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Speaker 1: Let's go to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: There was a big interview that he gave to NBC
Speaker 3: News Kristen Welker. The big top line was about trade
Speaker 3: with Canada and Mexico. He suggested, perhaps if we're going
Speaker 3: to subsize these two countries, they should just become the
Speaker 3: fifty first and the fifty second states.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: You're subsidizing Canada to the tune of over one hundred
Speaker 4: billion dollars a year, with subsidizing Mexico for almost three
Speaker 4: hundred billion dollars. We shouldn't be s upset. Why are
Speaker 4: we subsidizing these countries. If we're going to subsidize them,
Speaker 4: let her become a state. We're subsidizing Mexico, and we're
Speaker 4: subsidizing Canada, and we're subsidizing many countries.
Speaker 5: All over the world.
Speaker 4: And all I want to do is I want to
Speaker 4: have a level, fast, but fair playing field.
Speaker 3: Confirm some of the reporting that apparently had told Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 3: He's like, look, if we're going to pay you this much,
Speaker 3: then you might as well become a state.
Speaker 2: Listen, soccer, you add Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico. You
Speaker 2: got three new states. The Democrats actually have a shot
Speaker 2: at winning chance.
Speaker 3: Think about it, well, first of all, Mexico in Mexico,
Speaker 3: I don't actually know, it's a lot.
Speaker 6: And how many provinces in Canada?
Speaker 1: Man, this is a five?
Speaker 6: I'm going to guess five was what came in my
Speaker 6: mind as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, we've got Quebec, uh Bc, Ontario, Nova Scotia. What's Calgary?
Speaker 1: Is that a province or is that a city?
Speaker 6: Calgary's a city?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what it's I think something all right?
Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry Canadian iance here, that's better than Mercan you said,
Speaker 2: British Columbia, I said, isn't new Brunswick.
Speaker 1: Isn't that its own New Brunswick? Oh shit, Newfoundland? Is
Speaker 1: that its own? Ye in the northern territories.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if that's a province or if
Speaker 3: it's like Indian territory, yeah or whatever they.
Speaker 1: Sorry, we did anyway, Yeah, we did pretty well.
Speaker 3: I would say it's decent for American political commentator.
Speaker 1: Mexico. Don't even get me started.
Speaker 3: Oh, the only reason I know Mexican States is because
Speaker 3: of drug cartels like Tijuana, Sinaloa or you know, bazap
Speaker 3: Lan or whatever.
Speaker 6: That's the only recitement of our media. That that's all
Speaker 6: we know.
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, good point.
Speaker 3: But anyways, that's what he suggested in terms of some
Speaker 3: of the trade work. Actually, arguably the most important ones
Speaker 3: that he put forward.
Speaker 6: States in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's crazy.
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can barely name five. And they're only the ones
Speaker 3: like around the United States. Shows my own ignorance. Let's
Speaker 3: get to Trump's comments on Ukraine. Arguably this is the
Speaker 3: most important thing that came out of the interview. Let's
Speaker 3: take a listen.
Speaker 4: There are people being killed in that war at levels
Speaker 4: that nobody's ever seen before.
Speaker 5: You have to go back to the Second.
Speaker 4: World World War, and even that, if you take a
Speaker 4: look at and you know what it is, it's the soldiers, largely.
Speaker 4: The cities have been emptied out and demolished. The country
Speaker 4: has been demolished. If I won that election, which you
Speaker 4: know how I feel about it, I won't get into
Speaker 4: it because we don't need to start that argument.
Speaker 5: I think it's an easy argument.
Speaker 4: It was really proven even more conclusively by the wind
Speaker 4: that I had on this one.
Speaker 5: But as you did.
Speaker 4: Had I people, that's your opinion, but I disagree with it.
Speaker 4: Had I assumed kept control, number one, Israel wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 4: Number two Ukraine would have never happened. It would have
Speaker 4: never happened, Ukraine, Russia. But the number of people that
Speaker 4: are being killed, soldiers, young beautiful soldiers, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of people are being killed, and you know, it's very interesting.
Speaker 4: It's level, totally level, the battlefields totally level.
Speaker 5: You know what's happening.
Speaker 4: The only thing that stops a bullet, you know what
Speaker 4: it is is a body, a human body, And the
Speaker 4: people that are being killed, hundreds.
Speaker 5: Of thousands on both sides.
Speaker 4: Russia's lost probably five hundred thousand, Ukraine's lost higher than
Speaker 4: they say, probably four hundred thousand. You're talking about hundreds
Speaker 4: of thousands of bodies laying all of the fields. It's
Speaker 4: the stupidest thing I've ever seen, and it should have
Speaker 4: never been allowed to happen. Biden should have been able
Speaker 4: to stop it.
Speaker 3: So that was important because you couple it with a
Speaker 3: tweet that he act or a truth or whatever he
Speaker 3: put out on truth social where he called for quote
Speaker 3: in immediate ceasefire. Also, let's take this since Trump is
Speaker 3: now the president elect and he's probably getting intelligence numbers.
Speaker 3: Just so you're aware, he said four hundred thousand. Just yesterday,
Speaker 3: President Zelenski claimed that the total death toll in Ukraine
Speaker 3: was forty three thousand Ukrainian soldiers who had been killed.
