Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: All right, well, shall we turn to the Democrats and
Speaker 2: what's going on with them? So you guys will probably
Speaker 2: remember there was a significant race for a leadership fight
Speaker 2: in the House between AOC who wanted to be ranking
Speaker 2: member on the Oversight Committee, which basically it's a very
Speaker 2: public facing role. It was a good fit for her
Speaker 2: because she understands the media, she's feisty, she does well
Speaker 2: in these committee hearings, etc. So she'd be in this
Speaker 2: prominent forward facing role in the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: intervened and instead got her man Jerry Connolly to across
Speaker 2: the finish line to be ranking member of this committee. Now,
Speaker 2: it was known at the time that Jerry Connolly is
Speaker 2: he's in his seventies and he also is suffering from
Speaker 2: cancer and apparently that you know, the cancer prognosis has
Speaker 2: just recently gotten worse. So he is now saying he's
Speaker 2: stepping away from that role as ranking member of Oversight
Speaker 2: that he had just won over AOC. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen. This is his official statement. Jerry Connelly,
Speaker 2: by the way, I've met him before a number of times.
Speaker 2: He represents a northern Virginia suburban like Fairfax County District
Speaker 2: in Virginia and has for a while. He used to
Speaker 2: be the head of the Board of Supervisors in Fairbacks County,
Speaker 2: so long time public official. Anyway, he says to your friends,
Speaker 2: I want to begin by thanking you for your good
Speaker 2: wishes and compassion as I continue to tackle my diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Your outpouring of love and support has given me strength
Speaker 2: in my fights both against cancer and our collective defensive
Speaker 2: democracynnounced my diagnosis six months ago. I promised transparency. After
Speaker 2: grueling treatments, we've learned the cancer which was initially beaten back,
Speaker 2: has now returned. I'll do everything possible to continue to
Speaker 2: represent you and thank you for your grace. The sun
Speaker 2: is setting on my time in public service. This will
Speaker 2: be my last term in Congress. I will be stepping
Speaker 2: back as ranking member of the Oversight Committee soon with
Speaker 2: no rancor, in a full heart, I'm move into this
Speaker 2: final chapter full of pride in what we've accomplished together
Speaker 2: over thirty years. My loving family and staff sustain me,
Speaker 2: my extended family. You all have been a joy to serve,
Speaker 2: your friend and public servant, and you know I don't
Speaker 2: want to be an asshole here. I've met, like I said,
Speaker 2: I met Jerry Connolly, you know, interpersonally, very nice person.
Speaker 2: But if you truly believe yourself to be which I do,
Speaker 2: in this existential threat for the future of the country
Speaker 2: and democracy, you need to put your most effective players forward.
Speaker 2: And it was always very clear that that would not
Speaker 2: be Jerry Connell at seventy years old in battling cancer.
Speaker 2: It would be someone like AOC who is leading the
Speaker 2: fight and is out there, you know, touring the country
Speaker 2: alongside Bernie Sanders and garnering record breaking crowds. And understands
Speaker 2: new media, et cetera. And so here we are four
Speaker 2: months into the Trump administration and he's already having to
Speaker 2: step back emily from this role whatsoever. In terms of
Speaker 2: the who's going to be the replacement, it's not going
Speaker 2: to be AOC. She is no longer actually on this committee.
Speaker 2: She I guess got switched or booth committees or whatever.
Speaker 2: Can put Ken Klippenstein, who's been all over this from
Speaker 2: the very beginning, put the information to.
Speaker 3: Say the very least about Ken.
Speaker 4: I tried.
Speaker 2: I tried to book Ken for us today, but he's
Speaker 2: like traveling right now and is just like killing him
Speaker 2: because yeah, all over this other beginning.
Speaker 4: But anyway, put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is who looks to be set to replace him,
Speaker 2: another seventy year old representative, Stephen Lynch. Ken goes on
Speaker 2: to say his background is colorful. Lynch was apparently arrested
Speaker 2: some point for drunkenly attacking a group of Iranian students
Speaker 2: protesting US intervention abroad. There are some other members on
Speaker 2: this committee who could have been interesting. Rocana is on
Speaker 2: this committee. Jasmine Crockett is also on this committee. So
Speaker 2: you don't have to go with another seventy year old,
Speaker 2: but yet here they are just like this is the
Speaker 2: guy who's next in line seniority or leadership can rely
Speaker 2: on them or whatever. And it's absolutely incredible. I mean,
Speaker 2: Democrats have had multiple members die in office this session,
Speaker 2: which have led Republicans to you know, expand their margins
Speaker 2: by a little bit, and that little bit can make
Speaker 2: all the difference in terms of, you know, getting close
Speaker 2: legislation through the House.
Speaker 5: I'm so there's no committee that Democrats would should have
Speaker 5: wanted a like very aware and healthy person on more
Speaker 5: than oversight for the first one hundred days of the
Speaker 5: second Trump administration. Like, I am furious on behalf of
Speaker 5: Democratic voters just thinking back on how insane was like
Speaker 5: this is a concession that everyone who was concerned about
Speaker 5: Connolly getting this position was correct. This is him basically
Speaker 5: throwing in the towel and saying I'm not up to
Speaker 5: the job. Well, if you had had the humility and
Speaker 5: your supporters had had the humility to say that one
Speaker 5: hundred days ago, the Oversight Committee could have been much
Speaker 5: more robustly energetically pushing back on the Trump administration. It
Speaker 5: is just completely it's you know, all of this is obvious,
Speaker 5: what we're saying right now, but it is such a
Speaker 5: just obnoxious example of how wrong the old guard is,
Speaker 5: and how stubborn the old guard is, and how stuck
Speaker 5: in their way as the old guard is, and just.
Speaker 3: How not up to the moment they are.
Speaker 5: It's just the sort of arrogance of the political class
Speaker 5: just being I think, you know, to some extent here
Speaker 5: put on full display and again predictable and obvious. But
Speaker 5: the Oversight Committee is doing exactly what it says, like
Speaker 5: they have powers to call witnesses, like when Republicans were
Speaker 5: in the minority recently under Biden, the Oversight Committee, the
Speaker 5: Oversight Committee is where they felt they were doing their
Speaker 5: most important work. And it's because you can then call
Speaker 5: hearings and do Hunter Biden and Benghazi and all of
Speaker 5: those things come out of oversight.
Speaker 3: It's very powerful if you use it correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I remember when he won this or was
Speaker 2: going for this position at the time, which I could
Speaker 2: remember the exact language that he used, but he said
Speaker 2: something like like I've waited a long time for this.
Speaker 2: It was very like I did my time. I'm next
Speaker 2: in line, so I'm getting this seat. And Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: made sure that he had the votes to be able
Speaker 2: to and again, like we all knew this was the reality.
Speaker 2: They knew this was the reality. This was utterly predictable.
Speaker 2: And so not only was it really you know, self
Speaker 2: serving for Jerry Connelly even to put himself up for
Speaker 2: this position is extraordinarily you know, extraordinarily short sighted and
Speaker 2: weak move from Democratic leadership to push him for this
Speaker 2: spot and just speaks to a lack of seriousness and
Speaker 2: a lack of meeting the moment that has been characteristic
Speaker 2: across the board from the official Democratic leadership. And buydo
Speaker 2: have another example of that Senator Schumer, who of course,
Speaker 2: you know, capitulated the Republicans the one thing that where
Speaker 2: Democrats in the Senate really had some leverage. He completely
Speaker 2: you know, hands Republicans major victory there. Now he's on
Speaker 2: CNN saying that don't worry, he's in the fight. He
Speaker 2: has sent the Trump administration a strongly worded letter, Emily,
Speaker 2: so he will await their response. Let's take a listen
Speaker 2: to what he had to say.
Speaker 6: But it's also going to hurt the kind of medical
Speaker 6: research and other kinds of great research that has done
Speaker 6: at Harvard and other universities. So we sent him a
Speaker 6: very strong letter just the other day, tail asking eight
Speaker 6: very strong questions about why this isn't just a pretext.
Speaker 3: Well, you'll let us know if you get a response
Speaker 3: to that letter.
Speaker 5: I do want to say, I love yeah, seven not
Speaker 5: seven strongly worded questions.
Speaker 2: Eight strong, very strong, very strong questions.
Speaker 4: He said, I love that.
Speaker 2: Dana's like, okay, you let me know when they get
Speaker 2: back to you on that one, sure, buddy, Like, it's
Speaker 2: just you can't make it up.
Speaker 4: It's so pathetic. It is so utterly pathetic.
Speaker 5: It's insane that he was on live television and thought
Speaker 5: that was a good thing to say, Like, are you
Speaker 5: listening to yourself? You know that you were stepping straight
Speaker 5: into a joke, buddy. This is the minority, this is
Speaker 5: the head of Democrats for how many years and he
Speaker 5: can't even get through an interview without.
Speaker 3: Saying something as stupid as that. I mean, it's come on.
Speaker 2: Man, I miss Harry Reid. That's what I got to
Speaker 2: say about that. I miss Harry Reid. He would never, No,
Speaker 2: he would never. Meanwhile, you've got you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: just the again the leadership. They are just thrashing around
Speaker 2: trying to figure out where to be, what to say.
Speaker 2: They've recognized at this point that the base wants them
Speaker 2: to do more, so you know, their response is things
Speaker 2: like Senator Schumer sending eight strong questions and a strongly
Speaker 2: worded letter, and then Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker did
Speaker 2: some sort of a like live showlong else on the
Speaker 2: capital steps, which everything it's just, you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Just a little odd.
Speaker 2: I will say that the Corey Booker speech, it didn't
Speaker 2: really it really didn't do it for me because of
Speaker 2: a variety. You know, it wasn't really about anything, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's felt to me very performative, although impressive,
Speaker 2: like listen, to hold your bladder that long is extraordinary,
Speaker 2: if in fact that's true. Just to speak for that long,
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine. But I have to say, liberals
Speaker 2: ate that shit up. They loved it, They absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: They see him as a hero, and this shows you,
Speaker 2: like the bar is not that high. They just want
Speaker 2: people to do something, even I thought something was just
Speaker 2: like standing and talking for a while, right.
