Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: All right, good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. I was
Speaker 1: just telling Emily that my new favorite medium is TikTok.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I just learning Ryan is like a TikTok celebrity.
Speaker 6: Love and TikTok the last couple week. Thanks, Thanks everybody,
Speaker 6: it's fun over there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stick around now that Trump salvaged that,
Speaker 1: but if he sells it to Microsoft or Oracle.
Speaker 4: Or our government, have you seen that's part of that
Speaker 4: I mean distinction, Yeah, but it's on the table.
Speaker 1: Microsoft, I don't has never made a consumer product worth using.
Speaker 6: Oracle is basically a project of the CIA.
Speaker 1: Uh and Shine and TikTok's a project of the ccpiece
Speaker 1: and so I guess we don't have any great choices.
Speaker 4: But drowning in alphabet soup. Yeah, well you didn't like
Speaker 4: the Zoom. Wasn't that a Microsoft product?
Speaker 1: The there's I forget all of their products. Microsoft the
Speaker 1: other day was like, remember how bad the Microsoft phone was?
Speaker 6: I was like, I literally don't even remember the Microsoft phone.
Speaker 5: I also don't remember a Microsoft phone.
Speaker 6: That's how bad it was.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, we do have a lot of news today, actually,
Speaker 4: just like an almost impossible amount of news. Like every
Speaker 4: time you think a Trump era news cycle is crazy,
Speaker 4: you are not at the peak. We still have not peaked,
Speaker 4: even though it feels like speaking of drowning that you're
Speaker 4: just drowning in news by the hour.
Speaker 6: Heard your man Steve Bannon call it days of Thunder?
Speaker 5: Is that what he's saying?
Speaker 6: He was at an event last.
Speaker 1: Night with bright part the whole butterworst like the you
Speaker 1: know the like yeah, this is it's this like right
Speaker 1: wing bar that's like become the like it's it's like
Speaker 1: the where Jefferson and Franklin and the French revolutionaries. It's
Speaker 1: like the French cafe version from the revolution. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're they're pumped.
Speaker 5: Oh were you there?
Speaker 1: No, I didn't go it. Okay, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 1: This is about the only thing I leave the house
Speaker 1: for now with my wife.
Speaker 5: That's true, that's true. But so let's well, we'll be talking.
Speaker 6: To get invited though. That's how weird this world is.
Speaker 4: See, that's I figured that you were on the list.
Speaker 4: He is a regular warm room listener. You got to
Speaker 4: tune in to hear what's going on. So the shutdown,
Speaker 4: obviously the Federal Aide shutdown has been significant throughout the
Speaker 4: last twenty four or forty eight hours. But there are
Speaker 4: a ton of updates pertaining to what is, what is not,
Speaker 4: what was, and what was not covered that we are
Speaker 4: going to start with. We're excited to have Jeff Stein here,
Speaker 4: who was chasing down a lot of leads yesterday as
Speaker 4: a reporter. The Trump administration is saying that Jeff and
Speaker 4: other reporters are part of a big quote unquote hoax
Speaker 4: and that's how all of this got started.
Speaker 6: This is going to be their big thing.
Speaker 1: Anytime they screw up like see hoax, other hoax, other hooks.
Speaker 6: From the mainstream media.
Speaker 5: I'm going to do that too.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, people were like, I can't get into my medicaid.
Speaker 1: Why it was the mainstream media keeping the medicaid portal
Speaker 1: from working?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we'll have Jeff here to run
Speaker 4: down exactly what happened yesterday, what's happening right now.
Speaker 5: We'll bring you updates on that.
Speaker 4: We have a great immigration block just going through Stephen
Speaker 4: Miller's wild interview with Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday evening,
Speaker 4: but also the raids that happened yesterday. Who's actually being
Speaker 4: swept up in these raids? Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Speaker 4: of Christy.
Speaker 6: Nome was suited up, she put on some gear, shut
Speaker 6: it up.
Speaker 4: They had the photog They're ready to go. So we'll
Speaker 4: be doing a block on that. It looks like Pete
Speaker 4: Buddha Judge might finally be in a good position to
Speaker 4: win elected office on again.
Speaker 6: Remember this is the powerhouse mayor of whatever town.
Speaker 5: I was just going to say on the federal level, because.
Speaker 6: There's now a setund our Notre Dame is a.
Speaker 4: Senate seat open in Obviously Pete Buddha Judge's famous home
Speaker 4: state of Michigan, which actually a lot of people don't
Speaker 4: realize he moved to Michigan a couple of years ago,
Speaker 4: likely with something like this plant.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: People were always saying that he's cursed because he's got
Speaker 1: such high ambitions. Yet he's from Indiana, where no Democrat
Speaker 1: is going to be elected to the Senate or the
Speaker 1: governor's mansion in a very long time. And Bjos was like, wa,
Speaker 1: do I live in Indiana? No, I do not live
Speaker 1: in Indiana. In fact, I am a longtime Michigander.
Speaker 4: Yes, of course, he just bleeds Michigan. But we'll be
Speaker 4: talking about that. It's a pretty interesting Senate race that's
Speaker 4: shaping up.
Speaker 6: So in vivec he's bleeds Ohio.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, k was on Charlemagne and Breakfast Club and
Speaker 4: we have a great clipt and.
Speaker 6: He was strongly suggesting he's running for something.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: American hero Jim Acosta signed off of CNN yesterday after
Speaker 4: they tried to bump him to a later slot. We
Speaker 4: have a truly hilarious video of Jim Acosta's sign off
Speaker 4: from CNN.
Speaker 5: Just great stuff. Excited for that one.
Speaker 6: Did you see his Substack Live.
Speaker 1: Oh, he want a sub stack and he said in
Speaker 1: his first Substack Live he said, I'm going independent for now,
Speaker 1: which is such a delightful way to use the phrase independent.
Speaker 1: To qualify it with for now four now, because like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. It's one thing to say I'm going independent, okay,
Speaker 1: because that suggests you weren't independent before, even if you
Speaker 1: did work for somebody.
Speaker 6: Then to qualify it with four now, yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, because independent has such a con it has such
Speaker 4: a positive connotation.
Speaker 1: Right, But not to people like him, to him, to
Speaker 1: him and his circle, it reads as a failure.
Speaker 6: And for him it's four now.
Speaker 1: Maybe he gets scooped up by the contrarian, which is
Speaker 1: the new explosive centrist.
Speaker 6: Norman Eisen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe he will. He would love that.
Speaker 4: You know, we should also in that block make sure
Speaker 4: to mention the hilarious Crystal is a thread where both
Speaker 4: obviously you know, very close observers of Chrysalis's Twitter feed,
Speaker 4: where he just with any set, without any self awareness,
Speaker 4: goes through things that he got significantly wrong over the
Speaker 4: last decade.
Speaker 5: It's incredible.
Speaker 4: So we'll hopefully bring a little bit of that to
Speaker 4: the table as well. Romania Ryan's publication Drop site had
Speaker 4: an absolutely fantastic rundown of US intervention in Romanian elections
Speaker 4: that just have a huge story that just really hasn't been.
Speaker 6: Covered, really crazy story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're gonna do that.
Speaker 4: And then your colleague Martazza is saying, is.
Speaker 1: Here Yeah he so, Martaza going to talk about Steve
Speaker 1: Whitcoff going to Gaza with Ron Dermer. So this is
Speaker 1: Trump's Mid East envoy said a week or two ago
Speaker 1: that he wanted to go visit Gaza, which shook up
Speaker 1: Israeli politicized, like, what do you mean you're going to
Speaker 1: go visit Gaza? You talk to Hamas like, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not how that works. It's he's a deal maker.
Speaker 1: He's like, am I going to make a deal if
Speaker 1: I don't like understand both sides here. Ron Dhmer, who
Speaker 1: is net Yahoo's basically longtime top lieutenant, accompanied him to
Speaker 1: the Niserne quarter. Martaza just returned from a reporting trip
Speaker 1: in Syria. He'll also update us about what's going on there.
Speaker 1: What he has told me about what he saw on
Speaker 1: the ground there is utterly fascinating. He says, the fighting is,
Speaker 1: by the way, not complete In fact and that while
Speaker 1: As'ad has left because Ass'ad's government was so heavily propped
Speaker 1: up by basically drug trafficking, they make Coptagon, this like disgusting,
Speaker 1: like low grade speed that they sell mostly to Russia.
Speaker 1: Because they were making so much money from Captagon. Those
Speaker 1: commanders are like, we're not quitting. I don't care if
Speaker 1: you flew to Russia. We control this little bit of land.
Speaker 1: We got a factory that's making capta gon. We're making
Speaker 1: money handover fist, we have weapons. What are you gonna
Speaker 1: do about it? So it's a very send your situation.
Speaker 4: Well, that'll be a fascinating conversation with Maz. So let's
Speaker 4: dive into the news today with the federal aid grants,
Speaker 4: the federal aid, the loans, the grants, and the freeze
Speaker 4: slash shutdown on those.
Speaker 5: Let's go to Jeff Stein for some updates.
Speaker 4: A judge has ordered a freeze on the or has
Speaker 4: ordered a pause on the Trump funding freeze. We can
Speaker 4: put this first hairsheet up on the screen from CNBC.
Speaker 4: A federal judge paused, actually until February third, the implementation
Speaker 4: of a Trump administration ordered that would have frozen the
Speaker 4: issuance of federal grants and loans. We are joined by
Speaker 4: Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, who just over the
Speaker 4: last couple of days has been working really hard on
Speaker 4: this story. Busy man running down all kinds of news
Speaker 4: and reporting.
Speaker 5: So, Jeff, thank you for being here.
Speaker 8: My pleasure. Great to be on with crystalin Sager.
Speaker 6: That's Crystal.
Speaker 1: It's the only way we can get people on this programs.
Speaker 6: And then we show up. Now what's going on? I
Speaker 6: guess I'm here. We'll be the hit.
Speaker 4: Well, Jeff, let's just start with this news about the pause.
Speaker 4: Can you just tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 4: this means. I think that's a good place to start,
Speaker 4: because it's really confusing. Like at any given point yesterday,
Speaker 4: what was actually happening was confusing because people were interpreting
Speaker 4: what the White House scent and the White House was
Speaker 4: saying that they should be interpreting it differently. But actually,
Speaker 4: in practice people's interpretations kind of become policy. So as
Speaker 4: of right now that there's a freeze, let's say you
Speaker 4: are the veterans charity that you talked to in California,
Speaker 4: mostly funded by federal grants.
Speaker 5: What does this mean for you?
Speaker 7: What it should mean at least is that there's no
Speaker 7: stoppage of funding, and so whatever was expected to come
Speaker 7: in you know, in the next few months would and
Speaker 7: that there would be no interruption. However, you know, in
Speaker 7: the last twelve hours or so, I've and receiving numerous
Speaker 7: TEX signal messages, calls, emails from people who say that
Speaker 7: their funding is being interrupted. And so it's eight thirty
Speaker 7: or so this morning. As soon as we get off
Speaker 7: this call, I'm going to figure out what's going on there.
Speaker 7: Because this federal order seemed pretty clear. There were some exceptions.
Speaker 7: For instance, things that had been frozen you know, latterly
Speaker 7: by the Trump administration before this most recent stop order
Speaker 7: seemed like it would still be stopped by what the
Speaker 7: Trumpet people had done was massively expand I mean, in
Speaker 7: an unprecedented way, with pretty unclear legal standing, the extent
Speaker 7: of the president's hold on federal funds.
Speaker 8: And you know, the judge really was very clear.
Speaker 7: That the vast majority of that needs to continue at
Speaker 7: least until February third. But given all the confusion and
Speaker 7: given that, you know, I've been asking the Trump.
Speaker 8: People, are you complying with this order? And they haven't
Speaker 8: said so.
Speaker 7: I think there was a huge side of relief from
Speaker 7: a lot of people yesterday that this crisis would be over.
Speaker 7: For some it doesn't seem to be yet provisionally, I'll say,
Speaker 7: because it's still so soon after the order, maybe things
Speaker 7: will get sorted out today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this entire four years will probably be
Speaker 1: like the last fifteen minutes of a horror movie where
Speaker 1: people keep sighing and thinking that it's over, and then boom,
Speaker 1: like something else comes out of the closet. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I would encourage people not to sigh and think that
Speaker 1: it's over, unless you know they're trying to draw some
Speaker 1: type of monster from around the corner. Let's roll a
Speaker 1: little bit of Caroline Levitt yesterday at the first White
Speaker 1: House press briefing, where she did not really kind of
Speaker 1: settle people's nerves about where this is going.
Speaker 8: Well, fire Orfy for a.
Speaker 9: Sec what you were saying before Medicaid, It wasn't clear
Speaker 9: to me whether you were saying.
Speaker 10: That no Medicaid would be cut off. Obviously a lot
Speaker 10: of this goes to.
Speaker 11: States before it goes to individuals, and so are you
Speaker 11: guaranteeing here that no individual now on medicaid would.
Speaker 8: See you cut off because.
Speaker 12: Of the pause.
Speaker 4: I'll check back on that and get back to you.
Speaker 12: John Marlilan on the freezing federal funding, who advised the
Speaker 12: president on the legality of telling government agencies that they
Speaker 12: don't have to spend money it was already appropriated by Congress. Well,
Speaker 12: as the OMB memo states, this is certainly within the
Speaker 12: confines of the law. So White House Counsel's office believes
Speaker 12: that this is within the president's power to do it,
Speaker 12: and therefore he's doing it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So they disagree with lawmakers who say that they
Speaker 4: don't have the power to freeze this fund.
Speaker 12: Again, I would point you to the language in the
Speaker 12: memo that clearly states this is within the law.
Speaker 1: So let's take the first part first, which is which
Speaker 1: is medicaid. The memo that went out from OMB said
Speaker 1: that money that's going out to individuals will not be interrupted.
Speaker 1: It also said none of this should be construed to
Speaker 1: apply to Social Security or Medicare. They could have added
Speaker 1: medicaid and did not, And as one of the reporters
Speaker 1: there pointed out, because medicaid flows first, you know, from
Speaker 1: the federal government to states, and then from states to individuals.
Speaker 6: All these portals ended up going down.
Speaker 1: The memo did specifically say that it excludes money going from.
Speaker 6: Medicaid to payment providers, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: But they either they forgot the state part or what
Speaker 1: now the White House is saying it was a screw
Speaker 1: up and we're going to fix this. What is the
Speaker 1: truth here? What can you tell us about how this happened.
Speaker 8: It's a really good question, Ryan, that we're sold honestly
Speaker 8: trying to get.
Speaker 6: To the bottom of.
Speaker 7: What we don't know precisely is whether you know, we
Speaker 7: know for sure that at a minimum, they forgot to
Speaker 7: include in the order this healthcare program that seventy plus
Speaker 7: million people rely on for their insurance. And at a minimum,
Speaker 7: it's clear that this stoppage was precipitated by everything going
Speaker 7: on in the federal government. What we don't know is
Speaker 7: did someone at the Trump White House tell CMS, which
Speaker 7: runs Medicare and Medicaid, stop payments for Medicaid. I think
Speaker 7: that is not what happened. What seems more likely is
Speaker 7: that there was a rush amid the confusion of the
Speaker 7: stop order to this portal, which you know typically runs
Speaker 7: without that much you know, you know, frenzy sort of
Speaker 7: just running on autopilot, and when this order went out
Speaker 7: saying hey, everybody, like this is we're you know, ordering
Speaker 7: a cessation to federal payments and Medicaid is not included,
Speaker 7: it may have led to sort of an overwhelming response
Speaker 7: that effectuated the shutdown of this program. But I think
Speaker 7: the critics would say, and I think maybe someone legitimately
Speaker 7: it doesn't really matter, like why it was clearly left
Speaker 7: out of their initial order, and clearly the events of
Speaker 7: the last two days precipitated this shutdown. So you know,
Speaker 7: the White House not having an answer to that question.
