them take to caged
Speaker 5: pheasant hunts. All very legal because illustrious senators like Amy
Speaker 5: Koba Shar and Deb Fisher.
Speaker 1: And of course Hakeem Jeffreys was there, and.
Speaker 2: Fetterman was are you come on, Fetterman?
Speaker 5: Really, Schwartz, it's not even an inaugural decorum thing.
Speaker 2: It's freezing out there.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a health cancer.
Speaker 5: Fedtterman is literally America's teenage son.
Speaker 1: It's your grandma's funeral.
Speaker 2: I told you I don't like long pants.
Speaker 1: Fine, be cold.
Speaker 5: Even the president's family attended, most of whom didn't have
Speaker 5: to be warned not to do that weird thing with
Speaker 5: their hands.
Speaker 2: Don't, hey, hey, hey, don't don't do it with your hands.
Speaker 2: Can you Jeff be normal for a day?
Speaker 1: What was he doing?
Speaker 2: Literally like, look at my dick?
Speaker 1: What now? Okay? Okay, but not to worry.
Speaker 5: Also attending were all those people who warned Americans to
Speaker 5: shun this wannabe fascist dictator called Trump. Look at me, ma, Oh,
Speaker 5: let's go see Hitler and get a quick selfie. First
Speaker 5: look at us, a quick one for the gram. Yes,
Speaker 5: former President Obama was there. George Bush seemed kind of there,
Speaker 5: definitely high. Even Mike Pence showed up. I guess to
Speaker 5: let the crowd finish the job. Only Michelle Obama seemed to.
Speaker 1: Have the consistent ethical stance of saying, when they go low,
Speaker 1: I stayed the foul.
Speaker 2: I don't have.
Speaker 5: Of course, Joe Biden was there, making the strategic choice
Speaker 5: of keeping her person, which, as you know, is the
Speaker 5: international symbol of but the award for most useful fashion
Speaker 5: accessory went to the ever stylish Millennia Trump, who's Audrey
Speaker 5: hepburn esque chapeau or head close as it's called double
Speaker 5: doesn't affect him.
Speaker 2: If you don't control your borders, we don't have egg.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, many dignitaries went not only hatless, but hairless, with
Speaker 5: a plethora of stocky bald billionaires who all seem to
Speaker 5: go to the same biohack life extension clinic and say,
Speaker 5: give me the lex luthor, Yes, taking the place of
Speaker 5: seats normally reserved for democratic or Republican governors. Sat Zuck Bezos,
Speaker 5: Tim Cook, Elon, Tictac guy, the Google guy, the six
Speaker 5: guys who control maybe twenty percent of the world's wealth
Speaker 5: and one hundred percent of your nudes. You don't need
Speaker 5: to pretend with me. I don't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: Delete delete delete populism, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Shouldn't this gathering be happening in a volcanoes layer near Zurich?
Speaker 5: Or are we just open source Illuminati? Now, where's the conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Fund in that?
Speaker 5: Honestly, there is not a useful app of communication not
Speaker 5: controlled by at least one of these individuals, And you
Speaker 5: may not be concerned that they've all ponied up a
Speaker 5: million dollars to be sitting there and are kissing the
Speaker 5: ass of a president who openly threatens non ass kissers.
Speaker 5: But trust me, shit's gonna get weird even by that afternoon.
Speaker 3: Disappearance of Elon Muscat, an earlier trunk rallies getting loads
Speaker 3: of attention because of a one armed gesture he made.
Speaker 7: This one really matters, and I just want to say
Speaker 7: thank you for making it happen.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Okay, Charitably, I'm going to say that was just an
Speaker 5: awkward My heart goes out to you, jest.
Speaker 1: Sure any of you might have done it like this.
Speaker 5: You know, even Taylor Swift has done that, you know,
Speaker 5: my heart, but she almost never does nothing goes down
Speaker 5: to you like just always stays with But you know, listen,
Speaker 5: it's nerve wracking day. You're not normally a public speaker.