Speaker 5: Because that's a great that's a great point, because that
Speaker 5: philibuster didn't have any legislative goal. Like literally, they just
Speaker 5: were lapping up Corey Booker demonstrating how like passionately he
Speaker 5: was anti Trump and anti this administration. And it was
Speaker 5: actually smart because he was like live on TikTok and
Speaker 5: breaking records and it, you know, as I think vapid
Speaker 5: as it was, it just rallied the troops because people
Speaker 5: are desperate.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 2: But in any case, it came Jeffrey's Corey Booker, do
Speaker 2: this hangout live stream thing on the Capitol steps. Let
Speaker 2: me give you just just just a little taste of
Speaker 2: it them like just a little taste, And.
Speaker 7: I worked you all to know, I miss Obama, I
Speaker 7: miss Obama.
Speaker 8: I miss Obama, I miss Obama.
Speaker 9: And I miss I miss her husband too.
Speaker 7: We'll be pushing back against the Republican efforts to jam
Speaker 7: this far right, extreme budget down the throats of the
Speaker 7: American people, and we wanted to make sure that heading
Speaker 7: into that fight, we were very clear with our Republican colleagues,
Speaker 7: there will not be a single Democratic vote to take
Speaker 7: away the healthcare of the American people.
Speaker 9: Not a sing law.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, Emily, the spirit of Barack Obama is alive
Speaker 2: and well in the fake ass speech cadence of people
Speaker 2: like Pete Boodaget and Corey Booker. So never fear. It
Speaker 2: just feels so try hard, you know. It just feels
Speaker 2: very like we're going to be cool, We're going to
Speaker 2: do a thing. Here, we are doing a thing.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It just lands weird.
Speaker 5: And Hakim Jeffries is clearly his staff has clearly made
Speaker 5: a considered effort in the last couple of weeks to
Speaker 5: make sure that he does media mostly out of a suit.
Speaker 5: So like now they're putting him in a baseball cap
Speaker 5: and T shirts and his like sneakers. It's just so like,
Speaker 5: I'm casual every man, Like I'm just you know, your friend.
Speaker 5: It's very to your point try hard. When it's so sudden,
Speaker 5: it looks just cringe and it's again We've we talked
Speaker 5: about this recently, but it's so strange for me because
Speaker 5: this used to be even like younger Republicans how they
Speaker 5: came across. And I'm not saying Republicans are like hip
Speaker 5: and spry either, because they're not. But it used to
Speaker 5: not be like this for Democrats, Like it used to
Speaker 5: be a lot easier for them, especially in the Obama era,
Speaker 5: to come across as normal human beings. But they're so
Speaker 5: they're overthinking it so much because they're so thrown off
Speaker 5: by like the youth shift and working class Hispanic voters,
Speaker 5: some changes in the black electorate, so it's just hard
Speaker 5: for them to figure out what they should do and
Speaker 5: they haven't landed on anything, so it ends up looking
Speaker 5: really awkward and there's no sign of that, you know,
Speaker 5: there's no sign of the light being at the end
Speaker 5: of that tunnel at all.
Speaker 2: And some of them, I mean, they're just so many
Speaker 2: of them are just like old and kind of lost
Speaker 2: at sea in the world of like the new social media.
Speaker 2: Like they be like I should be doing a thing,
Speaker 2: but I don't really know what that thing is. And
Speaker 2: so much of this too, is like just stop trying
Speaker 2: to be something you're not. Like Kim Jeffries. You're never
Speaker 2: going to be a firebrand. You're never going to be that.
Speaker 4: Like super relatable, cool guy. That's just not who you are.
Speaker 2: I mean, look to go back to the Canada Black
Speaker 2: Mark Carney is like the ultimate technocrat and he just
Speaker 2: leans into it and people are like, Okay, that's who
Speaker 2: he is, you know, I mean Bernie Sanders, like, he's
Speaker 2: not out there trying to do a thing.
Speaker 4: He just is himself. That's that's it.
Speaker 2: That's just stop trying so hard. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: I'd be remiss if I didn't say Chuck Schumer's strategy,
Speaker 2: I just basically like, wait around and let the Republicans
Speaker 2: hang themselves is kind of panning out. Not only have
Speaker 2: we covered extensively Trump's numbers at one hundred days, obviously
Speaker 2: they're really bad across the board. Even his best issue
Speaker 2: of immigration, he's now underwater, especially when you ask about
Speaker 2: specifics foreign policy, but most importantly, his economic numbers have
Speaker 2: fallen off a cliff, and predictably that is having a
Speaker 2: major impact on the down ballot races. I think Republicans
Speaker 2: just basically expect to lose the House at this point.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a foregone conclusion, given that we're nowhere
Speaker 2: near out of the woods with regard to the economic
Speaker 2: pain either. Harry Enton just did a piece on the
Speaker 2: unpopularity of the Republican Party and how it may translate
Speaker 2: to midterm losses. Let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 10: Democrats versus Republicans. We have three polls out within the
Speaker 10: last few weeks.
Speaker 8: What do they all show?
Speaker 10: They all show the Democrats up by two points in
Speaker 10: the CNBC poll, the Fox News poll that was out
Speaker 10: on Friday.
Speaker 8: Look at that, Democrats up by seven.
Speaker 10: The New York Times poll that was out this Friday
Speaker 10: as well, Democrats by three.
Speaker 8: And keep in mind the House.
Speaker 10: GOP won the popular vote back in twenty twenty four
Speaker 10: by a little less than three percentage points. So when
Speaker 10: you see three seven to two averaging four, that is
Speaker 10: a tremendous shift. That is a shift of seven points
Speaker 10: from the November twenty twenty four elections away from the GOP.
Speaker 10: You look at Trump's net federal rating in October of
Speaker 10: twenty twenty four coin in the New York Times those
Speaker 10: minus nine points. Look at where it is now minus
Speaker 10: thirty points among independence That's horrific, that's historically awful. Take
Speaker 10: a look at the generic ballot in October of twenty
Speaker 10: twenty four. The Democrats were ahead, but only by three,
Speaker 10: well within the margin of our Look at where they.
Speaker 8: Are now, up seventeen points.
Speaker 10: There is no way on God's green Earth that the
Speaker 10: Republicans can hold on to the House of Representatives. If
Speaker 10: they lose independence by seventeen percentage points.
Speaker 8: My goodness, gracious.
Speaker 4: What do you think about that?
Speaker 5: M I mean like, this is despite Democrats' best efforts,
Speaker 5: I think, And that's part of this is interesting too.
Speaker 5: Did you see Alyssa slock and dropping like F bombs recently?
Speaker 5: Did you see the stories about that?
Speaker 4: I did not see that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, The Hill had a whole story yesterday about how
Speaker 5: Dems are like embracing the F word.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: I feel like that happens every time a political party
Speaker 5: gets a little bit besperate. But you know, it reminded
Speaker 5: me of the Hakim Jeffrey's Corey Booker like just sitting
Speaker 5: on the steps chatting with people moment.
Speaker 3: Because it's like, you.
Speaker 5: Guys, what's working right now is Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
Speaker 5: Acosio Cortez going to Red States and holding fighting oligarchy,
Speaker 5: fighting oligarchy rallies, Not Alissa Slockin, you know, thinking that
Speaker 5: she's like a cool mom for dropping F bombs in
Speaker 5: an interview, like forcing herself to drop an F bomb
Speaker 5: in an interview.
Speaker 3: It GE's just so bizarre.
Speaker 5: But I think the reason they're doing it, Crystal, is
Speaker 5: because they like Hakim Jefferys and Corey Booker can't go
Speaker 5: full quote fight oligarchy. This is there and that's, by
Speaker 5: the way, what's good for the party. Uh, what's good
Speaker 5: for them would be to embrace this anti oligarch message.
Speaker 5: But because they are also bankrolled by oligarchs, they're uncomfortable
Speaker 5: with that messaging. And that's why Alyssa Slockin is now
Speaker 5: explicitly pushing back against it. And I think it's why
Speaker 5: Hakim Jeffries and Corey Booker maybe they clear the very
Speaker 5: low bar of you know, looking like they have at
Speaker 5: least some energy and aren't you know, full connolly. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, I think what's what what Trump
Speaker 5: is struggling with is coming without actually a decent resistance
Speaker 5: from the Democratic Party, and so that goes to show
Speaker 5: like what could this be? Like I mean again, like
Speaker 5: Donald Trump has barely won a couple of elections. This
Speaker 5: man came off being the host of Celebrity Apprentice, Like
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton was terrible, Joe Biden was terrible, Kamala Harris
Speaker 5: was terrible. That's how bad Dems have been. It's not
Speaker 5: any I think special testament to Donald Trump being super
Speaker 5: attractive and likable. I think he's a smart politician with
Speaker 5: his base. But it's not like the entire country loves
Speaker 5: Donald Trump despite what he may say. It's just that
Speaker 5: consistently Dems have been worse than Trump, except for Biden
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty in the middle of the pandemic. So yea,
Speaker 5: in ten years, they have not figured out a way
Speaker 5: to be slightly better than Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, your point about slock and Jefferson Booker too is
Speaker 2: really well taken. And I've never seen anything more manufactured
Speaker 2: than the like pushing slot Eliza Sluckin.
Speaker 4: Honest, I would wanted this.
Speaker 2: The Democratic leadership for some reason was like this lady,
Speaker 2: she's the.
Speaker 4: Real future of a party. We're going to have her
Speaker 4: do the response to the state of the Union.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have her lead our effort to you know,
Speaker 2: tant down all this anti oligarchy talk that's getting a
Speaker 2: little too popular among our normy Democrat base. But to
Speaker 2: your point, you know, I think the I think the
Speaker 2: things that have really landed with the liberal base has
Speaker 2: been number one, the stop Oligarchy Tour, the fight Oligarchy tour.
Speaker 4: Number two.
