Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Everything.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1: We've got some breaking news this morning. It looks like
Speaker 1: we are headed to a Hollywood wide shutdown, so we
Speaker 1: will bring you all of those details. We've also got
Speaker 1: some big numbers coming out about inflation and wages that
Speaker 1: we definitely want to break down for you. We've also
Speaker 1: got the highlights for you from a pretty blockbuster hearing
Speaker 1: yesterday with FBI director Christopher ray so we'll give you
Speaker 1: some of those details. Ray Epps is going forward with
Speaker 1: a lawsuit against Fox News, so we will break that
Speaker 1: down for it probably end in the settlement, but we
Speaker 1: will find out. Also, we had talked to you before
Speaker 1: about how Fox News seem to be not as like
Speaker 1: warm and fuzzy towards Ron DeSantis, And now there are
Speaker 1: multiple outlets reporting that the Murdochs are considering turning and
Speaker 1: moving on to other candidates. At the same time, we've
Speaker 1: got a whole rash of new instances of Scotis corruption,
Speaker 1: and this one is conservatives liberals.
Speaker 5: The whole damn court seems to be totally corrupt.
Speaker 1: And we have, for the second time in the week,
Speaker 1: have to cover some Morning Joe comments that were really
Speaker 1: just chef's kiss cope covering for the President of the
Speaker 1: United States blaming his staff for his failings. We also,
Speaker 1: now this is a big deal, got a panel in
Speaker 1: house to cover the controversy of the week. How do
Speaker 1: we all feel about Jonah Hill's comments to his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend his conduct. So we've convened a panel we are going.
Speaker 5: To discuss it.
Speaker 1: I figure we'll just settle it here and that way
Speaker 1: everyone can can move on from this moment and go
Speaker 1: to the next controversy.
Speaker 3: That's right, we've all been embroiled in it. We might
Speaker 3: as well just put our cards all out. It's just
Speaker 3: a fun Thursday thing that we're all going to get.
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, so let's go ahead and start with
Speaker 1: that breaking news this morning. As I said, it does
Speaker 1: look like Hollywood is heading to their first industry wide
Speaker 1: strike in sixty three years. So Sag afterra, that's the
Speaker 1: Actors Union said at nearly one am Pacific time on Thursday,
Speaker 1: the negotiations with Hollywood Studios over a new contract had collapsed.
Speaker 1: Their negotiating board has unanimously voted to recommend a strike.
Speaker 1: They are meeting this morning nine am Pacific time, so
Speaker 1: that's noon Eastern for a final strike vote authorization. So
Speaker 1: it looks like the actors are going to join the
Speaker 1: writers who have already been out on strike for about
Speaker 1: three months. You know, this is a huge deal in
Speaker 1: terms of the you know, entertainment industry and also really
Speaker 1: a sign of the times in terms of increasing labor agitation,
Speaker 1: increasing labor militancy. As I said, was back in Marilyn
Speaker 1: Monroe's heyday, was the last time that you had this
Speaker 1: kind of an industry wide shutdown. This also comes Saga
Speaker 1: amid some comments that were made by an anonymous studio
Speaker 1: head to Deadline magazine that they sort of gave up
Speaker 1: the game here in terms of their plan. As I said,
Speaker 1: the writers have been out on strike already for quite
Speaker 1: a while, and you know those are people who are
Speaker 1: probably starting to struggle terms of paying their rent. And
Speaker 1: this anonymous studio executive said that's actually their their plan.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 1: The endgame is to allow things to drag on until
Speaker 1: union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.
Speaker 1: Deadline also spoke with other unnamed insider sources that confirmed
Speaker 1: the studio's approach. So pretty fascinating developments here. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the key issues for writers as well that
Speaker 1: we have been tracking is they're very concerned about how
Speaker 1: AI is going to impact their industry because you know,
Speaker 1: if you have AI like generating first drafts and then
Speaker 1: bringing in writers to touch them up and mess around
Speaker 1: at that edges with them, obviously you would need a
Speaker 1: lot fewer writers and there would be a lot less work.
Speaker 1: But you know, those pieces also just pay and other
Speaker 1: conditions have been central to the bargain bargaining. So it
Speaker 1: does look like we are headed to a Hollywood wide
Speaker 1: shutdown this morning.
Speaker 2: It's a historic event. Fun fact, as my memory was
Speaker 2: peauked and I just confirmed it. The last time that
Speaker 2: the writers and the actors were all on strike at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 6: A man named Ronald Reagan was.
Speaker 2: The president of the Screen Actors Guild ahead of the
Speaker 2: SAG union whenever they were negotiating for new contract terms
Speaker 2: and that actually had to do with residuals in terms
Speaker 2: of release, the rise of television, so not that you know,
Speaker 2: history really does rhyme and kind of repeat itself in
Speaker 2: this way. As you said, I believe that one of
Speaker 2: the big mistakes that was made here was that they
Speaker 2: tried to play the actors and the writers again each other,
Speaker 2: and they've seen now a huge alliance with so many
Speaker 2: of the actors also who are really moonlighting and often
Speaker 2: act as both be treated and played against each other
Speaker 2: to make them align and say, look, with the revolution
Speaker 2: of streaming with AI and post COVID, the explosion of
Speaker 2: all of this content, we have to reclaim some sort
Speaker 2: of ownership and different payment model when the studios are
Speaker 2: going to be specifically doing something completely different than was
Speaker 2: originally agreed upon. You know, I really think about HBO
Speaker 2: Max or quote Max. I guess as it's known about
Speaker 2: that that's a whole.
Speaker 5: Horrible brand, horrible brand that sounds like cinemat Let's.
Speaker 2: Take the you know, let's take the best prestige TV
Speaker 2: name in all of history and just ditch it for
Speaker 2: no reasons. That's a whole other interesting thing, But this
Speaker 2: actually happened during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: It was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: So Christopher Nolan and all of these other people had
Speaker 2: signed deals with Warner Brothers Studios to have their movies
Speaker 2: distributed in the theaters. The reason that they did that
Speaker 2: was because obviously the theater was the desired venue that
Speaker 2: they wanted their movie to go out. What they didn't
Speaker 2: realize though, is that during the pandemic that HBO Max
Speaker 2: I believe Jason Kylar was his name at the time,
Speaker 2: who was the head of the organization, was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: because of COVID, we're just all going to release it
Speaker 2: on streaming. And they're like, well, hold on a second.
Speaker 2: They're like, I signed up to be the number one
Speaker 2: studio in Hollywood. I didn't sign up to be distributed
Speaker 2: on the number three streaming network.
Speaker 3: And they believe that it cheap in the movie experience.
Speaker 2: Many times they manufacture the actual movie itself without the
Speaker 2: thought that it would go direct streaming, which would also
Speaker 2: cannibalize some of the movie theater views, which is also
Speaker 2: how they get paid. This is why Scarlett Johansson was
Speaker 2: suing Disney as well over the release.
Speaker 3: I think it was Black Widow, terrible movie.
Speaker 2: But beside the point, the thing is that compensation, the
Speaker 2: way in the structure of all these deals matters for
Speaker 2: the actors, for the writers. When you have so much
Speaker 2: of this power in the studio, being able to shift
Speaker 2: things around and say no, we're just going to release
Speaker 2: it on streaming, it's like, well, yeah, but if all
Speaker 2: the deals are negotiating on ticket prices, and there's not
Speaker 2: just the actors, the you know, the people who work
Speaker 2: on the film agents, you know, camera guys like all
Speaker 2: this stuff, so much of their compensation can depend on
Speaker 2: performance in things that they had never considered. So ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, this really is about technology and about the future.
Speaker 2: Just like the last screen actor strike, Yeah, happened in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties.
Speaker 5: That's that is exactly right.
Speaker 1: And just to read you a little bit of how
Speaker 1: the actors are describing their demands.
Speaker 5: This is from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: They write that their demands mirror a lot of the
Speaker 1: demands of the writers, including higher wages, increased residual payments
Speaker 1: type of royalty from streaming services, and aggressive guardrails around
Speaker 1: the use of artificial intelligence to preserve jobs. Guild leadership
Speaker 1: also wants new regulations regarding self taped auditions, a pandemic
Speaker 1: phenomenon that has resulted in significantly fewer live casting sessions,
Speaker 1: so apparently became a thing during the pandemic, and you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't great for actors, you know, and studios just decided
Speaker 1: to continue the practice for whatever reason. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was cheaper and easier for them. So those are some
Speaker 1: of the key sticking points.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: You have to think that the fact that the actors
Speaker 1: are in a lot of ways, i mean, they're finding
Speaker 1: for their own interests, but they're also in a certain
Speaker 1: way standing in solidarity with the writers. To think that
Speaker 1: that gives the writers a lot more leverage here as well,
Speaker 1: because nothing's going to happen in Hollywood until this gets resolved.
Speaker 1: So it's quite an interesting development, magnificant.
Speaker 2: It's personally a tragedy, you know, just because so much
Speaker 2: prestige content is now effectively going to be on hold.
Speaker 2: All of our favorite shows basically going to be pushed
Speaker 2: back for you know, possible even years, as I think,
Speaker 2: I believe we have to wait even longer for the
Speaker 2: new Avatar movie.
Speaker 3: Can you believe that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, first we had to wait a decade. Now we're
Speaker 2: gonna have to wait even more than that name the
Speaker 2: original slate. But that's just that, I mean, so many streaming.
Speaker 5: Shows, more time to watch.
Speaker 2: At other's point, yeah, I mean, I hate to say it,
Speaker 2: but it is actually great for YouTube. So you know
Speaker 2: in some ways that that is often the you know,
Speaker 2: the casualty is that self created content like stuff like
Speaker 2: ours as well. You know, unfortunately, I guess for them,
Speaker 2: but fortunately for us, there will be even more of
Speaker 2: a demand of it, just because there's going to be
Speaker 2: a lot less content, you know, for people to consume.
Speaker 2: I will say, let's all enjoy the Oppenheimer Barbie double
Speaker 2: feature while.
Speaker 1: We have it.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited for it.
Speaker 2: I have the whole day planned out. I'm excited to
Speaker 2: hear what you guys think of all of that as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, well, let's go ahead and get
Speaker 1: into the new economic numbers, which fits very closely with
Speaker 1: this story, because of course, the overall landscape of the
Speaker 1: economy really impacts how much power labor has in these
Speaker 1: types of negotiations. So I'm actually good news in the
Speaker 1: new inflation numbers, quite a significant drop. This shows, you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps maybe the Federal Reserve can quit trying to crush
Speaker 1: the economy and put everybody out of work because inflation
Speaker 1: is in fact cooling. Slowed sharply in June to its
Speaker 1: lowest pace in more than two years. Consumer Price Index
Speaker 1: increase three percent in June relative to a year earlier.
Speaker 1: That's a slow down from four percent in May. We've
Speaker 1: got some numbers here about exactly where that inflation is
Speaker 1: coming from. Let's go ahead and put a one up
Speaker 1: on the screen. This is from Heatherlong on the on
Speaker 1: the I guess it's on your screen the right hand
Speaker 1: side as well. You see the inflation numbers. You can
Speaker 1: see the drop off that came in June. That's quite
Speaker 1: a significant, you know development. But if you look into
Speaker 1: the numbers here, you can see where there is still
Speaker 1: a significant amount of inflation, and actually rent is a
Speaker 1: big part of it. Plus eight point three percent in
Speaker 1: the past year. Eating out still on the rise plus
Speaker 1: seven point seven percent in the past year. Car maintenance
Speaker 1: has gotten significantly more expensive twelve point seven percent, car
Speaker 1: insurance also spiking sixteen point nine percent.
Speaker 5: And then she also has.
Speaker 1: The areas where inflation has eased a lot. You have
Speaker 1: gas down twenty six point five percent, used cars down
Speaker 1: five point two percent, meet relatively static at this point
Speaker 1: but down point two percent, and airfare down eighteen point
Speaker 1: nine percent.
Speaker 5: So you know this is encouraging for sure.
Speaker 1: And the other piece of this was that for the
Speaker 1: first time in a long time, wages actually rose a
Speaker 1: greater amount than inflation. Will show you some of those
Speaker 1: numbers in a minute. At the same time, you know
Speaker 1: this is why the picture is so mixed, because people
Speaker 1: have been struggling with this inflation for so long.
Speaker 5: You have student loan debt payments set to restart.
Speaker 1: You've got Americans with record breaking amount of credit card debt.
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of pandemic eraror programs that help
Speaker 1: people out in the short term that have all more
Speaker 1: or less been rolled back at this point.
Speaker 5: So in terms of how people.
Speaker 1: Feel about the economy, even with some positive numbers just
Speaker 1: now coming out, the answer is still not great. Let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. There was a poll
Speaker 1: from economist Yugov ask people do you believe the US
Speaker 1: is currently in an economic procession, not are we heading there?
Speaker 1: Not is there a chance a one? But do you
Speaker 1: feel that we are right now in a recession? And
Speaker 1: you have very close to a majority saying yes. Forty
Speaker 1: seven percent say yes, twenty nine percent say no, and
Speaker 1: twenty four percent say not sure, So a solid majority,
Speaker 1: very large majority saying either yes, we're in a recession
Speaker 1: or we might be I'm not sure. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of at odds with some of the big picture economic
Speaker 1: numbers that we've been getting out recently, and big debate
Speaker 1: about why this is. Is it that you know, people
Speaker 1: just don't understand, how could they really have it?
Speaker 5: Obviously that's not really what we've been here, but there
Speaker 5: are people that.
