Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to the Friday Mini Show. Got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff to get through, Ryan Graham, great.
Speaker 2: To see you, My friends, Nice to see you.
Speaker 1: So we are hoping that our right wing friend Emily
Speaker 1: Kishinski is going to join us for some of the
Speaker 1: latter topics here. In particular, we're going to get into
Speaker 1: the Jeffrey Epstein the big release of the files, which
Speaker 1: there's quite a bit of MAGA pushback on how all
Speaker 1: of that went down, which is quite quite amusing.
Speaker 3: Ryan, I like that one.
Speaker 4: Yes, And so we have about ten or twenty minutes
Speaker 4: to cram in as much left as propaganda as we
Speaker 4: can until she comes in and checks us. And later
Speaker 4: today we're going to be posting our interview with former
Speaker 4: CFP to CFPB director Roe hit Chopra.
Speaker 2: Emily couldn't join that.
Speaker 4: She had to shed a flight she had to catch,
Speaker 4: so it's just me and row Hit But I played
Speaker 4: for him the like the Mark Zuckerberg comments on Rogan
Speaker 4: and Mark Andresen comments Jamie Diamond calling him an arrogant,
Speaker 4: out of touch SOB and had him respond to all
Speaker 4: of those different charges.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what we're kind of the big takeaways there, because
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet either,
Speaker 1: And that was one of the clearest examples to me,
Speaker 1: and you called it out immediately of how these oligarchs,
Speaker 1: the Andreasons of the world and the Zuckerbergs of the
Speaker 1: world were trying to use a like fake culture war
Speaker 1: agenda to trick people into supporting what is just like
Speaker 1: a blatantly pro oligarchic agenda. And one of the things
Speaker 1: we actually have in the show is some of the
Speaker 1: CFPB enforcements that have now been rolled back now that
Speaker 1: that agency is just completely gutted.
Speaker 4: I think it's just really interesting for people to hear
Speaker 4: precisely what the CFPB was doing that got these people upset.
Speaker 4: And for instance, when the White House basically tried to
Speaker 4: get rid of the CFBB, they put out a statement
Speaker 4: that listed like six seven things that they objected to
Speaker 4: and included links to stories.
Speaker 2: So I went through it with Chopra. All Right, they say, you.
Speaker 4: You know, try to enforce price controls on banks. Click
Speaker 4: through the link, like what is this and he's like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's our overdraft rule that said you can't you know,
Speaker 4: illegally shuffle around people's payments. So that they get five
Speaker 4: overdrafts rather than one, and the White House pulls the
Speaker 4: price controls.
Speaker 3: So so dishonest.
Speaker 4: Think I wish every person in the country could you know,
Speaker 4: we'll watch this interview.
Speaker 3: Well maybe they will, you never know. I'll go ahead
Speaker 3: and pull this up.
Speaker 1: This was an element I had for later along with
Speaker 1: we've got a whole bunch of updates on Doge. We've
Speaker 1: got some court pushback on Doge. That's really significant. But
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Speaker 1: was doing. They had these different enforcement actions against Capital
Speaker 1: One against Berkshire Hathaway owned Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, against
Speaker 1: a predatory student loan company, and now all of that
Speaker 1: is just being completely dropped and going away. So and
Speaker 1: of course it's no mistake, you know, a no accident
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk had just signed a deal with Visa.
Speaker 1: He wants to turn Twitter into one of these payment
Speaker 1: processors as well and be the quote unquote everything app
Speaker 1: they would have fallen under CFPB regulatory jurisdiction. And now
Speaker 1: the cfp BE basically doesn't exist anymore, so they have
Speaker 1: more of a free hand to scam people and do
Speaker 1: some of the things like what Sam Bankman freed was rightfully,
Speaker 1: you know, convicted and turn in prison.
Speaker 4: For doing Yeah, and Zuckerberg went on Rogan and was like,
Speaker 4: I don't understand why this agency would come after us.
Speaker 4: We have nothing to do with any any finance or
Speaker 4: financial institution behavior. And Rohit pointed out just five years
Speaker 4: ago they launched their own currency called Libra, Like, are
Speaker 4: we supposed to pretend that that never happened.
Speaker 1: The thing that was to me the most insulting was
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg pretending, oh, I don't even know what this agency.
Speaker 3: Dude, shut the fuck up, like, stop playing dumb.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the Rogan just going along with all of
Speaker 1: it was really sad to see as well.
Speaker 2: But in any case, if he watches it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he actually just recorded a big long interview apparently
Speaker 1: with Elon, so that's gonna be interesting as well.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll stay tuned forward to that. Yeah, yeah, for
Speaker 3: what comes down to that one.
Speaker 1: But let's go ahead and jump into the latest Widows
Speaker 1: just to give a sketch of what we're going to
Speaker 1: try to get through this morning.
Speaker 3: We've got all the Doge updates.
Speaker 1: The court orders, the latest in terms of the cuts
Speaker 1: going after the Weather Service and those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: That's a really significant one. Right now, we've also got
Speaker 1: all of the Epstein melee from yesterday and MAGA free
Speaker 1: count over that, and related to that, I would say,
Speaker 1: also the Tate brothers making their way to the US
Speaker 1: and actually some MAGA pushback over that as well.
Speaker 3: But it looks very.
Speaker 1: Much like the Trump administration intervened to get these alleged
Speaker 1: rapists and sex traffickers to be able to travel to
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 3: So, you know, you've got a lot of sex.
Speaker 1: Trafficker rapist stories here relevant to the day, and we've
Speaker 1: saved those for later in the show. We're hoping Emily
Speaker 1: is going to be able to join because we want
Speaker 1: to get a perspective from the right about all of
Speaker 1: this stuff is landing. But let me go ahead and
Speaker 1: jump in with this. So a couple of significant court
Speaker 1: orders coming down, this one in particular the most noteworthy.
Speaker 1: So a judge has blocked the Trump administrations firings of
Speaker 1: federal workers. This pertains to you guys, know how they
Speaker 1: just came in and said, Okay, everybody who is still
Speaker 1: on probationary status, that's it.
Speaker 3: You're gone.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's mostly people who are new on
Speaker 1: the job, but also, as Ryan pointed out previously, it's
Speaker 1: also people who just got promotions. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: a lot of individuals who actually were the most successful
Speaker 1: and the most significant within their organizations. One other thing
Speaker 1: I learned too, Ryan, is you know, we have all
Speaker 1: these programs for military spouses, who of course are having
Speaker 1: to pick up and move around the country all the
Speaker 1: time based on where their husband or wife is being deployed,
Speaker 1: and so they would more frequently than your average employee
Speaker 1: find themselves in a probationary status because of having to
Speaker 1: pick up and move around the country and job hop
Speaker 1: more often than your average employees. So they also work
Speaker 1: tremendously hit hard by this. Let me just read a
Speaker 1: little bit of this article on Before you do.
Speaker 4: That, I have to offer one clarification. The probationary period
Speaker 4: applies to when you move from into management or if
Speaker 4: you move get a promotion or a lateral movement from
Speaker 4: one agency to another or one sub agency to another
Speaker 4: sub agency. If you just go from you just get
Speaker 4: a raise from one year to the next like that,
Speaker 4: that doesn't kick you back into the probationary period, and
Speaker 4: the best interpretations of when your probationary period in management,
Speaker 4: they can't actually fire you from that. They would push
Speaker 4: you back down into worker status out of management.
Speaker 2: But lots of people do move.
Speaker 4: From agency to agency or get detailed and then come
Speaker 4: back or and so those would all be caught up.
Speaker 4: So it's not complete blanket anybody who got promoted, which
Speaker 4: is what I implied on the show.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to kind of.
Speaker 1: Correct that, gotcha, Okay, So here is what the Washington
Speaker 1: Posts is reporting. A federal judge on Thursday ordered the
Speaker 1: Office of Personnel Management to recent directives that initiated the
Speaker 1: mass firing or probationary workers across the government, ruling that
Speaker 1: the terminations were probably illegal, as a group of labor
Speaker 1: unions are argued in court. US District Judge William Alsup
Speaker 1: ordered OPM to rescind its previous directives to more than
Speaker 1: two dozen agencies, including the Department of Defense, which I
Speaker 1: think is the largest employer of civilians across the government.
Speaker 1: So really significant here. The ruling a temporary restraint on
Speaker 1: the government, will be revisited in the coming weeks. It's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest roadblocks so far to Trump's effort
Speaker 1: to slash the federal workforce. Here's about some of the
Speaker 1: language from the judge. They say, Congress has given the
Speaker 1: authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves.