Speaker 2: You know, people like Jasmine Crockett who just can like
Speaker 2: dish it out and really is it just has this
Speaker 2: vibe and this energy. She's not going to take any shit,
Speaker 2: and she's gonna like get out there and get in
Speaker 2: your face.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 2: Cory Booker's speech, whether I like it or not, I mean, listen,
Speaker 2: he did a thing, okay, like liberals loved it. The
Speaker 2: other thing is the Chris van Holland going to El Salvador,
Speaker 2: which you know, to me is a study in contrast
Speaker 2: between Corey Booker's thing, which was actually basically about nothing
Speaker 2: like him positioning himself as a resistance fighter, whereas Chris
Speaker 2: van Holland, you know, he actually did a thing like
Speaker 2: he went. It was a real issue. It was some
Speaker 2: personal risktue himself. It's a risky political issue, and obviously
Speaker 2: b Kelly did all he could to make the optics
Speaker 2: as terrible as possible, et cetera. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think his actions really kept that story alive and has
Speaker 2: helped to move public opinion dramatically against the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: not only specifically in that case, but that's what helped
Speaker 2: to drag them underwater on immigration in general. So and
Speaker 2: since then, you've seen some other representatives and senators follow
Speaker 2: suit and going to visit people who are detained because
Speaker 2: they you know, published an not bed or had some
Speaker 2: you know, pro Palestine speech or whatever. You saw other
Speaker 2: members also travel down to El Salvador. So that really
Speaker 2: set a model for Democrats moving forward who actually wanted
Speaker 2: to do something and not just like sit on the
Speaker 2: steps of the Capitol and talk about how much they
Speaker 2: miss Barack Obama.
Speaker 5: Well, okay, so I think with the base, it makes
Speaker 5: sense to me that that would be sort of that
Speaker 5: all of that would be a shot in the arm.
Speaker 5: I still think the Van Holland and what was the
Speaker 5: oh the uh yeah, Well, I think the Van Holland
Speaker 5: example in particular is like, I don't think they quite
Speaker 5: nailed the messaging for a broader audience, but I think
Speaker 5: he understood that what the Democratic Party's base, like the
Speaker 5: grassroots type people want right now is someone to like
Speaker 5: actually take personal risk and sect.
Speaker 2: You know, I really disagree with that, and I think
Speaker 2: it shows up in the polling. I mean, when we
Speaker 2: were looking yesterday at the best and the worst issues
Speaker 2: for Trump, his best issue and this was the New
Speaker 2: York Times Siena polling, which is you know, considered to
Speaker 2: be one of the more credible pollsters, and they.
Speaker 4: Do a large stample, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Best polling numbers were on immigration, though he was still
Speaker 2: underwater by four worst polling numbers was the handling of
Speaker 2: Kilmara Brego Garcia. So I think, I mean, the numbers
Speaker 2: I've seen are like twenty percent support what the Trump
Speaker 2: administration is doing there. So I do believe that the
Speaker 2: efforts of Chris van Holland and others to shine a
Speaker 2: light on that and to consistently explain, you know, this
Speaker 2: isn't really about this one guy, and however you may
Speaker 2: feel about him, this is about due process for all
Speaker 2: of us. This is about protecting all of our rights
Speaker 2: and your right to have your day in court before
Speaker 2: being sent for life to this you know, foreign goolog.
Speaker 2: I think it's undeniable at this point that that messaging
Speaker 2: has landed and that it has dramatically turned people against
Speaker 2: the Trump administration's handling in that one specific case, with
Speaker 2: bleedover into how they feel about the immigration program read large.
Speaker 5: I think people definitely agree with that sentiment. I don't
Speaker 5: disagree that that's where the public has landed on it.
Speaker 5: I think it's a for me it's an interesting case
Speaker 5: study and how Dems can misread or not misread that's
Speaker 5: the wrong word, how they can over maybe overread the
Speaker 5: public's position. Like it's easy to say, and actually I
Speaker 5: think Trump does this sometimes too. It's easy to say, Okay,
Speaker 5: the public is with us, this is a winning issue.
Speaker 5: Can't be sending people to see caught on, you know,
Speaker 5: mistakes that your own administration's attorneys, your own DJ attorneys
Speaker 5: admit and like sucking up to the CALA and doing
Speaker 5: that weird stuff like nobody is like here for that.
Speaker 5: I think what Van Holland did then looked like the
Speaker 5: Trump administration was able to message it in a way
Speaker 5: that probably resonated with a lot of people as Dems
Speaker 5: actively trying to keep people who are not in the
Speaker 5: country legally in the country, even though it's not what
Speaker 5: the case is about. I think it's easy to get
Speaker 5: we probably just disagree on it. I just think it's
Speaker 5: easy to get caught in that trap of like not
Speaker 5: sticking on the narrow issue, but then also looking like
Speaker 5: you're in the position that most people disagree with because
Speaker 5: you kind of misread where people are on the narrow
Speaker 5: issue in and of itself.
Speaker 3: But we probably.
Speaker 4: Disagree with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do, I do, just disagree with the
Speaker 2: assessment there. And I think at this point the polling
Speaker 2: bears it out pretty clearly that, you know, because the
Speaker 2: Trump administration had admitted fault in this case, it made
Speaker 2: it fairly clear cut of like you screwed up.
Speaker 4: Bring the guy back, like what are you doing?
Speaker 2: And also because the Trump Trump himself was like, we're
Speaker 2: going for us born, you know, homegrown criminals next, it
Speaker 2: didn't take any imagination to go, oh, this isn't just
Speaker 2: about rights for undocumented immigrants. This is an assault on
Speaker 2: all He wants to be able to send anybody he
Speaker 2: wants and disappear into this dungeon. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think that really made it easier for Democrats to make
Speaker 2: the case that this matter is for everyone. And you know,
Speaker 2: the Teriff stuff politically is obviously extremely toxic, and it's
Speaker 2: also something that everyone is aware of their own material
Speaker 2: circumstances and the way they're being negatively impacted. So I
Speaker 2: think they were able to push the message about kil
Speaker 2: Mar Abrego Garcia and the assault on rights and the
Speaker 2: way that the implications this has for the broader immigration agenda. Well,
Speaker 2: obviously the tariff stuff is there, not going away anytime soon,
Speaker 2: but we can we can agree to disagree on that
Speaker 2: one if you'd like.
Speaker 4: We'll come back to it, I'm sure another day.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there'll be plenty to talk about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's go Deportations to come, yes.
Speaker 2: Indeed, no doubt about it. A long way from through
Speaker 2: with that. Let's go ahead and talk about some updates
Speaker 2: with regard to Israel and with regard to our own country.
Speaker 4: Of course.
Speaker 2: Edamar Ben Gavier has been doing a tour here in
Speaker 2: the US. He is, you know, actual terrorist of Israel,
Speaker 2: but part of the NETANYAHUO coalition and government. He routinely,
Speaker 2: you know, he's loud and proud about, Hey, I think
Speaker 2: we should bomb aid depots, and I don't think there
Speaker 2: should be any food going into the Gaza Strip. And
Speaker 2: he goes to these resettlement conferences and is a real
Speaker 2: hero to you know, the sort of like extremist settler
Speaker 2: community who are also very overt about we want to
Speaker 2: push all the Palestinians out, and we want to be
Speaker 2: able to completely take over the Gaza Strip and all
Speaker 2: of Palestine. So let's go ahead and take a look.
Speaker 2: He was here in the halls of Congress and madea bench.
Speaker 2: Men of Code Pink was protesting him along with others.
Speaker 2: We can go ahead and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So this is their headline from Code Pink Israeli war
Speaker 2: criminal Itamar Ben Gavie. And you know, she's confronting him
Speaker 2: and he's just sort of like completely losing his mind.
Speaker 2: He's not one to just you know, to just kind
Speaker 2: of take it and keep moving. He's very this is
Speaker 2: his persona is He's this kind of like thuggish character
Speaker 2: who you know, will has pulled down a gun on
Speaker 2: someone previously and is shouting back and he's been making
Speaker 2: the rounds.
Speaker 4: We'll get back to that.
Speaker 2: He was at Yale, he was protested there, and he
Speaker 2: was also speaking at a synagogue in Brooklyn where there
Speaker 2: were protests and you know, one pro Palestine Jewish Israeli
Speaker 2: woman was viciously assaulted there.
Speaker 4: But we'll get to that in a moment.
Speaker 2: I wanted to highlight for people there's a new documentary
Speaker 2: out at from BBC done by Louis Thrue about the
Speaker 2: settlements in the West Bank and the settler idlogy. He interviews.
Speaker 2: I really recommend the whole things about an hour long.
Speaker 2: I watched it last night and it's really fantastic. We
Speaker 2: were probably watching it at the same time, Crystal.
Speaker 4: Oh really that's last night too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were probably watching it at the
Speaker 3: same time.
Speaker 2: We should have you know, we could have could have
Speaker 2: gotten together and I should have done it. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he interviewed Daniella Weiss, among others, and she really is
Speaker 2: sort of like the the godmother of the settler movement,
Speaker 2: and I really recommend people listen to what she has
Speaker 2: to say about what the Israeli government's program is, because
Speaker 2: what I've found is that the more like extremist elements
Speaker 2: within Israel are much more upfront and much more accurate
Speaker 2: about the actual project that Israel is engaging in at
Speaker 2: this point. So let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to a little bit of that documentary.
Speaker 11: So the idea is to force the government by putting
Speaker 11: people starts with small settlements, then they get bigger than
Speaker 11: they get recognized by the State of Israel and basically
Speaker 11: creating a new demographic reality.
Speaker 12: We do not force the government. We do for governments
Speaker 12: what they cannot do for themselves. Even if you're take
Speaker 12: Nathaniel now, he is very happy with what we do
Speaker 12: here and also about our plans to build in Jewish
Speaker 12: communities in Gaza. Is happy about it, but he cannot
Speaker 12: say it. He says the opposite. It's not realistic.
Speaker 13: Good, we will make it realistic. It's not forcing the government,
Speaker 13: it's helping the government. It's step number one one in politics.
Speaker 13: You don't force the government. You give the government the courage,
Speaker 13: the ability, the public support, the political support.
Speaker 12: I think you understand what I said, even if you.
Speaker 2: Disagree, and I think we understand Emily. I think she
Speaker 2: makes it quite plain. And what Louis, you know, really
Speaker 2: uncovers this won't be surprising to people who have followed
Speaker 2: this closely, is just how much of the illegal settlement
Speaker 2: activity and the violence against Palestinians is directly backed by
Speaker 2: the Israeli government. And Daniella is correct, she has you know,
Speaker 2: she's absolutely one hundred percent correct that what they are
Speaker 2: doing is with the tacit support of the government and
Speaker 2: helps to enable the you know, explicit project of Natanyahu
Speaker 2: and his coalition.