Speaker 5: It's one off gesture. Please try not to use it again.
Speaker 8: A bit.
Speaker 1: I really want to make sure that people in the backseat.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 5: I'm just going to be generous and say maybe that
Speaker 5: was Elon's attempt at dabbing on the haters.
Speaker 1: I don't by the way do people still dab on haters?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Was that a very old man?
Speaker 2: Okay, wasn't that a thing at one time?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 5: I think I think it's important in these troubled times
Speaker 5: to continue to dab on the haters. But don't be
Speaker 5: concerned that these tech titans control Google and TikTok and
Speaker 5: WhatsApp and Instagram and x and any other way that
Speaker 5: we communicate in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: because you know, I'm not going to censor us. And
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter anyway, because I know in my heart
Speaker 5: we don't need any of them, because we'll always.
Speaker 1: Have you messing your pigeon.
Speaker 10: No, no, how dare you, sir? Why messenger pigeon? Why
Speaker 10: would you turn on me? I'd let you live in
Speaker 10: a cage on my roof, surrounded by your own shit.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: I asked them to make that animation at like five o'clock.
Speaker 2: Tonight, literally with everything else going on in the show, and.
Speaker 1: I was literally like, could you make me a pigeon
Speaker 1: doing this?
Speaker 5: And they were just like sure, Hey, then it was
Speaker 5: time for the swearing in on me kind of on
Speaker 5: the Bible. Yes, it turns out Trump didn't actually put
Speaker 5: his hand on the Bible, obviously because one or the
Speaker 5: other would burst into flames, perhaps both. And so, ladies
Speaker 5: and gentlemen, the torch has been passed from Piden to Trump. Yes,
Speaker 5: the torch has been passed to the same generation of Americans.
Speaker 5: Let's hear from the four seventh president, fresh off the
Speaker 5: warm embrace of a tea ceremony with his predecessor.
Speaker 11: My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally
Speaker 11: reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals
Speaker 11: that have taken place.
Speaker 2: He's right behind you. Luckily, I don't think he can
Speaker 2: hear you.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 5: The inaugural speech followed the American tradition of a passive
Speaker 5: aggressive transfer of power. The incoming president gets the completely
Speaker 5: shit on the outgoing president in front of that president
Speaker 5: and hopefully his spouse.
Speaker 11: In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly record inflation.
Speaker 11: Trying to socially engineered race and gender disastrous invasion of
Speaker 11: our country is a radical and corrupt, establishous, violent, and
Speaker 11: unfair weaponization. From this moment on, America's dickline is over.
Speaker 5: This is a tumultuous time in American history, filled with
Speaker 5: much uncertainty, interrepidation. But it is very difficult for me
Speaker 5: to not in any way take the bait of the
Speaker 5: way he said dickline. It really did sound like, he said,
Speaker 5: our dickline, like the line of our dick So you
Speaker 5: can see America's dickline. I mean, how are you going
Speaker 5: to end our dickline with a tuck or a full reassignment?
Speaker 1: Or is this more about Fetterman's shorts?
Speaker 2: What about our dickline?
Speaker 5: I am a child, but as bad as things were,
Speaker 5: guess what, folks, Daddy's home, It's about to get a
Speaker 5: whole lot better.
Speaker 11: The Golden Age of America begins right now. From this
Speaker 11: day forward, our country will flourish. The American dream will
Speaker 11: soon be back and thriving like never before.
Speaker 1: We will win like never before.
Speaker 2: We will be a rich nation again.
Speaker 11: We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again.
Speaker 2: We will drill, baby drill.
Speaker 5: I think I just saw Jade Vance's dickline, Drill, baby drill.
Speaker 5: But for all the day's eerie energy, one thing stood
Speaker 5: out to America's watchdogs of democracy. We have watched as
Speaker 5: the forty seventh President of the United States has been
Speaker 5: sworn in a cornerstone of democracy. This is the true
Speaker 5: transfer of power here of the current president and the
Speaker 5: former president making this walk.
