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.
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Well, good morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. I'm Emmily Dashinski, joined
Speaker 4: virtually today by Ryan Graham, who's here to give us
Speaker 4: a little bit of a French dispatch. Ryan, how are
Speaker 4: you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, here to cover France's reaction to the coup and nager,
Speaker 1: which we'll be reporting on later. But no, this is
Speaker 1: I'm checking out Europe with my family, and I gotta
Speaker 1: say I knew that there was no air conditioning over here,
Speaker 1: that that wasn't really a thing. I didn't know. They
Speaker 1: also don't have screens, which is just mind blowing to me.
Speaker 1: And I feel like maybe we should pivot out of
Speaker 1: kind of this business that we're in here and open
Speaker 1: up a screen company in Europe. Like once they realized
Speaker 1: that you could put screens in the windows and just
Speaker 1: keep the bugs out. I feel like it would catch
Speaker 1: on like wildfire.
Speaker 4: What do you think so, Ryan Graham now both a
Speaker 4: capitalist and completely opposed to the green agenda that he's
Speaker 4: been in Europe for several days and is just totally pay.
Speaker 1: We could get. I mean, maybe we could get EU
Speaker 1: subsidies for them because they are green. You know, they're
Speaker 1: keeping the windows open and keeping the use of air
Speaker 1: conditioning down. So maybe, you know, maybe we can get
Speaker 1: fully subsidized.
Speaker 4: Screen seems like a seems like a very strong possibility,
Speaker 4: Greens for all.
Speaker 3: Well, Ryan, we're.
Speaker 4: So glad to have you here, Missuans Studio. But of
Speaker 4: course we're going to talk today about reactions that have
Speaker 4: come in to Donald Trump's third indictment.
Speaker 3: We're going to start the show with that in just
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 4: We're going to also talk about the economic plan that
Speaker 4: Ron de Santa's presidential candidate Randa Santas rolled out this week.
Speaker 4: There is some interesting stuff in there, some predictable stuff,
Speaker 4: but some interesting stuff as well. We're also going to
Speaker 4: discuss the Biden administration and the Democratic Party's new spin
Speaker 4: game that they're playing in relation to the Hunter Biden revelations.
Speaker 4: They're rolling out some really hilarious talking points, So we're
Speaker 4: going to break all of that down. Blackrock and Morgan
Speaker 4: Stanley are under investigation by the House Select Committee on
Speaker 4: China for some pretty bizarre, well I shouldn't say bizarre,
Speaker 4: I guess it's also rather predictable, but some pretty interesting
Speaker 4: investments over there in China.
Speaker 3: So we're going to break that down for you.
Speaker 4: And then Elon Musk also is suing an anti hate
Speaker 4: speech group that has come after Twitter. Now x Ryan,
Speaker 4: as he mentioned, is going to talk about the coup
Speaker 4: in Niger. I am going to talk about CNN's Dana
Speaker 4: Bash once again, just marveling at who the types of
Speaker 4: people are that.
Speaker 3: Vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: So why don't we start with reaction that has come
Speaker 4: in to the third Trump indictment.
Speaker 3: The third Trump indictment.
Speaker 4: I remember when the first indictment came down all of
Speaker 4: those months ago. I am nostalgic for it. Now, Ryan,
Speaker 4: we came into the studio and did a live show
Speaker 4: with Crystal and Sager because it was momentous, and indeed
Speaker 4: it was momentous, was the first indictment of a former president.
Speaker 4: But now we're three in arguably the most serious. We'll
Speaker 4: get into that in just a moment. Let's put up
Speaker 4: on the screen Donald Trump's prediction. It wasn't hard for
Speaker 4: him to predict he had gotten that target letter. He's
Speaker 4: obviously been getting some communications back and forth with the
Speaker 4: Special Counsel Jacksmith's office.
Speaker 3: He called it.
Speaker 4: He said he was assuming an indictment from quote deranged
Speaker 4: Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of thugs pertaining
Speaker 4: to my quote peacefully and patriotically speech. That's not a
Speaker 4: great use of adverbs there.