Speaker 5: You know, I was thinking about that clip while we
Speaker 5: were watching Medea. Benjamin kind of shout at Bengavir because
Speaker 5: in a sense, there is. So it is so much
Speaker 5: more you know, as she says at the end, you know,
Speaker 5: I think you understand what I'm saying, even if you
Speaker 5: disagree with it. It is so much more like the so
Speaker 5: much more respectable to be Danielle Weiss and Ben Gavir
Speaker 5: than to be Benja Yahu, because it is or to be,
Speaker 5: for example, Joe Biden or the Republicans who try to
Speaker 5: have it both ways and say, this is not what
Speaker 5: we're doing, but this is what we're doing. The the
Speaker 5: at least like transparency of the project that they're involved in.
Speaker 5: U is so much clearer and more discernible than the
Speaker 5: people who try to have it both ways and say, no,
Speaker 5: we're following all international law. This is uh, you know,
Speaker 5: we are doing everything right. It's you who are in
Speaker 5: the wrong here. No, they're being honest about what the
Speaker 5: project actually is. And again most people disagree with it
Speaker 5: very strongly, but you know, it's it just seeing that
Speaker 5: puts in stark contrast the sort of muddled bs that
Speaker 5: you get from Neta Yahu and Joe Biden. And I
Speaker 5: mentioned Biden in particular because we have the next element
Speaker 5: to put up on the screen.
Speaker 3: D three. This is some reporting from.
Speaker 5: Drop site about the quote unquote tireless work that Biden
Speaker 5: was putting in to get a cease fire in Crystal.
Speaker 5: I just wanted to see your reaction to the strap
Speaker 5: site story and a little bit more from it as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is a synopsis of an Israeli Channel
Speaker 2: thirteen investigation, and you know, it's incredible out the information
Speaker 2: you can get from the Israeli press that will never
Speaker 2: be repeated in the US media. But in any case,
Speaker 2: the former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog said, God did the
Speaker 2: State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president
Speaker 2: during this period we fought in Gaza for over a year.
Speaker 2: The administration never came to us and said ceasefire. Now,
Speaker 2: it never did, and that's not to be taken for granted.
Speaker 2: So you know, you can't help but think of AOC
Speaker 2: at the DNC saying Kamala Harris working tirelessly for a ceasefire.
Speaker 2: In fact, I saw Ilhan Omar kind of take a
Speaker 2: shot on Twitter saying, oh, look, it turns out they
Speaker 2: were as we all expected. They were never working tirelessly
Speaker 2: for a ceasefire. And you know, the Democratic base and
Speaker 2: much of the country has completely turned against Israel in
Speaker 2: an extraordinary manner because even in spite of the wave
Speaker 2: of propaganda, we are fed about what is being done
Speaker 2: in the Gaza Strip. It could not help but break
Speaker 2: through the images, the immorality, the war crimes, the starvation,
Speaker 2: the utter decimation of the Gaza Strip broke through, and
Speaker 2: people are looking at that with horror and say, how
Speaker 2: can my tax dollars go to support this?
Speaker 4: I don't want to be any part of this.
Speaker 2: And so to have it overtly said what we all knew,
Speaker 2: what we all expected, but just to be brazenly open
Speaker 2: about it. No, the Biden administration, they didn't want a ceasefire.
Speaker 2: They didn't ask for a ceasefire. They never did. And
Speaker 2: so there was always a question emily during the Biden
Speaker 2: administration of whether, you know, they really wanted the war
Speaker 2: to end, but they just were afraid of the political
Speaker 2: pressure and they didn't want to apply leverage. But really
Speaker 2: they'd like it if the bomb stopped or whatever. And
Speaker 2: I think that this demonstrates that Biden himself, who you know,
Speaker 2: was a kind of died in the whole ideological zionist
Speaker 2: committed to it, had an outdated view of Israel forge
Speaker 2: in like nineteen seventy two or whatever, that he supported this,
Speaker 2: he's supported, He'd never asked for it to stop. He
Speaker 2: was not working tirelessly for a Seasar Kamala Harris certainly
Speaker 2: was not working tirelessly for a ceasefire in spite of
Speaker 2: the fact that, yeah, at this point, the people who
Speaker 2: have power and are running the show and are driving
Speaker 2: the agenda within Israel are Danielle Owiss much more than
Speaker 2: any sort of like rump liberal internationalist political group that
Speaker 2: may still sort of like exist on the margins within Israel.
Speaker 2: It is Itamar Ben Kavie. It is Daniel Owiss who
Speaker 2: are driving, who are driving the train and running the show.
Speaker 2: So what I've been saying for a while is, you know,
Speaker 2: if you had been listening to Danielle Owis and Smochurch
Speaker 2: and Ben Gavie and the most alarmist lefties from the beginning,
Speaker 2: you know, from October eighth about what was going to
Speaker 2: unfold and what were that was going to look like,
Speaker 2: you would have a much much, much more accurate, greater
Speaker 2: understanding of everything that unfolded from then until now. Now
Speaker 2: there is a little bit of possible there's some talks
Speaker 2: going on about a potential cease fire. I'm not even
Speaker 2: going to come close to getting my hopes up at
Speaker 2: this point because it just looks so incredibly dire. And
Speaker 2: this comes at a time too. It could put the
Speaker 2: next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 8: Yo.
Speaker 2: The whoever is left in Gaza, However, many people are left,
Speaker 2: two million maybe less. According to Trump and things that
Speaker 2: he've said, they're being starved to death in real time.
Speaker 2: Right now, nothing has entered this from the American Conservative
Speaker 2: Nothing has entered Gaza for more than fifty days. Charity
Speaker 2: kitchens now they've said they are out completely of food,
Speaker 2: they're shuttering services. Two million people on the break. We
Speaker 2: are currently witnessing israel solution to the Gaza question, an
Speaker 2: unmistakable humanitarian crisis engineered by the Israeli government to remove
Speaker 2: from its borders and entire people. It has deemed the
Speaker 2: equivalent of Locus. That's where we are, I mean, and
Speaker 2: all of the debate about you know, and the from
Speaker 2: the early days, oh did they really bomb a hospital?
Speaker 2: They would never do that, And here's our PowerPoint presentation
Speaker 2: about the real tunnels and all of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: now there's just no even pretense anymore Emily.
Speaker 5: And this is so again, it's not entirely surprising that
Speaker 5: the American conservative would publish ASTs surrealist and you know,
Speaker 5: been smeared by you know, conservatives for a really long time.
Speaker 5: But it gets to it gets back to Bengavir Danielle Weiss,
Speaker 5: the at least like consistency of their argument, which is
Speaker 5: that yes, the people of Gaza, the people of the
Speaker 5: West Bank, but especially the people of Gaza in this context,
Speaker 5: starve them.
Speaker 3: This is war like.
Speaker 5: That's their argument, and they're honest about it, whereas the
Speaker 5: nets and Nahu of the world, will, you know, say
Speaker 5: this is, you know, we're doing the best that we can.
Speaker 5: You know, this is we we did this, we did that,
Speaker 5: we follow all the rules. This is you know, totally
Speaker 5: in compliance. We're doing the best we can under tough circumstances.
Speaker 5: When in reality there's this underlying sort of ideological marriage
Speaker 5: of the millenarian approach of people who are trying to
Speaker 5: settle areas of the West Bank, but then also the
Speaker 5: secular people who believe secular Zionists, who who want Israel
Speaker 5: to sort of be protected from enemies. They are not
Speaker 5: honest about the means to that end. They both share
Speaker 5: the same end, which is uh more land and in
Speaker 5: all of the various ways to accomplish that, but they're
Speaker 5: not honest that they are pursuing those beings to that end.
Speaker 5: And that is that contrast is really clear when you
Speaker 5: watch the documentary.
Speaker 4: Especially, Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: And if you watch the documentary and you talk to
Speaker 2: some of these settlers, a number of whom, by the way,
Speaker 2: are Americans, by the way, and you'll say, well, what
Speaker 2: about this is illegal? Like what you're doing is illegal,
Speaker 2: These settlements are illegal under international law. They'll say, one
Speaker 2: of them said directly, don't care. Don't care. As the
Speaker 2: Bible is the land. Deed is what the Bible is.
Speaker 2: The land need some things are greater than the law.
Speaker 2: And that's their view, is that they don't have to
Speaker 2: abide by anything. God has promised this land to them.
Speaker 2: That's what they believe, and whatever it takes, they're going
Speaker 2: to do it, including starving people, including you know, reducing
Speaker 2: Gaza to rubble, including ethnic cleansing, whatever.
Speaker 5: Testament justice, Yes, that's right, that's yep. And again that
Speaker 5: it is so much more honest and like that's the
Speaker 5: you know, again, as Danielle Weis says, disagree with it,
Speaker 5: but that puts it all on the table for people
Speaker 5: to judge what the tactics are as opposed to again
Speaker 5: hiding behind this sort of nonsense problem about following international
Speaker 5: law and everything. That's just posturing, and it forces American politicians,
Speaker 5: our own politicians to lie and stretch the truth on
Speaker 5: their behalf in order to keep funneling the money that way.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling on the Democratic side it's this
Speaker 2: is going to be a real litmus test issue in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight because the Democratic base is eighty percent
Speaker 2: on board with we're not sending any more weapons to Israel.