Speaker 3: The Department of Defense, for.
Speaker 1: Example, has statutory authority to hire and fire. The Office
Speaker 1: of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under
Speaker 1: any statute in the history of the universe to hire
Speaker 1: and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and
Speaker 1: fire their own employees. The article goes on to explain
Speaker 1: ran that even though this is a significant ruling but
Speaker 1: not a final decision, unclear how soon this is going
Speaker 1: to result in any sort of tangible benefits for those
Speaker 1: federal government workers who have been fired, as you know,
Speaker 1: part of this effort to act all the probationary employees
Speaker 1: from the government. This pertained to one specific civilian employee
Speaker 1: who you know, was part of this hearing. So hard
Speaker 1: to say when or how this is going to ultimately
Speaker 1: be implemented, but you know, a significant move forward for
Speaker 1: those who are trying to fight back against the mass
Speaker 1: cuts and especially mass firings at the federal government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and in a sense, it's a process technicality in
Speaker 4: the sense that if today, the Department of Defense itself
Speaker 4: sends out emails to all of these people well I
Speaker 4: don't even know their emails don't work anymore, but they
Speaker 4: have to find them somehow and send them a letter saying,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm writing you from the Department of Defense
Speaker 4: and you are fired. And they've also started changing the
Speaker 4: wording of how they've done these firings to try to
Speaker 4: get them closer to legal. Out of the gate, they
Speaker 4: were saying, you are fired because your skills and your performance,
Speaker 4: you know, don't match the needs that we currently have.
Speaker 4: And so lots of federal workers. Then we're like, well,
Speaker 4: here's my I just had my performance review and I
Speaker 4: got all you know, I got gold stars and all
Speaker 4: the flowers you could ask for. And so now they
Speaker 4: have said, you know, basically a kind of a reorganization
Speaker 4: type of language, like it's not you, it's us. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't it's not you, it's me. We don't need
Speaker 4: you around anymore. It's not about your performance. Now they'd
Speaker 4: have to do that that new language and send it
Speaker 4: directly from you know, if it's Noah, then Noah would.
Speaker 2: Have to do the firing.
Speaker 4: And so then a judge might say okay, well this
Speaker 4: was improper, but now it's moot, so you're still fired.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and I also saw as part of their arguments here,
Speaker 1: the government is changing their tune. You know, originally they
Speaker 1: were saying, at all these agencies, you have to fire
Speaker 1: of your probationary employees, and now there's well it was
Speaker 1: really a recommendation, and then the agencies are taken upon
Speaker 1: themselves to fire all of these employees because that gets around.
Speaker 1: You know, what the judge said here is like there
Speaker 1: is no statue anywhere they said in the history of
Speaker 1: the universe that says OPM, just come in and fire
Speaker 1: all of these staff across all of these agencies. They're
Speaker 1: responsible for their own employees. They can fire whoever they
Speaker 1: want there, but you can't come in and hole of
Speaker 1: government mandate the Defense Department and everybody else to fire
Speaker 1: all of these employees. So the government is trying to
Speaker 1: get a little cute here. Oh well, we just this
Speaker 1: was just a you know, a strong recommendation, but we
Speaker 1: weren't really mandating it. So we'll see if that changes anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it would be like Noah trying to fire people
Speaker 4: at the Pentagon, right, Like, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: You can't do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and Bernie Sanders made a point that was pretty
Speaker 1: relevant to this, and it's one that I've been making
Speaker 1: for a while now, not as well as Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: of course, but or not as virally certainly as Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: But you know, all of these Senate confirmed agency heads
Speaker 1: now are totally irrelevant, Like they don't matter much at
Speaker 1: all at this point, because if some Doge kid says
Speaker 1: we're going to let go of this many people and
Speaker 1: we're going to close your office and we're going to
Speaker 1: get this program, they're the ones who have the final say.
Speaker 1: And you've been making the great point Ryan about you know,
Speaker 1: at the Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued these waivers
Speaker 1: for petfar saying no, this funding is going to continue,
Speaker 1: and DOGE is basically like, no, it's not. And it's
Speaker 1: Doge that ends up having the final word here. So
Speaker 1: Bernie was making a similar point about how just completely
Speaker 1: stripped of power these agency heads are and how irrelevant.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and take a listen to the way
Speaker 1: he phrased this on the Senate floor.
Speaker 6: Today, we are not voting on who the next Secretary
Speaker 6: of Labor is the next secretary of Labor, the next
Speaker 6: Secretary of Education, the next Secretary of Housing, the next
Speaker 6: Secretary of the Treasury is Elon Musk. And let us
Speaker 6: understand that reality and not play along with the charade.
Speaker 2: Does anyone here really think that any.
Speaker 6: Secretary of Labor, any secretary of Education, is going to
Speaker 6: make decisions by himself or herself. Just yesterday, President held
Speaker 6: a meeting with his cabinet. And who was the star
Speaker 6: of the meeting was the Secretary of Defense, so Secretary
Speaker 6: of State. No, it was an unelected official otems to
Speaker 6: be the wealthiest person on earth. It was Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: And at that meeting, President Trump asked his cabinet, is
Speaker 6: anybody unhappy with Elon?
Speaker 2: Well, if you.
Speaker 6: Are, we'll throw them out of here. In the quote,
Speaker 6: in other words, if any cabinet official has the courage
Speaker 6: to stand up to mister Musk and disobey as edicts,
Speaker 6: they are gone. So, mister chairman, my request to you
Speaker 6: is a simple one. Let's be honest. The American people
Speaker 6: understand it, and it's time that we understlitered as well.
Speaker 2: If you want.
Speaker 6: To discuss policies in the Department of let's bring in
Speaker 6: the real secretary jevn I respectfully request this committee bring
Speaker 6: Elon Musk before this committee so.
Speaker 2: That we can really hear what's going on with the government.
Speaker 3: Would you make of that moment, Ryan, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean fair point. If he wants to run the show,
Speaker 4: he should be the one that answers the question. Is
Speaker 4: accountable to the public and accountable to our elected bodies.
Speaker 4: And to the point that we were talking about earlier
Speaker 4: about them trying to make it more legal, russ Vote
Speaker 4: sent out a memo yesterday pretty to a lot of
Speaker 4: government senior government officials that was forwarded to me, and
Speaker 4: there's one key line I can read to you here.
Speaker 4: The shows the way that they're kind of tweaking their
Speaker 4: language to try to make it legal. They say, he
Speaker 4: says quote, pursuant to the President's direction, agencies should focus
Speaker 4: on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily
Speaker 4: mandated while driving the highest quality, most efficient delivery of
Speaker 4: their statutorily required functions. So what they're what they're going
Speaker 4: to argue is that Congress requires the EPA or or
Speaker 4: Noah or whatever to do this thing, and we are
Speaker 4: going to do our best to do that thing that
Speaker 4: you say you're going to do. They don't require us
Speaker 4: to do these things by statute, and so we're getting rid.
Speaker 2: Of them all.
Speaker 4: And just because we're getting rid of a lot of
Speaker 4: what we're statutorally required to do, it doesn't mean we're
Speaker 4: not going to still do the mission. So it's really
Speaker 4: it's sidestepping the unitary executive theory because it's it's saying no, no,
Speaker 4: we're doing what you want. Don't worry, we're just doing
Speaker 4: it cheaper and better, which is like nobody would nobody
Speaker 4: would argue that you can't do that. So then the
Speaker 4: question would be, well, is that what you're actually doing
Speaker 4: or you're just putting this in a memo so you
Speaker 4: can share it with the judge.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think we already have an answer to that.
Speaker 1: When you look at USAA being the most clear cut example,
Speaker 1: I mean that agency has been destroyed, and it is,
Speaker 1: you know, by law, an independent agency authorized by Congress
Speaker 1: through multiple successive legislative efforts, and so it is, you know,
Speaker 1: it is not legal to just destroy an agency, or
Speaker 1: even just to take the key parts of it and
Speaker 1: subsume it under the State Department would require Congressional legislation.