Speaker 3: So yeah, literally add another zero on top of that
Speaker 3: number for what the reality is. But it does show
Speaker 3: that this is going to be very difficult because what
Speaker 3: did Jeremy say in our interview. If I'm me Ron
Speaker 3: and I just watched this, I'm accelerating my nuclear but
Speaker 3: right for preservation of the regime, that's the number one
Speaker 3: lesson North Korea took away from Libya. If you're Russia
Speaker 3: and you're looking at this, you just had a prestige hit,
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of.
Speaker 1: Your ally going down. You're embroiled in this war.
Speaker 3: We already learned from a Russian oligarch that the current
Speaker 3: quote unquote peace proposal on the table, which would mean
Speaker 3: at least from Zelenski in terms of NATO membership in
Speaker 3: exchange for recognition of some territory lost. Even of that,
Speaker 3: Olive Ark was like, no, Putin would not take that,
Speaker 3: So we're they have a mess on their hands, Like
Speaker 3: absolutely yeah, in terms of the ceasefire and all of that.
Speaker 3: Another piece of news that came out of this interview,
Speaker 3: which is really important is Trump said he has not
Speaker 3: spoken to Putin since he became the president elect, but
Speaker 3: now he's spoken with Zelenski twice. They had a phone
Speaker 3: call and they got cozy in the Lyza Palace, I'm
Speaker 3: sure by design by President Macron putting him in front
Speaker 3: and center and brokering some meeting there with Zelenski. So
Speaker 3: there are a lot of open questions about which way
Speaker 3: this goes. Remember, Mike Waltz and Keith Kellogg have both
Speaker 3: floated two separate theories of how they would force potin
Speaker 3: the negotiating table, which involves escalating the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: So already we have you know, look, it's easy to
Speaker 3: say I'll have it done by the time I take office.
Speaker 3: Actually getting there, it's just like the Middle East, it's
Speaker 3: going to be a tough road.
Speaker 2: Well, that was my major takeaway from his comments there
Speaker 2: is he still falls back on this while it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have happened if I was there, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: that was fine for the campaign. You know, people kind
Speaker 2: of bought that and what you were selling. But now
Speaker 2: you're about to be in that office and we are
Speaker 2: where we are, so what now? And you're right, the
Speaker 2: most consistent indications we've gotten from his advisors are that
Speaker 2: his plan is basically just like escalate to de escalate.
Speaker 2: I think you're right to read into the fact that
Speaker 2: he's he's always like Selensky, meeting with Zelenski multiple times,
Speaker 2: and you know, Russia maybe not in such a such
Speaker 2: a mood to negotiate given the prestige blow that they
Speaker 2: just took. So anyway, always interesting to hear what he
Speaker 2: has to say. But by and large, It's just like,
Speaker 2: we'll see what he does when he gets in there,
Speaker 2: because he says all kinds of things all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he says all kinds of things all the time.
Speaker 3: Can we put a sorry D four please on the screen?
Speaker 3: This is what I was referencing. He says, they have
Speaker 3: ridiculously lost four hundred thousand soldiers many more civilians. There
Speaker 3: should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too
Speaker 3: many lives are needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think the sentiment is great.
Speaker 3: It's like you said, though, it's like, well, we're your
Speaker 3: advisors speaking for you. Were they speaking on behalf of themselves?
Speaker 3: What do you actually think? What are you going to
Speaker 3: push to happen? And this will you know something I
Speaker 3: talked a lot about on the Lex Readman podcast. Was
Speaker 3: Trump believed previously under John Bolton? He said on the
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan Show. He was like, well, what I do
Speaker 3: is I hire these people who make me look more
Speaker 3: reasonable and who are scary. And it's like, okay, that's great,
Speaker 3: but you know, while you're in the Oval Office dealing
Speaker 3: with and if tax reform, immigration or any of these
Speaker 3: other things, they have a full time job where they're
Speaker 3: running the administration, and they are running and presenting options
Speaker 3: and making all of these decisions that have nothing to
Speaker 3: do with you. And if those people have an ideology
Speaker 3: that's different than you, you literally, by definition, cannot spend
Speaker 3: all of your attention focus on this. You're lucky as
Speaker 3: the American president if you get to spend twenty five
Speaker 3: percent of your time on foreign policy.
Speaker 6: Well, if that happens, he's very malleable.
Speaker 2: He's very easily flattered and manipulated. And I mean that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's not to take the blame off.
Speaker 6: Of his shoulders.
Speaker 2: That's just a reality that it matters a lot who
Speaker 2: he surrounds himself with. And I think at this point
Speaker 2: it's very likely that he would have to really pressure
Speaker 2: Zelenski into taking a deal that in no way is
Speaker 2: Lenski going to want to take in order to get
Speaker 2: Russia to consider coming to the table with spend And
Speaker 2: so is he going to be willing to apply that pressure,
Speaker 2: because what indication we're getting is that instead what he
Speaker 2: wants to do is say we're going to give Zelenski
Speaker 2: everything he wants. What was it except Gorko said to
Speaker 2: what Biden gave.
Speaker 6: Is going to be peanuts compared to what said that
Speaker 6: problem to give.
Speaker 3: Again, I have no idea like if any of this
Speaker 3: is true or not, a lot of those guys are
Speaker 3: just bullshitting on their radio shows too, if we're all
Speaker 3: being honest. Yeah, so it's like, okay, we're they talking themselves.
Speaker 3: They talk for Trump. At least One good thing is
Speaker 3: that Trump hates when other people speak for him. So
Speaker 3: it's one of those where hopefully he'll put them in
Speaker 3: his place.