Speaker 2: You know, there has just been an absolute seat change
Speaker 2: among Democratic base voters. And I have to think that
Speaker 2: this is going to be a significant litmus test issue
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty eight primary, and I think it
Speaker 2: will be very hard for a candidate to get through
Speaker 2: who holds the old line Joe Biden like whatever Israel
Speaker 2: once Israel gets position moving forward, but well, we'll have
Speaker 2: to see how the politics of that play out. And
Speaker 2: you know, whether there's uh, there are enough Palestinians and
Speaker 2: enough of Palestine left for it to even really matter
Speaker 2: at that point, which is increasingly an open and very
Speaker 2: concerning question. At the same time, let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: talk a little bit more about Benavier. Who is I mean,
Speaker 2: this man is convicted to hers. People like this used
Speaker 2: to be pushed to the fringe of Israeli society. Now
Speaker 2: he is an important and influential and powerful part of
Speaker 2: the Netanyahu coalition. So he went to Yale, there were
Speaker 2: protests there. He went and spoke at a synagogue in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: There were protests there as well, and the counter the
Speaker 2: pro Israel counter protesters turned quite violent. Can put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen, and in particular, and you know,
Speaker 2: just warning like this is disturbing. So this is a
Speaker 2: pro Palestine woman who you know, is surrounded by this
Speaker 2: like mob of counter protesters who are screaming at her
Speaker 2: and all sorts of you know, horrible insults and death
Speaker 2: to Arabs, et cetera. She's being escorted by police officers,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was quite a fraud scene. Could
Speaker 2: put the next one up on the screen. You can
Speaker 2: see this woman who was assaulted. You can see her
Speaker 2: on the left there, you know, bloodied and here after
Speaker 2: receiving some treatment and with her bandages. So this is
Speaker 2: a pro Palestine woman who happens to be Jewish and
Speaker 2: also only happens to be Israeli. And I just have
Speaker 2: to say, if this was a Jewish Israeli woman who
Speaker 2: was pro Israel who had been viciously assaulted in this way,
Speaker 2: we would have heard endless media coverage over it, and
Speaker 2: it would be used to smear the entire pro Palestine
Speaker 2: movement as violent anti Semites. But because she happens to
Speaker 2: be a pro Palestine Jewish Israeli woman, we get very
Speaker 2: very little mainstream coverage, and certainly it's not used to
Speaker 2: tar all of the pro Israel side of the equation
Speaker 2: as being anti Semitic or being violent and out of bounds,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 5: Things were getting really wild in Brooklyn last night, and
Speaker 5: I feel like that hasn't penetrated the media. I think
Speaker 5: it's just sort of just happening in the background, and
Speaker 5: people weren't talking about what's happening on the streets of
Speaker 5: New York. I mean, you see it pop up on
Speaker 5: social media. But am I wrong thinking like the sort
Speaker 5: of quote unquote mainstream media just isn't really touching this.
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think you do know why. It's
Speaker 2: because it's uncomfortable because so far the violence has been
Speaker 2: one sided, and you know, I don't know what chance
Speaker 2: were said. There's allegations that some of the pro Palestine
Speaker 2: chants were quote unquote anti Semitic. I just you know,
Speaker 2: I need to see some evidence and some proof of that.
Speaker 2: But rally chants are very different than actual assault and
Speaker 2: violent and part of this will help to explain why
Speaker 2: the media is very reticent to talk about those. You
Speaker 2: can put Eric Adams up on the screen here saying
Speaker 2: he's gonna there's going to be an investigation into this assault.
Speaker 2: He says, the NYPD is investigating a series of incidents
Speaker 2: stemming from clashing protests on Thursday that began when a
Speaker 2: group of anti Israel protesters surrounded the Jabad Lebovich World headquarters,
Speaker 2: Jewish House of Worship. Initial reports indicate one female protester
Speaker 2: was isolated from a group, harassed by counter protesters, suffered injuries,
Speaker 2: and another incident second one was surround and subjected to
Speaker 2: vile threatening by counter protesters. One ar us was made
Speaker 2: several summonss and he goes on to say that you
Speaker 2: know there's going to be an investigation here, and commending
Speaker 2: the NYPD police officers who were there on the scene,
Speaker 2: and just from him saying you know that there is
Speaker 2: going to be an investigation into these assaults. There has
Speaker 2: been a complete freak out. We can see this extremist
Speaker 2: group Bitar that they're the ones that have been like
Speaker 2: compiling the risks, the lists and bragging that the Trump
Speaker 2: administration is listening to them about which students university students
Speaker 2: should be arrested and detained for their pro Palestine speech.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 2: They say New York has fallen, Jews are unsafe in
Speaker 2: New York City. We urge all Jews to flee. Pagrams
Speaker 2: are imminent.
Speaker 3: And this is what I say. I have to say.
Speaker 5: I kind of it's surprising to me that there just
Speaker 5: isn't more again quote unquote mainstream media coverage of this
Speaker 5: because of posts like that, because it's sort of becoming
Speaker 5: it's being used as almost a roar test where the
Speaker 5: groups like Patar are saying pagrams are imminent, flee New
Speaker 5: York City, and what you see as an Israeli supporter
Speaker 5: of Palestine getting bloodied and punched in the face. I
Speaker 5: mean it's just bizarre. How I guess maybe the right
Speaker 5: way is the media doesn't know how to deal with
Speaker 5: stories like this. It's so I think it's so lost
Speaker 5: right now. It's like it's leading to a complete blind
Speaker 5: spot where people don't see what's happening on the streets
Speaker 5: of New York.
Speaker 2: Let me also make the Glenn Greenwald point, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, when these students were being rounded up and
Speaker 2: arrested for writing an op ed or being a negotiator
Speaker 2: or at a protest or whatever. What I heard from
Speaker 2: a lot of people on the right who defended this
Speaker 2: was if you are a foreigner in this country, you
Speaker 2: need to zip it, keep your mouth shut, be a
Speaker 2: good boy or girl. Don't let us know. We don't
Speaker 2: want to know about your politics. And now you have
Speaker 2: ben Gavier here, who is obviously a foreigner here in
Speaker 2: the US, going to Yale, going to Capitol Hill, going
Speaker 2: to Brooklyn. And again, this man is a convicted terrorist
Speaker 2: and is out there. You saw the video with him
Speaker 2: and Medea. Benjamin like, he's not being shy about he's
Speaker 2: not being a good little boy and keeping his views
Speaker 2: to himself while he's abroad in the United.
Speaker 4: States of America. So hmm.
Speaker 2: Interesting, there's a little bit of a double standard there
Speaker 2: about who is allowed to aggressively assert their views in
Speaker 2: whatever form and venue that they care to, even as it,
Speaker 2: you know, as he is like the ultimate insider, and
Speaker 2: if anyone has ever deserved for their visit to be protested,
Speaker 2: it is that man. He's allowed to do that, no problem.
Speaker 2: But God forbid you write a student op ed calling
Speaker 2: in your university to dive us from Israel, then you
Speaker 2: deserve to be locked up indefinitely and deported from the country.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of the push the pushback of the
Speaker 5: pushback to Bryan and Sager's drop site story last week
Speaker 5: where people were saying, you know, why is someone in
Speaker 5: the NSC formerly working for the Israeli defense Ministry? Well,
Speaker 5: why why are you upset that she was on the
Speaker 5: Israeli Defence Ministry and sort of saying it smacks of
Speaker 5: anti Semitism to say that there's anything newsworthy about that,
Speaker 5: and people going back and being like, well, if it
Speaker 5: were any other country, we would be allowed to say
Speaker 5: that's a little bit weird. Is there an espionage connection?
Speaker 5: Is there a conflict of interest? But it's the one
Speaker 5: place that if you highlight it, you end up getting
Speaker 5: accused of fomenting or perpetuating discrimination against Israel.
Speaker 3: And it was quick someone worked for another country. It's
Speaker 3: just like and is on the National Security Council. So anyway,
Speaker 3: reminded me of that point, Crystal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very very good point on that one.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and get to Ben Smith,
Speaker 2: who broke open his extraordinary internal dynamics of some of
Speaker 2: these group chats which have taken off on the right
Speaker 2: and the way that they have shaped the current government
Speaker 2: and also sort of the fallout as this government has
Speaker 2: become more unpopular, and especially with regard to tariffs.
Speaker 4: So let's go ahead and get to that.
Speaker 3: We're excited to be joined now by Ben Smith.
Speaker 5: He is the co founder and editor in chief of
Speaker 5: Semaphore as well as the host of the podcast Mixed Signals,
Speaker 5: and has a huge group that we are very eager
Speaker 5: to dissect.
Speaker 3: Ben, thank you for joining.
Speaker 9: Us, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 5: Of course, let's put this first element up on the
Speaker 5: screen because this was the already heard around the world yesterday.
Speaker 5: Ben's headline over at Semaphore was the group chats that
Speaker 5: changed America, and Ben I don't even want to try
Speaker 5: to explain the story myself, because you reported it out
Speaker 5: and it is really remarkable. And I have to say,
Speaker 5: as somebody on the right, conservatives really love signal. Signal
Speaker 5: chats are all the rage right now. But this also
Speaker 5: wasn't just explicitly conservatives. These are sort of billionaires, power brokers,
Speaker 5: the kinds of people who maybe give a little bit
Speaker 5: to Dems, a little bit of Republicans and rub elbows
Speaker 5: with everyone. So can you just tell us about these
Speaker 5: group chats that changed America? Like what the heck is
Speaker 5: going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 14: Sure, I mean I think you know, basically, starting in
Speaker 14: twenty twenty, around the time as some people may remember
Speaker 14: that the app Clubhouse was popping off, a number of
Speaker 14: kind of powerful Silicon Valley people. Mark Andresen by far
Speaker 14: the most important of them. He's the sort of old
Speaker 14: school silicon adventure capital leader who created the web browser,
Speaker 14: among other things. Tall guy egghead, you've seen him. He
Speaker 14: you know, had the feeling which I think a lot
Speaker 14: of people had, that it was sort of like impossible
Speaker 14: to have open conversations on Twitter as it was known then,
Speaker 14: and particularly that it was sort of that it was
Speaker 14: in his view like dominated by progressive speech policing and
Speaker 14: so that you know, and that tech leaders needed new spaces,
Speaker 14: and a colleague of his, again named Shruerham Krishnan, who's
Speaker 14: now the White House AI advisor, started eventually dozens of
Speaker 14: WhatsApp groups for him and other tech leaders to talk
Speaker 14: about their industries, to gossip and I think to somebody
Speaker 14: read to complain about their will employees.
Speaker 9: Basically, who were.
Speaker 14: You know, demanding that they put up whatever symbol was
Speaker 14: the sort of trendy at that moment, and they didn't
Speaker 14: want to but didn't know how to say no.
Speaker 9: And this was the shared experience.