Speaker 1: So you know, in some of these agencies, maybe technically
Speaker 1: they're complying with what Congress you know, authorized and demanded
Speaker 1: of this agency, but we know certain examples that is
Speaker 1: definitely not the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think some of the genius of the moves that
Speaker 4: they're making now evil genius maybe, is that it makes
Speaker 4: us sound like hall monitors, where we're like, well, hold on,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, flipping over the board and reading
Speaker 4: the rules and saying, oh, you can't do that. That's
Speaker 4: not you know, that's not how you're supposed to get
Speaker 4: rid of USAID, even while you know, we have been
Speaker 4: very critical of lots of what usa ID does, so
Speaker 4: and they can they can take the It isn't higher
Speaker 4: ground necessarily.
Speaker 2: But it's different ground where they're like, you know, screw.
Speaker 4: You, Like people are sick of this stuff, we're getting
Speaker 4: rid of it, and you're the ones that are standing
Speaker 4: in the way of it.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And And it kind of flips the whole argument about
Speaker 4: the Constitution the Republic on its head because Democrats are
Speaker 4: so used to Republicans being the ones that insist upon
Speaker 4: every every word of the Constitution being honored faithfully, so
Speaker 4: then it's like whiplasher to be like, oh, article one
Speaker 4: doesn't matter, never mind, like yeah, article one, it's like
Speaker 4: a big part of it. It's the first one, and
Speaker 4: it's a huge chunk of it. It's like, oh, I
Speaker 4: think if.
Speaker 1: It had stayed in the realm of USAI D I
Speaker 1: think that argument probably you know, has traction. Although even there,
Speaker 1: you know, people are not cruel. They want to don't
Speaker 1: want to deny. That's why there was a back.
Speaker 2: That's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: They have not and by the way, they have not
Speaker 1: restarted ebola prevention funding and so these things even though
Speaker 1: you know this might be in Africa, now we all
Speaker 1: know from very recent experience, it doesn't stay in Africa.
Speaker 2: So you know they have planes that can fly right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you when you ask people like should the government
Speaker 1: be more efficient?
Speaker 3: Should we spend less on foreign aid? They're like sure.
Speaker 1: When it's like, should we deny life saving medication to
Speaker 1: babies born with HIV living in an orphanage, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Of course not.
Speaker 1: But again to the point, it's obviously gotten way beyond
Speaker 1: just USAID at this point, I mean, we could I
Speaker 1: could go ahead and pull this up. Actually they're planning
Speaker 1: on slashing half of the Social Security Administration, and some
Speaker 1: of the headlines that are coming out in towns like
Speaker 1: local cities around the country really do underscore how the
Speaker 1: federal government is not just something that exists among like
Speaker 1: hippie liberals in d C with Ukraine flags and their bios.
Speaker 3: You know, this is these.
Speaker 1: Are headlines from Green Bay and from you know, in
Speaker 1: Michigan and in Birmingham social Security Las Vegas social Security
Speaker 1: offices that are slated for closure as part of these cuts.
Speaker 1: We've seen the impact to the National Park Service already.
Speaker 1: Obviously this pair is too with the budget resolution that
Speaker 1: just passed through the House, with every single Republican save
Speaker 1: for one voting for it, that's going to attack Medicaid.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a very clear picture that's
Speaker 1: emerging for people. You see this, you know, in the
Speaker 1: way the poll numbers have moved as well, where it's
Speaker 1: like one billionaire has taken control of the government and
Speaker 1: is running it for the benefit of him and his
Speaker 1: buddies and has slash any program that may benefit you
Speaker 1: or anything that the government does that you like or
Speaker 1: like maybe error traffic safety as one example, that's getting
Speaker 1: slashed while a bunch of billy are getting tax cuts.
Speaker 1: So even though the whole monitor thing like I hear
Speaker 1: you there, but I think we've gone way beyond that
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 4: Right, the higher level response to that is, like, you, guys,
Speaker 4: people voted for you because they think rent is too high,
Speaker 4: interest rates are too high, egg prices are too high,
Speaker 4: and you're closing the Social Security office in the town. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which people need that the soci Security office open for
Speaker 4: obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: And they'll say, well, if we.
Speaker 4: If we close the Social Security office, then will save
Speaker 4: money and eventually interest rates will go down as a
Speaker 4: result of that. That's that is the most broken, kind
Speaker 4: of slow way that you could ever try to do
Speaker 4: monetary policy by just you know, firing a bunch of
Speaker 4: Noah workers like that, you're not being serious about where
Speaker 4: the federal government spends money, not social Security staffers in
Speaker 4: Alabama or Wisconsin or Michigan.
Speaker 2: Well, especially, that's not moving the needle on interest.
Speaker 1: Rates, especially when you're pairing that with four trillion dollar
Speaker 1: tax cuts for the rich, right, Like you're not Like,
Speaker 1: clearly you're not serious about deficit reduction. The only person
Speaker 1: who was actually serious about It was Thomas Massey who
Speaker 1: voted against the bill because he was like, it blows
Speaker 1: up the debt and the depths.
Speaker 2: Right, you also wouldn't got the IRS.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, because every dollar you spent at the IRS
Speaker 1: is returned by the way. I mean, you know CFPB
Speaker 1: again if you're talking about like efficiency, and that was
Speaker 1: one of the best agencies in terms of return on
Speaker 1: investment for the dollars that are invested there. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, causing pain and misery among the federal government
Speaker 1: workforce is not going to do a damn thing. If
Speaker 1: you look at the if you fired every single federal
Speaker 1: government worker, it is like a relatively small proportion of
Speaker 1: the federal government budget. So you know, this is clearly
Speaker 1: not about cutting debt, cutting deficit, cutting the fat. It's
Speaker 1: about consolidation of power in an eye ideological agenda. I mean,
Speaker 1: you are more of a history buff than I am,
Speaker 1: but you know, it seems like there's some parallels here
Speaker 1: with like, you know, Mao's Cultural Revolution and the purges
Speaker 1: of the bureaucracy. You know in that era is kind
Speaker 1: of what it's i would say, scape.
Speaker 4: Analogy spegoating people, escapegoating people rather than having the courage
Speaker 4: to go after where the real money is.
Speaker 2: Like you could you want to save a trillion bucks,
Speaker 2: you know, go after the F thirty five program or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe I don't know if it's a trillion.
Speaker 4: It's an enormous amount of money that we've spent on
Speaker 4: this this jet that we don't need.
Speaker 2: We got drones. Yeah, just get rid of that. But
Speaker 2: you won't, you won't.
Speaker 4: Go after that because that's where your money comes from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So here's one more legal decision that came down that
Speaker 1: could be significant. A judge's ordered some Trump administration officials,
Speaker 1: at least one DOGE staffer, to have to sit for
Speaker 1: depositions in a lawsuit over the group's access to sensitive
Speaker 1: government systems. The judge involved here called dog's activities opaque.
Speaker 1: I believe they're limited to eight hours of you know,
Speaker 1: depot testimony from these staffers that are involved here. And
Speaker 1: this could be I mean, because it has been completely opaque.
Speaker 1: We've had to rely on whistleblowers from within this very
Speaker 1: these various agencies and some intrepid reporting from a whole
Speaker 1: range of people, both kind of your traditional media types
Speaker 1: like Jeff Stein, but also some who are more independent
Speaker 1: media to try to figure out what they're even up
Speaker 1: to and there, and we still have there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of unanswered questions, So could be some interesting things
Speaker 1: that come out of those depositions. So it's something to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if we ever get them, you know, it's you
Speaker 4: know they're going to because they're gonna have some wins
Speaker 4: too in the courts.
Speaker 2: Yes, we'll see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they will.
Speaker 1: They certainly will, I think, especially when they get up
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court given the ideological valance there. We've
Speaker 1: mentioned Noah a couple times, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the more significant cuts that's moving forward. It's also one
Speaker 1: that was significantly signaled in Project twenty twenty five. They
Speaker 1: are mass firing upwards of eighteen hundred workers at the
Speaker 1: National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, including top climate scientists and
Speaker 1: weather forecasters. The firings reportedly include workers at the National
Speaker 1: Weather Service. And as I mentioned and Ryan you may
Speaker 1: know more about, this has been kind of an ideological
Speaker 1: project of the russ vote right, and in Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, first of all, they hate they hate Noah
Speaker 1: because they are honest about climate change, so they don't
Speaker 1: like that. And then they also, you know, right now,
Speaker 1: anyone including there's some weather ubers who have gotten really big,
Speaker 1: but your local weather forecast or anyone can access the
Speaker 1: data and resources of the National Weather Service. And obviously
Speaker 1: that's really important because we are having increasingly extreme and
Speaker 1: increasingly regular climate catastrophes, and the right, led by RUSS
Speaker 1: vote and Project twenty twenty five, et cetera, they have
Speaker 1: long wanted to effectively privatize that function so that people
Speaker 1: have to pay in order to get that kind of research,
Speaker 1: and it's stripped of anything that might indicate that, you know,
Speaker 1: the climate crisis is fueling these things, and any of
Speaker 1: the research that indicates what direction the climate crisis might take.