Speaker 1: But we'll see.
Speaker 3: Man, it's a big question mark, and the potential for
Speaker 3: absolute catastrophic mess remains on the table. Trump was also
Speaker 3: asked about immigration policy and deportation.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: Four million families in America who have mixed immigration status.
Speaker 5: So I'm talking about parents.
Speaker 7: Who might be here illegally, but the kids are here legally.
Speaker 7: Your border zone jug Yeah, well, I mean there are
Speaker 7: two aspects to this, your border zaur Tom Hommet said,
Speaker 7: they can be deported together.
Speaker 6: Is that the plan?
Speaker 4: That way you keep the foot Well, I don't want
Speaker 4: to be breaking up families. So the only way you
Speaker 4: don't break up the family is you keep them together
Speaker 4: and you have to send them all.
Speaker 1: Back, even kids who are here legally, well.
Speaker 4: Well, what you going to do if they want to
Speaker 4: stay with the father. Look, we have to have rules
Speaker 4: and regulations. You can always find something out, like you know,
Speaker 4: this doesn't work, that doesn't work. I'll tell you what's
Speaker 4: going to be horrible When we take a wonderful young
Speaker 4: woman who's with a criminal and they show the woman
Speaker 4: and she could stay by the law, but they show
Speaker 4: the woman being taken out or they want her out,
Speaker 4: and your cameras are focused on her as she's crying,
Speaker 4: as she's being taken out of our country, and then
Speaker 4: the public turns against us.
Speaker 5: But we have to do our job.
Speaker 3: So that definitely shows that they're still talking a lot
Speaker 3: about what quote unquote mass deportation and all of that
Speaker 3: will look like Tom Homan has talked about that before.
Speaker 1: But the I mean, I just keep coming back to the.
Speaker 3: Reality of it, like they barely have enough resources to
Speaker 3: even deport criminals like ato. The idea that there is
Speaker 3: going to be I mean, unless they've literally unless Congress
Speaker 3: gives I don't know, ten twenty fifty billion, you know,
Speaker 3: to ee, which I don't see happening, especially with the
Speaker 3: current makeup of the Republican Senate, and you've got guys
Speaker 3: who are in swing districts or elsewhere, we are going
Speaker 3: to look out for it. So anyway, we'll see. That's
Speaker 3: how they're talking. But this is again like a big
Speaker 3: question mark to me.
Speaker 2: The comments to me were also very revealing because they
Speaker 2: really show you are too that he understood that the
Speaker 2: images that came out last time were incredibly damnae Jamming.
Speaker 2: Even he'sad the public terms against you, and so he
Speaker 2: realizes the way that these images can be extremely potent
Speaker 2: and very difficult in spite of the rhetoric that he
Speaker 2: used on the campaign. The other thing, the other thing
Speaker 2: that was noteworthy to me in this interview is he
Speaker 2: got asked about birthright citizenship, which is in the Constitution.
Speaker 2: He says he wants to end birthright citizenship using an
Speaker 2: executive order.
Speaker 6: You certainly cannot do that. Now there is some debate.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, let me give there some debates.
Speaker 2: That you could well that you could pass legislation because
Speaker 2: what is the language. It's as like subject to the
Speaker 2: jurisdiction thereof. And so there's some people who say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you can legislate what exactly that means, that's a debate
Speaker 2: for the courts. Possible, but you can't do it through
Speaker 2: an executive order as far as I know.
Speaker 3: Here's the debate. It says, here's the section from the
Speaker 3: fourteenth Amendment. All persons born are naturalized in the United States,
Speaker 3: subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
Speaker 3: States of the state wherein they reside. Naturalized citizens subject
Speaker 3: are citizens thereof. So the idea is that if you're
Speaker 3: here illegally and you have a child in the United States,
Speaker 3: that because you are an illegal immigrant and you're not
Speaker 3: here under legal jurisdiction, that that would not apply. So
Speaker 3: when they say and birthright citizenship, it's specifically about people
Speaker 3: who are not legally in the United States, which look objectively,
Speaker 3: that's crazy. If you're here illegally you get to then
Speaker 3: just have a baby and your baby is a US citizen.
Speaker 1: Crazy.
Speaker 3: I mean, sure, I should apply to Green cards or
Speaker 3: anybody else. Fine, that's totally fine. That's what the executive
Speaker 3: order would say, but it will be a huge constitutional question.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no issue about it because as it's written,
Speaker 3: I mean, I could see it going multiple ways. Like,
Speaker 3: I think that Clarence Thomas Alito. You know, maybe in
Speaker 3: a few other but somebody like Justice Gorsey Attorney those
Speaker 3: other pe they would easily sign up.
Speaker 2: But what I've seen, though, is not that is even
Speaker 2: from conservatives who support this was not that you could
Speaker 2: do it through executive order. It was that we could
Speaker 2: pass legislation to define what it means to be subject
Speaker 2: to the jurisdiction thereof and change those parameters. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know that's what could go through the courts, but
Speaker 2: I think the idea that you're going to do it
Speaker 2: through an executive order is fanciful.
Speaker 1: Well, you could try.
Speaker 3: What I just said is you could try through executive order,
Speaker 3: and then you could try through judicial review and see
Speaker 3: what they what they say, So maybe they come back
Speaker 3: and they're like, well, you have to pass an Act
Speaker 3: of Congress and then you do that.