Speaker 14: And he then asked another colleague to set up and
Speaker 14: he himself set up a bunch of signal groups, first
Speaker 14: with like Harper's specifically with Harper's letter liberals you know
Speaker 14: who were pro speech and people like Camille Foster from
Speaker 14: the Fifth Column podcast and Thomas chatterthan Williams, Yasha Monk,
Speaker 14: and then I think he and recent and Christopher Ruffo
Speaker 14: is a conservative activist who was also in that particular group,
Speaker 14: basically decided the liberals were too interested in speech and
Speaker 14: not interested enough in power, got sick of them, moved
Speaker 14: and moved on to another set of chats, and again
Speaker 14: in Richard Hanania organized a more I'm saying his name right,
Speaker 14: a more like a more right wing chat. Eventually, Richard
Speaker 14: felt like he wasn't right wing enough for that chat
Speaker 14: as in his view, and recent kind of kept moving
Speaker 14: right and you know, and basically these wound up being
Speaker 14: very important organizing nodes for Silicon Valley's embrace of Donald Trump.
Speaker 14: And the final group, which like through three hundred plus
Speaker 14: people are in. I'm honestly a little surprised that you
Speaker 14: guys aren't in it, although maybe you are. It's called
Speaker 14: Chatham House now, which is like which is basically devolved
Speaker 14: into a space where conservatives fight with Mark Cuban all day.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, well it is extraordinary. Actually, I saw
Speaker 2: Richard Hannania's response to this. He's like, these people have
Speaker 2: all the money in the world and the o they're
Speaker 2: like online try and they're in these groups trying to
Speaker 2: impress Mark Cuban or like random anonymous racists. That's what
Speaker 2: they spend their time doing. It is kind of extraordinary.
Speaker 2: And then the trajectory you sketch out is also I
Speaker 2: think important to understand the particular bubble that this Trump
Speaker 2: administration is in as well, because you're talking about this,
Speaker 2: like increasing okay that the chat that included Thomas Chatterdan
Speaker 2: Williams or whoever, that wasn't right wing enough, and they
Speaker 2: were too. They actually had some principles around free speech.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just a cudgel to use to, you know,
Speaker 2: to crush the left. And then they start a new
Speaker 2: group and that one's not right wing enough. And then
Speaker 2: we can put this extraordinary screenshot that you got your
Speaker 2: hands on on the screen that shows David Sachs getting
Speaker 2: pissed off because this group now has become worthless since
Speaker 2: the Lattice voices have TDS.
Speaker 4: Trump arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 2: Then he leaves the group and instruct someone to create
Speaker 2: a new one with just quote unquote smart people. Brian
Speaker 2: Goldberg responds, I'm not sure we have Trump arrangements in Rome.
Speaker 2: I think we Republicans who supported Trump are just seeing
Speaker 2: this as a failed administration. Followed by departures from Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 2: Sean maguire and one of the Winklevoss twins. Just absolutely
Speaker 2: amazing moment there.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and I think you do see, I mean I
Speaker 14: think there are two things happening. One is that the
Speaker 14: original reason that they started these groups, which was that
Speaker 14: there was no safe space in their view, sort of
Speaker 14: you know, I don't know to I mean, it was
Speaker 14: basically true if you felt like the progressives had gone
Speaker 14: too far, you were going to get beat up on Twitter,
Speaker 14: and they felt like they wanted a place to talk,
Speaker 14: to have open conversations.
Speaker 9: In general, the notion that you should have your political.
Speaker 14: Conversations in an open air in saying asylum like Twitter
Speaker 14: is you know, I actually don't think I think that's
Speaker 14: a pretty justifiable impulse that you don't want.
Speaker 9: To do that.
Speaker 14: But now, of course, since Elon bought Twitter, with the
Speaker 14: rise of substack and a whole podcast and all these
Speaker 14: alternative media channels, there are lots of places that you
Speaker 14: could have conservative conversations. And so I think they I
Speaker 14: mean this, you know, this being an early entry actually
Speaker 14: in a place some pretty heterodox conversations this show. And
Speaker 14: so I think the point of these spaces has eroded
Speaker 14: a little bit. I mean, Andreson says that he sort
Speaker 14: of feels like this era is drawing to an end.
Speaker 14: The other things that the consensus they built and kind
Speaker 14: of talk themselves into that Donald Trump was going to
Speaker 14: be this sort of ideal leader for you know, a
Speaker 14: Silicon valley that is most focused on something in recent
Speaker 14: talked about in a twenty twenty essay called It's Time
Speaker 14: to Build, which is most focused on let's like race
Speaker 14: to launch rockets and you know, robots and all these
Speaker 14: new products and into sort of an economic boom that is.
Speaker 9: Rooted by the way in free trade.
Speaker 14: They really just missed the tariff thing, like did not
Speaker 14: when Trump was talking about tariffs. They were not listening
Speaker 14: and they are like genuinely very very upset about that.
Speaker 5: Well, that's interesting because they were also sort of confident
Speaker 5: that they would be able to stack the administration or
Speaker 5: that the administration and be really favorable to them. And
Speaker 5: one of the things that the story helped me understand
Speaker 5: is just what was going on behind the scenes, because
Speaker 5: you could kind of without knowing this, you could kind
Speaker 5: of see that there were new alignments and groups of
Speaker 5: people who were expressing similar thoughts at similar times. And
Speaker 5: I think this just like blows it all wide open.
Speaker 5: You can kind of see the background of it. And
Speaker 5: I want to ask Ben about one of the things
Speaker 5: that stands out to me, which is just the David
Speaker 5: Snacks message that Krystal put on the screen recently was
Speaker 5: reflective of how much this chat mattered to them, or
Speaker 5: these chats I should say, mattered to them, Like it's
Speaker 5: very bizarre how much they seem to care about the
Speaker 5: quality of the discussion that it's like angering them to
Speaker 5: be surrounded by people who have trumped arrangement syndrome. Like,
Speaker 5: they really seemed to be relying on these chats as
Speaker 5: places that were shaping the way that they thought, shaping
Speaker 5: the way they thought about other people, shaping the way
Speaker 5: they thought about the world. My takeaway from that exchange
Speaker 5: is just how important these chats seemed to be. They
Speaker 5: weren't something that was happening in the background. This was
Speaker 5: like a really active part of the way they were
Speaker 5: working through the world.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, as somebody who's pretty who is I
Speaker 14: mean probably mostly beaten my addiction to Twitter, But has
Speaker 14: the times in my life been like very had my
Speaker 14: brain rewired by social media? I think you kind of
Speaker 14: understand if you've been there, like how a sort of
Speaker 14: really vibrant conversation between smart people can just sort of
Speaker 14: pull you in and particularly during the pandemic.
Speaker 9: I mean, this was this, like, I mean, and somebody told.
Speaker 14: Me Andresen was spending like twenty hours on these some
Speaker 14: days and the overwhelming reflet I mean, my first way
Speaker 14: I ran across these would be friends or sources being
Speaker 14: like this is crazy. Marc Andreessen is blowing up my
Speaker 14: phone like that's so cool. But also what you know,
Speaker 14: like he's.
Speaker 4: Very important to have something better to do.
Speaker 14: Yeah, yeah, And all of them were like, you know,
Speaker 14: he should be busier than I am, and yet I
Speaker 14: can't keep up with the text. And he's in like
Speaker 14: dozens of these groups, and any other given person is
Speaker 14: in one or two of them.
Speaker 2: Typically the wealthier you are, I think, the less busy
Speaker 2: you actually are is the reality.
Speaker 4: But anyway, go on in.
Speaker 14: The dreamy they definitely something One of the jokes going
Speaker 14: around was that somebody repeated to me is that in
Speaker 14: Maslow's hierarchy of needs, at the very very pinnacle is posting.
Speaker 4: I think there really might be something to that.
Speaker 2: I'm curious a little bit more of the makeup of
Speaker 2: who was in the group. Was it just more of
Speaker 2: the tech right figures? Were there some of the og
Speaker 2: maga types, and how much is the quote unquote like
Speaker 2: independent right wing influencer community influenced by like you know, whatever,
Speaker 2: prob whatever these billionaires happened to think on a given day.
Speaker 14: So I don't have a complete list either of the
Speaker 14: groups or of the of who was in them, but
Speaker 14: I think there were lots and lots of groups. This
Speaker 14: is like a whole archipelago, the it and so I think,
Speaker 14: you know, a lot is very Silicon Valley centric though,
Speaker 14: like you know.
Speaker 9: When when the when the.
Speaker 14: Open Ai stuff was, you know, the sort of coup
Speaker 14: attempt was going down, people were telling about being in
Speaker 14: a group with Sam Altman, like watching him react to
Speaker 14: posts in the group. As this whole story is playing out.
Speaker 14: When there was a run on Silicon Valley Bank that
Speaker 14: was really largely through these WhatsApp groups. The reason that
Speaker 14: bank collapsed so fast is that all these big investors
Speaker 14: are texting each other into a panic, which is how
Speaker 14: bank runs happen.
Speaker 9: And wow, way, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 14: It was Bloomberg Sport didn't explain which groups it was,
Speaker 14: but Bloomberg reported that at the time. Oh wow, you know,
Speaker 14: I don't think Musk personally was in these groups, but
Speaker 14: he's obviously a huge kind of they kind of orbit
Speaker 14: him a bit, and a lot of people around him
Speaker 14: were in them. No sure Peter Teal was, or at
Speaker 14: least not in the big ones, but also sort of
Speaker 14: his world and recent is by far the most kind
Speaker 14: of influential central figure in them.
Speaker 2: And so how much of the how much have the
Speaker 2: tariffs caused a rift even you know, within this this world,
Speaker 2: this worldling archiple eco as you called it, How significant
Speaker 2: have they been in creating a genuine rift there?
Speaker 14: I think, as you see in public, like very because
Speaker 14: you know, ultimately I do think people sort of you know,
Speaker 14: people like us in Washington, New York often read these
Speaker 14: Silicon Valley people as basically political and ideological figures, but
Speaker 14: they are basically entrepreneurs and spend most of their time
Speaker 14: thinking about investments in companies and could not believe that
Speaker 14: Trump would do something this dumb. And there's a guy
Speaker 14: named Bilagi Strinivasan who was another one of the really
Speaker 14: big kind of dominant chattery voices in these.
Speaker 9: Groups, who has written.
Speaker 14: And by the way, they're saying the same things in
Speaker 14: public and in private, as is often true, like you
Speaker 14: get to the very core of the like inner Sanctum
Speaker 14: sanctauram of the most important people in the world. And
Speaker 14: what they're saying is, hey, did you see that tweet
Speaker 14: by Taylor Lorenz?
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: So it's not like they're saying in power for.