Speaker 7: You know, it was something that we saw repeatedly in
Speaker 7: the first Trump administration. He just don't really cared about
Speaker 7: the healthcare programs that serve for Americans. I mean, he
Speaker 7: tried to massively cut it during his first term and
Speaker 7: characterize it as getting rid of Obamacare, even though it
Speaker 7: really is not the same thing. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 7: at a minimum, maybe it looks like negligence.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I was going to say, it's so interesting
Speaker 4: you said that, Jeff, because it did feel like something
Speaker 4: Everything is very carefully crafted that we've seen so far.
Speaker 4: This is the one thing that felt more like twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: like they just had the they didn't have their bearings.
Speaker 4: You know, you can lever hate the policies, but they
Speaker 4: have you know, been sort of taken from years of
Speaker 4: planning at this point, and this one just seemed really haphazard.
Speaker 4: Let's roll another clip of Carolyn Levitt getting questions about
Speaker 4: the payroll at some of these organizations who felt they
Speaker 4: may be affected. Again during yesterday's press briefing.
Speaker 12: Is the Trump administration recommending that organizations that rely on
Speaker 12: federal funding make payroll pay their rent.
Speaker 8: In the meantime, it.
Speaker 12: Is a temporary pause in the Office of Management and
Speaker 12: Budget is reviewing the federal funding that has been going
Speaker 12: out the door. Again, not for individual assistance, but for
Speaker 12: all of these other programs that I mentioned. I also
Speaker 12: spoke with the incoming director of OMB this morning, and
Speaker 12: he told me to tell all of you that the
Speaker 12: line to his office is open for other federal government
Speaker 12: agencies across the board, and if they feel that programs
Speaker 12: are necessary and in line with the President's agenda, then
Speaker 12: the Office of Management and Budget will review those policies.
Speaker 12: Think this is a very responsible measure. Again, the past
Speaker 12: four years, we've seen the Biden administration spend money like
Speaker 12: drunken sailors. It's a big reason we've had an inflation
Speaker 12: crisis in this country, and it's incumbent upon this administration
Speaker 12: to make sure again that every penny is being accounted for, honestly.
Speaker 4: So, Jeff, have the people you talked to do they
Speaker 4: share that sort of confidence or that they should be
Speaker 4: able to make payroll and keep the lights on for
Speaker 4: the next few months. I'm sure the judges order, as
Speaker 4: we've already talked about, helps, but I'm sure they still
Speaker 4: sort of feel uncomfortable and in some state of limbo.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and just quickly I laugh when I heard part
Speaker 7: of that line yesterday because if you listen close to
Speaker 7: what she's saying, she's saying I spoke to the budget chair,
Speaker 7: the budget incoming budget chief for US vote for the
Speaker 7: White House, whose office is responsible for the federal freeze,
Speaker 7: and Levitt is saying he told me to say that
Speaker 7: the federal agencies should contact me if there's anything essential
Speaker 7: that they want to keep going. And I found that
Speaker 7: to be kind of an amazing thing because it's like
Speaker 7: telling us the reporters, like I'm not in charge of
Speaker 7: a federal agency. You're using, you're telling the Press secretary
Speaker 7: to tell the world that the heads of federal agencies
Speaker 7: should contact the White House, like, yeah, those are the
Speaker 7: President's personnel. And the fact that that communication didn't occur
Speaker 7: well in advance of this order reflected I think kind
Speaker 7: of an amazing lack of planning.
Speaker 8: And I guess, on a.
Speaker 7: Sort of related note, this stop order seems to have
Speaker 7: been driven my sourcing and what they've said publicly suggests
Speaker 7: by a feeling that the Biden people had screwed them
Speaker 7: by sort of funneling money at the door, and to
Speaker 7: give the Trump people some credit, like this is not
Speaker 7: something they made up, Like there was a real effort
Speaker 7: by the Biden administration in the last few weeks to say,
Speaker 7: like whatever money like that we think the Trump people
Speaker 7: don't want.
Speaker 8: To spend, like let's just get it out there, let's
Speaker 8: get it out there, let's get it out there.
Speaker 7: And so they were discovering, as they've said, like I mean,
Speaker 7: I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but they said,
Speaker 7: you know, we discovered like condoms for Gaza, which well
Speaker 7: we should true squad down at some point, but like.
Speaker 8: Whatever, that was something that.
Speaker 7: They didn't like like there was a real ramp up
Speaker 7: of that spending, and so.
Speaker 8: They said like.
Speaker 7: No, no, more, like we don't we can't track what's
Speaker 7: going on out from every agency, so let's shut it
Speaker 7: all down.
Speaker 8: But then obviously, like that created this other huge problem.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to pick up on another thing that
Speaker 1: she said in that clip there, which goes to the
Speaker 1: also the second question that she got from the press
Speaker 1: that we played there about the legality of this question,
Speaker 1: and we can put up the next tear sheet A four.
Speaker 1: This is a piece by Dave Dayan over at the
Speaker 1: American Prospect, which I suggest everybody read because it kind
Speaker 1: of makes the case that this stuff is actually not legal.
Speaker 1: And the line that I wanted to get your response
Speaker 1: to from what we just heard her say was.
Speaker 6: That they were they were.
Speaker 1: She was going to approve or the White House would
Speaker 1: approve congressionally directed spending that was quote in line with
Speaker 1: the president's a into unquote.
Speaker 6: That's the key point there.
Speaker 1: People might think, like, Okay, we had a presidential election,
Speaker 1: we elected Donald Trump, he has an agenda. He should
Speaker 1: get to then direct spending in line with his agenda,
Speaker 1: and that is certainly a kind of political system that
Speaker 1: you could design and that people might support and think
Speaker 1: is a good way to run a country. That's not
Speaker 1: the country that we have. Like what we have is
Speaker 1: we have a Congress where you have two senators from
Speaker 1: every state and then you have you know, forever about
Speaker 1: seven or eight hundred thousand people in a particular state.
Speaker 1: They're represented by an individual and they represent that area.
Speaker 6: They go to Congress, they.
Speaker 1: Hash out spending bills down to the decimal points. They
Speaker 1: then pass it, and then the president signs it, and
Speaker 1: then the president has to then follow the law like
Speaker 1: these say we do we want thirteen point six five
Speaker 1: million dollars for this duck estuary in Long Island. It's
Speaker 1: not up to the president to change that. It's like
Speaker 1: that's what Congress did. And so for her to say
Speaker 1: that they would only approve spending that is quote in
Speaker 1: line with the president's agenda strikes me as flagrantly unconstitutional
Speaker 1: and illegal, Like it's it's you know, it's not up
Speaker 1: to her or them to say that this.
Speaker 6: If they don't like it, they got to veto it.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious for it because you would also flag
Speaker 1: this interesting post from a legal scholar.
Speaker 6: We can put up a nine so people can find it.
Speaker 1: This is on the well respected Balkanization blog blog where
Speaker 1: he kind of lays out the points the kind of
Speaker 1: elements within the Empowerment Control Act that allow you to
Speaker 1: actually pause funding, and the only ones are quote, to
Speaker 1: provide for contingencies, or to achieve savings made possible buy
Speaker 1: or through changes in requirements, or greater efficiency of operations. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the only way the only reason the
Speaker 1: White House can pause funding is because if they think
Speaker 1: they can do it slightly more efficiently. It's a quote
Speaker 1: No officer or employee of the United States may defer
Speaker 1: any budget authority for any other purpose. So how do
Speaker 1: you how is the White House squaring this?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, this whole topic, empowerments, appropriations, the White
Speaker 7: House Budget Act, the Empowerment and Control Act, like is
Speaker 7: so laden with obscure jargon that nobody has ever heard of.
Speaker 7: And yet, as you're saying, Ryan, like, this is a
Speaker 7: fundamental question about the balance of power, the rule of law,
Speaker 7: the question of whether our president has unchecked authority to
Speaker 7: overrule existing law and do what he wants. I mean
Speaker 7: that that is sort of the core of this issue.
Speaker 7: Beyond all of the technical legal jargon that you sort
Speaker 7: of do have to understand type apt.
Speaker 8: Your header on what's going on here.
Speaker 7: And the White House has been very clear for a
Speaker 7: long time. I mean, the Trump people have been saying
Speaker 7: this since the end of twenty nineteen when we had
Speaker 7: the impeachment hearing over the Ukraine.
Speaker 8: AID holds.
Speaker 7: Their view is that the nineteen seventy four budget and
Speaker 7: Control Budget and Empowerment Control accthing like that.
Speaker 8: Is unconstitutional.
Speaker 7: That after Nixon's resignation after the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted
Speaker 7: a law that dictates and lays out very clearly the
Speaker 7: blog post that you just referenced sort of lays out
Speaker 7: in this specific instance, how the president can pause funding
Speaker 7: when he can or she can cancel funding exactly the
Speaker 7: parameters of this relationship, this crucial relationship overspending between Congress
Speaker 7: and the White House, and what russ Vote, the Budget chair,
Speaker 7: and Trump and his top deputy Mark Paoleta, who is
Speaker 7: now the General Counsel at OMB what they have said
Speaker 7: is that they do not think that that law adheres
Speaker 7: to the Constitution and that therefore they are not bound
Speaker 7: to follow it. And I'll just stress here this was
Speaker 7: about pausing funding, and in many ways pausing funding is
Speaker 7: a small precursor to what the Trump people have said
Speaker 7: that they have the prerogative to do, which is not
Speaker 7: merely the pause funding, but to cancel it, to say,
Speaker 7: Congress told us to spend this money, but we will not.
Speaker 8: They have been arguing that the amount of money.
Speaker 7: That Congress approves is not a ceiling on the amount
Speaker 7: of money they can It is not a floorum on
Speaker 7: the amount of money they can spend, but a ceiling.
Speaker 7: So as long as they're below what Congress tells them
Speaker 7: to spend, they are in compliance with the law. And now, obviously,
Speaker 7: like most legal scholars who study this disagree with that,
Speaker 7: they have a very distinctive view, and I would note
Speaker 7: like not a particularly conservative view. Right, this is about
Speaker 7: massively expanding the president's power. So this is not small
Speaker 7: c conservatives, and this is an attempt to.
Speaker 8: Really exert much more control out of.
Speaker 7: The executive branch in a way that you know, defies
Speaker 7: a law that's been in effect for four or five decades.
Speaker 4: Although so it's a small counterput from the right would
Speaker 4: argue that what they would say is that Congress should
Speaker 4: take accountability of policies coming out of the executive branch.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you hear this all the time, Jeff, when
Speaker 4: you're talking to people like That's the argument that Mark
Speaker 4: Pelletta and russ Velt would make is that it's expanding
Speaker 4: the power of the executive to sort of make Congress
Speaker 4: do its job or what they believe its job should be.
Speaker 4: A Congress punt law seft to the executive branch. Now,
Speaker 4: but anyway, we don't have to get into that, no,
Speaker 4: I mean, I.
Speaker 8: Think that's exactly right.
Speaker 7: And it's also it comes in the context of the
Speaker 7: Biden administration in numerous instances, saying we should have more
Speaker 7: authority to do something that, for instance, you know, cancels
Speaker 7: to a loan debt that the court said violated the law,
Speaker 7: and so and so. The willingness of presidents to defy
Speaker 7: congressional statutes seems to be in part a bipartisan trend.
Speaker 7: I still think this is this is beyond what we've seen, definitely,
Speaker 7: but they are correct. I think that before the nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy four budget law, presidents did act with much more
Speaker 7: authority to cancel spending without congressional approval. And they are
Speaker 7: also right that the federal debt has grown to thirty
Speaker 7: six trillion dollars. And even though this the funding they're
Speaker 7: targeting is not you know, the fundamental part of that,
Speaker 7: there is waste and fraud in the federal government and
Speaker 7: it raises I think a somewhat legitimate question of if
Speaker 7: the government discovers that money that Congress has approved is wasteful, should.
Speaker 8: They have to spend it any way? Essentially on the flip.
Speaker 7: Side, like then that takes the power away from Congress
Speaker 7: to make the decision about what is wasteful.
Speaker 4: It's I mean, and yeah, it seems to me like people,
Speaker 4: as the people in the russ vote Mark Peletta camp,
Speaker 4: understand that this is going to be kicked to the
Speaker 4: courts and are kind of eager to see how the
Speaker 4: courts decide on these questions. Let's put up some of
Speaker 4: the Democratic response here A five. Obviously, the Democratic attorney's
Speaker 4: generals have, you know, put together their efforts to, as
Speaker 4: political says, quote, urgently resist the freeze. This is a
Speaker 4: statement from the Rhode Island Attorney General, Peter Narnha, who
Speaker 4: said it is astonishing the President Trump, through an agency
Speaker 4: most Americans have never heard of, would take an action
Speaker 4: so clearly unlawful that would impact so many Americans in
Speaker 4: so many ways. And if we go to the next element,
Speaker 4: this is a six. H This is a post from
Speaker 4: Alex Sfeiffer, who's a deputy Assistant to the President and
Speaker 4: Principal Deputy Comm's director. He says this was in the
Speaker 4: OMB memo or the OMB like memo after the memo
Speaker 4: that explained, quote, mandatory programs like Medica STAP will continue
Speaker 4: without pause. But again, that is a question Caroline Levitt
Speaker 4: didn't seem to have a clear answer to after the
Speaker 4: post that Pfeiffer is going for there came out, Jeff right,
Speaker 4: and do I have the sequence correct on that? It
Speaker 4: was pretty interesting that memo after the memo came out,
Speaker 4: then the White House Press briefing happened, and then they
Speaker 4: still didn't have a clear answer. And this brings us
Speaker 4: to a eight, which is an article that Jeff you
Speaker 4: wrote last June about Trump plans to claim sweeping powers
Speaker 4: to cancel federal spending.
Speaker 5: This is something that has been in the works.
Speaker 4: This is like an ideological like crafted in a conservative laboratory.
Speaker 1: Literally, always read Jeff Stein, always.
Speaker 4: Read Jeff Steyn, and Dave Dan's piece. I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people on the right at the American Prospect
Speaker 4: would read that and say, yes, it's you know, they
Speaker 4: would disagree that it was unlawful, but they would say, yes,
Speaker 4: this is the radical revolutionary measure that we were taking. So, Jeff,
Speaker 4: what's your perspective on why a policy that's been thought
Speaker 4: about for so long was rolled out?
Speaker 5: I think at best slappily.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's the core thing driving this to me,
Speaker 7: seemed to have been you know, Stephen Miller was on
Speaker 7: TV yesterday saying, like, we kept on hearing that we'd
Speaker 7: spent money that we didn't know was going out the
Speaker 7: door on gods and condoms or whatever, and I think
Speaker 7: that sort of fueled some of the sloppiness. I mean,
Speaker 7: the White House was like, if you read the order
Speaker 7: they sent out Monday night that we got that we
Speaker 7: reported on Monday night, it is the way it is read.