Speaker 1: But look, do I think this is going to happen?
Speaker 1: He said it last time?
Speaker 3: Okay, he said it in the famous remember the Jonathan
Speaker 3: Swan interview where Swan is like hands him the piece
Speaker 3: of paper. They were talking about birthright citizenship in that interview.
Speaker 3: I've heard him say this since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Well, it happened.
Speaker 3: We'll see in terms of the White House counsel and
Speaker 3: the lawyers and all of this, and even their ability
Speaker 3: to competently get any of this done.
Speaker 2: Like you know, the other the other piece. And this
Speaker 2: will help us transition to our monologue. Is it's true that,
Speaker 2: you know, many of the billionaires that surround him now,
Speaker 2: they're very interested in high skilled immigration. Absolutely in particular,
Speaker 2: I remember Trump said that thing about like.
Speaker 1: College, which is a lib position.
Speaker 2: And he had shifted his position on any number of
Speaker 2: things to you know, please this group which who were
Speaker 2: very important in getting him elective about to talk about
Speaker 2: Elon apparently gave a quarter billion dollars to this campaign,
Speaker 2: and given how close it was, like you know, you
Speaker 2: could easily make the case that's the reason that he's
Speaker 2: headed back to the White House. So he owes this
Speaker 2: group quite a lot.
Speaker 3: I would say that Elon and them, even David Zachs,
Speaker 3: who I love, but you know, let's be honest, David
Speaker 3: and the tech guys and all these other guys, we
Speaker 3: have a literal financial interest because a lot of their
Speaker 3: companies are started by you know, one visa types or
Speaker 3: foreign students and all that look it's great, but that's
Speaker 3: just reality. That's like five percent of the US immigration system.
Speaker 6: I mean, On himself is from South Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. It's his whole backstory is crazy. It
Speaker 3: was Canadian South Africa. People should go read about it.
Speaker 3: In terms of the immigration uh, I actually think that
Speaker 3: the major influence a lot of the people you're going
Speaker 3: to talk about are some of the lesser name billionaires
Speaker 3: and people who have ties like to the retail business
Speaker 3: or big agriculture. Though, that is where illegal immigration is
Speaker 3: like the greatest subsidy of all time. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: our new ambassador to China is going to be David Perdue,
Speaker 3: who was the CEO of Dollar General and the.
Speaker 1: Senator from Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I mean I guess the defense is he spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time in China and he knows them well.
Speaker 6: So I spent a lot of time China.
Speaker 3: No, he spent a lot of time brokery deals for
Speaker 3: cheap bul shit for two dollars general.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other story. I mean he had to
Speaker 1: get something right.
Speaker 3: He ran as the stop to steal candidate in Georgia
Speaker 3: on God is ass kicked, So you know you have
Speaker 3: to get something when you show that level of loyalty.
Speaker 3: But I think that the pressure will come from retail
Speaker 3: and from Wall Street on immigration way more than Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3: The Silicon Valley one is going to be more about
Speaker 3: the immigration reform through legislation. Yeah, but the actual beneficiaries
Speaker 3: of illegal immigration is Tyson's Food, big agriculture, you know,
Speaker 3: meanstruction half.
Speaker 2: Of the farm markers in the country undocumented. It's extraordinarily
Speaker 2: crucial for you know, that industry, and also just for
Speaker 2: people to be able to get food at the grocery
Speaker 2: store and pay the prices they're used to paying, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. The last campaign finance reports are in and
Speaker 2: we now know exactly how much Elon Musk, the richest
Speaker 2: man on the planet, paid in order to elect his
Speaker 2: man and secure his own whole sweeping government mandate. According
Speaker 2: to federal filings, the grand total is more than a
Speaker 2: quarter of a billion dollars. Now, just think about it.
Speaker 2: Maria Maidelson was able to buy the entire US foreign
Speaker 2: policy apparatus apparently for a mere one hundred million, so
Speaker 2: you can only imagine what Musk is getting for the
Speaker 2: virtually unlimited fortune he plunked down on Donald Trump's behalf.
Speaker 6: After all, given the.