Speaker 6: This process is what distinguishes the United States from a
Speaker 6: lot of other parts of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all just normal shit, it's just another day.
Speaker 5: It's all just normal transfer powershit. We're just going to
Speaker 5: play along like all this theater is normal. Oh, except
Speaker 5: there was one thing that might have given the game away.
Speaker 12: For just twenty minutes or so left in his presidency.
Speaker 12: We've just gotten word from President Biden that he is
Speaker 12: pardoning his brothers, their wives, his sister, other family members.
Speaker 2: He says that he is.
Speaker 12: Doing this because baseless and politically motivated investigations Greek havoc.
Speaker 2: On the lives of a individuals. It's all just normal.
Speaker 5: First of all, Biden, you're at the inauguration. Did you
Speaker 5: auto schedule your pardons? And second of all, what the man?
Speaker 5: You're just pardoning your whole family. It's not a great look. Yet,
Speaker 5: like any good captain, as the ship is going down,
Speaker 5: Biden gave the order that life vot is from my family.
Speaker 5: The rest of you can do just like a kind
Speaker 5: of Jack and Rose thing, one on one off fifty
Speaker 5: to fifty shot. Who gives a shit? Biden outy. So
Speaker 5: the takeaway of this entire day was a man who
Speaker 5: tried to overthrow the government has been peacefully handed the
Speaker 5: reins of power, and the outgoing president has started a
Speaker 5: new tradition of blanket pardoning everyone in his orbit, the
Speaker 5: two men creating a magnificent snake sucking its own dick
Speaker 5: cycle of no accountability. And then, of course we end
Speaker 5: with the grand finale, the attack on Greenland has begun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 5: For more on the day's events, we go out to
Speaker 5: the best news team in the country, starting at the
Speaker 5: Capitol with Michael cost and dasy Leer.
Speaker 2: Michael Costa, I'm gonna start with you, my friend.
Speaker 5: What's the mood over there at the inaugural parties tonight?
Speaker 1: John? It's incredible.
Speaker 13: Donald Trump hasn't even been president for one whole day,
Speaker 13: but already unemployment is down, gas is low, my vertical
Speaker 13: jump increased half an inch, and the stock market is.
Speaker 2: Soaring.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously a lot of that economic stuff was
Speaker 5: happening before noon today, so.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 14: Also, Trump made eggs sheep again. I mean, we can
Speaker 14: eat ton twenty thirty of these a day. John, They're
Speaker 14: literally selling them by the dozen. My albumen levels are.
Speaker 15: Foreign.
Speaker 5: Desi Leidick. You're down there as well. You've been covering
Speaker 5: Blue Washington as it were.
Speaker 14: John.
Speaker 7: I'm with the hashtag resistance, and they are aphalled by
Speaker 7: what they're seeing. The executive orders, the renaming of military bases.
Speaker 5: They've already renamed the bases after Confederate generals.
Speaker 7: No Hitler, it's just Fort Hitler.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 7: It's overwhelming.
Speaker 1: John, all right, Well, try and stay safe out there, Dosy.
Speaker 5: And John, if I could say something, I'm sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 5: Josh Johnson, are you.
Speaker 15: I'm at the Martin Luther King Memorial Today was also
Speaker 15: MLK Day. There was a march honoring a man that
Speaker 15: represented the best about America. Just want to put that
Speaker 15: out there.
Speaker 5: Okay, fantastic, good to keep in mind, John, Can I interraw, Yes, Michael,
Speaker 5: I just thought of some more egg stuff.
Speaker 13: Egg salad, egg creams, eggnog, yawnie, eggs, egg plants.
Speaker 14: Thanks to Trump, these things are now super cheap.
Speaker 2: And the best part about eggs, John, they never expire.
Speaker 1: That's definitely not true.