Speaker 7: Like the actual words used specifically state that all federal
Speaker 7: grants will be paused, including but not limited to DEI,
Speaker 7: clean energy, all this stuff that they don't want.
Speaker 8: The next day, their.
Speaker 7: Memos said the only thing affected by this pause are
Speaker 7: spending programs not.
Speaker 8: Compliant with our.
Speaker 7: Prior executive orders on DEI, green energy, et cetera, et
Speaker 7: CETERA huge difference between one and two, right, Like one
Speaker 7: is saying we shut down everything, then we evaluate it,
Speaker 7: and whatever is found in compliance with ore eos will
Speaker 7: be allowed to go. The second day is we will
Speaker 7: shut down only the things that are found that are found.
Speaker 8: To be in violations of our eos.
Speaker 7: They you know, it was like, how do you guys
Speaker 7: not understand like that these are like the same thing.
Speaker 8: We haven't changed our messages like blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: I's like I don't know what to tell you guys,
Speaker 7: Like I don't write these memos, like I am just reading.
Speaker 8: They're like very clear, like ay one said that, they
Speaker 8: too said that.
Speaker 7: So like it's it's confusing, like it's it's not it's
Speaker 7: not it's not us, it's not the press, And it's
Speaker 7: frustrating because like I don't know, I don't know how
Speaker 7: to I don't want to get myself in trouble here,
Speaker 7: but I think like for a lot of reporters, myself included,
Speaker 7: like we we know that the Trump people think that
Speaker 7: we're like unfair, that they think we're biased, that they
Speaker 7: think we're like all liberals like out to get them,
Speaker 7: and I have been working very hard to be like
Speaker 7: I am. I am reporting the facts. I am figuring
Speaker 7: out what's happening. I am giving you guys it, you know,
Speaker 7: a totally fair hearing in all my stories, like.
Speaker 8: I wanna I want to. I don't want to.
Speaker 7: Be demagogued as someone who's just out here doing Trump
Speaker 7: arrangements in syndrome stuff like. I think that's really important
Speaker 7: for the media to like not get stucked out into
Speaker 7: every like thing that might not be true. I mean
Speaker 7: to just make it a very obvious point. And but
Speaker 7: then I'm in this instance where it's just like they're
Speaker 7: telling everyone that we're lying, and it's like I've been
Speaker 7: reading what you guys are putting out and it's confusing
Speaker 7: and it's hurting people, and it's it's not saying what
Speaker 7: you said. It says So it's like, what am I
Speaker 7: supposed to do with you know.
Speaker 9: What I mean?
Speaker 8: Does that make sense?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 1: We actually before you get on here, Emily and I
Speaker 1: were talking about how or I was saying this, so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna put this in Emily's mouth, but I
Speaker 1: was saying that because the there has been genuine Trump
Speaker 1: derangement syndrome from significant elements of the mainstream media. Now,
Speaker 1: whenever the Trump administration screws up and actually does something
Speaker 1: like shut down all the medicaid portals around the country,
Speaker 1: maybe accidentally what they they respond by saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is another MSM hoax. Don't believe the MSM. This is
Speaker 1: this isn't this isn't happening. This is them lying again.
Speaker 1: And so you can't say that all the time, like
Speaker 1: something like everybody makes mistakes and that's being generous. I
Speaker 1: think like I'm being generous here and calling this potentially
Speaker 1: a mistake.
Speaker 6: You know. Meanwhile, so I completely understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're trying to give them a fair shake, and they
Speaker 1: are actually doing this very confusing thing and then saying
Speaker 1: that they didn't do it, and you're like, well, how
Speaker 1: there's no way to fairly report that and make you
Speaker 1: sound good like you messed this up. Meanwhile, I'm totally
Speaker 1: bracing myself for the Supreme Court to come in and
Speaker 1: say that it was illegal for the Biden administration to
Speaker 1: underline the point that you were making earlier, illegal for
Speaker 1: the Biden administration to restructure loan payments around student debt.
Speaker 1: But it is totally legal for a President Trump to
Speaker 1: just do what he wants with the money that Congress directed.
Speaker 1: How confident are your sources in the Trump world that
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court is going to meet them somewhere on
Speaker 1: this and give them new powers or are they going
Speaker 1: on that theory where well, the worst thing that happens
Speaker 1: is we get our policy for a couple of months
Speaker 1: or couple years and then it gets shut down.
Speaker 6: That would just keep doing it.
Speaker 8: I'm honestly not sure.
Speaker 7: I mean, the the people I was talking to last summer,
Speaker 7: you know, they have ties to Clarence Thomas and the
Speaker 7: Conservatives on the Court, and I think they feel pretty
Speaker 7: good about a few of them. But yeah, exactly, Mark Yoletta,
Speaker 7: who's the lawyer at the Budget Office, he knows Thomas
Speaker 7: very well. If there's been pro public or reporting about them,
Speaker 7: you know, doing trips together and stuff. So you know,
Speaker 7: I'm guessing this is a guess, but I'm guessing that
Speaker 7: they have a pretty good feeling of where Thomas is.
Speaker 7: But you and Clarence Thomas and so why like you
Speaker 7: still need the rest or at least you know, several
Speaker 7: other you know, Supreme poor justices that said, I think
Speaker 7: the the capacity or possibility that the Trump people just
Speaker 7: ignore the court order. You know, I could not get
Speaker 7: a straight answer to reiterate last night what they con
Speaker 7: or whether they would bye by what the judge said.
Speaker 7: The federal judge had said. And you know, for all
Speaker 7: the comparisons we were making with the Bienes Tune loan order,
Speaker 7: if the Trump people are just going to straight up
Speaker 7: ignore what the federal courts say, I'm not saying they
Speaker 7: have yet, but if that's what they're going to do,
Speaker 7: we are in really different territory in terms of just
Speaker 7: defying a court order. I mean, we haven't seen that
Speaker 7: really since I don't know, you know, Lincoln and Habeas
Speaker 7: Corpus and ignoring the Supreme Court and Civil War. I
Speaker 7: don't I'm not a historian obviously, but but that that
Speaker 7: would be a huge change in shock. So the speed
Speaker 7: and lase nature in which they did this to me
Speaker 7: suggest that they might be willing to try sort of
Speaker 7: ignoring the courts.
Speaker 4: And I should correct myself. Markedn't clerk for Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 4: He was sort of a sharp and the confirmation for
Speaker 4: Clarence Thomas, but has been around the circles for a
Speaker 4: long Thank you. So, yeah, that's a that's an interesting
Speaker 4: that's a really interesting point. Actually, the makeup of the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court is like tailor made if you would want
Speaker 4: to have a descent, if you're a conservative, who would
Speaker 4: want to have something like this litigated right now and
Speaker 4: for the Supreme Court. So, Jeff, this is super super interesting.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for joining us and sticking with
Speaker 4: us for like a whole half hour to go through
Speaker 4: all of this crazy news.
Speaker 8: Well my pleasure, guys, thanks for having me appreciate it, all.
Speaker 6: Right, good lucking up.
Speaker 1: Next, he was talking about that Steven Miller Jake Tapper interview. Well,
Speaker 1: they also fought over immigration. We'll talk about that in
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 4: White House Deputy Chief of stafford Policy and also a
Speaker 4: Homeland Security advisor, Stephen Miller, was brawling with Jake Tapper
Speaker 4: on CNN yesterday evening. They touched on what we talked
Speaker 4: about earlier, on the federal aid loans and grants and
Speaker 4: all of that, but also really got into an interesting
Speaker 4: exchange over the Trump administration's immigration policy.
Speaker 5: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 13: How do you how does President Trump make sure that
Speaker 13: the effort to deport people who are not in this
Speaker 13: country legally doesn't end up hurting America who want safe
Speaker 13: borders absolutely but also don't want to see even more
Speaker 13: higher prices and groceries.
Speaker 11: Well, I mean, I'm sure it's not your position, Jake.
Speaker 11: You're just asking the question that we should supply America's
Speaker 11: food with exploitative illegal alien labor. I obviously don't think
Speaker 11: that's what you're implying. Only one percent of alien workers
Speaker 11: in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination
Speaker 11: for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like
Speaker 11: Los Angeles, and small industrial talents of course, all across
Speaker 11: the heartland and we as we've seen with the Biden flights,
Speaker 11: none of those illegal aliens are doing farm work. Those
Speaker 11: thirty thousand legal aliens that Joe Biden dumped into springs.
Speaker 13: I'm talking about the ones no no, no, but but no.
Speaker 9: But I'm explaining this. It's important to understand.
Speaker 6: Now you're kind of changing with I mean no, no, no.
Speaker 11: I will, I will go. I will give me thirty minutes.
Speaker 11: All goes deep as you want to say, I don't
Speaker 11: will your audience.
Speaker 13: I don't have a fair I'm talking about the ones
Speaker 13: that could that they're work in the agriculture industry.
Speaker 9: What I mean explaining back when you're talk.
Speaker 6: About the ones in the cities.
Speaker 9: I swear I'll do the whole answer.
Speaker 11: The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country
Speaker 11: are not full stop doing farm work. They are not
Speaker 11: the illegal aliens he brought in from Venezuela, from Haiti,
Speaker 11: from Nicarauagua. They are not doing farm work. They are
Speaker 11: inner cities collecting welfare.
Speaker 9: As for the.
Speaker 11: Farmers, there is a guest worker program that President Trump supports.
Speaker 11: Over time as well, we will transition into automation so
Speaker 11: we'll never have to have this conversation ever again.
Speaker 9: But there's no universe in which this nation is.
Speaker 11: Going to allow the previous president to flutter our nation
Speaker 11: with millions and millions of illegal aliens who just get
Speaker 11: to stay here.
Speaker 9: And we are especially not going.
Speaker 11: To allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape
Speaker 11: and murder our citizens. So we are going to unapologetically
Speaker 11: enforce our immigration laws. And as I'm sure you will celebrate,
Speaker 11: we are going to unleash the power and might of
Speaker 11: the US government to eradicate the presidence of transnational threats.
Speaker 9: On our soil.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: Of course, the criminal status or non criminal status of
Speaker 4: people who are being deported was a topic at the
Speaker 4: first White House Press Briefing yesterday, which was absolutely packed.
Speaker 4: Let's take a look at how Carolin Lovett responded to
Speaker 4: some questions about that five hundred arrests ICE is made
Speaker 4: so far since President.
Speaker 10: Trump came back into office.
Speaker 4: Can you just tell us the numbers how many have
Speaker 4: a criminal record versus those who are just in the
Speaker 4: country illegally.
Speaker 12: All of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws,
Speaker 12: and therefore they are criminals as far as this administration goes.
Speaker 12: I know the last administration didn't see it that way.
Speaker 12: So it's a big culture shift in our nation to
Speaker 12: view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal.
Speaker 12: But that's exactly what they are here. They all have
Speaker 12: a criminal records and welcome to the if they broke
Speaker 12: our nation's laws.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, so, Brian, there's an interesting debate happening right
Speaker 4: now about what constitutes criminal because it is under US code,
Speaker 4: a crime, but it's a misdemeanor to cross the border illegally.
Speaker 4: It's not a felony if you repeat, which many people have,
Speaker 4: it is a felony, but it is still technically a misdemeanor.
Speaker 4: So and you know, you're sort of getting into a
Speaker 4: semantics game.
Speaker 1: And then the extra layer of semantics is that overstaying
Speaker 1: of visa is a civil infraction, right, and many, many,
Speaker 1: maybe most of the people who are here illegally are
Speaker 1: here because they overstate a visa, which technically, actually like
Speaker 1: is just a civil offense, not even a misdemeanor. The
Speaker 1: misdemeanor comes from crossing the border without the right papers,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 6: So and then I guess the question is.
Speaker 1: If you commit a misdemeanor, are you a criminal? I mean,
Speaker 1: how many misdemeanors have you committed?
Speaker 6: Probably a lot.
Speaker 5: I think a jay walked the.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 4: So that's it. It gets into this sort of semantic game.
Speaker 4: But Trump did repeatedly say that this would be about
Speaker 4: violent criminals, and so right now, what everyone's trying to
Speaker 4: do is kind of parse the amount of people who
Speaker 4: are violent criminals versus who just committed the misdemeanor of
Speaker 4: entering the country illegally. The Washington Post we can put
Speaker 4: this next Forbes tear sheet up on the screen Forbes
Speaker 4: kind of was running down what numbers we have and
Speaker 4: found in the Washington Post that ICE officials have been
Speaker 4: directed by Trump officials to aggressively ramp up the number
Speaker 4: of people they arrest from a few hundred per day
Speaker 4: to at least twelve hundred to fifteen hundred because the
Speaker 4: President has been disappointed with.
Speaker 5: The results of his mass deportation.
Speaker 4: So these are quotas, and quotas, obviously is how you
Speaker 4: end up with a different kind of or you end
Speaker 4: up with percentages of you know, criminal, violent criminals versus
Speaker 4: kind of regular people who committed the misdemeanor crime of
Speaker 4: coming to the country illegally. Then you can't like guarantee
Speaker 4: that you're only sweeping up violent criminals.
Speaker 5: As soon as.
Speaker 4: You're you know, saying we have to have fifteen hundred
Speaker 4: daily deportations, it just gets a lot harder, obviously.
Speaker 1: Right, And you can see Trump's mind working where he's like,
Speaker 1: I keep being told there were twelve to fifteen million
Speaker 1: illegals who like flooded into the country in the last
Speaker 1: four years, and we're removing a few hundred a day,
Speaker 1: Like Trump can do the math on that, like that
Speaker 1: that those are two wildly different sets of scales, and so.
Speaker 6: People, if he had people.
Speaker 1: Around him who who were honest, they would have told
Speaker 1: him like, this is this is basically what we're capable of.
Speaker 1: And he has had people around him who have said,
Speaker 1: if you want to do this in the way that
Speaker 1: you see it, you're gonna need to basically send the
Speaker 1: military into American cities all at once. And you know
Speaker 1: there are factions on the right that want to see
Speaker 1: that happen. Yeah, but I think even Trump is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's pushing it a little bit.
Speaker 6: Much like the the.
Speaker 1: Like black jackets and the black boots, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: The Green ones going around the city like like maybe
Speaker 1: against BLM protesters, but like just rating like the home
Speaker 1: depot parking lot like that starts to look ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: also the fact that they're being so coy about the
Speaker 1: criminal records of the people that they're rounding up suggests
Speaker 1: an inherent acknowledgment among all sides of the debate here
Speaker 1: that there isn't actually an enormous amount of support for
Speaker 1: kind of violently deporting, aggressively deporting people who whose only crime,
Speaker 1: if you want to call it, that is coming here illegally,
Speaker 1: like there might be kind of poles say, Poles might say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we think people should be here legally. But then it
Speaker 1: seems like even the Trump administration knows that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: physically dragging people out of them done anything wrong. That's
Speaker 1: why they want to find people with these criminal records,
Speaker 1: why they're at the very top of we didn't play it,
Speaker 1: but at the very top of this White House press briefing.
Speaker 1: She started by saying they'd arrested what a Dominican guy
Speaker 1: who had murdered his his like his mother and her
Speaker 1: like child or something like. Those are the ones that
Speaker 1: the Trump administration wants to then kind of allude to
Speaker 1: all Democrats are okay with that, when really, if Democrats
Speaker 1: had any sense, they would have been going after people
Speaker 1: like that internally, and to some extent they were, but
Speaker 1: not not They wouldn't you kind of make a big
Speaker 1: deal of it, Well yeah, like Biden wouldn't have bragged
Speaker 1: that they had done it, which is crazy, Like you
Speaker 1: catch a murderer, actually, like that's that's the number one
Speaker 1: thing a politician likes to celebrate.