Speaker 2: Closeness of the race, one must assume this level of
Speaker 2: investment likely secured Trump the White House. What's coming into
Speaker 2: focus as we learn more details is a sort of
Speaker 2: billionaire coup, because Elon is, of course just one of
Speaker 2: a rapidly expanding cabal of billionaires who have already been
Speaker 2: given plum gigs in the incoming Trump administration, earning slots
Speaker 2: that will allow them to directly plunder the federal government
Speaker 2: for their own benefit. In addition to these official roles
Speaker 2: that these plutocrats will occupy, they are also reportedly serving
Speaker 2: as headhunters for the incoming administration, helping to staff lower
Speaker 2: level jobs with their cronies and ideological allies, so that
Speaker 2: the billionaire takeover is even more complete than it appears
Speaker 2: at surface level. We now billionaire influence, of course, nothing
Speaker 2: new in politics, without a doubt, though this is the
Speaker 2: most overt transfer of government into the hands of oligarchs
Speaker 2: in our nation's history. It is my sense that Trump,
Speaker 2: desperate to avoid prison and not having ever been all
Speaker 2: that interested in ideology or governance to begin with, was
Speaker 2: happy to sell off different parts of his ministration and
Speaker 2: is now sitting back to let this band of robber
Speaker 2: barons shape the government to suit their desires. Now, many
Speaker 2: of these unelected rulers, like the New AI and Cryptos,
Speaker 2: are David Sachs, their Musk allies and friends who share
Speaker 2: similar ideological and self interested goals. Quite a number of
Speaker 2: these goals are directly at odds with the alleged commitments
Speaker 2: of trump Ism. So where Trump claims to be a
Speaker 2: China trade hawk, Elon's vast fortune is so tied up
Speaker 2: with that of the Chinese government that his new partner
Speaker 2: of a vague once roasted him for jumping like a
Speaker 2: circus monkey for Jijinping. Where Trump courted union member support,
Speaker 2: Elon fired striking workers, something that Trump did cheer him for,
Speaker 2: and is currently fighting in court to end the body
Speaker 2: that governs work or organizing in its entirety. And crucially,
Speaker 2: whereas Trump's ascendants in the Republican Party has come from
Speaker 2: bucking austerity politics, Elon and his cadre are fans of
Speaker 2: an arco capitalist leader Javier Malay and his shock doctrine approach. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're a billionaire, of course, what's not to love
Speaker 2: about Malay? He's slashing the social spending programs that make
Speaker 2: workers less desperate for whatever abusive, poorly paid gig to
Speaker 2: corporate titans that are willing to provide them. He's privatizing
Speaker 2: core government functions, creating war opportunities for oligarchs to siphon
Speaker 2: off of public funds. And he's slashed the regulations that
Speaker 2: constrain greedy bosses from abusing workers and consumers and poisoning
Speaker 2: our air in our water. Crucially, Malays also rolled back
Speaker 2: tariffs to the explicit praise of Musk, once again polar
Speaker 2: opposite of Trump's stated program goals. Now, Trump's billionaire puppeteers
Speaker 2: seem to think they could smuggle this oligarchic agenda in
Speaker 2: through the trojan horse of culture war.
Speaker 6: That strategy was on.
Speaker 2: Prominent display recently when one of the billionaires informally advising Trump,
Speaker 2: investor Mark Andresen, took to Joe Rogan's pot cast in
Speaker 2: order to make the case for eliminating an agency, the
Speaker 2: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has consistently stood up to
Speaker 2: business abuses of consumers. This agency, which has a comparatively
Speaker 2: small budget, mind you, has returned twenty one billion dollars
Speaker 2: to ordinary Americans in just more than a decade of existence.
Speaker 2: As we covered here with Matt Stoller, and Dreson hates
Speaker 2: the CFPB precisely because the work it does protecting consumers
Speaker 2: has been inconvenient for some of scammier business investments. But
Speaker 2: instead of making the kind of unpersuasive case that he
Speaker 2: and his allies should just be able to plunder unimpeded,
Speaker 2: he instead made up a lie to play to one
Speaker 2: of the right wing culture war issues du jour and
Speaker 2: claimed that the CFPB was d banking conservatives for ideological reasons.
Speaker 2: That's not even a power the CFPB has, and on
Speaker 2: the contrary, the agency's head has pushed back on ideological debanking. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: Andreson's lives were immediately picked up by the Doge crew
Speaker 2: of AK responded on X. The only right answer shut
Speaker 2: it down must concurred delite CFPB. If there was any
Speaker 2: pushback from the mega base, I did not see it.
Speaker 2: But if mus really wants to slash two trillion dollars
Speaker 2: from the budget or anything close to that, much more
Speaker 2: must be targeted than this agency, which, even if deleted
Speaker 2: in its entirety, comprises a grand total of zero point
Speaker 2: zero three one percent of that two trillion dollar goal.
Speaker 2: So it should be no surprise that the billionaires have
Speaker 2: set their sights on the longtime conservative fantasy of cutting
Speaker 2: social Security and medicare. Contray to Donald Trump campaign promises. Now,
Speaker 2: on Twitter, Elon Re shared a lengthy thread from libertarian
Speaker 2: Mike Lee making Paul Ryan style conservative arguments attacking the
Speaker 2: foundations of social security. Meanwhile, Vivek has argued that they
Speaker 2: could slash hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid, social Security,
Speaker 2: and Medicare through what he describes as quote basic program
Speaker 2: integrity measures. Republican members of Congress are rushing to back
Speaker 2: them up, and this assault on our most popular successful
Speaker 2: programs were.
Speaker 8: Bringing the Democrats in and talk about social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.
Speaker 8: There's hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and
Speaker 8: we know how to do it. We just have to
Speaker 8: have the stomach take those challenges on. But we can't
Speaker 8: just talk about their discretionary budget that's twenty that's less
Speaker 8: than twenty five percent of our budget. We have to
Speaker 8: have some real hard discussions.
Speaker 1: Well, we talk about this all the time.
Speaker 4: It seems like we're constantly talking about where to cut,
Speaker 4: and the fact that the fight over defense.
Speaker 7: Do you believe that the defense budget should be cut.
Speaker 5: I'm not a big fan of that.
Speaker 8: I think we could do things a lot better.
Speaker 5: But when you talk about.
Speaker 8: What's happening in Taiwan, what's happening in the Middle East,
Speaker 8: what's happening with Isra, what's happening in Ukraine, this is
Speaker 8: an unstable place and unstable time.
Speaker 5: We have to be very.