Speaker 13: Michael's Okay, well, we'll see what the new Secretary of
Speaker 13: Health and Human Services has to say about that, right
Speaker 13: after he legalizes raw milk.
Speaker 2: You know, speaking of the letters M L and K.
Speaker 15: Let me tell you about someone else we should be
Speaker 15: celebrating today.
Speaker 2: Black guy preacher and he talked like Vice, the black
Speaker 2: guy from the movie Selma.
Speaker 7: No, well yeah, but no, no, John, I have an
Speaker 7: update from Resistance headquarters that the Cheetos man is not
Speaker 7: gonna like yes.
Speaker 1: Does he do initiatives? Is there another march?
Speaker 7: Not gonna be necessary? I'm hearing Rachel Maddow is coming
Speaker 7: back five days a week, and when she compares what's
Speaker 7: happening now to the Chay's rebellion of seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Whooh boy, I would not want to be Trump.
Speaker 16: Excuse me, sorry, I'm sorry, great cool Trump, we're being
Speaker 16: recognized again.
Speaker 1: Why are you dressed like a caveman and a robot?
Speaker 16: Oh we were under studies for the village people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: If the copper Native American gets sick, then caveman and
Speaker 5: robots step in. Well, aren't you guys a little like
Speaker 5: shamed at all about performing at the Trump inauguration?
Speaker 2: Or do we look like we're capable of shame.
Speaker 1: John.
Speaker 2: Besides, this is fun, much.
Speaker 5: Like it's fun to stay at the White.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's you know where it's not fun to stay.
Speaker 9: It's not fun to stay at a Birmingham jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Josh, can't we just talk about this another day?
Speaker 1: It is literally the day to talk about it.
Speaker 15: Damn, am I the only one who thinks it's fucking
Speaker 15: crazy that Martin Luther King Day is having it at
Speaker 15: the same.
Speaker 1: Time that Trump taking power.
Speaker 15: A man who staged violent resistance is being rewarded with
Speaker 15: power to the diminishment of our greatest nonviolent resistance leader.
Speaker 13: This cannot halt in it won It's just been renamed
Speaker 13: Martin Luther Trump Day.
Speaker 1: So that's your news team, everybody.
Speaker 2: When weak you're looking for Brook Carrington, you'll be joining me.
Speaker 5: We'll rob.
Speaker 1: Hello the buddy. Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 2: My guest Tonight.
Speaker 5: My guest Tonight is an economic sociologist at Dartmouth College
Speaker 5: who studies the behavior of the ultra rich. Her latest
Speaker 5: book is called Offshore Stealth, Wealth and the New Colonialism.
Speaker 5: Please welcome to the program, Brook Carrington.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy here.
Speaker 2: You have studied oligarchy, you have studied the ultra rich.
Speaker 5: As you were watching today, I'm going to assume you
Speaker 5: were struck by the scenes of the collegial atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was that odd.
Speaker 5: Do we normally see all the titans of industries and
Speaker 5: things in the front row the box seats.
Speaker 6: No, this is really different, And in fact I was
Speaker 6: reflecting on how different this is even from Russian oligarchy, because.
Speaker 1: Don't now, Okay, that hurts, that actually hurts.
Speaker 6: Sorry, well, you know, at least Putin had a very
Speaker 6: clear red line with hisligarchs. The grand bargain of the
Speaker 6: early two thousands was he was going to let them
Speaker 6: get rich on condition that they kept their noses out
Speaker 6: of his political business. At most they would be his
Speaker 6: errand boys from some diplomatic missions in Europe, for example,
Speaker 6: and they're superyodds. But that was it, and it ended there.
Speaker 6: And he made a huge example of Mikhail Haroowsky, who
Speaker 6: was the Yukos Oil chairman who dared to stand up
Speaker 6: for transparency and human rights in Russia, and that earned
Speaker 6: him almost a decade in Russian prison and seizure of
Speaker 6: all of his assets by Putin. He was lucky to
Speaker 6: escape with his life.