Speaker 1: Are arguing that others are saying, listen, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of factors that go into this and the realities
Speaker 1: I just stated of, you know, the high levels of debt,
Speaker 1: the fact that key things like shelter, housing, food, that
Speaker 1: these are still really expensive. People are still really being stretched,
Speaker 1: and in fact, there was another story in the Washington
Speaker 1: Post about how many Americans are having to resort to
Speaker 1: an installment plan just to pay for groceries let's go
Speaker 1: and put this next piece up on the screen about
Speaker 1: wage growth. There's significantly above inflation for the first time
Speaker 1: since March twenty twenty one. They're up four point four percent.
Speaker 1: So that's a big deal. That could change the way
Speaker 1: people are feeling about the economy if that continues in
Speaker 1: this direction. And at the same time, you know, it's
Speaker 1: confusing because you've still got the recession warning. The inverted
Speaker 1: yield curve is still in place, sending a strong signal
Speaker 1: that typically means we're headed towards a recession. But they
Speaker 1: quote a number of analysts in this New York Times
Speaker 1: piece that say, maybe this time it won't end up
Speaker 1: being predictive because we're in such a weird space post pandemic,
Speaker 1: and maybe this really just reflects optimism about what the
Speaker 1: Fed is ultimately going to do.
Speaker 5: So that's everything we know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's actually a fascinating portrait because it's
Speaker 2: one of those where the Biden folks can say, hey, look,
Speaker 2: you know, wages.
Speaker 6: Are finally outstripping inflation.
Speaker 2: But I always come back to the way that people feel,
Speaker 2: and you know, often people are like, oh, facts are
Speaker 2: not feelings, and I'm like, but on the economy.
Speaker 6: I actually kind of think it is. People are pretty.
Speaker 2: Good descriptors about how they are experiencing everyday life and
Speaker 2: whether they are wanting to act, whether they are actually
Speaker 2: fulfilling the thing that they want on a very basic level.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you still look at the inflation data,
Speaker 2: sure the overall number is down.
Speaker 3: What's the top one rent?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if rent is up eight point three If
Speaker 2: your overall paycheck you're spending twenty five thirty percent and
Speaker 2: your rent goes up by eight percent, that's a ton
Speaker 2: of money of your disposable income. Second, eating out one
Speaker 2: of the few luxuries that people have, up seven point
Speaker 2: seven percent. Car maintenance is still up thirteen percent. That's
Speaker 2: always one of the biggest reasons in terms of why
Speaker 2: people go into debt. Health insurance it's a health event
Speaker 2: and cars that those are like the two money pits
Speaker 2: that people get into. It's an unexpected thing. People very
Speaker 2: rarely save for it, they don't have the cushion, and
Speaker 2: then when it hits, the price is even higher and
Speaker 2: they can gouge you even more than they want to.
Speaker 2: Car insurance also up by seventeen percent, largely as a
Speaker 2: result of some road accidents that we continue to see.
Speaker 2: But you know, they're like, oh, gas is down by
Speaker 2: twenty six percent, Yeah, drop from five dollars a gallon,
Speaker 2: so it's still three point fifty. Use cars they're down
Speaker 2: five still. I've did monologues here. It is nearly impossible
Speaker 2: right now to buy a used car for less than
Speaker 2: twenty thousand dollars, which I can't even say that out
Speaker 2: loud because it sounds so crazy to me. And then airfare,
Speaker 2: same thing. Airfare is down by eight teen point nine percent.
Speaker 2: But as I have described here, and so do we.
Speaker 2: I believe we did an entire thing about this crystal,
Speaker 2: the price to a destination which has anything even tangentially
Speaker 2: to do with vacation is higher than ever before. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess the Boise to Montana route is down a
Speaker 2: little bit. But try flying to Europe right now. I mean,
Speaker 2: I told you this. My flight was canceled on my
Speaker 2: way over to India. They were like, yeah, the next
Speaker 2: five we can put you on is three days, because
Speaker 2: every flight across the Atlantic is booked solid. So that's
Speaker 2: what people are actually dealing with. You know, on the
Speaker 2: desirable routes, almost every one of these metrics whenever you
Speaker 2: actually experience it, especially in a relatively high demand way,
Speaker 2: the cost is completely out of control.
Speaker 1: Student loan debt payments are set to restart here very shortly,
Speaker 1: and the average monthly payment is about three hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety three dollars. So every month for people who are
Speaker 1: student loan debt holders, which is a lot of the
Speaker 1: country and especially young people are just getting started out
Speaker 1: in their careers, is about four hundred bucks a month.
Speaker 5: That's a big hit at a time when.
Speaker 1: US households hold a record seventeen trillion dollars in debt,
Speaker 1: including nearly one trillion dollars in credit card debt.
Speaker 5: So there's a lot of overhang here.
Speaker 1: And so let's be clear, like people are not crazy
Speaker 1: to feel like their financial situation is not great and
Speaker 1: to tell bolsters. Yet to me, it feels like we
Speaker 1: may already be in a recession. But we should also say,
Speaker 1: if the numbers continue in this direction, and you genuinely
Speaker 1: have wage growth that is outpacing inflation, which again has
Speaker 1: like not happened ever in my lifetime, and you have
Speaker 1: inflation continuing to cool, and you have the FED taking off,
Speaker 1: you know, at least they may not put their foot
Speaker 1: on the gas, but.
Speaker 5: At least taking their foot off of the break.
Speaker 1: This is the best news possible. It's good for people
Speaker 1: in general, that's the best part of it. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the politics of this, I mean, these
Speaker 1: might be some of the most critical numbers in terms
Speaker 1: of whether Joe Biden is going to be able to
Speaker 1: get re elected or not, because in twenty twenty too,
Speaker 1: you know, we really felt like and a lot of
Speaker 1: people felt like the fact that there was high inflation,
Speaker 1: people were feeling so poorly about the economy and right
Speaker 1: track wrong track that that was.
Speaker 5: Going to pretend a potential large red.
Speaker 1: Wave didn't materialize because of a variety of issues, but
Speaker 1: primarily abortion. You know, is abortion still going to be
Speaker 1: the key issue in twenty twenty four or are people
Speaker 1: going to revert back to the economy being kind of
Speaker 1: their primary focus at a time when you know, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's numbers on the economy are trash like, they're not good, right,
Speaker 1: and so if you continue to have this kind of
Speaker 1: wage increase, lowering of inflation, the White House has to
Speaker 1: feel very good about these numbers. And the fact that
Speaker 1: you have seen inequality come down over the past number
Speaker 1: of years, so you know, it'll be interesting to see
Speaker 1: whether people actually start to feel this, start to feel like,
Speaker 1: all right, my wages are picking up, I'm able to
Speaker 1: you know, make ends meet. I'm not having to take
Speaker 1: on more and more debt as has been the trend
Speaker 1: over the past number of months.
Speaker 5: So we'll see if this trend is able.
Speaker 3: To continue, We'll see.
Speaker 2: I just think that because the fundamentals still remain so
Speaker 2: far out of reach, like with housing, rent you know,
Speaker 2: continue to go up. Gas obviously is an immediate concern,
Speaker 2: but health insurance costs, car insurance costs, all of these,
Speaker 2: especially the fixed ones, and then the yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: the event ones.
Speaker 1: To me, housing is the big Housing is a huge
Speaker 1: and this is my whole monologue today. I mean, this
Speaker 1: issue just overhangs everything and puts stress on everyone who
Speaker 1: was not just like wealthy, you know, every like pushing
Speaker 1: people into homelessness, people who are you know, aren't able
Speaker 1: to afford rent anymore, getting pushed onto the streets, and
Speaker 1: then housing supplies still incredibly constrained, impossible get your foot
Speaker 1: on the ladder. I mean, there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: issues there, especially in terms of access to affordable housing.
Speaker 1: So I do think that is a big one that
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't notice.
Speaker 2: Absolutely no, I think you're absolutely correct. Okay, let's move
Speaker 2: on to the next one. There was an interesting moment
Speaker 2: yesterday the FBI Director, Christopher Ray appeared before Congress, actually
Speaker 2: before the House committee, the GOP Oversight Committee, and he
Speaker 2: was really grilled on a couple of key subjects. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of interest when we spending some time
Speaker 2: on today around whether there were federal informants, agents, undercover
Speaker 2: people in the crowd on January sixth.
Speaker 3: That's been a.
Speaker 2: Hot topic, of hot topic of discussion. That FBI director
Speaker 2: was specifically pressed on this, and let's listen very carefully
Speaker 2: to his answer.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 8: How many individuals were either FBI employees or people that
Speaker 8: the FBI had made contact with were in the January
Speaker 8: sixth entry of the capital and surrounding area.
Speaker 9: So I really need to be careful here talking about
Speaker 9: where we have or have not used confidential human sources.
Speaker 8: Was there one or more? Was there one or more
Speaker 8: individuals that would fit that description on January sixth that
Speaker 8: were in or around the Capitol.
Speaker 9: I believe there is a filing in one of the
Speaker 9: January sixth cases that can provide a little more information
Speaker 9: about this, and I'm happy to see if we can
Speaker 9: follow BA a couple of years.
Speaker 8: I just want an answer, was there one or more?
Speaker 8: I mean, you would know if there was at least
Speaker 8: one individual who worked for the FBI who entered the
Speaker 8: capitol on that day.
Speaker 9: I can't again, I just can't speak to that here,
Speaker 9: but I'm happy to get the court filing those.
Speaker 8: It's been two years and you're now come before us.
Speaker 8: The gentleman asked these questions, makes all kinds of insinuations,
Speaker 8: and you nod your head yes, and then I ask
Speaker 8: you simply was there one or more? And you won't
Speaker 8: answer that. So I'm going to make the assumption that
Speaker 8: there was more than one, more than five, more than ten,
Speaker 8: and that you're ducking the question because you don't want
Speaker 8: to answer for the fact that you had at least
Speaker 8: one and somehow missed understanding that some of the individuals
Speaker 8: were very dangerous and that there were others inciting individuals
Speaker 8: to enter the capital after others broke windows.
Speaker 6: So I think that the best point there, Crystal is.
Speaker 3: It's been two years we got it, like you know
Speaker 3: at this point, whether there's more than one or not.
Speaker 2: There's also I found in a little bit later questioning
Speaker 2: there was a parsing around agents and undercover employees, which
Speaker 2: is a little bit of a dodge. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: there were no FBI agents involved. I'm like, well, first
Speaker 2: of all, let's see about that. Let's find out. But
Speaker 2: the core allocation from very the beginning has really been
Speaker 2: also about informants and about people who were developed confidentially
Speaker 2: as well. I mean, from that it's almost certain considering
Speaker 2: we know from the court filings that have come out
Speaker 2: around the Proud Boys in Rico Tario, around the oath
Speaker 2: Keepers as well, like who was you know, who wasn't
Speaker 2: a fed in some these organizations, And it also comes
Speaker 2: to the core question, which I think is correct. Now, look,
Speaker 2: let's not say that these people aren't acting in bad faith,
Speaker 2: but they're like, well, if you guys had all this
Speaker 2: info and you knew so much about what was going on,
Speaker 2: how could you then have the debacle occur in which
Speaker 2: you are so completely unprepared? That also is, you know,
Speaker 2: fundamentally the core questions here around like was this a
Speaker 2: screw up or does this justify, you know, basically incasing
Speaker 2: the entire capital as a cage for several months and
Speaker 2: spending half a billion.
Speaker 3: Dollars on National Guard deployment.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think that's why they're so reluctant to
Speaker 1: answer any of these questions. This is humiliating for that
Speaker 1: US that should be. I mean, they have all the
Speaker 1: like fake plots that they invent and then swoop into
Speaker 1: disrupt Gretchen Witmor kidnapping, I mean, throughout the War on
Speaker 1: Terror and the way they would entrap young Muslims and
Speaker 1: invent these plots and set them up so when you
Speaker 1: had an actual threat and you had informants littered throughout
Speaker 1: all of these organizations, and this is not a mystery
Speaker 1: at this point. I mean we know this from as
Speaker 1: you said, Saga the court filings with the Oath Keepers,
Speaker 1: with the Proud Boys in particular. But we know that
Speaker 1: the FEDS had informants throughout a number of these right
Speaker 1: wing organizations that were involved in January sixth, and you
Speaker 1: weren't able to disrupt what was an.
Speaker 5: Actual violent threat.
Speaker 1: That's humiliating and so to me, none of them at
Speaker 1: this point the mystery is solved. The answer is they
Speaker 1: had tons of informants they should have been able to know.
Speaker 1: We know there's a ton of reporting about how these
Speaker 1: informants were never asked about the activities of their own organizations.
Speaker 1: A lot of what they were asked by the FEDS
Speaker 1: was like, what do you know about Antifa, especially the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys informants within their organization. There was no curiosity
Speaker 1: about whether the Proud Boys themselves pose some sort of
Speaker 1: a threat. It was all about like, oh, you've got
Speaker 1: proximity to Antifa, tell us about that. And so meanwhile,
Speaker 1: they completely missed this thing that's developing right underneath their
Speaker 1: own noses. So I haven't seen any evidence that there's
Speaker 1: like truth to this idea that this was some sort
Speaker 1: of a false flag, and in part because again this
Speaker 1: is nothing but embarrassing for the FBI and the deep
Speaker 1: state that this was allowed to unfold, and they basically,
Speaker 1: you know, had informants in the crowd that did not
Speaker 1: tell them key details about what was going to happen exactly.
Speaker 2: And there also was a really interesting moment where they
Speaker 2: referenced some of the stuff that came out in the
Speaker 2: Twitter files about FBI agent specifically flagging and taking things down,
Speaker 2: censorship requests, flagging, or us that was directly brought to
Speaker 2: his attention.
Speaker 3: So here's what he had to say when he was
Speaker 3: confronted over that.
Speaker 11: The evidence shows you, your agency, the people that directly
Speaker 11: report to you, suppressed conservative leaning pre speech about topics
Speaker 11: like the laptop, the lab leak theory of COVID nineteen's origin,
Speaker 11: the effectiveness of masking COVID nineteen lockdowns, and vaccines.