Speaker 2: Careful, So not big on those defense cuts, but very
Speaker 2: open to the social programs cuts. What's more, in Elin
Speaker 2: and Vivik's quest to bring what they describe as a
Speaker 2: chainsaw to government spending cuts, the doge doer are also
Speaker 2: threatening programs where specific funding authorizations have lapsed. That's an
Speaker 2: easy way, perhaps to cut spending without having to go
Speaker 2: through those pesky, duly elected representatives in Congress at all. Now,
Speaker 2: I know everyone's for cutting federal spending, and the abstract
Speaker 2: sounds good right from the fat All that stuff sounds good, but.
Speaker 6: The reality can be quite harsh.
Speaker 2: Among the programs that could be slashed using the vac's
Speaker 2: innovative approach are veterans healthcare, new drug development, opioid addiction treatment,
Speaker 2: housing assistance, and the head Start preschool program that gives
Speaker 2: low income kids access.
Speaker 6: To early childhood education.
Speaker 2: Trump's billionaires might not need these programs, but millions of
Speaker 2: Americans truly do depend on them. Now, there's one large
Speaker 2: and vastly unaccountable area of government that I would personally
Speaker 2: be happy to see slash, and that is the Pentagon. Now,
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders and Rocana both signaled they would like to
Speaker 2: work to help Musk with this project if he's actually
Speaker 2: serious about it, in an attempt to effectively call his bluff.
Speaker 2: But no one should delude themselves into believing that Elon
Speaker 2: Musku is himself one of the Pentagon's largest contractors, is
Speaker 2: earnestly interested in trimming the sales of the military. Pete
Speaker 2: Heck's up too, Trump's nominee for the Defense Department. He's
Speaker 2: been portrayed as some sort of a revolutionary intending to
Speaker 2: hack away at the Pentagon. In reality, he's supported every war,
Speaker 2: including the Iraq War, up until shockingly recently. He's articulated
Speaker 2: desire to expand American militarism abroad, and frequently couches his
Speaker 2: critiques of the Pentagon in culture War terms. What's more,
Speaker 2: Trump has reportedly picked another billionaire to serve as the
Speaker 2: Pentagon's number two, a guy by the name of Stephen Finberg. Now,
Speaker 2: Feinberg has made millions with large investments in defense contractors himself.
Speaker 2: On my experience, war profiteers don't tend to be inclined
Speaker 2: towards cutting back military spending or cutting back on endless wars.
Speaker 6: I suspect this.
Speaker 2: Crew will performatively cut some meaningless DEI program then call
Speaker 2: it a day after all. Onside of like two people
Speaker 2: Thomas Massey and Ran Paul, maybe there are a couple others.
Speaker 2: The Republican Party has no interest in cutting the defense budget.
Speaker 2: Trump himself increased it every single year while he was
Speaker 2: in office the last time. John Stewart made a similar
Speaker 2: point recently when he was speaking with Bernie Sanders about
Speaker 2: finding the balance between trying to work with Trump and
Speaker 2: his billionaires when they claim to want to do something
Speaker 2: good but also not getting played.
Speaker 9: What Musk and Ramas Swanee are proposing, boy, is something
Speaker 9: I've wanted for years. I'm just not sure those are
Speaker 9: the guys that I wanted to do it, because maybe
Speaker 9: I don't trust there, you know, I feel like they're
Speaker 9: too focused on woke or retribution or something along those lines,
Speaker 9: and we'll go in there. Is it democrats inability to
Speaker 9: reform those processes that has opened the opportunity for this
Speaker 9: more nihilistic approach.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Democrats are, in many cases not all, defending a
Speaker 10: system which is broken, and people perceive that it is broken.
Speaker 10: And Trump says it is broken. Now his remedies are
Speaker 10: going to make it even worse. And I think what
Speaker 10: I feel very much hasn't been discussed all that much.
Speaker 10: If I give you an example, the post office. The
Speaker 10: mandate of the post Office is a very good mandate.
Speaker 5: It is to deliver.
Speaker 10: Mail to every house in America, no matter how rule
Speaker 10: it can be. It's a money loser, but it's the
Speaker 10: right thing to do. You can privatize the post office tomorrow,
Speaker 10: make it more efficient, and yet you will lose the
Speaker 10: beauty of what the post office is supposed to be.
Speaker 10: The challenge that we face is can you have a
Speaker 10: post office functioning in the year twenty twenty four, which
Speaker 10: is efficient, which serves the needs of its customers. I
Speaker 10: believe we can. I believe we can, and I'm fighting
Speaker 10: for that. What these other guys I suspect want to
Speaker 10: do is privatize, privatize, privatize, so it'll have even more
Speaker 10: power in the hands of the large corporate interests.
Speaker 2: Look, I genuinely get the surface level appeal of doge
Speaker 2: and even of stacking your administration with billionaires, given the
Speaker 2: American mythology that financial success is indicative a general superiority.
Speaker 6: The truth is, though, with very.