Speaker 14: What they're saying in public, just they're just there's just
Speaker 14: more like personal disappointment about it.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Interesting, This is absolutely wild.
Speaker 2: The Silicon Valley Bank thing is wild too, just because
Speaker 2: you know, just the real world impact there. And I
Speaker 2: suspect also, I mean, David sax was one of the
Speaker 2: people most aggressively pushing for a bailout. I would guess
Speaker 2: that some of that, like messaging, was also coordinated within
Speaker 2: these chats, are being floated and surface within these chats for.
Speaker 9: Sure, and it's really influential on the administration.
Speaker 14: I mean, somebody told me that they had the impression
Speaker 14: that these these public arguments with Mark Cuban that have
Speaker 14: been going on all your because chathamass was intended to be,
Speaker 14: you know, a more centrist place or at least a place
Speaker 14: where you can kind of pull normies to the right
Speaker 14: depending on who you ask it.
Speaker 9: So so there's some Democrats in there.
Speaker 14: But somebody who was saying to me they felt like
Speaker 14: arguing with Mark Cuban was a way to audition for
Speaker 14: the Trump administration and that people have gotten jobs through
Speaker 14: these groups for sure, And you see, like I mean,
Speaker 14: Sacks obviously is a huge role in the administration, but
Speaker 14: there's a number of people who've gone into various jobs.
Speaker 2: Who were some of the others who left along with
Speaker 2: David Sachs. We saw the you know, the screenshot that
Speaker 2: had him and Tucker and one of the Winklevoss twins.
Speaker 2: Who are the people who are still in and who
Speaker 2: are the people who.
Speaker 14: Are like, ah, I kind of I don't have a listration,
Speaker 14: you know, I don't have a list. I honestly feel
Speaker 14: like I just got a tiny snapshot of this, and
Speaker 14: you know, one of the things that's disappearing messages, and
Speaker 14: so maybe there was some crazy person out there who
Speaker 14: was screen chatting everything. I kind of hope so, because
Speaker 14: it's a really interesting piece of intellectual history. But I
Speaker 14: basically publish everything I knew, which is then a complete picture.
Speaker 2: Do you see a tie over between this and the
Speaker 2: signal Gate controversy with with Peate tag Zev, Like Emily
Speaker 2: was saying, apparently Republicans just love signal chats totally.
Speaker 9: I mean, lots of people work in love signal.
Speaker 14: You just saw like a comfort of like, hey, let's
Speaker 14: jump on a signal chat. That means they're in signal
Speaker 14: chats all the time. By the way, like signals amazing,
Speaker 14: that's great, Like the Signal is by far the best
Speaker 14: and most secure app, and everyone should be in signal
Speaker 14: chats all the time. Like I'm I think that, I mean,
Speaker 14: I think you should not. If you would not like
Speaker 14: to have Jeffrey Goldberg in your signal chat, do not
Speaker 14: add him. And I'm not an expert in sort of
Speaker 14: classification issues, but it is actually as these things go.
Speaker 14: And again maybe not if you're in Russia, Steve Whitcoff,
Speaker 14: but because it doesn't if your device has been compromised,
Speaker 14: it doesn't protect you. But it really is an incredible
Speaker 14: piece of technology and if you care about privacy, we
Speaker 14: should all be in signal shots all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we use it for our show planning.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, him, Yes we do. Oh I was going
Speaker 2: to say, yeah.
Speaker 5: Just my last question is how active are these Did
Speaker 5: you get an indication of how the chat reacted or
Speaker 5: how the chats reacted to your story yesterday, Did any
Speaker 5: of that trickle down to you?
Speaker 14: You know, nobody has sent me any screenshots. I mean,
Speaker 14: one thing that I honestly find kind of endearing about
Speaker 14: this is like a lot of people find these.
Speaker 9: Incredibly lovely and rewarding, and a lot of.
Speaker 14: People who talk to me on the record or off
Speaker 14: the record wouldn't share screenshots because they didn't feel you know,
Speaker 14: they felt like they wanted to talk about.
Speaker 9: This thing that's been important to them, but didn't want
Speaker 9: to betray it.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting.
Speaker 9: But if that said you, if you're.
Speaker 14: And you have, I would of course love to see
Speaker 14: how they're talking about that story. I've gotten some feedback actually, Honestly,
Speaker 14: the pre story thing was, of course the usual like
Speaker 14: the liberal journalists are coming to destroy us and be
Speaker 14: mean to us. Friend Bilagi tweeted that, and the schedule
Speaker 14: Linsdale to we're tweeting about how I mean, obviously the
Speaker 14: story was going to be all about them also because
Speaker 14: they're extremely important. But then actually, since the story, I
Speaker 14: think I've been I've gotten a lot of feedback from
Speaker 14: people in the groups that they were surprised that it
Speaker 14: kind of captured the vibe.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. Fair if you don't mind sticking around. I
Speaker 2: wanted to get your reaction to on what's going down
Speaker 2: at sixty Minutes, so long time executive producer there Bill
Speaker 2: Owens resigned, saying, effectively, I can't be independent anymore, and
Speaker 2: sixty Minutes took the extraordinary step of calling out their
Speaker 2: own parent company.
Speaker 4: Let's go ahead and take a listen to what Scott
Speaker 4: Pelly had to say.
Speaker 15: In tonight's last minute. A note on Bill Owens, who
Speaker 15: until this past week was executive producer of sixty Minutes.
Speaker 15: He was our boss. Bill was with CBS News nearly
Speaker 15: forty years. Twenty six years at sixty minutes. He covered
Speaker 15: the world, covered combat, the White House. His was a
Speaker 15: quest to open minds, not close them. If you've ever
Speaker 15: worked hard for a boss because you admired him, then
Speaker 15: you understand what we've enjoyed here. Bill resigned Tuesday. It
Speaker 15: was hard on him and hard on us, but he
Speaker 15: did it for us and you. Stories we pursued for
Speaker 15: fifty seven years are often controversial lately, the Israel Gazo
Speaker 15: War and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were
Speaker 15: accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our
Speaker 15: parent company paramount is trying to complete a merger. The
Speaker 15: Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our
Speaker 15: content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked,
Speaker 15: but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.
Speaker 15: No one here is happy about it. But in resigning
Speaker 15: Bill proved one thing he was the right person to
Speaker 15: lead sixty minutes all along.
Speaker 4: So, Ben, what's your understanding of what went down here?
Speaker 14: I mean, you know, exactly exactly what he said and
Speaker 14: exactly as it seems so. In particular, what Max Tani,
Speaker 14: my colleague at Semaphore, reported was that Sherry Redstone, who
Speaker 14: owns the company, had been had started to ask for
Speaker 14: information about what was you know, what what kind of
Speaker 14: mean thing they might be saying about the Trump administration,
Speaker 14: which you know, which people internally took, as you know,
Speaker 14: was brand new in the history of this, you know,
Speaker 14: probably the most important news show in this in the
Speaker 14: US history, and which they interpreted accurately as the parent
Speaker 14: company getting nervous that Donald Trump would you know, react
Speaker 14: to a story by blocking the merger and trying to
Speaker 14: figure out how to navigate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sixty minutes.
Speaker 5: I didn't realize this, but I think he was like
Speaker 5: only the third executive producer of sixty minutes period, and
Speaker 5: then maybe you can speak to a little bit about
Speaker 5: how significant it is, particularly that this happened at sixty
Speaker 5: minutes in the whole like paramount CBS universe, because it
Speaker 5: seems like sixty minutes has traditionally sort of been maybe
Speaker 5: a bulwark against those types of winds shift.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know, but I
Speaker 14: think we all, like I came up in a media
Speaker 14: universe where there were kind of like fringy groups on
Speaker 14: the right and the left who would complain that like
Speaker 14: the owners of media were pulling the strings, you know,
Speaker 14: Like there was a group called Free Press which on
Speaker 14: the left kind of NATO rite groups and you and
Speaker 14: if you worked in media, you'd be like, you're crazy,
Speaker 14: that's not how it works.
Speaker 9: I've never had my owner or bother me about anything.
Speaker 14: There's a strong tradition of separate like here that like
Speaker 14: you had, the journalists are left alone from newspapers, television, magazines, whatever,
Speaker 14: you know, and if it happened even the tiniest way,
Speaker 14: be a huge scandal.
Speaker 9: And what happened in the last year is that has totally.
Speaker 14: Changed Trump's you know kind of focus on leverage and
Speaker 14: using financial leverage against his enemies and rivals has meant
Speaker 14: that He's very focused on Jeff Bezos, on Patrick Sonsheong
Speaker 14: and what he can and they are very sensitive to
Speaker 14: the way in which Trump will obviously use you know, space,
Speaker 14: it will use Jeff Bezos' space company against the Washington Post,
Speaker 14: things like that, and have responded by doing whatever he
Speaker 14: wants more or less incredibly effective.
Speaker 9: And I think you see that, you know, he Trump
Speaker 9: Trump went after.
Speaker 14: The Time Warner at and T Merger in his first term,
Speaker 14: lost the case, but did a lot of damage. And
Speaker 14: I think they it's it's CNN, which was inside Warner.
Speaker 14: They interpreted that as a you know, as a response
Speaker 14: to they didn't like their coverage.
Speaker 9: I mean, the government has a ton of power, the
Speaker 9: FCC and.
Speaker 14: Brandan Carr has totally openly said that, in his view,
Speaker 14: the Biden administration behaved in inappropriate political ways, and so
Speaker 14: the Trump administration is planning to behave in inappropriate political ways.
Speaker 9: He literally said that to.
Speaker 2: Me, how much do you think that this will change,
Speaker 2: you know, the character of our media a lot.
Speaker 14: I think these big corporate places are really afraid and
Speaker 14: by the way, are already very weak. I mean, part
Speaker 14: of it, of course, is that if sixty Minutes were
Speaker 14: a you know, and if Paramount, if CPS, whatever kind
Speaker 14: of collapsed merged parent company, there were were, as it
Speaker 14: was thirty years ago, a massively profitable juggernaut that could
Speaker 14: afford to tell the president to screw himself, it would.
Speaker 14: I think you'll see places that are It's actually interesting,
Speaker 14: like this is why the kind of financial health of
Speaker 14: media is so important. I mean, I think the New
Speaker 14: York Times, which is doing great, has a subscription base,
Speaker 14: will be able to be independent and stand up to
Speaker 14: the president.