Speaker 6: It's catching a murderer.
Speaker 1: Like entire careers are made off of that, that's what
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 5: Doesn't get any better than that.
Speaker 4: No, Well, so, speaking of the optics, let's take a
Speaker 4: look at this next clip of DHS Secretary Christie Nome.
Speaker 5: I can't believe I'm even saying.
Speaker 4: DHS Secretary Christine Nome on the streets of New York
Speaker 4: City yesterday. You can see her. She tweets seven am
Speaker 4: in NYC getting the dirt bags off the streets. She's
Speaker 4: got I'm gonna get criticized her, she's got a blowout,
Speaker 4: she's got her outfit on, and she's ready to go.
Speaker 6: You know, Ryan, is that a still up look?
Speaker 1: Like usually people seven am in New York City with
Speaker 1: their hair looking like that.
Speaker 4: It just went out the night before and went straight
Speaker 4: to the ice right very late in PR. I don't
Speaker 4: know what she was up to, but she she looked great,
Speaker 4: I'll give her that.
Speaker 1: And she was checking out kitchens at bars until six
Speaker 1: am and.
Speaker 5: Then checking the restaurant inspection.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she's looking for bussers and bar backs.
Speaker 4: So seven am in NYC getting the dirt bags off
Speaker 4: the streets.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: To your point, I will say, we've all seen the
Speaker 4: polling recently. New York Times Episodes had a poll, just
Speaker 4: like the day before the inauguration last week about how
Speaker 4: Americans support the concept of mass deportations. That isn't the
Speaker 4: only pole that's found that if you just ask people
Speaker 4: right now about whether they support mass deportations, the answer
Speaker 4: to that is yes. And it's possible that dips a
Speaker 4: little bit more as the media starts focusing on as
Speaker 4: the Trump administration starts focusing on deportations, and then the
Speaker 4: media starts focusing on it. Are all entirely possible, but
Speaker 4: they're and.
Speaker 1: That goes my But I think I don't have any
Speaker 1: evidence for this, but I just feel like the people
Speaker 1: who are answering that kind of when a snaff of
Speaker 1: the finger, like, Okay, we didn't really see those people
Speaker 1: come in, except we saw some images at the border,
Speaker 1: and we don't really want to see them leave.
Speaker 6: But I agree that.
Speaker 1: They should leave, Like that's the kind of right like
Speaker 1: support for that. But when it gets ugly, you might
Speaker 1: see that slip.
Speaker 4: We'll see Yeah, No, I mean optics wise, you want to,
Speaker 4: I mean the Christy Nome thing. You can see exactly
Speaker 4: why people who look at what happened, For example, Lake
Speaker 4: and Riley would say yeah, like, hell yeah, let's.
Speaker 5: Get out of there.
Speaker 4: Let's get people out of here if they are prior
Speaker 4: criminal convictions and they do so.
Speaker 5: This is from the Associated Press.
Speaker 4: As of July twenty one, I said six hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty two, five hundred and fifty six people under its
Speaker 4: supervision were either convicted of crimes or face criminal charges.
Speaker 4: Nearly fifteen thousand were in its custody, but the vast
Speaker 4: majority were not included in the figures of people not
Speaker 4: detained by ICE, where people guilty of very serious crimes
Speaker 4: thirteen thousand for homicide, fifteen thousand for sexual assault, thirteen
Speaker 4: thousand for weapons offenses, and two thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty three for stolen vehicle. The single biggest category, though,
Speaker 4: was for traffic related defenses seventy seven thousand, followed by
Speaker 4: assault at sixty two thousand, and dangerous drugs at fifty
Speaker 4: six thousand. But those numbers on that we just went
Speaker 4: through here, of homicide, sexual assault, weapons, stolen vehicles, assaults,
Speaker 4: those are really really high numbers, right, but.
Speaker 6: It gets dip puts you with what one hundred thousand
Speaker 6: or so.
Speaker 4: Right, I was just going to say, if you want
Speaker 4: to do that, on a if you want to do
Speaker 4: fifteen hundred on a daily basis of only the most
Speaker 4: violent criminals, that quota is going to put you in
Speaker 4: a position where there are you know, just people who
Speaker 4: aren't the most violent criminals.
Speaker 1: Still, and we're being told that there's twenty million people
Speaker 1: we need to get out of the country, and that's
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand, Like, what about the other nineteen million,
Speaker 1: nine hundred thousand.
Speaker 6: That's the that's the part that's going to get interested.
Speaker 5: That is the part that's gonna be interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah's that is the part for sure, because for Donald
Speaker 4: Trump right now, some of the toughest questions that he
Speaker 4: faced between his election ands inauguration were are you going
Speaker 4: to be rounding up like families and kids that came
Speaker 4: here were brought here illegally over the course of the
Speaker 4: Biden administration.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to that Stephen Miller clip that
Speaker 1: we started with a where Miller does this kind of
Speaker 1: logical kind of fallacy where he says he's asked about
Speaker 1: agricultural workers, and you know, he understands that there's another
Speaker 1: implicit kind of agreement between Tapper and Miller there that
Speaker 1: most Americans like don't want ice going into the lettuce
Speaker 1: fields and rounding everybody up and hauling them to Mexico.
Speaker 1: And so instead of defending that, what Miller says is, well, actually,
Speaker 1: most of the people that are here illegally and that
Speaker 1: we're allowed in by Biden, we're jumped in the cities
Speaker 1: and they're not out there picking the fields. That's not
Speaker 1: the point. The question is about the agricultural workers. And Tappers,
Speaker 1: are you're changing the subject? Is like to how dare
Speaker 1: you change the subject? And the right kind of loves
Speaker 1: that Miller's given it to Tapper, and Tapper's fans love that.
Speaker 6: He's like standing up to Miller.
Speaker 1: But what gets lost in the conversations they are talking about,
Speaker 1: they're talking about.
Speaker 6: Genuinely two different things.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so then Miller says, well, we have a
Speaker 1: guest worker program. And this is where I get so
Speaker 1: frustrated in the immigration conversation, because I'm a big supporter
Speaker 1: of a of guest worker programs that smoothly allow people
Speaker 1: who you know, if you've got a country where you know,
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of laborers in Mexico who want
Speaker 1: to work these jobs, like in the fields of California.
Speaker 1: But don't actually want to live here like they like Mexico.
Speaker 1: Their roots are there, their family is there, their community
Speaker 1: is there, but they want to come for four or
Speaker 1: five months like that used to be how it was
Speaker 1: done in the seventies and eighties. And then we crack
Speaker 1: down and we close the border, and so all the
Speaker 1: people that were doing that told their families and their
Speaker 1: communities just come up here because now it's too expensive
Speaker 1: to go back and forth across the border. The idea
Speaker 1: that there's a functional guest worker program that can be
Speaker 1: used at scale by our our agriculture industry.
Speaker 6: Is just not true.
Speaker 1: And if Miller supports that, great pass it into put
Speaker 1: it back into law and make and make that the law,
Speaker 1: and then it and then then you can raise questions,
Speaker 1: are they exploited? Okay, if they are exploited, they're now legal.
Speaker 1: They can form they can join a union.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: They the inspectors can come out and make sure that
Speaker 1: things are going well.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And the pay that they're going to be getting is
Speaker 1: so much is relatively so much better. But that's just
Speaker 1: thrown as and then he says, oh, and we're going
Speaker 1: to use automation to get rid of that soon anyway. So,
Speaker 1: but all of it is actually just a way to
Speaker 1: avoid the actual conversation.
Speaker 5: I think he.
Speaker 4: Got Tapper pretty good when Tapper was asking him about
Speaker 4: like I forget exactly what Tapper what description Tapper used,
Speaker 4: but like, let us is that what they were talking about,
Speaker 4: like let us something.
Speaker 5: To that extent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And Miller came back and was like, so this
Speaker 4: is just about bringing in an underclass of people too,
Speaker 4: Like that was thought. I thought that was pretty excellent. Rebuttal,
Speaker 4: I assume what you're saying that it's on a difference.
Speaker 6: It is and Tapper should be like or Tapper's.
Speaker 1: Well, actually with the other side to say, yes, it
Speaker 1: is actually like we don't have people.
Speaker 6: You can't.
Speaker 1: We've got this economic problem where we need people to
Speaker 1: do these jobs for wages that are less then you
Speaker 1: can actually live a dignified life in the United States.
Speaker 5: But we don't need that.
Speaker 1: And so the way you can do this, well, they
Speaker 1: don't actually live in the United States. They only live
Speaker 1: here for four months. They work here, make a good
Speaker 1: amount of money, Like just like H two B people
Speaker 1: come over here, wait tables for four months and then
Speaker 1: go back to Poland or whatever, and they made good
Speaker 1: money for Poland or they made good money for Romania,
Speaker 1: like that, Is that the best system we design in
Speaker 1: the world. No, but otherwise the price lettuce is going
Speaker 1: to double. And see how people like that.
Speaker 5: Well Miller will have to own that. Yeah, No, I
Speaker 5: mean absolutely don't.
Speaker 4: I don't disagree that it causes price increases, but I
Speaker 4: don't think we all need.
Speaker 5: To like get that. I think when people look at them.
Speaker 1: As people like Taver won't say yeah, actually you're right,
Speaker 1: like yeah, and we need So it's going to be
Speaker 1: two tiers, and the second tier is people that don't
Speaker 1: actually live here. They just come here and then they
Speaker 1: go back, and then over time hopefully you can then
Speaker 1: develop more equitable economy where you're raising the living standards
Speaker 1: of everywhere.
Speaker 4: Well, the disorderly process over the last few years has
Speaker 4: definitely made exploitation a lot easier, which is why they've
Speaker 4: actually just like lost a certain number of even like
Speaker 4: children who have gone into the labor system here at
Speaker 4: times at a great expose on how many kids were
Speaker 4: being like forcing the exploit of labor and then we
Speaker 4: just lost custody of them. Whose Mayorkas was like DHS
Speaker 4: just lost custody of them. And part of that is
Speaker 4: because our system was so overwhelmed and disorderly, and so
Speaker 4: I think the Trump administration's best argument probably is not
Speaker 4: just you know, people are here and they shouldn't be here.
Speaker 5: We've lost track of them.
Speaker 4: We need to adjudicate their asylum claims if they made,
Speaker 4: you know, dubious asylum claims, like judicate those, get the
Speaker 4: violent criminals out.
Speaker 5: But then also have some system.
Speaker 4: That makes sense, and that is way harder than actually
Speaker 4: like deporting people. And well we can talk about that
Speaker 4: too with all of the other sort of radical reforms
Speaker 4: of Trump administration is doing. Like it's that first step
Speaker 4: is kind of the easiest, is politically the hardest, but
Speaker 4: then rebuilding a system afterwards is definitely going to be
Speaker 4: really difficult. Let's move on to the Michigan Senate race
Speaker 4: that suddenly opened up yesterday. Nobody really expected Gary Peters
Speaker 4: to step down. He's a pretty run of the milk
Speaker 4: conventional while like establishment democrat, wouldn't you say, Ryan.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's very like the unions are cool with him.
Speaker 1: He's like a rank and file politician who like worked
Speaker 1: his way up.
Speaker 6: Now he's a senator pro ily sit there for life.
Speaker 1: But you know you only make what one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy four thousand dollars a year as a senator Boring,
Speaker 1: you spend all your time with incredibly rich people, doing
Speaker 1: like the coolest rich people things, and at some point
Speaker 1: you're like, wait a minute, if I have power over
Speaker 1: these people, they're asking me for things. Yet I got
Speaker 1: no money and here I am with twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: in my campaign account, but I can't spend it on myself.
Speaker 6: Let me just cash app here.
Speaker 1: You start making a couple of million dollars a year
Speaker 1: for ten years and just really live large. I don't
Speaker 1: know what he's going to do. We'll see. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect anything.
Speaker 4: Different, right, No, but it did take everybody by surprise
Speaker 4: that he announced. Peter's announced his retirement yesterday. And if
Speaker 4: we skip here to C two, we can put this
Speaker 4: access report up on the screen that former Transportation Secretary
Speaker 4: Pete Buddha Judge is quote taking a serious look at
Speaker 4: running for Peter's seat. This is from a person close
Speaker 4: to Buddha Judge.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 4: Pete is exploring all of his options on how he
Speaker 4: can be helpful and continue to serve. He's honored to
Speaker 4: be mentioned for this, and he's taking a serious Look.
Speaker 4: What I love about that quote, Ryan, is I hope
Speaker 4: the person who said he's honored to be mentioned for
Speaker 4: this is the one who mentioned.
Speaker 5: Him for this.
Speaker 6: Bis Smith.
Speaker 4: Yeah, probably it was, Yes, probably it was probably like, Hey, Pete,
Speaker 4: let's call up Axios and just say we're honored to
Speaker 4: be mentioned, and there that will create the mention of us.
Speaker 1: The thing about Pete is really his consultants probably don't
Speaker 1: even have to tell him that now he's on the ball.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this guy is.
Speaker 1: He's wanted this for a very long time, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so it'll be mayor Pete.
Speaker 6: How is the Republican field looking over there? I mean,
Speaker 6: I mean they keep.
Speaker 1: Losing too very Yeah, seemingly beatable Democrats with pretty good candidates. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and that they went.
Speaker 6: They've won two out of the last three presidential.
Speaker 1: Cycles, right close races, but on.
Speaker 6: The gubernatorial level and the Senate level, they just get waxed.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He It's a really good point because and I actually
Speaker 4: just wrote a piece about Alissa Slotkin yesterday for her
Speaker 4: very close race. It was very close race, very culturally,
Speaker 4: that's true.
Speaker 6: She eked it out Yeah.
Speaker 4: And she actually had an interesting campaign on abortion, which
Speaker 4: is where Mallory McMorrow, who many people remember was sort
Speaker 4: of conspicuously posting.
Speaker 5: She went really viral.
Speaker 4: This was a couple of years ago, and it was
Speaker 4: about correct me ivery mind. I think it was about like
Speaker 4: banned books quote unquote banded books.
Speaker 5: Or something like it.
Speaker 6: Wasn't she like Mike Staffer or something like that.
Speaker 5: Oh was she didn't even know she was like a
Speaker 5: state Yeah she was. Yeah, but she so.
Speaker 6: She's Brooklyn hipster who moved back to Michigan.
Speaker 5: Moved back home.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Many such cases.
Speaker 6: Have a great speech, yes, and viral.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in many such cases.
Speaker 4: She seems to have political ambitions and could be a
Speaker 4: rival to Boodha Judge on in this race. Wiggle was
Speaker 4: Dave Waggel was, you know, quoting her her tweets wishing
Speaker 4: Gary Peters a happy retirement yesterday with interest. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And her problem is.
Speaker 1: She is in the same lane as Buddha Judge, kind
Speaker 1: of the local leaning center left, where you know, you're
Speaker 1: not in the Bernie lane. And the way you differentiate
Speaker 1: yourself from establishment democrats is you're more aggressive.
Speaker 6: In how you fight on behalf of.
Speaker 1: Cultural issues and I don't think you can beat Pete
Speaker 1: on that because he's just the best at that.
