Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 2: can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to it could happen here show about things falling apart.
Speaker 3: The thing falling apart this week is me after watching
Speaker 3: nine hours of Clinton testimony.
Speaker 4: The past two days. Can relate. I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 3: I'm joined by Sophie LECHTERBD to discuss guys.
Speaker 4: Hey, Sophie, hey.
Speaker 1: To discuss the Clinton testimony. I was gonna say, can
Speaker 1: relate after you know you fortunately missed that Clinton speech
Speaker 1: at the DNC in twenty twenty four. Clinton, that was
Speaker 1: a really really, really really long hour of my life.
Speaker 4: That's a long speech for a guy of that age too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we were together during Hillary's speech. We did
Speaker 1: catch that when we're in the pit. I think that's
Speaker 1: when I got COVID. I got the Clinton COVID. Hillary
Speaker 1: got COVID too at the DNC, so I think she
Speaker 1: gave it to me.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 1: That's when we were up close and personal with the
Speaker 1: Clintons last. Now they're back.
Speaker 3: They've never been more back, They've never been more I
Speaker 3: completely agree. If you don't want to hear the voices,
Speaker 3: I've tried to limit it, but there's gonna be some
Speaker 3: the voices of Hillary and or Bill Clinton. This is
Speaker 3: your chance. If you want to hear me talk about
Speaker 3: Hillary being asked about everything from spies to aliens and Quanon.
Speaker 3: It's again, this is your sign to continue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm excited. Let's do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get started, because there's probably more more to
Speaker 3: cover than what we'll be able to so. On February
Speaker 3: twenty sixth and twenty seventh, Hillary and Bill Clinton respectively
Speaker 3: testified in closed door hearings about their relationship with Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Epstein and Glaine Maxwell. The Clinton's refers to Penia to
Speaker 3: testify in this Bipartisan House Oversight Committee investigation into the
Speaker 3: DOJ's handling of the Epstein investigation back in August of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. For months, they pushed back against having
Speaker 3: to testify, arguing the process was politically motivated, that the
Speaker 3: subpoenas were quote unquote invalid and legally unenforceable, and that
Speaker 3: to any relevant information they had could be delivered via
Speaker 3: assigned statement. In January twenty twenty six, Chairman James Comer
Speaker 3: advanced two resolutions recommending the Clintons be held in contempt
Speaker 3: of Congress for refusing to comply. Days before a vote
Speaker 3: to hold them in contempt, the Clintons finally agreed to
Speaker 3: testify in February.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to be fair, they did let other people give
Speaker 1: little shitty statements.
Speaker 4: They so did.
Speaker 3: That is something that Hillary specifically brought up during.
Speaker 4: Her deposition more than once.
Speaker 3: Yes, so let's start with Hillary's because that was the
Speaker 3: first one. In her opening statement, she said she had
Speaker 3: no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's criminal activities, did not ever
Speaker 3: recall incoun ding Jeffrey Epstein whatsoever, never flown on the
Speaker 3: plane or visited his island homes or offices. Glaine Maxwell
Speaker 3: dated a family friend around twenty ten named Ted Waite,
Speaker 3: who was a software developer. Waite brought Glaine to Hillary's
Speaker 3: Daughters of Chelsea's wedding as a plus one guest in
Speaker 3: twenty and ten, and Hillary says she was unaware of
Speaker 3: any criminal activity relating to Glayne Maxwell, specifically before her
Speaker 3: crimes republicly revealed a few years ago. Hillary was asked
Speaker 3: to recount the origin of the Clintown Foundation, which Hillary
Speaker 3: only joined the board of in twenty thirteen because she
Speaker 3: was busy serving in office. Hillary was asked about Glene
Speaker 3: Maxwell leading a breakout session on ocean conservation at a
Speaker 3: Clinton Global Initiative conference in twenty thirteen. He said that
Speaker 3: she was not involved in this selection process for those sessions,
Speaker 3: but that Glen Maxwell had been an internationally recognized ocean
Speaker 3: advocate around that time. Hillary refused to answer a question
Speaker 3: about whether her husband is a quote unquote smart guy, which.
Speaker 1: Was who asked that question?
Speaker 3: I forget, but I had that note written down some
Speaker 3: of these things I was watching pretty pretty late.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what a great question. Hey, Hill, babe, is
Speaker 1: your husband a smart guy? Wow? Glad our tax dollars
Speaker 1: are funding such an important question.
Speaker 3: She said that her husband had a limited relationship with
Speaker 3: Epstein for a limited time, Yes used his airplane for
Speaker 3: Clinton Foundation trips, and this connection began and ended before
Speaker 3: any of Epstein's crimes were publicly revealed. Representative of Pat
Speaker 3: Fallon with the Republican Majority talked about how Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 3: visited the White House seventeen times under the Clinton administration,
Speaker 3: this is mostly for White House Historical Association events and
Speaker 3: donated money to the White House Historical Association, but said
Speaker 3: that Epstein never visited under Trump or donated money to Trump.
Speaker 3: This could, in fact just be simply because the Trump
Speaker 3: admin You know, Trump came into office after Trump's relationship
Speaker 3: with Epstein fell through and Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 3: Trump got into office at twenty sixteen. Clinton was in
Speaker 3: office in the early nineties. Yeah, that's why Epstein was
Speaker 3: able to visit the White House for these public events
Speaker 3: as a regular citizen, but did not do so when
Speaker 3: Trump was president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, prior to Epstein's like first conviction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, two thous eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Pat found also tried to characterize a twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: donation to a joint campaign fund in the nineties as
Speaker 3: a donation to Hillary's presidential campaign fund. Many years later,
Speaker 3: he was called on this being obviously incorrect.
Speaker 1: Come on, man, that's so dumb.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of stuff like that, So a
Speaker 3: lot of small errors. Some of them may not have
Speaker 3: been arrows right, some of them may have been ways
Speaker 3: to make the transcript read a certain way if Hillary
Speaker 3: or the lawyers weren't able to catch something. But both
Speaker 3: Hillary and her team, but really mostly Hillary was really
Speaker 3: on it for this entire hearing like very sharp.
Speaker 1: This was peak Hillary. I feel like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, for a lot of the like analysis online,
Speaker 1: I saw you know, a takeover and over again that
Speaker 1: that was like, why wasn't she like this when she
Speaker 1: ran for president?
Speaker 5: She was?
Speaker 1: This is this is.
Speaker 3: Hillary she was, and it's you know, it's impressive, but
Speaker 3: also a little bit unlikable. For if you do that,
Speaker 3: if you do that like all the time, right.
Speaker 1: If you're like that all the time, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit Oh, okay, I'm going to take a step back now.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, but you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have we'll have more on her sort of
Speaker 3: like intellectual sharpness later.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's fiercely intelligent. Yeah, fiercely intelligent, and.
Speaker 4: That is that is that is on display for the
Speaker 4: entirety of this deposition.
Speaker 1: But I really hated the take where people were like,
Speaker 1: if she was like this when she ran for president,
Speaker 1: maybe we wouldn't be dealing with Donald Trump. Now. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. No, this is who Hillary's been
Speaker 1: her entire adult life.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Hillary said that she never solicited funds for Jeffy Epstein,
Speaker 3: never had funds solicited on her behalf, and never invited
Speaker 3: Epstein to any political fundraisers. When asked about her own
Speaker 3: speculation on her husband, previous investigators, or the mind state
Speaker 3: of Jeffrey Epstein and Glen Maxwell, she could not answer,
Speaker 3: because that is speculation on other people's opinions or mind states.
Speaker 3: About an hour in Nancy Mace asked Hillary Clinton if
Speaker 3: she believes the Epstein files are quote unquote a vast
Speaker 3: right wing conspiracy.
Speaker 7: I think if they are fully released, as the Transparency
Speaker 7: Act requires, that would be fulfilling the responsibility of the
Speaker 7: Justice Department. But it appears that there have been many
Speaker 7: issues with the full release, so I'm not going to
Speaker 7: characterize it other than to say I think that's a
Speaker 7: well known fact.
Speaker 3: It is certainly an odd question to ask if the
Speaker 3: files themselves are a vast right wing conspiracy, and Hillary
Speaker 3: here just answered by talking about the issues that have
Speaker 3: come up with the full release of the Epstein files.
Speaker 3: After this, Hillary has asked about whether Jeffrey Epstein was
Speaker 3: one of the most prolific sex traffickers in the world
Speaker 3: and how the State Department worked to counter international sex trafficking.
Speaker 8: Would you say he's one of the world's most prolific
Speaker 8: sex track reckers.
Speaker 7: I don't know what to compare it to. There are
Speaker 7: terrible sex trafficking rings all over the world.
Speaker 8: And you were you said you were Secretary of State
Speaker 8: from two thousand and nine to twenty thirteen, and you
Speaker 8: state your agency prioritized im batting sex trafficking internationally. Correct,
Speaker 8: that's correct. During your time as Secretary of State, did
Speaker 8: you the State receive any intelligence cables or briefings mentioning
Speaker 8: Epstein's foreign travel, pedophile island, or his network of pedophiles
Speaker 8: and sex trafficks, Not that I am aware of. Now,
Speaker 8: how did you miss it? If he's I believe, one
Speaker 8: of the most prolific sex traffickers in the world, you
Speaker 8: were Secretary of State, how did you miss it?
Speaker 7: Well, that would have been a matter of the Justice Department,
Speaker 7: not the State Department.
Speaker 8: But in your opening statement, and your statements earlier. In
Speaker 8: your opening statement, you stated that Secretary of Rubio should
Speaker 8: be called to testify. You said that he has and
Speaker 8: the administration has quote abandoned survivors using the same logic.
Speaker 8: You were Secretary of State during a time period after
Speaker 8: Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of being a pedophile and soliciting
Speaker 8: children for sex. Why then, did you quote, using your
Speaker 8: own logic, abandoned survivors. What is the question?
Speaker 9: Please?
Speaker 7: I followed her comment. First of all, we focused on
Speaker 7: whether there were laws that made sex trafficking, sexual slavery,
Speaker 7: domestic violence, other abuses of women on the books in countries.
Speaker 7: And then we tried to evaluate were those laws being
Speaker 7: implemented and were judges appropriately trained and briefed about how
Speaker 7: to implement those laws? Were governments taking them seriously? We
Speaker 7: looked at the broad institutional approach to these very serious abuses.
Speaker 3: This is an interesting exchange to me. Yeah, so Mace
Speaker 3: here doesn't really understand the role of the Justice Department
Speaker 3: versus the State Department. Yes, for the Justice Department investigates
Speaker 3: crimes committed in the United States, versus the State Department
Speaker 3: is this entity that pressures other countries to create or
Speaker 3: improve sex trafficking laws and doesn't really understand this difference.
Speaker 3: Right first to a part in Hillary's opening statement about
Speaker 3: how Rubio's shrunk a specific office to combat international sex trafficking,
Speaker 3: and she isn't quite able to like to understand how
Speaker 3: Hillary is critiquing that while also saying that the Justice
Speaker 3: Department mishandled the Epstein investigation while she was Secretary of State.
Speaker 3: It's this interesting just break in not really understanding how
Speaker 3: the government works. And this clip also shows like how
Speaker 3: sharp Hillary is being able to follow this line of
Speaker 3: questioning better than her own lawyers in some instances be
Speaker 3: able to actually like respond to what Mace is really asking.
Speaker 1: Notice that as well.
Speaker 3: Mace then continues to ask about how the US government
Speaker 3: handled Jeffrey Epstein's first criminal case, and this is how
Speaker 3: Clinton responded.
Speaker 8: Would you say the US government at that time, during
Speaker 8: this time period was appropriate with the way that it
Speaker 8: handled Epstein.
Speaker 7: I don't think that you could say that was true
Speaker 7: about any of the government's prosecutorial efforts, starting with the
Speaker 7: Southern District of Florida and alex Acosta and all those
Speaker 7: who basically gave him a sweetheart deal and then I
Speaker 7: think going up the chain, there was very little attention
Speaker 7: paid that should have been paid.
Speaker 10: But what we had.
Speaker 7: Laws on the books, they were not being implemented. But
Speaker 7: that was not within my purview because what we were
Speaker 7: looking at is what's the institutional structure and can we
Speaker 7: do more to make sure countries take it seriously? Our
Speaker 7: country had laws on the books, so this man was
Speaker 7: not held to account.
Speaker 8: You it was not in your purview when you were
Speaker 8: Secretary of State. Then why is it today in Secretary
Speaker 8: of Rubios?
Speaker 7: Because what's happened is that the office that was actually
Speaker 7: following what was going on around the world has been decimated.
Speaker 7: Seventy percent of the staff is gone. It's impossible to
Speaker 7: carry out the functions of that office if you don't
Speaker 7: have a critical number of people. So my question would
Speaker 7: be to Secretary Rubio, is there more that can be
Speaker 7: done out of time here?
Speaker 1: Wow? Yeah, Nancy Mace, you suck, You suck.
Speaker 3: Pretty clear articulation there, Yeah from Secretary Clinton.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I fear that like that. Nancy Mace spent most
Speaker 1: of this time trying to set Hillary up, and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think she I don't think she succeeded.
Speaker 3: No, Hillary was then asked if she was quote unquote
Speaker 3: concerned when she sawt photos of her husband getting a
Speaker 3: back massage or in a hot tub and what went
Speaker 3: through her mind. Hillary refused to speculate on events in
Speaker 3: which she has no context for and was not there.
Speaker 3: We're going to go on a quick ad break now
Speaker 3: and then return to continue the discussion on the Clinton testimony.
Speaker 4: All right, we're back.
Speaker 3: I want to get a little bit into the background
Speaker 3: of this hearing some more so. When the Clintons finally
Speaker 3: agreed to testify in February, one of the things they
Speaker 3: pushed for was that the testimony take the form of
Speaker 3: public hearings broadcast live. Hillary addressed Terman Comra online saying, quote,
Speaker 3: you love to talk about transparency. There's nothing more transparent
Speaker 3: than a public hearing cameras on unquote. There was a
Speaker 3: brief back and forth negotiation on whether the depositions would
Speaker 3: be open to the public. Ultimately they were not, but
Speaker 3: they were recorded on camera and transcribed for later release.
Speaker 3: Part of the terms for this private hearing this deposition
Speaker 3: was that press and photographers were not allowed inside the room,
Speaker 3: and that deposition materials would only be released in full
Speaker 3: through official channels after sensitive information like staffer names president,
Speaker 3: the deposition and off the record exchanges between lawyers were
Speaker 3: properly removed or redacted. At about an hour and twenty
Speaker 3: minutes into Hillary's deposition, the Clinton staff learned that one
Speaker 3: of the Republican Committee members leaked a photo of Hillary
Speaker 3: to right wing influencer Benny Johnson Crazy, who posted the
Speaker 3: picture and wrote, quote breaking the first image of Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton testifying under oath about Jeffrey Epstein to the Republican
Speaker 3: Oversight Committee. This is the first time Hillary has had
Speaker 3: to answer real questions about Epstein. Clinton does not look happy.
Speaker 3: Photo provided by Representative Lauren Bobert.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 1: Honestly, there's actually nobody more unprofessional than Lauren Bobert.
Speaker 3: Will get into her unprofessional conduct later in this hearing
Speaker 3: as well. Great, but here's a clip of Mclinton team
Speaker 3: realizing that a photo has been leaked.
Speaker 10: I have another photos that are being released of the
Speaker 10: Secretary as she is testifying from inside this room. Can
Speaker 10: you please advise me as to whether or not that's
Speaker 10: permissible and consistent with the rules, particularly given that we
Speaker 10: have asked for public hearing. There are photos that are
Speaker 10: being released of the secretary, she is testifying. Can you
Speaker 10: please explain.
Speaker 7: How we've done with this? If you guys are doing that,
Speaker 7: I am done. You can hold me a contempt from
Speaker 7: now till the cows come home.
Speaker 2: This is just typical behavior.
Speaker 10: Oh, for heaven, I would like to understand how that's
Speaker 10: permissible for the hearing was It doesn't matter.
Speaker 7: We all are abiding by the same rules.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, I would like to take a break at this movie.
Speaker 1: I'd like to have I've done for now, fair up
Speaker 1: the record.
Speaker 4: Pretty shocking stuff.
Speaker 1: There's no defense for that. That's that's wild and uh
Speaker 1: I would walk out as well.
Speaker 3: When they went back on the record, Chairman Comer discussed
Speaker 3: how he advised all members that no photos of the
Speaker 3: deposition were to be released and that an instant like
Speaker 3: this would not happen again. Lauren Barber later told reporters
Speaker 3: that she took the picture before a testimony actually began,
Speaker 3: and that she checked with committee staff about using the photo.
Speaker 4: No follow up on.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, that chance, it's embarrassing.
Speaker 3: After returning from off the record, the minority, the Democrats,
Speaker 3: asked about the Justice Department illegally withholding certain files related
Speaker 3: to the investigation from public disclosure. Hillary says that this
Speaker 3: behavior by the Justice Department deserves the most thorough investigation
Speaker 3: that Congress could carry out. This will be a longer clip,
Speaker 3: about two minutes, but there's some good information inside.
Speaker 7: I think from the very beginning, the behavior of the
Speaker 7: Attorney General and her staff has demonstrated either a gross incompetence,
Speaker 7: which is bothersome because they are the keepers of information
Speaker 7: that should be evaluated for law enforcement purposes, or a
Speaker 7: clear cover up because they are protecting the President and others.
Speaker 7: Either one of those should be the focus of this
Speaker 7: committee to try to get to the bottom. If they
Speaker 7: are incompetent and they are incapable of complying with the
Speaker 7: law that the Congress passed, we need to know that
Speaker 7: because they are falling down on the job. They have
Speaker 7: an FBI director is more interested in drinking beer in
Speaker 7: a hockey dressing room after our team won the Olympics
Speaker 7: rather than being responsive and complying with the law as
Speaker 7: it has been promulgated. So I don't think it's unfair
Speaker 7: to say that given the sequencing of the events, starting
Speaker 7: with the way that President Trump made the release of
Speaker 7: the files a key element of his twenty twenty four campaign,
Speaker 7: the promise that he and then his attorney general made
Speaker 7: that the files would be released, then a walking back
Speaker 7: of that as they began to look at the files,
Speaker 7: an ignoring of what they had promised, including that they
Speaker 7: had a client list on the desk of the attorney general.
Speaker 7: Reasonable people would have to assume they are engaged in
Speaker 7: a massive cover up, which is infuriating as an American,
Speaker 7: as a citizen, all of us should be, regardless of party,
Speaker 7: wondering what are they hiding?
Speaker 1: The thing says I watched sports more than calling it
Speaker 1: a hockey dressing room.
Speaker 4: Dressing room, I was.
Speaker 1: Like Hillary, up with the times.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 3: Hillary goes on to mention how the prosecutor the original
Speaker 3: Epstein case, alex Acosta, was not asked to any questions
Speaker 3: by Republicans during his Epstein deposition. About half an hour later,
Speaker 3: Hillary and the Majority go into about a three minute exchange.
Speaker 4: The thing this is between Hillary and Nancy Mace.
Speaker 3: About Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce secretary, who's frequently named in
Speaker 3: the files, whom Hillary knew from being a New York
Speaker 3: senator during the nine to eleven attacks where Lutnick lost
Speaker 3: the highest number of employees out of anyone that day,
Speaker 3: like over six hundred. So Hillary was asked how she
Speaker 3: knows Lutnik. Hillary tries to respond by saying how they met,
Speaker 3: which was the aftermath of nine to eleven. Mace claims
Speaker 3: that this is like a distraction from answering the question
Speaker 3: and that Hillary's trying to garner sympathy. Things get very
Speaker 3: heated over over the course these like three minutes, as
Speaker 3: they like argue about, you know, if she's actually answering
Speaker 3: the question. Mace talks about being a survivor herself and
Speaker 3: how she's trying to, you know, get the truth out
Speaker 3: of these hearings. Hillary responds by talking about how she's
Speaker 3: been very sympathetic to Mace's situation and respects the work
Speaker 3: that she's doing in the Epstein hearings, but is trying
Speaker 3: to answer the question specifically about Lutnik. It's a pretty
Speaker 3: loud and contentious three minutes. About two minutes after that,
Speaker 3: Republicans made Hillary read emails from the Epstein files.
Speaker 7: Thank you for a fun night.
Speaker 8: Your littlest girl was a little naughty.
Speaker 11: How does that make you feel?
Speaker 12: It makes me sick?
Speaker 11: If you can also read the EFTA zero zero eight
Speaker 11: seven eight four to two to one. This is also
Speaker 11: another email. Can you just please provide the context.
Speaker 13: It's an email to Jeffrey Epstein if you could just
Speaker 13: read the context of what it is.
Speaker 7: Of course, the O H Jesus, ohio, Jesus, I'm coming trick.
Speaker 13: And the just the main body of the context of email.
Speaker 7: Said that she felt God's presence next her when she
Speaker 7: was in bed. She knows that Jesus watches over her
Speaker 7: and he helped save her life.
Speaker 11: Whoops, How does that make you feel?
Speaker 8: It's bizarre. I don't know what it means.
Speaker 13: The reason I asked you to read both of these
Speaker 13: is because these emails were both sent by co conspirators
Speaker 13: that were then given the plea deals and now have
Speaker 13: been given victim status. Both of these women were also
Speaker 13: named an FBI document, and they're on a number of
Speaker 13: other emails.
Speaker 1: What does that have to do with Hillary?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the exact thing that I wrote down. This
Speaker 3: has no relevance to Clinton at all. This doesn't relate
Speaker 3: to her.
Speaker 1: They wanted soundbites of her reading weird things.
Speaker 3: It's a humiliation ritual, right, It's yeah, there's no reason
Speaker 3: for them to do this. That the majority just go
Speaker 3: on to ask Hillary if the DOJ should reevaluate the
Speaker 3: plea deals of these two people, something that Hillary has
Speaker 3: no expertise for, Like, that's what she's here to testify
Speaker 3: on her own knowledge relating to Epstein and Maxwell. This
Speaker 3: is a complete non sequitor. This doesn't relate to her
Speaker 3: in any way. It's just grosse. You're just you're just
Speaker 3: getting a woman to read the Epstein files for your
Speaker 3: own entertainment. Yes, it's disgusting. Yes, I have a few
Speaker 3: clips here. This is about three clips about her intellectual
Speaker 3: kind of ruthlessness and the ways that the questioners in
Speaker 3: this committee were trying to get sir naces out of
Speaker 3: her and she was able to either correct them or
Speaker 3: navigate in an interesting way. I'll start with this first
Speaker 3: one at three and a half hours in gosh, you've
Speaker 3: watched a lot.
Speaker 14: In twenty fourteen, Epstein met with William Burns, who was
Speaker 14: then a senior State Department official and later a CIA director.
Speaker 15: Excuse me, could you say what year that was?
Speaker 16: Again?
Speaker 17: In twenty fourteen.
Speaker 10: Twenty fourteen, he met with William Burns.
Speaker 14: Epstein met with William Burns as as a Secretary of
Speaker 14: State at that time.
Speaker 17: Were you aware of that?
Speaker 7: I wasn't secretary of state in twenty fourteen?
Speaker 17: Okay? Were you aware of them? I was an aster burds.
Speaker 3: Okay, embarrassing stuff. Yeah, she was not secretary state in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. She served from twenty nine to two US
Speaker 3: and thirteen. Asking a question about if she was informed
Speaker 3: of something, well, secretary of state in twenty fourteen, she
Speaker 3: simply was not there. She was not secretary of State.
Speaker 3: The people in this committee should know this. They should
Speaker 3: know when she actually served as Secretary of State. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 3: They continued to get like dates wrong throughout this hearing
Speaker 3: that this guy who's asking this question is his representative,
Speaker 3: Eric Berlinson. He also mischaracterized Chelsea's wedding as Hillary's wedding,
Speaker 3: saying that Glen Maxwell attended Hillary's wedding and that Glen
Speaker 3: Maxwell vacationed with Chelsea after the wedding. This event that
Speaker 3: he's referencing, this vacation was actually a year before the wedding,
Speaker 3: and who has a nine Hillary and her lawyers had
Speaker 3: to correct all of that stuff. Specifically, Eric Berlinson did
Speaker 3: not seem to know what he was talking about. At
Speaker 3: all in this hearing, just constantly got little dates and
Speaker 3: facts wrong.
Speaker 1: That gives me pause for a number of reasons. But
Speaker 1: it just makes me think about, you know, if they
Speaker 1: were actually talking to somebody that they needed to deeply press,
Speaker 1: that they would not get the results needed. It gives
Speaker 1: me a major pause that they have lack of confidence
Speaker 1: in this committee to do their jobs.
Speaker 2: But it's just.
Speaker 1: Frankly embarrassing that these are elected officials and they can't
Speaker 1: even get their dates right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an extremely serious matter, and these are
Speaker 3: the people doing oversight.
Speaker 1: This is not a laughing matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are totally incompetent.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Lauren Barber then asked a very leading question about when
Speaker 3: Hillary learned her husband was spending time with a registered
Speaker 3: sex offender.
Speaker 18: Missus Clinton, when did you first learn that your husband
Speaker 18: was spending time extensively with a registered sex offender?
Speaker 7: He did not after he was convicted, years after Bill
Speaker 7: stopped having any.
Speaker 18: Were there any activities that raised any red flags to
Speaker 18: think that he could be charged of sex crimes during
Speaker 18: the time?
Speaker 7: Are you at has awareness yes, of Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 18: Of any red flags being brought to your awareness, to
Speaker 18: your family's awareness, while your husband was spending time with
Speaker 18: Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 7: I have no recollection of anyone bringing any red flags
Speaker 7: to me.
Speaker 3: They continued to ask about her husband, and she just
Speaker 3: had to She just had to keep reiterating it, like
Speaker 3: the committee will have a chance to question her husband tomorrow,
Speaker 3: Like they could ask him about his relationship with this
Speaker 3: Epstein tomorrow. There's no use in her speculating about her
Speaker 3: husband's relationship. They can just ask him, literally in less
Speaker 3: than twenty four hours. But they just kept they just
Speaker 3: kept going.
Speaker 1: Classic No.
Speaker 3: One of the more bizarre moments, they quoted Epstein referring
Speaker 3: to Hillary being prettier in person. And this exchange is
Speaker 3: interesting because of the way it suggests the committee's interpretation
Speaker 3: of certain statements made by Epstein, when I think they
Speaker 3: probably infer something to the opposite bizarre.
Speaker 1: It's like weird misogyny going on.
Speaker 18: So regarding the Epstein files, there are many files where
Speaker 18: Jeffrey Epstein seems to speak as though he does know
Speaker 18: you personally. In one file FTA zero zero six five
Speaker 18: seven one one five, mister Epstein is commenting and he quotes, Hey, Hillary.
Speaker 8: Clinton is much prettier in person.
Speaker 18: This was Tuesday, September twentieth, twenty eleven, and then another Congressman.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to object to that.
Speaker 19: Commress, can we see the documents because we.
Speaker 20: Don't think that we would get that present.
Speaker 8: I don't think the documents that you're not pretty.
Speaker 18: Jeffrey epstein Is also commented that meetings with Hillary are
Speaker 18: not easily discreet. Has he ever connected someone to meet
Speaker 18: with you?
Speaker 8: Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was my first time seeing that clip. That's
Speaker 1: so funny. First of all, very funny. Second of all,
Speaker 1: this is not what this is supposed to be. Why
Speaker 1: are you bringing that up? What does that have to
Speaker 1: do with anything?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that they're trying to establish some sort
Speaker 3: of relationship between Hillary and Epstein.
Speaker 1: Purely, but it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: And to me, these exchanges just infer that, you know,
Speaker 3: Jeffy Epstein had seen Hillary in person before, likely at
Speaker 3: these White House Historical Association events where she sees you know,
Speaker 3: hundreds of people who like walk by, right.
Speaker 4: But then Epstein.
Speaker 3: Himself like expressed that it's actually difficult to get a
Speaker 3: private meeting with her. So this doesn't prove that they
Speaker 3: had any actual, like personal knowledge of each other like mutually.
Speaker 3: Obviously Epstein knew who she was. She was the first
Speaker 3: Lady of the United States.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: About ten minutes later, and this is getting to the
Speaker 3: end of this hearing about, like you know, four hours in,
Speaker 3: Hillary just kind of goes off a little bit after
Speaker 3: just being asked the same question again and again and again,
Speaker 3: and then also demonstrates like how much she actually knows
Speaker 3: about this committee's investigation.
Speaker 2: You have said that you've never been to mister Epstein's island.
Speaker 17: Is that correct?
Speaker 7: You know what, I am so tired of answering that question.
Speaker 7: If you have one sentilla of evidence to the contrary,
Speaker 7: put it forward. I have never been on his island period.
Speaker 7: I've never been in his homes, his offices, his anything.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many times you have to say
Speaker 7: the same thing over and over and over again, and
Speaker 7: I just am struggling with the relevance of all of this.
Speaker 6: But no, I never have been.
Speaker 15: And based off that response, I would include, you've never
Speaker 15: been to mister Epstein's Manhattan town home.
Speaker 5: I have not his New Mexico ranch.
Speaker 2: No, I have not his Palm Beach residence. No, I
Speaker 2: have not his Paris apartment.
Speaker 17: Did know he had one.
Speaker 6: I haven't been there, you know.
Speaker 7: I also find it very interesting because I went back
Speaker 7: and looked at the transcripts of all of your other depositions,
Speaker 7: and none of the Republicans asked a single question to
Speaker 7: any witness about Jeffrey Epstein or any question that would
Speaker 7: help provide answers for his victims.