Speaker 5: Oh and so you're not expecting any of our oligarchs
Speaker 5: to be like, hey, watch what you're doing, Like none
Speaker 5: of that.
Speaker 6: No, But what Trump has done is so extraordinary because
Speaker 6: he doesn't have that bright line with the new oligarchs
Speaker 6: of America at all. He's basically said, Okay, you bought it,
Speaker 6: do what you want.
Speaker 1: But he's blended them. I mean this doze.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's brought them in to the But is
Speaker 5: there maybe something better about that because the explicit bargain
Speaker 5: is now you have to give us money or you
Speaker 5: have to bring business to America.
Speaker 6: Well, for me, as an American, this is not good
Speaker 6: news because I like democracy And tell.
Speaker 1: Me more about this. Yeah, I like the sound of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm afraid I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna have to be sold. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, the thing about the brologarchs, and this is even
Speaker 6: different from oligarchs to stop.
Speaker 1: Stop Okay if that's not trademarked brologarch. Nice.
Speaker 6: So we've had oligarchs in the past in America. We've
Speaker 6: had Carnegie and we've had Rockefellers, but aside from making
Speaker 6: sure they didn't get regulated or taxed too much, they
Speaker 6: kind of stuck to their own business they just want
Speaker 6: to get rich. But the brologarchs really have an explicit
Speaker 6: political agenda and it is essentially anti democrats and almost monarchical.
Speaker 5: So there you see them more as like they're in
Speaker 5: the King's court and the world has been returned to
Speaker 5: the more natural order of nobless obleege or something along
Speaker 5: those lines.
Speaker 6: Well, they're going for no bless without the obliege. They
Speaker 6: want all the privileges and none of the obligations in
Speaker 6: terms of charitable funding, philanthropy, any sense of social norms
Speaker 6: constraining them. I mean, what they're all about is nothing
Speaker 6: can constrain me.
Speaker 2: I mean, look what.
Speaker 6: Happened when the EU tried to impose its own laws
Speaker 6: on Elon musk jd Vance not even the vice president
Speaker 6: yet rolls up on the EU and says, you leave
Speaker 6: our boy alone or we're going to pull out of NATO.
Speaker 5: Wait that's what he said. You made this sound very
Speaker 5: crips versus bloods. Well there is dad e Vans rolled
Speaker 5: up on the EU out of his benz and went inside.
Speaker 6: And it was like you'd me with the eyeliner and everything.
Speaker 1: Right, craziness.
Speaker 5: So they are explicitly but then what is the political philosophy.
Speaker 5: Is it just the great man theory that, you know,
Speaker 5: the irony of a populist movement relying on the great
Speaker 5: men to control all that happens.
Speaker 6: It sounds a lot actually like the divine right of kings,
Speaker 6: but with a pseudoscientific spin. So that's where you get
Speaker 6: all the elon bros. Talking about being high t alpha males.
Speaker 6: That's just a twenty first century way of saying, God
Speaker 6: says I'm the king and you all need to bow down.
Speaker 5: But don't I mean, at some level, don't you think
Speaker 5: they're just trolling people with that? Like you do you
Speaker 5: actually believe they think I have a heighspermut?
Speaker 1: So I mean I feel, yeah, listen.
Speaker 5: I don't know how we went off the rails on that,
Speaker 5: but that feels a little bit like how much of
Speaker 5: this is trolling and memes and how much of it
Speaker 5: for me? They feel a little bit like, Look, we
Speaker 5: had a Gilded age. It doesn't seem that different from
Speaker 5: the Gilded Age that ushered in industrialization, although now it's
Speaker 5: more on the digital side.
Speaker 1: Would that be a charitable way of putting it?