Speaker 6: But who knows. We'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe Pete keeps his powder drive for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight.
Speaker 4: This is this is back to who Republicans possibly have.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, maybe he does, although he could still technically,
Speaker 4: I guess he could run in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 6: It could, just it would look pretty weird, like you're
Speaker 6: going from your swearing into Iowa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, well they don't do Iowa anymore, right, that's right.
Speaker 4: But so the Alyssa Slatkin is out here talking to
Speaker 4: for example, the Free Press Barry Wise's publication about how
Speaker 4: Democrats just need to get back to being quote unquote
Speaker 4: normal and how she is the kind of normal person
Speaker 4: whisper because she eked out this Michigan Senate race by
Speaker 4: talking about the economy and blah blah blah, which by
Speaker 4: the way, really isn't true. She sort of tried to
Speaker 4: pivot to that, but when she was in the House
Speaker 4: of Representatives was pretty eagerly leading into some of these,
Speaker 4: like she's the co sponsor. I think she may have
Speaker 4: even been the sponsor of the George Floyd.
Speaker 5: Justice and policing.
Speaker 6: What everyone is for that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, everyone was for that, right, but she like really
Speaker 4: leaned into it, took the initiative on it. So anyway
Speaker 4: a CIA right, Oh yeah, So like let's I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a tough race Forublicans because Democrats in Michigan are
Speaker 4: just smarter than Democrats in different parts of the country.
Speaker 4: They're forced to be because Michigan is a has an
Speaker 4: interesting demographic profile of the people that Democrats are losing.
Speaker 4: So they kind of got to that question first. But
Speaker 4: it'll be an interesting rash for sure. Less interesting probably
Speaker 4: than the vake rama Swami. Yeah, less interesting than vike
Speaker 4: Ramaswami is Ohio run because I mean he has to
Speaker 4: get out of primary. The primary is where it would
Speaker 4: be interesting. General election would be less interesting.
Speaker 1: How oak is he because of his uh Parkle tweet? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm thrown out of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's take a look at his interview with Charlamine
Speaker 4: that god on Breakfast Club where Charlamne really laid into him.
Speaker 14: Do you think you will push out of those because
Speaker 14: Trump rolled back the DEI initiatives.
Speaker 15: No, the contrary, and you know, I would say, just
Speaker 15: to be super clear about I I have no problem
Speaker 15: with you know, framing or whatever. It was really just
Speaker 15: an actual mutual decision where you look at here was
Speaker 15: one vision on approach. Here's a differ from vision on
Speaker 15: an approach that's great. There's no right or wrong answer
Speaker 15: with a technology driven approach and a technology first approach,
Speaker 15: there's no better person.
Speaker 9: Than Elon to run with that.
Speaker 15: With a constitutional law focus, with the legislation focus some
Speaker 15: of the areas I was focused on, Probably the right
Speaker 15: place to do it is elected office. And so we
Speaker 15: all agreed on that, and I think that that's actually
Speaker 15: a good thing where we're able to where we're actually
Speaker 15: able to collaborate, divide and conqueror.
Speaker 14: I behave Yeah, I don't believe you. I think you
Speaker 14: either got pushed out. You know that it's going to implode.
Speaker 14: I think that you know Elon is going crash and
Speaker 14: burn it. And you're a smart guy, and you said,
Speaker 14: you know what, let me get out of dodge and
Speaker 14: go do my governor Ohio thing.
Speaker 6: So look, I know.
Speaker 15: I knew that the right step for me in the
Speaker 15: long run is elected office and to pursue the vision
Speaker 15: that we're talking about here, to actually translate that to
Speaker 15: action of my own terms that's what I've been called
Speaker 15: to do. It was clear that I could not do
Speaker 15: that and serve on DOGE at the same time, even
Speaker 15: for logistical reasons.
Speaker 8: It came to be in the government rather than.
Speaker 6: An outside body.
Speaker 15: I was proud to be able to spend the first
Speaker 15: couple of months offering my contributions and setting it in
Speaker 15: the right direction with its focus now, with its digital
Speaker 15: technology focus. No better person to do that than Elon
Speaker 15: in the way that he's going to lead it. And
Speaker 15: I am hopeful that there's going to be a lot
Speaker 15: of streamlining of government bureaucracy that comes out of that.
Speaker 6: And I'm pursuing my next steps at the State.
Speaker 15: We're all on very good terms and so I wouldn't
Speaker 15: want to speak for anybody else, but I will say
Speaker 15: that they are very supportive of the decision that I
Speaker 15: made to pursue his my next step.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm sure they are very supportive of the decision
Speaker 4: for that next step. He is going to need a
Speaker 4: better answer to that question. He's smooth, but way too
Speaker 4: smooth there, Right, that was some real politician talk.
Speaker 1: Well, the part that was absurd to me was when
Speaker 1: he said he can't run for office and also serve
Speaker 1: on this Doge committee. It's like, wait a minute, Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is tweeting twenty four hours a day, faking being
Speaker 1: a good video game playerrunning SpaceX, running X Tesla, running
Speaker 1: running Testine, Neuralink, Neuralink, Solar City is still.
Speaker 5: Part of his AI company.
Speaker 1: Like, so he can do all this, but you can't,
Speaker 1: you know, run for a senate and also like go
Speaker 1: after seniors.
Speaker 5: Well, it's the digital technology focused.
Speaker 6: So that was the substance of it.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you have any insight into how serious
Speaker 1: that that.
Speaker 6: That dispute was between them.
Speaker 1: What he seems to be suggesting is that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is going to focus on technology basically, I guess trying
Speaker 1: to analyze where you know, you know, using algorithms, analyze
Speaker 1: where money is being spent, and then using a scalpel
Speaker 1: or a sledgehammer to go after them. Right now, he's
Speaker 1: going with a sledgehammer.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: We talked about an a block with you know, asking
Speaker 1: for every federal worker to consider taking this this buyout,
Speaker 1: whereas Veck was saying that he he would prefer a
Speaker 1: constitutional law approach and passing legislation. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you could read that it's some shade of like I'm
Speaker 1: actually going to try to do this legally, Like we
Speaker 1: have a system set up where people vote for representatives
Speaker 1: who pass laws and then implement them, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it within that system.
Speaker 4: By the way, that's the entire point of what russ
Speaker 4: Vote is trying to do at OMB.
Speaker 6: So just get rid of the representative or face.
Speaker 4: Is to force Congress to actually pass laws or take
Speaker 4: them away from the executive branch in the way that
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is trying to use executives.
Speaker 6: Right, except already did pass laws. Rustis doesn't like.
Speaker 4: Them that delegated the funding to the executive branch.
Speaker 6: They did not delegate funding. It directed the funding.
Speaker 1: The agency sell It's like if you have an Uber driver,
Speaker 1: did you delegate your destination to the Uber driver or
Speaker 1: did you direct the Uber driver? What if the Uber
Speaker 1: drivers like yeah, four oh one nine Street, how about
Speaker 1: nine o one fourth Street. This is going to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, Like, no, there's two different branches here that
Speaker 1: the branches the driver directed, the Uber driver has sent
Speaker 1: the money. This is exactly your job is to just
Speaker 1: drive the Uber.
Speaker 4: This exact argument is being I think one of the reasons.
Speaker 4: One of the things that vote is doing is this
Speaker 4: is designed to go to Supreme Court to actually cash out.
Speaker 5: It's empowerment.
Speaker 1: We can talk about it, and we did talk about
Speaker 1: We talked.
Speaker 4: About this with Jeff, but we should add Ramaswami. This is,
Speaker 4: according to local Cleveland paper, is actually expected to announce
Speaker 4: his governor bid in mid February. So just in a
Speaker 4: matter of weeks makes sense then why I was going
Speaker 4: on breakfast club And he's brought on some advisors from
Speaker 4: the Governor JD.
Speaker 5: Vince's political team. Yeah, government governor yep.
Speaker 4: So he will be in that primary with the Attorney
Speaker 4: General Dave Yost and the Treasurer Robert Sprague. And I
Speaker 4: actually think getting out of that primary is really going
Speaker 4: to be the tough one for him.
Speaker 5: It's not guaranteed at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I wonder if he's gonna have to face
Speaker 1: questions about that Alzheimer's scam he did again, like in
Speaker 1: any reasonable society, he's in prison right now. Like for
Speaker 1: people who don't know, And we talked about this now
Speaker 1: it's cool to talk about on the right.
Speaker 6: We talked about it years ago.
Speaker 1: He bought in Alzheimer's drug that had already failed its
Speaker 1: FDA trials a bunch of times did his Ramaswami hype
Speaker 1: to it, which pumped the stock up really high. Promised
Speaker 1: to like, oh man, this is going to be amazing,
Speaker 1: hired all his family, pulled the rug out, took all
Speaker 1: his money out, and then the FDA rejects it for
Speaker 1: like the fourth time, and everybody who put money in
Speaker 1: based on his hype lost.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's one thing to run in a national political or
Speaker 4: national presidential prim rate. It's another thing to run in
Speaker 4: a very localized race where those questions are just it's
Speaker 4: just sharper because there's less national noise.
Speaker 5: So I expect that'll be a pretty significant part.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, let's move on to Jim Acosta's departure
Speaker 4: from CNN.
Speaker 1: CNN anchor Jim Acosta is out.
Speaker 6: Let's watch his sign off.
Speaker 16: I just wanted to end today's show by thanking all
Speaker 16: of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at
Speaker 16: this network. You may have seen some reports about me
Speaker 16: and the show, and after giving all of this some
Speaker 16: careful consideration and weighing and alternative time slot seeing an
Speaker 16: offered me, I've decided to move on. I am grateful
Speaker 16: to CNN for the nearly eighteen years I've spent here
Speaker 16: doing the news. People often ask me if the highlight
Speaker 16: of my career at CNN was at the White House
Speaker 16: covering Donald Trump. Actually, no, that moment came here when
Speaker 16: I covered four President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba in
Speaker 16: twenty sixteen and had the chance to question the dictator there,
Speaker 16: Ral Castro about the island's political prisoners. As the son
Speaker 16: of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson. It
Speaker 16: is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.
Speaker 16: I've always believed it's the job of the press to
Speaker 16: hold power to account. I've always tried to do that
Speaker 16: here at CNN, and I plan on going doing all
Speaker 16: of that in the future. One final message, don't give
Speaker 16: into the lies. Don't give into the fear. Hold on
Speaker 16: to the truth and a hope. Even if you have
Speaker 16: to get out your phone, record that message. I will
Speaker 16: not give into the lies. I will not give into
Speaker 16: the fear. Post it on your social media so people
Speaker 16: can hear from you.
Speaker 1: Two and so, Acosta, as he was alluding to, has
Speaker 1: new plans. He is over at Substack, and he said
Speaker 1: he was going to be independent for the time being.
Speaker 6: So I actually have a so I have a thought here.
Speaker 1: So and for people who were just tuning in, Acosta
Speaker 1: was known as the CNN guy that was really going
Speaker 1: after Trump at every single briefing.
Speaker 6: Trump absolutely loved it.
Speaker 5: Trump called them the real beauty.
Speaker 1: He's a you are fake news, like in his first briefing,
Speaker 1: like really setting the tone that this was going to
Speaker 1: be combat between CNN and Acosta. A costa later, you know,
Speaker 1: really cashed in on that with a book called The
Speaker 1: Enemy of the People, which was echoing a phrase that
Speaker 1: Trump shamefully used to describe the press that's and still
Speaker 1: uses this day as the enemy.
Speaker 4: That to describe the fake news media, fake news media,
Speaker 4: not all.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't include you because you're not fake.
Speaker 6: News and there's real news right here.
Speaker 1: But the thought I have is that the Democrats problem
Speaker 1: is that they hitched their wagon to a corporate structure, yes,
Speaker 1: rather than a people powered structure that is not going
Speaker 1: to stand with them when there is a rise of
Speaker 1: a right wing populist, fascist, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: when there's a rise of that movement corporate America, which
Speaker 1: you have hitched your wagon to through your corporate donors
Speaker 1: over at the Democratic Party, and also corporate media through MSNBC,
Speaker 1: CNN and New York Times and all the others that
Speaker 1: are funded by corporate advertising. Times now a little bit
Speaker 1: less so because it has so many subscribers that it's
Speaker 1: kind of that it's kind of pulled in both directions.
Speaker 1: But the point is that when the chips are down,
Speaker 1: these companies are not ideologically hostile to right wing authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: as they had to say demonstrated during World War Two
Speaker 1: when they were willing to work with Nazis even like, so,
Speaker 1: these companies are not with you when the going gets tough.
Speaker 6: So now the going is getting tough.
Speaker 1: CNN on Inauguration Day told Jake Tapper and the rest
Speaker 1: of them covering it, we don't want to hear any
Speaker 1: pro clutching, no kind of expressions of outrage from Trump,
Speaker 1: the complete opposite of four years ago.
Speaker 6: Did their ideology change? No, the power balance changed.
Speaker 1: And so because the power balance changed, Sianna is like, Acosta, you're.
Speaker 6: Out of here.
Speaker 1: We're not taking on Trump the way we did last time.
Speaker 1: And so now the Democrats are left defenseless because they
Speaker 1: allied with people that were not actually allies of them.
Speaker 1: So that's so they when you use corporate media as
Speaker 1: your center left mouth piece, you're going to get screwed
Speaker 1: and you're going to get wiped out. Whenever corporate the
Speaker 1: corporate parents profits are threatened.
Speaker 4: Well, when you say if the when the chips are
Speaker 4: down as they are now, I then though, think back
Speaker 4: to like twenty seventeen and the media collaborating with basically
Speaker 4: the deep state to help take down Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: They believed it was a winnable fight. Then well the.
Speaker 4: Chips were down to the tips were down, meaning from their.
Speaker 5: Perspective, the trips were down.
Speaker 6: Fluke.
Speaker 5: They thought Trump was a fluke.
Speaker 4: They thought that he was in kind of an emergency,
Speaker 4: and now there's sting to.
Speaker 6: Be a threat to the stability they need for profits.
Speaker 4: The stability. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put.
Speaker 1: It's the same that so this cuts both ways. This
Speaker 1: is not a left or right thing. Right, the right
Speaker 1: allying itself with corporate power is going to find itself,
Speaker 1: you know, not not with not with you know, hardcore allies.
Speaker 1: If those corporate allies think that the right is going
Speaker 1: down and the right is a threat to them, well
Speaker 1: this was a little happily ally with corporate Democrats instead
Speaker 1: the hand.
Speaker 4: Ringing in like twenty eighteen nineteen, and then definitely in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty over the Chamber of Commerce was really fascinating
Speaker 4: to watch from inside of the conservative world because they
Speaker 4: realized what was called fusionism, the three legged stool Frank Meyer,
Speaker 4: National Review.
Speaker 6: William F.
Speaker 4: Buckley, meaning you combined libertarian economics with strong foreign policy.
Speaker 4: That's already kind of hilarious and traditional value is also
Speaker 4: kind of hilarious that the ally with the business community
Speaker 4: and libertarian economic policy had been undermining what they were
Speaker 4: pushing on family policy for years and years, like there
Speaker 4: wasn't harmony on the right. By allying yourself with the
Speaker 4: Chamber of Commerce, they started going towards ESG DEI and
Speaker 4: all of these things that they conservatives were like, we
Speaker 4: have helped you with tax cuts. We just helped you
Speaker 4: with the massive corporate task tax cut, and what you
Speaker 4: are doing is undermining the idea of like the nuclear
Speaker 4: family and men and women, And we've been on your
Speaker 4: side for years and this is what you're you're now
Speaker 4: doing here. So those I mean, I don't know, those
Speaker 4: fissures have been like very real.