Speaker 3: Hillary goes on to say that Republican Chairman Comer did
Speaker 3: ask Attorney General bar not about Epstein, but if he
Speaker 3: was aware of clinton involvement in the twenty sixteen Russia
Speaker 3: collusion invent instigation again in a deposition about the DOJ's
Speaker 3: handling of the Epstein files. Completely relevant, completely relevant to
Speaker 3: the to the matter at hand. And if these people
Speaker 3: want to pretend that they actually take, you know, what
Speaker 3: happened to these victims seriously, then they would have a focused,
Speaker 3: focused effort on the actual subject, not all these wild
Speaker 3: partisan threads. And I'm now going to discuss before before
Speaker 3: we before we go and break again about how this
Speaker 3: hearing kind of threwout it. But I've condensed down into
Speaker 3: one section, turned towards the weird multiple times in ways
Speaker 3: that are sometimes you know, relevant, but oftentimes not earlier.
Speaker 3: In this hearing, Hillary stated that she had never been
Speaker 3: briefed on whether Jeffrey Epstein had foreign intelligence ties while
Speaker 3: serving in office, but that speculation that Jeffrey Epstein could
Speaker 3: have been a foreign intel asset is a quote unquote
Speaker 3: fruitful area of investigation, although she was not made aware
Speaker 3: of any connection of this sort to well Scretary of State.
Speaker 3: She was also asked about a passport belonging to Epstein
Speaker 3: which bore a different name.
Speaker 13: This is actually a passport that was given. The individual's
Speaker 13: name is Marcus Robert Fortinelli. Do you think that this
Speaker 13: is a sign or a telltale sign of intelligence operations
Speaker 13: and pseudonames.
Speaker 7: I can't speculate.
Speaker 15: I don't know, okay.
Speaker 13: Victims have stated to this committee, both Democrats and Republicans,
Speaker 13: that during Epstein's time, during his day camp dreals what
Speaker 13: I'll call it, that he was also an active communication
Speaker 13: with Bush's CIA director. They also had stated that he
Speaker 13: had activities to Russia Israel. Eni Ron, given your status
Speaker 13: not just as the first Lady but also in your
Speaker 13: secretary position, have you ever been targeted by any of
Speaker 13: these countries as a means of a foreign intelligence gathering operation.
Speaker 13: I you were of potential vulnerabilities.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was targeted by Russia in the twenty sixteen campaign.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's.
Speaker 7: Pretty well known. What about Israel, Ari Rand, I don't
Speaker 7: know about either Israel or Iran?
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 13: Do you believe that Epstein was running potentially honeypot operation
Speaker 13: with intelligence gathering operations to collect information on how high
Speaker 13: profile individuals, both Democrat and Republican the United.
Speaker 8: States in an effort to sway are foreign policies. Is
Speaker 8: it possible.
Speaker 7: I have no direct knowledge, but I think it's one
Speaker 7: of the areas your committee should investigate. Do you think
Speaker 7: it's possible, Well, it's certainly possible. It's a tried and
Speaker 7: true technique of certain intelligence agencies.
Speaker 11: Do you believe that he was using honeypot's an effort to.
Speaker 8: I can't speculate.
Speaker 1: I don't know what This is such a weird use
Speaker 1: of their time.
Speaker 3: Later, she said that she had no reason to believe
Speaker 3: that personally she was the subject of an intel gathering
Speaker 3: operation relating to Jeffrey Epstein or Glene Maxwell. And then
Speaker 3: right after she was asked if she was ever denied
Speaker 3: access to information about you, apse, that's an unidentified aerial phenomenon.
Speaker 3: Hilary said that she was never denied access because she
Speaker 3: never asked for access. When questioned, she said that she
Speaker 3: believes the American public deserves access to such topics, subject
Speaker 3: to national security implications. This bizarre off topic line of
Speaker 3: questioning continued nearly an hour later into the hearing.
Speaker 14: So I'm going to begin with some lighthearted different questions,
Speaker 14: and you're welcome to ignore them or if you want to.
Speaker 17: But while I have you here, I just have to ask.
Speaker 14: So, when your husband was president, it is Lawrence Rockefeller
Speaker 14: had an effort to try to disclose UFOs UAPs When
Speaker 14: you were running for president, John Podesta publicly stated that
Speaker 14: you would disclose these files with if given the chance,
Speaker 14: if you had been president. Are you pleased to see
Speaker 14: that these files may be disclosed?
Speaker 7: Finally, I am pleased, As I say, I think they
Speaker 7: have to be carefully and I so that no national
Speaker 7: security information is disclosed.
Speaker 19: But this is an.
Speaker 8: Issue of real.
Speaker 7: Importance to so many people, and I think whatever can
Speaker 7: be disclosed should be disclosed.
Speaker 14: Was there a program that specifically that that was referencing
Speaker 14: that you were aware of?
Speaker 7: I was not, as you mentioned, John Podesta, who was
Speaker 7: one of my advisors, was deeply interested in the issue,
Speaker 7: and if I had been elected, I certainly would have
Speaker 7: listened to his advice.
Speaker 17: Well, thank you for indulgence on that.
Speaker 3: Very odd, completely off topic, no relevance to the actual
Speaker 3: subject of inquiry of A few minutes later, Hillary asked
Speaker 3: a clarifying question about why UFOs were brought up.
Speaker 7: It's a sort of like off subject. But didn't you
Speaker 7: all require in the latest Defense Authorization that the UFO
Speaker 7: information asked about what?
Speaker 13: They ripped it out?
Speaker 17: They killed it.
Speaker 8: Oh I thought.
Speaker 7: That had gone through.
Speaker 17: That was my amendment and it got ripped out.
Speaker 7: Oh okay, well you've just I didn't know that, So
Speaker 7: thank you for enlightening me.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, they've been killing that.
Speaker 3: So if alien disclosure questions weren't bad enough and you know,
Speaker 3: disrespectful to victims of epstein and sex trafficking.
Speaker 4: It did get worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 3: And we will get into the worse after this at break.
Speaker 4: All right, we're back. At nearly the four.
Speaker 3: Hour mark into Hillary Clinton's deposition, Lauren Bobert started asking
Speaker 3: about conspiracy theories.
Speaker 18: In past public statements, as in twenty seventeen speeches and interviews,
Speaker 18: you described pizza Gate as a baseless conspiracy theory, alleging
Speaker 18: you and others ran a child sex trafficking ring from
Speaker 18: a Washington Pizzeri based pizzeri basement. Have you reviewed any
Speaker 18: twenty twenty six Epstein files that were released that you
Speaker 18: believe reference or relate to those specific twenty sixteen claims.
Speaker 18: Regarding the Podesta emails comet ping pong pizza used as code, possibly, I'm.
Speaker 14: Sorry disasting her about whether she's reviewed emails in that
Speaker 14: Epsteine file was.
Speaker 17: Related to the wacky Pizzagate excuse.
Speaker 18: You could characterize it however you want. I just would
Speaker 18: like to know if she's familiar with any of them.
Speaker 10: So your question is about whether or not she has
Speaker 10: reviewed any emails in the Epstein release files about Pizzagate.
Speaker 7: Correct, Pizzagate was totally made up. It was an outrageous
Speaker 7: allegation that ended up hurting a number of people, that
Speaker 7: caused a deranged young man to show up with his
Speaker 7: assault rifle and shoot up a local pizzeria. I can't
Speaker 7: believe you're even referencing it. You should be there.
Speaker 18: There are connections to the language.
Speaker 7: Believe there are.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you have believe at.
Speaker 4: It completely unhitched.
Speaker 1: But why are we doing this? I have complete lack
Speaker 1: of faith in this committee. This is offensive to survivors
Speaker 1: of Epstein, and this is getting us no relevant information
Speaker 1: to the Epstein probe as they call it. This is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: This is infammatory. I mean, I expect nothing less from
Speaker 1: Loan and Bober, But you know, it's just it's insane
Speaker 1: and embarrassing.
Speaker 3: It's insane, and like there has been a resurgence of,
Speaker 3: you know, Pizzagate related conspiracy theories, people talking about Pizzagate
Speaker 3: since the files had been released, Since people can create
Speaker 3: their own patterns, right by selectively honing in on words
Speaker 3: or symbols which allow them to overlook what's right in
Speaker 3: front of their nose. Right, all of the very clear
Speaker 3: connections laid out in the Epstein files, those can be ignored, yes,
Speaker 3: and instead you focused on these like coded messages hidden everywhere,
Speaker 3: hidden in the backgrounds of videos, people carrying pizza boxes
Speaker 3: into the Clinton deposition, all this kind of stuff. It's
Speaker 3: it's it allows them to miss the very the very
Speaker 3: clear things that are actually outlined in the files. It is,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the negative side effects of, you know,
Speaker 3: of files like this being released is that it allows
Speaker 3: a lot of points of interest to be honed in
Speaker 3: on by people charting wildly conspiratorial matrices.
Speaker 1: I just don't even know how somebody like Lauren Barbert's
Speaker 1: on a committee like this, or an elected official or
Speaker 1: you know, employed.
Speaker 3: Frankly, Hillary went on to say I expected a lot
Speaker 3: of interesting questions today, but Pizzagate was not on the list.
Speaker 3: Lauren Bobert replied, that's okay, we're asking all sorts of
Speaker 3: things here, okay. A few minutes later, Bobert returned with
Speaker 3: even more Pizzagate questions, and things escalated to the point
Speaker 3: where they had to go off the record.
Speaker 4: That's lord, are.
Speaker 18: You aware of any files that were on Anthony Wiener's
Speaker 18: laptop and a folder that was titled Insurance Life Insurance
Speaker 18: with a ZIP file titled.
Speaker 9: Chairman.
Speaker 15: Is this within the scope?
Speaker 6: Mister chairman?
Speaker 10: Chairman rules that it's not based on what you said
Speaker 10: in the public hearing, Is this within the scope? For
Speaker 10: a moment, mister chairman, is this within the scope?
Speaker 3: So you couldn't quite make out what Bobart was referencing there.
Speaker 3: She was talking about the frazzle drip conspiracy theory that
Speaker 3: alleged Anthony Wiener possessed a video of Hillary Clinton conducting
Speaker 3: a satanic ritual murder of a child, cutting off this
Speaker 3: child's face to wear as a mask, to fill the
Speaker 3: child's blood with adrenochrome to be harvested.
Speaker 4: This is like twenty eighteen conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Theory, one of the more like graphic and gross aspects
Speaker 3: of QAnon. And here Robert is just openly asking Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton about frazzle drip by name, completely inappropriate, has no
Speaker 3: bearing on the investigation. It's an insult to actual victims
Speaker 3: of child sex trafficking. So this whole conspiratorial angle of
Speaker 3: the Hillary Clinton deposition made up a significant chunk. Another
Speaker 3: chunk that made up a significant portion of time is
Speaker 3: just Clinton kind of advising and the committee members, both
Speaker 3: on the Republican and Democrat side, like asking for her
Speaker 3: advice on how to conduct their own investigation. She advised
Speaker 3: that they should follow Senator Widens compiled Treasury data on
Speaker 3: Epstein's financial transactions, and that that data should be subpoened
Speaker 3: from the Treasury Department. She was asked about how they
Speaker 3: could determine if Jeffrey Epstein was a spy. Hillary advised
Speaker 3: them to send document requests to subpoena the CIA, the
Speaker 3: Department of National Intelligence counterintelligence departments in the DOJ, saying
Speaker 3: to quote unquote, cast a wide net. She suggested cooperating
Speaker 3: with UK investigations into former Prince Andrew and trying to
Speaker 3: see if Israel will cooperate in sharing information regarding the investigation. Finally,
Speaker 3: Hillary suggested to Chairman James Comer that he should advise
Speaker 3: on how laws could be changed to prevent future abuse
Speaker 3: based on the committee's knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's manipulation techniques
Speaker 3: and mode of operation. But there was like significant chunk
Speaker 3: of at least like, you know, thirty minutes where she
Speaker 3: was essentially being asked or advising the committee on how
Speaker 3: to do their own job. Just due to the sheering
Speaker 3: confidence that has been displayed and the clips that I've
Speaker 3: selected here.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't really have anything else to say besides
Speaker 1: that it's just like.
Speaker 3: Pathotic, yeah, I mean, and most of the interesting stuff
Speaker 3: is in the Hillary Hillary Clinton Yeah. A bill was
Speaker 3: deposed the next day. But for some of the logistics
Speaker 3: regarding this hearing, a source told The New York Post,
Speaker 3: so take that as you will sure that the Clinton
Speaker 3: team demanded specific quote unquote beauty lighting and camera.
Speaker 1: Positions relatable life fear to get.
Speaker 3: The most flattering angle of Hillary's face, and brought white
Speaker 3: tablecloths to bounce the overhead lighting onto the bottom of
Speaker 3: her face and into my shadows.
Speaker 20: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Pictures of the whole room also showed that the Clinton
Speaker 3: team was the only ones with these like nice orange
Speaker 3: upholstered chairs. The rest of the chairs were just like
Speaker 3: regular black folding chairs. The New York Post contains this
Speaker 3: little tidbit that the customized blue paneled backdrop was developed
Speaker 3: by a local specialized vendor within about seven hours after
Speaker 3: Clinton's team concluded it did not like the vibe of
Speaker 3: the original black curtains in the background unquote. So they
Speaker 3: like went in saw this, you know, white table with
Speaker 3: black curtains. They thought it looked too much like a
Speaker 3: criminal interrogation or or like a quote unquote hostage situation
Speaker 3: is what's quoted in the Post article, as opposed to
Speaker 3: like an official congressional deposition, you know, like an official
Speaker 3: government venue. So they got like a local carpenter to
Speaker 3: make this blue paneled backdrop in like a few hours
Speaker 3: to put behind Hillary. And that's just an interesting insight
Speaker 3: into like the thought process of the Clinton team regarding
Speaker 3: the optics of this.
Speaker 4: Hearing shop local.
Speaker 3: So let's briefly go through some of the sections on Bill.
Speaker 3: Bill started by saying that they should not have questioned Hillary. Quote,
Speaker 3: but I do think you should be talking to me.
Speaker 3: You should have called me. I did take those playing
Speaker 3: trips with him. You have a right to ask those questions.
Speaker 4: Unquote. He said that quote.
Speaker 3: I'll be honest with you, I'll be eighty eight years
Speaker 3: old if I lived my next birthday. I don't remember
Speaker 3: everything that happened twenty four years ago, but I do
Speaker 3: remember some things, and I'll tell you what I remember
Speaker 3: the best that I can un quote. When asked when
Speaker 3: he first met Jeffy Epstein, Bill referred to a photo
Speaker 3: of him shaking Epstein's hand in nineteen ninety three at
Speaker 3: a White House Historical Association event. But Bill said that
Speaker 3: he doesn't remember that, but this photo does exist. He
Speaker 3: shook a lot of people's hands, does not remember everyone
Speaker 3: he meets. He first remembers meeting Jeffrey Epstein for a
Speaker 3: Clinton Foundation plane trip in two thousand and two. He
Speaker 3: said he was connected with Epstein through someone named Larry Summers,
Speaker 3: who told Bill that Jeffrey Epstein made a large donation
Speaker 3: about ten million dollars to brain research and was a
Speaker 3: quote unquote information hungry person. Summers said that Epstein wanted
Speaker 3: to talk with Bill about economics and politics and offered
Speaker 3: to take Bill his staff and his secret service detail
Speaker 3: on Clinton Foundation trips for global humanitarian aid. So Bill
Speaker 3: saw this as a way to drive the price down
Speaker 3: for these trips. He took the last one of these
Speaker 3: flights in two thousand and three. When asked why this
Speaker 3: relationship ended, Bill said that the AIDS program.
Speaker 4: It was a humanitarian aid program to help with AIDS.
Speaker 3: That this AIDS program, you know, took off and more
Speaker 3: people that Bill knew better offered to help, and Jeffrey
Speaker 3: did not seem as interested in the AIDS program, so
Speaker 3: they kind of just naturally drifted apart. Bill characterized the
Speaker 3: relationship as friendly, but didn't know him well enough to
Speaker 3: be considered a friend, and so that he never talked
Speaker 3: about witness or participated in anything sexual. Relating to Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Epstein and young women and girls, Bill said he learned
Speaker 3: of Epstein's crimes in two thousand and eight. Bill said
Speaker 3: he had no indication Epstein was trafficking women. Quote There's
Speaker 3: nothing that I saw when I was around him that
Speaker 3: made me realize he was trafficking women.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Bill was asked about if he communicated with a long
Speaker 3: list of people regarding Epstein.
Speaker 4: This was kind of a weirdly framed question.
Speaker 3: It was have you communicated with any of these people
Speaker 3: about Jeffrey Epstein. Bill had a hard time kind of
Speaker 3: understanding the nature of this question. It is kind of
Speaker 3: oddly phrased. Hillary was asked the same one. They just
Speaker 3: read a list of names. Bill recounted if he knew
Speaker 3: the person or not, and the lawyers had to specify, like,
Speaker 3: oh no, they're asking if you communicated with them about Epstein,
Speaker 3: not not if you knew them. So it kind of
Speaker 3: got some confusing responses.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, both Hillary and Bill laughed at the mention of
Speaker 3: nom Chomsky. Hill said that he never communicated with Chomsky
Speaker 3: and that Chomsky quote wasn't a big fan of mine.
Speaker 4: He thought I was too conservative.
Speaker 1: Fuck off, Nome, fuck off, nome crazy.
Speaker 3: Bill did testify that he thought that someone relating to
Speaker 3: law enforcement would ask him about Epstein in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight when the news about Epstein's crimes came out.
Speaker 3: Considering that Epstein let Bill use the plane but no
Speaker 3: one ever did hmm. He said he never suspected until
Speaker 3: agency connections with Epstein and was at the time unaware
Speaker 3: of Epstein's visits to the White House while Bill was president,
Speaker 3: and there has only since been informed of this. In
Speaker 3: preparation for this testimony, Okay, Bill was asked about a
Speaker 3: New York Times article claiming to expound on Bill and
Speaker 3: Epstein's relationship in the nineties, characterized as chummy, which Bill denies.
Speaker 3: He said that he didn't even know Epstein really during
Speaker 3: this time, even though they may have been at the
Speaker 3: same events. He was asked about being asked to write
Speaker 3: a personal note to Jeffrey Epstein's mother. Bill said that
Speaker 3: he never met Jeffrey Epstein's mother and that he wrote
Speaker 3: a lot of notes to a lot of people that
Speaker 3: he did not know.
Speaker 4: He was unsure of who asked him to write this note.
Speaker 3: He was also asked about this passport appearing to belong
Speaker 3: to Epstein bearing a different name, with the questioner asserting
Speaker 3: that they believe Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence operative running
Speaker 3: a honeypot against the president. When later asked if he
Speaker 3: believes that he was targeted, Bill says that it's possible.
Speaker 3: The lawyers objected this based on speculation, but Bill says
Speaker 3: he doesn't know if he was targeted but would be surprised.
Speaker 3: Refers to Jeffrey Epstein as a quote unquote vacuum cleaner
Speaker 3: of information but was not overtly manipulative early on, saying
Speaker 3: that Epstein mostly asked about derivatives trading and stock market regulation.
Speaker 3: Bill was asked if you ever had contact with someone
Speaker 3: named Chante Davies who was a quote unquote flight attendant
Speaker 3: on Epstein's plane. Bill confirms that he did, and confirmed
Speaker 3: that a neck rub took place once with Chante Davies,
Speaker 3: but denied he ever went to the island.
Speaker 1: I don't know something about neck rub and Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: just mix messed.
Speaker 16: On my hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He later says that he was unaware of the abuse
Speaker 3: happening to Chante Davies and says that he quote wish
Speaker 3: Chante had told me I liked her, but said that
Speaker 3: he did not think there was anything unusual. He said
Speaker 3: that massages on which people's planes and boats weren't uncommon.
Speaker 3: Was never aware of anyone under the age of eighteen
Speaker 3: all these flights, and if there were, that would have
Speaker 3: made him uncomfortable. He specified that Secret Service was with
Speaker 3: him for every single trip. He quote never signed off
Speaker 3: secret Service protection. He talked about specifically this neck rub incident,
Speaker 3: saying that he had a sore neck during one of
Speaker 3: the legs of these Clinton Foundation Aid trips and received
Speaker 3: a massage this one time.
Speaker 4: That's what he claimed.
Speaker 3: He was asked about the note in Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth
Speaker 3: birthday book, Bill said that his own staff asked him
Speaker 3: to write a letter for the book, specifying that he
Speaker 3: sends out hundreds of birthday letters every year to friends
Speaker 3: or people he's only met a few times. A regular occurrence,
Speaker 3: he's asked to read a section of the letter that
Speaker 3: people had a hard time transcribing exactly, which makes a
Speaker 3: reference to Epstein having made errors in his life, and
Speaker 3: he was asked whether this errors referred to sex crimes.
Speaker 3: Bill said, no, in the life of someone fifty years old,
Speaker 3: they're gonna make mistakes. It was a throwaway line in
Speaker 3: one section of this very short letter. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's super relevant. Now around this time when they're reading
Speaker 3: from this letter is where there's this viral clip of
Speaker 3: Bill pulling back a copy of a photo from his lawyers,
Speaker 3: like while smiling. This is circulated a lot. It looks
Speaker 3: like he's no, like recounting like good memories or something.
Speaker 3: The piece paper he's pulling back is actually just a
Speaker 3: copy of a New York Times article. It's not a
Speaker 3: picture of him and Epstein. It's not a picture of memories.
Speaker 3: There may be a small photo framed in the picture
Speaker 3: included in this New York Times article. It's being passed around,
Speaker 3: but it's not like he's like flipping through like a
Speaker 3: year book of like a good moments with friends and like,
Speaker 3: you know, happily recounting. I think this this little clip's
Speaker 3: been decontextualized.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to defend Bill Clinton here, no, but
Speaker 3: I'm adding context for what's actually happening in this hearing.
Speaker 3: And his lawyers are passing around a copy of a
Speaker 3: New York Times article which he's being questioned about, and
Speaker 3: that's the context for that clip.
Speaker 1: And like this clip went pretty viral, and so I
Speaker 1: was talking about it actually with my mom my mom,
Speaker 1: and my mom's first reaction held some weight with me.
Speaker 1: She was like, that's just Bill Clinton's face.
Speaker 4: He's kind of this happy, goofy guy.
Speaker 1: Like he's generally like a smiley guy. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense contextually. Here again not defending
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, but yeah.
Speaker 3: I did want to play one clip about Trump. Bill
Speaker 3: was asked if the committee should talk to Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: since it's a name appears more frequently in the thousand
Speaker 3: almost any other person. Bill says that's up to the
Speaker 3: committee and mentions an instance where he talked with Trump
Speaker 3: about Epstein on a golf course for a charity tournament
Speaker 3: around two US and two to TWOISM three, and they
Speaker 3: talked about Epstein because Trump somehow knew that Bill had
Speaker 3: flown on the plane. But besides this incident, he had
Speaker 3: no other conversations with Trump about Epstein or Maxwell.
Speaker 9: The day I was there, he would typically Donald Trump
Speaker 9: would come out and play a few holes with us,
Speaker 9: and he somehow knew I had flown in Jeffrey Epstein's aircraft.
Speaker 9: And he said, you know, we had some great times
Speaker 9: together over the years, but we fell out all because
Speaker 9: of a real estate deal. And he said I'm sorry
Speaker 9: it up. That's all.
Speaker 21: Do you recall whether President Trump was the first one
Speaker 21: to affirmatively bring up the subject of Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 9: No, but I'd be shocked if I did. I just
Speaker 9: don't do that, you know.
Speaker 21: Do you recall whether President Trump elaborated at all on
Speaker 21: the great times that he had with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 9: No, and I took at the time. I took. No,
Speaker 9: I didn't put any you know, sexual spin on it.
Speaker 21: And as far as you recall, President Trump characterized the
Speaker 21: nature of the ending of their friendship as being solely
Speaker 21: due to the real estate.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, here Bill recounts that Trump's reason for breaking with
Speaker 3: Epstein was due to a real estate deal, not the
Speaker 3: poaching of employees at mar A Lago, as alternatively reported.
Speaker 3: Right the minority, the Democrats referred to statements from three
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein victims in statements, including Bill in some way.
Speaker 3: Starting with someone named Maria Farmer, an Epstein employee who
Speaker 3: first reported abuse to the NYPDNFBI in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: She claimed that she acknowledge that Bill visited Epstein's house
Speaker 3: multiple times. Bill denies this. Someone named Virginia Roberts Druffey
Speaker 3: remarked that she had knowledge that Bill was at Epstein's island.
Speaker 3: Bill responded by saying that ultimately this person quote unquote
Speaker 3: reached a different conclusion, and den I declaimed that he
Speaker 3: flew in a helicopter with Glen Maxwell to the island.
Speaker 3: The committee member referenced a diary entry as the piece
Speaker 3: of information asserting that Bill was on the island. Bill's
Speaker 3: lawyers asked about the dates for this entry so that
Speaker 3: they could determine whether Bill was in a different part
Speaker 3: of the world around this time. But this gets moved
Speaker 3: on pretty quick. They briefly bring up this picture of
Speaker 3: Bill in a hot tub in Brunei. He says that
Speaker 3: he was staying at a hotel during one of these
Speaker 3: AIDS trips and briefly went to a hot tub. Other
Speaker 3: people were present from this trip secret service. That's about
Speaker 3: a bizarre painting of Bill Clinton wearing Monica Lewinsky's blue
Speaker 3: dress found in Jeffrey Epstein's apartment. Bill said he'd never
Speaker 3: seen it before. Was asked to speculate why this painting
Speaker 3: was made. Lawyers said that the committee can.
Speaker 4: Ask the artist.
Speaker 3: Lauren barbart I was on a very poor line of
Speaker 3: questioning regarding a conversation transcert between two people, and this
Speaker 3: line of questioning requires deposition to go off the record
Speaker 3: to figure out what exactly she's talking about. Billa and
Speaker 3: she responds to a question stating that he never felt
Speaker 3: that he owed to Jeffrey Epstein any favors and never
Speaker 3: participated in any quote unquote to Island Orgies since he
Speaker 3: never traveled to the US of virgin Islands with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 3: About two hours in Bill Clinton is asked if he
Speaker 3: thinks Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, something they never asked.
Speaker 4: Hillary.
Speaker 20: I'd just like.
Speaker 18: To ask you personally and directly, do you believe that
Speaker 18: Jeffrey Epstein killed himself?
Speaker 10: Are you asking him to speculate on how mister Epstein died?
Speaker 18: I am asking what miss the President thinks, So you're
Speaker 18: asking his opinion, mister President, was your friend Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 10: Clasifying him as a friend who he has testified that
Speaker 10: he was a friend in a letter he said he
Speaker 10: was friendly, but not you've asked for his test.
Speaker 18: As your president. Do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein was suicidal?
Speaker 18: Do you know was he ever suicide.
Speaker 17: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I only know what the medical founding was. I think
Speaker 9: maybe he finally got caught.
Speaker 12: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I've accepted it my own mom.
Speaker 18: I don't know what happened, Miss President. What did you
Speaker 18: accept that he killed himself or that he did not?
Speaker 9: But he did?
Speaker 17: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, none of us know.
Speaker 17: We weren't there.
Speaker 8: Miss President has been an honor, Thank.
Speaker 22: You, thank you.
Speaker 1: Why would you ask him that? That makes no sense?
Speaker 3: I mean again, this is Lauren Bobber, the same person
Speaker 3: asking about pizza Gate. She's trying to yeah, donkey in
Speaker 3: as many of these conspiracy theory questions as she can,
Speaker 3: because that's that's like who she is, right, she has
Speaker 3: she she is a conspiracy theorist herself. She made not
Speaker 3: a characteristic that way. But she's trying to, you know,
Speaker 3: go off a checklist of like epic owns against the
Speaker 3: evil child eating Clinton's A few other few other small
Speaker 3: notes that I think are interesting. Bill was asked about
Speaker 3: emails being sent to Glene Maxwell by one of his assistants,
Speaker 3: and Bill says that he never sent these emails and
Speaker 3: he's only ever sent two emails in his life, which
Speaker 3: I do believe I can too.
Speaker 1: It's so crazy.
Speaker 4: Oh Bill Wow.
Speaker 3: Bill's asked about a statement that Epstein made saying that
Speaker 3: Bill quote unquote likes them young. Bill Lawyers asked, you
Speaker 3: know if Bill's being asked to speculate on Jeffrey Epstein's mind.
Speaker 3: Bill says that this isn't true, that he quote unquote
Speaker 3: likes them young and never went to the island again.
Speaker 3: Mace later asks if it's unusual for a quote unquote
Speaker 3: sitting president to receive a massage. Bill Sawyer has had
Speaker 3: to argue back and forth because Bill was not a
Speaker 3: sitting president during the time where this neck massage incident occurred.
Speaker 3: Bill's once again asked if he was the target of
Speaker 3: an intel operation. He says, I doubt it. There was
Speaker 3: then an extended argument between Mace and Lawyer's the reference
Speaker 3: to Daily Beast reporting on a statement Bill made after
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein's to as a nineteen arrest, mischaracterizing two instances
Speaker 3: where Jeffrey Epstein visited the Clinton office and Bill once
Speaker 3: visited Jeffrey Epstein's New York ampartment, which he later remarked
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein was not even present for and Nancy Mace
Speaker 3: kept asking if Bill lied about only meeting Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 3: at these two times based on the phrasing of the
Speaker 3: Daily Beast article, But the full statement that the Daily
Speaker 3: Beast was quoting from also lists the four plane trips,
Speaker 3: which contained a total of seventeen stops. The Beast article
Speaker 3: just mischaracterized this as only being two incidents, and Mace
Speaker 3: was referring to the article, not the actual original statement.
Speaker 3: That's resulted in a pretty extensive argument. This leads us
Speaker 3: to the final clip that I'll play, which I think
Speaker 3: is kind of the only interesting question across the nine
Speaker 3: hours of testimony, The only question I think is actually
Speaker 3: kind of interesting and worthwhile, and it's not actually followed
Speaker 3: up on in any substantial way. Nacy Basica asks why
Speaker 3: the Clinton's still associated with Gleade Maxwell after Jeffrey Epstein's
Speaker 3: first conviction, knowing that Maxwell was one of Epstein's closest associates.