Speaker 3: We'll be coming out of this now.
Speaker 1: Very classic Trump. He said, you know, march peacefully and
Speaker 1: patriotically or some version of that. So now he's trying
Speaker 1: to brand speech that this speech was his peacefully and
Speaker 1: patriotically speech. See, I can speak Trumpe's at this point
Speaker 1: that I think that's what he's going for.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for the translation. I actually agree.
Speaker 4: I think that looks now like a branding attempt, and
Speaker 4: other presidential candidates have weighed in.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that just a moment.
Speaker 4: Let's play a clip actually from Special Consul Jacksmith himself,
Speaker 4: who also indictled Donald indicted Donald Trump the second time around,
Speaker 4: a lot of people remember the Document's case, which is
Speaker 4: also continuing to pend in the court system. Jack Smith
Speaker 4: this time is as Crystal Old Soccer discussed on the
Speaker 4: Channel yesterday, coming out with an indictment related to January sixth.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say last night.
Speaker 5: Today an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with
Speaker 5: conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters,
Speaker 5: and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we can also put the statement from the
Speaker 4: Trump campaign up on the screen, not entirely from at
Speaker 4: least in tone from what Donald Trump said right away.
Speaker 3: This is the statement right now.
Speaker 4: This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter and
Speaker 4: the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden crime family and
Speaker 4: their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four presidential election, in which President Trump is the
Speaker 4: undisputed front runner and leading by substantial margins. And then
Speaker 4: the statement ends by saying, three years ago we had
Speaker 4: strong borders, energy independence, no inflation, in a great economy.
Speaker 4: Today we are a nation in decline. President Trump will
Speaker 4: not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting. They
Speaker 4: also question why Jack Smith waited quote two and a
Speaker 4: half years to bring these fake charges right in the
Speaker 4: middle of President Trump's winning campaign for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Why was it announced the day after the big crooked
Speaker 4: Joe Biden scandal broke out from the halls of Congress.
Speaker 4: The answer is election interference. The lawlessness of these persecutions
Speaker 4: of President Trump and supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany
Speaker 4: in the nineteen thirties, the former Soviet Union and other
Speaker 4: authoritarian dick to regimes. All right, let's put Ronda Santis's
Speaker 4: reaction up on the screen. He said, as president, I
Speaker 4: will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director,
Speaker 4: and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.
Speaker 4: He said, well, I've seen reports, I've not read the indictment.
Speaker 4: I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so
Speaker 4: that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington,
Speaker 4: d c. To their home districts. Goes on to say,
Speaker 4: no more excuses. I will end the weaponization of the
Speaker 4: federal government. We have reaction from Mike Pence as well.
Speaker 4: He says, Today's indictment serves as an important reminder anyone
Speaker 4: who puts himself over the constitution should never be president
Speaker 4: of the United States. That's a very different reaction to
Speaker 4: Ronda Santis as you just saw there. Pence also says
Speaker 4: out more to say about the government's case after reviewing
Speaker 4: the indictment. The former president is entitled to the presumption
Speaker 4: of innocence, but with his indictment, his candidacy means more
Speaker 4: talk of January sixth and more distractions. Tim Scott had
Speaker 4: a reaction as well that a lot of people pass around.
Speaker 4: He basically said, we have two tiers of justice in
Speaker 4: this country. Maybe people didn't expect that from Tim Scott
Speaker 4: where given where some folks assume he falls on the
Speaker 4: kind of Republican candidate spectrum. But Ryan, what do you
Speaker 4: make of all of those reactions and give us your
Speaker 4: early reaction to the incitement the indictment itself as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Trump's reference to Nazi Germany is an interesting
Speaker 1: one because if I were going to refer to Germany,
Speaker 1: I would I would say that, well, actually they should
Speaker 1: have left Adolf Hitler in prison for the beer Hall
Speaker 1: putsch rather, you know, because this is the arrangement that
Speaker 1: we kind of have in societies that if you come
Speaker 1: for the king and you miss, like you're done. And
Speaker 1: so Adolf Hitler launched this beer hall putch, was it flopped,
Speaker 1: fell apart, he went to prison, they let him back out,
Speaker 1: and then his Nazi party eventually kind of retakes power.