Speaker 6: And they're still losing corporate America.
Speaker 4: See, this is what's interesting for and this is what's
Speaker 4: interesting for but also for conservatives. This is what's interesting
Speaker 4: right now is if you just go crawling back to
Speaker 4: the corporate world because you know, Mark Zuckerberg is giving
Speaker 4: you money again, and it's talking nice to you again.
Speaker 6: Firing Acosta.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's it's it's it all goes to your point.
Speaker 4: And I would recommend people watch our interviews actually with
Speaker 4: Don Lemon and Brian Stelter, because those were really rare opportunities.
Speaker 4: Like we literally played the Chomsky clip of him saying,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't need people to.
Speaker 5: Pay you to tell you what to say.
Speaker 4: It's you just the fact that, like you ask the
Speaker 4: questions you do, you don't need anybody to tell you
Speaker 4: to do that. You just agree with them. You're in
Speaker 4: the position you are to ask those questions because you're
Speaker 4: the kind of person that would ask the questions that
Speaker 4: you do of people in positions of power. And Don
Speaker 4: Lemon and Brian Stelter were very very much in the
Speaker 4: Jim Acosta vein of the sort of media resistance to
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. This kind of breathless fact fact checking, that
Speaker 4: would fact check, you know, if he said he had
Speaker 4: one or two scops of ice cream for dinner, and
Speaker 4: has put the media in a situation where trust has
Speaker 4: dipped to the low at hitting twenty seventeen back again.
Speaker 5: It didn't.
Speaker 4: It's not going up, it's going back down after having
Speaker 4: all of these years to learn the Biden lies for years,
Speaker 4: I think, or probably that's probably the biggest reason that
Speaker 4: trusted media is dipping again to a record low. And
Speaker 4: media with people allying with people like Jim Acosta, has
Speaker 4: put itself in the situation where, to your point, you
Speaker 4: get Jim Acosta or you get like independent media or
Speaker 4: conservative media. So like you're forcing corporate media forces peopleho
Speaker 4: choose between Jim Acosta and Sean Hannity, right, Like, that's right.
Speaker 1: And the key difference between independent media and corporate media
Speaker 1: is that you're not actually aliging with Jim Acosta himself
Speaker 1: as the man. You are aliging with Jim Acosta as
Speaker 1: the anchor for CNN because that's where he gets his power.
Speaker 1: And so if the parent company doesn't want him to
Speaker 1: be Jim Acosta the anchor anymore, now he's Jim Acosta
Speaker 1: the substacker yep. And so Democrats put themselves in a
Speaker 1: fox hole with corporate media and fighting back against Trump.
Speaker 1: And it worked the first time around, but now the
Speaker 1: second time Trump.
Speaker 6: Is more powerful.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and Democrats are looking over at the foxhole
Speaker 1: and they're like, all right, you're ready to go over
Speaker 1: the top, let's charge. And they're like they just put
Speaker 1: bullet in Acosta's head and they're like, no, we're over
Speaker 1: here with this guy right now. And Trumps, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not going to welcome them back automatically. However, since
Speaker 1: CBS News, for instance, got busted for and we talked
Speaker 1: about this on the program for this like kind of
Speaker 1: crappy editing for this Kamala Harris interview where they they
Speaker 1: made a like airheaded answer less airheaded. They cut off
Speaker 1: some of the rambling. But that's well within your First
Speaker 1: Amendment rights. And when you write an article, you don't
Speaker 1: put the entire quote.
Speaker 6: You take the.
Speaker 1: Quote that kind of conveys the message. You can agree
Speaker 1: or disagree with. It wasn't a crime what they did.
Speaker 1: Trump sued them and it was a completely laughable lawsuit.
Speaker 1: No chance this goes anywhere, Like what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You can't sue over at editing that you don't like
Speaker 1: sixty minutes. CBS settled with him, which is fascinating. So
Speaker 1: in other words, this corporate giant cut a big check
Speaker 1: to the man who's the president of the United States.
Speaker 6: We used to call that a bribe, like that's very clever.
Speaker 1: File a frivolous lawsuit, get a big check in response.
Speaker 1: Because CBS doesn't care about journalism whatever, they don't care
Speaker 1: either way. They have a merger that Paramount, which is
Speaker 1: the CBS parent companies, trying to merge with Skydance like
Speaker 1: it's a huge thing that they believe they.
Speaker 6: Need for their corporate entity.
Speaker 1: And so if you thought that CBS as Democrats, if
Speaker 1: you thought CBS was going to be part of the resistance,
Speaker 1: CBS has other things. Well forget CBS, Paramount has other
Speaker 1: things that they care about, and this merger being much
Speaker 1: more important. So they're like, you know what, Trump takes
Speaker 1: some money, sorry about our fake news media over at
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, and that allows you at it.
Speaker 6: You're right, we won't do it again.
Speaker 1: By the way, how's that merger looking. You're not going
Speaker 1: to keep any lean of con fans around.
Speaker 6: Are you so?
Speaker 4: The interview that Mark Andreesen did with Rostauf at recently
Speaker 4: where he talked about how Silicon Valley everyone sort of
Speaker 4: thought they were good Democrats and actually would put profit
Speaker 4: would put they're sort of standing as quote unquote good
Speaker 4: Democrats above tax cuts, right like they would say, we
Speaker 4: know Obama is going to raise our taxes, but it's
Speaker 4: important for us because it sort of helps us internally, personally, psychologically,
Speaker 4: morally whitewash what we're doing. Right because as long as
Speaker 4: you support the Democrats, which is the party of progress,
Speaker 4: and this is the era before Oberga fell, then you
Speaker 4: can be on the right side of history and you
Speaker 4: can keep, you know, doing whatever the hell you're doing
Speaker 4: to the country, radically changing the country. And so this
Speaker 4: is a huge conversation that we could do this for hours.
Speaker 4: But I think that's like to the extent the corporate
Speaker 4: media was resisting Trump, it was I think along those lines.
Speaker 4: But when radical reform for the left or the right
Speaker 4: comes up, that's what you see the resistance too. And
Speaker 4: it happens with Bernie, It's going to happen with Tulca
Speaker 4: Gabbard this week.
Speaker 5: It'll definitely happen with Robert F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy Jr. There are all kinds of reasons, like legitimate
Speaker 4: debates to be had about these people, but we know
Speaker 4: what side the media. We can predict what side of
Speaker 4: the media is going to be on basically every single time,
Speaker 4: given the parameters of the conversation if it's about like
Speaker 4: upending the system that benefits them. So I agree with
Speaker 4: a lot of that, and I think it's important for
Speaker 4: the left to think about this right now because of
Speaker 4: what we talked about with Jeff Stein, that the Trump
Speaker 4: administration is now calling what is at best a very
Speaker 4: sloppy rollout that ended up through somebody's fault we don't
Speaker 4: know who yet, freezing medicaid portals and sent charities into
Speaker 4: like freak outs. They saw this like personally, and it's
Speaker 4: just like the hoax lie is going to work. It's
Speaker 4: going to work because nobody trusts media. And so this
Speaker 4: is like a situation that ever's found themselves in. And
Speaker 4: this is a good lesson. Ryan, You've laid out some
Speaker 4: really interesting stuff for the rest of this segment about
Speaker 4: where the resistance goes from here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the consequence of democrats allying themselves with corporate
Speaker 1: media rather than help helping to produce an actually kind
Speaker 1: of grassroots democratic media ecosystem, is that now those mainstream
Speaker 1: media outlets are not broadcasting all of the genuine resistance
Speaker 1: that is going on.
Speaker 6: If you get your.
Speaker 1: News from the news, which is where people get the news,
Speaker 1: either from mainstream press or from the right wing press,
Speaker 1: you're not hearing anything about this upsurge in resistance that's
Speaker 1: going on, whereas in twenty seventeen it's all you heard about.
Speaker 1: Yet I can tell you it actually is happening. So
Speaker 1: last night, for instance, you may have seen this, there
Speaker 1: was a special election in an Iowa state Senate seat.
Speaker 1: The Republicans had won that seat by like twenty one
Speaker 1: points last time around, Democrats won it by four. This
Speaker 1: time was a swing of twenty five points. That's the
Speaker 1: exact same thing that you saw in twenty seventeen, that
Speaker 1: these kind of outraged Democrats were shocked and started coming
Speaker 1: out to the polls in ways that they really had
Speaker 1: not before, and Republicans, when Trump was not on the
Speaker 1: ballot kind of just stayed home. And it led to
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, Trump district people losing in
Speaker 1: special elections, and that foreshadowing a twenty eighteen blue Wave.
Speaker 6: But now you're not hearing about any of that.
Speaker 1: And the for instance, like throughout throughout the country, people
Speaker 1: are indivisible immigration groups such are organizing all these meetings.
Speaker 1: They're getting absolutely overflow crowds, like there is energy out there.
Speaker 1: So and Democrats are actually fighting back, it's just not
Speaker 1: getting any coverage.
Speaker 6: So put up D three here JB.
Speaker 1: Pritzker in Illinois, and we can roll through these, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. You know, he's pushing back against a lot
Speaker 1: of the immigration push. A bunch of mayors are saying
Speaker 1: that they're pushing inst that you can put up D four.
Speaker 1: This is the Pittsburgh mayor saying, you know, they're not
Speaker 1: working with Ice.
Speaker 6: We talked about this.
Speaker 1: Your Democratic Attorney's General sued both over the birthright citizenship
Speaker 1: and also about the funding freeze, even as kind of
Speaker 1: congressional Democrats have been flat footed and all over the
Speaker 1: place and slash. But here's a key point that people
Speaker 1: need to remember, because I think people who watch this
Speaker 1: program don't fall into this category, but they need to
Speaker 1: understand that there's millions of people who do.
Speaker 6: Put up D six.
Speaker 1: This is a tweet from David Siegel progressive populist activists.
Speaker 1: He points out on Twitter, Harris's approval rating among Democrats
Speaker 1: is seventy nine to twelve.
Speaker 6: That's now, so let me say that again.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris's approval rating among Democrats is seventy nine to twelve,
Speaker 1: and Bidens is only slightly lower. He writes, we desperately
Speaker 1: need to reform the party, but strategies that might succeed
Speaker 1: at doing so require recognizing that most rank and file
Speaker 1: Democrats still like the people at the top for whatever
Speaker 1: reasons unquote. So this is not to defend the seventy
Speaker 1: nine percent were saying that. It is to defend the
Speaker 1: idea that we need to be objective about what people
Speaker 1: actually believe. Reforming the Democratic Party is going to be interesting,
Speaker 1: to say the least, when that is the circumstance that
Speaker 1: they're in. Yet at the same time, you're not seeing
Speaker 1: that reflected in the media coverage of it, either because
Speaker 1: they tied themselves to corporate media and corporate media when
Speaker 1: it's corporate interests were threatened, or abandoning the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: This is basically what Rick sand Torum, in a weird way,
Speaker 4: was trying to tell Republicans back when he was running
Speaker 4: the twenty twelve primary, that some of these allies were
Speaker 4: not really allies. And you know, obviously from a somewhat
Speaker 4: pro business perspective conservative in the Tea party era, he
Speaker 4: had to make that argument in a different way. But
Speaker 4: it took Donald Trump coming as a wrecking ball to
Speaker 4: totally set the two party system and force Republicans at
Speaker 4: least on the surface to change for a little bit.
Speaker 4: And what we're seeing now is a backslide into the
Speaker 4: warm welcome arms of big tech and people like Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 4: But I mean, I don't know how Democrats. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's the problem of entrenched two party power
Speaker 4: that what incentive do they have really to change? When
Speaker 4: you can just keep cobbling together coalitions that put you
Speaker 4: slightly over the edge with like pr outreach, it just sucks.
Speaker 4: There's no real incentive. And what Trump did was screw
Speaker 4: with the primary. And Democrats tried to come in with
Speaker 4: the wrecking ball in the primary through Bernie Sanders, and
Speaker 4: they were thwarted by the DNC. And for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: the RNC wasn't able to do that with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Probably, but also we need to internalize this, they were
Speaker 1: also thwarted by Democratic voters.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Trump was.
Speaker 6: It gives me no pleasure to say that, But.
Speaker 4: But that was a a primary that easily could have
Speaker 4: gone another way because Trump was one of what like
Speaker 4: nineteen candidates or whatever.
Speaker 5: But if that had just been Trump and a couple
Speaker 5: of other people, it may have gone a different way.
Speaker 4: If other people had been if there was a coordinated
Speaker 4: dropout effort, like there was to beat Bernie, could have
Speaker 4: easily gone the other way. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 4: this wild story of the Romanian election that's getting virtually
Speaker 4: no attention here in the US.
Speaker 1: Told an election because they didn't like the results. That's
Speaker 1: the short version. The longer version is wild.
Speaker 5: But it's getting attention at drop site.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 1: So, because news has been flying so fast, you may
Speaker 1: have missed an event in November that, in retrospect may
Speaker 1: turn out to be of truly historic importance. A presidential
Speaker 1: election was held in a European Union country. The two
Speaker 1: establishment parties lost to two outsider parties, and the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court simply annulled the election. And there was no allegation
Speaker 1: that there were any problems with the voting or the
Speaker 1: vote counting. So we have a new story up at
Speaker 1: drop site by alt Alexander Zachik that takes a deep
Speaker 1: dive into what happened. It's a wild story and worth
Speaker 1: a full read, but the short version is that on
Speaker 1: November twenty fourth, Romanian voters delivered an unexpected victory to
Speaker 1: a right wing populist named Callan Gorgescu and in the
Speaker 1: opening round.
Speaker 6: Of the country's presidential election.
Speaker 1: So always considered a long shot, Gregesco had been polling
Speaker 1: in the single digits just weeks before surgeing to claim
Speaker 1: first place with twenty three percent of the vote, moving
Speaker 1: on to the runoff. The result shocked Romania's two dominant parties,
Speaker 1: who found themselves on the sidelines as Gurgesco campaigned for
Speaker 1: the runoff against another anti establishment candidate who came in
Speaker 1: second place, Elena Lasconi of the reformist Save Romania party.
Speaker 1: Now five days later, a news outlet called Context elevated
Speaker 1: claims that the election had been swung by the Kremlin
Speaker 1: through a social media campaign. On November twenty ninth, the
Speaker 1: outlet reported the outlet published a report that included a
Speaker 1: summary of an analysis it conducted using software that from
Speaker 1: a Ukrainian firm that for the last several years had
Speaker 1: been had had NATO and EU and.
Speaker 6: Others as clients.
Speaker 1: Now the past several years, context has participated in a
Speaker 1: regionwide NGO project to investigate the quote pro Kremlin conspiracy
Speaker 1: and altright disinformation ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe unquote.
Speaker 1: The participating groups often have similar funding streams and various
Speaker 1: Western institutional connections. In the case of CONTEXTS, its budget
Speaker 1: is overwhelmingly covered by funding from the State Department funded
Speaker 1: National Endowment for Democracy and the Organized Crime and Corruption
Speaker 1: Reporting Project, a global reporting network that we recently reported
Speaker 1: over at drop site, is heavily funded by the US government.