Speaker 9: So what I would say is the FBI is not
Speaker 9: in the business of moderating content or causing any social
Speaker 9: media company to suppress or censor.
Speaker 11: That is not what the court has found.
Speaker 9: What I would also say is, among the things that
Speaker 9: you listed off, I find ironic the reference to the
Speaker 9: lab Leaku theory. The idea that the FBI would somehow
Speaker 9: be involved in suppressing references to the lab Liak theory
Speaker 9: is somewhat absurd when you consider the fact that the
Speaker 9: FBI was the only the only agency in the entire
Speaker 9: intelligence community to reach the assessment.
Speaker 11: That it was more likely than not that that was
Speaker 11: the explanation. But your agemic, your agents pulled it off
Speaker 11: the shirt. That's what the evidence in the court has found.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of an interesting little testy exchange. He's
Speaker 2: not wrong in terms of when they talked about it,
Speaker 2: but they didn't start talking about.
Speaker 3: Ladleau until literally like two months ago.
Speaker 2: So before that though, as the Congressman points to, given
Speaker 2: what has been revealed in the court, and I know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you guys did a great job on this the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court case that came out around the Biden administration and
Speaker 2: their ability to have censorship requests with social media companies,
Speaker 2: which of course they're freaking out about already, which really
Speaker 2: does tell you. But at its core, I mean, what
Speaker 2: they are, what he is couching behind here is saying, well,
Speaker 2: we don't censor anything.
Speaker 3: We just strongly advise.
Speaker 10: You take it down.
Speaker 2: That's like, well, as we saw from the Twitter files,
Speaker 2: FBI agent says, take down this shit posting account with
Speaker 2: six followers saying that the elections on Wednesday. And at
Speaker 2: a core level, you're like, why are we paying the
Speaker 2: salary of something?
Speaker 3: Right? Who is doing this? Furli? That's insane?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's yeah. There's multiple levels there.
Speaker 1: There's first of all, the like disturbing dystopian surveillance and
Speaker 1: like violation of First Amendment and all of those sorts
Speaker 1: of pieces, and then when you actually look at the
Speaker 1: tweets that they were flagging to be taken down, you're like,
Speaker 1: this is what you're spending your time on.
Speaker 5: Remember there's the one lady.
Speaker 1: Who was like some resistance activists, who was pretending like
Speaker 1: she said some snarky thing about like for everyone who
Speaker 1: shows up without a mask, I'm going to change one
Speaker 1: vote from Republican to Democrat. Like clearly a joke. She
Speaker 1: had like five followers or something. It got two likes.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a threat to national security. It's
Speaker 1: just clown show stuff. But then also it's very serious
Speaker 1: because of obviously, when these social media companies get a
Speaker 1: strongly worded request from the FBI, the federal government, that's
Speaker 1: going to carry a lot of weight with them. So
Speaker 1: what you were referring to sober is there's a case
Speaker 1: now filed by a number of attorneys general working its
Speaker 1: way through the court system. One federal court judge found
Speaker 1: that they actually issued an injunction that the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: unless it is an actual issue of national security, can
Speaker 1: no longer have these communications of just you know, nicely
Speaker 1: suggesting a variety of tweets and users and whatever.
Speaker 5: That need to be censored or block. So this is
Speaker 5: very much a live issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Look, the FBI director certainly get impressed there.
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 2: I do still though we need less grandstanding and more
Speaker 2: like actual cooperation. That's the biggest problem is, Look, it's
Speaker 2: great to see them grilled, and I think that's awesome,
Speaker 2: but we have how many clips have we now played
Speaker 2: in this show over two years of FBI director refuses
Speaker 2: to answer around just like we got it. Look at
Speaker 2: a certain point, like do the work and actually get
Speaker 2: some of this stuff done or if they're not, you know,
Speaker 2: hold them whatever. And contempt of Congress for refusing to
Speaker 2: provide some of this info because it's clear that like
Speaker 2: everything just always plays out the same without any real
Speaker 2: confirmation and confirmations with all the stuff that's actually important
Speaker 2: to documents about the cases and all that. So anyway,
Speaker 2: keep that in mind as we go to the next
Speaker 2: story here, let's go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 2: Fox News finding themselves embroiled in another defamation suit. This one, though,
Speaker 2: I think is pretty different. Arizona Man aka Ray Epps,
Speaker 2: who I think viewers of the show will long know,
Speaker 2: the Trump voter who was on tape multiple times urging
Speaker 2: people to quote go into the Capitol before January sixth,
Speaker 2: and on the day of January six is suing Fox
Speaker 2: News and specifically the Tucker Carlston Tonight Show for falsely
Speaker 2: naming him as a covert government agent who incited the
Speaker 2: January sixth attack. Now, the details of this case are
Speaker 2: actually very important because what Ray Epps is alleging is
Speaker 2: defamation and public harm that was done to him as
Speaker 2: a result of people who were effectively harassing him and
Speaker 2: his family, which I do not condone and I do
Speaker 2: not think is correct, but apparently that's what happened after
Speaker 2: his name surface. He says that his wife and he
Speaker 2: received numerous death threats and were forced to sell their
Speaker 2: ranch and wedding business in Arizona and moved to a
Speaker 2: mobile home in the mountains of Utah. The problem for
Speaker 2: him is that whenever he was his core allegation by
Speaker 2: the Tucker or also tonight by Revolver News and some
Speaker 2: of the people who aired the initial allegations against Ray
Speaker 2: Apps was this man is on tape multiple times trying
Speaker 2: to get people to go into the capital. He has
Speaker 2: not yet been charged by federal authorities, while QAnon Shaman
Speaker 2: all these other folks are you know, not only in
Speaker 2: prison at this point, but fully gone through the judicial system.
Speaker 2: The reason why most people don't get charged is usually
Speaker 2: that they are federal informants. So the question is was
Speaker 2: he a federal informant? Now by focusing in on that,
Speaker 2: you know, by someone who was created and posted on
Speaker 2: wanted posters.
Speaker 3: That was part of the other curiosity about this case.
Speaker 2: Ray Apps was initially flagged as a cor instigator of
Speaker 2: some of the violence or going into the capital and
Speaker 2: then was taken off of FBI wanted posters afterwards. Was
Speaker 2: what happened in this sudden change? You know, why was
Speaker 2: he taken off these posters? Why was he not charged?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, though in the actual lawsuit they mister Epps claims,
Speaker 2: we don't know if this is true or not that
Speaker 2: the Justice Department actually notified him. They are planning to
Speaker 2: file criminal charges against him related to his role in
Speaker 2: the capital attack quote. Details about the charges remain unknown,
Speaker 2: but the fact that they are being filed undermines the
Speaker 2: notion that Epps was being protected because of his role
Speaker 2: as a supposed covert agent. So effectively, their defamation revolves
Speaker 2: around the fact that he was falsely accused as an
Speaker 2: alleged government informat government agent whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: Y Tucker Carlson tonight, you know, on the show. In
Speaker 2: terms of that speculation, I personally think this is spurious
Speaker 2: and ridiculous Crystal At because number one, all it took
Speaker 2: is a single like, First of all, Epps made himself
Speaker 2: a public figure. He's on video, and the FBI also
Speaker 2: made him one. So in terms of the private citizen defense,
Speaker 2: I think is completely thrown out the window. And second,
Speaker 2: as long as you say alleged and you ask a
Speaker 2: question instead of a direct accusation, you're good. I mean
Speaker 2: in terms of the court of law. That does not
Speaker 2: mean though that they may not settle. They very much
Speaker 2: could settle because they don't want to go through a trial.
Speaker 2: But personally, I think you should take this man's ass
Speaker 2: to trial because I want to know every single detail
Speaker 2: about these folks to actually get him in all that
Speaker 2: actual lawful deposition to see what's going on.
Speaker 1: I think that's an actually important point. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: he was like you know, fed false flag instigator, then
Speaker 1: I don't think he would be suing Fox News and
Speaker 1: opening himself up to discovery. So and I also, so,
Speaker 1: I asked, because you know, I'm not a defamation lawyer whatever.
Speaker 1: So I asked the guy Mark Bankston, who was one
Speaker 1: of the top lawyers for the Sandy Hook families in
Speaker 1: their suit against Alex Jones, which you know was very successful.
Speaker 5: And he said, and he told me I could say
Speaker 5: this on the record.
Speaker 1: Quote, the liability case against Fox is extraordinarily strong. Fox
Speaker 1: broadcast teament saying Epps was quote the smoking gun of
Speaker 1: the FED surrection, not alleged, not maybe not. I'm asking
Speaker 1: a question, the smoking gun of the FED surrection. That's
Speaker 1: clearly defamatory, and it's easy to prove his false Unlike
Speaker 1: in prior cases involving Tucker, it's not easy for Fox
Speaker 1: to defend this by saying it was only an opinion.
Speaker 1: They were unquestionably making factual assertions about Epps. The next
Speaker 1: thing he says, Apps will have to prove is Fox's
Speaker 1: level of fault. If he was a public figure, he'd
Speaker 1: have to prove actual malice. But Epps is just one
Speaker 1: of one hundred and twenty thousand private citizens at the
Speaker 1: Capitol that day. He is not a public figure, so
Speaker 1: it only needs to prove Fox acting negligently under the
Speaker 1: law that means Fox is liable if they failed to
Speaker 1: act as a reasonably prudent publisher would act that as
Speaker 1: bad news for Fox. And then he goes on to
Speaker 1: sale'll have to prove that he has been damaged. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think. I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: a problem there. So listen, what I ultimately think is
Speaker 1: going to happen is they're probably going to settle. They
Speaker 1: just settled with the Tucker former producer who would alleged
Speaker 1: sexual hangrassmen. I think she got like twelve million dollars,
Speaker 1: which for her is a lot for Fox News is nothing.
Speaker 1: Do you really think that they're going to want to
Speaker 1: open the kimono again and go through the whole process
Speaker 1: again that they went through with dominion of all kinds
Speaker 1: of embarrassing correspondents and emails and text messages and what
Speaker 1: did this producer say and did they know that this.
Speaker 5: Was bullshit, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: No, they're probably not going to want any of that happening,
Speaker 1: So I am and they will probably settle here with
Speaker 1: mister Ups because I do think that he has a
Speaker 1: decent case.
Speaker 2: I did not realize that they had called him the
Speaker 2: smoking gun, because yeah, I mean, we always do it
Speaker 2: the same thing. You gotta say a leged that's just
Speaker 2: one of the most basic, especially whenever you're talking about.
Speaker 3: This public figure.
Speaker 2: Though, I really, you know, I think that on that one,
Speaker 2: just saying that you're one of one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: thousand like that, that doesn't really pass scrutiny. Whenever he
Speaker 2: was literally on an FBI wanted poster and made himself
Speaker 2: a core part of it by shouting constantly on video
Speaker 2: and knowing that he was being filmed at the time.
Speaker 2: So I mean, we can quibble about this all day long.
Speaker 2: Is he an actor?
Speaker 3: No, you know.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I believe there have been
Speaker 2: multiple cases in the past where witnesses and participants and
Speaker 2: big events have been declared public figures after they later
Speaker 2: on tried to sue for defamation, specifically like this, and
Speaker 2: the reason but was it was like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: even though it is no fault of your own, you
Speaker 2: became one whenever you became involved in the case. We'll
Speaker 2: see how it all plays out. As you said, though,
Speaker 2: the reason why I think the only reason he has
Speaker 2: a good case is reputationally. Murdock and them, they just
Speaker 2: want to wash their hands with this. They don't want
Speaker 2: to deal with it anymore. So they're willing to pay
Speaker 2: somebody to shut up and walk away. They already paid
Speaker 2: out a billion dollars on this dominion voting system. They
Speaker 2: just paid twelve million to this former Tucker producer. To them,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the reasons that they fired him
Speaker 2: was because they didn't want to deal with this stuff anymore.
Speaker 3: And to them, they want to walk away.
Speaker 2: So you know, for them, he very much could get
Speaker 2: a very big payday from him, So we'll see.
Speaker 1: And reportedly Ruper Murdock really hated the Tucker January sixte.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, and Rupert in particular was
Speaker 3: very upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean the whole like you know,
Speaker 1: fed surrection documentary quote unquote thing the Tucker did. Apparently
Speaker 1: they didn't like he was what was he about to
Speaker 1: do an interview with someone? I was about to do
Speaker 1: some additional commentary on that just before he was fired.
Speaker 1: And then if you just look at the business piece,
Speaker 1: you know, he was named in the dominion lawsuit. He's
Speaker 1: named in the smarmatic lawsuit. His former producer was suing
Speaker 1: for sexual harassment. The Ray Epps thing was already hanging
Speaker 1: out out there that they expected a lawsuit on that
Speaker 1: front as well. So you know, when you start getting
Speaker 1: wrapped up in multi tens one hundred million dollar lawsuits,
Speaker 1: then the fact that you generate great ratings ends up
Speaker 1: being less consequential, especially.
Speaker 5: Because there were a lot of advertisers.
Speaker 1: Who would no longer place their ads during his program,
Speaker 1: so it becomes less financially lucrative. So you can sort
Speaker 1: of put all these pieces together and see why they
Speaker 1: were like, all right, we're done here.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 5: Yes, speaking of the Murdoch what you got for us?
Speaker 2: All right, let's go in and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. This is pretty interesting in terms of
Speaker 2: the proclivities of billionaires and why you never really want
Speaker 2: to make sure that you are aligned with them. The Murdochs,
Speaker 2: the king makers of conservative media are starting to lose
Speaker 2: confidence in Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 3: This was reported by Rolling Stone.