Speaker 9: First of all, when the wedding occurred, she was with
Speaker 9: Ted White, and she was for several more years.
Speaker 17: We did not know.
Speaker 9: When Epstein was arrested that she was still involved with him.
Speaker 9: I think that clears a lot of this up. We
Speaker 9: didn't know, and I don't want all of me to
Speaker 9: get we're all getting in a lad. There's a logical explanation.
Speaker 9: We didn't know, and I'm sorry for what she did
Speaker 9: and what she allowed her like to become, and now
Speaker 9: she's let them with it.
Speaker 3: They do not follow up on this at all, the
Speaker 3: fact that the Clinton's, knowing that Maxwell was like Epstein's
Speaker 3: number two guy, spent a peaston amount of time with
Speaker 3: on these four playing trips, the two US and two
Speaker 3: to two US and three on these humanitarian aid Clinton
Speaker 3: Foundation trips, you know, a lot of time with Glaine
Speaker 3: and Epstein. The committee did not follow up on why
Speaker 3: they continued to associate even loosely, like very loosely, with
Speaker 3: Glaine after the two estate conviction. Yeah, that's a pretty
Speaker 3: reasonable question to have, and it just doesn't even get
Speaker 3: focused on very much. Instead, they started talking about this
Speaker 3: report from an Epstein victim about Bill Clinton allegedly walking
Speaker 3: into the offices of Vanity Fair and threatening them to
Speaker 3: not write sex trafficking articles about Jeffrey Epstein, something that
Speaker 3: Bill obviously denies, and there would be other witnesses for
Speaker 3: this event. But like this, this question about the Clinton's
Speaker 3: extended relationship with Glaine Maxwell after the first conviction is
Speaker 3: one of like the very last questions asked. It takes
Speaker 3: them nine hours to get there. Yeah, they don't even
Speaker 3: follow up on it, and it just kind of ends
Speaker 3: very very flaccid.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to the survivors, Like you're not getting any
Speaker 1: kind of justice. This committee is incompetent, embarrassing, and repugnant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that kind of sums up the hearing, all
Speaker 3: of the hearings they were inconfident, embarrassing, and repugnant, really
Speaker 3: spending more time on weird conspiracy theories than asking like new.
Speaker 4: Questions on Pizzagate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because like they asked Hillary and Bill basically the
Speaker 3: same two questions over and over again, giving the same answers,
Speaker 3: wasting hours and hours of time. The only new questions
Speaker 3: they asked are these insane conspiracy ones. It's it's embarrassing,
Speaker 3: it does not hold any relevance to the investigation, and
Speaker 3: it's nine hours of my life I'll never get back.
Speaker 20: Yep.
Speaker 3: Well that does it for us here at it could
Speaker 3: happen here. We'll keep following some of these, some of
Speaker 3: these hearings and depositions as this continues. I know there
Speaker 3: was new FBI documents about witness statements regarding President Trump
Speaker 3: released as I was writing this, like last night, and
Speaker 3: we'll probably be talking about those in executive disorder and
Speaker 3: later on throughout our coverage.
Speaker 20: Bye bye, Welcome to.
Speaker 4: It could happen here a podcast where the economy is
Speaker 4: falling apart a new and exciting ways faster that I
Speaker 4: can write about it. I am your host, Mialong. Welcome
Speaker 4: to what has turned into a kind of emergency? Is
Speaker 4: the economy Collapsing episode? This episode was originally supposed to
Speaker 4: be about tariffs, but while I was writing the tariff episode,
Speaker 4: a bunch of shit happened, like we invaded or run
Speaker 4: and Coast b which is the leading Korean stock market index,
Speaker 4: had its largest single drop in its entire history, which
Speaker 4: triggered its circuit breaker. Circuit breakers are a thing that
Speaker 4: stock markets have now where if the stock market collapses,
Speaker 4: like if it loses points too fast in a certain
Speaker 4: period of time, all trading will automatically stop for a bit,
Speaker 4: so it hits its circuit breaker. The TIE index also
Speaker 4: hits its circuit breaker, and then in the wee hours
Speaker 4: of sort of Monday morning, American time. I start seeing
Speaker 4: a bunch of people posting that Coastby hit the circuit breaker,
Speaker 4: and I'm very confused because that happened on like Wednesday,
Speaker 4: right like this already happened. No, no, no, no, wrong, wrong,
Speaker 4: happened again. It's two circuit breakers in like four sessions.
Speaker 4: So this has turned into an unbelievable crisis. Yeah, so
Speaker 4: we're gonna get the tariff episode at some point, talking
Speaker 4: about the Supreme Court tariff rulings and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: That will happen. There's a lot of interesting stuff there,
Speaker 4: But right now we need to answer the question is
Speaker 4: the economy about to collapse? And tendatively it has been
Speaker 4: held off at least for a little bit. Now. This
Speaker 4: is being recorded early Monday afternoon on March ninth. By
Speaker 4: the time this goes out on March tenth, who the
Speaker 4: fuck knows what will have happened. But let's talk about
Speaker 4: what happened in the run up to all of this,
Speaker 4: because it's very important. So in the lead up to
Speaker 4: the open of the American markets, we had a massive
Speaker 4: spike in oil futures, like one of the largest single
Speaker 4: day spikes in oil futures ever. It looks like it's
Speaker 4: going to be the apocalypse for the markets. And the
Speaker 4: reason it looks like this is because and this is
Speaker 4: something that's genuinely astounding. So one fifth of the world's
Speaker 4: oil moves through the strain of for Moose. We're going
Speaker 4: to talk about this in more detail later. And obviously
Speaker 4: there is now a war, which means that you can't
Speaker 4: move oil through it, and people suddenly realized that, oh
Speaker 4: my god, this is going to raise oil prices.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: When I was originally writing this episode in the housey
Speaker 4: in days of Friday of last week, part of this
Speaker 4: episode was about why oil prices were not spiking because
Speaker 4: they didn't spike immediately upon the start of the war, right,
Speaker 4: And I was very confused about this because the explanation
Speaker 4: at the time was that people were like, Oh, I'll
Speaker 4: be fine. The US Navy can escort oil tankers through
Speaker 4: the straight ocrewer moves. No, they can't, like the narrowest
Speaker 4: part of it's twenty three miles wide. Like what are
Speaker 4: we doing here?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 20: Wait?
Speaker 4: Like, forget drones. You can hit these oil tankers with
Speaker 4: like a fucking trebuchet. What are we doing here? What
Speaker 4: was the administration telling to oil companies right, and then
Speaker 4: a few days later everyone collectively realized, oh my god,
Speaker 4: we can't move oil, and yeah, no shit, you can't
Speaker 4: move oil.
Speaker 22: Jeseuz.
Speaker 4: This is christ like, this is unbelievable stuff. From the
Speaker 4: people who are in the oil markets, from the oil executives,
Speaker 4: from the golf monarchies, from all of the people planning this.
Speaker 4: Why would you think this wouldn't happen? And we're gonna
Speaker 4: get into that actually in a little bit, because there
Speaker 4: is apparently a reason why they thought this was going
Speaker 4: to happen, which is some combination of just pure lies
Speaker 4: and willful belief and some of the worst strategy planning
Speaker 4: I've ever seen in my entire life. But you know,
Speaker 4: the ability to close the straight up from news is
Speaker 4: the reason why even if you are like President Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: the kind of person who doesn't give a shit if
Speaker 4: you know your army burns a running and children to death, right,
Speaker 4: even if you don't care that you fucking bombed a
Speaker 4: fucking school, you don't fight this war because it fucks
Speaker 4: with the money. Now, in anticipation of what looked like
Speaker 4: it was going to be just a market pounding, Trump
Speaker 4: gave a phone interview with CBS's senior White House correspondent
Speaker 4: Weija Jang, who posted this on Twitter. This is her
Speaker 4: reporting of his statements. This is from Donald Trump, quote
Speaker 4: I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They
Speaker 4: have no navy, no communication, they've got no air force.
Speaker 4: He added that the US is quote very far ahead
Speaker 4: of his initial three to four week timeframe.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: He also said that ships are moving through it now.
Speaker 4: But he's also quote thinking about taking it over, which
Speaker 4: what is officially conquering the straight up on moves instead
Speaker 4: of merely like protecting it with the American fleet assets.
Speaker 4: This is completely unhinged. And then he also said, quote
Speaker 4: they've shot everything they have to shoot, and they better
Speaker 4: not try anything cute or it's going to be the
Speaker 4: end of that country.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the part of this right that went to
Speaker 4: the markets is that he thinks the war is over now.
Speaker 4: The part of it where he says if a rawn
Speaker 4: fights back in any way, quote, it's going to be
Speaker 4: the end of that country apparently did not hit the markets.
Speaker 4: The people running the markets are really really dumb. They
Speaker 4: think and act like herd animals. This is, I guess
Speaker 4: slightly an ansult to herd animals, because herd animals react
Speaker 4: that way for a reason. These people are human beings.
Speaker 4: They have the capacity for logic and reason. They have
Speaker 4: the same capacity for logic and reason that we do,
Speaker 4: and they still act like this. But this has calmed
Speaker 4: the markets down and it's sent oil prices back down again.
Speaker 4: We're going to get into why that's kind of nonsense
Speaker 4: in a little bit. But it's also worth noting in
Speaker 4: terms of Trump saying the war is nearly over, that
Speaker 4: every single other quote Trump has said about this war
Speaker 4: has been He's in this for the long haul. He's
Speaker 4: thinking about troops on the ground. He is not going
Speaker 4: to get bored with it. He doesn't care the gas
Speaker 4: prices are going up. Someone asked his press secretary about
Speaker 4: whether he ruled out the draft, and she said no,
Speaker 4: he hadn't, which is I mean, like they're not gonna
Speaker 4: do a draft, But like, that's ridiculous, why would you
Speaker 4: say that. It's also worth noting that so he has
Speaker 4: a a two hundred and fifty year anniversary commission thing
Speaker 4: that he set up that he's very very excited about.
Speaker 4: That's like it's America's two hundred and fifty year blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah blah, and that commissions like one of
Speaker 4: their big people was ringing the opening bell wall shake
Speaker 4: this morning. So, you know, I suspect that there's a
Speaker 4: lot of sort of motivated reasoning here going on with
Speaker 4: Trump saying, oh, that's fine, it's gonna be fine. The
Speaker 4: war's nearly over. Do do do do do? Okay, So
Speaker 4: I quite frankly do not believe the President when he
Speaker 4: says that the war is nearly over. I mean, I
Speaker 4: guess maybe there's a scenario where everything we're about to
Speaker 4: talk about causes a crisis that is large enough to
Speaker 4: you know, actually set off Trump pulling out of the
Speaker 4: war under pressure from his allies in the region, which
Speaker 4: is to say, the air of monarchies. I don't know
Speaker 4: to what extent that's actually going to happen, but let's
Speaker 4: talk about what the crisis here is. So the US's
Speaker 4: war against Iran has triggered what could be the start
Speaker 4: of a full on energy crisis. The energy crisis has
Speaker 4: been postponed for one day, I guess as of again
Speaker 4: time of recording, Monday, March ninth, But this could be
Speaker 4: the start of fall on energy crisis and it's not
Speaker 4: just me saying this. Here is the subtitle of the
Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal's big piece on this quote, Traffic through
Speaker 4: the Straight of Furmuz has ground to a virtual halt,
Speaker 4: unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the nineteen seventies
Speaker 4: and threatening the global economy. So that's not good. Now.
Speaker 4: I began this episode talking about a collapse on South
Speaker 4: Korean and high markets, and I was also mentioned by
Speaker 4: the way that like when that collapse happened, all the
Speaker 4: other Asian markets kind of eight shit. The Chinese markets
Speaker 4: were sort of more stable for reasons we'll get you
Speaker 4: in a second, but like Japan, like the nik was
Speaker 4: down like four percent, like all of the other Asian
Speaker 4: markets kind of eight shit, right, Taiwanese market. And the
Speaker 4: reason for that is well, again, as I said above,
Speaker 4: one fifth of the world's oil supply crude oil is
Speaker 4: shipped through the Strait of Framus. And this is an
Speaker 4: issue for a country like South Korea, which imports almost
Speaker 4: all of its oil, you know, and whose economy, like
Speaker 4: manufacturer economy in particular, is very very heavily dependent on oil.
Speaker 4: This is true of a lot of other countries in
Speaker 4: that region, and South Korea and Thailand and Taiwan and
Speaker 4: Japan are not countries like China, which have much of
Speaker 4: oil stockpiles and have the ability to get oiled through
Speaker 4: other ways. Now, I want to take a second to
Speaker 4: actually explain what the Strait of Framuz is. So the
Speaker 4: Strait of Fromuz is a straight it's like there's a
Speaker 4: little bit of water, but it's close to land. I
Speaker 4: talked to said earlier that the narrowest part of it
Speaker 4: is twenty three miles, so it's very narrow, and it
Speaker 4: is a passage between the Persian Gulf and effectively the
Speaker 4: Indian Ocean right and what you're out into the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 4: you can get to the rest of the world that is,
Speaker 4: you know, east of that, which is all of Asia,
Speaker 4: most of the rest of the world that's not west
Speaker 4: of you. Right now, she's bordering the Persian Gulf. Who
Speaker 4: are in the area who need to ship their oil
Speaker 4: out through here include a run Araq, Bahrain Cotter, the UAE,
Speaker 4: and Saudi Arabia. Those are a bunch of oil producing countries.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: They are now also countries that are embroiled in this
Speaker 4: war because they are part of the American Alliance, and
Speaker 4: you can ask the very reasonable question, Okay, so if
Speaker 4: you're part of the American Alliance, why the fuck would
Speaker 4: you be like, okay, with the United States launching this
Speaker 4: attack on Iran. On a more vulgar level, you can
Speaker 4: ask the question, how the fuck was this allowed to happen?
Speaker 4: This is the money, this is the global economy that
Speaker 4: you are fucking with right now. The things that the
Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal talks about is that officials in the
Speaker 4: US and Israel told the Gulf States that there wouldn't
Speaker 4: be retaliation by Iran, right, that Iran wouldn't target oil facilities,
Speaker 4: they would just target American military bases. They had a
Speaker 4: whole thing about how, oh well three tree in the
Speaker 4: war with Israel, they did only target American military basis.
Speaker 4: They didn't like bomb any oil infrastructure. They were sending
Speaker 4: mister Bean memes in their group chats about how weak
Speaker 4: the Iranian retaliation was going to be. So this is
Speaker 4: not just a situation of pure you know, motivated reasoning.
Speaker 4: We relying to them, et cetera, et cetera. Like the
Speaker 4: Americans appeared to have actually believed some of this, that
Speaker 4: Iran's retaliation was going to be weak. I've seen reports
Speaker 4: that they thought that Aram was out of drones. I
Speaker 4: don't know why you would think this, in baffling. Their
Speaker 4: drones are extremely cheap to produce, like they've used them,
Speaker 4: but why would you think they didn't have more? And
Speaker 4: I just want to point out right, so point of
Speaker 4: reference here was oh Iran showed restraint in the war
Speaker 4: with Israel. You know, this is a twelve day conflict
Speaker 4: where Israel and a rol and sort of fired missiles
Speaker 4: at each other and stuff after Israel assassinated a bunch
Speaker 4: of people for doing nuclear stuff. But okay, let's look
Speaker 4: at this for a second. My brother in Christ, you
Speaker 4: killed the fucking Ayahtola. This is an existential war for
Speaker 4: survival of the regime. Of course, they were going to
Speaker 4: target your oil facilities. Are you fucking kidding me? Your
Speaker 4: goal here was regime change. You literally assassinated their fucking
Speaker 4: head of state. You literally killed him. What the fuck
Speaker 4: did you think was going to happen? Oh my god.
Speaker 23: These people are so fucking dumb, Like you know, and
Speaker 23: it's obviously not clear exactly like who knew what about
Speaker 23: this plan? But again, like it seems like the plan
Speaker 23: was put into place because they had the opportunity to
Speaker 23: to kill Ahtola Committee. And like, okay, if that's true,
Speaker 23: and presumably the Gulf States would know that, why the
Speaker 23: fuck would they not expect retaliation?
Speaker 4: I expected this. I'm a podcaster. I mean, I know,
Speaker 4: I'm very smart, but like these people are These people
Speaker 4: and their advisors are running fucking like some of the
Speaker 4: most important governments in the entire world. I don't know, monarchy,
Speaker 4: bad system of governments. Electing Donald Trump also apparently bad
Speaker 4: system of government. You're getting just oh my god, holy fuck,
Speaker 4: these people are stupid. Oh my god. They really truly
Speaker 4: they really truly believed that Iran was not going to
Speaker 4: pick up the weapon that it has always had, that
Speaker 4: has always been the thing for what the reason why
Speaker 4: you don't fight this fucking war, even if you don't
Speaker 4: care about Iranian lives, that you're willing to spend American lives? Right,
Speaker 4: they really thought they wouldn't do it. I just, I
Speaker 4: just I can't get over this. I just oh my god,
Speaker 4: Oh I don't know, I don't know. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 4: go to ads a mad hell. I'm not gonna take
Speaker 4: it any more. Here's some ads Okay, calming down a
Speaker 4: little bit, let's get back to the actual oil of
Speaker 4: it all. So let's talk about the quality of the
Speaker 4: oil here now. Sharp eared listeners may remember that when
Speaker 4: I talked about Venezuelan oil battery nor Executive Disorder episode
Speaker 4: about the previous war a couple of months ago, a
Speaker 4: sentence so unhinged I had to go back check the
Speaker 4: date to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. But no,
Speaker 4: it was January third, twenty twenty six, when we had
Speaker 4: our last war with a major oil producer where read
Speaker 4: in some way incapacitated or killed the head of state.
Speaker 4: By the way, we're still just like holding Maduro hostage.
Speaker 4: This is just still a thing that we're doing right now.
Speaker 4: Incredible stuff, incredible like normal government shit, bad things happening.
Speaker 4: But in that episode, which would have been the Executive
Speaker 4: Disorder that came out on Friday the January ninth, I
Speaker 4: talked about how Venezuelan crude oil is not very good. Right,
Speaker 4: It's extremely sour, kind of sucks. The Kumbo composition is bad.
Speaker 4: The oil in the golf is not like that. This
Speaker 4: is good oil. This is one fifth of the world's
Speaker 4: crude oil. Supply, right, And also it is now because
Speaker 4: of cutters like liquified natural gas production. This is now
Speaker 4: also a shutdown of a significant portion of the world's
Speaker 4: liquified natural gas, which is again extremely important to the economy.
Speaker 4: And also, you know, one of the biggest sort of
Speaker 4: climate hoaxes in all of this, right, and I'm saying
Speaker 4: climate hoaxes here. There's been a whole push to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: we should transition to natural gas because it's cleaner than oil,
Speaker 4: and like kind of a little bit in the sense
Speaker 4: that like dunking your head into a swamp is probably
Speaker 4: cleaner than dunking your head directly into like a shitful toilet.
Speaker 4: And also it's only cleaner assuming that no methane escapes
Speaker 4: through the production process. But the thing is, methane fucking
Speaker 4: escapes during the production process of natural as all the
Speaker 4: fucking time. And methane is like to get a sense,
Speaker 4: So we're talking about greenhouse greenhouse gases here, right, and
Speaker 4: obviously we're familiar with CO two is like the major
Speaker 4: pollutant that we that we produce. Methane is a greenhouse
Speaker 4: gas that is so fucked that it is better to
Speaker 4: light it on fire and have it burn and have
Speaker 4: it admit that CO two into the air. That is
Speaker 4: better for the environment than letting fucking methane into it.
Speaker 4: It is that fucked of a greenhouse gas, right, And
Speaker 4: you know a lot of this stuff escapes and and
Speaker 4: this this is the point that I've been, you know,
Speaker 4: trying to find a thing to put in this episode.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: One of the big things here is why are we
Speaker 4: still using oil to this extent? And you know, it
Speaker 4: has to do with sort of, I mean just just
Speaker 4: the the the utter cowardice and evil and short sighted
Speaker 4: profit motive chasing of the entire world ruling class. It
Speaker 4: has to do with specific efforts by the oil lobby
Speaker 4: in order to make sure that politics would happen like this.
Speaker 4: You know, we can talk about like the role of
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania and like fracking as like an electoral thing. We
Speaker 4: can talk about sort of the kind of Andreas Molm
Speaker 4: fossil capital thesis about the place that you want to
Speaker 4: produce things being a place that both has stable energy
Speaker 4: and also a sort of I don't know, I guess
Speaker 4: the capitalists would call it disciplined workforce, but like a
Speaker 4: workforce that's not like organized, and that's not militant, so
Speaker 4: you can exploit them. And the places where those things
Speaker 4: are true, for example, like this century largely has been China,
Speaker 4: where you know, if you try to do independent union organizing,
Speaker 4: they will arrest you. Sometimes you will get disappeared. And
Speaker 4: that also coincides with you know, they have an energy grid,
Speaker 4: and the energy grid is extremely pollution intensive. It still
Speaker 4: is even as you know, trying to sort of renewable
Speaker 4: energy push has been happening, is still extremely carbon intensive.
Speaker 4: So okay, obviously, like we're in this nightmare because a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of people who really really really really desperately
Speaker 4: want us to burn the entire world of lives. They
Speaker 4: can keep making money. But we're turning to the original
Speaker 4: thing before I got pissed off about people saying that
Speaker 4: natural gas is cleaner than oil. It's like, just fucking
Speaker 4: use literally any other way to generate energy that's not
Speaker 4: fucking oil or natural gas or coal or I guess
Speaker 4: nuclear too. But like, we have other ways of generating power.
Speaker 4: We could do this. But because we haven't done this,
Speaker 4: this massive decrease in oil supply because again nothing's fucking
Speaker 4: going through the Gulf. There's like a couple of ships
Speaker 4: have gone through. This is causing a crisis in the
Speaker 4: global economy. I'm going to quote the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 4: If the Strait is still closed this Friday, output in
Speaker 4: the region could fall by more than four million barrels
Speaker 4: kind of analystical quoting earlier estimates, the decline could reach
Speaker 4: about nine million by the end of March, representing almost
Speaker 4: a tenth of global demands. Now it's worth noting here,
Speaker 4: right that you know, you look at a tenth of
Speaker 4: global demand and you go, oh, okay, so it's like
Speaker 4: a ten percent reduction, but it's actually way worse than that,
Speaker 4: because again, people have this tendency to look at oil
Speaker 4: as just liquid money that moves freely around the world.
Speaker 4: But that reduction in supply is not evenly distributed across
Speaker 4: the world. Right, There are countries who have extraordinary needs
Speaker 4: of it who get their oil from the Middle East.
Speaker 4: This is the places like for example, Korea from Thailand,
Speaker 4: b and mar We're gon We're gonna get to you
Speaker 4: in a little bit, are places who are relying on
Speaker 4: this oil. And you know, for South Korea, it's like
Speaker 4: seventy percent of their oil comes from this region, right,
Speaker 4: So that ten percent of global demand is not spread
Speaker 4: eatingly across the world, is intensified into acute crises and
Speaker 4: very very specific economies. And this is a compounding crisis because,
Speaker 4: as the Wall Street Journal points out, like it's not
Speaker 4: just that the strait is closed for the first time ever, right,
Speaker 4: this rait has never been closed, Like there was a
Speaker 4: point where the US was like escorting things through a
Speaker 4: dream the Iron of Rock War, But like it's never
Speaker 4: just been closed before. It's not just that, like you know, oil,
Speaker 4: natural gas and fertilizer isn't coming out of there either,
Speaker 4: which is a real fun problem that we'll talk about
Speaker 4: in a second. This is not just an immediate crisis
Speaker 4: of we can't move the oil that we have out
Speaker 4: there is a secondary crisis, which is that where the
Speaker 4: fuck do you put the oil? Right? If you get
Speaker 4: one thing out of listening to me talk about oil,
Speaker 4: it's that again, it's not just liquid money. It's a
Speaker 4: material substance. And the actual substance of oil and what
Speaker 4: it is and how it's produced has really wide reaching
Speaker 4: political effects, right, because when you take your stuff out
Speaker 4: of the ground, the system is designed so that it
Speaker 4: is moved extremely quickly. Now there are countries like a
Speaker 4: rock that you could in theory still produce oil, right,
Speaker 4: but there aren't enough containers to store it, so they
Speaker 4: have to shop production down. Now you could be like, okay,
Speaker 4: well but why don't they just ship it out through
Speaker 4: the Mediterranean, and the answers that the pipelines and the
Speaker 4: shipping equipment there just don't have the throughput. Oil distribution
Speaker 4: is very, very flexible, and this is what makes disrupting
Speaker 4: it harder than something like coal used to be. But
Speaker 4: it is designed to a point to be sort of
Speaker 4: nodal and flexible and able to sort of deal with
Speaker 4: supply reduction crises, right. It's not designed to deal with this,
Speaker 4: which is a full on energy crisis level, like, oh
Speaker 4: by god, we can't get oil out through the trade
Speaker 4: of removes. This is a scale of issue that can't
Speaker 4: simply be solved by just moving the supply around and
Speaker 4: distributing it differently. This is not a solution to this,
Speaker 4: and so these are having these interlocking effects right because
Speaker 4: also again, these things are designed to be going constantly
Speaker 4: and it's not just a thing where you can just
Speaker 4: turn it off and turn it back on again. It
Speaker 4: doesn't work like that. These are actual, very very complicated,
Speaker 4: tendic goal processes. If you turn these things off, this
Speaker 4: is again very important. If you turn these wells off,
Speaker 4: some of them will never turn back on again. So
Speaker 4: we're talking about permanent damage to the supply. Right, even
Speaker 4: if tomorrow, right like the war is suddenly over and
Speaker 4: everything quote unquote goes back to normal, we're talking about
Speaker 4: still like permanent damage to the supply. And this is
Speaker 4: where again you can be like, well, okay, but like,
Speaker 4: why don't we just condition from oil? And again you
Speaker 4: can also ask like why should we give a shit
Speaker 4: about this? There's a few reasons when I say this
Speaker 4: is a compounding crisis. The Wall Stree Journal talked about
Speaker 4: this a little bit, but in every article you read
Speaker 4: about this, you will see people making the argument that, oh,
Speaker 4: it's fine, Like the US is more insulated than it
Speaker 4: was from oil prices in the seventies when it just
Speaker 4: like caused a major global crisis. And that's kind of
Speaker 4: true to a certain extent, Right, the US is an
Speaker 4: oil producer, but also again, oil is not just something
Speaker 4: that's used for cars, right, and our domestic economy doesn't
Speaker 4: just rely on oil like you can't just you know,
Speaker 4: you can you make plastics out of oil?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: But even that, you don't just make things wholesale out
Speaker 4: of oil. Like everything you consume has other things in it,
Speaker 4: and it relies on products like, for example, aluminum and
Speaker 4: things like copper and everything from basic commodities to sort
Speaker 4: of like refined goods that rely on there being oil. Right.
Speaker 4: Like again we're talking about South Korea's economy. South Korea produces.
Speaker 4: There's a whole bunch of microtrip production stuff that goes
Speaker 4: on there. You know, there's like Samsung, right, major foam manufacturer,
Speaker 4: So there's all of this very very high tech stuff too.
Speaker 4: On the sort of on the bottom end, we're talking
Speaker 4: about like you can't refine a luminum anymore, you know, right,
Speaker 4: not that you can't, like like places are shutting down
Speaker 4: their cassidy to do it because they can't get oil
Speaker 4: or they can't afford this oil. To the extent that
Speaker 4: we're seeing something called force maith Zura and being deployed
Speaker 4: by a whole bunch of companies across the world in
Speaker 4: different sectors and forced majoritam is this is this legal
Speaker 4: concept you can apply that It's like it's like an
Speaker 4: act of God where for example, like I don't know,
Speaker 4: if there's like a once in a century earthquake and
Speaker 4: it like obliterates your factory, You're not legally liable to
Speaker 4: pay stuff out to people because it's an act of God,
Speaker 4: like you, you can't be legally held liable for it.
Speaker 4: And people are doing this for their aluminum production to
Speaker 4: say like yeah, sorry, we can't meet our tracks, we
Speaker 4: can't meet our quotas that you bought from us, Like
Speaker 4: not our fault, nothing we can do about it. It's
Speaker 4: happening with oil producers. Because it's also worth noting that
Speaker 4: it's not just that the Strait is closed. Iran is
Speaker 4: also hitting oil facilities. Israel is also hitting oil facilities
Speaker 4: in Iran. They hit one in Tehran, like a massive
Speaker 4: one in Tehran that's releasing all of these fucking toxic
Speaker 4: chemicals into the air, and that has set off a
Speaker 4: massive ecological crisis because all of these people are Enormous
Speaker 4: numbers of people in Iran are going to die because
Speaker 4: of this, not just because of the bombings, but because
Speaker 4: it turns out when you fucking blow up an oil
Speaker 4: facility releases a bunch of extremely toxic chemicals into the
Speaker 4: air that caused fucking cancer and stuff like that. And
Speaker 4: so what you're dealing with, right, is this crisis in
Speaker 4: which all of these different aspects of the economy that
Speaker 4: rely on oil are impacted. Right, it's basic commodities, it's
Speaker 4: highly advanced like parts of of like subig conductor manufacturing.
Speaker 4: It's you know, all of these things that rely on
Speaker 4: oil are suddenly constrained, and suddenly the supply chains are fragmenting.
Speaker 4: You know, the US gets things from all over the world,
Speaker 4: but the crisis right now has mostly been hitting East Asia. Right.