Speaker 1: The deal is, you know, if you illegally come for
Speaker 1: power and you fall short of it, then you don't
Speaker 1: get the kind of grace of mercy from from the
Speaker 1: public or from the power structure that you tried to
Speaker 1: take over. And so this is why I was kind
Speaker 1: of annoyed with the Alvin bra if you remember, I
Speaker 1: was annoyed with Alvin Bragg one and and the document's case. Okay,
Speaker 1: he looks pretty guilty. He is on tape saying he
Speaker 1: did all these things. But it's just, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's documents like this is not a not that
Speaker 1: big a deal. It feels like they took a lot
Speaker 1: of the punch out of this indictment. This this is
Speaker 1: the thing that that really matters, Like this, according to
Speaker 1: the indictment, is an attempt to basically overthrow the government.
Speaker 1: But I did find it interesting that they didn't include
Speaker 1: the highest charges. You know, they didn't include say, insurrection
Speaker 1: or or or another type of charge that would then
Speaker 1: disqualify him from running for president. So in other words,
Speaker 1: he's gonna, you know, he's going to win this nomination
Speaker 1: and he'll be on the ballot even if he's convicted
Speaker 1: of everything from here, you know, through November, if you know,
Speaker 1: imagining that they can get these cases to trial fast
Speaker 1: enough because they didn't charge him with high enough offenses, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to to disqualify him. So in some ways
Speaker 1: there will be accountability, but not the type that's going
Speaker 1: to kind of keep you you know, from from running
Speaker 1: for office again. Finally, the DC jury point that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have been making, I think actually is
Speaker 1: a legitimate one. If I were Jack Smith, I'd be like, look,
Speaker 1: tell you what, I'm so confident in my case. You
Speaker 1: pick the district. Go ahead, You're like, look, and you
Speaker 1: can do unprecedented things, because this is an unprecedented trial
Speaker 1: of a former president, and not just a former president,
Speaker 1: but a you know, leading presidential candidate in the next race.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, pick pick a district. What do you want, Alabama, Mississippi?
Speaker 1: Picket and we'll make our case, and we'll still convict
Speaker 1: you that I would. I don't imagine that he's going
Speaker 1: to do anything like that, but I think to develop
Speaker 1: public confidence in it requires something something like that. What
Speaker 1: did you think of the indictment as you read through
Speaker 1: it last night?
Speaker 4: You know, I thought the defraud a conspiracy to defraud.
Speaker 4: I have it in front of me right now, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to read. This is the so Smith says,
Speaker 4: the defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes
Speaker 4: and subverting the election results, and so doing, the defendant
Speaker 4: perpetrated three criminal conspiracies. And he's referencing US Code here
Speaker 4: when he says a conspiracy to defraud the United States
Speaker 4: by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and
Speaker 4: defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results
Speaker 4: of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by
Speaker 4: the federal government, and violation of and then he cites
Speaker 4: the statute that the language itself there. I mean, maybe
Speaker 4: there's an argument people can make that that's really broad
Speaker 4: language that can be used by weaponized federal government, which
Speaker 4: I think it's in it's at this point. I think
Speaker 4: it is absolutely incontrovertible that the Department of Justice is
Speaker 4: being weaponized against the former president.
Speaker 3: Of the United States.
Speaker 4: Does that make every hit a bad one? No, There's
Speaker 4: a lot to work with when it comes to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: But I mean, maybe someone can make the argument that
Speaker 4: that language is overly broad in the statute itself, but
Speaker 4: given where that language is, I think that's very serious
Speaker 4: for Donald Trump. The others I think are more of
Speaker 4: a stretch personally. But that first one, that one is
Speaker 4: pretty pretty brutal, and it also allows people like Mike Pence,
Speaker 4: who I don't think poses a serious electoral threat to
Speaker 4: Donald Trump whatsoever. But it does allow people to air
Speaker 4: this one very damaging argument and serious argument that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump was exploiting his own voters, his own fans, his
Speaker 4: own supporters.