Speaker 2: Now normally I would not just rely on Rolling Stone,
Speaker 2: but one of the reasons why I think that you
Speaker 2: can take this to the bank is that the Murdochs,
Speaker 2: and clearly the people around them are basically leaking this
Speaker 2: to anybody who will listen, go in and put the
Speaker 2: next one up there. Literally almost an hour after that
Speaker 2: story posted, another one was posted by The New York
Speaker 2: Times saying, quote, DeSantis confronts a Murdoch empire. No longer
Speaker 2: quite so supportive. The Florida governor face tough questions, as
Speaker 2: we noted from Fox News in outlets, in a sign
Speaker 2: of growing skepticism. Furthermore, Crystal mister Murdoch quote has privately
Speaker 2: told people he would like to see Governor Glenn Youngkin
Speaker 2: of Virginia enter the race, according to a person with
Speaker 2: knowledge of his remarks, and he has made clear in
Speaker 2: private discussions that he thinks Trump, despite his popularity with
Speaker 2: Fox News viewers, is unhealthy for the Republican Party. And
Speaker 2: I think when you can put these two things together,
Speaker 2: you are actually seeing a growing trend of a lot
Speaker 2: of these billionaires are just the most fickle people on earth.
Speaker 2: I mean, just earlier today, I was looking at a
Speaker 2: story top donors are starting to sour on DeSantis and
Speaker 2: looking at Governor Tim's our former current Senator Tim Scott,
Speaker 2: you also see people like Ken Griffin, who I've noted
Speaker 2: here before and shows you again how ridiculous these people are. Griffin,
Speaker 2: you know, makes it known months ago, I've got a
Speaker 2: blank check for Ron desandis I'll never want for money.
Speaker 2: Now it's like Ken Griffin's eye is beginning to watch
Speaker 2: for real. Oh yeah, I mean, these are fickle people.
Speaker 2: They have no loyalty. They their ideology is you know,
Speaker 2: ridiculous at best. They're already you know, all they care
Speaker 2: about is lower taxes. They thought DeSantis, you know DeSantis,
Speaker 2: you know he's the guy who will get it done
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 3: He's just not so mean as Trump.
Speaker 2: And now you know, at the moment that they think
Speaker 2: that you're not doing well, they really have no loyalty whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So the Murdock problem is a much bigger billionaire problem
Speaker 2: that I think Ron DeSantis has right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's disgusting the way that these people just
Speaker 1: like play with the whole nation like it's their play things,
Speaker 1: you know, and they think that they're king makers and whatever,
Speaker 1: even though I mean it's really not even money. Apology
Speaker 1: is still a big problem, especially at the lower levels,
Speaker 1: but at the presidential level. I mean, you know, Ken
Speaker 1: Grivin could write his billion dollar check to Ronda Santis
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I don't think that it would get
Speaker 1: him across the finish line. But the reason that I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of confidence in this reporting too,
Speaker 1: is because you can see the signs of it all
Speaker 1: over the Murdock properties we covered here.
Speaker 5: How Will Caine and then Maria.
Speaker 1: Bartiromo just basically, you know, confronted DeSantis with what's going
Speaker 1: on with your poll numbers, buddy, which really contrasted with
Speaker 1: the treatment that he got early in the campaign where
Speaker 1: it was nothing but puff pieces. You remember, he was
Speaker 1: like playing softball with Was it one of the Fox
Speaker 1: and Friends who kill meat? I think it was, And
Speaker 1: he was getting this unbelievable, I mean, embarrassingly friendly write
Speaker 1: up from Selena's veto in the New York Post, and it's.
Speaker 5: Just puff piece after puff piece.
Speaker 1: They would go out in the wilderness and do their
Speaker 1: best to find like a few Ronda Santis supporters to
Speaker 1: be like, we're done with Trump, we love Rondo Santis now.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they've turned is becoming increasingly apparent,
Speaker 1: both on Fox News. They also note in this Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone piece the editorial pages of news courts newspapers, which
Speaker 1: they say are often important tea leaves for divining the
Speaker 1: Murdoch Famili's political wishes. They've taken recent jabs at DeSantis.
Speaker 5: New York Post editorial board, which.
Speaker 1: Once hailed Dasantis as the candidate who gives America the
Speaker 1: chance to move on from its punch drunk stupor, they
Speaker 1: begun to look askance at Dysantis. They curated pieces expressing
Speaker 1: skepticism at quote DeSantis's odd choices to criticize Trump Supreme
Speaker 1: Court picks and to be too online in his constant
Speaker 1: culture war crusading. So part of I mean, the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that happened here is just the poles aren't good
Speaker 1: and so they're looking at it and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't look like a winner to me. And then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other justifications of like, oh, we
Speaker 1: don't like your position on this or that, or you've
Speaker 1: taken too heart of a turn on culture war issues.
Speaker 1: But I think the bottom line is if he was
Speaker 1: committed to cutting their taxes, which I'm sure is, and
Speaker 1: he was winning, they would stick with him. I think
Speaker 1: the Tim Scott thing is interesting. I keep going back
Speaker 1: to the reporter we had on what was her name,
Speaker 1: Shelby Talcott. She had told us months ago she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, the people that the Trump team, the person
Speaker 1: that the Trump team are actually looking at is Tim Scott.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe that's just what the Trump team
Speaker 1: was telling her, but I do think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: he's getting a second look from the elite media and
Speaker 1: donor class.
Speaker 5: And then I just the young kin.
Speaker 1: Flirtation is to me hilarious, like that guy is going
Speaker 1: to be your Trump's slayer.
Speaker 5: Okay, good luck with that, Good luck with that.
Speaker 3: It's a nice guy.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I think he's a good politician for
Speaker 2: where he is. But like even he I don't think
Speaker 2: has any compunction that he could ever.
Speaker 3: Win an act.
Speaker 5: It's like flirting with it again, so never on.
Speaker 3: He goes.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean you know better than I, but Virginia,
Speaker 2: I do think that it is a perverse incentive that
Speaker 2: these guys don't have to run for reelection.
Speaker 3: So it's basically, what is it because you have a
Speaker 3: one term limit?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, whenever you're the whenever you're the gov. So
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is then you won't focus on that.
Speaker 2: But it also almost immediately makes you want to think
Speaker 2: and look for the future, whatever national prospects or for
Speaker 2: donor dollars. So in a way, I almost think that
Speaker 2: having to run for reelection is a good limitter on
Speaker 2: keeping you at least like semi focused within the state.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've heard a lot of different theories around it. At
Speaker 2: the end of the day, though Glenn Youngin is not
Speaker 2: going to be the GOP nominee. You know, remember this,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of theory that he couldn't even
Speaker 2: win a real primary. They had to use rank choice
Speaker 2: voting at the GOP convention to even get him the nomination.
Speaker 2: If they had led it to the base, we would
Speaker 2: have had some crazy backup tu be the you know,
Speaker 2: Cory Stewart level guy who would have got blown out
Speaker 2: in a GOP gubernatorial election.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that's another reason I liked one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forgot about that that they had to basically
Speaker 1: like true ye usher room through the GOP primary because
Speaker 1: he was going to get his ass beat by some
Speaker 1: weirdo crank If.
Speaker 5: He didn't, I mean it weren't, Yes, College would probably
Speaker 5: be governor of Virginia. So yes, it did work.
Speaker 1: But they probably won't be able to pull that off
Speaker 1: at the Republican primary level as much as they would.
Speaker 5: Really like to.
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, Let's give you the very latest
Speaker 1: on a beat that we've been tracking, which is the
Speaker 1: seemingly bottomless well of corruption at the Supreme Court. We
Speaker 1: got a couple of pieces together that have been reported
Speaker 1: out over the past number of days. Let's put this
Speaker 1: first part up on the screen. So New York Times
Speaker 1: did a deep dive into some additional sketchy connections with
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas being very closely tied to a lot of
Speaker 1: elites who have business in front of the court. But
Speaker 1: packed into this piece was an interesting little nugget about
Speaker 1: the bipartisan nature of some of this corruption and how
Speaker 1: this is apparently just the way people, you know, these people,
Speaker 1: these justices view they have carte blanche to do whatever
Speaker 1: while they're sitting on the court. They talk about who
Speaker 1: was actually number one in terms of the trips, the
Speaker 1: you know, all expenses paid trips that they took while
Speaker 1: they were on the court, and they say that Justice
Speaker 1: Scalia's disclosures showed he took two hundred and fifty eight
Speaker 1: subsidized trips from two thousand and four to twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Destinations included Switzerland, Ireland, Hawaii. He died, you might remember
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen while staying for free at the West
Speaker 1: Texas hunting Lodge of a business executive whose company recently
Speaker 1: had a case before the Supreme Court. So that is
Speaker 1: the late antonin Scalia, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg disclosed
Speaker 1: more trips than any other justice. In twenty eighteen, during
Speaker 1: a trip to Israel, she was a guest of the
Speaker 1: Israeli billionaire Morris Khan. The year before, the court had
Speaker 1: given his company a victory by declining to take up
Speaker 1: a case. Now, it is also worth noting that Justice
Speaker 1: Thomas at least.
Speaker 5: Appears to have just like stopped.
Speaker 1: Disclosing a lot of the trips that he has been
Speaker 1: going on. That's why we only found out about the
Speaker 1: whole Harlan Crow situation once there was reporting on it.
Speaker 5: So there's willy nilly.
Speaker 1: Approach to what they even decide is you know we're
Speaker 1: worthy of knowing about.
Speaker 5: So that's one piece.
Speaker 1: The next piece here is some reporting on current Justice
Speaker 1: Sonya Soda mayor, let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So she has been going on book tours, one of
Speaker 1: the exceptions to the rules about how they can get paid.
Speaker 1: As they are allowed to write books, they're allowed to
Speaker 1: make money from writing books, and so she has a
Speaker 1: habit of going on these book tours to libraries and
Speaker 1: universities and whatever. And the ap here got their hands
Speaker 1: on multiple emails where her staff was prodding public institutions,
Speaker 1: as they put it, to buy her memoir or her
Speaker 1: children's books, works that have earned her at least three
Speaker 1: point seven million dollars since she joined the court in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. Repeated examples, they say, of taxpayer
Speaker 1: funded court staff performing tasks for the justice's book ventures.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that former Governor Cuomo got in trouble
Speaker 1: for that We really raked them over the colds for here.
Speaker 5: Apparently she is doing that as well.
Speaker 1: But since the Court holds itself to basically no standards,
Speaker 1: there's no actual prohibition even on her using her staff,
Speaker 1: her taxpayer funded staff, to help her write her books
Speaker 1: so that she can earn millions. There's a quote here
Speaker 1: from an expert who says this is one of the
Speaker 1: most basic tenets of ethics laws that protects taxpayer dollars
Speaker 1: from misuse. The problem with the Supreme Court is there is
Speaker 1: no one there to say whether this is wrong.
Speaker 5: The justification, by.
Speaker 1: The way, just to give her side of the story
Speaker 1: from the court about her aids constantly prodding universities like,
Speaker 1: you need to buy more of her books if she's
Speaker 1: going to come here, they say. When Justice Sotomayora is
Speaker 1: invited to participate in a book program, chamber staff recommends
Speaker 1: the number of books for an organization to order based
Speaker 1: on the size of the audience, so as not to
Speaker 1: disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: That's exactly why they be so disappointed if they didn't
Speaker 2: have the book.
Speaker 5: That if they didn't get her children's book.
Speaker 2: The most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, As you said,
Speaker 2: the worst part is that these people are federal employees
Speaker 2: who are pushing private books.
Speaker 3: This is the most basic ethics from queens.
Speaker 2: Really, the same thing happened with what's her name, Elaine
Speaker 2: chow Ohm Mitch McConnell's wife over the Department of Transportation
Speaker 2: using federal resources to help flog her billionaire father's book
Speaker 2: while she was literally a Secretary of Transportation. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why is that books are
Speaker 2: normally one of the avenues.
Speaker 3: That federal officials and elected officials.
Speaker 2: Can make a ton of money while not, you know,
Speaker 2: directly serving in another job. So look, the other problem
Speaker 2: is we don't even know how much money she's making
Speaker 2: off these books, but it could I'm literally, like you said, millions. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she all of a sudden decided to become a children's author,
Speaker 2: you know, out of nowhere, or maybe the margins on
Speaker 2: children's books are incredible because they're like this book this big, if.
Speaker 3: You can sell a ton of them.
Speaker 2: The problem I think with all of this is just
Speaker 2: the sheer lawlessness.
Speaker 3: Wh's what they seem to behave.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially coming out in that like RBG really
Speaker 2: just thinks you can fly around the globe, you can
Speaker 2: just do it all for free. You can stay at
Speaker 2: these billionaire residences whenever they're arguing cases before you, and
Speaker 2: they don't think twice Clarence Thomas doing the same things Scalia.
Speaker 2: I mean, but these are really just the tip of
Speaker 2: the iceberg, because these dinners and events and all these
Speaker 2: things these people get to go through in Washington throughout
Speaker 2: the legal world.
Speaker 3: It's like you say, they're kings and queens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they behave that way, and they expect the courtier treatment.
Speaker 2: And I often find that one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: they're so comfortable accepting a lot of freebies is because
Speaker 2: in their minds, they're like, I've given up so much
Speaker 2: to serve on the court.
Speaker 3: That is how they far three hundred.
Speaker 5: Thousand oh yes, Popperty salary.
Speaker 3: Multi millionaire.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, you can leave
Speaker 2: any time you want and then you can go make
Speaker 2: a ton of money and live that lifestyle and nobody
Speaker 2: would care. But you know, this just shows you the
Speaker 2: mindset that they have about the sacrifice.