Speaker 4: I talked about Korea, we talked about high Land. The
Speaker 4: thing is, right, crises in East Asia do not stay
Speaker 4: in East Asia. Like the Asian market collapse, heralded a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of other debt crises. This is the Asian
Speaker 4: market class in the nineties, right, Herald's a bunch of
Speaker 4: debt crises in places like Mexico. Heralds the collapse of
Speaker 4: the US economy and draining the dot com bubble. It
Speaker 4: as say it with me, long time listeners of the show,
Speaker 4: is what causes the reverse Plaza Accords try to bail
Speaker 4: out the entire world economy, which is where the US,
Speaker 4: like nuked its own manufacturing economy. By reversing Reagan's attempt
Speaker 4: to force all of the rest of the countries in
Speaker 4: the world to increase the value of their currencies relative
Speaker 4: to the dollars of the US, he compete in manufacturing better,
Speaker 4: you know. So it affects all these places, you know,
Speaker 4: and that that effect will boomerang back here. But as
Speaker 4: as is always true with American imperialism, the people suffering
Speaker 4: from this the most are not Americans. It's people in Iran, right,
Speaker 4: It's people who are getting fucking blown up. It's people
Speaker 4: who are breathing in toxic chemicals as people whose lives
Speaker 4: have been destroyed and ruined by American imperialism. And beyond Iran,
Speaker 4: it's Pakistan, it's India, it's Bangladesh, it's Taiwan, it's Thailand,
Speaker 4: it's the Philippines, South Korea, it's Mia and mar like
Speaker 4: it's Indonesia designan to lesser sent in Genesia. But you know,
Speaker 4: we're talking about potential crop failures from lack of fertilizer, right,
Speaker 4: We're talking about economic ruin. We're talking about the destabilization
Speaker 4: of the world economy, or talking about people dying for
Speaker 4: fucking cancer when we're talking about the global economic effects
Speaker 4: of this. That's what we're really dealing with here, regardless
Speaker 4: of what happens on the American stock markets, is a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of people who never had anything to do
Speaker 4: with this fucking suffering and dying because of the fucking
Speaker 4: greed and pride and vanity and hatred of the American
Speaker 4: ruling class. Now, I'm going to close on a slightly
Speaker 4: lighter note, which is people who follow the economy very
Speaker 4: closely will be talking about how kost B, the Korean index,
Speaker 4: had a massive bubble and that's why it collapsed, and
Speaker 4: that's why it had like two circuit breakers, and that's
Speaker 4: why it's going down so much. That's kind of true, right,
Speaker 4: But that bubble is an AI bubble. Now it is
Speaker 4: a larger and more concentrated version of the American AI bubble.
Speaker 4: But you know, the American economy is an AI bubble.
Speaker 4: And the thing about AI is that it's propped up
Speaker 4: by gas prices.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 4: AI is enormously enormously fuel intensive, but it wastes a
Speaker 4: staggering on a hinged amount of energy, right, And it
Speaker 4: could only really function as long as those oil prices
Speaker 4: are very cheap, and as long as natural gas prices
Speaker 4: are cheap. And it's also worth noting that, you know,
Speaker 4: these AI things are also do a physical infrastructure. Because
Speaker 4: these people are just like absolute clowns. They've been buying
Speaker 4: into the Golf monarchy's attempts to attract a tech sector there,
Speaker 4: so they've been hit and Iran has been taking advantage
Speaker 4: of this by hitting Amazon data centers in the Golf States.
Speaker 4: So that's another way where this can potentially just sort
Speaker 4: of toss a nuke into the global economy, is that
Speaker 4: like the price of running all of these AI things
Speaker 4: suddenly starts to increase. And the kind of worst case
Speaker 4: scenario scenario for this, right, the one that we've been
Speaker 4: looking at in terms of what could happen to the
Speaker 4: world economy is what's been being discussed more and more,
Speaker 4: which is a version of the Crisis of the seven,
Speaker 4: which is an economic crisis of increasing inflation and also
Speaker 4: increasing unemployment that completely reshaped the entire global economy. It's
Speaker 4: why we have deoliberalism, you know, it's a complete collapse
Speaker 4: with the social democratic system that I come before. It
Speaker 4: it changes the entire global world order. Right, the US
Speaker 4: goes off the gold standard, like things change that had
Speaker 4: never changed before. And we're going to talk about that
Speaker 4: more on the tariff episode. But that, to a large
Speaker 4: extent to the ruling class is what is at stake here, right,
Speaker 4: It's whether it is worth destroying the global economy in
Speaker 4: order for Trump to kill what people and I wrong.
Speaker 4: This has been Nickuldoppen here.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and this is it could
Speaker 2: Happen Here. Today, We've got a special episode for you.
Speaker 2: This is a guest episode by all of a Minneapolis
Speaker 2: resident and movement legal worker who hosts the Outlaw podcast. So,
Speaker 2: without further ado, here's Olive.
Speaker 24: Minneapolis Print put hi, and welcome to the first crossover
Speaker 24: episode of It Could Happen Here and Outlaw, an anti
Speaker 24: oppression podcast where we demystify how the law is used
Speaker 24: to neutralize descent in the US.
Speaker 25: I'm your host, Olive. I live in Minneapolis, and if
Speaker 25: you've read a single headline over the last two months,
Speaker 25: you probably know that we are battling the largest immigration
Speaker 25: enforcement operation in US history. Since early December, Minnesota has
Speaker 25: been occupied by three thousand agents from Immigration and Customs
Speaker 25: Enforcement ICE and Customs and Border Protection who have already abducted, imprisoned,
Speaker 25: and deported at least four thousand people. In the face
Speaker 25: of this devastating federal occupation, people are showing up every
Speaker 25: single day to defend their migrant neighbors in unimaginably beautiful ways.
Speaker 25: And on the other side of this effective resistance is
Speaker 25: expansive legal repression all of the many ways the state
Speaker 25: uses the law and its enforcement mechanisms to crush dissent.
Speaker 25: More than four hundred people have been arrested for protesting
Speaker 25: ICE or following ICE vehicles, with thirty five of them
Speaker 25: now facing federal charges under eighteen USC one eleven assaulting, resisting,
Speaker 25: or impeding a federal officer. I think it's really important
Speaker 25: for those of you outside of Minnesota to know how
Speaker 25: law enforcement and political prosecution are working here because it
Speaker 25: might come to where you live to and it's different
Speaker 25: than other kinds of movement repression I've seen. Instead of
Speaker 25: the agencies that normally police citizen protesters, like local and
Speaker 25: state cops or the FBI, it's primarily ICE and CBP
Speaker 25: who are carrying out arrests, and its Homeland Security investigations
Speaker 25: doing the investigations. It's happening this way because arrests are
Speaker 25: mostly happening when people are responding to ICE activity, and
Speaker 25: so those are the agencies who are present to make arrests.
Speaker 25: This impacts everything from how arrests go down and the
Speaker 25: conditions of incarceration to the kinds of charges that people
Speaker 25: are catching. To understand what all this actually means, you
Speaker 25: need to hear from those who are experiencing it, the
Speaker 25: people who have been detained and prosecuted for protesting ICE.
Speaker 25: So in this episode you'll hear two interviews from Minneapolis
Speaker 25: rapid responders. First, you'll hear from Clem and Ray about
Speaker 25: their experience being arrested out of their car and taken
Speaker 25: into ICE attention. And second, Lucy and Isabelle will talk
Speaker 25: about catching charges and navigating cases during the surge. Stick
Speaker 25: around at the end for a special treat, a poem
Speaker 25: from isabel and a new song out of Minneapolis that
Speaker 25: responds to the surge, and just the heads up before
Speaker 25: we get into it. In this episode, you're going to
Speaker 25: hear people talk about their first hand experiences with police violence.
Speaker 25: So take care of yourself and if you like the episode,
Speaker 25: check out the other episodes of Outlaw wherever you listen
Speaker 25: to podcasts.
Speaker 4: Indigenous, from the North, from the South.
Speaker 5: From everywhere.
Speaker 25: Welcome to Outlaw. You're both here to talk about legal
Speaker 25: oppression of ice Watch in Minneapolis over the past two months.
Speaker 25: Can you both introduce yourselves briefly and your connection to
Speaker 25: the Twin Cities.
Speaker 26: I am ray Is they then pronouns. I'm from here,
Speaker 26: I grip here and have lived most of my life
Speaker 26: in the Twin Cities, and I now live in Potterhorn
Speaker 26: Park that's in South Minneapolis.
Speaker 25: Site of high ice activity, the highest I believe.
Speaker 26: I would think that is true, and quite close to
Speaker 26: the sites of George Floyd as well as Renee Goods murders.
Speaker 6: My name is Clem.
Speaker 27: I've lived in the Cities for like five years maybe now.
Speaker 27: I grew up in the Southwest, and I also live
Speaker 27: on the border of Powder Horn in the Central neighborhood,
Speaker 27: so kind of yeah, halfway between where Renee was shot
Speaker 27: and where George Floyd was killed.
Speaker 25: So you both were arrested while you were doing ice
Speaker 25: Watch in your car. For people who are listening, this
Speaker 25: gets called commuting here. It can look different ways, but
Speaker 25: it often involves a hyper local signal call with a
Speaker 25: dispatcher and commuters to be able to notify and dispatch
Speaker 25: rapid responders. When ICE is around, Commuters track ICE vehicles,
Speaker 25: oftentimes following them around, which ICE doesn't like. So my
Speaker 25: question for you two is what kinds of tactics have
Speaker 25: you witnessed agents used to stop this kind of rapid
Speaker 25: response organizing.
Speaker 27: I feel like they have escalated and it always depends
Speaker 27: on the agent, But there's times where they'll just slow
Speaker 27: roll and drive like a normal person. There's times where
Speaker 27: they'll run red lights, they'll break check you, they'll just
Speaker 27: like go in loops around the city to try and
Speaker 27: lose you. And then depending on however they are, they'll
Speaker 27: try and pull you over and intimidate you, or they'll
Speaker 27: try and lead you to like a police station or
Speaker 27: have a share of pull you over. And they've threatened
Speaker 27: people with like stocking charges and stuff like that. And yeah,
Speaker 27: we personally have been We've had agents come up to
Speaker 27: our windows when we were commuting, the two of us,
Speaker 27: we've had we followed its like all the way to
Speaker 27: northeast and a long time, probably like an hour, and
Speaker 27: then eventually downtown they had sheriffs pull up on us
Speaker 27: and pull us over and tell us to stop following.
Speaker 6: And then we have the other thing that I'm sure
Speaker 6: you won't to talk to us about.
Speaker 26: A lot of what we've been seeing is just this recklessness,
Speaker 26: like speainning through red lights and not signaling, just like
Speaker 26: a lot of like traffic violations, and then once you're
Speaker 26: pulled over, just having your windows smashed it and like
Speaker 26: them using all these intimidation tactics but like not necessarily
Speaker 26: detaining people.
Speaker 27: Yeah, and all of these vehicles don't necessarily look like
Speaker 27: a cop car. It's pretty rare for them to like
Speaker 27: actually turn on their lights and sirens. So when they're
Speaker 27: going through intersections as quote unquote law enforcement, it's pretty
Speaker 27: rare for someone to see them. And there are times
Speaker 27: where we almost witness like t bones of that just
Speaker 27: recklessly running a red light.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 25: There's been a good number of car accidents also involving
Speaker 25: their cars.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, and like not even caused by communing.
Speaker 27: They've just slipped on ice and ran into poles, and
Speaker 27: then they tear gas observers who were hackling them because
Speaker 27: they don't know how to drive in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 25: Let's turn to January seventh, twenty twenty sixth, the same
Speaker 25: day Renee Good was killed by Ice. You both were
Speaker 25: out commuting. Can you tell me about how that day
Speaker 25: started for you?
Speaker 26: It was me picking up Clem and immediately there was
Speaker 26: like a sus car that like zoomed off and then
Speaker 26: Clem checked the plate and it was Ice that we
Speaker 26: think was just waiting outside of the house to intimidate. Unclear,
Speaker 26: but I mean it certainly felt that way. Had anything
Speaker 26: happened like that to you before Clem with them targeting
Speaker 26: the house, wasn't there something that.
Speaker 27: I think at that point because they've used the tactic
Speaker 27: too of like when an observer is tailing them, they'll
Speaker 27: run your license plate and then drive you back to
Speaker 27: your house that the car is registered to as an
Speaker 27: intimidation tactic, and they'll get out and take pictures of
Speaker 27: the house. But I think at that point, me and
Speaker 27: my roommates that hadn't happened yet. But we had spent
Speaker 27: a lot of time at Whipple, like just observing the
Speaker 27: cars going in now the gates and trying to record
Speaker 27: all that data. And when you're there, there's just like
Speaker 27: intimidation vehicles that will just like drive up right next
Speaker 27: to your driver's side window and film you and take pictures.
Speaker 27: So it was certainly in some sort of database at
Speaker 27: that point. But what's whipple Whipple is the federal building
Speaker 27: that is near Fort Snelling State Park, which is by
Speaker 27: the airport, and that's where ICE has been operating out of,
Speaker 27: and it's the command headquarters for like the entire Upper Midwest.
Speaker 27: So wass gone in Minnesota? The Dakota is I think
Speaker 27: Iowa too?
Speaker 25: Okay, So the day starts off, there's an ICE agent
Speaker 25: outside your house and you get in the car to
Speaker 25: start commuting. Tell me about what happens next.
Speaker 6: The abandoned car, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 27: The first thing I responded to is near Little Earth,
Speaker 27: which is like a gated community but for like people
Speaker 27: who were like an urban reservation is what it calls itself.
Speaker 27: And there was a call of ICE at a park
Speaker 27: nearby there, and we showed up and there was just
Speaker 27: an abandoned car. And when I went and talked to
Speaker 27: someone on the street you staying next to it, basically
Speaker 27: explained the situation of ICE rolled up on them and
Speaker 27: they ran on foot and left the car, and they
Speaker 27: basically had to push the car out of the road
Speaker 27: and then they ended up locking it because the person's documents.
Speaker 27: So I was staying with the car and calling TOATRA
Speaker 27: companies that have offered free toes for people who have
Speaker 27: gone inducted. And so we were probably there for like,
Speaker 27: I don't know, more than thirty minutes, and I think
Speaker 27: as that was happening is when Renee was shot.
Speaker 6: So neither of us were like.
Speaker 27: On the call or looking at shots or anything, and
Speaker 27: we like went home for a break, and that's when
Speaker 27: we heard the news of that.
Speaker 26: Yeah, because I lived really close by to there, and
Speaker 26: there was a lot of swirling information, so people saying,
Speaker 26: you know, someone was shot, and then at first people
Speaker 26: being like, come down to this area, and then you know,
Speaker 26: very shortly after people being like it's totally cordoned off,
Speaker 26: don't come down. There's also enough observers and we need
Speaker 26: people to be out there doing this still, because like
Speaker 26: we can't invest all of our resources into this.
Speaker 4: One thing that's happening.
Speaker 26: And probably within the hours when we got the message
Speaker 26: that was saying that there were vehicles staged in a
Speaker 26: parking lot the street, So we drove down there and
Speaker 26: there were already observers, people in cars and on foot,
Speaker 26: probably around thirty people, and it was kind of a
Speaker 26: standoff of these vehicles, probably around five fish vehicles and
Speaker 26: then people blowing whistles, honking horns, and so Clem and
Speaker 26: I were there in the car doing that.
Speaker 25: So you see the news that Renee was killed and
Speaker 25: for doing exactly what you were doing, driving around your
Speaker 25: neighborhood to look out for your neighbors, and you get
Speaker 25: back in.
Speaker 4: The car and you keep going. Yeah, that didn't stop us.
Speaker 26: I mean, if anything, it you know, made us feel
Speaker 26: like we need to be out here because they're not stopping.
Speaker 6: We're not going to stop either.
Speaker 25: So you said, you arrive at the next scene, where
Speaker 25: how are you and what is Ice doing there?
Speaker 27: Yeah, it's the Dollar Tree parking lot, which is like
Speaker 27: on Lake Street and the Uptown area. And yeah, there's
Speaker 27: five vehicles presumably staging because what we've been calling out
Speaker 27: when they're just like parked planning what they're going to
Speaker 27: do next. And there weren't any agents out of car.
Speaker 27: It was just a bunch of cars sitting there that
Speaker 27: we knew were Ice.
Speaker 4: And a bunch of observers were responding.
Speaker 26: Yeah, we were just like in the parking lot. They
Speaker 26: could still have driven around us, like there was room
Speaker 26: on either side of our car that they could have
Speaker 26: driven past us. And then in addition to that, they
Speaker 26: could have driven around like there were just several options
Speaker 26: for them to get around us. At that point, I
Speaker 26: think some agents got out and were like move.
Speaker 6: Your vehicle, move your vehicle, and.
Speaker 26: One of the cars this like huge suv ramm to
Speaker 26: the back of my car to get it out.
Speaker 4: Of the way while you were in it.
Speaker 26: What we were in it, Yeah, And I think at
Speaker 26: that point Clem turned to me and was like, they're
Speaker 26: gonna smash out the windows, and I was like yep.
Speaker 26: And so at that point I think we were both
Speaker 26: prepared for for what was going to happen, I guess though.
Speaker 26: Also I mean once they smashed the back of the car,
Speaker 26: I was thinking like, Okay, they got us.
Speaker 4: Out of the way, like that might be it.
Speaker 26: But then so the cars out of the way, but
Speaker 26: they all got out of their vehicles. They first maced
Speaker 26: the windows so it's like they have a die in it.
Speaker 26: It's like a bright orange and they maced the passenger,
Speaker 26: the driver, and the windshields windows, and then they came
Speaker 26: around on they smashed both both of the passenger and
Speaker 26: driver windows and then sprayed bear mace through Clem side
Speaker 26: into both of our faces right before they smashed the windows.
Speaker 26: We grabbed each other's hands and we just held hands
Speaker 26: as it was happening around us. And then I saw
Speaker 26: that bright orange mace coming from the passenger window, so
Speaker 26: they sprayed it directly in Clem's face, and then they
Speaker 26: reached over and sprayed me, and they were able to
Speaker 26: open up the doors with the windows smashed, and they
Speaker 26: dragged us out and he punched me in the jaw,
Speaker 26: like in the lip really while they cuffed me, and
Speaker 26: they used pain compliance.
Speaker 6: It's like a.
Speaker 12: I mean, it's torture.
Speaker 26: So they've pulled my wrist up or my hand up
Speaker 26: against my arm with the cuffs on, and then pulled
Speaker 26: me or like up against the vehicle where I was
Speaker 26: detained separately from the Clem. You can talk about what
Speaker 26: happened to you at the same time.
Speaker 27: Yeah, So I could feel the door open, and then
Speaker 27: they tried to yank me out and under my seat
Speaker 27: belt and I was holding onto the seat belt and
Speaker 27: eventually they got that undone and I was just like
Speaker 27: trying to hold on to you as tired as I
Speaker 27: could until they were able to break that grasp, and
Speaker 27: then two agents pulled me out and slammed me on
Speaker 27: the floor and got on top of me and put
Speaker 27: me in cuffs, and I'm still just have my eyes
Speaker 27: closed so the mace doesn't get in them. And yeah,
Speaker 27: from there, I fell a few times and kept just
Speaker 27: being dead weight, and they kept trying to take me
Speaker 27: to cars, but they didn't know which car they were
Speaker 27: supposed to go to where they would go to a car,
Speaker 27: and they didn't have the keys for it, so I
Speaker 27: would just like kept getting walked in circles, not seeing
Speaker 27: what was going on, and like hearing the confusion of
Speaker 27: all of them, until eventually I got put in the
Speaker 27: back of a car and you got put into a
Speaker 27: separate car.
Speaker 26: And the way there, I mostly just was focused on
Speaker 26: breathing through the pain on the way to Whipple, and
Speaker 26: like what was so disgusting to me? I mean, it
Speaker 26: was so fresh in our minds that Renee had just
Speaker 26: been killed, right, And I'm hearing them singing on the radio.
Speaker 26: There was one agent who is singing like I got
Speaker 26: a pucket, got a packet for the sunshine or something
Speaker 26: like that, and a lot of laughter. I remember the
Speaker 26: phrases fucking Somali's and later one of them complaining about
Speaker 26: all these fucking whistles, and I remember thinking like, oh, fuck, yeah,
Speaker 26: they're working, and wasn't too long before we arrived in
Speaker 26: the garage. It's just giant garage where they process people
Speaker 26: and there are mostly agents vehicles, and people have been detained,
Speaker 26: like a line of people have been detained.
Speaker 20: Yeah.
Speaker 25: I just want to point a couple of things out
Speaker 25: in what you both have said. That's a little bit
Speaker 25: different than we normally see in protests related legal repression,
Speaker 25: which is one detention of people who are citizen protesters
Speaker 25: or just people arrested for protest activity by ICE, by
Speaker 25: immigration enforcement, or by federal agents in general. That's usually
Speaker 25: something that is done by state or local law enforcement
Speaker 25: cops or sheriffs, and people are taken to the local
Speaker 25: jail for processing. But here what's happening is you're being
Speaker 25: taken to Whipple, which is the ICE detention center where
Speaker 25: all non citizens detained by ICE for immigration reasons are
Speaker 25: also taken and processed. But you're also being brought there,
Speaker 25: so you're getting a window into ICE operations and you're
Speaker 25: taken into a place that people also normally don't have
Speaker 25: access to. It's a pretty high security building that they
Speaker 25: don't like people from the outside inside.
Speaker 4: But there you are in the garage.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 26: So we're on our knees, and at one point I
Speaker 26: commented on how young the people looked that were holding clem,
Speaker 26: and they pulled us apart and they brought me to
Speaker 26: the opposite side of the garage and they're still using
Speaker 26: the pain compliance They're filming me.
Speaker 4: The whole time.
Speaker 26: There was just a bunch of agents that were filming me,
Speaker 26: and like three guys that were like on me, and
Speaker 26: I said to them, I said, make it hurt, daddy,
Speaker 26: and I was being mouthy, and just this one guy
Speaker 26: in particularly seems really freaked out by that, and they
Speaker 26: he pushed me to the ground with my face to
Speaker 26: the floor, and he said, you like the dirt, queer.
Speaker 26: And my reaction for a lot of the time that
Speaker 26: this is happening is I just was laughing and laughing,
Speaker 26: and I said, yeah, I fucking love the dirt, like
Speaker 26: I love the dirt more than anything. And I don't
Speaker 26: know how long I was like that, but they kept
Speaker 26: me on the ground and then eventually brought us in
Speaker 26: to bring us to the cells.
Speaker 27: We walked past like this central command hub with all
Speaker 27: of these people who are working in this so called
Speaker 27: metro Surge operation, and then on the left were cells
Speaker 27: of people who had been detained. I think we passed
Speaker 27: at least five cells from what we could see, and
Speaker 27: they were filled just like wall to wall of black
Speaker 27: and brown people that yeah, I had like one toilet
Speaker 27: in there, so probably at least like two or three
Speaker 27: hundred people in there.
Speaker 26: The desolation sticks with me and they led me to
Speaker 26: a separate cell. Then Clem and this other person that
Speaker 26: we were detained with, and these were seemingly like the
Speaker 26: remaining cells that were available in the in the whole area,
Speaker 26: because I mean it was just full of like they
Speaker 26: were like completely a capacity with a number of people
Speaker 26: they've abducted. Clem and I are were in there for
Speaker 26: hours with mace in our eyes and like.
Speaker 4: No relief from that.
Speaker 26: And I remember just laying on the ground and an
Speaker 26: agent coming in pretty soon after being an asshole, and
Speaker 26: he was like, we've got gourmet potato and chicken and
Speaker 26: Brussels sprouts or something, and he hands me this like
Speaker 26: little plastic container with like this just this white haste
Speaker 26: or like just new you know, just.
Speaker 27: Like a microwave meal of goop, just disgusting goop.
Speaker 26: But we were in there for a while before being
Speaker 26: taken back, and I think they took me back first,
Speaker 26: and I refused to say anything without a lawyer obviously.
Speaker 26: They hand me a piece of paper and after reading
Speaker 26: me or my rights, and they said, actually, we need
Speaker 26: you to read these back to us to confirm that
Speaker 26: you speak English and understand English.
Speaker 6: And I was like, weird, but okay.
Speaker 26: So I start to read it and it's all pretty normal,
Speaker 26: and then I get to a paragraph that says something
Speaker 26: to the effect of like, knowing these rights, I wave
Speaker 26: my rights. So I was being tricked into waving my rights,
Speaker 26: which I thought I was going crazy. I did not
Speaker 26: understand at the time, and I stopped halfway through the
Speaker 26: sentence and I read it over and over, trying to
Speaker 26: make sense of it. And I said to them, I
Speaker 26: was like, I don't understand what I'm being asked to read.
Speaker 26: I'm not going to keep reading this and they were like,
Speaker 26: that's okay, we have what we need and they took
Speaker 26: it back and then I got a phone call Clempton up.
Speaker 27: We got taken into the interrogation room and it was
Speaker 27: like too homeland security, I don't know, like detective or whatever.
Speaker 27: But they like opened it with saying like I know
Speaker 27: this is all like can be a lot right now,
Speaker 27: so feel free to just like let it loose in
Speaker 27: this room.
Speaker 6: And I just like kind of looked at them, like
Speaker 6: what are you talking about?
Speaker 27: Like it's it was jarring to go from dealing with
Speaker 27: a month of seeing only these people in masks and
Speaker 27: just like as this like horrible monstrosity of like a fascist,
Speaker 27: and then being inside of there and like seeing that
Speaker 27: command setter of all those people working on the computers
Speaker 27: like making this whole thing work, and then all these
Speaker 27: detectives who like think they're detached from it and think
Speaker 27: that they're not a part of what's going down on
Speaker 27: the streets right now just because they're working inside the building.
Speaker 27: And yeah, so the same thing happened. They try to
Speaker 27: ask me questions and I said I wouldn't say anything
Speaker 27: without a lawyer president, and I asked for a phone call,
Speaker 27: and they did the same thing with the rights where
Speaker 27: they were going to read them to me, and then
Speaker 27: what the other detectives said, actually, we don't need to
Speaker 27: do that, and so one of them just left for
Speaker 27: a bit, and so I was just like left in
Speaker 27: the room with the like assistant detective and he just
Speaker 27: like asked me some how's your day going question? And
Speaker 27: I just kind of dead stare at him for like
Speaker 27: twenty minutes, which felt pretty good because he was very
Speaker 27: uncomfortable and kept just like avoiding eye contact. And I
Speaker 27: don't know, it's the small amount of power you can
Speaker 27: have when you're in a cage. And I got taken
Speaker 27: back to my room and tried the intercom and stuff
Speaker 27: i could get a phone call, and they said I'll
Speaker 27: get a phone call after booking. So I was pretty
Speaker 27: worried about what was going to happen. Actually they said
Speaker 27: they had lawyer president and yeah, these two real cool
Speaker 27: lores were there that we know and are friends with,
Speaker 27: and they explained that we'd be out pretty shortly.
Speaker 26: And yeah, and then we were able to get out
Speaker 26: and go home. But I feel really haunted by the
Speaker 26: fact that we were in there for maybe a handful
Speaker 26: of hours, and of course there are all these people
Speaker 26: that are stuck there that aren't going to be able
Speaker 26: to go home. The way we did, and then I
Speaker 26: took the most painful shower of my life because the
Speaker 26: water just I did the cold water thing, and my
Speaker 26: lawyer friend had and me about it was like, you know,
Speaker 26: try not to get it in your bits, but I
Speaker 26: totally did and it was excruciating.
Speaker 25: One of the things we talk about on the show
Speaker 25: is how to counteract the chilling effects of oppression and
Speaker 25: just the trauma of a day like this that having
Speaker 25: violent interactions with law enforcement can cause. And I really
Speaker 25: appreciate you both sharing and going back into this experience
Speaker 25: that happened now almost exactly a month ago from when
Speaker 25: we're recording today. I'm curious if you have thoughts on
Speaker 25: what you've learned and moving through this experience, lessons you've
Speaker 25: learned that you'd want others to know about about how
Speaker 25: to move through something like this and keep getting out
Speaker 25: there as I know you both have.
Speaker 27: I don't really know how to move through it, but
Speaker 27: it's yeah, I feel like it still lives in my body,
Speaker 27: and that fear has definitely changed me. But it's been
Speaker 27: nice to have friends and community, and there's been a
Speaker 27: lot of like free sort of like bodywork, and I
Speaker 27: tried acupuncture for the first time, which was really nice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, just having people that have your back.
Speaker 27: And knowing that, like, you're not alone in this, Like
Speaker 27: since we've been arrested, there's been hundreds of people in
Speaker 27: the same exact boat as us, And yeah, it feels
Speaker 27: good to know we're not an outlier.
Speaker 6: Here unapologetically, unapologetically.
Speaker 25: Myself, like most anti ICE protesters arrested here during the surge.
Speaker 25: Clem and Ray were released pending charges, but the legal
Speaker 25: landscape is rapidly shifting. At least thirty out of the
Speaker 25: thirty five federal cases from the past two months, we're
Speaker 25: charged retroactively in the past few weeks. To give you
Speaker 25: a sense of how these cases might unfold and what
Speaker 25: it's like to face these charges. You'll hear from two
Speaker 25: Minneapolis based anti ICE protesters facing criminal charges for responding
Speaker 25: to a raid at Takaia las Cuatros Muthbus that took
Speaker 25: place back on June third, twenty five. Isabel Lopez faces
Speaker 25: federal charges and Lucy faces state charges from that day.
Speaker 25: Their June cases are still open today, and Lucy also
Speaker 25: caught federal charges after responding to an ICE raid that
Speaker 25: took place during Operation Metro surch.
Speaker 24: We shouldn't be so concerned with everything.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Isabel and Lucy.