Speaker 3: And that is especially.
Speaker 4: As people have taken a look at his campaign finances
Speaker 4: and how much of the money that was raised that's
Speaker 4: gone to you know, especially when people look back at
Speaker 4: when he was raising money for different candidates in the
Speaker 4: last cycle twenty twenty two and say, a lot of
Speaker 4: money didn't go to Blake Masters or whatever else because
Speaker 4: it was being used for legal defenses. You know, he
Speaker 4: has good reason to defend himself from some of these cases.
Speaker 3: Bragwin is a good example.
Speaker 4: We're waiting on a case to be brought by the
Speaker 4: Fulton County DA Fanny Willis, possibly this week. There are
Speaker 4: barricades up around Atlanta where they're expecting a decision and
Speaker 4: an announcement in the grand jury there. So some of
Speaker 4: this is like tiki taki law fair. That particular charge
Speaker 4: stands out to me as one that could genuinely be damaging.
Speaker 3: And you know, the.
Speaker 4: More that it's discussed, the more that conversation about that
Speaker 4: sort of top down exploitation of Donald Trump, of people
Speaker 4: who supported him, gave him money, you know, people working
Speaker 4: class people, middle class people who don't have a lot
Speaker 4: of money to give and whipsa just hit the desk
Speaker 4: gave it to him. That is I think a pretty
Speaker 4: difficult that's a pretty difficult charge.
Speaker 1: And the January sixth charge, I thought is an interesting
Speaker 1: one too, because you've already had people and just goes
Speaker 1: to two tiers of justice. There's actually one tier in
Speaker 1: this sense. You've already had a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have been convicted of the charge of disrupting the January
Speaker 1: six proceedings, like and those people, you know, did relatively
Speaker 1: very little compared to what President Trump did. All you know,
Speaker 1: what they did is they marched with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other people. Most of them did not break into
Speaker 1: the capitol. It was already broken into and they walked
Speaker 1: in and they hung out in the Capitol for a while,
Speaker 1: and then when Trump told them to leave, they left,
Speaker 1: and they were and they were convicted by a jury
Speaker 1: of well, if they went to trial, most completed guilty of,
Speaker 1: you know, disrupting this January sixth, you know, certification. So
Speaker 1: it seems to me like you could arguably then make
Speaker 1: it stick on the person whose idea the whole thing
Speaker 1: was that, Okay, we're going to gin up all of
Speaker 1: these fake electors. We're going to get a big crowd here,
Speaker 1: and the crowd and the fake electors are going to
Speaker 1: pressure Mike Pence to do something that all of these
Speaker 1: other lawyers are saying, they just he just simply does
Speaker 1: not have the right to do.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: Andre he's going to you know, he's sending out tweets
Speaker 1: pressuring Pence. He is really him his entire defense on
Speaker 1: the fact that he told the crowd to be peaceful
Speaker 1: and to be patriotic, and maybe that is enough to
Speaker 1: get him off. You know, we don't know, but we
Speaker 1: also know that he for how long a.
Speaker 2: Hour?