Speaker 9: I think it's very hard for the Washington Post too,
Speaker 9: because it's.
Speaker 14: Dependent on a billionaire who seems to really want for
Speaker 14: the president to like it. But I think that stuff
Speaker 14: is totally real right now.
Speaker 5: And how much you got, well, yeah, I was just
Speaker 5: maybe we were going to ask the same question as
Speaker 5: just this was this is in the report a bit,
Speaker 5: But how much was this reflective of discomfort with Israel
Speaker 5: Gaza coverage versus Trump coverage. It seems like there was
Speaker 5: a little bit of both going on.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 14: Mean, I think it is fascinating the degree to which
Speaker 14: Israel is being used sort of as a cudgel against
Speaker 14: the administration's enemies. Oh, you know, I don't think that's
Speaker 14: why the Trump administration and why conservatives like that's not
Speaker 14: the sort of pre existing reason that they're upset at
Speaker 14: universities which they think are too left wing and which
Speaker 14: are very left wing, but it is the it's sort
Speaker 14: of the it's sort of the issue that has come
Speaker 14: to hand and the one that they're beating them with. Yeah,
Speaker 14: I mean, I haven't particularly got that impression at CBS,
Speaker 14: like I think the Sherry Redstone separately, the owner is
Speaker 14: I think unhappy with the you know, with critical coverage
Speaker 14: of Israel that's been reported separately. But and I'm sure
Speaker 14: Trump is happy to throw, you know, the kitchen sink
Speaker 14: of its enemies, and that's one of the that's one
Speaker 14: of the elements of it.
Speaker 9: But I don't think that's fundamentally what's driving it is.
Speaker 14: I mean, maybe it's Trump's concern for you know, the
Speaker 14: coverage of Israel gocopy straight up the middle, but I
Speaker 14: don't think that's his main concern.
Speaker 2: We've seen with some of the other civil society groups
Speaker 2: like with the law firms. We've seen with universities where
Speaker 2: there was an initial instinct to just completely capitulate to
Speaker 2: the Trump administration, and now there seems to be a
Speaker 2: little bit more backbone starting to grow. Do you see
Speaker 2: any sign of that with media organizations or do you
Speaker 2: feel like it just comes down to who has the
Speaker 2: finances to weather the storm?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 14: I think, you know, the less, you know, Trump has
Speaker 14: seen his kind of this his momentum collapse in the
Speaker 14: sense that he could kind of run the table and
Speaker 14: do anything, sort of collapse with the tariffs, you know,
Speaker 14: with the sort of debacle of the tariff rollout, and
Speaker 14: so yeah, that has affected things a lot. I think also,
Speaker 14: right the I think that these places underestimated, whether it's
Speaker 14: Paul Weiss or Columbia, the internal backlash they'd get from capitulating,
Speaker 14: from students, from donors, from lawyers, right, Like, every big
Speaker 14: law firm that did not capitulate is currently poaching Paul
Speaker 14: Wes's associates, right because it's embarrassing to work there. And
Speaker 14: you know, even I mean, honestly, I think even if
Speaker 14: you agree one hundred percent with the criticisms, it's embarrassing
Speaker 14: to work there. And so that's yeah. I think that's
Speaker 14: true in media too. I think, I mean, I think,
Speaker 14: you know, there's this illusion. I think the CBS people
Speaker 14: and believe that basically, like you know, sometimes like when
Speaker 14: you're selling a company, old management will do all the
Speaker 14: hard stuff, they'll fire everybody and then neon managing it
Speaker 14: and be like, hey, we're the good guys, like welcome
Speaker 14: to your new home, Survivors.
Speaker 9: And I think that this is the philosophy here.
Speaker 14: It's like the old company will do all this bad
Speaker 14: stuff with Trump and then Skydance, which is buying it,
Speaker 14: can say, hey, that was terrible, so sorry about that,
Speaker 14: although of course they're coordinating. And I think it's a
Speaker 14: huge mistake, like look at look at what happened when
Speaker 14: there was like a year and a half when Warner
Speaker 14: had bought CNN, and all they wanted like they're not
Speaker 14: really in the news business, they don't want to be
Speaker 14: in the news business. They just wanted it to be
Speaker 14: chill and like instead it was an absolute garbage fire
Speaker 14: for a.
Speaker 9: Year and a half. And I think that I think
Speaker 9: that the.
Speaker 14: Idea that these folks in Hollywood Skuydance, who are buying
Speaker 14: Paramount mostly for the entertainment assets. Imagine that just like
Speaker 14: they're going to like bring a news organization that is
Speaker 14: just like literally in flames on board into their company,
Speaker 14: and that that will be like a RESTful and normal experience.
Speaker 9: I think is not the case.
Speaker 3: Final thought for me.
Speaker 5: We talked obviously in an earlier segment about your group
Speaker 5: group chat story at Smophore, and now we're discussing sixty minutes.
Speaker 5: It seems like the theme between both of these stories
Speaker 5: is that American elites in business and media, in academia,
Speaker 5: in the legal world are actually experiencing a schism in
Speaker 5: a way that didn't happen and Trump one point zero,
Speaker 5: that there's this like survival mode maybe that people have
Speaker 5: entered and it's causing panic and it's causing decisions to
Speaker 5: be made rationally or otherwise, that it's really becoming a
Speaker 5: serious wedge in a way that it hadn't before. Ben,
Speaker 5: I don't know if you if that sounds right, or
Speaker 5: if you have any thoughts or pushback on them.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I know, I mean, I think that's a great point,
Speaker 14: and I think that I mean, one of the things
Speaker 14: that somebody said to me yesterday was that every day
Speaker 14: before was that whereas these signal groups were started because
Speaker 14: people were afraid to say conservative things on the internet
Speaker 14: and get beat up for it. Now, the thing that
Speaker 14: you can say in the signal group that you're scared
Speaker 14: to say in public is criticism of Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Really interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And last last thing, Ben, you know, how do you
Speaker 2: think journalists should think about some of these choices? I mean,
Speaker 2: you have obviously Bill Owens resigning, Scott Pelly making the choice,
Speaker 2: and the sixty Minutes team presumably like we need to
Speaker 2: say something, but we're not going anywhere. We're going to
Speaker 2: stay here and continue to do the best that we can.
Speaker 2: You know, from an ethical perspective, how do you think
Speaker 2: journalists should think about these challenges?
Speaker 15: I don't know.
Speaker 14: I think it's like a tough situation and I don't
Speaker 14: want to tell people how to do their jobs. I mean,
Speaker 14: I do think it sort of brings home and I'm
Speaker 14: genuinely not trying to like talk my book into your
Speaker 14: book here, but there you see why news organizations ought
Speaker 14: to be independent because they become a headache for the
Speaker 14: parent company, and the parent company has an obligation to
Speaker 14: its shareholders to like get the merger through, and you
Speaker 14: have these maniacs at sixty minutes insulting the president. This
Speaker 14: is from the point of view of the you know,
Speaker 14: the lawyers and bankers running the merger, like that's not
Speaker 14: a normal company like that CBS News shouldn't be inside
Speaker 14: that company. But on the other hand, that means they've
Speaker 14: got to figure out a way to run a business
Speaker 14: on their own. I mean, it's a it's not an
Speaker 14: easy thing. But you see why sticking independent news organizations
Speaker 14: inside these conglomerates that have all sorts of other hostages
Speaker 14: to fortune becomes a real problem.
Speaker 2: So basically you're saying, when Bernie was criticizing Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: owning the Washington Post, he was right.
Speaker 14: You know when I started, he was right, Bernie Bernie.
Speaker 14: Bernie was right about everything. When I was at BuzzFeed,
Speaker 14: I remember I sat down with him and the first
Speaker 14: thing he said was thank you for standing up to
Speaker 14: the corporate media. And I was sort of like senator,
Speaker 14: like and recent Horrorwitz is one of our investors, Like
Speaker 14: we're like, we're never're like pretty capitalist, and like this
Speaker 14: idea that the corporate media is like influenced by its owners,
Speaker 14: Like that's not that's not really how it works, and
Speaker 14: I think he's been totally vindicated.
Speaker 3: He was like, the billionaires are paying for the listicles.
Speaker 3: You're telling me that.
Speaker 14: I'm not sure he was a reader, and I think
Speaker 14: he may have confused us with there's a left wing
Speaker 14: site called buzz Flash.
Speaker 4: Hmmm.
Speaker 3: I don't even interest that.
Speaker 14: He was, but I remember thinking, like, huh, this is
Speaker 14: not exactly how I think about my job.
Speaker 4: Amazing, Ben, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's so great to have your insights, and you know,
Speaker 2: really appreciate your reporting on all of these things.
Speaker 9: Great to see you both. Give my regards to Megan Emily.
Speaker 3: Well do all right?
Speaker 2: That was fun hearing from Ben on those stories. Always
Speaker 2: his interesting insights into media in particular.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was referring there at the end of that
Speaker 5: segment too. The last a couple times ago that was
Speaker 5: on Megan Kelly. She had just done an interview with
Speaker 5: Ben and she excoriated him for not kind of fully
Speaker 5: getting new media and I agree with her, still agree
Speaker 5: with her on that point, so stand by it. But
Speaker 5: it was good to have a friendly conversation with him,
Speaker 5: and that report was fantastic and like very worth going through.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have no idea what the Megan Kelly
Speaker 2: drama was, so I will just stay I'll stay unaligned
Speaker 2: in that conversation. I'll stay neutral on that one. However, Yes,
Speaker 2: great to see him, Great to see you. I think
Speaker 2: Ryan and Emily will be counterpoints per normal tomorrow, and
Speaker 2: I will be back on Thursday, maybe with soccer.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: We'll see it could be baby time on Thursday.
Speaker 2: It could be baby time, so we're all on the
Speaker 2: lookout for that. In any case, thank you guys so
Speaker 2: much for watching and joining. Like I said earlier, if
Speaker 2: you're having trouble with Spotify, please check your email. If
Speaker 2: you're still having trouble, email us and we'll get it worked.
Speaker 4: Out for you. Love you guys and appreciate you, and
Speaker 4: we'll see you back here soon.
Speaker 9: Wanted Putt