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right. And you know, they're in
Speaker 1: this high position of power. There is no accountability. They
Speaker 1: have no actual set really ethics rules that they have
Speaker 1: to abide by, and they feel themselves to be a
Speaker 1: part of the extremely wealthy elite set, and so to them,
Speaker 1: it's only fitting that they be treated and veetted to
Speaker 1: these trips and vacations and goodies and perks and whatever,
Speaker 1: because they do feel this sense of like you know,
Speaker 1: there's been some reporting on this with regards to Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 1: like they feel that they deserve this lifestyle rather than Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think if you are going to serve on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, if you're going to serve in these
Speaker 1: positions of quote unquote public service, I do think that
Speaker 1: there should be some measure of sacrifice, more so even
Speaker 1: than what has been you know, what is the actual
Speaker 1: reality for these individuals? And you know, I can't get
Speaker 1: past the irony that these are supposed to be the
Speaker 1: arbiters of true justice in our land and forget about
Speaker 1: like a you know, two tier legalss like they hold
Speaker 1: themselves to no standards whatsoever and they have no plans
Speaker 1: to change. There was additional reporting about Clarence Thomas. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just like another weird sketchy I don't even
Speaker 1: know what's going on here. Let's put this up from
Speaker 1: the Guardian. So lawyers with Supreme Court business were sending
Speaker 1: venmo cash to a Clarence Thomas aid and it all
Speaker 1: seemed to be with regards to some Christmas party that
Speaker 1: he had. But I'm talking these lawyers. One of them
Speaker 1: was on the affirmative Action case. I mean these are
Speaker 1: really you know, serious, big time people, and they're like
Speaker 1: cash apping money to his top aid.
Speaker 5: What the hell is that about?
Speaker 1: And we don't exactly know, but it sure looks sketchy
Speaker 1: as hell.
Speaker 3: So yeah, what's the explanation?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They didn't respond to a requests for comments, so we
Speaker 1: really don't have an explanation. The Venmo account, which was
Speaker 1: public prior to requesting comment for the article and it
Speaker 1: is no longer show that this aid, received seven payments
Speaker 1: in November and December from lawyers who previously served as
Speaker 1: Thomas Legal clerks. The amounts of the payments not disclosed,
Speaker 1: but the purpose of each payment is listed is either
Speaker 1: Christmas Party, Thomas Christmas Party, CT Christmas Party or CT
Speaker 1: Xmas Party, in an apparent reference to the Justice's initials. So,
Speaker 1: you know, they just feel themselves to be above it all.
Speaker 1: None of the laws apparently they think apply to them.
Speaker 1: They don't think that they should be held to any
Speaker 1: sort of ethical standard, when I think it's clear to
Speaker 1: everyone else that they should be held to the highest
Speaker 1: ethical standard given the amount of power that they hold
Speaker 1: in our system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and most people would not disagree with that at all.
Speaker 2: The only people who do are them, so yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, truly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does show.
Speaker 5: You them and their spouses. That's it.
Speaker 3: Specific Yeah, the spouse is probably most of all. All right,
Speaker 3: let's go to the next part here.
Speaker 2: This is just one of the best that we've been
Speaker 2: able to see in a while. MSNBC's Morning Joe and
Speaker 2: Mika Persinski are very upset with Joe Biden's staff for
Speaker 2: letting him appear old.
Speaker 3: They're not upset with Biden for.
Speaker 2: Being this old and contnually to run and be trying
Speaker 2: to run for reelection, run the country, put himself in
Speaker 2: a very stressful job. They are upset with the staff
Speaker 2: for not helping hide how freaking.
Speaker 3: Old that he is. Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 3: They also managed to schedule very carefully.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think his staff needs to own his age.
Speaker 12: I'm just going to be honest. I don't think they
Speaker 12: do a good job helping out the president. And I'm
Speaker 12: not talking about it like I'm just saying, if you
Speaker 12: are managing a president's schedule, and you are managing a
Speaker 12: president getting on stage and getting off stage and doing
Speaker 12: getting on planes and getting off plane, and yes, he's
Speaker 12: eighty you need to be there for him, and you
Speaker 12: need to make a pathway, and you sure as hell
Speaker 12: better make sure he doesn't fall on a sandbag. And
Speaker 12: I blame the staff for that. I mean, these are
Speaker 12: the things that are going to hurt him. These are
Speaker 12: things that are going to be played on a loop. Okay,
Speaker 12: let him do his job, let him do his speeches,
Speaker 12: let him work on policy, let him do his connections
Speaker 12: in Congress. Unlike any president that we've seen. I don't
Speaker 12: know since Clinton, but my god, make sure you know
Speaker 12: your secret service, you're his staff, that you were there
Speaker 12: and you're telling.
Speaker 5: Him what's next.
Speaker 12: And it's not because don't take this as oh, he
Speaker 12: can even get from one place to another when you're
Speaker 12: busy and you're on stage. And we've been on stage.
Speaker 12: I've done speeches and I'm so nervous.
Speaker 3: I'm doing the speech.
Speaker 12: I'm trying to get it right, and when it's done,
Speaker 12: I don't know which way to go and I'm looking
Speaker 12: for direction.
Speaker 7: So do a better.
Speaker 12: Job, because you can't have these video images of the
Speaker 12: president tripping or the president like going the wrong way.
Speaker 5: It's not going to work.
Speaker 12: In this presidency because his age is going to be
Speaker 12: a factor. His age is going to be a factor,
Speaker 12: and it's your job to make sure he gets from
Speaker 12: one place to another. He can handle the presidency, you
Speaker 12: have to handle his schedule and where he goes.
Speaker 2: You've got to handle his schedule and where he goes.
Speaker 2: I would posit that we've had several presidents. Many of
Speaker 2: them faced the exact same circumstance and they didn't wander
Speaker 2: off in weird directions whatever these are, because they're not old.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very basic about what the issue is.
Speaker 2: And effectively what they're saying is you got to cover
Speaker 2: up his age more. You got to basically come in.
Speaker 2: I mean it's so patronizing too. It's like he's a
Speaker 2: grown man.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: If he really does require someone to come and grab
Speaker 2: his arm the moment that he's done and point him
Speaker 2: in the right direction, she should not be in the position. So,
Speaker 2: you know, you really can't look autonomous.
Speaker 3: Adults.
Speaker 6: People deal with these stressful things.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 2: We can all acknowledge that it is stressful in part
Speaker 2: of the presidency, but no president in modern history has
Speaker 2: been as old as Joe Biden. And if that's what
Speaker 2: he requires to serve in the job, then he shouldn't
Speaker 2: be in the job period.
Speaker 1: They want him to get the Dianne Feinstein try Good
Speaker 1: point where it's like, you know, staffers constantly surround her.
Speaker 1: She never gets asked a question without a stafford there
Speaker 1: to feed her what the answer is. They shepherd her
Speaker 1: through the hallways. They do everything they can and have
Speaker 1: for years to make sure that people don't know just
Speaker 1: how far her mental decline has gone. And apparently that's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing the system that they feel needs
Speaker 1: to be in place for the president of the United States.
Speaker 5: I mean, it is Listen. The other piece of this, too.
Speaker 1: Is Mika is really going off here, like she's really
Speaker 1: in her feelings about this one.
Speaker 5: And it's like, with all the issues that exist in
Speaker 5: the world, the fact.
Speaker 1: That you don't feel the president's aides have you know,
Speaker 1: lied to the American public enough about how the president
Speaker 1: is actually doing. That's the thing you're gonna get on
Speaker 1: your righteous high horse about. It's just amazing.
Speaker 12: And you know what.
Speaker 5: The other thing is that there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Of signs that his aides have really been trying to
Speaker 1: aggressively stage manage him.
Speaker 5: There were pictures of like, you know, they were always
Speaker 5: giving him these note.
Speaker 1: Cards with really clear bullets to really hammer home like
Speaker 1: this is the thing that we need you to say,
Speaker 1: and this is the person that's in the room.
Speaker 5: Whatever.
Speaker 1: But you know, they can't control if he goes off
Speaker 1: script and says where's Jackie when Jackie died in a
Speaker 1: car accident a month ago? Like how are you possibly
Speaker 1: going to protect against that? And we also have the
Speaker 1: example of the fact that you know, he barely does interviews,
Speaker 1: he's not going to debate, very few public appearances, is
Speaker 1: very few press conferences.
Speaker 5: So they're clearly doing everything they.
Speaker 1: Can to try to hide his very apparent aging from
Speaker 1: the American public.
Speaker 5: But still not enough for Mika and Joe.
Speaker 2: The big problem that they are getting to, you know,
Speaker 2: with all this, like you just said, is that the
Speaker 2: age is a factor which is so visceral for all
Speaker 2: of us, and they want it to be covered up.
Speaker 3: And I find that just so disgusting.
Speaker 2: And you know, she could spend more time being like, hey,
Speaker 2: list is, mister President, you're an old man, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's time to go sometimes, and that's okay. You know,
Speaker 2: her own father recently, I think he just died very recently,
Speaker 2: lived up into his nineties, Like and he was a
Speaker 2: great man, you know, great man quote unquote, I guess
Speaker 2: in his time as a national security advisor to Jimmy Carter,
Speaker 2: a great statesman and all this. But you know, there
Speaker 2: is just an inevitable decline that happens with this. And
Speaker 2: you know, let's go and put this next part up
Speaker 2: on the screen, which really hammers this stuff home. Like
Speaker 2: Biden skipped the NATO dinner with all of the leaders
Speaker 2: citing workload, and you're like, hmm, okay, it turns out,
Speaker 2: let's put this next part. This is the third major
Speaker 2: dinner that he has now skipped with world leaders on
Speaker 2: an international trip. The last time quote still after fatiguing
Speaker 2: days on the road, he skipped dinner with world leaders
Speaker 2: in Indonesia and again in Japan in May. Now, let
Speaker 2: me just offer some sympathy. I just returned from Asia.
Speaker 7: I get it.
Speaker 2: The jet lag is a pain in the ass, don't
Speaker 2: get me wrong. But I checked Vilnius is seven hours ahead. Okay,
Speaker 2: it ain't that bad. It's not terrible enough for you've
Speaker 2: already been on the continent. You know, one day you
Speaker 2: can stomach a single dinner, especially whenever you so rarely
Speaker 2: get to actually meet and commiserate with some of these people.
Speaker 2: From what I have heard, many of these are a chore,
Speaker 2: these diplomatic events and all that.
Speaker 3: You know, don't be the head of state, then I
Speaker 3: don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: If you don't like to be feted and attend some
Speaker 2: of this stuff, then you probably shouldn't run.
Speaker 3: Who drive me crazy, don't get me wrong. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: know that's not what I do.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden used to live for this stuff.
Speaker 3: That's the other part.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not like, he's not like us in
Speaker 1: the really you know, like I don't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with this, Like I'm not interested and you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, bullshit table conversation.
Speaker 5: He's not like that.
Speaker 1: He's a you know, old school glad handing politician very
Speaker 1: you know, really prizes those personal relationship becuse start trumpy
Speaker 1: in this regard, like, you know, really views foreign policy
Speaker 1: through the lens of his like personal relationships with various
Speaker 1: world leaders. So yeah, when he decides in multiple trips
Speaker 1: that he's going to skip out on those dinners, it's
Speaker 1: indicative and I it's a rough schedule. No one is
Speaker 1: saying that being president of the United States is a
Speaker 1: cup of tea. You know, it's brutal, it's stressful, it's exhausting,
Speaker 1: it's long days, it's late nights, it's early mornings, it's
Speaker 1: it's all of those things. And you know, ideally you
Speaker 1: would have someone in the job who was ready and.
Speaker 5: Able and willing and up to that task.
Speaker 1: But you know, just to bring it back to Mega,
Speaker 1: I just can't get over someone who is supposedly, I guess,
Speaker 1: sort of a journalist in our you're actually arguing here
Speaker 1: for less transparency for the American people. What you're arguing
Speaker 1: for is you need to do a better job hiding
Speaker 1: the reality of what's going on in the White House.
Speaker 1: I mean, the real thing you should be asking for is, hey,
Speaker 1: mister President, people have questions about your age and your
Speaker 1: ability to do the job. You should debate your primary
Speaker 1: opponents so people in real time that you're that you're
Speaker 1: up to it, that you're you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: vision for the future, that you're able to articulate, that
Speaker 1: you've got the energy to take on these other competitors,
Speaker 1: like get out there and show us. What you should
Speaker 1: be advocating for is hey, we need to have more
Speaker 1: availability we need to see out there in press conferences.
Speaker 5: We need to see you doing interviews.
Speaker 1: We sure as all need to see you, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to attend these dinners that are with other
Speaker 1: heads of state. That's what you should be arguing for
Speaker 1: if you're any of your rhetoric about democracy means a
Speaker 1: single thing. But of course we know that it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's all just partisan flacking. And in that regard, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're just like Democratic partisans cheerleader, you're not wrong
Speaker 1: that maybe the staff should up their game in further
Speaker 1: trying to hide from the American people the actual condition
Speaker 1: of the president of the United States.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, at the end of the day, like
Speaker 2: this is all they can really stomach. If he can't
Speaker 2: handle the very basics of the presidency, like you know,
Speaker 2: going abroad and holding a meeting and being able to
Speaker 2: be sound of mind, well then you shouldn't be in that.
Speaker 3: And it's not a staff problem. It is a personal problem.
Speaker 2: It is a very legitimate question, and it's one that
Speaker 2: we've been probably the most gas lit on from the
Speaker 2: very beginning really of his entire candidacy, from the you know,
Speaker 2: fake stutter that suddenly remateialized eighty years later to any
Speaker 2: you know, just you know, accusations of agism or sexism.
Speaker 2: Whenever it came to Diane Finstein. They'll use anything in
Speaker 2: their playbook to get people to shut up.
Speaker 5: It's anti Irish bias. I haven't actually heard.