Speaker 1: Two hours like that, maybe three hours. There's some amount
Speaker 1: of time between the kind of breaking into the capital
Speaker 1: and and Trump's final kind of video under pressure asking
Speaker 1: them to leave, where you know, he seems quite content
Speaker 1: and his public messages seems content with the fact that
Speaker 1: these folks we're putting pressure on the certification in a
Speaker 1: way that is illegal, Like there is there is not
Speaker 1: you know, according to the indictment, there is not a
Speaker 1: process by which a mob of people can pressure, you know,
Speaker 1: legally pressured the vice president to accept these fake electors
Speaker 1: Like that's not that's not i legal avenue that you're
Speaker 1: allowed to pursue. And so if so this was Trump's
Speaker 1: entire plan to then slap on top of it that
Speaker 1: you need to do it peacefully and patriotically, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, isn't enough, But maybe maybe it is to
Speaker 1: a jury, we'll see. What what's what's your sense of
Speaker 1: you know, how much residence that argument is having now
Speaker 1: among among people on the right, and what is what
Speaker 1: is the way that you're seeing them defend this mainly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that it is definitely it looks definitely
Speaker 4: like a weaponization of the government, that it looks definitely
Speaker 4: like election interference, especially because you consider there's ample, ample,
Speaker 4: ample evidence that Joe Biden is implicated in a pretty
Speaker 4: vast influence peddling scheme, let alone his son. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's the sitting president of the United States himself. So
Speaker 4: if he's not going to have a special consul investigating that,
Speaker 4: if he's if his Department of Justice isn't going to
Speaker 4: call for a special console investigating that, and you're just
Speaker 4: going to have this hit one candidate. I mean, I
Speaker 4: remember talking to Crystal about this one time, and we
Speaker 4: were basically like, yeah, like, lock them all up if
Speaker 4: they've done something wrong. But we know that we're not
Speaker 4: in a country where that happens. And so I think
Speaker 4: that's really the emergent argument. And there's an interesting thing too.
Speaker 4: This is int Trump's statement. He talks about the timeline
Speaker 4: and how it came. Right after the testimony of Devin Archer.
Speaker 4: Greg Price had a pretty viral tweet on the right
Speaker 4: where he lays out the timeline. June seventh, FBI releases
Speaker 4: documents to Congress legend the Bidens took a ten million
Speaker 4: dollar bribe from Barrisma. June eighth, Jack Smith indicts Trump
Speaker 4: in the mar al Lago docs case. Then he does
Speaker 4: the same with July twenty sixth and twenty seventh, and
Speaker 4: then the same with July thirty.
Speaker 3: One and August one.
Speaker 4: So it was interesting that Trump sort of used that
Speaker 4: argument too, because I think that is really potent. I
Speaker 4: think if you're an average Republican primary voter, you see that.
Speaker 4: And why has Donald Trump's margin or what margin of
Speaker 4: support over Rondo Santas and any other candidate only grown
Speaker 4: since he's been hit with these prosecutions, Well, because the
Speaker 4: media is talking about them constantly in a way that
Speaker 4: makes Trump look like the avatar.
Speaker 3: He becomes the sort.
Speaker 4: Of he looks like the bulwark between the United States
Speaker 4: of like what people thought of and remembered and then
Speaker 4: what they say is as a banana Republic. And the
Speaker 4: more that he is the avatar, the more he takes
Speaker 4: on that role of being the bulwark between you know,
Speaker 4: the the America before it was weaponized against presidents and
Speaker 4: anything else, the more successful he's going to be, the
Speaker 4: more oxygen he takes away from any of the other candidates,
Speaker 4: And again, like, these are real concerns. I understand there
Speaker 4: are very real concerns about January sixth too. If the
Speaker 4: other cases hadn't been brought, this would be a very,
Speaker 4: very different conversation, I think.
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's right too, And it's
Speaker 1: it's complicated by the fact that something like what you
Speaker 1: tell me, sixty seventy percent of Republicans seem to think
Speaker 1: that the election actually was still like that, they agree
Speaker 1: with Trump on that, which makes their prism of this case,
Speaker 1: you know, completely different, because it's like, how can you
Speaker 1: illegally overthrow an election if you actually believe that it
Speaker 1: was stolen from you? So I think that contributes to
Speaker 1: a lot of the rallying around Trump as well. I
Speaker 1: think on the Biden side, shure, yeah, like open up
Speaker 1: an investigation. I think actually Democrats would probably benefit if
Speaker 1: they had an open primary and a bunch of candidates
Speaker 1: ran instead of Biden. So I'm not sure that would
Speaker 1: actually help Republicans. If I were going to agree with
Speaker 1: Trump on something, I would point to his complaint about
Speaker 1: it taking two and a half years. I complained that
Speaker 1: they didn't impeach him that night, you know, the night
Speaker 1: of January sixth or early in the morning on January seventh.