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's different from the Gilded Age in
Speaker 6: two important ways. One is the sort of the release
Speaker 6: of the oblige part of No Blessed Oblige. These guys
Speaker 6: are totally released from the constraints of social norms. That said,
Speaker 6: it was stigmatizing to sit on your wealth like a
Speaker 6: dragon on a horde of gold. You had to show
Speaker 6: that you were doing something for society.
Speaker 1: Is that why?
Speaker 5: So when you look at all those like National Parks
Speaker 5: of Rockefeller, or you look at all that that's why
Speaker 5: those guys did that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean they didn't necessarily have to be fans
Speaker 6: of humanity, but they cared about their reputations, and in
Speaker 6: order to keep a decent reputation, you had to be
Speaker 6: seen to do something, you know, throwing the public a bone.
Speaker 2: As it were.
Speaker 5: But isn't that what these oligarchs now? Isn't that what
Speaker 5: their first wives are for? Isn't that like what it
Speaker 5: seems like now, is they divorced their first wife and
Speaker 5: then their first wife is like.
Speaker 1: Give this all the planned parentos?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 1: Is that the is that the oblige that's coming out?
Speaker 6: I only know about the case of Mackenzie Bezos writing that.
Speaker 1: I think Melinda Gates also gives a true she.
Speaker 6: Too, Yes, she is doing her part, but it almost
Speaker 6: seems as a like a middle finger to the ex
Speaker 6: husband's like, I'll show you the proper use of wealth usob.
Speaker 5: Really yeah, so this so let's talk about though, when
Speaker 5: we look at the Russian holguards you talk about Putin
Speaker 5: is utilizing the wealth of these men, I guess to
Speaker 5: fund some of his endeavors or just the amassing of
Speaker 5: that money covers his own.
Speaker 1: Corruption.
Speaker 6: My understanding, I'm not a Russia expert, but my understanding
Speaker 6: from reading the work of people who are is it
Speaker 6: sort of like a pyramid schemer, a mafia operation where
Speaker 6: the Capo de Tutikapi sits at the top and takes
Speaker 6: a percentage of what the lower level henchmen are getting.
Speaker 6: So you know, he takes a chunk of Yuco soil,
Speaker 6: and he takes a chunk of gas prom and that
Speaker 6: way he stays the wealthiest man in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're earners. So Vladimir Putin like runs herbal life
Speaker 1: like that's what they say.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And for Trump, he looks at it as like
Speaker 5: I will take my power that I have in government
Speaker 5: and I will amplify it through industry.
Speaker 1: But through industry.
Speaker 5: Look, it's almost better to me that it's this explicit
Speaker 5: like I feel like, now we have a number on
Speaker 5: what this type of crony capitalism looks like. Elon gave
Speaker 5: two hundred and seventy million dollars to get Donald Trump elected.
Speaker 5: He made after the election, I think something like two
Speaker 5: hundred and ten billion.
Speaker 1: So now we have a number on it.
Speaker 5: We know what their access to government is worth.
Speaker 1: Is that transparency?
Speaker 5: Better for us to even know? Can we do anything
Speaker 5: about it if we don't even know?
Speaker 6: Well, I think you make a good point. It's better
Speaker 6: that we know and that it not be happening sub
Speaker 6: rosa and you know in whispers that we can't really
Speaker 6: define in any way. It's it's all cards on the
Speaker 6: table now, and it's almost like it's being rubbed in
Speaker 6: our faces.
Speaker 1: Right, how do you battle?
Speaker 5: So when you have something that's the state power of
Speaker 5: the United States, which is utterly enormous, combined with the
Speaker 5: corporate power, I mean I always viewed government in some
Speaker 5: ways as hopefully a check on corporate power. But if
Speaker 5: it's a lubricant, what does that turn into?
Speaker 2: And again I apologize, you know, I just realized.
Speaker 1: You went right from.
Speaker 6: Well, it's obviously something very dangerous because what we're seeing
Speaker 6: here is the total release of all democratic constraint and
Speaker 6: all pretense to social norms that used to constrain these people. Right,
Speaker 6: they're totally unfettered in their access to power and in
Speaker 6: their sense of what is okay to do with that power.