Speaker 4: Right, it's for them, and actually, honestly, you could call
Speaker 4: it it's socialism, like the public comes together and collectively
Speaker 4: funds something that we all believe that we need, which
Speaker 4: is some forecast about what the weather is going to
Speaker 4: be like, both extreme events and regular events. And you know,
Speaker 4: we make fun of the weatherman for getting things wrong.
Speaker 2: But the are the the.
Speaker 4: Apps on our phone are pretty good, like you think,
Speaker 4: if you think about it, if you know, they tell.
Speaker 2: You what it's going to be.
Speaker 4: They're they're nailing it pretty often, and people find it
Speaker 4: very helpfully. You've got you know, free access all the
Speaker 4: time to this pretty accurate data, and they take for
Speaker 4: granted that people some people take for granted that that
Speaker 4: just comes from the sky, but it has to get
Speaker 4: filtered through a bunch of scientists who are you know,
Speaker 4: training their whole lives to figure this stuff out and
Speaker 4: then and then pump it out to us for free.
Speaker 4: And you're right, ACU Weather and these other places want
Speaker 4: to just you know, monopolize it so they can so
Speaker 4: they can charge you for it. But at the same
Speaker 4: time they're going to it'll be a much crappier service
Speaker 4: because they are getting rid of the people who know
Speaker 4: who know how to do it right.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: it requires significant scale to be able to do it
Speaker 1: well and to be able to predict things effectively in
Speaker 1: you know, every part of what is a large and
Speaker 1: vast country, et cetera. So yeah, you'll be paying more
Speaker 1: and you will be getting less. There were I wanted
Speaker 1: to show two different people one knock.
Speaker 2: On effect this could have.
Speaker 4: The insurance companies are getting freaked out at a lack
Speaker 4: of access to data, true, which and then if insurance
Speaker 4: companies are in doubt, they're just going to raise rates
Speaker 4: like they're you know, they're not your friend, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: So now we're shoot ourselves in a couple of feet
Speaker 4: this way.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to show a kind of like traditional
Speaker 1: weather person and also I think the biggest YouTube weather guy,
Speaker 1: Ryan hall al Roker wade in and said, going into
Speaker 1: the severe weather and hurricane season, this cannot be good.
Speaker 1: Commerce departments laid off hundreds of NOAH employees, many with
Speaker 1: specialized skills, who work at one of the world's top
Speaker 1: climate science and weather forecasting agencies. Why it matters National
Speaker 1: Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for providing weather watches and warnings,
Speaker 1: monitoring studying earth climate, as well as operating weather satellites
Speaker 1: and protecting marine life. The layoffs of probotionary employees that
Speaker 1: began Thursday hit soon after cuts at the behest of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's DOGE occurred at other climate and environment agencies.
Speaker 1: The big picture, Noah's missions require staff to work around
Speaker 1: the clock to monitor dan dangerous weather, earthquakes that could
Speaker 1: cause tsunamis and other hazards. He goes on to note
Speaker 1: that just in the past several weeks, they've been essential.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the stories that I've been covering
Speaker 1: is the that you know, there were these horrific floods
Speaker 1: in Appalachia, across parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky,
Speaker 1: historic levels of devastation.
Speaker 3: First of all, it.
Speaker 1: Took Trump almost two weeks to declare state of emergency
Speaker 1: in West Virginia, which is just completely unforgivable. And you know,
Speaker 1: if it had been Biden on the other side, it
Speaker 1: would have been a total freak count from the Rye Hocket,
Speaker 1: you abandon these people, et cetera, et cetera. But you know,
Speaker 1: it really is a sort of coordinated attack not only
Speaker 1: on Noah but also on FEMA. Trump is that he
Speaker 1: wants to dismantle and send it to the states. It
Speaker 1: was stated like West Virginia's a poor, small state, is
Speaker 1: not going to have the ability to respond on their own.
Speaker 1: But in any case, al Roker pointing out there that
Speaker 1: the regularity of these events, now you say it's you know,
Speaker 1: what was once a once in a hundred year flood
Speaker 1: seems to be happening, you know, once every five year,
Speaker 1: once every decade, with increasing regularity, all because of the
Speaker 1: you know, escalating climate crisis.
Speaker 4: Right, Federal emergency management is one of the most obvious
Speaker 4: things you would want federalized. Yeah, if if a small,
Speaker 4: if a small poor state like West Virginia could do
Speaker 4: it on its own, they would.
Speaker 2: Right they can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you know,
Speaker 1: and actually it will be not that it matters whether
Speaker 1: it's Trump voters or Democratic voters or whatever, but it
Speaker 1: will be more red states that are harder hit because
Speaker 1: states like California and New York, you know, they still
Speaker 1: need federal garment help, but they will be more able
Speaker 1: to respond. They have more resources than a state like
Speaker 1: you know, West Virginia, or you know, Mississippi and Alabama,
Speaker 1: a so on. Louisiana often hard hit by hurricanes as well.
Speaker 2: Kansaw, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: They all get whacked with Yeah, that's exactly right, tornadoes.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is this is one that is
Speaker 1: important for literally everyone in the country. This is the
Speaker 1: YouTuber I was mentioning Ryan Hall. He says, this is
Speaker 1: Devid's stating news. Today's reported layoffs at the NWS will
Speaker 1: impact our ability to keep American safe from extreme weather.
Speaker 1: These forecasters are essentil frontline workers who save lives during hurricanes, tornadoes,
Speaker 1: and floods. Cutting these meteorologists isn't just short sighted, it
Speaker 1: is dangerous. And I think that's you know that almost
Speaker 1: goes without saying, or it should go without saying.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's very similar to cutting a bowl of funding,
Speaker 4: like and they cut it.
Speaker 2: You know that the Ebola outbreak.
Speaker 4: Was I think was declared January twenty eighth or something,
Speaker 4: and to be pausing at Bola prevention funding at that
Speaker 4: moment is absurd. And you know he claimed, oh we
Speaker 4: kicked it back up very quickly. That appears, like you said,
Speaker 4: not to be true. But even if you wait, you
Speaker 4: lost three days, and only three days. I people understand
Speaker 4: how infectious a bowla is, like you have, like it's
Speaker 4: you save so much money and so many lives by
Speaker 4: getting it right away. It costs so much more to
Speaker 4: be slow and let it spread and then try to
Speaker 4: come in and contain it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, with any one of these things,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, maybe it'll be okay, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: they'll get the funding turned back on, or the local
Speaker 1: health authorities will do an effective job of stopping the spread.
Speaker 3: Maybe it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Maybe the cuts that they air with the air traffic
Speaker 1: controller at the FAA, maybe it'll work out, you know.
Speaker 2: And maybe yesterday they missed each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it worked out, you know, no harm, no foul. Right,
Speaker 1: it's all good. I don't know what you libs are
Speaker 1: panicking about. You know, maybe the Social Security Administration will
Speaker 1: be able to cut all the checks on time and
Speaker 1: with accuracy with half the staff.
Speaker 4: But and nobody's nobody's case will get denied because they
Speaker 4: didn't have access to an office.
Speaker 1: But sure, right, yeah, or you know, maybe just not
Speaker 1: that many so we don't really care all that much
Speaker 1: or hear about them. Probably yeah, And maybe you know,
Speaker 1: they'll do good enough job of predicting hurricanes and tornadoes
Speaker 1: and whatever that it doesn't cause an immediate catastrophic loss
Speaker 1: of life. But that's a lot of ifs, and you're
Speaker 1: spreading them across the entire government, you know, food safety,
Speaker 1: like all of these things. Hey, Emily, Hi, Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: just in time. Actually one more story and then we're
Speaker 1: getting to Epstein and tape. So you're right on schedule.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you're talking about all of these
Speaker 1: risks and cuts comparted across the federal government, I think
Speaker 1: David Day made this point, like you are taking responsibility
Speaker 1: for every catastrophe.
Speaker 2: That's kind of unfold stupid.