Speaker 25: We're going to talk today about legal oppression you both
Speaker 25: are experiencing for protesting ice in Minneapolis. But before we
Speaker 25: even start that conversation, can you both introduce yourselves, your
Speaker 25: connection to the Twin Cities and share a little bit
Speaker 25: about who you are side of the topic of today's conversation.
Speaker 25: Isabella can start with you.
Speaker 12: Je. Hi'm my name is Celle La.
Speaker 28: I'm a community I don't know, organizer, helper, and I'm
Speaker 28: also spoken word poet. I've been writing and doing performances
Speaker 28: here in the Twin Cities for like since like twenty twenty,
Speaker 28: but the old George Ford thing. Yeah, and I've also
Speaker 28: done other organizing when it comes to the climate justice
Speaker 28: movement and also indigenous rights.
Speaker 12: I have supple Tech Benzara Asis and like that's just
Speaker 12: important for me.
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 12: But I was born in Chicago, race here in the
Speaker 12: Twin Cities.
Speaker 16: Hi, Lucy, I've been in Minneapolis since I don't know,
Speaker 16: the early twenty tens, but I lived in Minnesota forever.
Speaker 16: I mean, I've been in and out, but I feed people.
Speaker 16: I'm allowed bitch, I'll make noises, I make songs, make
Speaker 16: good trouble.
Speaker 25: Okay, So you were both arrested and charged after a
Speaker 25: multi agency raid that took place back on June third,
Speaker 25: twenty twenty five at Las Quatro Milpas, a Mexican tacorea
Speaker 25: in South Minneapolis. Officials still say that it was not
Speaker 25: an ICE raid and that they were executing a warrant
Speaker 25: for drug trafficking, but ICE agents were confirmed on site
Speaker 25: alongside ten other federal agencies and local cops, and the
Speaker 25: owner of the tacorea ended up in ICED attention. The
Speaker 25: raid and response went pretty viral. The operation was heavily militarized,
Speaker 25: and hundreds of neighbors turned out in protest. Lisa, you
Speaker 25: were charged with three counts of obstructing, impeding, or assaulting
Speaker 25: a federal officer and a fourth count of impeding a
Speaker 25: federal investigation. And Lucy you're facing state level charges from
Speaker 25: that day and federal assault charges. I'd love to hear
Speaker 25: from you both a little bit about your experiences getting arrested,
Speaker 25: catching charges. What do you want people to know about
Speaker 25: what that experience was like.
Speaker 28: Yeah, so I wasn't arrested until like three or four
Speaker 28: days later, because it happened on June third, and then
Speaker 28: I was rested on June ninth.
Speaker 12: It felt very planned and just like a Poppet show.
Speaker 6: I remember.
Speaker 28: I think it was the day after two senators from
Speaker 28: the House here in Minnesota were shot. And Georgia Ford,
Speaker 28: you know, was a really close community friend of mine.
Speaker 28: We're both from the East Side, and she called me
Speaker 28: to do an interview. I was kind of unsure about it, but.
Speaker 12: She just assured me that she just wanted to hear
Speaker 12: my story.
Speaker 28: And yeah, I didn't really think much of it, and
Speaker 28: so then I went I did the interview.
Speaker 12: I was still very shaken up about what happened that day.
Speaker 12: By around like four, I think or Thic three.
Speaker 28: I was coming out, and by that time in downtown
Speaker 28: there's a lot of things going on in Saint Paul.
Speaker 12: It's kind of a dead city by that time.
Speaker 28: And so as I was coming out, that's when and
Speaker 28: for officers came from behind me and arrested me and
Speaker 28: pushed me to the ground, and my shoulder hit the
Speaker 28: concrete and I started bleeding, and they took me in
Speaker 28: a black STUV and they waited there for a second,
Speaker 28: and you know, just when Georgia came out and saw
Speaker 28: everything that was happening and started recording, and you know,
Speaker 28: from there, let the community knew about what happened. And
Speaker 28: so after that, that's when I kind of started realizing
Speaker 28: what this administration is trying to do. And it felt
Speaker 28: very orchestrated. It felt very calculated. Even after, especially after
Speaker 28: there's a lot of news about my arrest and adding.
Speaker 12: My face to this whole drug rade and my case
Speaker 12: to it.
Speaker 28: So yeah, I know other people were arrested, but my
Speaker 28: arrest felt very like intentional and calculated and kind of
Speaker 28: this is an abuse of power, and this isn't okay,
Speaker 28: Like I don't care who you are, I don't care
Speaker 28: how you see things, Like I'm like barely not even
Speaker 28: five to three, five to two, and you know, these
Speaker 28: men that were huge felt the need to tackle me.
Speaker 28: This is all allegedly right, But at the same time,
Speaker 28: I think that I want people to understand that they
Speaker 28: can make their own calls and own judgment, and how
Speaker 28: like this justice system isn't that.
Speaker 4: Right now at all.
Speaker 12: It's repression.
Speaker 25: Am I also remembering correctly that I maybe had seen
Speaker 25: you post a video on Instagram about that raid because
Speaker 25: I feel like, in my impression, had also felt like
Speaker 25: maybe retaliation for you speaking out. Yeah, definitely, your case
Speaker 25: feels important for people to know about. Especially in the
Speaker 25: past two weeks here in Minneapolis, twenty eight people have
Speaker 25: been charged with assault on a federal officer and are
Speaker 25: facing federal charges. Now there was a handful before that,
Speaker 25: but we've just seen it massive spike of people who
Speaker 25: were charged after being released pending charges.
Speaker 4: So your case does feel like this test case.
Speaker 25: That's being looked to is how are they going to
Speaker 25: handle this and what's going to happen. So I appreciate
Speaker 25: you talking about it. I would love to turn to you,
Speaker 25: Lucy and hear a little bit about what you're facing
Speaker 25: and what your experience has been.
Speaker 16: Like I think they charged me with assault and then
Speaker 16: they downgraded it to like less degree assault because it
Speaker 16: was ridiculous. Well yeah, I like they had like six
Speaker 16: cops tackle me, and my shoulder's never been the same.
Speaker 16: But that was that was in June, and then in
Speaker 16: another instance, I also have charges for assaulting a federal officer.
Speaker 16: Seems like they just charge everyone, you know, and like
Speaker 16: all of these legal observers are also getting docked by
Speaker 16: the age. They're trying to raise the stakes of resisting
Speaker 16: the administration as much as possible because it is a
Speaker 16: popular movement. It's like generally popular to hate ice, but
Speaker 16: they're trying to make it as expensive and as irrevocably
Speaker 16: life destroying for US citizens as it is for people
Speaker 16: who aren't US citizens.
Speaker 25: I think it's super important to highlight the ways in
Speaker 25: which these targeted political prosecutions are being used to raise
Speaker 25: the stakes of showing up to defend your community from abduction,
Speaker 25: from death, from surveillance and intimidation and fascist violence.
Speaker 12: Do you know who else was arrested that day?
Speaker 5: There was two people arrested on June third.
Speaker 16: They were both arrested in the same interaction with a
Speaker 16: police officer. A young woman was standing in front of
Speaker 16: a police vehicle and an officer approached her like super rapidly,
Speaker 16: and then someone approached that officer, and from the video,
Speaker 16: it seems like that person ripped off a thin blue
Speaker 16: line lapel velcro from the officer, and then that officer
Speaker 16: proceeded to assault that person, and then that person was
Speaker 16: accused of assault, and then my federal charges. The government
Speaker 16: has motioned to dismiss them, but we are motioning to
Speaker 16: dismiss them with prejudice. And during that interaction, I can't
Speaker 16: really speak to what happened between me and federal officers,
Speaker 16: but a pregnant woman was assaulted by federal officers. People
Speaker 16: were tased, people were hit with batons, and that woman
Speaker 16: had like a ICE agent on top of her for
Speaker 16: like I don't know a half hour. People said that
Speaker 16: she miscarried, she was pregnant. Everyone was saying she was pregnant.
Speaker 16: She was dragged by one arm between the legs of
Speaker 16: the ICE officer. They said that she spray painted a
Speaker 16: car and that was the reason for the arrest. They
Speaker 16: also said that there was no proof of that either.
Speaker 25: And that incident, which was one of the first immigration
Speaker 25: operations in the surge or one of the earlier ones
Speaker 25: that went pretty viral. There was a lot of coverage.
Speaker 25: It was a huge raid, big community turn out. It
Speaker 25: was also like ICE was on the wrong block and
Speaker 25: they were in a Somali neighborhood and people were mad
Speaker 25: and people were showing up and not letting them get
Speaker 25: away with it. Also, I think there was a lot
Speaker 25: of response. My understanding was to ICE having their knee
Speaker 25: on this pregnant person's back for such a long period
Speaker 25: of time from what I've seen in the complaint for
Speaker 25: that day for your case, which is a public record,
Speaker 25: and I not asking you to speak to whether or
Speaker 25: not it's true or anything about it, but part of
Speaker 25: what you're being charged with is I believe de arresting
Speaker 25: that person, the pregnant person, while they were dragging her,
Speaker 25: and as result you got assault on the federal officer charges.
Speaker 25: So just some context for people listening for the case
Speaker 25: as we're following it. Those are the public allegations that
Speaker 25: the government has made. But it was one of the
Speaker 25: earliest federal cases during the surge and one of the
Speaker 25: earlier assault cases of this kind. So interesting to hear
Speaker 25: that it looks like it's headed for a dismissal and
Speaker 25: exciting for you, but that is the case, Isabelle. There's
Speaker 25: been community mobilization to support you starting back in June.
Speaker 25: Could you speak to what's been effective about that and
Speaker 25: what you've learned fighting these charges related to this political prosecution.
Speaker 12: I mean, the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 28: I think that there's just been so much repression when
Speaker 28: it comes to just you know, the Brown community. We've
Speaker 28: lost mcgous and Dad, which is a really dope place
Speaker 28: on Lake Street, right across the street from Happened from Less.
Speaker 28: You know, it's like raising fun so they don't close,
Speaker 28: and you know, I think I think that starts reviewing
Speaker 28: really stuff for Latino businesses around businesses. They've lost like
Speaker 28: forty six million dollars this past month. So what I'm
Speaker 28: trying to say with that is that my community is
Speaker 28: very much on the scarcity, you know, like it's almost like.
Speaker 12: We're being dragged to the point. And so when my community.
Speaker 28: Showed up for me that day, like it just showed
Speaker 28: for me like how resilient we are and how much
Speaker 28: like it's scary, but we can't keep having other people
Speaker 28: in our communities disappear, you know, people that we can't afford.
Speaker 28: And for my case, because I'm a US citizen, I
Speaker 28: feel very like responsible and very like wanting to like
Speaker 28: being present in community because I think that's really what
Speaker 28: I can do. I can't really like do a lot
Speaker 28: because of the fear that like if I come into
Speaker 28: certain spaces, am I being launched?
Speaker 12: You know, And they've have shown.
Speaker 28: Like hinting having an eye on me basically throughout this
Speaker 28: but like you know, being present with community and being
Speaker 28: there when you know we're organizing, and knowing you know,
Speaker 28: your rights and things like that. I think has helped
Speaker 28: a lot of people in my community to one be
Speaker 28: a lot more careful, but to know that like what
Speaker 28: we're going up against and how it's a way of
Speaker 28: survival to keep going and like you know, to have
Speaker 28: our right speed to at least grow during these times.
Speaker 28: And we've had like observer trainings, We've had a lot
Speaker 28: of low key, smaller trainings.
Speaker 12: We're not like trying to tell too many people about.
Speaker 28: It for the same reason, and for my case in particular,
Speaker 28: it's been really hard just because like a lot of
Speaker 28: people are scared, and a lot of people are very
Speaker 28: intimidating to speak out and you know, advocate for what's
Speaker 28: been going on in my case, because you know, they
Speaker 28: want us to keep having this scarcity mentality and you know,
Speaker 28: being afraid of like what's to happen, what's to come.
Speaker 28: So for me, it's just been really important for me
Speaker 28: to be with community, to be with people, and like
Speaker 28: to share my story in the small ways that I can.
Speaker 28: And you know, we've been doing phone baking campaigns and
Speaker 28: also just writing in letters. They have a radar on
Speaker 28: me for sure and know like or where I'm at,
Speaker 28: where I stand. But I also know that I have
Speaker 28: a really big community behind me, and I know it's
Speaker 28: not just about me. It's about the fact that it's
Speaker 28: bigger about what could happen to somebody else in our community.
Speaker 28: And it's been hard, but I think it's it's you know,
Speaker 28: it's important for us to know that, like, you know,
Speaker 28: we can keep pushing and like be together in community
Speaker 28: despite all this, and so, yeah, it has been kind
Speaker 28: of hard, especially with the searge. It got even more messy,
Speaker 28: you know, just with a lot of people trying their
Speaker 28: buzz to keep their head above the water and helping
Speaker 28: the families that they can, because a lot of families
Speaker 28: haven't been able to leave their house.
Speaker 25: When you say we've and hosting trainings, are you referring
Speaker 25: to your support committee. You've been doing like events that
Speaker 25: are joint raising awareness about your case and also helping
Speaker 25: community get trained up.
Speaker 4: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think I mean it's one and the same.
Speaker 28: I feel like the people that I'm working with, they
Speaker 28: work and do a lot of grassroot things in the
Speaker 28: community and so I know, me just showing up to
Speaker 28: those trainings and just talking about my case like that,
Speaker 28: that helps a lot. So it's like that, and we've
Speaker 28: done a couple events here and there where we talk
Speaker 28: about immigration. We did one in June or no in July,
Speaker 28: i think.
Speaker 12: And like we still have said to do.
Speaker 28: More things with community to just know that, like you know,
Speaker 28: we're all we're all here in it.
Speaker 12: But it has been very interverackering.
Speaker 28: It's been really hard just because like I don't I
Speaker 28: don't know who's watching, I don't know who's in the room,
Speaker 28: I don't know who I can trust.
Speaker 12: But I know I'm not alone. So that's that's the
Speaker 12: best part about it.
Speaker 25: So, yeah, there's so much intentional isolation of people facing charges.
Speaker 25: That's so much of how repression works is to isolate people,
Speaker 25: make them scared to go be in community and do
Speaker 25: important work. So thanks for continuing to show up. It's
Speaker 25: cool to hear you speak to both like navigating the
Speaker 25: fear and continuing to show up where you can. Yeah,
Speaker 25: I'd love to hear you both speak a little bit more.
Speaker 25: I know you just spoke about this a little bit, Isabelle,
Speaker 25: But what it's been like navigating these cases amidst the
Speaker 25: past couple months of the surge here in the Twin Cities,
Speaker 25: it's a pretty unique moment to also have these pretty
Speaker 25: high stakes cases going on, Lucy, if you want to start,
Speaker 25: it just sucks.
Speaker 16: I mean, there's lots of ways of doing things, but like,
Speaker 16: I don't want to be afraid that I need to
Speaker 16: call my pre trial release person every time a cop
Speaker 16: talks to me, Like I don't know, Like I not
Speaker 16: that I interact with cops all the time, but I'm
Speaker 16: in Minneapolis and like keep talking to the probation guy
Speaker 16: about this. I'm like, you know, if a cop drives
Speaker 16: by me, is that a police interaction? If I'm on
Speaker 16: the street and the fucking fedser in in the street
Speaker 16: in front of my house, is that a police interaction?
Speaker 16: Like it just makes you so stressed out, Like Renee
Speaker 16: Good was shot in front of me, and it's like
Speaker 16: like normally I'm not the kind of person that runs
Speaker 16: away from a situation like that. I'm like would go
Speaker 16: towards where what happened to like make sure people are okay,
Speaker 16: or like see if there's anything I can do. And
Speaker 16: in that situation, I was like what if I just
Speaker 16: am gonna go to jail like for trying to like
Speaker 16: do something. So it's just like it's just contrary to
Speaker 16: my instincts that if I see someone getting brutalized in
Speaker 16: the street or they're like they say, you can go
Speaker 16: to a protest, but that's just what repression is. You know,
Speaker 16: they come into your house and they look in every
Speaker 16: single room. You know that they say that you need
Speaker 16: to go and do drug tests and that you can't
Speaker 16: have a firearm, and they wanted me to have twenty
Speaker 16: four to seven monitoring. I don't know if you had
Speaker 16: that kind of shit, but it's just like this shit's insane,
Speaker 16: like and it's over fucking nothing. And so that's why,
Speaker 16: like I see people on the internet being like, oh,
Speaker 16: but like all those charges get dropped or whatever. I
Speaker 16: was like, then fuck you, like you never dealt with this,
Speaker 16: Like doesn't matter if the charges get dropped. I'm gonna
Speaker 16: try and apply to fucking Target to be a cashier
Speaker 16: and then they're gonna be like, actually, you have an
Speaker 16: active case. I tried to work at a theater and
Speaker 16: they were like, can you come explain what happened here?
Speaker 16: Doesn't matter if you end up going to jail. Yeah,
Speaker 16: going to jail sucks, but repression is like it's the
Speaker 16: thing in and of itself.
Speaker 5: The cruelty is the point.
Speaker 25: I want to hear from you too. Issavell, I just
Speaker 25: want to say for people listening that what Lucy's talking
Speaker 25: about are release conditions. So when the cases initiated against you,
Speaker 25: the government could argue that you should be held in
Speaker 25: detention while the case is ongoing, or they could ask
Speaker 25: for cons of release. And those are conditions that are
Speaker 25: enforced by a pre trial probation officer, like person who
Speaker 25: might come to visit your house or you have to
Speaker 25: call when you have cop interactions, or who facilitates drug testing,
Speaker 25: depending on what your conditions are. So just some background
Speaker 25: on that for anyone who's unfamiliar.
Speaker 28: Yeah, I think Lucy kind of said it best. Was
Speaker 28: like crely questioning your instincts. You're questioning like what can
Speaker 28: you do? And I've tried my best to be as
Speaker 28: creative as i can with it, but yeah, it's so
Speaker 28: hard to I'm finding myself having to mobilize in a
Speaker 28: different way and like show up the community.
Speaker 12: So I've kind of pivoted to art.
Speaker 28: Yeah, doing things when it comes to like screenprinting and
Speaker 28: just again showing up a community and just try to
Speaker 28: play face or be face, like be real, you know,
Speaker 28: be with community. But yeah, it has been hard because again,
Speaker 28: you never really know what you can and cannot say.
Speaker 28: Like the other day, I had a really good friend
Speaker 28: they admitted a graphic for me talking about explaining my
Speaker 28: case and things like that. You know, I can't really
Speaker 28: post too much about my case people start tagging me
Speaker 28: in it. I tried resharing one of it. I only
Speaker 28: shared like one of reshared one of the tags, and
Speaker 28: then I tried resharing another tag that kind of explained
Speaker 28: what to do to help with my case, and like Instagram,
Speaker 28: don't let me post it. You know, these are this
Speaker 28: is like minor shit, like this isn't like that big
Speaker 28: of a deal. But it's also just like okay, like yeah,
Speaker 28: they want to make sure that you're not being seen
Speaker 28: or heard. And I'm pretty fortunate to have like a
Speaker 28: job where like they're paying me to do community work
Speaker 28: and they have known me, so like I'm I feel
Speaker 28: really lucky. At the same time, it's also just been
Speaker 28: really hard because, like you know, some people are more
Speaker 28: reluctant to have me in the room when it comes
Speaker 28: to like organizing, are doing certain things because of that,
Speaker 28: because like you know, of where my case stands, and
Speaker 28: some people have like you know, actually kind of walked
Speaker 28: away from being my friend because you know that they
Speaker 28: were also there that day on June third, and just
Speaker 28: also kind of being afraid about what would happen to them.
Speaker 28: But on the other side of that, you know, there's
Speaker 28: also been friends that are like I'm gonna be here,
Speaker 28: I'm down, like, don't don't like know you where you know,
Speaker 28: which has been great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, don't ditch your friends.
Speaker 16: Like I had, like my roommate being like I'm gonna
Speaker 16: i gotta leave, like I'm gonna dip, and people being
Speaker 16: weird to you, and it's just like, I don't know,
Speaker 16: maybe you just should just be better about your like
Speaker 16: security in general.
Speaker 5: Because like sooner or later, we're all going to have charges.
Speaker 16: I don't know, maybe it's not going to be that bad,
Speaker 16: but we're all domestic terrorists in Minnesota now, Uh fuck?
Speaker 16: I mean as as per ice, you know, making list
Speaker 16: and I don't know, they can't tell everybody.
Speaker 12: It's just been really hard navigating I get.
Speaker 28: I guess, like the sense of morality that comes with it,
Speaker 28: because it's like for me and I feel like you know,
Speaker 28: Lucy can relate to this, is that like you act
Speaker 28: on the things that you believe in, you act on
Speaker 28: the things that you know is worth participating. And now
Speaker 28: this administration is you know, gaslight. I don't even think
Speaker 28: gasline is a right word. I think it's just like
Speaker 28: imposing a lie of just like what is right and
Speaker 28: what is wrong and seeing everybody also just being very
Speaker 28: gas lit and having you know, the news, having a
Speaker 28: certain narrative of like what is right, what is wrong,
Speaker 28: what has been said, what has not been said, what
Speaker 28: really happened, what didn't happen, And also just arresting independent journalists.
Speaker 28: I think just goes to show how much constitution has
Speaker 28: not been constituted.
Speaker 12: Like the human rights that we believed and we thought
Speaker 12: that we have are no more. So it's like what
Speaker 12: goals and what doesn't go you know?
Speaker 28: And I think that for me, the only real hope
Speaker 28: I have is like community and like creativity, because it's
Speaker 28: like people have shown up for me, because I've been
Speaker 28: showing up since like twenty twenty. So it's like how
Speaker 28: can we inspire a sense of like a sense of
Speaker 28: hope and spirit to keep going. How can we keep
Speaker 28: have people know that there is there is hope at
Speaker 28: the end, that you know, there can be another side
Speaker 28: that right now what we're seeing is just another world unfolding.
Speaker 28: And the only way that we can really understand that
Speaker 28: new world is when we understand the truth.
Speaker 12: That we've been walking on. And so my friends have
Speaker 12: been so good to me, and some of them have been.
Speaker 28: You know, they've made like graphics and really cool like
Speaker 28: shirts with my face on it just a way to like,
Speaker 28: you know, welcome me home and things like that, and
Speaker 28: creating different images of like what this new world can be.
Speaker 28: And you know, one thing that I did with some
Speaker 28: of the NDI and collective, we made this really dope
Speaker 28: graphic that says Motherland on it and it's all the
Speaker 28: Americas having roots from the global South, you know, and
Speaker 28: being supple thick like has been really like so key
Speaker 28: for me to know that like I have every right
Speaker 28: to be here, that like a lot of the legitimacy
Speaker 28: that is constituted quote unquote for me, that doesn't come
Speaker 28: from for me, that's not my truth.
Speaker 12: Of like why I move and why I believe to do.
Speaker 4: Is right to me.
Speaker 28: I do what is right because of the history that
Speaker 28: I come from, because of like you know, who my
Speaker 28: dad is, and like the people that I know that
Speaker 28: I come from. You know, I'm not like native to
Speaker 28: the northern plains, but I do have friends that are,
Speaker 28: and I do respect and love them so much. Where
Speaker 28: I want to see the traditions be fully and thrived.
Speaker 28: And I know that my power and my liberty is
Speaker 28: tied with theirs. And I know that we like have
Speaker 28: every right to be here from the people that are
Speaker 28: from the global South as well, because of the fact
Speaker 28: that we haven't been able to like fully thrive in
Speaker 28: the motherland. We haven't been fully thrived in all the Americas.
Speaker 28: And you know, a lot of people don't want to immigrate.
Speaker 28: A lot of people don't want to migrate. They don't
Speaker 28: want to leave their motherland. But I know that we
Speaker 28: have built homes here, we have built communities here, and
Speaker 28: I think.
Speaker 4: That for me, that that's the other side of.
Speaker 28: It, is that we can we can thrive, and that
Speaker 28: we can be in this place together, that we have
Speaker 28: every right to, like in this constant last night together,
Speaker 28: we are America.
Speaker 25: So yeah, I also just want to ask what support
Speaker 25: asks you have for listeners, either for your defense campaigns
Speaker 25: or for anti ice organizing more broadly.
Speaker 28: Yeah, for me, we're having people call in to Daniel
Speaker 28: Rose to draw the charges and to send in letters.
Speaker 28: That's our community ask. And also to donate to the gulfunding. Yeah,
Speaker 28: I'm finding myself needing more support when it comes to
Speaker 28: just people on the side and just yeah, getting people
Speaker 28: also sustained through the movement as well through that, So yeah,
Speaker 28: don'tate to my hofund me And also if they.
Speaker 12: Can, it's inn ano letter call in and yeah.
Speaker 16: I'll just say, yeah, talk to everyone. You can, talk
Speaker 16: to your neighbors, talk to your relatives. It should be
Speaker 16: impossible for them to convict anything in Minnesota because no
Speaker 16: jury is sympathetic with these people. And the only way
Speaker 16: that happens is if there's a broad understanding of the
Speaker 16: violence that is being perpetuated in our communities in a
Speaker 16: broad support of those that are resisting it.
Speaker 25: Well, I know you both have shared the importance of
Speaker 25: creative work for you, Isabelle, do you have a poem
Speaker 25: you'd like to read or anything you want to share?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I can read a poem real quick.
Speaker 28: Since I can't really speak much about what happened that
Speaker 28: day I wrote this. When I walked outside, I saw
Speaker 28: staring back at me, cold presence stirring an earthquake in
Speaker 28: my body. Do I freeze or do I run? I
Speaker 28: ask myself? Did my parents have the time to ask
Speaker 28: themselves this when they left the Motherland? If I run,
Speaker 28: I might slip into its breue arms and be caught
Speaker 28: by its cages. If I freeze, will it drown out
Speaker 28: all the warmth of my family?
Speaker 12: Let inside of me?
Speaker 28: Will the couffing freeze the southern sun and my blood
Speaker 28: veins just to be as numb as them?
Speaker 12: The cold thrives in control. The order of ignorance can
Speaker 12: thrive an unconscious and vulnerable pride. I never thought their.
Speaker 28: Hands could be as brown as mine, as young as mine,
Speaker 28: as desperate for safety. That it folds into another version
Speaker 28: of insanity. The wrong ice is melting, and the warmth
Speaker 28: of brown and black bodies are freezing.
Speaker 4: Can I walk back.
Speaker 12: Into the pattern of survival? My lineage taught me to
Speaker 12: flourish instead of freezing in the numbing of society.
Speaker 4: Wow, thank you? Does that have a name?
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's ice or ice freeze something like that.
Speaker 4: Still am.
Speaker 27: Unapologetically, unapologetically myself.
Speaker 25: We recorded this episode in the first half of February
Speaker 25: in twenty twenty six. It's March now, so here's a
Speaker 25: couple updates. Since recording, eight of the federal defendants have
Speaker 25: had their charges dismissed and many have been offered misdemeanor deals.
Speaker 25: We also now know that there are over one hundred
Speaker 25: protesters facing state level charges, mostly misdemeanors. The aftermath of
Speaker 25: repression in the form of criminal cases from this time
Speaker 25: will likely continue for years, if not decades to come.
Speaker 25: And another update, thousands of agents have left the Twin Cities.
Speaker 25: I get to see my neighbors out of their houses
Speaker 25: a little more often now, but daily life is still
Speaker 25: colored by ongoing abductions, disappeared family members, and shock waves
Speaker 25: of state violence that have hit our migrant neighbors. I
Speaker 25: know I said it in the beginning, but just to
Speaker 25: say it to close. As much as there is devastating
Speaker 25: violence and terror happening here, there is incredibly magnificent resistance
Speaker 25: and community connection happening every single day. Neighbors are showing
Speaker 25: up and stopping abductions, They're watching people get killed in
Speaker 25: the street for doing it, and they're showing up the
Speaker 25: next day to continue. There's a kind of fearlessness and
Speaker 25: a kind of love that is in this community that
Speaker 25: I've never seen anywhere else. So as much as things
Speaker 25: are horrible, things are also beautiful. And I want you
Speaker 25: to know that. The theme music you heard in this
Speaker 25: episode was the song Star by twofa one, a Dakota
Speaker 25: and bariqua artist based out of Minneapolis.
Speaker 4: Check out their other.
Speaker 20: Music from the South from Everywhere.
Speaker 25: If you like this episode, check out the show Outlaw
Speaker 25: wherever you get your podcasts, throw us a rate review,
Speaker 25: and follow Outlaw pod on Instagram and Blue Sky. To
Speaker 25: close the episode, here's a song written in Minneapolis during
Speaker 25: the surge. I think it captures some feeling of being here.
Speaker 19: Never broad someone back from the dead. Justice never broad
Speaker 19: someone back from the dead. Justice never broad someone back
Speaker 19: from the dead, just as never brid someone.
Speaker 4: Back from the dad.
Speaker 20: Just that, never.
Speaker 2: Broad someone back from the dead.
Speaker 4: Way are you telling me, wait.
Speaker 2: Like someone wealth be saved?
Speaker 20: Are you telling me?
Speaker 4: Are you telling me that justice were.
Speaker 19: Somehow saved, never gonna get back their days?