Speaker 3: That, Ani.
Speaker 10: I mean, I'm sure they say.
Speaker 3: It actually sounds like something he would say, it.
Speaker 5: Really does, all right, Sorry, are you looking at it?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden Gate, much like Russia Gate or Obamagate, has many,
Speaker 2: many layers. Most people are familiar with Hunter's payments from
Speaker 2: a Ukrainian energy company, Barisma.
Speaker 3: That certainly was bad, but honestly, for those.
Speaker 2: Familiar with his sketchy business dealings, it barely scratched the surface.
Speaker 2: Hunter has millions of dollars in dealings that he still
Speaker 2: needs to answer for from Russian, Romanian, and most importantly,
Speaker 2: Chinese businessmen. The Chinese dealings in particular have deep links
Speaker 2: both to the government, and they remain very understudied by
Speaker 2: the press. The Chinese deals came into focus in recent
Speaker 2: months after Republicans retook control of Congress and they began
Speaker 2: their investigation into Hunter Biden and their possible links to
Speaker 2: the current president. One of those inquiries into China relied
Speaker 2: on a whistleblower named Dal Luft.
Speaker 3: He is a dual US Israeli citizen.
Speaker 2: According to Luft, he was previously contacted by the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice in March of twenty nineteen, and he detailed
Speaker 2: his knowledge of a Biden families deep financial chies ties
Speaker 2: to China.
Speaker 3: Here is the story he told in his own words.
Speaker 13: My ordeal goes back to a fatal decision I made
Speaker 13: in March of twenty nineteen to share with the US
Speaker 13: government my knowledge about the Biden families relations with CFC.
Speaker 13: Over an intensive two day meeting, I shared my information
Speaker 13: about the Biden family's financial transactions with CFC, including specific
Speaker 13: dollar figures. I also provided the name of Rob Walker,
Speaker 13: who later became known as Hunter Biden's bag men. Finally,
Speaker 13: in February this year, I was arrested in Cyprus on
Speaker 13: an expedition request from the Sudden District of New York,
Speaker 13: the very same office that met with me in Brussels.
Speaker 13: The seven County indictment said I violated the Export Arms
Speaker 13: Export Control Act and if I am convicted, I would
Speaker 13: face up to one hundred years in prison.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he contacted them. In March of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: a bunch of FBI agents met with him. Nothing happened.
Speaker 2: So then what, as he continues a detail, after he
Speaker 2: contacted the doj in the FBI to details knowledge of
Speaker 2: Biden ties to China, they ignore him. A few years later,
Speaker 2: after attention again is sparked into these allegations, he is
Speaker 2: suddenly indicted by the Department of Justice. That indictment, which
Speaker 2: became public on Monday, alleges that he evaded registering as
Speaker 2: a foreign agent in the United States while working to
Speaker 2: advance the interests of the Chinese government in the US
Speaker 2: and seeking specifically to broker the sales of Chinese weapons
Speaker 2: and Iranian oil. The charges against him total nearly one
Speaker 2: hundred years in prison, as he said, if convicted, and
Speaker 2: they detail a very serious breach of the law. But
Speaker 2: it does leave us with a few questions. Number one,
Speaker 2: is this true? And number two why is this happening?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: Let's focus in on a second part of that question
Speaker 2: and also untangle some of the details. One of the
Speaker 2: charges against Luft is based upon a donation to his
Speaker 2: think tank by CEC, that is, a Chinese energy company
Speaker 2: from twenty fifteen. Now the money was given to that
Speaker 2: think tank in an effort to recruit a former CIA
Speaker 2: director to make statements beneficial to the interests of China.
Speaker 2: Shady and gross stuff, to be sure, But what they
Speaker 2: are not telling you is that the CEFC is the
Speaker 2: exact same company paid Hunter Biden five million dollars between
Speaker 2: August twenty seventeen and May of twenty eighteen. Great work,
Speaker 2: if you can get it right. What exactly did Hunter
Speaker 2: get paid all this money for. It's not actually clear.
Speaker 2: Millions of dollars though, to represent this Chinese energy company's
Speaker 2: interest in the US, and one million dollars even more
Speaker 2: to provide legal services to the very Chinese go between
Speaker 2: that the DOJ says Lift was working with who was
Speaker 2: a Chinese buy so. In other words, if god Luft
Speaker 2: is an unregistered Chinese agent, Hunter Biden sure as hell
Speaker 2: looks like one two and the timeline of almost everything
Speaker 2: matches up. If anything actually vindicates much bluff was saying.
Speaker 2: And I guess it takes one unregistered foreign agent to
Speaker 2: know another one, As my friend Chuck Ross over the
Speaker 2: Washington Free Beacon re notes the initial contact to both
Speaker 2: of these individuals was made in twenty fifteen, That is
Speaker 2: when the first donation actually happened to Hunter Biden's Link charity,
Speaker 2: and is when the first payment was made. In fact,
Speaker 2: both Luved and Hunter both appear to have had knowledge
Speaker 2: pretty soon afterwards that the people they were dealing with
Speaker 2: were no ordinary Chinese businessman. Hunter himself, in a text
Speaker 2: message in twenty seventeen, specifically said he wanted to avoid
Speaker 2: registering as a foreign agent as part of his deal
Speaker 2: with the CEFC. Now, for those who are familiar, this
Speaker 2: is where the character Tony Bobolinski also comes in and
Speaker 2: relates to this entire saga. Bobolinski, of course, came forward
Speaker 2: after the release of the Hunter Biden laptop and alleged
Speaker 2: that he specifically met with Joe Biden in May of
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen regarding this exact Chinese energy company deal, and
Speaker 2: that Hunter himself laid out the quote ten percent for
Speaker 2: the big guy, the big guy being Joe Biden. So,
Speaker 2: upon closer inspection, the headline the Department of Justice sought
Speaker 2: in trying to make this all go away is not
Speaker 2: close to reality. The reality, though, is that Hunter Biden
Speaker 2: whistleblower has been revealed as a Chinese spy. It is
Speaker 2: also though the Department's Justice has confirmed that the company
Speaker 2: which paid Hunters some six million dollars is now confirmed
Speaker 2: as an agent, possibly of China, and that the same
Speaker 2: behavior that the whistleblower was now indicted for is the
Speaker 2: same stuff that Hunter Biden was doing. That the company
Speaker 2: in question here at the least is alleged by this
Speaker 2: whistleblower to have been directly financially connected to the President
Speaker 2: of the United States. And I understand this can all
Speaker 2: seem complicated, but it's not. Even the government now admits
Speaker 2: effectively that the company is a Chinese spyfront and they
Speaker 2: paid the Biden family, plain and simple. The only question
Speaker 2: now is did he get a piece of that as
Speaker 2: president or not. This two vindicates the previous text message
Speaker 2: revealed by the House Committee IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley specific
Speaker 2: noted that a previous search warrant uncovered this infamous text
Speaker 2: message by Hunter to the very Chinese energy company threatening
Speaker 2: action if he was not paid. Aiden vokes how his
Speaker 2: father was sitting right next to him. So look now
Speaker 2: it's actually all coming together. The shocking part is an
Speaker 2: upon investigation, it actually looks even more clear that Hunter
Speaker 2: and possibly Joe got into some very sketchy stuff with
Speaker 2: this Chinese energy company. But don't expect the media to
Speaker 2: actually tell you the truth about the case. So Chrystal,
Speaker 2: that's my investigation.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagre's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: Cristal, what are you trying to look at?
Speaker 1: Well, we have closely tracked here the way that private
Speaker 1: equity has swooped into by the entire neighborhoods across the country,
Speaker 1: vacuuming up single family homes and positioning themselves as America's landlords.
Speaker 1: Great money making mensure for them, disaster for literally everyone else. Well,
Speaker 1: this week, a group of Senate Democrats, including Shared Brown,
Speaker 1: Ron Wyden, and Elizabeth Warren, they introduced legislation seeking to
Speaker 1: cut the legs out from large investors who are buying
Speaker 1: up the nation's housing stock. The Stop Predatory Investing Act
Speaker 1: aims to make it less profitable for these private equity
Speaker 1: backed companies to purchase single family homes. So basically, the
Speaker 1: bill says you cannot deduct mortgage interest or depreciation on
Speaker 1: these homes once you own more than fifty of them,
Speaker 1: undercutting one aspect of the very lucrative nature of this business.
Speaker 1: In addition to cutting into the profit margins of mass
Speaker 1: single family landlords, the bill also attempts to incentivize selling
Speaker 1: homes to actual aspiring homeowners. According to a Senate one
Speaker 1: page or quote, if an investor sold one of those
Speaker 1: properties to a home buyer or qualified nonprofit, they can
Speaker 1: deduct the interest and appreciation for the year in which
Speaker 1: the property is sold. So basically, if you're one of
Speaker 1: the big guys, you don't get tax breaks while you
Speaker 1: own the property, but you do get a break if
Speaker 1: you sell it off to an actual human being rather
Speaker 1: than to permanent capital. Now let me temper my expectations
Speaker 1: here a bit. First of all, no Republicans have signed
Speaker 1: on as of yet, meaning that the bills pross in
Speaker 1: the Senate are dim let alone the GOP controlled House.
Speaker 5: And second, hard to.
Speaker 1: Say just how impactful this bill would actually be even
Speaker 1: if it did somehow pass through. With high mortgage rates,
Speaker 1: a good chunk of these large investors actually buy houses
Speaker 1: in all cash, making the tax deduction piece of this
Speaker 1: less significant to their bottom line. It's ultimately a much
Speaker 1: more reformist and less radical reform than what I would
Speaker 1: like to see, but it is a start and at
Speaker 1: least aims to tackle what is a very real problem.
Speaker 5: What's more, the.
Speaker 1: Fact that this issue is getting serious attention at the
Speaker 1: federal level is telling in and of itself. Housing is
Speaker 1: literally the least affordable that it has ever been in history.
Speaker 1: Take a look at this chart showing the way that
Speaker 1: the median monthly mortgage payment has skyrocketed in the last
Speaker 1: several years as housing prices have spiked and mortgage rates
Speaker 1: have jumped thanks to the FED. This has huge ramifications
Speaker 1: for every income level outside of the rich, pushing up
Speaker 1: shelter costs for everyone from renters to aspiring homeowners to
Speaker 1: current homeowners who need or want to move. The net
Speaker 1: effect here is to push everyone down a rum on
Speaker 1: the latter of stability, and those who are barely hanging
Speaker 1: onto the bottom rung they get pushed right on into
Speaker 1: the streets, leading the homelessness that has become endemic across
Speaker 1: the entire country. This disastrous state of affairs is apparently
Speaker 1: starting to break through at the federal level, as evidenced
Speaker 1: by this effort and by some others too, including legislation
Speaker 1: introduced by Bernie and aoc Now. Their bill would fund
Speaker 1: upgrades to public housing and repeal an amendment that caps
Speaker 1: construction of new public housing units by the federal government,
Speaker 1: with the goal of expanding and improving social housing. Now,
Speaker 1: the fact that Shared Brown has made himself the face
Speaker 1: of this new effort aimed at private equity, it also
Speaker 1: tells you something key about the politics of pushing back
Speaker 1: on investors buying up American neighborhoods. It is no accident
Speaker 1: that he is pushing this bill at the same time
Speaker 1: as he faces a very tough reelect in his home
Speaker 1: state of Ohio. Now, Ohio may be an increasingly read state,
Speaker 1: but this bill is good policy and good politics there,
Speaker 1: especially because Cincinnati, Cleveland and other Ohio cities they've been
Speaker 1: going to war with the private equity back giants that
Speaker 1: are destroying neighborhoods, ing out home buyers and jacking up rents.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, twenty percent of
Speaker 1: the homes sold in the first quarter this year were
Speaker 1: snapped up by investors. That put Cincinnati in the top
Speaker 1: ten of cities nationwide in terms of investor's share of purchases.
Speaker 1: This has been a huge source of tension major issue locally.
Speaker 1: The Cincinnati Inquirer recently documented how one single Texas based company,
Speaker 1: Wenebrook Homes, now owns more than thirty one hundred homes
Speaker 1: in the county that include Cincinnati. They've specifically targeted increasingly
Speaker 1: scarce starter homes that are priced around one hundred K
Speaker 1: to two hundred k.
Speaker 5: That means that working class.
Speaker 1: Neighborhoods have been transformed practically overnight from real neighborhoods into
Speaker 1: just another profit center for giant corporations. These companies increasing
Speaker 1: dominance in the rental market has also caused rents to
Speaker 1: skyrocket as they push the whole market to be way
Speaker 1: less affordable. And it's not like these renters are getting
Speaker 1: good service for their money either. Vinebrook was sued by
Speaker 1: the city for neglect and failure to pay their bills.
Speaker 1: They've been settled for half a million dollars in fines.
Speaker 1: Just the cost of doing business, I guess for our
Speaker 1: nation's slumlord bohemoths is what it appears. In recent years,
Speaker 1: Shery Brown has been the only Democrat who seems to
Speaker 1: be able to win in the state of Ohio. He's
Speaker 1: done it by leaning into a pro labor economic populism
Speaker 1: that is uniquely suited to a state that has struggled
Speaker 1: with industrial decline post NAFTA and opening up trade with China.
Speaker 1: By honing in on private equity and housing, He's once
Speaker 1: again placing a big bet on bread and butter issues.
Speaker 5: But this will undoubtedly be the toughest.
Speaker 1: Fight of his political career, and it's far from certain
Speaker 1: that he can overcome Partson tilt that makes the state
Speaker 1: more and more difficult for Democrat to win no matter what.
Speaker 5: They do and what good legislation they back.
Speaker 1: I just hope more politicians recognize that curbing the abuses
Speaker 1: of these giant landlord vultures is good for the country
Speaker 1: and also good for their careers.