Speaker 1: And even in the best of circumstances, there are going
Speaker 1: to be catastrophes, even when things are running at full
Speaker 1: tilt and it's most efficient, and you know, God forbid,
Speaker 1: we have another pandemic. They had to quickly scramble to
Speaker 1: rehire the people who were monitoring the bird flu spread.
Speaker 1: You know, they had to quickly rehire the dude was
Speaker 1: like watching over nuclear safety. How many other stories like
Speaker 1: there like that are there across government that we don't
Speaker 1: even know about.
Speaker 4: The attack on and Emily and I've talked about this.
Speaker 4: The attack on the FAA and air traffic controllers is
Speaker 4: the one that is probably just politically the stupidest, because
Speaker 4: you then own every plane crash after that, even if
Speaker 4: you had nothing to do with it. I was talking
Speaker 4: to an air traffic controller yesterday who said that while
Speaker 4: so far air traffic controllers themselves have not been affected,
Speaker 4: like have not been fired, even the ones that are probationary.
Speaker 4: He said he's lost most of his support staff and contracts,
Speaker 4: like contractors that were assisting them. So before they'd have
Speaker 4: people helping with their scheduling, helping order equipment that you
Speaker 4: need to make sure that all of your stuff continues
Speaker 4: to work, and all the other kind of technical support
Speaker 4: that goes on in the background. So they got rid
Speaker 4: of all of them, and so now it's just the
Speaker 4: air traffic controllers. And so Elon Musk is like, well, hey, look,
Speaker 4: we didn't fire the air traffic controllers, so it's not
Speaker 4: our fault if there's a plane crash. But now you
Speaker 4: have the air traffic controllers trying to fix the equipment
Speaker 4: and ordering the parts for the equipment and scheduling their
Speaker 4: own travel and like doing all the things that they
Speaker 4: used to have help doing. So while they're doing that,
Speaker 4: what are they not doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you could think about it in the
Speaker 1: context of this show, like, you know, if.
Speaker 3: All the support staff of this show was fired, the
Speaker 3: show would still what we didn't.
Speaker 2: Fire, Crystal, What are you complaining about?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: It would not be a good show. It would not
Speaker 1: go off, Well, it wouldn't go out on time. I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to post the show every day.
Speaker 2: It would be right in our basements.
Speaker 5: It would be TikTok. You guys would just move the
Speaker 5: show to TikTok.
Speaker 3: It's true, that's true.
Speaker 2: What are you complaining about? Yeah, you still get still
Speaker 2: get it?
Speaker 1: So okay, this is actually a good transition to this
Speaker 1: story that I've been following closely and actually that I
Speaker 1: posted a TikTok about. Thank you Emily for that ability
Speaker 1: to and I'm over ten thousand followers now, just big milestones.
Speaker 1: I can apply for the TikTok Creators Fund. Very exciting stuff.
Speaker 1: Cute helping me with that. But in any case, it
Speaker 1: sure looks like Elon Musk is just like stealing this
Speaker 1: two point four billion dollar contract that had been previously
Speaker 1: awarded to Verizon over at the FAA for so he's
Speaker 1: you know, his operatives there are taking it for Starlink.
Speaker 1: And the way all of this went down is, you know,
Speaker 1: you had that horrific crash. Elon had been putting pressure
Speaker 1: on the fa administrator even before Trump was inaugurated. They've
Speaker 1: been going forward with these cuts at the FAA. They
Speaker 1: sent over some SpaceX engineers to look around and see
Speaker 1: what's going on, see if they can make it safer,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And those people just came in effectively and
Speaker 1: were like, oh, this two point four billion dollar contract
Speaker 1: we're going to give to Verizon, We're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 3: Now we're giving it to Starlink again.
Speaker 1: You know, this is illegal because there's a whole contract
Speaker 1: process that has to play out. You have to have
Speaker 1: competitive bids, which I think is something that everyone would
Speaker 1: kind of intuitively understand that you don't want to just
Speaker 1: give out contracts to whoever is favored status obviously the FAAAA.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure things are done in like
Speaker 1: the best possible way. I have no idea if Verizon is,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a fantastic job and doing an amazing
Speaker 1: job or whatever. But the fact of the richest man
Speaker 1: on the planet sending his operatives in there and just
Speaker 1: like taking this contract for himself one more very brazen
Speaker 1: instance of the complete self dealing and corruption and conflicts
Speaker 1: of interest just inherent in all of this. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: you know, the FA was also investigating SpaceX for a
Speaker 1: launch that went wrong where the rocket came apart. A
Speaker 1: dozen commercial flights had to be diverted and so this
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Something tells me that investigation is
Speaker 1: not going to be going forward in the same way,
Speaker 1: and there was some reportings suggests that you know that
Speaker 1: investigation of spaces and others and other investigations of Tesla
Speaker 1: were part of the motivating factor for Elon must to
Speaker 1: get as involved in Trump's campaign and in Doge as
Speaker 1: he ultimately has.
Speaker 5: Well, can I just say, I was just gonna say quickly, Ryan, like,
Speaker 5: we don't know.
Speaker 7: This is one of the things that really bothers me,
Speaker 7: And honestly it should bother Elon. Obviously it doesn't, but
Speaker 7: it should because you'll never know. Like I actually think
Speaker 7: some of his bids probably are extremely competitive, some of
Speaker 7: his products are extremely compelling, some of what he does
Speaker 7: is extremely compelling. But this actually is like the kind
Speaker 7: of thing that we're never gonna know sometimes, like this one.
Speaker 7: The reporting has been really good on it, but there
Speaker 7: are going to be contracts awarded that we don't know
Speaker 7: probably until like five years down the road, that there
Speaker 7: was wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. And like, it
Speaker 7: makes you less competitive when you just know you're going
Speaker 7: to get the bid, It makes your products suck more
Speaker 7: when you know that you can just rely on getting
Speaker 7: the government contract because you're the one giving the government contracts.
Speaker 7: It's actually not good for anybody. Like it's self dealing
Speaker 7: of course, and like that's corrupt and gross. But in
Speaker 7: this case, there's probably a good case to be made
Speaker 7: that he really did have a more competitive, better bid,
Speaker 7: But it doesn't that trajectory historically doesn't continue because when
Speaker 7: it gets less competitive, if your product gets less good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there was no competitive there was no bid,
Speaker 1: there was just him taking the contract.
Speaker 3: And the officials at.
Speaker 1: The FAA actually have refused to sign off on it
Speaker 1: under pressure. I don't know if they have yet or not,
Speaker 1: so they're having to like elevate it to the Transportation
Speaker 1: Secretary Sean Duffy, but they you know, this was this
Speaker 1: contract was years in the making with Verizon. Apparently next
Speaker 1: month was when they were supposed to sign off on
Speaker 1: the final thing, and Elon tweeted something negative about this
Speaker 1: Verizon situation. Then lo and behold his doge guys are
Speaker 1: just like, yep, we're going to.
Speaker 5: Take it right.
Speaker 4: So, and what complicates is that a source of mine
Speaker 4: who's involved in this area said that the company that
Speaker 4: was that's losing it, which is called L three Harris
Speaker 4: using they were losing the bid to Verizon, like they
Speaker 4: got in and started weaponizing the presence of SpaceX and
Speaker 4: Elon Musk, and like they helped to kind of foment
Speaker 4: this story.
Speaker 2: Like that that's what That's what he was saying.
Speaker 4: So it's like when you so, now you're going to
Speaker 4: have two contractors, you know, fighting over a project, and
Speaker 4: because Musk has these obvious conflicts of interest, the one
Speaker 4: who loses is going to you know, throw Musk up
Speaker 4: and be like, actually, look, Musk is trying to come
Speaker 4: in and steal this thing because L three's goal is
Speaker 4: to just reset the entire thing and go back to
Speaker 4: the status quo of them having the contract. And so
Speaker 4: that's another way, if there's any truth to that, Like,
Speaker 4: that's another way that taxpayers and American citizens lose by
Speaker 4: having a guy conflicted out the wazoo right in the
Speaker 4: center of this and talking openly about how SpaceX is
Speaker 4: great and should do you know, because it looks so bad.
Speaker 4: Then then they go, oh, you know what, forget it,
Speaker 4: Forget Verizon, forget SpaceX, just keep it how it is
Speaker 4: with you know, And there's maybe there was reasons to
Speaker 4: move away from L three, Like, I mean, they're not
Speaker 4: that efficient and they're ripping off the government, but they
Speaker 4: then got to play the corruption to their own corrupt advantage.