Speaker 4: Welcome to It could Happen, a podcast about tariffs and
Speaker 4: how to justify them. I am your host, Mio Wong,
Speaker 4: and today we are talking about tariffs, the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: ruling and how Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify
Speaker 4: the next set of tariffs that he has imposed. Oh boy,
Speaker 4: So all right to recap our last tariff segment, so
Speaker 4: people understand what I'm talking about when I talk about
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court ruling from a few weeks ago. So,
Speaker 4: Trump had been claiming the ability to do tariffs under
Speaker 4: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, an act that famously
Speaker 4: never says the word tariff, and the Supreme Court was like, no, actually,
Speaker 4: that the International Economic Powers Act does not give you
Speaker 4: the power to levy tariffs, a thing that it does
Speaker 4: not say that you can do. So Trump got extremely
Speaker 4: mad about this, and he imposed a ten percent tariff
Speaker 4: across the board using a different law, as he said
Speaker 4: he was going to do. Now, this ten percent across
Speaker 4: the board tariff was run through section one twenty two
Speaker 4: of the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four. We're going
Speaker 4: to get into that, okay. So he imposes a ten
Speaker 4: percent tariff using this like different authority from section one
Speaker 4: twenty two, and the next day he goes, I'm going
Speaker 4: to raise the tariff right to fifteen percents, and this
Speaker 4: is the teriff rate on the entire world. But then
Speaker 4: he just forgot to do it because he got distracted by,
Speaker 4: i think, invading Iran. So he has never actually, you know,
Speaker 4: raised the tariff rate to fifteen percent, which he said
Speaker 4: that he had done. So it's now just at ten
Speaker 4: percent on the entire world instead of you know, all
Speaker 4: of the sort of individual country terifts that have been
Speaker 4: in place before. And that's sort of the focus of
Speaker 4: today's episode is about these tariffs, because these tariffs are
Speaker 4: already being challenged in court, and I think that that
Speaker 4: challenge has a very very good chance of winning fairly easily.
Speaker 4: And the reason that those tariffs have a very good
Speaker 4: chance of being overturned by the courts is that unlike
Speaker 4: the IEPA tarriffs that he was using, where he was
Speaker 4: claiming illegally the authority to just do whatever he wanted.
Speaker 4: This is why you would wake up in the morning
Speaker 4: and there's like one hundred percent teriff on China, like
Speaker 4: seven hundred percent tariff of Vietnam. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Trump was claiming that that Act let him do whatever
Speaker 4: he wanted. It did not. Court found that he did not.
Speaker 4: But that was how he was using tariffs, and it
Speaker 4: was the basis of how he was using terrors for diplomacy, right.
Speaker 4: You know, he would put a tariff on someone at random,
Speaker 4: claiming this power, and then he would like enter negotiations
Speaker 4: with them. And he can't do that anymore. Now what
Speaker 4: he's done in its place is again imposed this terriff's
Speaker 4: using section one twenty two of the Trade Act. Now
Speaker 4: this authority is very, very different than the authority Trump
Speaker 4: was claiming before. I'm just going to read it because
Speaker 4: it mostly explains itself. Do not worry about the international
Speaker 4: payment problems or balance payments deficit that it mentions at
Speaker 4: the beginning. We're going to go over that in a second.
Speaker 4: What's important for our purposes here is that in order
Speaker 4: to put tariffs into effect, quote, whenever fundamental international payment
Speaker 4: problems require special import measures to restrict imports one to
Speaker 4: deal with large and serious United States balance of payments deficits,
Speaker 4: two to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the
Speaker 4: dollar in foreign exchange markets, or three to cooperate with
Speaker 4: other countries in correcting an international balance of payments disequilibrium.
Speaker 4: The President shall proclaim for a period not exceeding one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty days, unless such a period is extended
Speaker 4: by a Nact of Congress, a temporary surch charge not
Speaker 4: to exceed fifteen percent out of lorum in the form
Speaker 4: of duties in addition to those already opposed if any
Speaker 4: article is imported into the US. Okay, so let's look
Speaker 4: at the limits first, right. Instead of any rate of
Speaker 4: tariff on any country, which is what Trump had been doing,
Speaker 4: Section one twenty two only lets you set an up
Speaker 4: to fifteen percent tariff on every country in the world
Speaker 4: and only lasts for one hundred and fifty days unless
Speaker 4: Congress votes to approve it. This sets up a giant
Speaker 4: fight in Congress that Trump is not going to win. Now.
Speaker 4: We may never get to that point because the same
Speaker 4: right wing legal group who funded the lawsuit that overturned
Speaker 4: the IEPA stuff is going after Section one twenty two
Speaker 4: and they're going to win now. They're going to win
Speaker 4: because Section one twenty two has literally never been implemented before.
Speaker 4: The tariffs specifically never been implemented. There is a reason
Speaker 4: for that, and the reason is that to even deploy
Speaker 4: Section one twenty two tariffs in the first place, you
Speaker 4: need quote fundamental international payment problems. One to deal with
Speaker 4: large and serious United States balance of payments deficits to
Speaker 4: the print dollar depreciation, and cooperation with other countries to
Speaker 4: correct international ballots of payments disequilibrium. So those are very
Speaker 4: specific conditions. What does that mean? What does it mean
Speaker 4: for there to be a problem with balance of payments?
Speaker 4: This requires us to understand what the fuck balance of
Speaker 4: payments is. And it is here where I am fulfilling
Speaker 4: my promise from that Executive Disorder episode where I said
Speaker 4: I will explain it in the full episode. All right,
Speaker 4: we're doing it, and oh fucking boy, are you in
Speaker 4: for it, because Jesus Christ, oh my god, holy shit,
Speaker 4: this stuff is annoyingly convoluted. But it is also extremely
Speaker 4: important to how the global economy functions, how it's changed,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's not really relevant for the US
Speaker 4: at all, for reasons we will get into, but it
Speaker 4: is extremely relevant for the economies of a bunch of
Speaker 4: developing countries. So, okay, let's start off with balance of payments.
Speaker 4: So what is the balance of payments? I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: start off by quoting the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Balance
Speaker 4: of payments. Quote is a summary of all the transactions
Speaker 4: involving goods, services, and investments between one country and all
Speaker 4: other countries over a given time. Any transaction that causes
Speaker 4: money to flow into a country is a credit to
Speaker 4: balance payment accounts, and any transaction that flows out is
Speaker 4: a debt. So this is a record of literally every
Speaker 4: purchase in capital movement that goes in and out of
Speaker 4: a country. Right, So it's goods services, debt payments, and
Speaker 4: things can either be credits or debts. This is the
Speaker 4: FED explains. You know things that are debts, right, Things
Speaker 4: that like make your account go lower is you know,
Speaker 4: debt payments, capital transfer payments, like buying imports. If you
Speaker 4: were importing stuff from China, that is a debt. And
Speaker 4: then there are things that are credits to make account
Speaker 4: go up. So that's other countries paying for exports, capital
Speaker 4: transfer receipts, and you know financial assets and that's other
Speaker 4: countries paying for your exports. So this is tracked in
Speaker 4: like two accounts. There's a capital and finances account. I'm
Speaker 4: just gonna call it the capital account because that's the
Speaker 4: most common name for it, and it's shorter. So there's
Speaker 4: the capital account that is all movement of capital in
Speaker 4: and out of the country, and then there's a current account,
Speaker 4: which is like a trade record of all goods and services.
Speaker 4: Technically there's also stuff from like interest from an investment
Speaker 4: goes there, but we don't really care about that for
Speaker 4: our purposes. The current account is the account that's like trade,
Speaker 4: and then there's a capital account, which is the account
Speaker 4: that's all of the capital moving in and out. Now, importantly,
Speaker 4: these two accounts, right, these two accounts compose balance of trade. Right,
Speaker 4: this record has two accounts in it. Those are the
Speaker 4: two accounts. If you line up all the credits and
Speaker 4: debits and then they cancel out and equal zero. The
Speaker 4: value of all goods being imported or exported, as as
Speaker 4: services and stuff like that too, is the same as
Speaker 4: the amount of capital moving in and out of the country.
Speaker 4: The two accounts will cancel out. And this is what's
Speaker 4: really confusing about balance of payments, because why the fuck
Speaker 4: is that true? Right? Why are the capital flows and
Speaker 4: trade balance Why can't you have an imbalance? And the
Speaker 4: answer is that's how the accounting system works. And the
Speaker 4: reason the accounting system like that is because of what
Speaker 4: balance of payments is now. Weirdly, if you want a
Speaker 4: more detailed explanation, there are a billion detailed explanations that
Speaker 4: are extremely convoluted and annoying. The Reserve Bank of Australia
Speaker 4: weirdly has like a readable one for people who aren't
Speaker 4: like engrossed and financial stuff. However, come up, I'm going
Speaker 4: to try to explain it. So, balance of payments is
Speaker 4: the record of everything that moves in and out of
Speaker 4: a country, you know, So that's goods, that services, that's money,
Speaker 4: it's stocked. When I say it tracks everything, right, was
Speaker 4: a record of everything? That means it's recording both sides
Speaker 4: of a transaction. So what does that mean? Okay, imagine
Speaker 4: a receipt, right, it's a receipt for a burger. You
Speaker 4: have bought one hamburger. On the receipt is the thing
Speaker 4: you bought, the burger and how much it cost, which
Speaker 4: is the money you pay for it. Balance of payments
Speaker 4: tracks both the burger and the money you paid for it.
Speaker 4: Because it tracked international trade, right, it's tracking international movement
Speaker 4: of stuff, and because both the burger and the money
Speaker 4: changed hands across borders. Right, it tracks both of them.
Speaker 4: And that is why when you put all the credits
Speaker 4: and debts from both accounts together, it adds to zero, right,
Speaker 4: because you know, think about like the net transfer of
Speaker 4: funds on that burger. Right, on the one hand, there
Speaker 4: is the burger, and on the other hand there is
Speaker 4: you know, how much money you paid for the burger,
Speaker 4: and those two things are equivalent. Right. The value of
Speaker 4: the burger is how much it's worth, So okay, that
Speaker 4: means that in the accounting of it, right, the account
Speaker 4: on the receipt, which shows both of these things is
Speaker 4: balanced because it's tracking both of them, right. And this
Speaker 4: is the same way it works for an investment. You
Speaker 4: buy shares of a company, So okay, there's the money
Speaker 4: for the shares and the shares themselves, and they're both
Speaker 4: being tracked and they both go into the record that
Speaker 4: balance of payments keeps. So there are some convoluted things
Speaker 4: about this, and this is the reason why you need
Speaker 4: to combine both accounts instead of each account being balanced
Speaker 4: by themselves, because sometimes the record of the burger goes
Speaker 4: in one account and the record of the money for
Speaker 4: that burger goes at a different account This is convoluted.
Speaker 4: It's because of how income is classified. It's a mess.
Speaker 4: You can go read the Berserve Bank of Australia. But
Speaker 4: that's why you need both accounts together to get the
Speaker 4: balance of payments, right, because both the burger and the
Speaker 4: money for the burger are in the balance of payments somewhere,
Speaker 4: but they might go in different accounts, so you need
Speaker 4: to put them together. And that's how you get the
Speaker 4: balance of payments. And see that's why it's called the
Speaker 4: balance of payments, right, they balance out. See now you're
Speaker 4: getting it. Now you're getting it. This is why it
Speaker 4: always bounces out to zero because it's the balance of
Speaker 4: both the money and the object. Right. So sharp eared
Speaker 4: listeners may be going, wait, hold on. So Section one
Speaker 4: twenty two, which is where the tarifts are from, is
Speaker 4: about a deficit in the balance of payments. How can
Speaker 4: you have a deficit if it always balances out to zero?
Speaker 4: And the answer is, technically speaking, you can't. So Okay,
Speaker 4: what the fuck is going on here? Why is Trump
Speaker 4: using and Trump stifically is claiming that there's a balance
Speaker 4: of payments deficit and there's a crisis in order to
Speaker 4: impose these tariffs. So what is going on here? Why
Speaker 4: does this law exist? You will find out after these
Speaker 4: ads whoa cliffhanger? A. So to explain what is going
Speaker 4: on here, we need to take a detour back in
Speaker 4: time to when this was written. This Act was written
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy four, but we need to go back
Speaker 4: a little further to nineteen seventy one. Now, in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy one, Richard Nixon makes probably the most consequential in
Speaker 4: a macro sense, change to how currency functions on a
Speaker 4: global scale in probably half a millennia when he pulled
Speaker 4: US off the gold standard. So what does this mean?
Speaker 4: It means that Nixon ended what was called dollar convertibility,
Speaker 4: or the ability to go to the government and trade
Speaker 4: your dollar for a certain amount of gold. So this
Speaker 4: fixes the value of the dollar to the value of gold.
Speaker 4: So the value of your currency is sort of relatively
Speaker 4: constant in that like it's this much gold, right, But
Speaker 4: it means that your macroeconomic policy is constrained by your
Speaker 4: gold supply. So why did Nixon take the US off
Speaker 4: the gold standard? And what does SAVA do with balance
Speaker 4: of payments? Surprisingly everything? So, okay, what I've been describing
Speaker 4: about balance of payments. I've been describing modern balance of payments.
Speaker 4: If you go back and read stuff from the FED
Speaker 4: from this era, when they talk about balance of payments
Speaker 4: or talking about flows of gold. In this period, every
Speaker 4: dollar that leaves the country represents an amount of gold,
Speaker 4: and the more of it that leaves the country, the
Speaker 4: more sure that puts on the US gold reserves, because
Speaker 4: you know, there's less and less of it. This is
Speaker 4: what they're talking about when they talk about balance of payments.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 4: What's what's interesting here, and this is something that's important
Speaker 4: for our modern purposes, is that the problem that the
Speaker 4: US was facing in the fifties and sixties that causes
Speaker 4: Nixon to do this when they're talking about having balance
Speaker 4: of payments deficits, which they are in this period, right.
Speaker 4: And this is why this law is written, is because
Speaker 4: this is a period where this stuff is talked about.
Speaker 4: The problem isn't a trade deficit, right, And this is
Speaker 4: very important. Trade deficits and balance of payments deficits not
Speaker 4: the same thing at all. In fact, in this whole
Speaker 4: period when the US is running these massive balanced payments
Speaker 4: deficits to become a problem, they have a trade surplus. Right,
Speaker 4: they have a trade surplus. So like, okay, how are
Speaker 4: they like losing gold then, right, like, how are dollars
Speaker 4: flowing out of the country. Well, it turns out that
Speaker 4: what's actually making this a balance of account deficit, where
Speaker 4: like dollars are leaving the economy, which means gold leaving
Speaker 4: the US's vaults, is that the US is spending too
Speaker 4: much of its military. It's always speaking military spending. It
Speaker 4: is always fucking military spending. Holy shit, It's the reason
Speaker 4: everything is broken. It's it's literally just always military spending.
Speaker 4: We're spending too much gold on the damn military. Right.
Speaker 4: So the deficit and you were you're talking about a
Speaker 4: bounce payments deficit. The actual deficit is that in order
Speaker 4: to pay for wars and to do military bases, they
Speaker 4: are spending money in other countries. And this is technically
Speaker 4: like part of the bounce of payments, right, because it's
Speaker 4: money leaving the country. And you know, like technically speaking,
Speaker 4: the balance of payments as we've been talking about it, right,
Speaker 4: like the account is balanced, but we keep spending dollars
Speaker 4: in order to obtain military bases and then also in
Speaker 4: order to bomb Korea and Vietnam, and the dollars have
Speaker 4: to come from somewhere. Now, again, the dollar at this
Speaker 4: point is gold. It represents a fixed amount of gold
Speaker 4: that the US has, and those dollars are coming from
Speaker 4: the US government, so that that's what the actual quote
Speaker 4: unquote deficit is in this case. Right, you will see
Speaker 4: this described as like, oh my god, they're paying for
Speaker 4: stuff from the current account for the capitol count.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: No, no, technically yes, but like, like, what's actually happening
Speaker 4: here is that the US, Right, it's gold leaving the
Speaker 4: country because the US is having to buy shit for
Speaker 4: a military basis, right, and it's not getting enough gold
Speaker 4: back from trade to replenish the amount of gold that
Speaker 4: the US is spending on these military bases. Now, in theory,
Speaker 4: this is fine because it's technically speaking, you're spending dollars,
Speaker 4: and as long as no one tries to actually convert
Speaker 4: those dollars into gold, you'll be okay. Enter one Charles
Speaker 4: de Gaulle, president of France, who begins to unmasks convert
Speaker 4: American dollars into gold in order to end the dollar's
Speaker 4: reign as the world reserve currency. Because it was pissed
Speaker 4: off at the US running the world. This is not
Speaker 4: like Charles de Gaull, anti imperialist. De Gaull does not
Speaker 4: want like the end of imperialism. Degaull wants there to
Speaker 4: be equal footing, or more equal footing between the different
Speaker 4: impure powers. Right. He just wants France to be like
Speaker 4: a major world power, imperialist power as well. Right. The
Speaker 4: power the US gets from being the world reserve currency
Speaker 4: is extremely important. So what is the reserve currency? The
Speaker 4: reserve currency is the currency that, like all global trade
Speaker 4: is done in. And because it's the currency that all
Speaker 4: global trade is done in, all of the world's central
Speaker 4: banks have to hold like a bunch of that currency, right,
Speaker 4: And that that's why it's called the reserve currency. But
Speaker 4: I say all of the world central banks have to
Speaker 4: hold it except for the United States, which does not
Speaker 4: have to hold dollars because it's our fucking currency and
Speaker 4: if we want more, we can just print more. Right.
Speaker 4: So this is time they called like seniorage privilege. But
Speaker 4: like that, the power of this right is enormous, and
Speaker 4: the dollar status is the reserve currency is actually really
Speaker 4: important to us in terms of explaining these sort of
Speaker 4: balance of payments deficits and crises. So, okay, here's a
Speaker 4: Saint Louis fed on why countries have to hold wood
Speaker 4: reserve currencies.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 4: Governments and or es. Central banks keep you know, like
Speaker 4: reserve currency on hand for several reasons, including exchange management,
Speaker 4: insurance against sudden loss of ability to pay for imports
Speaker 4: caused by a halt capital inflows such as foreign direct
Speaker 4: investment to the domestic market, foreign purchases of domestic stocks
Speaker 4: or balls, or domestic borrowing from the rest of the world.
Speaker 4: Insurance for other economic contingencies such as wars or natural disasters. Now,
Speaker 4: the second one is what's of concern to us, right,
Speaker 4: it's insurance against sudden loss of ability to pay for imports.
Speaker 4: And that's what's commonly known as a balance of payments
Speaker 4: crisis in the current day, when you run out of
Speaker 4: dollars to pay for your imports or to pay for
Speaker 4: your foreign debt, which is a real issue too, right,
Speaker 4: Usually your money goes to the foreign debt and then
Speaker 4: you're out of currency and then you can't you know,
Speaker 4: like import more shit. This is a balance of payments crisis,
Speaker 4: and they're actually pretty common or decently common in a
Speaker 4: bunch of developing countries, and they are almost always completely catastrophic.
Speaker 4: It's one of the foremost causes of modern revolutions because
Speaker 4: when you have one of these balance of payments crises,
Speaker 4: you can't afford to fucking import things because you don't
Speaker 4: have enough dollars. You can't import oil or you know,
Speaker 4: fertilizer or food because you don't have enough dollars to
Speaker 4: do it, and your government has gone through all of
Speaker 4: the dollar reserves. As I talked about in the ED,
Speaker 4: Sri Lanka is probably the most recent example that the
Speaker 4: country you know, just ran out of dollars to purchase
Speaker 4: shit with, and the ensuing unbelievably hideous shit that everyone
Speaker 4: had to suffer through cause people to burn down the
Speaker 4: president's fucking mansion. You will know, and I said, this
Speaker 4: is before you will know if the US has a
Speaker 4: bounance of payments crisis, because you will see the smoke
Speaker 4: and flames outside of your window, and it's such. It's
Speaker 4: like Sri Lanka, right like the revolution in Sudan. Like
Speaker 4: the reason that there's a civil war in Sudan right
Speaker 4: now to some extent is because of one of these
Speaker 4: crises that set off a revolution. Even though you know
Speaker 4: What usually happens in these cases, right, is that a
Speaker 4: country has one of these crises, and that someone, usually
Speaker 4: the International Monetary Fund, will give them a loan, and
Speaker 4: so they will give them dollars in exchange for you know,
Speaker 4: like turning the entire economy of that country into a
Speaker 4: debt servicing machine, which means, you know, like taking food
Speaker 4: out of the mouths of babies to pay that debt back.
Speaker 4: And this also often causes revolutions, right, Like, so, like
Speaker 4: Sudan had a balance of payments crisis and in like
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, late twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, and they eventually
Speaker 4: got an IMF bailout deal, but like the price of
Speaker 4: bread increased by two hundred fifty percent and people drove
Speaker 4: omer al Basher out of power. However, come U, you
Speaker 4: will note that I have been saying that these crises
Speaker 4: are caused because countries run out of dollars. But we
Speaker 4: can't run out of dollars because those are United States dollars.
Speaker 4: We can just fucking print them. We literally cannot have
Speaker 4: this kind of bounce of payments crisis because it's all
Speaker 4: our own money, and we can just print shit in
Speaker 4: our own money. Jesus Christ, this is so silly, losing
Speaker 4: my mind, Like it's not possible, you can't do it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. Now, however, why is the law like this, right, Like,
Speaker 4: why is there a law written talking about the US
Speaker 4: as if it could have a bowets of payments deficit? Again, Like,
Speaker 4: right up until nineteen seventy one, when Nixon took the
Speaker 4: US off the gold standard, it actually was possible to,
Speaker 4: you know, make the US run out of dollars because
Speaker 4: you could run out of gold. And this is what
Speaker 4: like the goal was trying to do, you know, by
Speaker 4: like making the US convert all his dollars into gold.
Speaker 4: But Nixon just said, fuck it. The dollars of floating
Speaker 4: currency now, and since its value isn't pegged to a
Speaker 4: certain amount of anything else, right, And that's the way
Speaker 4: it's been ever since, we can't have these crises. Now.
Speaker 4: The countries that have these crises in modern day are
Speaker 4: ones that peg their currency to like a specific amount
Speaker 4: of dollars, right, And they tend to run out of
Speaker 4: the reserves trying to like stabilize the value of their
Speaker 4: currency by offering conversions of their currency into the dollar
Speaker 4: at the official rate, by like letting people go convert
Speaker 4: their currency as of dollars. But again, we can't have
Speaker 4: that because it's dollars. We owe shit in dollars. And also,
Speaker 4: in order to have like a full on balance payments
Speaker 4: crisis where you can't pay for things right, it requires
Speaker 4: no one to be like willing to lend you money.
Speaker 4: And it's like, okay, like who is not going to
Speaker 4: lend the United States of America money? Like are you
Speaker 4: kidding me? This is this is the fagas crisis of
Speaker 4: all time. This bill, however, was passed again in like
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy four, and it was only three years after
Speaker 4: the US was off the gold standard, and so people
Speaker 4: were like, Okay, we're going to do this thing in
Speaker 4: case we ever go back to a situation where this
Speaker 4: stuff is possible. But right now, like we literally structurally
Speaker 4: cannot have a balance of payments crisis, Like we can't
Speaker 4: have one. You can't have a balance of payments deficits.
Speaker 4: This is not the same as a trade deficit. Trump
Speaker 4: is trying to argue that's, oh, we have a trade deficit.
Speaker 4: Our current's account, which is like the trade account is
Speaker 4: like four percent below balance. But then if you look
Speaker 4: at the capital account and you put them together a
Speaker 4: balances because that's just how it works. Oh, that means
Speaker 4: we're in trouble and nonsense, absolutely bullshit. He's also claiming
Speaker 4: that there's like fundamental international payment problems, which I know
Speaker 4: there aren't, because fundamental international payment problems means you can't
Speaker 4: pay for your imports or like your debt, and if
Speaker 4: we weren't able to do that, you would all know. So, ah,
Speaker 4: they're going to lose this lawsuit because this is the
Speaker 4: fakest crisis that has ever existed. And now you know
Speaker 4: how fake it is, and also what balance of payments
Speaker 4: is you know? Okay, I'm going to close on a
Speaker 4: story about this, which is that there is a scenario
Speaker 4: in which this knowledge has actually saved countries before, and specifically,
Speaker 4: like the country that this saved was Cuba. There's like
Speaker 4: the Cuban Revolution, right, and immediately after the Cuban Revolution,
Speaker 4: the government it's not like at their communists. Yet there's
Speaker 4: this very very short window where it's like not quite
Speaker 4: entirely clear what the fuck is going to be going
Speaker 4: on with this new like Cuban government, and the government
Speaker 4: sends chay Guevara to the US to negotiate with a
Speaker 4: bunch of American banks, right, and che Guevara actually understands
Speaker 4: this stuff, right, he knows a balance of payments is,
Speaker 4: he knows he's able to like talk to all of
Speaker 4: the sort of Manhattan bankers who are talking about this
Speaker 4: stuff on their terms, right, and like they literally literally
Speaker 4: the line they say about it was like, yeah, he
Speaker 4: talks like a banker, right, he understands bounce of payments,
Speaker 4: He understands all of this stuff and what he's able
Speaker 4: to do. And this is critically like why the nation
Speaker 4: of Cuba, like like why the Cuban Revolution succeeded was
Speaker 4: that he was able to get the US to give
Speaker 4: him all of his gold. But because he was able
Speaker 4: to convince these bankers, because he understood what they were
Speaker 4: talking about in their language, and these able convinced the
Speaker 4: US governments to get him all this fucking gold because
Speaker 4: he understood how the shit works. And that's why Cuba
Speaker 4: was like functional as a country after that, because they
Speaker 4: had managed to get all of their gold reserves, which
Speaker 4: previously had been being held in the US. So you know,
Speaker 4: you never know when you too might be at the
Speaker 4: head of a better revolution or you might be the
Speaker 4: one person in the new Revolutionary Coalition who understands what
Speaker 4: balance of payments is and you too, can get your
Speaker 4: gold out of the United States before the government realizes
Speaker 4: that you're communists and like would have like locked it
Speaker 4: down and frozen it and taken the gold. So this
Speaker 4: is what it could happen here, the podcast that helps
Speaker 4: you take your country's gold reserves like che guevara, Oh.
Speaker 3: Boy, this is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our
Speaker 3: weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House. They're
Speaker 3: crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison
Speaker 3: Davis today and joined by James Stout Robert Evans, with
Speaker 3: a segment later on by Mia Wong. This episode, we
Speaker 3: are covering the week of March fourth to March eleventh.
Speaker 3: Some small news items here at the top. Ahead of
Speaker 3: National Espresso Martini Day this Sunday, Buffalo Wild Wings is
Speaker 3: releasing a wing flavored espresso Proteiny cocktail made with muscle
Speaker 3: milk protein powder infused with the Buffalo Dry rub, which
Speaker 3: also coats the rim of the glass.
Speaker 2: I gotta say when we stationed a reporter permanently at
Speaker 2: Buffalo Wild Wings headquarters. A lot of people said why
Speaker 2: not somewhere in one of the many war zones in
Speaker 2: the world. You know, why not in Washington, DC in
Speaker 2: the press corps. And I shouted that person down until
Speaker 2: they cried. And today today I've been proven right.
Speaker 3: We will be doing a detailed report on the espresso
Speaker 3: proteiny next week, anxiously awaiting the release of it this weekend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not touching that shit. Yes, I am excited
Speaker 2: that they have finally decided to put muscle milk powder
Speaker 2: in an espresso martini.
Speaker 15: It's one of the fouls. Every word in this sentence
Speaker 15: gets worse. The dry rub, I think, is much more dangerous.
Speaker 2: Frankly, it's the dry raum muscle milk combo. You're gonna
Speaker 2: be sneezing as you drink it. It's imagine if someone
Speaker 2: had just come out with spicy packs of muscle milk,
Speaker 2: like pre mixed muscle milk that.
Speaker 15: Was on spice. I'd be shocked, and that didn't already exist.
Speaker 15: To be honest, I mean it, it'll kill you, It'll
Speaker 15: kill your toilet.
Speaker 2: What is beautiful to me though, and what I should not?
Speaker 2: This goes back to our sponsor's buffalo wild wings caring
Speaker 2: very deeply about human beings. Muscle milk is in the
Speaker 2: bottom third of protein powders when it comes to lead exposure.
Speaker 2: Now that's still more lead than you're supposed to have
Speaker 2: the bottom third.
Speaker 4: It's one of the better ones.
Speaker 2: It's one of the better ones.
Speaker 3: Few other small news items. Erica Kirk has been appointed
Speaker 3: to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Aerica air Force makes sense.
Speaker 4: Charlie Kirk also is heard on this board.
Speaker 3: And Ben Shapiro's eyebrows are not actually that big. Those
Speaker 3: videos are manipulated media.
Speaker 2: I saw those and I knew they were fake and
Speaker 2: chose not to prove to myself that they were fake
Speaker 2: because I needed something that day. But I guess I'm
Speaker 2: okay today.
Speaker 15: I haven't seen these. Oh wow, I'm just seeing these
Speaker 15: for the first time.
Speaker 27: Wow.
Speaker 15: It's like a caterpillar has crawled up there.
Speaker 2: The beauty of how the meme worked is that I
Speaker 2: saw it for the first time right after waking up,
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, that's got to be fake.
Speaker 2: And then I saw five more pictures of different pictures
Speaker 2: with the eyebrows, and so I got this beautiful moment
Speaker 2: and it was it wasn't more than about a minute,
Speaker 2: but this moment of magic, like when you're a child
Speaker 2: on Christmas morning, like this might be real. Maybe this
Speaker 2: is real.
Speaker 3: It's one of the more useful uses for ai jen
Speaker 3: a altered videos.
Speaker 2: It's turned me around.
Speaker 3: You could apply like the you know, these these very
Speaker 3: subtle changes to a lot of different videos fairly quickly.
Speaker 3: So it's not just one you know, photoshopped or like
Speaker 3: you know, visual effects video, but there's like five, you know,
Speaker 3: handheld cell phone videos that look pretty genuine and if
Speaker 3: you just make enough of them, you're like, oh this this,
Speaker 3: this seems this seems real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, Garrison, you're bringing up the part
Speaker 2: of this that actually is evidence of a danger. But
Speaker 2: let's all just enjoy this for just a second more. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're done.