Speaker 1: But were we kidding ourselves in some ways? You know?
Speaker 5: I saw a gentleman who was trying to become the
Speaker 5: new DNC chairman, Gentleman Martin, I think is Amos, and
Speaker 5: he had said about money and politics, Oh yeah, we're
Speaker 5: going to get all that money out. You know, we're
Speaker 5: going to have our good billionaires, but we're not going
Speaker 5: to take any money from the bad billionaires.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me.
Speaker 5: I once said Nancy Pelosi on it. She said, money
Speaker 5: corrupts in politics, So what about the money democrats race?
Speaker 5: Oh no, that doesn't corrupt them. There's this sense that,
Speaker 5: oh no, it's only those actors that are bad. I mean,
Speaker 5: the oligarchs gained trillions during the Biden presidency. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: are we kidding ourselves that this wasn't in place? Just
Speaker 5: not maybe as stated as clearly, I.
Speaker 6: Would want to move away from individualistic explanations of like
Speaker 6: good billionaires and bad billionaires and talk about like what
Speaker 6: do we as a society say We're not We're not
Speaker 6: going to let you get away with that, because historically
Speaker 6: that's been the only thing that's constrained the really rich.
Speaker 6: If you go all the way back to the Medici
Speaker 6: in the fourteen hundreds, they weren't necessarily good people, but
Speaker 6: they were the richest people in Europe. And the reason
Speaker 6: we have the Renaissance and all of its great works
Speaker 6: of art is because their society wouldn't let them get
Speaker 6: away with just sitting on their hordes of wealth and
Speaker 6: enjoying it for their own benefit. They had to do
Speaker 6: something for their society.
Speaker 5: Does that mean we're allowing ourselves to be bought off?
Speaker 5: Is the idea of being like, look, you guys, a mass,
Speaker 5: what you need to amass at the top? You pull
Speaker 5: the strings you want to pull. We need two parks,
Speaker 5: Like what how? And this gets to a larger conversation
Speaker 5: about labor and capital. How does American labor tap into
Speaker 5: that money stream? Because that money stream is built on
Speaker 5: the backs of American labor, yet they don't have access
Speaker 5: to it. What if we allow them their excess but
Speaker 5: rather than philanthropy.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to.
Speaker 5: Attach to make American labor also a shareholder in.
Speaker 6: That, Yes, but you could say it's the hard way,
Speaker 6: so to speak. One of the wealth managers I spoke
Speaker 6: to in the course of studying offshore finance over seventeen years,
Speaker 6: he was a historian, and I mean he trained as
Speaker 6: a historian at one of the Oxbridge schools in.
Speaker 1: The UK, and he said, one of the finest historian institutes.
Speaker 6: And he was very candid about his role in making
Speaker 6: rich people richer at the expense of the rest of us.
Speaker 6: And he said, well, once that ball gets rolling, it
Speaker 6: becomes quite difficult to stop it short of like revolutions
Speaker 6: or mass general strikes. And I think historically that's what
Speaker 6: we've seen. We're at levels of wealth inequality unseen since
Speaker 6: the Gilded Age. And you know what happened then, Well,
Speaker 6: we had a World war, we had a pandemic, and
Speaker 6: then we had the rise of fascism, and in between
Speaker 6: then we had a lot of labor action in the US.
Speaker 6: So if labor unions are able to muster enough power
Speaker 6: to stand up to some of these oligarchs, they could
Speaker 6: be a.
Speaker 1: Force for good.
Speaker 5: It's so dispariting to hear that same message for labor
Speaker 5: of like, you guys just need to get together and
Speaker 5: get better lobbyists. And there is something here that seems
Speaker 5: almost more difficult, which is this rise of populism mirroring
Speaker 5: this Gilded Age. You know, fascism was not blended with
Speaker 5: the Gilded Age. The Industrial age was. And so I
Speaker 5: don't know that we've we've seen this before and I
Speaker 5: hesitate to say that, but it does seem unusual.