Speaker 1: So contexts executive director spent twenty years working in the
Speaker 1: press office of the US Embassy in Bucharest.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: On December fourth, four days before the deciding round was
Speaker 1: supposed to take place, Romania's Supreme Defense Council released a
Speaker 1: small batch of heavily redacted documents from the country's Foreign
Speaker 1: Intelligence Service. The documents outlined allegations of a Kremlin backed
Speaker 1: social media campaign that supported Gorgesco in violation of national
Speaker 1: election laws. Quote data were obtained the accompanying government. The
Speaker 1: company government statement read quote revealing an aggressive promotion campaign
Speaker 1: that exploited the algorithms of some social media platforms to
Speaker 1: increase the popularity of Callan Gurgesco at an accelerated pace unquote.
Speaker 1: Within hours, the US State Department expressed its quote concern
Speaker 1: over the allegations. Two days later, on December sixth, Romania's
Speaker 1: Constitutional Court unanimously ruled the November twenty fourth vote was invalid.
Speaker 6: Quote.
Speaker 1: The entire electoral process for electing the president of Romania
Speaker 1: is annulled, the court announced, citing government claims of irregularities
Speaker 1: on social media. Now a week and a half ago,
Speaker 1: the court finally announced a new date of May fourth
Speaker 1: for a new election. Radio Free Europe and Radio Free
Speaker 1: Europe slash Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US,
Speaker 1: reported Romania had become the latest victim of a quote
Speaker 1: aggressive hybrid war waged by the Kremlin. Four US senators
Speaker 1: issued a statement condemning quote Vladimir Putin's manipulation of Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Party controlled TikTok to undermine Romania's democratic process. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just Russia now, it's Russia and China. The
Speaker 1: State Department, though seemed fine with the election cancelation, saying
Speaker 1: in a statement, quote, we note the Romanian Constitutional Court's
Speaker 1: decision today unquote an expressed quote confidence in Romania's democratic
Speaker 1: institutions and processes, including investigations into foreign malign influence.
Speaker 6: Okay, so that's the case.
Speaker 1: They laid out the who done it is so fun
Speaker 1: and I don't even want to spoil it for readers,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to because this is a newscast.
Speaker 6: I'm going to tell you how this ended.
Speaker 1: It was not the Kremlin, it was not Chairman she.
Speaker 1: What happened was the P and L, which is one
Speaker 1: of the establishment parties, did that thing where you go
Speaker 1: and support a fringe candidate to try to draw votes
Speaker 1: away from your opponent. Both major parties in the US
Speaker 1: do this. The Democrats love to boost Libertarians Senate see
Speaker 1: it's Reid Hoffman likes to do it, and Republicans are
Speaker 1: the most aggressive advocates for Green party ballot access all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 6: So what happened here?
Speaker 1: Imagine the scenario is that basically both the Democrats and
Speaker 1: the Republicans lost, and the Greens and the Libertarians went
Speaker 1: to the second round accidentally boosted by these more roonic
Speaker 1: establishment parties.
Speaker 6: So that's what happened.
Speaker 1: So the funding for this TikTok campaign came from one
Speaker 1: of the major establishment parties. And what's wild, and Alex
Speaker 1: goes into this in the article, is that when they
Speaker 1: originally put out those batche of documents showing that this
Speaker 1: whole thing happened, the name of the consulting firm that
Speaker 1: had run this entire operation was redacted. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: Romania knew the name, and not only did Romania know it,
Speaker 1: the US knew it. The name of the consulting firm
Speaker 1: that ran it was redacted. We now know the identity
Speaker 1: of that consulting firm, and it is a consulting firm
Speaker 1: that works almost only with this one establishment Romanian party.
Speaker 1: So from the very beginning, and also Alex talks about
Speaker 1: how they'd seen this consulting firm. You know, people had
Speaker 1: seen them going in and out of the offices like
Speaker 1: it was everybody knew. Everyone knows that this consulting firm
Speaker 1: only works with this part like that, It's like that
Speaker 1: we have the same thing here in the United States.
Speaker 1: You got firms that worked with Republicans, firms that work
Speaker 1: with Democrats. So once they identified oh, this social media
Speaker 1: campaign is being run by this consulting firm.
Speaker 6: They immediately knew that it was one of.
Speaker 1: These parties, that it was this particular party that had
Speaker 1: funded this operation. Yet instead they redacted it and claimed
Speaker 1: that it was Russia, knowing full well that it was not.
Speaker 1: This was not a mistake where they're like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: sure has all the hallmarks as all the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: a Russian counter intel operation. Wasn't even that they knew
Speaker 1: with certainty for a fact who ran this thing? And
Speaker 1: the State Department publicly supported the annulment of this election. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The key point here why do they care so much
Speaker 1: about Romania? You used to think that Germany had the
Speaker 1: most important European American military base.
Speaker 6: Not anymore.
Speaker 1: Romania now is host to the most important American military
Speaker 1: base in Europe, and a right wing populist who has
Speaker 1: said that the war between Ukraine and Russia ought to
Speaker 1: end is a direct threat to American military interests visa
Speaker 1: vi that base.
Speaker 5: And so here we are the other part of the story.
Speaker 4: First, as I was reading this reporting, I was like,
Speaker 4: it needs like a flow chart, because the other one
Speaker 4: is relying on the assessment that it was Russia from
Speaker 4: a firm that does most of its work with NATO.
Speaker 1: Right, right, US Ukrainian AI software company. They claim that,
Speaker 1: And this is the US funded news outlet relying on
Speaker 1: a Ukrainian NATO funded analytics firm that's used some AI
Speaker 1: that says, yep, we have concluded. So think about this
Speaker 1: back up for a second. Like the US and there's
Speaker 1: Romanian establishing parties are accusing Russia of interfering in Romanian politics.
Speaker 1: Who is leading the charge and making that accusation? A
Speaker 1: US funded news outlet relying on a NATO funded Ukrainian
Speaker 1: software company claiming that there is foreign interference.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's like guys blaming.
Speaker 1: That's kind of foreign interference, Like like you're actually doing
Speaker 1: the thing that you're accusing Russia of doing.
Speaker 4: Yes, and it's getting like no coverage in American media
Speaker 4: because it's like, oh, Romania whatever.
Speaker 6: I think it's it's the cancelation of an election.
Speaker 1: A NATO country when you when you don't have any
Speaker 1: evidence of voter fraud or anything, like, no allegations that
Speaker 1: the vote was tainted, Like the people went out and
Speaker 1: voted and voted for these characters.
Speaker 4: There's zero evidence that votes were tampered with, And.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I like this Gorgesco guy. He's like
Speaker 1: right wing Creek, but come on, like you guy one, it's.
Speaker 4: If votes are not tampered with, if you cannot prove
Speaker 4: that votes are tampered with, and you're just mad that
Speaker 4: someone came in and put up a bunch of let's
Speaker 4: just say, billboards, whether they're digital billboards, physical billboards, digital flyers,
Speaker 4: or literal flyers, and you say that it was foreign interference.
Speaker 6: It was actually Romanians.
Speaker 4: But it's like saying that we have to cancel out,
Speaker 4: like yeah, so, but let's say hypothetically that it was
Speaker 4: Russia and it was like Russia's little Facebook campaign and
Speaker 4: the closing days of twenty sixteen election to divide Americans
Speaker 4: along the BLM lines and the LGBT lines. So those
Speaker 4: ads are still like very funny. If you go read
Speaker 4: the Senate report from twenty eighteen when they found the
Speaker 4: memes that Russia was posting, let's just say that that's
Speaker 4: what happened hypothetically. It's like, do I think that we
Speaker 4: should be transparent about if foreign powers are funding propaganda?
Speaker 5: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Do I think there should be rules about what money
Speaker 4: you're allowed to take in elections from foreign powers. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: but people are making up their minds like you're getting
Speaker 4: you're still fundamentally getting mad with voters.
Speaker 5: It's fundamentally about voters.
Speaker 1: It does does raise a thorny question because there are
Speaker 1: also sovereignty questions. So I think there's a threshold issue,
Speaker 1: like if Russian TikTok thing, Let's say it was Russia
Speaker 1: and it's a little TikTok thing, It's like, get out
Speaker 1: of here, Like that's not it's not persuasive enough that
Speaker 1: you've swung the entire election. But let's say Russia came
Speaker 1: in and like ostentatiously spent a billion dollars supporting the
Speaker 1: candidate that they liked, in complete contravention of Romanian law.
Speaker 1: I can see a case where you're like, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do that, like we we are Like what does
Speaker 1: Trump say, like we got we have borders? You know,
Speaker 1: you're not a country right on borders, and you're not
Speaker 1: a country if you can't pass some laws and have
Speaker 1: them respected totally. So but I understand how that can
Speaker 1: be a slippery slope to exactly what just happened. Yes,
Speaker 1: but you know this is tricky stuff to think through. However,
Speaker 1: none of that even happened here. This was a Romanian
Speaker 1: establishment party. It's this that screwed itself accidentally and then
Speaker 1: used its own screwing to annull the election.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it feels like we're in the vibe
Speaker 4: shift moment now. But this is what you're going to
Speaker 4: see attacking the populist left and populist right long term
Speaker 4: as a major theme. It's going to be technocratic elites
Speaker 4: using the powers of or abusing exploiting the powers of technology,
Speaker 4: which completely shrinks the globe to undermine people. So saying
Speaker 4: that we couldn't control TikTok, we couldn't control the messaging
Speaker 4: on TikTok, so elections canceled like sorry, because everything is
Speaker 4: now so consolidated and centralized that you can look at
Speaker 4: a campaign, an alleged campaign on social media and say
Speaker 4: that it totally up ended the election and validated the election,
Speaker 4: and you can do that from your perch in the technocracy.
Speaker 4: So this is I mean, this is a taste of
Speaker 4: what's to come, but it's a significant taste of what's
Speaker 4: to come, because it screwed up the Romanian election, NATO country,
Speaker 4: EU country, and we were involved, shamefully involved.
Speaker 6: Yeah, great story, fascinating.
Speaker 5: The reason to subscribe to Drop.
Speaker 6: That's right, go.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to Drop some cool stuff like that. And this
Speaker 1: was published with in collaboration with truth dig. Alexander Zechik
Speaker 1: is an editor over at truth Dig.
Speaker 4: Up.
Speaker 1: Next, We've got Trump's real estate buddy, Steve Whitcough went
Speaker 1: to Gaza.
Speaker 5: You made it sound like we were having Steve Witcoff
Speaker 5: on this show.
Speaker 6: That would be cool. But even better we have Whocoff
Speaker 6: is welcome on the show anytime he wants.
Speaker 16: That's right.
Speaker 1: Even better, we have my drops, like colleague Martaza Hussein,
Speaker 1: who just returned from a reporting trip in series. Going
Speaker 1: to talk about that and also about this Witcough visit
Speaker 1: to Gaza. Mid East Envoy Steve Whitcoff visited Gaza today
Speaker 1: along with Netanya who Lieutenant Ron Darmer visiting the net
Speaker 1: Serene Quarter.
Speaker 6: If we can put up this first.
Speaker 1: Element here scooped by Barack revied as all things net
Speaker 1: Yahoo seemed to be scooped, he writes, White House. Envoy
Speaker 1: Whitcoff visited on Wednesday the nets Ring Quarter inside the
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip together with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs
Speaker 1: Ron Dhermer, this is the first visit by a US government.
Speaker 6: Official in Gaza for at least fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So joining us now to discuss this and also a
Speaker 1: recent reporting trip that he took to Syria is my
Speaker 1: dropsite colleague, Maz Hussein Maz, thanks so much for joining us,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me and so Witkoff had actually floated
Speaker 1: this and I believe it was in a Fox News
Speaker 1: interview recently. Causing complete pandemonium is really political observers and
Speaker 1: political participants saying what this like. They're already panicked about
Speaker 1: this guy because he forced net Yahoo to work on
Speaker 1: Shabbat and then forced him into this deal that is
Speaker 1: now unfolding. They accused him of being, you know, basically
Speaker 1: a puppet of Cutter when he said he was going
Speaker 1: to go visit Gaza, they completely lost their minds Oftentimes
Speaker 1: that kind of meltdown would would yield a backing off,
Speaker 1: a retreating from the position. Instead he ends up going
Speaker 1: to a nets ering cort or. I think importantly with
Speaker 1: Ron Dermer, who is this guy that you know, very
Speaker 1: well known around Washington, used to be Israel's ambassador to Washington.
Speaker 1: He's this guy from from Miami was probably closest confidant,
Speaker 1: very smooth operator. Uh so they wanted, you know, they
Speaker 1: wanted a babysitter with him as he's.
Speaker 6: Going in there.
Speaker 1: Uh what what do you make of Witkoff's willingness to
Speaker 1: go through with this kind of in the face of
Speaker 1: Israeli opposition.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, I've been.
Speaker 10: Watching very closely the Trump administration's nascent sort of approach
Speaker 10: to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East more generally because
Speaker 10: of the fact that obviously the Trump coalition continu it's
Speaker 10: very different streams of people with different views of foreign policy.
Speaker 10: And some people are the more neo con type people
Speaker 10: you could say, who dominated the first term. But there's
Speaker 10: this very strong, you could say America First nationalist type
Speaker 10: of contingent as well too, and they're very skeptical of
Speaker 10: further deep US military involvements in the Middle East and
Speaker 10: even Europe to an extent too, So they would like
Speaker 10: to extricate themselves from the situation. And you know, I
Speaker 10: don't know exactly yet, and obviously the first Trump term,
Speaker 10: I'm cautious and wary of the approach is going to take.
Speaker 10: But I do think there's some hints that maybe the
Speaker 10: latter category is seeing its views represented more strongly. And
Speaker 10: we saw some of the personnel decisions too, or some
Speaker 10: of the nine personnel visions, some decisions Trump made to
Speaker 10: kind of stideline the Iran Hawk people from his first
Speaker 10: term in the last few weeks. So wick Cooff, you know,
Speaker 10: he's taking these steps, pushing to the ceasefire kind of
Speaker 10: as he's mentioned, forcing that now to work on ship.
Speaker 10: But I think then now is very secular.
Speaker 8: A name was I think that.
Speaker 10: May have made him do that. And now you know
Speaker 10: the ceasefire, we see people returning north to north of Gaza,
Speaker 10: We see Witcof actually visiting. These are all tentatively good
Speaker 10: signs potentially that Trump will be taking a different path
Speaker 10: they did in the first term, at least to some
Speaker 10: degree a relative degree visa vi Israel Palson. But also
Speaker 10: it seems like a repudiation of what Biden was doing.
Speaker 10: Biden was giving how every single thing he wants. And
Speaker 10: one very consistent theme with Trump, maybe even more than
Speaker 10: you know, any particular views he has about foreign policy
Speaker 10: or the US rule in the world, is that he
Speaker 10: likes to stick it to the Democrats and stick it
Speaker 10: to his predecessor. So if Biden was giving everything BB wants, well,
Speaker 10: let's make BVB work in Shabbai and then maybe we'll
Speaker 10: force him to end the war. And Trump, if he
Speaker 10: did have one consistent message, he said he would end
Speaker 10: the wars. He wasn't very specific always how we do that,
Speaker 10: but he did say that ends. So I think he
Speaker 10: does have a lot of political capital invested. So I
Speaker 10: would say I'm cautiously monitoring. And there's some glimmers of
Speaker 10: hope there. And Widcos's visit to Gaza that seems to
Speaker 10: be another data point.