Speaker 2: So it's just.
Speaker 4: A giant mess and not how anybody should want a
Speaker 4: government to run.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm also illegal, like a DOJ source pointing out
Speaker 4: to me yesterday that there are criminal conflict of interest
Speaker 4: statutes like if you if you take action as a
Speaker 4: government employee and any government employee, including a special government
Speaker 4: employee like Musk, for the benefit of your own personal
Speaker 4: financial interests, there are actually criminal statutes involved. Obviously, nobody
Speaker 4: in the DOJ is going to prosecute that now, but
Speaker 4: it's not as if it just goes away immediately.
Speaker 1: Right, And maybe must doesn't have to worry because he
Speaker 1: can get a pardon.
Speaker 3: From the government from Trump.
Speaker 1: But true, you know, is every underling who's executing his orders?
Speaker 3: Are they all going to to get a pardon?
Speaker 1: Are they all gonna you know, are they going to
Speaker 1: get thrown onto the bus at some point? Oh, I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. It was you know,
Speaker 1: big balls, it was really running.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 2: The thing is he doesn't know doubt about it with him.
Speaker 7: The thing is that, like maybe there were people in
Speaker 7: the White House who didn't know that Anita Dunn, for example,
Speaker 7: had interests in TikTok or whatever she had her many
Speaker 7: interests in. But with Elon Musk, he doesn't actually need
Speaker 7: to give anybody direct orders because everybody knows Elon Musk favors.
Speaker 5: Space Space Starling Tesla.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like you don't have to have Elon Musk being
Speaker 7: like go screw with Rivian. You know, it's like people
Speaker 7: kind of know where he's coming from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is also, by the way, something that has happened.
Speaker 1: They did go and screw with some Rivian thing that
Speaker 1: was happening in Georgia. So all right, so let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and move on to the much anticipated Epstein portion
Speaker 1: that we wanted to get Emily in on, in particular
Speaker 1: because this has been become quite a quite a drama
Speaker 1: over on the MAGA side of things. So they've been
Speaker 1: teasing we're going to release the Ebstein files, etc. Now
Speaker 1: I've been skeptical because Trump was buddies with Epstein for
Speaker 1: a long time and shows up in the Epstein flight
Speaker 1: logs and whatever.
Speaker 3: So I was like, I don't think y'all are going
Speaker 3: to get what you really want.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, a bunch of Epstein stuff has already
Speaker 1: been made public in the past.
Speaker 3: So they hold this big photo op.
Speaker 1: You can see, you know, a bunch of these like
Speaker 1: right wing influencers here.
Speaker 3: What that's is that d C.
Speaker 7: Draino in THEO Tik top lips of TikTok, Mike Cernovic
Speaker 7: and Liz Wheeler.
Speaker 5: By the way, but.
Speaker 2: For you tab.
Speaker 1: So they've got these binders that says the Epstein Files
Speaker 1: Phase one. They're so excited they're doing their you know,
Speaker 1: their photo op outside of the White House. They start
Speaker 1: going live and flipping through the binder to see what
Speaker 1: they find, and lo and behold, not a whole hell
Speaker 1: of a lot. So let me actually pull up this
Speaker 1: video of flipping through the binder because it is it
Speaker 1: is pretty funny. A lot of reactions and a lot
Speaker 1: of just things that already were publicly available.
Speaker 3: So you can see here.
Speaker 1: The scrolling through, yeah, of the redactions, and apparently someone
Speaker 1: was saying this is something that Gawker had previously published
Speaker 1: but actually with fewer like it didn't have the redactions.
Speaker 1: So this is information that's been available for a decade,
Speaker 1: and just the way of doing it, to like inviting
Speaker 1: in the most online people in the entire world, these
Speaker 1: right wing influencers to do their little photo ops. It
Speaker 1: didn't land well with a lot of people, Emily.
Speaker 7: It didn't land well with people on the right. It
Speaker 7: didn't land well with other conservative influencers, let alone like
Speaker 7: genuine conservative journalists, who were furious that they have been
Speaker 7: reporting out these stories with some degree of like seriousness.
Speaker 5: For a long time.
Speaker 7: And then there was you know, there's all kinds of
Speaker 7: speculation about whether this was intentionally a photo op or
Speaker 7: whether it was just the people waiting for Kere Starmer.
Speaker 7: But you can see some of them are literally posing
Speaker 7: with the binders. So turning it into like an influencer
Speaker 7: circus was really offensive to.
Speaker 5: Some people on the right. It were just.
Speaker 7: Absolutely furious, And I mean, this is I share obviously
Speaker 7: your's skepticism on this, Crystal. Maybe we'll get a little
Speaker 7: bit more information on some of this, but I think
Speaker 7: what's going on, and this is how it unfolded. Yesterday
Speaker 7: they say that Pam Bondi and Cash Batel were being
Speaker 7: undermined by the Southern District of New York, which was
Speaker 7: supposed to hand over new Epstein records and at the
Speaker 7: last minute did not. They were supposed to give Pam
Speaker 7: Bondy and you know, Cash Batel more information that was
Speaker 7: going to be released, and they didn't do it. So
Speaker 7: what's interesting about COPE is that they didn't present it
Speaker 7: to the influencers this way. If they knew, right, if
Speaker 7: the dj knew that this is what was happening, that
Speaker 7: they didn't have like really any bombshells, they didn't have
Speaker 7: any good information whatever.
Speaker 5: That is not how they presented it to the public.
Speaker 7: They presented it like we are doing a public service,
Speaker 7: thank you so much, you know Pam Bondi. We saw
Speaker 7: some of them saying for releasing this, making sure we're
Speaker 7: on top of this.
Speaker 5: It was a cover your ass story.
Speaker 7: I'm sure there's truth to the fact that the FBI
Speaker 7: doesn't want to give all of these records, but it's
Speaker 7: a cover your ass story to say after the fact.
Speaker 7: After this lands like a lead balloon because you take
Speaker 7: a story that's really serious to Maga and you can
Speaker 7: hate Mega people as much as you want, but there's
Speaker 7: genuine concern about about Epstein in MAGA world, and that
Speaker 7: might sound silly given the Trump and Epstein friendship, but
Speaker 7: that is real, Like people are genuinely they care about
Speaker 7: the Epstein stuff, like sound of free them.
Speaker 5: The story about child trafficking was.
Speaker 7: Huge in in MAGA world and in the sort of
Speaker 7: on the right. More broadly, it's a serious issue. So
Speaker 7: after it lands like a lead balloon, then we start
Speaker 7: seeing this cope from the DOJ saying you know that
Speaker 7: it's being thwarted by the Southern District of New York
Speaker 7: and all of this. My broad theory is that all
Speaker 7: of this is to lay the groundwork and condition the
Speaker 7: people in their camp to not expect much to write
Speaker 7: like this is not that they're not they'll be able
Speaker 7: to like continue blaming the deep state essentially.
Speaker 1: Well, Trump had always, you know, he'd get asked about
Speaker 1: this periodically. First of all, he got asked about what
Speaker 1: you know, when Glene Maxwell was on trial or whatever,
Speaker 1: like do you think about it?
Speaker 3: Well, I wish her.
Speaker 1: Well, He's gotten asked multiple times about releasing the Epstein files,
Speaker 1: and he always demmersed, you know, it would be like
Speaker 1: yes JFK, yes RFK, like yes UFO Epstein. Well, there
Speaker 1: might be some personal details, there will have to be
Speaker 1: careful change the subject.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was his famous interview with Rachel Campo Stuffy
Speaker 7: on Fox News where he did that.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And to your point about the influencers and the way
Speaker 1: that they approached this, they apparently all were on like
Speaker 1: coordinated talking points.
Speaker 3: Here here's DC Draino.
Speaker 1: Today I met with President Trump, vpjd Vans, Pam Bomdy
Speaker 1: Cash Hotel in the Oval Office. They handed me a
Speaker 1: binder copy the Epstein files. This is the most transparent
Speaker 1: administration in American history. The best part this is just
Speaker 1: the start. A g Boni confirmed there are thousands more
Speaker 1: Epstein file documents being secretly held. Blah blah blah. And
Speaker 1: then oh look at this. Today I met with blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. They handed me a binder copy the most
Speaker 1: transparent administration in American history.
Speaker 3: The best part this is just the start.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, you couldn't even come up with your
Speaker 1: own like lame tweet language to be willing useful idiots
Speaker 1: in this photo stunt. That's that's pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 3: Ryan.