Speaker 2: Few exceptions, your interests and the interests of billionaires are
Speaker 2: diametrically opposed. They want a degrade government until it no
Speaker 2: longer has the power to impede their plunder to slash
Speaker 2: the social safety net programs that can take the edges
Speaker 2: off of our vast inequality, while fattening their own coffers
Speaker 2: with contracts and subsidies, and guaranteeing a future with limitless
Speaker 2: automation and crypto scams that funnel even more to the
Speaker 2: already rich Musk and some of his friends. They've told
Speaker 2: Americas to prepare themselves for economic hardship thanks to their
Speaker 2: austerity program, but somehow it's never Then they're rich buddies
Speaker 2: who are asked to participate in that shared sacrifice. But yes,
Speaker 2: by all means, let's ask the low income four year
Speaker 2: olds and our nation's veterans and seniors to sacrifice so
Speaker 2: that Trump's billionaires can execute a brazen smash and grab
Speaker 2: on our future. Trump has handed the keys over to
Speaker 2: the very globalist elites he once derided and sager. This
Speaker 2: really gets at there are a lot of tensions.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 3: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: So we had one more story we wanted to add
Speaker 2: in here that broke yesterday evening and this is what
Speaker 2: I talked about before. So jay Z has been hit
Speaker 2: with a civil lawsuit alleging that he back in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands raped a thirteen year old girl.
Speaker 6: At a party.
Speaker 2: You can put this tear sheet up on the screen
Speaker 2: from NBC News at just go ahead and say up front,
Speaker 2: he denies the charges, the allegations.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 2: We'll read you a statement from his team here in
Speaker 2: just a second. In any case, this says the Star Wrapper.
Speaker 2: An entrepreneur's real name is Sean Carter, was accused in
Speaker 2: the lawsuit Sunday of raping a thirteen year old girl
Speaker 2: in two thousand, allegedly alongside Sean Ditty Combes. The accuser
Speaker 2: is anonymous identified only as Jane Doe. She says the
Speaker 2: assault happened after she was driven to an MTV Video Music.
Speaker 6: Awards after party.
Speaker 2: Basically, what she alleges here is that she was trying
Speaker 2: to get into this after party. Someone saw and was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I think that your Ditty's type got her into this
Speaker 2: party again as she's at the age of thirteen. She arrives,
Speaker 2: she sees lots of drugs, including cocaine and marijuana being consumed.
Speaker 2: She has a drink, she starts feeling woozy, feels like
Speaker 2: she needs to lay down, and next thing she knows
Speaker 2: allegedly is being raped by a Ditty and jac and
Speaker 2: another female was also in the room who has as
Speaker 2: of yet been unnamed. Again, this is a civil lawsuit.
Speaker 2: The statute of limitations has expired, best to my knowledge,
Speaker 2: in New York for this woman, which is relevant to
Speaker 2: when we give you jay Z's response and put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen and I'll read this for you
Speaker 2: in its entirety. So this is from Rock Nation. My
Speaker 2: lawyer received a blackmail attempt called a demand letter from
Speaker 2: a lawyer named Tony Busby. What he had calculated was
Speaker 2: the nature of these allegations. The public scrutiny would make
Speaker 2: me want to settle. No sort had the opposite effect.
Speaker 2: It made me want to expose you for the fraud
Speaker 2: you are in a very public fashion. So no, I
Speaker 2: will not give you one bread penny. These allegations are
Speaker 2: so heinous in nature. I implore you to file a
Speaker 2: criminal complaint against statue of limitations has expired anyway, not
Speaker 2: a civil one. Whomever would commit such a crime against
Speaker 2: the minor should be locked away. Would you not agree
Speaker 2: these alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were
Speaker 2: the case. This lawyer, have done a bit of research
Speaker 2: on seems to have a pattern of these types of theatrics.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how you have come to be
Speaker 2: such a deplorable human, mister Busby, but I promise you
Speaker 2: I've seen your kind men any times over. I'm more
Speaker 2: than prepared to deal with your type. You claim to
Speaker 2: be a marine. Marines are known for their valor. You
Speaker 2: have neither honor nor dignity. My only heartbreak is for
Speaker 2: my family. And then he goes on to say, my
Speaker 2: heart and support goes out to true victims in the
Speaker 2: world who have to watch how their life story is
Speaker 2: dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser in
Speaker 2: a cheap suit, you have made a terrible error in
Speaker 2: judgment thinking all celebrities are the same. I'm not from
Speaker 2: your world. I'm a young man who made it out
Speaker 2: of the project of Brooklyn. We don't play these type
Speaker 2: of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We
Speaker 2: protect children. You seem to exploit people for personal gain,
Speaker 2: only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake physics, fake physics. Okay,
Speaker 2: well believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that,
Speaker 2: if not for the series and surrounding harm to kids,
Speaker 2: would be laughable.
Speaker 6: I look forward to showing you just.
Speaker 1: How that's what it's got to be. It has to
Speaker 1: be fake psychics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, maybe I don't know. Anyway, I look forward
Speaker 2: to showing you just how different I am. And I
Speaker 2: believe there is a followup from the lawyer that I
Speaker 2: will pull up while you're reacting to this. Oh, I
Speaker 2: have the lawyer, Okay, he said. So this is Tony Buzzby,
Speaker 2: who jay Z was addressing there. He tweeted out regarding
Speaker 2: the jay Z case and as eversus silence my clients,
Speaker 2: Mister Carter previously denied being the one who sued me
Speaker 2: in my firm. He thought his frivolous case under a pseudonym.
Speaker 2: What he fails to say in his recent statement as
Speaker 2: my firm sent his lawyer a demand letter on behalf
Speaker 2: of an alleged victim, and that victim never demanded a
Speaker 2: penny from him. Instead, she only saw it a confidential mediation.