Speaker 1: Ilon Omar had written articles of impeachment. They weren't hard
Speaker 1: to write. You also had a couple, you had a
Speaker 1: couple of Democrats who were on the Judiciary Committee who
Speaker 1: had written articles of impeachment, who handed them to Standy
Speaker 1: Hoyert and said, look, let's just vote on these, Like,
Speaker 1: just just write them on the bloodstained paper in this
Speaker 1: room and vote today and kick it to the Senate
Speaker 1: and have a trial while he's still president. Barring that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole lot in this indictment. I don't
Speaker 1: think you tell me what you think that wasn't available
Speaker 1: to the FBI hy around say, March of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Like most of this stuff is most of the indictment
Speaker 1: based on interviews and interrogations, and you know the kind
Speaker 1: of extensive research that FBI does, but lot most of
Speaker 1: it's based on public stuff, like these are things we knew,
Speaker 1: and so if you could have done this in March
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, I think that is that really is
Speaker 1: the time to do it. Instead, they went for an
Speaker 1: impeachment after he was out of office, that they knew
Speaker 1: wasn't going to get two thirds of the vote, and
Speaker 1: then Merrick Garland kind of just sat around for a
Speaker 1: long time and finally kicks it over to Jack Smith.
Speaker 1: So that I think that is a fair criticism. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't think Trump would agree that he should have
Speaker 1: been indicted two years ago. I think he thinks he
Speaker 1: shouldn't be indicted at all. But I think he's right
Speaker 1: that the delay is was a problem, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Yeah, and they appointed a special council. And one
Speaker 4: thought that I had was actually how little the January
Speaker 4: sixth Committee contributed to anything that is in this indictment.
Speaker 4: From my perspective, it does seem like Mark Meadows flipped.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of the sort of liberal corporate
Speaker 4: press pundits are right that it does seem like some
Speaker 4: of this is from Mark Meadows. I do think they
Speaker 4: are legitimate concerns about precedent that the sets for attorneys.
Speaker 4: I think they're legitimate concerns about precedent that the sets
Speaker 4: for free speech when people are legitimately concerned about election results.
Speaker 4: Going forward, we'll see how the case proceeds. I mean
Speaker 4: this all like we actually have to see how it proceeds.
Speaker 4: I would just raise those questions too. I agree with
Speaker 4: you on the timing. I thought that it was interesting
Speaker 4: how little what came out of that Select Committee on
Speaker 4: January sixth ended up contributing to all of this.
Speaker 1: So it's just a yeah, go ahead, one last point
Speaker 1: on that, and maybe you know who this is. They're
Speaker 1: talking about the deputy chief of staff and another top official.
Speaker 1: That one part that struck me in the indictment was
Speaker 1: the guy saying, look, you lost, there's absolutely no legal
Speaker 1: path for you to stay in office. If you're here
Speaker 1: past noon on January twentieth, twenty twenty one, there are
Speaker 1: going to be riots in every city. And the official responded,
Speaker 1: that's why we have an Insurrection Act. And there was
Speaker 1: all of this, these rumors on the right at the
Speaker 1: time that Trump was going to an act, you know,
Speaker 1: or was going to implement the Insurrection Act and other
Speaker 1: national security protocols that they believed would allow him. So
Speaker 1: there were people in his inner circle that were that
Speaker 1: were genuinely contemplating invoking the Insurrection Act, bringing out which
Speaker 1: means bringing out, you know, national Guard troops to basically
Speaker 1: violently put down protests against him. Remaining office, which that
Speaker 1: is a that is a forceful seizure of power, and
Speaker 1: you know, the end of American democracy. So I think
Speaker 1: this is really serious stuff that these that these clowns
Speaker 1: were contemplating, and the fact that they are clowns doesn't
Speaker 1: make it any less serious.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: I think that's a good point, because it's only going
Speaker 4: to get more serious the more that this happens, the
Speaker 4: more that he's hit with Alvin Bragg charges or documents,
Speaker 4: chargers that could theoretically apply to other people, the more
Speaker 4: you're going to have this total vortex of trust, a
Speaker 4: lot of which is stemming from very reasonable sentiments and
Speaker 4: concerns about what's happening in the country. Meaning nobody is
Speaker 4: going to know who to trust anymore. So if Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: so if you've thoroughly planted the seeds of distrust and
Speaker 4: you've discredited the credibility of things that people used to trust,
Speaker 4: like the FBI.