Speaker 4: And at first I was saying, thinking, I don't blame
Speaker 4: the White House for this, because the White House's job
Speaker 4: is propaganda, and the propagandist's job is to make it
Speaker 4: look not like propaganda. You gotta take the material and
Speaker 4: you rephrase it. But I do blame the White House
Speaker 4: because they wrote it in this like cute see the
Speaker 4: best part, the best is yet to.
Speaker 2: Come or whatever, which just begs for the propagandas to
Speaker 2: just the best is yet and she's part in Greece.
Speaker 4: She was right, So it just begs the propagandists to
Speaker 4: just copy and paste it, and so they did and
Speaker 4: so and then they got caught.
Speaker 5: Moron blames the DOJ.
Speaker 7: Yeah, basically this has been an absolute like I just
Speaker 7: like from.
Speaker 5: What I ha.
Speaker 3: Its hair, let her cook.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 7: So the House Judiciary Committee tweeted a Rick role about
Speaker 7: the Epstein files yesterday, seeming like a literal Rick role,
Speaker 7: seeming to be blaming or like making a joke about
Speaker 7: the deep state thwarting the release efforts, and people were furious,
Speaker 7: saying this is not funny, like there's nothing to be
Speaker 7: joking about here.
Speaker 5: And so all of this has been this is probably.
Speaker 7: The earliest like real infighting that I have, Like there's
Speaker 7: always small infighting, but what this did inside the administration
Speaker 7: that you have so many different fingers pointing in so
Speaker 7: many different directions, and people are furious because it destroyed,
Speaker 7: you know, certain relationships with influencers that are.
Speaker 5: Now really furious. It's it's been an.
Speaker 7: Absolute dumpster fire of twenty four hours just because of
Speaker 7: the stunt. And so this is a very early like
Speaker 7: when books are written. This blow up, I think will
Speaker 7: be a really consequential moment in the second administration just
Speaker 7: because of what it did to different relationships.
Speaker 3: That is interesting.
Speaker 4: You know, the guy was killed on Trump's watch, Like
Speaker 4: Trump's not giving you this information.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, a good point, just say, let me just
Speaker 2: save you the suspense.
Speaker 3: Good point. And this is Laura Lumer.
Speaker 1: We reference to all the social media influences who were
Speaker 1: at the White House. How come you are running cover
Speaker 1: for pedophiles? Every single one of you is chosen to
Speaker 1: not share the files with the public wire protecting pedophiles.
Speaker 1: How come you haven't posted the screenshots of the documents?
Speaker 1: The reason is because there wasn't Eventually, you know, they
Speaker 1: did show like I showed you that video of them
Speaker 1: flipping through. The reason they weren't sharing them was because
Speaker 1: there wasn't much really there. But certainly they got you know,
Speaker 1: used for this propaganda effort, and she continued to go
Speaker 1: after them as many other people did as well. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I can't help but notice, of course, the the buck
Speaker 1: never stops with Trump, right, Yeah, it's the deep state,
Speaker 1: It's Pam Bondi's fall as Cash Betel's fault, It's the
Speaker 1: sdn Y, It's this is that it's never Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who Jeffrey Epstein claims was his best buddy for tech,
Speaker 1: who was president, who was president when yeah, when I
Speaker 1: think died.
Speaker 7: And I think all of this document dump promises that
Speaker 7: you know, we're I think if if some of these
Speaker 7: documents are dumped, it'll be wonderful. And it's great that
Speaker 7: he's making the promises, but I think a lot of
Speaker 7: this is conditioning people to have their expectations lowered in
Speaker 7: a way that's helpful for the Trump administration. I actually
Speaker 7: reached out to the CIA over the last week asking
Speaker 7: about Section three of the JFK Release EO, which, like
Speaker 7: Jefferson Morley and other people have said, could allow the
Speaker 7: CIA director to just keep some records sealed. You know,
Speaker 7: like there are way like there are loopholes actually that
Speaker 7: could be potentially exploited, and the CIA gave me a
Speaker 7: complete non answer about how they're like cooperating and blah
Speaker 7: blah blah, just some.
Speaker 5: Very specific questions. So I think what we're.
Speaker 7: Going to see is some stuff is going to come out,
Speaker 7: but it's definitely not going to be like a substantial
Speaker 7: It'll be substantial, I shouldn't say non substantial, but it
Speaker 7: won't be everything, and it probably won't even be that
Speaker 7: close to everything. And I think that there's a recognition
Speaker 7: of that, and people were trying to sort of lay
Speaker 7: the groundwork.
Speaker 4: So one other point on Epstein, and let me share
Speaker 4: something here. This is a tweet of mine from years
Speaker 4: ago that still gets shared every now and then. I
Speaker 4: think asking for the list and all that stuff is fine,
Speaker 4: but here is the thing that people really should want
Speaker 4: to know about. So this is July eighth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: I just dug this up.
Speaker 4: So, according to the FBI, they found CDs in Jeffrey
Speaker 4: Epstein's safe that were labeled quote young than a name
Speaker 4: plus name. So they found all of these CDs with
Speaker 4: the name of a young person and presumably the name
Speaker 4: of somebody that Epstein cared enough to write their name
Speaker 4: on the CD they took you can you can read
Speaker 4: this file here. They took these out with them. This
Speaker 4: is this is what we need, right who whose names
Speaker 4: are in between these brackets?
Speaker 1: Well, and one one other thing that we need too
Speaker 1: is I mean, there are a lot of indications that
Speaker 1: he was basically working for Israeli intelligence, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and which is another reason to be skeptical that this administration.
Speaker 2: Would be maybe also US yeah.
Speaker 3: In releasing that sort of information.
Speaker 1: You know, So you think, you really think that the
Speaker 1: guy that Mary Maddison gave a hundred million dollars to
Speaker 1: is interested in like completely exposing what was going on here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be pretty doubtful, pretty doubtful on that particular front.
Speaker 1: And then you know, this also ties in with this
Speaker 1: story about Andrew interest in Tate, who are accused of
Speaker 1: rape and sex trafficking very epstein stah, they had their own,
Speaker 1: their own alleged flavor to it, but you know, Epstein
Speaker 1: esque type behavior. And it looks like the Trump administration
Speaker 1: intervened to get them released and allowed to travel from
Speaker 1: the Romania they traveled to the US. Garnell was reportedly,
Speaker 1: you know, directly involved here. By the way, the White
Speaker 1: House denies this. Trump says, I don't even know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I'll let you make your own decisions
Speaker 1: about what happened here. Apparently, you know, Andrew had claimed
Speaker 1: that he was in touch with Baron. Baron is supposedly
Speaker 1: a fan, and Baron also involved in you know, some
Speaker 1: of the like Manisphere outreach reportedly of the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: going on all the Browie podcast and Emily. There was
Speaker 1: you know, significant amount of pushback from the right on
Speaker 1: this as well. Again not directly against Trump, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of this ties in with something
Speaker 1: like the backlash over the Ashley Saint Clair Elon Musk
Speaker 1: relationship and a lot of you know more sort of
Speaker 1: like traditional family conservative type conservatives saying like what the
Speaker 1: hell are we embracing here?
Speaker 3: Like, what is going on?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Here, let me share this post. This is once again
Speaker 7: Laura Lumer, but Candas Owens and others are on this too.
Speaker 7: After news broke this morning that the Trump admin helped
Speaker 7: the Tape Brothers live Romania and come back to the US. Today,
Speaker 7: Governor Rond De Santas said they're not welcome in Florida.
Speaker 7: The Tape Brothers are US citizens, good thing Ron isn't president.
Speaker 7: And Candace Owens has also been out saying, you know,
Speaker 7: the chargers against them, like if I think she criticized
Speaker 7: Megan Kelly and said something like if the charges against
Speaker 7: them are not if you look at the chargers, they're
Speaker 7: actually like all cooked up blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: Like they're not that serious.
Speaker 7: And Megan Kelly, Josh Holly and others have been like in,
Speaker 7: Ron de Santis is a good example. Ron de Santis
Speaker 7: actually leaning into this to me after the Byron Donalds
Speaker 7: dust up between Byron Donald's potentially getting into the governor's
Speaker 7: race with Trump's endorsement when Casey DeSantis won to get
Speaker 7: into the governor's race, Like looks to me like he
Speaker 7: is using the Tape Brothers actually as an interesting wedge
Speaker 7: issue understanding to the point you just made, Crystal that
Speaker 7: this could be to the extent that there's something that
Speaker 7: could be a crack in the Trump MAGA foundation that
Speaker 7: like actually exploiting like something like this, like trafficking documents
Speaker 7: not getting released. Like Rond de Santis could see that
Speaker 7: as like his lane to outmaneuver Trump. I don't think
Speaker 7: it'll work, but you can sort of see where they
Speaker 7: are maybe leaning into some of these issues. Now, I
Speaker 7: don't think Josh Holly is going to lean into it.