Speaker 2: Since I sent the letter on her behalf, Mister Carter's
Speaker 2: not only sued me, but he has tried to bully
Speaker 2: and harrass me. In this plaintiff, his conduct has had
Speaker 2: the opposite impact. She is in bold and I'm very
Speaker 2: proud of her result. As far as the allegations then
Speaker 2: complete filed, we will let the filings speak for itself
Speaker 2: and will litigate the facts in court, not in the media.
Speaker 6: So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's all back and forth. You know.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean, I'll I don't know anything about jay Z.
Speaker 3: I'm not a big hip hop person who's been tracking
Speaker 3: all of these allegations.
Speaker 1: Now, I do find it kind of.
Speaker 3: An insane thing, because look like if we're talking about
Speaker 3: like this is somebody who's thirteen years old. This is
Speaker 3: like a small child, right, I mean, this is like pedophilia.
Speaker 3: This isn't something like mistaking somebody's seventeen eighteen years old.
Speaker 3: I would assume that there would be other instances and
Speaker 3: that stuff like this would have come out. I mean,
Speaker 3: in terms of other the thing is about the diddy
Speaker 3: thing has been around in the ether for like thirty
Speaker 3: five years, right. Everybody knew that there was something going
Speaker 3: on that was sketchy. It just took a while to
Speaker 3: catch up. For this to be true. I mean, you'd
Speaker 3: have to believe this happened and what it didn't happen
Speaker 3: again for years, or nobody kept quiet or everybody kept
Speaker 3: quiet around it look definitely within the realm of possibility.
Speaker 3: It also, I guess in the civil sense, in terms
Speaker 3: of trying to prove it's true, that's going to be
Speaker 3: very difficult, right, in terms of recalling something that happened
Speaker 3: some twenty four years ago and being able to provide
Speaker 3: witnesses and find culpability. So anyway, my point is I
Speaker 3: have no idea any of this, but I will say,
Speaker 3: like when you hang out with sketchy people and you
Speaker 3: hang out in sketchy environments, then you definitely leave yourself
Speaker 3: vulnerable to such accusations if that's the behavior that you guys.
Speaker 1: Are all indulging in and rapping about. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, look not to get too but it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we had a code and all this, like he had
Speaker 1: a code and he sold drugs, Like what you're checking people?
Speaker 3: So somebody to make a joke, Oh, he was checking
Speaker 3: IDs when he was selling drugs and making sure he
Speaker 3: wasn't selling to mothers.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, spare me your code. Bullshit in
Speaker 1: terms of what that means.
Speaker 2: So he's you know, yeah, until proven guilt, like you know,
Speaker 2: we'll see what comes out. And he deserves to be
Speaker 2: able to have his side of the story, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I mean he was close with Ditty, so
Speaker 2: and so he was one of the big names that
Speaker 2: people have been That's part of the why this is
Speaker 2: a big story is because a lot of the chatter
Speaker 2: centered around is jay Z going to be implicated in this?
Speaker 2: Because based on the allegations which have been denied by
Speaker 2: Ditty and his team, Based on the allegations against him,
Speaker 2: this was a large criminal enterprise that Ditty was engaged
Speaker 2: in filled with a whole lot of enablers, and at
Speaker 2: the very least, it is hard to imagine that jay
Speaker 2: Z did not know quite a bit of what was
Speaker 2: going on and the sort of you know, criminal abusive
Speaker 2: behavior that was being engaged in, because the allegation suggests
Speaker 2: that it was quite systematic. So that's why a lot
Speaker 2: of people were looking in his direction when the initial
Speaker 2: allegations against Diddy began to drop. I will also just
Speaker 2: note that when jay Z met his wife Beyonce, as
Speaker 2: other people are noting online, she was sixteen. Now they
Speaker 2: started dating, she says when they were. At times she
Speaker 2: said eighteen, at other times she said nineteen. She was
Speaker 2: very young, Oh wow, and he was I want to
Speaker 2: say thirty.
Speaker 1: It's creepy.
Speaker 2: So in any case, that's putting out there on the
Speaker 2: public record. Again, he denies all the allegations, and so
Speaker 2: we'll say, you know, we'll see where this goes. But
Speaker 2: just wanted to update you on that because he is
Speaker 2: such a giant name, and because there has been a
Speaker 2: lot of speculation swirling around him. This is the first
Speaker 2: official allegation to drop against him. Now we had seen this.
Speaker 2: She's a come forward before with these details with regards
Speaker 2: to Ditty, but the other male celebrity in the room
Speaker 2: had been unnamed, so now we know the name she
Speaker 2: is giving.
Speaker 1: Us jay Z, So we'll see crazy stuff.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really is yeah?
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean even when reading it, I was shocked.
Speaker 5: I was like this.
Speaker 3: I mean, as he he's taking it seriously and he's
Speaker 3: coming out and going after this lawyer. So I mean,
Speaker 3: there are really only two options in terms of But
Speaker 3: I don't know how we're going to find the truth.
Speaker 1: That's part of what's other scary.
Speaker 3: But perhaps we also may learn even if this is
Speaker 3: not true, we may learn a little bit more about
Speaker 3: his life, right and Ditty and some of their own
Speaker 3: things that were going on in the past. Have you
Speaker 3: seen this clip of Ashton because you're going around on
Speaker 3: hot ones being unable to talk about Ditty.
Speaker 1: Parties, don't. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's gone very people should watch it. It's it's pretty interesting. Anyways,
Speaker 3: We'll keep everybody updated and we'll see you all tomorrow.