Speaker 15: Hundreds of people have returned to a free after having
Speaker 15: been removed nine years ago, in some cases by Turkey
Speaker 15: proxy forces and s and a many of them will
Speaker 15: have returned to find their orchids and their homes destroyed,
Speaker 15: but at least now they can begin to rebuild.
Speaker 2: For an idea of how important a fhrene was like
Speaker 2: one of the most common nom du gueers that I
Speaker 2: came across when talking to YEPG and WYITEPG fighters was
Speaker 2: have Al Lafreen, Like it's a name that you pick
Speaker 2: because you're not going to use your real name as
Speaker 2: a revolutionary fighter. And a lot of people, some of
Speaker 2: them came from a friend, some of them was just
Speaker 2: a symbol of you know what the Curds had lost
Speaker 2: due to Turkish military aggression. Yeah, but this is a
Speaker 2: very big deal for them.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it's like, I know I've been critical of STG,
Speaker 15: but like I'm glad to see this happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Also in Syria, Sipan Himo has been appointed as a
Speaker 15: Deputy Minister of Defense for Eastern Syria, which would be
Speaker 15: I guess the way they're dividing up now would be
Speaker 15: the area which include Syrian Kurdistan.
Speaker 2: And we just.
Speaker 15: Learned today very sadly that Salam Muslim, who's one of
Speaker 15: the co chairs of the PYD, the Democratic Union Party,
Speaker 15: has passed away, which is yeah, pretty sad.
Speaker 2: Rest in peace.
Speaker 3: Last week, the Department of Justice finally released some of
Speaker 3: the missing files related to four interviews between nineteen with
Speaker 3: a protected source who claimed that Epstein introduced her to
Speaker 3: Trump in the eighties when she was between the ages
Speaker 3: of thirteen and fifteen, and that Trump has actually abused her.
Speaker 3: The released documents r FBI memos summarizing three interviews and
Speaker 3: a crisis intake form. Yeah, this victim received a financial
Speaker 3: settlement from the FSCNA state in twenty twenty one. An
Speaker 3: NPR found that there are still thirty seven missing pages
Speaker 3: related to these interviews.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also worth noting that the FBI is currently
Speaker 2: looking into Zoro Ranch. What was lunch Zoro Ranch in
Speaker 2: New Mexico. This was Jeffrey Epstein's New Mexico property, and
Speaker 2: it's where he talked a lot about when he would
Speaker 2: talk about his plans to like breed a bunch of
Speaker 2: children and stuff with his DNA or whatever he like.
Speaker 2: Zoro Ranch was the epicenter of this, and it's become
Speaker 2: clear in the documents release that in terms of the
Speaker 2: amount of trafficking and the amount of abuse of trafficked
Speaker 2: children that was done there at least equal to his island. Now,
Speaker 2: this ranch goes under a new name and it's owned
Speaker 2: by a new person, and we'll talk about who exactly
Speaker 2: that is in a second. But there were several attempts
Speaker 2: by local law enforcement to investigate the ranch, particularly to
Speaker 2: dig for human remains, but those were kind of stymied
Speaker 2: by ongoing FBI investigations that seem very shady in retrospect,
Speaker 2: given how long they waited to look for bodies on
Speaker 2: the ranch. But they're doing that now. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they're going to find anything. A lot of the
Speaker 2: talk about bodies is in like individual anonymous reports that said,
Speaker 2: I'm glad they're looking. They should be looking at this ranch.
Speaker 2: And now I can give the promised punchline, which is
Speaker 2: that the current guy who owns Jeffrey Epstein's ranch is
Speaker 2: Don Hauffines, who's running for state comptroller in Texas and
Speaker 2: who used to run one of the big dealerships in
Speaker 2: my childhood. Huffines has it in this case, Huffins might
Speaker 2: have evidence that Jeffrey Epstein murdered people. Great is that
Speaker 2: is bleak.
Speaker 15: Let's start with Christy no As we reported last week,
Speaker 15: it looks like Christi Nome's time at the Department of
Speaker 15: Homeland Security is about to come to an end. Did
Speaker 15: seem that at the time that Trump announced this via
Speaker 15: truth Noome was unaware of her removal and at this
Speaker 15: footage of her speaking at an event as people become
Speaker 15: aware that she's lost her job. But shortly afterwards, she
Speaker 15: posted on x dot com the Everything website, thank you
Speaker 15: at potus for appointing me as a special envoy for
Speaker 15: Shield of the Americas. When you see this Shield of
Speaker 15: the America's this is not Christian. When you see the
Speaker 15: Shield of America's website, you will fucking be laughing. Then
Speaker 15: at SEC Rubio and a SEC War are incredible leaders
Speaker 15: and I look forward to working with them closely to
Speaker 15: dismantle cartels poured drugs into our nation and killed our
Speaker 15: children and grandchildren.
Speaker 2: That There's a lot more in this tweet. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: appreciate how Trump congratulated on being an excellent Secretary of
Speaker 2: in quotation Mark's homeland. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was great.
Speaker 15: There has been some speculation about known being fired because
Speaker 15: of vehicles that she purchased for DHS. I've linked to
Speaker 15: a bunch of those contracts. I found the contracts that
Speaker 15: money is relatively trivial when you look at the massive
Speaker 15: budget that they have, and I'm really not sure that
Speaker 15: this was a reason, and I've seen no evidence to
Speaker 15: suggest that it was. What I have seen is that
Speaker 15: Gnome is going to be replaced by Mark Wayne Mullen.
Speaker 15: Mullen is a bombastic MAGA supporter. He's probably best known
Speaker 15: with trying to start a fight in Congress with Sean
Speaker 15: O'Brien and generally being an extremely loyal support of Trump
Speaker 15: in all cases, apart from January sixth, where for a
Speaker 15: while he supported prosecutions. Now he's much more like equivocating
Speaker 15: on that. He also at one point attempted to set
Speaker 15: up his own evacuation of US citizens from Afghanistan during
Speaker 15: the Biden deministration. He is an enrolled citizen the Cherokee Nation, which,
Speaker 15: as I commented before, has been the source of far
Speaker 15: too many democratic critiques which are really kind of disgusting
Speaker 15: and bigoted.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 15: God, there are so many things to be upset about
Speaker 15: Quae Munnin about, and being Cherokee is not one of them.
Speaker 15: And like policing how you think indigenous people should look
Speaker 15: or suggesting that like, yeah, he doesn't fit your trope
Speaker 15: of indigenous people is in itself bigoted and offensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a general rule, if you're like finding reasons
Speaker 2: or reading someone else who's finding reasons to say this
Speaker 2: person who has lived their entire life as a member
Speaker 2: of this tribe, isn't really that you're basing it on
Speaker 2: some form of racist US government logic from one decade
Speaker 2: or another, because it's changed over time, as opposed to
Speaker 2: how the tribe actually considers membership. Right, which, yeah, is it?
Speaker 2: I guess what should matter most. I don't. I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have an opinion on it either way.
Speaker 15: But it's not what you claim, it's who claims you away.
Speaker 15: I've had it right right exactly. It's like the way family.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I shouldn't say anymore because it's not
Speaker 2: my fucking place.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I wish other people would adopt the same science.
Speaker 15: Mullin is a really big border hawk. He's been incredibly
Speaker 15: combative in Congress. I don't think that this will make
Speaker 15: DHS any less aggressive or violent. Clearly, Gnomes Tenure had
Speaker 15: become unpopular right in the same way that Baveno had
Speaker 15: become unpopular. But I don't think this signals a dramatic
Speaker 15: change in DHS leadership or you know, towards respecting people's
Speaker 15: basic dignity and rights. Now, I want to talk a
Speaker 15: little bit about the Shield of the Americas. The program
Speaker 15: was announced last weekend at Trump's golf resort in southern Florida.
Speaker 15: It currently has a web page with it a really
Speaker 15: incredible placeholder graphic. Maybe I should just share this. If
Speaker 15: you go to Shield of the America's.
Speaker 3: Dot site, I was wondering if that was a real website.
Speaker 3: I think it is, like, do we know that that's
Speaker 3: actually what they.
Speaker 15: So I'm a little unsure because I couldn't find like
Speaker 15: a government contract for like the website hosting right that.
Speaker 15: I don't think I've ever found a government contract to
Speaker 15: the website hosting. So it's a placeholder. And then it
Speaker 15: has videos. If you click access content, it appears to
Speaker 15: be essentially like a drop box huh for videos of
Speaker 15: the Shield of the America's event. Yeah, it seems to
Speaker 15: be real.
Speaker 3: It does seem to be based on the inclusion of
Speaker 3: these videos. But the main page with the with the
Speaker 3: little shit.
Speaker 15: That's definitely their logo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like it's from two thousand and five
Speaker 3: in the most enduring way possible.
Speaker 15: You know, someone booted up Microsoft paint and went to
Speaker 15: town on this.
Speaker 2: Someone had graphic design as a passion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks kind of Gi Joe ask, it looks
Speaker 3: kind of like American Ninja Warrior ass Yeah. Like it's
Speaker 3: it's a very specific, like an era of of design choices.
Speaker 15: Here this shield graphic, it's fascinating much to discuss anyway,
Speaker 15: Moving past a graphic currently, the agreement. The Shield of
Speaker 15: America's agreement was signed by representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Costanica, Ecuador,
Speaker 15: El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, of Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago,
Speaker 15: and the United States. Evidently, for those keeping track of
Speaker 15: countries in the Americas, it's leaves Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela,
Speaker 15: along with other Caribbean island nations. There was also a
Speaker 15: representative from Chile's president elect, who obviously couldn't sign because
Speaker 15: they don't have the authority to do so. Yet, what
Speaker 15: it seems to be is an extension of what we've
Speaker 15: seen already right of the quote unquote Donroe doctrine.
Speaker 2: Can we just call it the Trump doctrine? Why do
Speaker 2: we gotta do this?
Speaker 3: I think the don Road auction actually is the correct
Speaker 3: way to refer to it, as.
Speaker 15: I just Trump himself has used it and it annoys me. Unfortunately,
Speaker 15: so annoys me. Yeah, me both, buddy.
Speaker 2: I know it's what he calls it, but it annoys me.
Speaker 2: It's extremely unfortunate.
Speaker 3: But it also links it to an actual lineage of
Speaker 3: US foreign policy behavior.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 15: The Trump corollary to the Monroe doctrine would perhaps have
Speaker 15: been a more conventional way.
Speaker 2: That would be the dignified way to refer to it.
Speaker 2: That would be the way like a historian would hope
Speaker 2: to refer to it.
Speaker 15: The Unfortunately, dignity is not a thing that it's abounding.
Speaker 2: At this time. No, it's not.
Speaker 3: It's not first as tragedy, second as first yeah, and
Speaker 3: then it's really big fast.
Speaker 15: I guess the best way to explain Short of America
Speaker 15: is is to explain the conference it was hosted the
Speaker 15: day before at Trump's golf resort, which was the Department
Speaker 15: of Defense, sometimes referred to as the Department of War.
Speaker 3: But not when they're talking about military action in Iran,
Speaker 3: in which it's the Department of Defense again.
Speaker 15: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, because that's not a war. The
Speaker 15: DD hosted the America's Countercutel Conference. The correct a brief
Speaker 15: and according to the Secretary of Defense is AC three.
Speaker 15: Just so you know, and I think it's best to
Speaker 15: explain this with the strikes that were carried out just
Speaker 15: a few days before this, right on the third of
Speaker 15: Marty in the six so much southcomb so that that
Speaker 15: would be the US Regional Command, which encompasses South America
Speaker 15: and Central America, announced it quote launched operations against quote
Speaker 15: designated terrorist organizations in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: We saw videos of.
Speaker 15: Like these very small, very isolated jungle outposts being struck,
Speaker 15: and then we saw videos of helicopters deploying troops who
Speaker 15: did not appear to be United States troops. It's uncle
Speaker 15: exactly like what the munitions or what the thing doing
Speaker 15: that the strike at the start of those videos were.
Speaker 15: But it seems that the US is working at the
Speaker 15: very least with Ecuadorian troops. Potentially, the US is just
Speaker 15: there to quote unquote train, advise, and assist, right, but
Speaker 15: it signals a much more like VI approach to this
Speaker 15: anti cartel mission. Yeah, in this case, the two groups
Speaker 15: Los Jooneiros and Los Lobos, they were both listed as
Speaker 15: foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists in September
Speaker 15: of last year.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen.
Speaker 15: That link made anywhere else explicitly in reference to this strike,
Speaker 15: but the fact that they used They didn't use FTO
Speaker 15: in the statement, right. They used dto designated terrorist organizations,
Speaker 15: and there are a few different ways an organization can
Speaker 15: be designated as a terrorist. But given that there are
Speaker 15: two that are listed as ftos, and that those two
Speaker 15: are the most acquid in the region, I think we
Speaker 15: can assume that that's who it was against. They also
Speaker 15: added the Clandale Golfer right. The golf cartel would be
Speaker 15: how people refer to in English in December of twenty
Speaker 15: five to the FTO list. I didn't pick this up
Speaker 15: at the time, and again I haven't seen a great
Speaker 15: deal of reporting on it. The reason this concerns me
Speaker 15: is that it pertains to the trig bar terrorism related
Speaker 15: in admissibility guidelines. The trig bar can bar people for
Speaker 15: being admissible to the United States, and it could be
Speaker 15: a serious barrier to migrants. Organizations can be considered terrorists
Speaker 15: for the purpose of the trig bar if they are
Speaker 15: not ftos, But the addition of the golf Cartel to
Speaker 15: the FTO list will make it very hard for people
Speaker 15: seeking asylum in the United States who have crossed a Darien,
Speaker 15: because it is not possible for them to do that,
Speaker 15: at least if they are coming from south to north,
Speaker 15: which was a durction of travel until twenty twenty five,
Speaker 15: without transiting golf Cartel territory, and it would not be
Speaker 15: possible for that to happen without interacting with them in
Speaker 15: some way. And so this is just potentially very concerning.
Speaker 15: I want to do more reporting on the trig bar
Speaker 15: pursuing that with some public records requests, which will just
Speaker 15: take some time. Trump has very clearly made the link
Speaker 15: between this coalition and the much larger international coalition against
Speaker 15: the Islamic State. I've said this before, but he clearly
Speaker 15: sees Operation Inherent Resolve as a very successful model for
Speaker 15: foreign policy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I especially think the.
Speaker 15: Model of the it was called talent anvil, but the
Speaker 15: strike cell that they had in Syria is one that
Speaker 15: he thinks is a very successful model. I've written about
Speaker 15: a link to a piece I wrote about this in
Speaker 15: my newsletter. But Robert, do you want to go ahead there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I should start with a little update
Speaker 2: on our ongoing story, which is that America is out
Speaker 2: of bullets. Or running out of bullets, not literal bullets,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of those, yeah, and also those in America.
Speaker 2: But the actual munitions that we use to intercept both
Speaker 2: drones and ballistic missiles, couple of things have happened since
Speaker 2: the start of our war with Iran. We've moved a
Speaker 2: significant chunk, if not the absolute majority, it's a little unclear,
Speaker 2: of the anti missile and anti drone weaponry, the major
Speaker 2: stuff that we had protecting other parts of the world
Speaker 2: that the United States has bases in like South Korea,
Speaker 2: over to the Middle East and over to intercept Iranian
Speaker 2: missiles primarily headed either towards US forces or most often
Speaker 2: to Israel. But even with all of the shit that
Speaker 2: we've redeployed from other areas, there's only so many of
Speaker 2: the munitions that we use because they're very expensive, and
Speaker 2: particularly the drones that are on is using, like the
Speaker 2: Shahed drones, are very cheap. So starting at kind of
Speaker 2: the start of hostilities, we were looking about six point
Speaker 2: seven percent Iranian drones got through. The intercept got through.
Speaker 2: And this is just in the UAE, but you can
Speaker 2: assume that it's fairly accurate to other theaters, right because
Speaker 2: we have a lot of missile defense and a lot
Speaker 2: of drone events in the UAE. So at the start
Speaker 2: of hostilities, about six points seven percent of Iranian Shaheed
Speaker 2: drones we're getting through the UAE's differences.
Speaker 15: Stop it, huh, there is a thing, rubbit that younger
Speaker 15: people do.
Speaker 2: Yes, the six seventh thing. Yes, I know, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Aron did that just for the Zoomers or the jinn
Speaker 2: Alfas whatever. Anyway, that's February, like twenty eighth. By March tenth,
Speaker 2: more than twenty five percent of Iranian drones are getting
Speaker 2: through the UAE's interception defenses. Oh wow. There hasn't been
Speaker 2: a massive change in the rate of ballistic missile interceptions yet,
Speaker 2: which suggests that at least we're not running on empty.
Speaker 2: But that's not good, right, that's a massive change. Like,
Speaker 2: that's a massive issue. So we'll continue. I'll be doing
Speaker 2: a whole episode on how the US is running out
Speaker 2: of bullets. Bullets being you know, a stand in tern
Speaker 2: for more advanced munitions. But I've got something else to
Speaker 2: talk about right now that's also involved in the Iranian theater. Particularly,
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaker 2: Let's do some adds for products that you may not
Speaker 2: be able to buy if naval traffic is interdicted through
Speaker 2: the Strait of horm Moos so by him now, so
Speaker 2: get him now books. So there's an evidence that's come
Speaker 2: out kind of in the last couple of days. I
Speaker 2: start broken on the New Republic, But I believe CBS
Speaker 2: News was the origin point that Iran started laying minds
Speaker 2: in the Strait before Donald Trump publicly declared he was going,
Speaker 2: he wanted to take it over. So basically, after we
Speaker 2: killed a huge chunk of the Iranian government, Trump started
Speaker 2: public amusing, maybe we'll just take over the Strait of
Speaker 2: horror moves, and Iran started mining the shit out of it. Now,
Speaker 2: this is a problem for a lot of reasons. For
Speaker 2: one thing, the Strait is probably the most I mean,
Speaker 2: it's arguably the most important energy transit point on planet Earth,
Speaker 2: right Like, it's about a fifth of all crude oil
Speaker 2: shipments go through the Strait. Ye, that's not the only
Speaker 2: thing that goes through there, but it is an incredible
Speaker 2: amount of the world's crude oil supply travels through this strait.
Speaker 2: And Tehran's always kind of had the option of closing
Speaker 2: it by just dumping a bunch of mines in there.
Speaker 2: Mines are incredibly cheap. You can drop mines from very
Speaker 2: small boats. The US Navy is very good at blowing
Speaker 2: up big boats, but if you have a shipload of
Speaker 2: small boats that have a shitload of mines, it's basically
Speaker 2: impossible to stop an adversary like Iran from laying a
Speaker 2: fuckload of mines. And that will make it basically untenable
Speaker 2: financially for anyone to run oil through the strait. If
Speaker 2: you never know if one of your boats is going
Speaker 2: to get hit by a fucking sea mine, it makes
Speaker 2: it hard to get insure to run a boat through
Speaker 2: the strait of horn moves. Most of these mines are
Speaker 2: not capable of I mean, these minds in general are
Speaker 2: not capable of destroying the kind of bolt callars that.
Speaker 4: Move crude through.
Speaker 2: They're not going to blow the boat out of the
Speaker 2: water immediately, but they're going to damage it, and they
Speaker 2: have a very good chance, because these boats are filled
Speaker 2: with crude fucking oil, of lighting them on fire. And
Speaker 2: that causes a serious problem for the crew.
Speaker 5: Of any boat.
Speaker 2: I want you to I shouldn't have to explain why
Speaker 2: that creates a serious problem with the crew of any
Speaker 2: boat that's filled with crude oil. Right, it's pretty obvious
Speaker 2: that once it became clear that Iran started laying had
Speaker 2: started laying mines in the Straight, US forces claimed to
Speaker 2: have sunk sixteen mine layers. That was from US Syncom,
Speaker 2: although it's kind of unclear because at least half of
Speaker 2: those seem to have been inactive at the time, So
Speaker 2: these may have just been bigger mind layers that we
Speaker 2: hit at the start of our attacks on their navy,
Speaker 2: and then when we realized there's going to be a
Speaker 2: news cycle about mines in the Strait, let's claim, you know,
Speaker 2: right whatever. After it came out that around had in
Speaker 2: fact been laying mines, President Trump truthed, we want them
Speaker 2: removed immediately. If for any reason, minds were placed and
Speaker 2: they are not removed forthwith I've never heard them use
Speaker 2: fourthwith before.
Speaker 15: Yes, city won for him, Yeah, yea, yeah.
Speaker 2: The military consequences to Iran will be at a level
Speaker 2: never before seen. If, on the other hand, there were
Speaker 2: movement may have been placed, it will be a giant
Speaker 2: step in the right direction. That sounds kind of desperate,
Speaker 2: and it sounds kind of desperate because the United States
Speaker 2: is in a uniquely dog shit position to deal with
Speaker 2: c minds right specifically now, we made a really funny decision,
Speaker 2: and by we, I mean the Trump administration made a
Speaker 2: really funny decision basically immediately before we declared war on Iran,
Speaker 2: a country we've known has always threatened to mine the
Speaker 2: strait of horror moves every time we fucked with them,
Speaker 2: And that funny decision was in January, the Navy decommissioned
Speaker 2: for Avengers class mine countermeasureships, which were the last mind
Speaker 2: countermeasureships we had in the Persian goal. Now we have
Speaker 2: other boats that were pretty sure can do the job,
Speaker 2: but we've never tried. And the funny thing about the
Speaker 2: boats that we're currently going to be using for to
Speaker 2: take out my mind is that they're pre existing boats
Speaker 2: that were not built to take out mines. We basically
Speaker 2: have like they're called like operations packages that you add
Speaker 2: to the boat to add capability. One of the capabilities
Speaker 2: they have these little like basically drone torpedo things that
Speaker 2: can go out and seek out mines. They've got an
Speaker 2: enhanced like radar package I guess or whatever. They're better
Speaker 2: at looking for mines because the boats that they added
Speaker 2: these packages to were not initially meant for d mining.
Speaker 2: They're littoral combat ships. Lcs's widely considered to be the
Speaker 2: worst boats in the entire US Navy. In fact, in
Speaker 2: the Navy, the acronym LCS stands for little crappy ships
Speaker 2: because they're bad. They've been very bad. Basically every time
Speaker 2: we have like tested how will these things function and
Speaker 2: like a real fight, it's the answer has been like terribly.
Speaker 2: They're not good ships. They kind of suck ass. Now
Speaker 2: we'll see if the mind countermeasures that they put on
Speaker 2: these boats like make them superior to the old Avenger class. However,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of issues with the mind countermeasure packages
Speaker 2: that they've they've been making for these and I want
Speaker 2: to read a quote from an article published by famous
Speaker 2: leftist and thus untrustworthy news source, the US Naval Institute. Quote.
Speaker 2: Initially set for an initial operational capability in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: the MCM package went through a development process punctuated by
Speaker 2: stops and program failures. For example, the first craft that
Speaker 2: could tow the AQS twenty son are to hunt the
Speaker 2: bulk of minds suffered reliability problems and was scrapped. The
Speaker 2: service also canceled a plan for the IMAGE sixtys to
Speaker 2: toe the AQS twenty. After years of program changes, the
Speaker 2: packages coalesced around a few core main systems. So the
Speaker 2: development of these mcum mission packages has been troubled for
Speaker 2: a very long time, which is what delayed the retirement
Speaker 2: of the Avenger class minehunters previously. And the Navy's now
Speaker 2: saying they totally work now and we're all going to
Speaker 2: find out in real time if they do. And the
Speaker 2: last funny thing I have to say is the four
Speaker 2: decommissioned to venture anti MIAs ships. Two of them at
Speaker 2: least have hilarious names. Two of them makes sense. One
Speaker 2: of them was the USS Century, perfectly reasonable name for
Speaker 2: a d mining ship. Okay. The other was the USS Dextrous.
Speaker 2: Kind of a weird name, but whatever. And then you
Speaker 2: have the USS Devastator and the USS Gladiator. What is
Speaker 2: a mine shift devastates? It's for dem it's to stop
Speaker 2: things from getting devastated. Anyway, that's my report, Okay, good
Speaker 2: to know, and let's pick up with Iran. I want
Speaker 2: to start by talking about, like the speculation regarding partner forces.
Speaker 2: I think some of it has been just like a
Speaker 2: little bit misinformed. Starways people have been talking about the
Speaker 2: Blochistan Liberation Army. They were only added to the United
Speaker 2: States FTO list last summer, which leads me to believe
Speaker 2: that the Trump administration is not positively.
Speaker 15: Disposed towards him. Right, if they've just put them on
Speaker 15: the FTO list in August of last year, one.
Speaker 2: Of the odds anyone in that administration knows where Blakistan is.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it happened shortly after they killed some some Pakistani
Speaker 15: military personnel, So I'm guessing that, yeah, just got asked
Speaker 15: to do it. It was part of the negotiation.
Speaker 29: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Yeah. It also seems very unlikely that Trump is now
Speaker 15: willing to back a Kurdish land incursion. Invasion wouldn't be
Speaker 15: the right word. If people going into Kurdistan, it's not invasion.
Speaker 15: I have a short video here.
Speaker 2: We're about kind.
Speaker 17: Of an autonomous region.
Speaker 4: Enough they did, it's Syriami, right, We're not happy.
Speaker 17: We're not looking to the courage going in.
Speaker 2: We're very friendly with the courage, as you.
Speaker 29: Know, but we don't want to make the war any
Speaker 29: more complex than it already is.
Speaker 4: Double we don't want. Yeah, I have wrote it down.
Speaker 22: I don't want the curs going in.
Speaker 4: I don't want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed.
Speaker 4: We've had a good relationship. They were want need to
Speaker 4: go in, but we really I've told them I don't
Speaker 4: want them to go in there.
Speaker 20: You're wrong.
Speaker 17: I just think it's the worst complicated enough without.
Speaker 2: Having Yeah, sure you would want the war to get complicated. Yeah.
Speaker 15: Also the audio quality on Fox News, say absolute, the atrocious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard. That's plains sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, they're in a difficult situation. Yeah.
Speaker 15: So I've spoken to a couple of these Kurdish groups
Speaker 15: that people have been speculating about in the last couple
Speaker 15: of weeks. Here's part of a statement that I received
Speaker 15: from the PAK that's a Kurdistan Freedom party that refers
Speaker 15: to the US's vacillation on supporting them. Quote, the United
Speaker 15: States is working in the best possible way to mantle
Speaker 15: the Iranian regime and eliminate terrorism in the region. For
Speaker 15: over three decades, we have been fighting to expel the
Speaker 15: IIGC from Kurdistan and liberate our land. Therefore, we cannot
Speaker 15: and must not base our policies on the shifts in
Speaker 15: US rhetoric. America has its own plans regarding the overthrow
Speaker 15: and subsequent administration of Iran, and we have our plan
Speaker 15: for the liberation administration of Roger lad rojolatt referring to
Speaker 15: eastern Kurdistan.
Speaker 6: There.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Meanwhile, of course, for the last week, we've seen consistent
Speaker 15: bombing of Iran, including the targeting of oil and water infrastructure.
Speaker 15: Hengar is reporting horrible overcrowding and food shortages, as well
Speaker 15: as increased militarization of the Gazol Jesar prison, which holds
Speaker 15: more than sixteen thousand people. As I highlighted last week,
Speaker 15: Iran was in a water crisis before this new campaign began.
Speaker 15: Hitting water infrastructure will only increase the odds of massive
Speaker 15: human suffering and death. This is especially true it seems
Speaker 15: that Trump is somewhat growing.
Speaker 2: Tired of the war with Iran.
Speaker 15: He said in a press conference this week it would
Speaker 15: be quote inappropriate to target the newly chosen Supreme Leader
Speaker 15: of Iran. In the same press conference, Trump also repeated
Speaker 15: his claim that Iran was quote going to take over
Speaker 15: the Middle East and would have had quote a nuclear
Speaker 15: weapon within a matter of weeks if it were not
Speaker 15: for last year's Operation Midnight Hammer. He also talked about
Speaker 15: an Iranian nuclear site quote protected by granite. Both Fordoh
Speaker 15: and Natans were struck last year and have underground elements.
Speaker 15: Four DOH is about eighty meters below ground. Yeah, and
Speaker 15: that was the site that required a US strike. Israel
Speaker 15: did not have the means to knock that one out.
Speaker 15: But to the best of my knowledge, FOURDOU is now
Speaker 15: out of commission following the strikes in Operation Midnight Hammer.
Speaker 15: Rehich happening in twenty twenty five. Perhaps he's referring to
Speaker 15: another subterranean site, or perhaps he's confusing this with earlier information. Evidently,
Speaker 15: you can't just destroy uranium, right, Like, if there is
Speaker 15: a rich nuclear material, then then that is still there.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we talked about this the last time. But like,
Speaker 2: the thing that's time consuming is enriching the uranium. And
Speaker 2: there's there's no evidence that any of this has reduced
Speaker 2: the amount that Aron has access to.
Speaker 15: Yes, exactly, And according to Senator Chris Murphy, it doesn't
Speaker 15: seem like that is particularly the target at this campaign.
Speaker 15: He said most of the targets are conventional weapons facilities
Speaker 15: like drones and missile facilities. The Iranian Navy is Robert mentioned,
Speaker 15: it does not seem like they're particularly interested in regime change,
Speaker 15: and as Robert mentioned, the IIGC is still able to
Speaker 15: use many of its small civilian vessels fast attack vessels
Speaker 15: and drones. I spoke to quite a few people who
Speaker 15: are in this sort of shipping security world, and one
Speaker 15: of their concerns is, like, when they say fast attack vessels,
Speaker 15: they're talking about very small boats with mounted machine guns, right,
Speaker 15: operating in large groups and swarming tankers or other ships
Speaker 15: going through the straight ofform moods, which would be quite
Speaker 15: challenging to defend ships from, especially of their like large
Speaker 15: civilian ships, right. I know some people have been speculating
Speaker 15: about the CM three to ZHO two missiles that around
Speaker 15: ordered from China. Those are like quote unquote carrier killer missiles.