Speaker 5: And this is something it's really bubbling up for the way.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: So I made a big promise at the top of
Speaker 1: the show that we're going to convene a panel to
Speaker 1: get so we could all sort through what's going on
Speaker 1: with Jonah Hill come to some sort of a conclusion.
Speaker 5: So we've gathered here with us today.
Speaker 1: We've got Emily Tashinsky, great friend, and of course I'm
Speaker 1: co host of Counterpoints and Federalists and does all sorts
Speaker 1: of other things, busiest working woman in show business. And
Speaker 1: we also have Kyle Kolinsky, host of Secular Talk, and
Speaker 1: my husband Full disclosure, which I guess is relevant to
Speaker 1: conversation certainly is to sort through the various issues. So
Speaker 1: first of all, we do have an update, and I'm
Speaker 1: not asking anyone to defend this alleged action on the
Speaker 1: part of Jonah Hill, but apparently former child star Alexa
Speaker 1: Nicholas of Zoe one O one says that Jonah Hill
Speaker 1: quote shoved his tongue down her throat against her will
Speaker 1: when she was sixteen. So we have some additional character
Speaker 1: questions about Jonah Hill.
Speaker 4: But the thing that I was at twenty four, Yes,
Speaker 4: he was twenty four. They were at a party at
Speaker 4: Justin Long's house.
Speaker 3: Who wasn't I.
Speaker 5: Don't even know.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 1: To be perfectly honest with you, I don't know how
Speaker 1: any of these people are. But the piece that people
Speaker 1: are really debating, let's go and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen, is Jonah is in a relationship with this woman,
Speaker 1: Sarah Brady, who is a surfer.
Speaker 5: That's basic.
Speaker 1: Gale, I really know about her, and she posted online
Speaker 1: these text messages that he had sent her.
Speaker 5: He said, quote plain and simple.
Speaker 1: If you need surfing with men, boundaryless inappropriate friendships with men,
Speaker 1: to model, to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit,
Speaker 1: to post sexual pictures, friendships with women who are in
Speaker 1: unstable places and from your wild recent past. Beyond getting
Speaker 1: a lunch or coffee or something respectful. I am not
Speaker 1: the right partner for you. If these things bring into
Speaker 1: a place of happiness, I support it and there will
Speaker 1: be no hard feelings. These are my boundaries for romantic partnership,
Speaker 1: my boundaries with you based on the way these actions
Speaker 1: have hurt our trust. The last piece of information I
Speaker 1: will put up here. Let's go and put this next
Speaker 1: piece up on the screen is some of the photos
Speaker 1: that apparently he had her take down. Again, she's a surfer.
Speaker 1: There's one where she's in a full piece bathing suit.
Speaker 1: It's actually relatively modest in my opinion, but anyway, she's got,
Speaker 1: you know, her back to the camera, so you can
Speaker 1: see a little bit of her booty from.
Speaker 10: Like a hundred yards away.
Speaker 3: I know, I'm just kind.
Speaker 1: And also apparently in this one he like accused her
Speaker 1: being in a thong but was literally like a pretty
Speaker 1: modest one suit anyway, So that is the setup here, Emily,
Speaker 1: let me go ahead and get your your take on
Speaker 1: all of this.
Speaker 4: Okay, So timing is also interesting context here. Jonah Hill
Speaker 4: just had his first baby a month ago. Okay, she
Speaker 4: posts these from a relationship that's more than a year
Speaker 4: old out of absolutely nowhere after he has the baby,
Speaker 4: actually even invokes his baby and one of the Instagram
Speaker 4: posts and says, I hope my ex has a girl
Speaker 4: because of X, Y and Z, so that he understands
Speaker 4: this stuff. And I still also think one of the
Speaker 4: funnier parts of the discourse on this is that Jonah
Speaker 4: Hill slides into her DMS after apparently seeing one of
Speaker 4: these pictures that's how their relationship started, turns around then
Speaker 4: and says, no, these are my boundary, And a lot
Speaker 4: of people I've seen in the discourse are like, well,
Speaker 4: that's so hypocritical, a contrere. This is a man who
Speaker 4: knows exactly what he should be doing if he's falling
Speaker 4: in love with someone He does say they were in love.
Speaker 4: So you meet, you realize actually all of the other
Speaker 4: men in the world are looking at these things that
Speaker 4: made me attracted to you in the first place.
Speaker 7: This is my big contrarian take here.
Speaker 4: So yeah, this is a boundary for me because I
Speaker 4: don't want other men sliding into your dms, because I'm
Speaker 4: a man and I know that's what men are going
Speaker 4: to do. He is being pretty respectful in those messages.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of things we might not know
Speaker 4: about the relationship that he alludes to, reasons that they've
Speaker 4: lost trust, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 7: So well, I think it's weird behavior.
Speaker 4: I definitely don't think it's quote emotional abuse, which is
Speaker 4: what she said that seems to be aligned too far.
Speaker 10: Well, let's be clear, nothing here is illegal, and I
Speaker 10: don't think anybody is claiming it's illegal. And I think
Speaker 10: it's a fair criticism to say she continued to post
Speaker 10: private correspondence and she's still doing it, like right now, Yeah,
Speaker 10: so I've seen everybody. I'd be like, oh, all right,
Speaker 10: you know, real it in now, like you've got a little.
Speaker 5: Bit in relationship with either one of these individuals.
Speaker 3: Right, So.
Speaker 10: That gets to my point, it's like I tried. When
Speaker 10: I saw this, I started to put myself in his
Speaker 10: shoes and put myself in her shoes. Right, and from
Speaker 10: both perspectives, this was doomed to failure because to have
Speaker 10: a relationship that's functional, in my opinion, you need three
Speaker 10: things attraction, trust, and love. And the love can develop
Speaker 10: over time, but the second you click send on a
Speaker 10: message like that, the attraction's gone. Literally, nobody on the
Speaker 10: planet is gonna want to sleep with you. If you're
Speaker 10: posting that long diatribe about like here are my rules
Speaker 10: for you, that's not how it works. And then obviously
Speaker 10: from his perspective, he has no trust of her, so
Speaker 10: why are you even in a relationship with her? So
Speaker 10: if I was her friend, I'd be like, get out
Speaker 10: right now, don't even don't hang on one more day.
Speaker 10: And if I was his friend he was showing me, Hey,
Speaker 10: this is the message I'm gonna send of my girlfriend,
Speaker 10: I'd be like, get out. Don't even bothers ending the
Speaker 10: message because their values just don't align. That that's just
Speaker 10: not a good fit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that this little woman who's posting these
Speaker 2: messages is definitely attention seeking.
Speaker 3: Narcissists, and what.
Speaker 2: You said was very key, is like bringing the daughter
Speaker 2: into this was a big mistake when she was like,
Speaker 2: I hope his baby or what he remains feminist or whatever.
Speaker 2: Now Okay, that said, I have also been increasingly annoyed
Speaker 2: by the entire rise of therapy culture. And I will
Speaker 2: say I don't know, okay, but emotional abuse, these terms
Speaker 2: all get thrown around, and unfortunately Hill himself is the
Speaker 2: one who's been endorsing a lot of this. He recently
Speaker 2: did that whole documentary with his therapist. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people actually got a lot of praise for it,
Speaker 2: but this actually is the end state of a lot
Speaker 2: of therapy culture. And I noticed this a lot in
Speaker 2: our current like relationship, like how it's portrayed. A big
Speaker 2: fan of the show Love Island, and what I see
Speaker 2: constantly is they're like this is just who I am.
Speaker 2: They're like, this is me, and it's like, you're actually
Speaker 2: a crazy person. Yeah, not supposed to just say and
Speaker 2: validate your own insanity, but I mean, like I'm being
Speaker 2: true to myself.
Speaker 3: As you just said.
Speaker 2: You know, if you want to be in a successful relationship,
Speaker 2: and specifically a successful marriage, it's just all about communication.
Speaker 2: Ninety percent of it is a lot about compromise. Now,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't compromise your core values, but you also shouldn't
Speaker 2: get to that point if you're unable to do so.
Speaker 10: So can I go ahead further? Yeah? Go ahead, Okay,
Speaker 10: because I actually look, I actually am of the belief
Speaker 10: that this whole thing, I'm going to list my boundaries.
Speaker 10: I'm going to list my boundaries. No, if you're in
Speaker 10: a successful relationship, the boundaries are kind of intuitive. You
Speaker 10: know what they like and what they don't like. They
Speaker 10: know what you like and when you don't like, and
Speaker 10: you kind of respect that inherently. I feel like anytime
Speaker 10: you're out of point your relationship where it's like I
Speaker 10: shall list the things you can't do, and you realize
Speaker 10: it's like, what are we doing here? What do we children?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the thing too, that so listen. The
Speaker 1: therapy language to me comes down also in his post
Speaker 1: of like these are my boundaries and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: as if it's reasonable for you to impose whatever boundaries are,
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent make you feel in control of
Speaker 1: this relationship. It sort of reminds me of because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a weird wonk, you know, economic obsession, whatever it's going.
Speaker 1: And it reminds me of like contract law and like employment.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to freely contract like a worker. Can you
Speaker 1: know I'm going to offer my services and this is
Speaker 1: the wage or whatever. But there are also boundaries established
Speaker 1: in the law about what a reasonable contract looks like.
Speaker 5: You can't pay below a minimum wage.
Speaker 1: Here's what the hours are, here's when you have to
Speaker 1: pay overtime, and you are not you cannot just like
Speaker 1: agree to be an indentured servant. So if you are
Speaker 1: putting out these are my boundaries, you have to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: is it reasonable to tell this woman who is a
Speaker 1: surfer she can't.
Speaker 5: Like basically be seen in a bathing suit.
Speaker 1: What is she supposed to like wear a burker everywhere
Speaker 1: now so other dudes don't think she's hot, and she's
Speaker 1: not allowed to have friendships with women who are in
Speaker 1: unstable places beyond getting coffee or something.
Speaker 5: Respectable about that. See See this one to me was
Speaker 5: like the.
Speaker 1: Most over the line of like, now you're telling her
Speaker 1: who she can and can't be friends with other women
Speaker 1: that she has been friends with, Like, now you're saying
Speaker 1: you can only get coffee.
Speaker 5: With these people. That seems crazy.
Speaker 4: I would I would really like to know more about that.
Speaker 4: I mean, actually, I wouldn't want to know anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't need to know any but.
Speaker 4: Since we're here, I would like to know more about that,
Speaker 4: because it seems like he's alluding to her very what
Speaker 4: her very what does he say, her very recent past,
Speaker 4: her wild recent past?
Speaker 10: Yeah, but like, if you have a problem with the
Speaker 10: recent past, get out.
Speaker 7: And if you have a.
Speaker 4: Problem with people being in a relationship with somebody in
Speaker 4: bathing suits, then it's a weird thing to start a
Speaker 4: relationship with the surfer. That said, if they let's just
Speaker 4: give him benefit of the doubt for the sake of
Speaker 4: the argument, they fall in love. He's like, I really
Speaker 4: love this girl. He does use the word love in
Speaker 4: some of these messages, and they're going forward. She's like, yes,
Speaker 4: I will. You know, I realize my wild recent past
Speaker 4: was indeed wild, and you know, I want to change,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. And there were people, for instance,
Speaker 4: who were coercing her to a drinking problem or a
Speaker 4: drug problem, and that's what he's talking about. Then I
Speaker 4: can kind of see where she's trying to use relationships
Speaker 4: as a stepping stone into a healthier life. Not a
Speaker 4: great idea problem, but at the same time, you can
Speaker 4: see the sort of logic behind it.
Speaker 7: So this could either be something really minor.
Speaker 4: Like girls who gossip that she hangs out with that's
Speaker 4: the wild recent past, or it's like they're coercing her
Speaker 4: into a drinking problem.
Speaker 2: Worse, look, do we have the response actually, because I
Speaker 2: think his response is very illuminated. Screenshotting intimate text between
Speaker 2: us is a huge triggering violation for me. Breach of
Speaker 2: trust as a friend. I've explained to you about breaches
Speaker 2: of trust I've had between trusted friends recently.
Speaker 3: They have caused me trauma.
Speaker 2: I am increasingly incredibly hurt and feel a lack of
Speaker 2: safety where I've always trusted you. I'm sorry if a
Speaker 2: former partner moving on is painful, I ampathize with that,
Speaker 2: but I have done nothing wrong, and if I wasn't
Speaker 2: a public person, I wouldn't face this violation. Having shared
Speaker 2: that with you and then watching you be like this
Speaker 2: today shatters my ability to trust anybody even further. I
Speaker 2: have always shown you kindness and support, so once again
Speaker 2: we receive the return of the therapy language. The traumas
Speaker 2: don't hurt, No, but saying I am unable to trust
Speaker 2: anybody further. You know, another key part of it is
Speaker 2: that being famous is not that all that's crucked up.
Speaker 10: Clearly, she didn't help her case. She didn't help her
Speaker 10: case by continuing to post all these No, that's right.
Speaker 2: She clearly is an attention seeking and she's also obviously
Speaker 2: hurt by the relationship that he moved on and they
Speaker 2: had a child. You know, I guess we can all
Speaker 2: empathize with that, but he shouldn't be going starting something.
Speaker 3: He has a point that you know.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't be facing any of this if he wasn't famous.
Speaker 2: But also part of the reason why I think he's
Speaker 2: had to develop this insane complex around how to communicate
Speaker 2: with women is because he is famous.
Speaker 10: Well, it's also insecure because he played the role of
Speaker 10: like the fat looser, you know what I mean, just
Speaker 10: like Spreech from Saved.