Speaker 3: Whether or not they.
Speaker 4: Should have always trusted the FBI is a different question,
Speaker 4: but institutions that we sort of need consensus trust levels
Speaker 4: on to function as a country. If you've sowed a
Speaker 4: lot of distrust, both because you're exploiting very real concerns
Speaker 4: and you're facilitating those very real concerns, and to that,
Speaker 4: I would point to the activities of the FBI and
Speaker 4: the Department of Justice itself.
Speaker 3: Then someone can step in.
Speaker 4: We've actually seen this historically step in take power because
Speaker 4: people don't have anyone to trust except for the one
Speaker 4: person that is correctly telling them you can't trust anyone,
Speaker 4: and so that's where you end up in an extremely
Speaker 4: dangerous situation because nobody knows what's real what's not, and
Speaker 4: that means you can sort of more easily manipulate public opinion,
Speaker 4: you can sort of seize on people's angst and anxieties,
Speaker 4: and that's where things get even more violent. And there
Speaker 4: was a lot leading up to January sixth I think
Speaker 4: that was similar actually to that, And so the fact
Speaker 4: that we're heading into a place where it's going to
Speaker 4: get worse is a little bit chilling to think about
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and ironically, if Donald Trump had just conceded that
Speaker 1: he had lost, he'd probably be up by five to
Speaker 1: ten points on Biden right now, if he had just
Speaker 1: done something that apparently he's in capable of doing and
Speaker 1: gracefully exit. Instead, you know, here he is. You know,
Speaker 1: tangling in a Republican primary and also head to head,
Speaker 1: you know, head to head tide with Joe Biden. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get to that Republican primary. We have Ron de
Speaker 1: Santas has a plan for that, right, He's got his
Speaker 1: He's got his economic ten point economic plan out. Here's
Speaker 1: how I would describe it. Tell me, uh, what you
Speaker 1: think of it. To me, it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: kind of muddled together, groping mixture of populism and kind
Speaker 1: of old school Reaganism, because it combines the kind of
Speaker 1: nod toward austerity where he's he's saying he's going to
Speaker 1: kind of cut the depths that cut the budget, He's
Speaker 1: going to go after waste, fraud and abuse, he's going
Speaker 1: to reign in government spending. But he's also leaning in
Speaker 1: a more populous direction about kind of helping helping the
Speaker 1: family economically so that he can also help them culturally.
Speaker 1: And and I don't want to like completely dismiss as
Speaker 1: an intellectually incoherent brought product, because I think the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is going through a transition period, so I think
Speaker 1: there's going to be some incoherence, you know, on on
Speaker 1: the way to where they finally land on something, and
Speaker 1: so you're going to wind up with a situation like
Speaker 1: this where you have things that are kind of often
Speaker 1: in conflict with each other because you know, you Wan's
Speaker 1: less government and more government at the same time. What
Speaker 1: was your what's your read on the Dysanta's plan for that?