Speaker 15: I don't believe they have those yet, though they do
Speaker 15: will probably find out soon enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah boy, that would be a big day.
Speaker 15: Yeah boy, yeah, yeah, that would These things will get
Speaker 15: quite bad if if that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. I honestly like that might be for
Speaker 2: this administration. A tactical nuclear scenario like that, it would
Speaker 2: be an unprecedented loss. They'd have to do something insane
Speaker 2: to save face.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I assume US carriers have means of defense, are
Speaker 15: supposed to.
Speaker 2: They're very hard to kill. Yes, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 15: A particular like matchup that no one has seen yet
Speaker 15: because no one has been wild enough to try it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They say these are carrier killers. They're theoretically carrier yet
Speaker 2: of the defensive systems on carriers as regards missiles like
Speaker 2: that are theoretical too, because it hasn't happened.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it's not many people have aircraft carriers, and the
Speaker 15: people who do, you don't want to piss off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 15: Finally, I guess I want to talk about the Senator
Speaker 15: Blumenthal who raised the alarm in a congressional briefing this week.
Speaker 15: He's a clip.
Speaker 22: I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly,
Speaker 22: as I have from any past briefing in my fifteen
Speaker 22: years in the Senate. I am left with more questions
Speaker 22: than answers, especially about the cost of the war. My
Speaker 22: questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers because
Speaker 22: the American people deserve to know. And I guess I
Speaker 22: am most concerned about the threat to American lives of
Speaker 22: potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran.
Speaker 22: We seem to be on a path toward deploying American
Speaker 22: troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of
Speaker 22: the potential objectives here and there is also, as disturbingly
Speaker 22: as anything else, the specter of active Russian age to
Speaker 22: Iran putting in danger American lives.
Speaker 15: The last part references reporting that came first from the
Speaker 15: Washington Post. Russia is providing targeting info to Iran, chiefly
Speaker 15: using its advanced satellite imaging capacity, to quote from the
Speaker 15: Peace Quote. Since the war began on Saturday, Russia has
Speaker 15: passed it around the locations of US military assets, including
Speaker 15: warships and aircraft. This might explain how Iran has been
Speaker 15: able to hit some soft targets like the temporary structure
Speaker 15: in q Weight, where at least six people were killed.
Speaker 15: We've now learned that many more people were seriously injured,
Speaker 15: as well as hitting some over their horizon radar systems
Speaker 15: that we spoke about last week. Finally, the US is
Speaker 15: carrying out operations against hashtaal Shabby popular mobilization forces in
Speaker 15: a rack. This is getting a lot less reporting, but
Speaker 15: it seems like if there are boots on the ground
Speaker 15: anywhere right now, this would be where they would be right.
Speaker 15: They're using things like apaches in a tens, They're not
Speaker 15: using standoff munitions delivered from a great distance, and so
Speaker 15: anything that is likely to result in either needing people
Speaker 15: to support targets or needing people to rescue a pilot
Speaker 15: of a playing or a helicopter gets shut down, would
Speaker 15: more likely at this point be there.
Speaker 2: In it rack. That's about all I have.
Speaker 3: We'll go on one more ad break and return with
Speaker 3: a special segment from Ema Wong.
Speaker 2: So we need to intro the music.
Speaker 4: If you want to play the music, you can rocket jazzbot,
Speaker 4: sorry locking rocket jazz rocking jazz Bot. Onto the economy,
Speaker 4: we have been seeing over the past week what I
Speaker 4: would effectively describe as a will they won't they? With
Speaker 4: are the stock markets going to collapse? Where markets have
Speaker 4: imploded and then immediately rebounded, basically in line with Trump
Speaker 4: saying that the war is going to be over very soon.
Speaker 4: This was the sort of state of things on Monday.
Speaker 4: You know, there had been massive collapses in the Asian
Speaker 4: market from rising oil prices, and then Trump said that quote,
Speaker 4: the war is very complete, pretty much in a phone
Speaker 4: interview with the journalist from NBC, and this caused a
Speaker 4: resurrection of the markets. Now, this is completely disconnected from
Speaker 4: the actual reality of the war and functioned entirely to
Speaker 4: again just calling these markets on Tuesday, So that was Monday.
Speaker 4: On Tuesday, Trump speech quote, We've already won in many ways,
Speaker 4: but we haven't won enough. We go forward more determined
Speaker 4: than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this
Speaker 4: long running danger once and for all. Which, Okay, that's gibberish. Now,
Speaker 4: Trump has specifically begun to address the fact that again
Speaker 4: you can't move oil tankers through the straighter four moves
Speaker 4: because Iran is going to just carry out strikes on them,
Speaker 4: and he said, quote, We're also focused on keeping energy
Speaker 4: and oil flows to the world, and I will not
Speaker 4: allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and
Speaker 4: attempt to stop the globe's oil supply. And if Iran
Speaker 4: does anything to do that, they'll get hit at a
Speaker 4: much much harder level. I will take out those targets
Speaker 4: that were easy and that I mentioned before, We'll take
Speaker 4: them out. So quickly, they'll never be able to recover. Ever,
Speaker 4: if they want to play that game, they better not
Speaker 4: play that game. In the long run, oil supplies will
Speaker 4: be dramatically more secure without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles,
Speaker 4: nuclear menace, or anything. So what he's saying here is
Speaker 4: that if Iran keeps the straight closed, he's going to
Speaker 4: destroy them. But A, he's already in a war with them,
Speaker 4: and B this just means it as long as it wrong,
Speaker 4: keeps it straight closed, then the war keeps going, which
Speaker 4: keeps a straight closed longer, which keeps the war going.
Speaker 4: So this is great. Trumps also directly asked by a
Speaker 4: reporter about whether the war is going to keep going.
Speaker 4: Quote thank you, thank you, mister president. You said the
Speaker 4: war is quote very complete. But your Defense secretary says,
Speaker 4: this is just the beginning. So which is it? And
Speaker 4: how long should Americans be prepared for this war to
Speaker 4: last for? And he immediately starts going into metaphysics. Quote well,
Speaker 4: I think you could say both the beginning. It's the
Speaker 4: beginning of building a new country. And then he eventually says,
Speaker 4: so you know, you could look at that statement. We
Speaker 4: could call it a tremendous success. Right now, as we
Speaker 4: leave here, I could call it, or we could go further,
Speaker 4: and we're going further. But the big risks on that
Speaker 4: war have been over for three days. We wipe them
Speaker 4: out in the first two days. So that says nothing
Speaker 4: other than probably the war is going to keep going.
Speaker 20: Now.
Speaker 4: Trump has been claiming there will be navy escorts through
Speaker 4: this trade of four moves. This is an absolute unhinged
Speaker 4: lide that Trump came up with to calm oil prices.
Speaker 4: And on Wednesday we had reporting from Reuters that obviously
Speaker 4: know the Navy has been turning down requests for escort.
Speaker 4: I'm going going to read a quote from that Raiders
Speaker 4: piece quote the US Navy has refused near daily requests
Speaker 4: from the shipping industry for military escorts through this trade
Speaker 4: of from mows since the start of the war on Iran,
Speaker 4: saying the risk of attacks is too high for now,
Speaker 4: according to sources familiar with the matter, which yeah, no shit,
Speaker 4: of course isn't happening. There's no way for it to happen.
Speaker 4: Have you seen an oil tinker. The largest of these
Speaker 4: things is two fifths of a kilometer long, right, and
Speaker 4: some of them are you know, half that size, so
Speaker 4: they are like one fifth of a kilometer long, but
Speaker 4: you can't escort that through straight is and I kind
Speaker 4: of emphasize this enough twenty three miles wide at its
Speaker 4: narrowest point.
Speaker 17: Now.
Speaker 4: Iran has also started mining the Straits to some extents.
Speaker 4: On Wednesday, Trump claimed the Navy had destroyed Iron's mining
Speaker 4: ships and the Strait was safe across. Iran immediately proved
Speaker 4: this to be a lie by hitting a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of oil tankers in various places around the Golf. And
Speaker 4: this is one of the substantive issues with trying to
Speaker 4: get one fifth of the world's oil supply through this Golf.
Speaker 4: On top of and also and again like this is
Speaker 4: being reported a little bit less, but we talked about
Speaker 4: this in my episode earlier in the week. It's not
Speaker 4: just oil, it's things like critical chemical components for fertilizer
Speaker 4: that comes through here. It's natural gas. It's also helium,
Speaker 4: which is a very very critical element for a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of heavy industry that is actually very scarce, and
Speaker 4: a huge amount of the world's helium supply has to
Speaker 4: travel through the Gulf. And there are so many kinds
Speaker 4: of munitions besides mines that iron cans use to hit
Speaker 4: boats from rockets and missiles to drones, just shooting at
Speaker 4: them with the guns on boats. That thing if apparently
Speaker 4: done now now. Trump also said that he was waving
Speaker 4: oil related sanctions on certain countries to reduce prices. It's
Speaker 4: not clear what this means. It's probably Russia. Reuters has
Speaker 4: claimed that it's about the US temporary allowing India to
Speaker 4: purchase Russian oil that's been like stranded at See, it's
Speaker 4: very unclear what's going on there. On Thursday, we got
Speaker 4: we got a bunch of claims from the administration that
Speaker 4: escorting tankers through the Strait was their planned the whole time,
Speaker 4: which no, it wasn't. This is just going to continue
Speaker 4: to be an absolute nightmare because if Trump can't figure
Speaker 4: out a way to get oil through there, he's either
Speaker 4: going to have to end the war or the world
Speaker 4: economy is going to just implode. Yeah, we'll be tracking
Speaker 4: that situation. There's also another crisis that has begun to brew,
Speaker 4: which is the crisis in the so called private credit market,
Speaker 4: which is this is stuff that used to be called
Speaker 4: shadow banking. I'm going to go into more detail on
Speaker 4: this later as it becomes more and more a sort
Speaker 4: of relevant. But private credit slash shadow banking is a
Speaker 4: series of things that are like a bank, but they're
Speaker 4: not regulated, So we are talking about trillions of dollars
Speaker 4: of assets. There has been a huge run basically on
Speaker 4: the shadow banks, to the point where several very large
Speaker 4: banks have paused the ability to take money out of them.
Speaker 4: Now it's difficult to report on this because we don't
Speaker 4: actually know anything about how many people are pulling their
Speaker 4: money out or what the effect on this is because
Speaker 4: there are no reporting requirements because eise are shadow banks,
Speaker 4: and the whole point about them is that they're not
Speaker 4: subject to the regular regulations that regular banking will be
Speaker 4: subject to. So that's another looming economic crisis that we're
Speaker 4: all sort of just going to have to deal with,
Speaker 4: on top of Trump attempting to sort of destroy the
Speaker 4: economy with this war and Iran. And finally, I want
Speaker 4: to close by talking about a very good piece and
Speaker 4: crime thing called history is Repeating Itself, a Lebanese perspective
Speaker 4: on the war in palestein Lebanon and Iran. That is
Speaker 4: an interview with friend of the show Iliau talking about
Speaker 4: a part of this war that hasn't basically ignored in
Speaker 4: the media, which is to quote Ilia. Israel has ordered
Speaker 4: the forced evacuation, effectively the ethnic cleansing of the entirety
Speaker 4: of southern Lebanon, the Hey and parts of Becca. This
Speaker 4: has been a horrifying campaign that has involved Israel bombing
Speaker 4: major Lebanese cities, including repeated bombings of Beirut, as well
Speaker 4: as a systematic destruction of Lebanese villages by Israeli army
Speaker 4: in the areas they've occupied in the south. The Israeli
Speaker 4: invasion has killed six hundred people in Lebanon so far,
Speaker 4: and that number will be higher by the time we're
Speaker 4: listening to this. This campaign does not seem to have
Speaker 4: an endpoint and is continuing as the American and an
Speaker 4: Israeli war in Iran also continues to grind on. Yeah,
Speaker 4: put a transgoal on your couch, Thank you, Mia.
Speaker 3: I have a few more news stories before we close
Speaker 3: out this episode. Trump has delayed his endorsement in the
Speaker 3: Republican Texas primary to build pressure on the Senate to
Speaker 3: pass the Save Act, the Voting Restriction Act to gain
Speaker 3: favor with the President. Ken Paxton has announced he'd back
Speaker 3: out of the race if this Senate passes the Save Act,
Speaker 3: which Trump later called his number one priority. Paxton knows
Speaker 3: that the passing of the Act is very unlikely, but
Speaker 3: by signaling support for the President's number one priority, he's
Speaker 3: hoping to gain favor and maybe even steal the endorsement
Speaker 3: away from Cornyn or convinced Trump not to give an endorsement,
Speaker 3: which would help him in the runoff election.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Politico has reported that Trump was quote irritated when news
Speaker 3: articles from axiosen The Atlantic published Wednesday declaring that Trump
Speaker 3: was quote unquote expected to endorse Cornyn. According to a
Speaker 3: Republican operative, Trump and others in his orbit hate when
Speaker 3: stories get out ahead of official announcements. Unquote. I sympathize
Speaker 3: with the president here. I am also often irritated by
Speaker 3: news articles from Axios and The Atlantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, an't we all? Let's see.
Speaker 15: I think it bring us together as a country, right.
Speaker 4: It will be interesting to see what Trump does here.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Trump is previously called Cornyn like a rhino, and Paxton
Speaker 3: is way more popular with the megabase despite having more
Speaker 3: electoral liabilities. For the general election day on March fifth,
Speaker 3: seven of the biggest tech companies signed President Trump's rate
Speaker 3: Payer Protection Pledge, empowering the private sector to build their
Speaker 3: own power infrastructure like power plans, microgrids, and substations, while
Speaker 3: also agreeing to quote bring or buy new generation resources
Speaker 3: and cover the cost of all power delivery infrastructure upgrades
Speaker 3: required for their data centers, ensuring such expenses are not
Speaker 3: passed to American households unquote. And that is per the
Speaker 3: White House. So this expounds on the rate player Protection
Speaker 3: Pledge that Trump announced during his State of the Unit address.
Speaker 3: We have a little bit more details now. The pledge
Speaker 3: has been signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Open Ai, Oracle,
Speaker 3: and Xai. These companies will quote unquote voluntarily negotiate new
Speaker 3: separate rate structures with utilities and state governments wherever they
Speaker 3: build new data centers, and will quote commit to pay
Speaker 3: these rates for the power and related infrastructure brought online
Speaker 3: to service their data centers, whether they use the electricity
Speaker 3: or not, unquote, to prevent blackouts and power shortages. The
Speaker 3: pledge also promises that AI companies and hyperscalers will also
Speaker 3: quote coordinate with grid operators to make backup generation resources
Speaker 3: available at times of emergency, contributing to a more reliable
Speaker 3: grid unquote. This pledge is not legally binding, but like
Speaker 3: I said, it will empower the private sector to develop
Speaker 3: power plant infrastructure.
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 3: Last Saturday, March seventh, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a
Speaker 3: protest outside of the New York City Mayor's residence, Gracie
Speaker 3: Manson dubbed stop the Islamic takeover of New York City.
Speaker 3: Stop new York City public Muslim prayer unquote.
Speaker 2: Incredibly frustrating guy. Yeah, I know that's his goal, but
Speaker 2: like very frustrating. Well, he's high off the fact that
Speaker 2: he was able to ignite a news cycle by lying
Speaker 2: about jet.
Speaker 15: Yeah, after getting chased out of Minneapolis by people with
Speaker 15: water pistols and rescue by aunt lady.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 17: Now.
Speaker 3: During this protest on Saturday, two teenagers who traveled from Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: a Mere Blat and Ibrahim Kyumi, allegedly attempted to detonate
Speaker 3: two improvised explicit devices amongst the protesters, and after being apprehended,
Speaker 3: both suspects stated allegiance with ISIS. According to US Attorney
Speaker 3: for the Southern District of New York, J. Clayton, the
Speaker 3: homemade explosive devices were Mason jar sized and packed with
Speaker 3: metal shrapnel and contained the high explosive tatp oh Wow.
Speaker 3: One ied was ignited and thrown towards the group of protesters.
Speaker 3: Another was dropped in front of several NYPD officers, but
Speaker 3: neither device successfully detonated.
Speaker 2: It is hard to make bombs. That is why very
Speaker 2: few domestic terrorists in the US go the bomb route.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that the bombers quote
Speaker 3: allegedly sought to inflict mass casualties in service to ISIS
Speaker 3: with the hope of exceeding the carnage of the Boston
Speaker 3: marathon bombing unquote. Bilot was asked if he wanted to
Speaker 3: accomplish something akin to the Boston bombing during interrogation, to
Speaker 3: which he allegedly replied, no, even bigger. It was only
Speaker 3: three deaths unquote. During interrogation, Caumi stated that he had
Speaker 3: watched ISIS propaganda videos on his phone. The Criminal Complaints
Speaker 3: says that en route to the NYPD precinct, Bilot told officers, quote,
Speaker 3: this isn't a religion that just stands when people talk
Speaker 3: about the blessed name of the prophet.
Speaker 4: We take action.
Speaker 3: If I didn't do it, someone else will come and
Speaker 3: do it unquote, and he later pledged allegiance to the
Speaker 3: Islamic state in writing along with the phrase die in
Speaker 3: your rage.
Speaker 2: The only thing weird about it is that there's not
Speaker 2: a whole lot of that going on right now. But
Speaker 2: this is very similar to the people who are carring
Speaker 2: about sympathetic eyes as attacks, you know, during the height
Speaker 2: of military action and Mosul same death. Yeah, gies.
Speaker 15: The timing is odd unusual yet given past to the
Speaker 15: territorial Katapha, etc. They have been propagandizing a bit more
Speaker 15: in the last five six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and it makes sense that they choose this
Speaker 2: as a target.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But thankfully again, most people who try to make bombs
Speaker 2: fail and that was the case this time too.
Speaker 4: Yeah for our last main store.
Speaker 3: Since the war on Iran began, the Trump administration has
Speaker 3: increasingly been talking about Cuba as being the next target
Speaker 3: of US intervention. In the immediate aftermath of military strikes
Speaker 3: in Iran, The Atlantic reported that Trump is eyeing Cuba
Speaker 3: as the next target, with an administration official saying the
Speaker 3: President is feeling like I'm on a roll, like this
Speaker 3: is working unquote, And I seen an interview about US
Speaker 3: military success in Iran. Last Friday, Trump started talking about Cuba, saying, quote,
Speaker 3: Cuba is going to fall pretty soon, by the way, unrelated,
Speaker 3: but Cuba is going to fall too. They want to
Speaker 3: make a deal so badly. They want to make a deal,
Speaker 3: and so I'm going to put Marco over there and
Speaker 3: we'll see how that works out unquote. That same day
Speaker 3: in Florida, Trump was asked about this Cuba deal and
Speaker 3: what do it mean for the US.
Speaker 29: And it may be a friendly takeover, it may not
Speaker 29: be a friendly taker. It wouldn't matter because they're really
Speaker 29: in They're down to as they say, fumes. They have
Speaker 29: no energy, they have no money, they're in deep trouble
Speaker 29: on a humanitarian basis, and we don't want to.
Speaker 3: See that may or may not be a quote unquote
Speaker 3: friendly takeover.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Yeah, I mean I think that's really helps you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounds like he's threatening Batista too, basically, even going
Speaker 2: back further than that, but yeah.
Speaker 15: Does he consider Venezuela to have been a friendly takeover? Like,
Speaker 15: because he's very friendly with Delsey now right, Like you
Speaker 15: can see her tweeting all the time about their great partnership.
Speaker 3: I think he would consider that an unfriendly takeover, which
Speaker 3: has now become friendly. But I think he's like referring
Speaker 3: to the amount of like actual like you know, kinetic
Speaker 3: force as a part of a takeover versus just a
Speaker 3: diplomatic deal done by Rubio. But in his scene an
Speaker 3: interview from from Friday, Trump DIDs us that the administration
Speaker 3: is quote unquote really focused on Iran right now and
Speaker 3: that they have quote plenty of time.
Speaker 4: But Cuba's ready after fifty years.
Speaker 3: I've been watching it for fifty years, and it's fallen
Speaker 3: right into my lap because of me unquote. The before this,
Speaker 3: Trump mentioned how Rubio wants to finish up operations in
Speaker 3: Iran before trying anything in Cuba. Quote, we could do
Speaker 3: them all at the same time, but bad things happen
Speaker 3: if you watch countries over the years, if you do
Speaker 3: them all too fast, bad things happen.
Speaker 4: Unquote do them do the countries do them?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I see. Fascinating.
Speaker 15: That's the reference to these regime change decapitations doing the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, got it good to know.
Speaker 3: At a presentation for the Shield of the Americas on Saturday,
Speaker 3: Trump said, quote, as we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela.
Speaker 3: We're also looking forward to the great change that will
Speaker 3: soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of
Speaker 3: the line. They have a bad regime.
Speaker 15: It is wild to see him just like I don't
Speaker 15: want to be like, you know, like baby Ruth used
Speaker 15: to point to where he's going to hit the baseball.
Speaker 15: That's probably not the best analogy there, but you know
Speaker 15: what I mean, it is bonkers just to see.
Speaker 4: They're very confident right now.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they haven't gotten a serious pushback.
Speaker 2: You know, we're starting to see gas prices rise, the
Speaker 2: cost of living is going to rise, but we haven't
Speaker 2: suffered any sort of major military loss.
Speaker 15: I eight Americans have died in the operations against Iran.
Speaker 2: Right, like, yeah, and I doubt Trump has noticed.
Speaker 15: But I mean for him, that's not serious, it's not now.
Speaker 15: But he seems to have literally shrugged it off, almost
Speaker 15: impressed conferences. We did learn today that a great deal
Speaker 15: more people suffered more serious injuries when we thought in
Speaker 15: that particular drone striking Q eight. But there won't be
Speaker 15: electoral consequences, right. I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 15: why they like these astrike heavy very light ground footprint
Speaker 15: models because it's not Americans who.
Speaker 2: Die, No, it's it's Iranians who are primarily dying. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Shall we close with this brief discussion on proton mail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's important. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So last week four h four media reported that the
Speaker 3: end to end encrypted email service proton mail quote helped
Speaker 3: FBI unmasked anonymous stop Coopcity protester unquote.
Speaker 4: That is their headline.
Speaker 3: So what happened here is that in January twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: the FBI sent Swiss authorities a mutual Legal Assistance treaty
Speaker 3: request for information tied to the defend the Atlanta Forest
Speaker 3: at ProtonMail dot com account. The FBI believe that whoever
Speaker 3: had access to this email would likely have administrative access
Speaker 3: to the now defunct scenes from the Atlanta Forest blog,
Speaker 3: which hosted sabotage report backs, calls to action, and some
Speaker 3: instructional information on possible criminal acts people could commit. After
Speaker 3: Swiss authorities verified the FBI's request, proton mail was legally
Speaker 3: required to submit payment data, which identified a name tied
Speaker 3: to the account through a credit card. Swiss authorities then
Speaker 3: forwarded that information to the FBI via the Mutual Legal
Speaker 3: Assistance treaty. This individual has not been charged with the
Speaker 3: crime and no email contents were provided to either the
Speaker 3: Swiss authorities or the FBI. This is Edwards shown the
Speaker 3: head of communications for Proton quote, Proton only provides the
Speaker 3: limited information that we have when issued with a legally
Speaker 3: binding order from Swiss authorities, which can only happen after
Speaker 3: all Swiss legal checks are passed. This is an important
Speaker 3: distinction because Proton operates exclusively under Swiss law. Proton accepts
Speaker 3: payments via cryptocurrency, cash and also credit card. If you
Speaker 3: use a credit card, we do have access to the
Speaker 3: payment identifier, which can be used to identify the credit
Speaker 3: card holder from the card issuer. We check all legal
Speaker 3: orders received from authorities, and we understood that a law
Speaker 3: enforcement officer was shot and explosive devices were involved, and
Speaker 3: we verified that Swiss legal requirements were met unquote. That's
Speaker 3: their main statement regarding the handover of this credit card information.
Speaker 15: This has always been my understanding of how Proto Mail works.
Speaker 4: They are a business, They are not an activist organization.
Speaker 3: They are they are a business, and Swiss privacy laws
Speaker 3: are stronger and they would have not been able to
Speaker 3: hand over financial information identifying the person if this account
Speaker 3: paid in cash mailed to Proton or be a cryptocurrency,
Speaker 3: which would have been way more difficult to identify.
Speaker 2: Depending on the crypto.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I've operated many many proton mail accounts through
Speaker 3: the years. I've never tied any of them to financial information.
Speaker 3: You do not need to pay for most of the
Speaker 3: services that they provide, like I even have Proton VPN
Speaker 3: without paying for like the expanded VPN option.
Speaker 15: Yeah, they've always been very clear that they're a Swiss
Speaker 15: based company and they comply with Swiss privacy law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is how and before they have responded to
Speaker 2: FBI requests before.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many off ther requests they have
Speaker 3: responded to. I know they've responded to requests from other
Speaker 3: countries in Europe.
Speaker 2: It's one around twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I know they've responded to French authorities about environmental protesters.
Speaker 3: The fact that's what authorities did send this information to
Speaker 3: FBI is newsworthy. This is notable, But this doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that Proton is getting increasingly compliant Like this is from
Speaker 3: early twenty twenty four, following the standard procedure via the
Speaker 3: mutual legal assistance treaty, and importantly, the actual end to
Speaker 3: end email contents were not given because Proton themselves don't
Speaker 3: even have access to those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and for clarity, Proton has given info to the
Speaker 2: FBI before. I found a case back in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two where the FBI was able to get data on
Speaker 2: us proton mail user who was being investigated for harassment.
Speaker 2: They responded in twenty twenty one to six nine hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety five legal orders and complied with about six
Speaker 2: thousand of them, only twenty one it was about five
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty about three thousand. I think this generally
Speaker 2: reflects the rate at which Proton has grown, rather than
Speaker 2: them becoming more likely to respond to these requests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and by responding to the requests that that doesn't
Speaker 3: really give us a good insight into what they're actually responding.
Speaker 15: With, right, Yeah, Yeah, that's the other thing, right, Like
Speaker 15: this person's email inbox was not opened to the FBI.
Speaker 2: That is a different thing, very important.
Speaker 4: There was the name linked to their credit card.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I think, like you said, this is reportable, but
Speaker 15: it's it was a little over sold in the headline.
Speaker 15: I know ify one does that these days.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's good for people to understand how proton
Speaker 3: actually works as like a privacy email.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and they are not.
Speaker 3: They are not an activist group and that is an
Speaker 3: important sanction. They are a Swiss business that will follow
Speaker 3: the law. And if you understand how to use Proton
Speaker 3: as a service to maximize your privacy, then it can
Speaker 3: be a very useful service, but it will not protect
Speaker 3: you in every way. If you're handing them over payment
Speaker 3: information or information tied to your name that is not encrypted,
Speaker 3: that can open the possibility of an account being identifiable.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so I know a lot of people had contacted
Speaker 15: me about a proton mail address, Like, hopefully now you
Speaker 15: have the information that you need to decide it's that
Speaker 15: it's something you.
Speaker 2: Want to use or not.
Speaker 4: Speaking of proton mail.
Speaker 15: Yeah, speak of protemail. We still have a proton mail address.
Speaker 15: Now you know a little bit more about how you
Speaker 15: can use it. If you want to cool zone tips
Speaker 15: at proton dot me. If you would like to send
Speaker 15: us a pitch for you or your boss to be
Speaker 15: on behind the Bastards, if you would like us to
Speaker 15: plug your book, if you want us to talk about
Speaker 15: your fucking time share. You can send all of that
Speaker 15: to Coolzone Media at iHeartMedia dot com. Especially if it's
Speaker 15: the last one, I.
Speaker 4: Will block you.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm looking for a time share that seems
Speaker 2: like a good investment. Sick.
Speaker 3: But that is the email for non tips for things
Speaker 3: that not related to news tips, you can use the
Speaker 3: calls on media at iHeartMedia dot com email address dot com.
Speaker 15: Talking of tips, I have a tip garrison for marketing people.
Speaker 15: If you email anyone ten times a day, you gotta
Speaker 15: piste them off. They're not gonna want to fucking hear
Speaker 15: from you.
Speaker 4: Stop it.
Speaker 2: Some of you aren't. Well you're not emailing them. You've
Speaker 2: got an AI doing it.
Speaker 4: It's got to be AI. Yeah, that's that's not a person.
Speaker 2: If it's a marketing person. There are other people who
Speaker 2: email ten times a day.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean this was a marketing person who was
Speaker 15: emailing some of our work addresses try and get us.
Speaker 2: To plug their podcasts, which on our podcast is.
Speaker 15: To stop it, grow up, have some self respect.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What's really fun is if you go on Reddit, you
Speaker 2: can find a subreddit for those kind of marketers. Well
Speaker 2: they're worth they'll complain about journalists not responding, and it's beautiful.
Speaker 15: Yeah, you can't see because podcasts. I'm raising both my
Speaker 15: middle fingers at this time. Like anyway, this has been
Speaker 15: us swining about marketing people. I hope you will have
Speaker 15: a lovely week.
Speaker 3: I will be as a hug as many of those
Speaker 3: proteins as.
Speaker 2: I can, Garrison, if you want to start really bulking up,
Speaker 2: you need at least one hundred grams of protein a day.
Speaker 2: And there's ten and he'll die.
Speaker 20: It's only ten day.
Speaker 2: You could pour them in a camel back and go
Speaker 2: about your day.
Speaker 15: Just make sure you dip the end of the camel
Speaker 15: back in the buffalo.
Speaker 2: Dry rope, the dry rope for the nozzle. Have a
Speaker 2: little Shika, have a little.
Speaker 4: We reported the news.
Speaker 19: Oh god, did we?
Speaker 5: We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
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