Speaker 3: By the and he's talked about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say his insecurity is clearly like
Speaker 4: a driving point of this. But I would also say
Speaker 4: if she if this, if the roles were reversed and
Speaker 4: let's say again, like the most charitable case for his
Speaker 4: text messages, a woman is saying this to a man
Speaker 4: who's been struggling with a drinking problem or a drug
Speaker 4: problem or cheating something like that, these text messages leak.
Speaker 4: I think it would be a really different response. I
Speaker 4: think there's something particularly triggering in the public discourse about
Speaker 4: a man listing rules for women that sounds it hits
Speaker 4: us in the wrong way. I do think relationships need
Speaker 4: to have boundaries, but to your guys's point, those should
Speaker 4: be sort of implied. You should enumerate them in text
Speaker 4: messages like a constitution.
Speaker 10: And when I think when I think of a best
Speaker 10: friend or when I think of a romantic partner, you're
Speaker 10: on their team and they're on your team, Like loyalty
Speaker 10: actually matters, of course if you get to the very
Speaker 10: extreme stuff like hey, I committed murders, But like outside
Speaker 10: of the very few exceptions, it's like the whole point
Speaker 10: is I'm on your team. You're on my team for
Speaker 10: a best friend, for a significant other, And like this
Speaker 10: dynamic is the polar opposite of that, Like nobody looks
Speaker 10: at here's a list of rules for you, and goes
Speaker 10: like can't wait to hang out with them next time.
Speaker 3: You don't say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you share somebody had tweeted out like you know,
Speaker 1: I hope you understand my boundaries and now.
Speaker 5: Get back in your cage.
Speaker 10: That is that is what it feels like, like.
Speaker 5: You know, I want okay. So two questions I have
Speaker 5: for the group.
Speaker 1: Number one on the question of her leaking these messages,
Speaker 1: so putting the content of the message aside, do you
Speaker 1: think it was at all okay? I guess given the
Speaker 1: content of the message, like was it okay for her
Speaker 1: to share this with the world.
Speaker 2: Or no, No, I should have come at the time
Speaker 2: of the breakup, if he actually cared. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: clearly like emotionally manipulative in order to try and hurt
Speaker 2: his recent you know chance it was recent chance, I
Speaker 2: think at a relationship and having a baby, and that
Speaker 2: I do think it is really you know, upsetting and bad.
Speaker 2: And I understand also where he is coming from. But
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I don't condone or think people should be releasing this.
Speaker 3: Kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But if it were to be like in any realm
Speaker 2: of acceptability, would have to come at the time of
Speaker 2: the breakup and have to be the reason of like
Speaker 2: this is why I left, and you know, especially she's like,
Speaker 2: he hurt me, and this is something that I want
Speaker 2: to exact. But right now it just really looks like
Speaker 2: the worst type of bitterness and revenge.
Speaker 10: So I largely agree that it's like ethically sketchy. But
Speaker 10: having said that, that shouldn't prevent us from discussing the issue. Yes,
Speaker 10: but I see a lot of people playing this like
Speaker 10: little trick where it's like, because I don't think they
Speaker 10: should have been leaked, therefore totally off the table. Yeah,
Speaker 10: And honestly reminds me back in the day when like
Speaker 10: Edward Snowden released in the government was spying on all
Speaker 10: of us, and the establishment was like, you're not talking
Speaker 10: about that, Pretend you don't even know that, And it's like, no,
Speaker 10: we're going to talk about the issue regardless of what
Speaker 10: you think, whether or not that you've been released. But
Speaker 10: I largely agree it certainly is ethically sketchy. What I'll
Speaker 10: say this is I'll say that the earlier messages I
Speaker 10: think were more defensible than the fact that she keeps
Speaker 10: freaking going with stuff that's not improving her case at all.
Speaker 10: Now you look like a psycho as well, because you
Speaker 10: are kind.
Speaker 3: Of a psycho.
Speaker 1: No really, yeah, yeah, I agree with Okay, another question. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say because part of the context here is she's
Speaker 1: a surfer, so that makes it more unreasonable to be like,
Speaker 1: you can't post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit.
Speaker 1: And we saw the pictures that he wanted taken down,
Speaker 1: which were really pretty modest.
Speaker 5: They weren't like.
Speaker 1: Thirst traps, because you know, I would be a little
Speaker 1: more sympathetic if it was, like, you know, she was
Speaker 1: posting these really overtly sexual pictures. I would be more
Speaker 1: sympathetic to that. But when you see the actual photos
Speaker 1: and you're like, you're literally just surfing in a one
Speaker 1: piece bathing suit, it became, you know, significantly less sympathetic
Speaker 1: to his position. But let's say, and I think you
Speaker 1: brought this up, Kyle, maybe in the video you did.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you decide to date an actual Instagram
Speaker 1: model who's like whole thing is to post thirst traps.
Speaker 5: All day long?
Speaker 1: Is it unreasonable to ask that person to change themselves? Like,
Speaker 1: if they're a model, they're an Instagram model, you know
Speaker 1: that going in and then you're like, I don't want
Speaker 1: you posting thirst traps?
Speaker 5: What do you guys think?
Speaker 7: So why do we disagree on?
Speaker 10: And if you're dating an Instagram model, that's the whole
Speaker 10: point is if you want the woman who posts.
Speaker 7: A thirst trap, I agree on that. I agree. I agree.
Speaker 3: It's like a weird do Well.
Speaker 10: I agree on that too, But then you control them.
Speaker 4: After again, if you fall in love and you realize
Speaker 4: you have a change of heart, you want to like
Speaker 4: change your life, souf because it would be weird do well,
Speaker 4: it is on you.
Speaker 7: I agree with that.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I can understand where Jonah
Speaker 4: Hill's defense. The way he wrote those messages wasn't like
Speaker 4: I'm gonna, you know, like tear up your stuff and
Speaker 4: like destroy your reputation.
Speaker 7: It was just, hey, if you want to do that,
Speaker 7: that's fine, it's not for me.
Speaker 3: I'm out.
Speaker 4: I think that's a reasonable thing if you and I
Speaker 4: don't think Jonah Hill was like converting.
Speaker 7: To like some conservative faith. But if that happened in
Speaker 7: the realm of it depends.
Speaker 4: You get into a relationship with someone, you realize that
Speaker 4: you have a different sexual ethics, or that the sexual
Speaker 4: ethics has been hurtful to you something like that, get
Speaker 4: out and you ask, just get out, and the other
Speaker 4: person says, no, fine if you. But I don't think
Speaker 4: the ask is crazy in and of itself. I think
Speaker 4: the ask is one of those things that will expose
Speaker 4: the incompatibility.
Speaker 10: I disagree because listen that that is the weaponization of
Speaker 10: the therapy speak that we were just talking about, this
Speaker 10: idea that like, you can hide behind this veil of
Speaker 10: high minded, serious therapy stuff to be like and I
Speaker 10: need you to change this very core thing about who
Speaker 10: you are. So I think, look, you know what you're
Speaker 10: signed Everybody knows what they're signing up for, and he
Speaker 10: knew what he signed up for here, and so for
Speaker 10: them for him to turn around and be like, no,
Speaker 10: I don't approve of any of this, it's like nobody
Speaker 10: cares if you approve of anything. She's gonna do what
Speaker 10: she's gonna do.
Speaker 5: And where does it end to?
Speaker 1: Because clearly part, like a core part of what he
Speaker 1: objects to is just her being in any position where
Speaker 1: other men could find.
Speaker 10: Her pot correct, Yeah, in security, that's all that is.
Speaker 5: Where does that end?
Speaker 3: Like she's.
Speaker 1: That's where it is, like she can't now she can't
Speaker 1: wear a bathing suit. She's got to wear a BERKINI
Speaker 1: or she's gotta you know, she's gotta like have floor
Speaker 1: length skirts. It just it gets to a level of
Speaker 1: where this is not about her. She's not doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1: You got issues that you need to work through. You
Speaker 1: need to maybe spend some more time with your therapist,
Speaker 1: because you decided to date a woman who is beautiful
Speaker 1: and other people are going to find beautiful and you're
Speaker 1: gonna need to find some way to manage that and
Speaker 1: cope with that, otherwise you're gonna have some major issues.
Speaker 4: She shouldn't have deleted anything. I think that was like
Speaker 4: a slippery slope. She obviously was trying to.
Speaker 10: Oh, she deleted some of the messages she posted.
Speaker 4: She deleted some of the right, right because like these
Speaker 4: these people are Yeah, exactly like there I do is
Speaker 4: about what's appropriate and what like.
Speaker 7: It is just fundamentally to the previous question.
Speaker 2: This is what I brought up when we were talking
Speaker 2: about was Penn badgely I believe that's how you say
Speaker 2: from gossip Girl, but also recently of you actually said
Speaker 2: he is swearing off racy sex scenes that previously were
Speaker 2: a staple of the show out of respect for his
Speaker 2: new wife, and I was like, that.
Speaker 3: Is actually kind of interesting. It gets to you know,
Speaker 3: in a way, like his wife got in she knew
Speaker 3: what he was whenever she married him. Obviously.
Speaker 2: That said, though it seems to be out of discussions
Speaker 2: between him and his partner.
Speaker 3: Like he felt like it was disrespectful to her. He
Speaker 3: no longer wanted to do it.
Speaker 2: But actually did because Yeah, but it did cause some
Speaker 2: consternation on the show because they're like, well, hey, that's
Speaker 2: like a core part of the contract that you signed
Speaker 2: about the character.
Speaker 10: Who don't know the background of that. His wife could
Speaker 10: have been like, you're doing this or I'm leaving you
Speaker 10: know what I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just don't like that.
Speaker 10: If you know what you signed up for, I don't
Speaker 10: like the Well now you got to change it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 10: It's like if christ like, you can't play golf anymore
Speaker 10: my whole life, it doesn't mean like what are you
Speaker 10: talking about?
Speaker 4: Self tweeted pants Before she started or before we started this,
Speaker 4: she was like, I think I'm going to come out
Speaker 4: in favor of right to work.
Speaker 10: Are one of the final points I wanted to make
Speaker 10: is about introspection, because I think the thing that drives
Speaker 10: me crazy about all this stuff is the lack of
Speaker 10: introspection all around, because even minimal introspection, you would have realized, like,
Speaker 10: I'm being a little crazy here on her side for
Speaker 10: continuing to post all of this stuff over and over
Speaker 10: and try to be the number one story in the country,
Speaker 10: and on his side for like being so demanding and
Speaker 10: having this list of boundaries that he's enforcing after the fact,
Speaker 10: when you already knew these things about her. People need
Speaker 10: to like it goes back to the weaponization of therapy.
Speaker 4: Thing.
Speaker 10: If you stop and look inward and think, like, just objectively,
Speaker 10: how would a reasonable person view what I'm doing, I
Speaker 10: think it would have nipped a lot of this in
Speaker 10: the bud and they would have realized very quickly, like,
Speaker 10: if I'm doing minimal introspection here, I shouldn't be with her,
Speaker 10: she shouldn't be with me, That she isn't going to work.
Speaker 10: It's a toxic relationship. If anything, the trajectory is going
Speaker 10: in a worst direction, it will keep on going in
Speaker 10: a bad direction. So I think that could have prevented
Speaker 10: all of it. But unfortunately, I actually do think that
Speaker 10: this you know, modern age obsession with therapy type stuff.
Speaker 10: It actually gives people a very powerful tool to not
Speaker 10: do introspection.
Speaker 3: Oh this is narciss well, right, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: That is a masquerading is like intellectualism basically through therapy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was going to say on that.
Speaker 4: Last point, and this is actually a fairly serious one.
Speaker 4: I think therapy culture has allowed people do inflate definitions
Speaker 4: of things like emotional abuse to a point where it
Speaker 4: is actually very dangerous because it cheapens the experiences people
Speaker 4: have with real emotional abuse and it allows everyone else
Speaker 4: to put themselves in this sort of like that you
Speaker 4: sort of step into the role of a victim when
Speaker 4: she had plenty of agency in this situation.
Speaker 7: She wasn't being coerced or controlled. She could have done
Speaker 7: anything that she wanted to do.
Speaker 4: And it's weird behavior in Jonahill's part, but she is
Speaker 4: a free woman who is able to do what she needs.
Speaker 7: She's exercising her freedom right now.
Speaker 4: And to say that that is emotional abuse, I think
Speaker 4: is really allowing people to lump themselves in in an
Speaker 4: unfortunate way with people who are suffering very very severe
Speaker 4: actual like legal series emotional abuse, and that really is
Speaker 4: an unfortunate trend I think for the country.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I agree with that. I would just say my
Speaker 10: final point is just don't send the message in the
Speaker 10: first place, just leave, and to her when she received
Speaker 10: that message, of the second she received that, just leave.
Speaker 10: So I see a lot of blame to go all around.
Speaker 10: But I do think his at least prior to her
Speaker 10: continuing to post all the messages. Prior to that, I
Speaker 10: thought his behavior was way weirder. In those initial backs
Speaker 10: and forths, it looks it looked like she was being
Speaker 10: kind of like trying to appease him and trying to
Speaker 10: be reasonable, and so that's why I think everybody sort
Speaker 10: of jumped to her defense initially because it did seem
Speaker 10: like very very controlling behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do feel like I should stand up at
Speaker 1: least for like therapy can be good for people, sure saying.
Speaker 7: Like the terrible have you ever tried golf?
Speaker 10: But I just think a line between alcoholism.
Speaker 5: You know, it can be good to like, you know,
Speaker 5: self reflect and work on your lives.
Speaker 1: They're all good things, but then you have to consider
Speaker 1: the line between working on yourself and then just like
Speaker 1: obsessive narcissism, especially when it comes into contact with your
Speaker 1: romantic partner.
Speaker 5: Where I we'll leave things all right.
Speaker 3: This is a great discussion. We had a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Good way to end the hil We'll see you guys
Speaker 3: later