Speaker 6: And you know, what's really kind of surprising to me
Speaker 6: about this is that what's really needed here is a
Speaker 6: way for people to coalesce and organize themselves to stand
Speaker 6: up to these individual accumulations of power in the hands
Speaker 6: of the brologarchs.
Speaker 1: But the law is not on our side. The law
Speaker 1: is basically now saying corporations are people.
Speaker 5: Money is speech, And so how do you well, boy,
Speaker 5: I hate to see someone who studied this for so long.
Speaker 1: To you go like, you know what's terrible to me?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what, sorry, you study this.
Speaker 6: Well, as you correctly point out, like where does the
Speaker 6: wealth actually comes from? Maybe it comes from labor. So
Speaker 6: if labor gets together and says we're not going to
Speaker 6: stand for this anymore, or if consumers get together and
Speaker 6: say we're not going to stand for this anymore, they're
Speaker 6: way more of us than there are them. The problem
Speaker 6: is that the weird twist in the wonderful world of
Speaker 6: the Internet and social media is that rather than giving
Speaker 6: us a means to coalesce and come together, it's divided
Speaker 6: us into these little bubbles or camps that are at
Speaker 6: war with.
Speaker 5: One another, which I'm guessing now is maybe the overt strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 5: because that's in many ways how they generate the income,
Speaker 5: because that the overt strategy of the algorithm is to
Speaker 5: conflict and outrage.
Speaker 6: Just last week there was a scholarly journal article published
Speaker 6: by some political scientists in the Netherlands that looked at
Speaker 6: who generates the most misinformation on social media and they
Speaker 6: found it was really asymmetric. It's almost all coming from
Speaker 6: right wing populus and it's not an accident. That's their strategy.
Speaker 1: Holy shit.
Speaker 5: You know, for a second there, I thought you were
Speaker 5: gonna say me made me really nervous. Thank you so
Speaker 5: much for this. Offshore is the book. It's available now,
Speaker 5: Brook Herrington. We're gonna take quick break a little love that.
Speaker 2: Hell everybody's got the shop for tonight.
Speaker 5: Before we go, I'm gonna check in with your host
Speaker 5: for the rest of the week, mister Ronnie Chang Ronnick.
Speaker 1: What do you got for the rest of the week,
Speaker 1: my friend John.
Speaker 3: Before we lean into the Trump years, I'm gonna spend
Speaker 3: this week finally remembering the incredible four years America had
Speaker 3: under Joe Biden, a president of faith, compassion, and courage.
Speaker 5: You uh, you know he's out office and can't give
Speaker 5: out any more pardons, right, you know that?
Speaker 1: Oh? I see? I see.
Speaker 3: Well, then I'll be spending this week talking about the
Speaker 3: Biden crime family and how only President Trump has the
Speaker 3: courage to take them down.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Trying to chang everybody.
Speaker 1: Gright Brent here it is your moment to.
Speaker 17: Jem I just want to say, you're a younger, far
Speaker 17: more beautiful audience that I just spoke to, and I
Speaker 17: want to keep.
Speaker 2: It off the record.
Speaker 11: At least change is a disaster. She's a crying lunatic
Speaker 11: and crying crying Adam Kinsinger, he's a super crime.
Speaker 1: I never saw the guy not cry.
Speaker 8: I talked about inflation too, but you know how many
Speaker 8: times can you say that an Apple has doubled and
Speaker 8: used to get into a stage coach. Now you get
Speaker 8: into a helicopter in times got like six seventy pounds
Speaker 8: of drug and they go as fast as you can walk.
Speaker 8: I go, but I would attack a karate champion get
Speaker 8: slightly repaired.
Speaker 2: I think this was a better speech than the one
Speaker 2: I made upstairs.
Speaker 8: Okay, I think this was better.
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