Speaker 7: But he condemned the decision. Yeah that's on the screen
Speaker 7: right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's what he said. He said, I would hope
Speaker 1: our government wasn't involved in any way. My view is
Speaker 1: that charges against him are very serious. I don't think
Speaker 1: Conservats should be glorifying this guy at all. I certainly
Speaker 1: don't think we should be using any influence in our
Speaker 1: government to try to get him out of what seemed
Speaker 1: to be extremely serious charged in Romania. So I'd hope
Speaker 1: that we weren't involved in any way. I mean, I listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on this case. Is from what
Speaker 1: I've seen of Andrew Tate's own words, there's quite a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, you know, fire where there's smoke. But
Speaker 1: even if you think the charges are bullshit, unfair and
Speaker 1: it's you know, a witch hun or whatever, like, just
Speaker 1: the things that he has himself acknowledged and admitted to
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the type of stuff that a traditional
Speaker 1: conservative would want to embrace, celebrate, you know, have the
Speaker 1: the president's administration go out on a limb to exert
Speaker 1: diplomatic pressure to try to free.
Speaker 3: These guys, like that's that is.
Speaker 1: You know, if you went back to the pre Trump
Speaker 1: era and you told me that any of this was happening,
Speaker 1: I would think it was absolutely preposterously insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 4: You know there's a there's a videos of him like
Speaker 4: beating women with.
Speaker 2: A stick, like that's that's out there the years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's all sorts of even though he hasn't been convicted. Yeah,
Speaker 4: to your point, it's not is there not the kind
Speaker 4: of values that we were told the party represented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he ran an MLM like scam university to separate
Speaker 1: vulnerable young men from their cash, teaching him how to
Speaker 1: run cam businesses like.
Speaker 2: Canis Owens. Has she ever heard a ME two allegation?
Speaker 2: She's been like that she.
Speaker 3: Didn't this one. I believe.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, I mean I say, also, it's sort of laughable.
Speaker 7: Their claim to only care about the case because it
Speaker 7: represents like a weaponization of government, I think is also
Speaker 7: very obviously a pretense, Like that's what they're claiming Josh
Speaker 7: Holly is concerned about, right, Like these chargers are just
Speaker 7: a pretense because they really don't like Andrew Tate, he's
Speaker 7: super anti establishment, wants to bring down.
Speaker 5: The world order or whatever.
Speaker 7: But that I think it's a pretense really with the
Speaker 7: people like Laura Lumer who actually are using the allegedly
Speaker 7: weaponized charges in order to really express solidarity with Andrew
Speaker 7: Tait overall, not just on the like charges. They see
Speaker 7: him as extraordinarily popular, and his popularity with young men
Speaker 7: is really real, and I think it's real for reasons
Speaker 7: we could get into that are have to do with
Speaker 7: the failure of you know, the circultural establishment and all
Speaker 7: of that.
Speaker 5: But but I think.
Speaker 7: They realize these are coattails that they can ride to
Speaker 7: more popularity, and there's this kind of convenient excuse or
Speaker 7: this convenient pretense about weaponized charges. So I don't think
Speaker 7: they're being I think they're being cynical obviously as well.
Speaker 1: On that front, Shapiro says America does not need more
Speaker 1: self proclaimed pimps and terror supporters with outstanding criminal allegations
Speaker 1: of sex trafficking and a history of pornographic distribution, plus
Speaker 1: a grift university that suckers young men out of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, Echoing some of what I was saying about
Speaker 1: his like MLM scam that he ran on all of
Speaker 1: these young men. I guess I sort of felt like
Speaker 1: his popularity had like waned a bit. He's still like
Speaker 1: at the height of his power.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I.
Speaker 7: Don't think at that high. I feel like he was
Speaker 7: really before this. I mean, I think this did actually
Speaker 7: genuinely hurt his reputation a bit, to the extent that
Speaker 7: that's possible.
Speaker 5: I don't think he's at the height of his power.
Speaker 5: I think that's probably true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is I mean, that's also probably part of
Speaker 1: why you see a DeSantis and Josh Holly and whoever
Speaker 1: feeling like they have the political bandwidth to say these
Speaker 1: types of things about him and be as explicit as
Speaker 1: they've been.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I think there was He's always like
Speaker 7: had I remember when I was at the Federalists, we
Speaker 7: would have a lot of debates, like just internally about
Speaker 7: Andrew Tate, and it was mostly like the younger conservatives
Speaker 7: who would say, he's not a great guy, but he
Speaker 7: this is not just a Federalists, but like he's interesting
Speaker 7: and he's saying things other people won't, and kind of
Speaker 7: older conservatives were like, who cares, like he's doesn't bad
Speaker 7: like he's awful. He's clearly awful. There's no reason for
Speaker 7: people to be listening to him just because he's entertaining
Speaker 7: and says things that other people won't. You can do
Speaker 7: that without also being an awful person. And so there's
Speaker 7: always been this. He's actually created an interesting divide, but
Speaker 7: it hasn't been fully teased out yet because he was
Speaker 7: kind of off in Romania doing this thing. So maybe
Speaker 7: this pushes, maybe this forces the issue more.
Speaker 1: Ryan last thing to you, The other thing that both
Speaker 1: the Epstein and the tape stories underscore is just how
Speaker 1: insanely online this administration is.
Speaker 3: Mm hm, like, yes, some of you.
Speaker 1: I mean for my job, for our jobs, we have
Speaker 1: to be insanely online, right. The amount of Twitter time
Speaker 1: I spend in a day is grotesque and not helping.
Speaker 1: These are some of these people were I have never
Speaker 1: even heard of these people.
Speaker 3: I'm like, how are you more online than I am?
Speaker 3: How is that possible?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: And yet yeah, they're pulling these random influencers out of
Speaker 1: wherever they're coming from and inviting them to the White House.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, holy shit, this is crazy. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, partly they feel like that approach of being
Speaker 1: super online paid off for them in the election. But
Speaker 1: I also think there is a real danger here because
Speaker 1: you know, if they're more online than I am, they're
Speaker 1: certainly more online and out of touch with like just
Speaker 1: normy Americans, then they should be It's.
Speaker 7: Like Elizabeth Warren saying LATINX at the first twenty twenty debate,
Speaker 7: it's this the reverse of it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it feels like they're almost taunting Democrats. They're like, how,
Speaker 4: what's the most ridiculously unpopular thing we can do and
Speaker 4: still stay in power. They're like the Harlem glowtrotters playing
Speaker 4: and they think of the Democrats as the Washington Generals,
Speaker 4: like they can do the most flamboyantly like absurd stuff
Speaker 4: on the court and still win against the Washington general
Speaker 4: slash Democrats, Like, yeah, we'll just gonna bring the sex
Speaker 4: trafficker and his brother.
Speaker 2: And how do you like that? We're going to be
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 4: We're not going to like look the other way. We're
Speaker 4: going to like actively like do it and be like
Speaker 4: embrace it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be like yeah we did that, we did that. Actually,
Speaker 1: the Epstein thing, I was thinking, like, Brian, if you
Speaker 1: and I had planned it as a way to like
Speaker 1: subvert the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: We could have done a better.
Speaker 4: Job, and they're still beating the Washington General blowing up.
Speaker 3: Their media ecosystem and whatever.
Speaker 1: And yes they are still the Washington Generals are still like,
Speaker 1: you know, putting up alyssa slot kind yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's their response to say the union. All right, guys, Well,
Speaker 1: well on that note, we'll leave it there for today.
Speaker 1: Ryan and Emily thank you guys. As always, guys, make
Speaker 1: sure you check out Ryan's interview with Roe hit Chopra. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, very newsy and very significant conversation help people
Speaker 1: to understand what was actually going on at the CFPB
Speaker 1: and why this agency was significant and I guess theoretically
Speaker 1: still could be sometime in the future, but certainly not now.
Speaker 1: Have a great weekend and we will see you guys
Speaker 1: back here next week.