Speaker 1: And in that and uh, speaking of Syria, uh, and
Speaker 1: the net Yahoo administration's kind of pressure here. Uh Israel
Speaker 1: cats you may have seen this visited uh you know
Speaker 1: what they call Mount Herman recently in the Golan Heights
Speaker 1: and said that basically they're they're not leaving and they're
Speaker 1: just fortifying, fortifying it more aggressively. Do we have do
Speaker 1: we have this in English or should we just roll
Speaker 1: this as a vo? All right, so so people can
Speaker 1: if you're watching, you can read this. So he's went
Speaker 1: up to this basically ski resort that is in the
Speaker 1: Golan Heights, that is now illegal, illegally occupied by Israel,
Speaker 1: and they're claiming that they're going to you know, keep
Speaker 1: this keep this territory that they've claimed indefinitely. And so
Speaker 1: mys you were you just got back from uh Syria.
Speaker 6: I guess that the.
Speaker 1: First first question is kind of like what were your
Speaker 1: what were your impressions after having not been there for
Speaker 1: so long? What is you know, what is the place
Speaker 1: like on the ground.
Speaker 10: You know, Syria was a very nice country. My family's
Speaker 10: to go with a vacation in Syria because it was
Speaker 10: just like a nice place to go. Today, if you
Speaker 10: go to Syria, it's like the apocalypse happened there beyond.
Speaker 10: You know, you see pictures of Gaza. Half the country
Speaker 10: looks at Gaza. It's just completely flattened buildings, rubble destruction.
Speaker 10: Even in the quote unquote normal areas, it's you know,
Speaker 10: people don't have food, they don't have you know, their
Speaker 10: fancy areas. People are selling you know, Fifth Avenue. If
Speaker 10: it could be turned into people selling us shoes and
Speaker 10: things like that, that's kind of the level of economic
Speaker 10: the devastation has taking place there. You know, even the
Speaker 10: supply chains for food and things like that, they've broken down,
Speaker 10: so people are just doing whatever they can. The level
Speaker 10: of suffering is just unbelievable. It's a post apocalyptic, i
Speaker 10: would say, sort of environment inside Syria. And you know,
Speaker 10: I mentioned a lot of areas are destroyed, their whole
Speaker 10: cities which are destroyed. There are people living in the
Speaker 10: rubble who have been living there for a very long
Speaker 10: time with no electricity, no water. Somehow they're still managing
Speaker 10: to get their kids educated, doing everything they can, you know,
Speaker 10: even you know, trying to make the best of cant situation.
Speaker 10: But it's just an unbelievably devastating situation. And you know,
Speaker 10: as long as it's can take Gaza to rebuild, it
Speaker 10: can take a very very long time. You have to
Speaker 10: extrapolate that to a whole country, you know, maybe ten
Speaker 10: times the population of Gaza, that same level of destruction
Speaker 10: is very very evident there. And secondly, you know, I'll
Speaker 10: tell you from the beginning, it was a very strange
Speaker 10: environment because when I've crossed the border from Jordan, i
Speaker 10: drove over, I was expecting to see the former government
Speaker 10: people working at the border, maybe with different bosses. Because
Speaker 10: my understanding, as you're reading the news, others people with
Speaker 10: that the government was not dissolved entirely. They kept personnel there.
Speaker 10: What I found actually was that the new guys are
Speaker 10: completely in control. The old government guys are not there,
Speaker 10: And it was everything is very informal. They were just
Speaker 10: guys with assault rifles and noone was wearing uniforms, and
Speaker 10: they just kind of waved me through. They're like, you know, welcome.
Speaker 10: They didn't really ask the many questions things like that.
Speaker 10: It was a completely, you know, a barren situation. And
Speaker 10: maybe it'll change sometime in a couple of weeks and months,
Speaker 10: but it's very much a flux and they have a
Speaker 10: tremendous task ahead of them to hold the country together
Speaker 10: if they can, and if they can, rebuild the country
Speaker 10: even better, but it's not going to be easy.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is another immediate test of Donald Trump's
Speaker 4: foreign policy. And I'm curious, Miles, what you might have
Speaker 4: picked up on what people there are expecting to see
Speaker 4: or maybe aren't sure what to expect to see from
Speaker 4: the Trump administration.
Speaker 5: Obviously his policy both towards Israel and Syria. We're kind
Speaker 5: of like.
Speaker 4: Reading the tea leaves trying to figure out what might
Speaker 4: extrapolate from the first administration and you know, public statements
Speaker 4: and personnel to what might happen in the near term future.
Speaker 4: Did you get a sense of what people are hearing
Speaker 4: or expecting, or maybe what they're not hearing or not
Speaker 4: expecting when you were over there. Yeah.
Speaker 10: You know, first of all, it's very interesting because it
Speaker 10: was never the case you could ask people their opinion before.
Speaker 10: So I'm having the idea of having casual conversation what
Speaker 10: you think about what's going to happen politically, domestically abroad.
Speaker 10: That was a completely new thing for people there because
Speaker 10: of a much fear before, and people just didn't weren't
Speaker 10: comfortable doing it. So now you can have those conversations,
Speaker 10: and I would say generally speaking, people you know, they're
Speaker 10: relieved in the short term that okay, something is changing,
Speaker 10: and you know we're a bit freer.
Speaker 8: We have to pay bribes all time, just day to
Speaker 8: day life.
Speaker 10: But you know, to your point, like, what's going to
Speaker 10: happen now domestically internationally is great unknown. People are very
Speaker 10: very concerned. Many people I spoke to a concern that well,
Speaker 10: this could just be a breather before new war, could
Speaker 10: be a breather before you know, foreign powers potentially the
Speaker 10: US among them may seek to divide the country, They
Speaker 10: may seek to partition it on ethnic grounds, or you know,
Speaker 10: there's a lot concerned about that. So I think Trump,
Speaker 10: the conservative Trump, is one of many concerns people have.
Speaker 10: And obviously the US role in the region is often
Speaker 10: mediated through Israel. So what Israel does is kind of
Speaker 10: seeing an accession what the US is doing because of
Speaker 10: the fact that obviously Israel's heavily armed by the US
Speaker 10: and gives political and diplomatic cover. And there's concern this
Speaker 10: can certain that maybe they may try to carve off
Speaker 10: more parts of the country, they may try to arm
Speaker 10: people inside the country, the format more chaos. People are very,
Speaker 10: very very concerned about this. And you know, for Trump's
Speaker 10: from what I've seen, if Trump so far, it doesn't
Speaker 10: seem like he wants to dig deeply involved in nation
Speaker 10: building or quote unquote nation building or having the US
Speaker 10: deeply invested in Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East.
Speaker 10: For the most part, I think believe he announced or
Speaker 10: there was a leak that TI maybe planning to withdraw
Speaker 10: US troops from Syria, and US troops in Syria they
Speaker 10: play a very particular role they were there to fight
Speaker 10: ISIS when ISIS was very very active, and they're defending
Speaker 10: some of the Kurdish groups that were helping to fight
Speaker 10: ISIS at that time. And they also keep this very
Speaker 10: large prison complex called a Whole where tens of thousands
Speaker 10: of ices, former artist members and their families and also
Speaker 10: some innocent civilians are incarcerated. So the US may withdraw
Speaker 10: that presence, and if they do, it'll inevitably create a
Speaker 10: vacuum where something else happens in there. So either there
Speaker 10: will be a resumption of fighting between central government and
Speaker 10: the Kurdish groups, or maybe ISIS people will revive. These
Speaker 10: are all open questions right now, but there are things
Speaker 10: that people are thinking about and concerned about. And I said,
Speaker 10: the situation is still very much developing, but the what
Speaker 10: the US does is very much top of mind.
Speaker 8: For many people.
Speaker 1: And something you had mentioned to me I found really
Speaker 1: interesting where you've said that Asade of course has fallen
Speaker 1: and fled, but elements of regime are still holding some
Speaker 1: territory and still fighting. That the war is over in
Speaker 1: the sense that it's been won by HTS, but yet
Speaker 1: the war is not actually over yet. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about who these elements are that are
Speaker 1: still fighting and could you imagine them. Let's say the
Speaker 1: US withdraws now the Curds are more vulnerable. Could you
Speaker 1: see the Kurds, you know, allying with some of these
Speaker 1: kind of gang elements to try to weaken the central
Speaker 1: government to maintain their own position, Like is what's going
Speaker 1: on with the fighting.
Speaker 10: So by the time the government collapsed, the degradation of
Speaker 10: the state had been so extensive that you effectively had
Speaker 10: you know, gangs. It was basically a gang with no
Speaker 10: ideology which was controlling the country and they were involved
Speaker 10: in drug trafficking, particularly captigan, you know, other force smuggling.
Speaker 10: They're making a lot of money for themselves. And so
Speaker 10: the regime left, it was decapitated. You could say that
Speaker 10: the head of the regime fled to Russia and many
Speaker 10: other leaders scattered. We don't know exactly where, but there
Speaker 10: are all these military units. We're controlled by officers, and
Speaker 10: they'd be turned into gangs basically their mafias, and when
Speaker 10: the government fell, they disappeared like you don't see them
Speaker 10: in damaskets anymore. And interestingly, in damaskets they used to
Speaker 10: Behad's photo every single every single corner. There's not a
Speaker 10: single trace of him anymore. So they kind of disputed
Speaker 10: from earth, at least from the major cities. But they've
Speaker 10: gone to the countryside, they've gone to the coast, and
Speaker 10: you know, they still maintain they have their money, they
Speaker 10: have their cliques around them and so forth. And the
Speaker 10: government has offered that people can you know, demobilize certain cases,
Speaker 10: you know, former soldiers and so forth, they can turn
Speaker 10: in the weapons and go home. But you know a
Speaker 10: lot of people who are more senior or who were
Speaker 10: allegedly implicated in crimes during the government, they don't have
Speaker 10: that option, and some of them don't want to do
Speaker 10: that either. They have financial interest, they have their power
Speaker 10: independently in their own right. So you know, it's kind
Speaker 10: of like it's a very hobsy in situation, you could say,
Speaker 10: because there is a state now which is trying to
Speaker 10: assert a monopoly in violence, but the previous they didn't
Speaker 10: have monopoly in violence. So you're trying to reimpose order
Speaker 10: on this very very big country with lots of guns
Speaker 10: and lots of money and lots of drugs floating around.
Speaker 10: Is a pretty significant a lot of territory and I'll
Speaker 10: tell you that the level of traveling around the country,
Speaker 10: the level of control that the government has doesn't seem
Speaker 10: totally clear because they're not that many of them. There
Speaker 10: are only maybe a couple tens of thousands of people
Speaker 10: that controlled one province, and now they're controlled suddenly the
Speaker 10: whole country, which I think they were not expecting.
Speaker 8: What I saw of HTS is mostly sixteen.
Speaker 10: Seventeen year olds with AK forty seven's who were just
Speaker 10: kind of standing around and you know, guarding stuff or
Speaker 10: taking pictures and things like that, that not seeming ready
Speaker 10: to con cert control of the entire countries.
Speaker 6: So it can take a very long time.
Speaker 10: And to your point, this creates a very fertile environment
Speaker 10: for potential subversion or infiltration of the country. Obviously, these
Speaker 10: former regime elements they kind of don't have many options
Speaker 10: left if they were implicated in crimes and things like that,
Speaker 10: so they may seek to outside patronage. So a country
Speaker 10: that you can think of is the UAE potentially can
Speaker 10: get involved. If you've done in other countries like Sudan
Speaker 10: and Libya and so forth, Israel and the US, they
Speaker 10: could seek to arm certain elements to cause trouble for
Speaker 10: the governments to carve off pieces of Syrian territory for themselves.
Speaker 10: It's a very very febrile environment. And you know, I
Speaker 10: would say everyone wants a piece of Syria, fortunately, and
Speaker 10: the people suffered so much against so much destruction, and
Speaker 10: I would say the vast majority of people of all
Speaker 10: backgrounds simply just want no more wars, and they want
Speaker 10: the economy to recover and sanctions to be lifted and
Speaker 10: to go back to somewhat assemblance of normality. But I
Speaker 10: think that the geopolitical interests of other countries are so
Speaker 10: strong that there will be a lot of resistance to that,
Speaker 10: and you can only hope that whoever's in charge is
Speaker 10: able to reassert control. But it's gonna be, like I said,
Speaker 10: a very very difficult path. And you know, reasserting just
Speaker 10: physical control is the first step towards that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be incredibly difficult to do it if
Speaker 1: Syria had real borders and was just fighting, you know,
Speaker 1: among the factions that were within the Syrian borders. But
Speaker 1: to your point, the instability can be kind of generated
Speaker 1: and furthered by elements that have a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in making sure that you know, Syria isn't able to
Speaker 1: kind of reconstitute itself as a as a real state.
Speaker 1: And I get somewhat related to this, I'll point out that.
Speaker 1: So today's Wednesday, Tomorrow night, Thursday, at eight pm at
Speaker 1: drop site, we're screening a documentary about Syria and which
Speaker 1: focuses on American leftists like we had. We had one
Speaker 1: of the Brooklyn hipsters on this program talking about how
Speaker 1: he kind of went over and fought with the.
Speaker 6: YPG against ISIS.
Speaker 1: Will be screening that documentary at drops that I can
Speaker 1: put a link in there and Mozzle be leading the
Speaker 1: Q and A with a director afterwards. But so I
Speaker 1: hope everybody checks that Out's opportunity to catch catch that
Speaker 1: for free.
Speaker 6: OZ, welcome back to the States, and thanks so much
Speaker 6: for joining us.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thanks for having you guys.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, so these these rebels might have bitten
Speaker 1: off more than they can chew. It's it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to see how they're going to be able to build
Speaker 1: an effective state under these conditions. And what he was saying,
Speaker 1: he was telling me before they have electricity even in
Speaker 1: the best areas, like two hours a day, which means
Speaker 1: that the food is all like an edible.
Speaker 6: The meat is gray.
Speaker 1: Like imagine trying to run a restaurant or a grocery
Speaker 1: store or anything when you have two hours of refrigeration.
Speaker 1: So you know, he was eating like a lot of
Speaker 1: nuts and berries and stuff or dried berries because it's
Speaker 1: not like you can not like you have access to
Speaker 1: like fresh fruit and people as he was poring out,
Speaker 1: I've been living like that for more than ten years,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 4: I Mean the other thing I just wanted to say
Speaker 4: as a takeaway from that is I'm really glad you
Speaker 4: guys are sending people at drop site into places like
Speaker 4: this where typically only corporate press can afford to go.
Speaker 4: I mean, it costs a ton of money. You need
Speaker 4: to have a reasonable assumption your reporters will be safe.
Speaker 4: It's really hard to do and to have independent eyes
Speaker 4: on the ground. I just think that's a really good
Speaker 4: sign of what you.
Speaker 5: Guys are up to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, really really interesting stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, this was a packed show.
Speaker 4: We fit in all the debates about the constitutionality of executives.
Speaker 6: Yeah we did.
Speaker 4: We solve the problem and we even got to have
Speaker 4: some fun with Jim Acostafer. But I consider that a win. Definitely,
Speaker 4: breaking points that got was where you could go to
Speaker 4: get a premium subscription support the show.
Speaker 5: We always appreciate that. Thanks to everybody for tuning in.
Speaker 4: We'll be back here, of course, next Wednesday with more counterpoints.
Speaker 6: See you then, m