Speaker 4: That's so interesting because I've been writing a piece about
Speaker 4: it over the last couple of days and you basically
Speaker 4: just echoed exactly what I've landed on it. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: So let me actually read from what DeSantis is calling
Speaker 4: his quote declaration of economic independence. He says, it's time
Speaker 4: and name names and defeat those people in institutions that
Speaker 4: have formed the root causes of this economic malaise. And
Speaker 4: a family focused economy means having the courage to take
Speaker 4: on our enemies. Now this next line, imagine a Republican
Speaker 4: saying this ten years ago quote, we are no longer
Speaker 4: going to count how to Wall Street and big corporations
Speaker 4: who don't have your interests front and center. He talks
Speaker 4: about China, and then he says the American dream is
Speaker 4: slipping away from our nation's middle class. He goes on
Speaker 4: and talks about COVID lockdowns, reckless borrowing, printing, and spending,
Speaker 4: making costs of life essential, so much so that buying
Speaker 4: a home, purchasing a car, or starting a family is
Speaker 4: cost prohibitive, and for many even affording groceries has become
Speaker 4: a matter of saving. Now this next line I thought
Speaker 4: was the most interesting. He says the bottom half of
Speaker 4: American households have less wealth today than in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 4: while the top ten percent have added twenty nine trillion
Speaker 4: dollars in wealth over the same period. He also adds
Speaker 4: another good line here, Over six million prime age men
Speaker 4: are neither working nor looking for work. The labor force
Speaker 4: participation rate for this group fell from ninety eight percent
Speaker 4: in nineteen fifty three to eighty nine percent today. Ryan
Speaker 4: that line about the bottom half of American households having
Speaker 4: less wealth than in nineteen eighty nine while the top
Speaker 4: ten percent have added is like could have been ripped
Speaker 4: from a speech somebody gave it Occupy Wall Street in
Speaker 4: twenty eleven, when all of the Republican Party was and
Speaker 4: I use this word understanding that it's sort of a joke,
Speaker 4: and for good reason, seizing on class warfare. Right Republicans
Speaker 4: were lamenting the divisiveness. You definitely remember this better than
Speaker 4: I do. Of they were lamenting the divisiveness of quote
Speaker 4: class warfare over and over and over again to their
Speaker 4: own detriment. They then nominated private equity Baron and Mitt
Speaker 4: Romney to take on Barack Obama in twenty twelve and
Speaker 4: got Donald Trump and were shocked and surprised by the
Speaker 4: fact that after all of that they got Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: So here's Rond DeSantis, I think absorbing some of those lessons,
Speaker 4: And now to your point, Ryan about whether the plane
Speaker 4: itself addresses that, you know, how do you address that
Speaker 4: as Republican policies. It is a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: cutting red tape, ending regulatory capture, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 4: which I.
Speaker 3: Think would be helpful.
Speaker 4: But it certainly that's where his policies are going to
Speaker 4: diverge completely from most people who share those concerns about
Speaker 4: income inequality.
Speaker 1: Would have put an even finer point on it if
Speaker 1: he said that forty seven percent of people rather than
Speaker 1: fifty percent, because you know, famously you had Mitt Romney
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve basically just dismiss half the country and
Speaker 1: that and that's stuck with him throughout the presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: and that's the part of the country that's falling behind
Speaker 1: and the one that the Santis is now rhetorically trying
Speaker 1: to reach out to, particularly with the class war pair
Speaker 1: rhetoric of what is it we lose, they win, like
Speaker 1: the we and the Day framing, it's that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of left wing or at least populous stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of left wing populist stuff when you're when you're
Speaker 1: breaking it down to the ninety nine percent and the
Speaker 1: one percent and the we to day it is very,
Speaker 1: like you said, kind of occupy inspired. But then right,
Speaker 1: how you're going to go after corporations and Wall Street
Speaker 1: and rain them in, but you're also going to cut
Speaker 1: regulation and red tape? Well, how are you going to
Speaker 1: do that? But you it is the regulatory power of
Speaker 1: the state that is going to do the things that
Speaker 1: you're saying you're going to do, and you're saying that
Speaker 1: you're going to weaken the regulatory power of the state.
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, I'm not I don't want
Speaker 1: to mock him because I think the right is kind
Speaker 1: of groping for something interesting here. But the way it's
Speaker 1: structured now, it is self defeating. Now, if you're going
Speaker 1: to be totally cynical, you would say he doesn't mean
Speaker 1: any of this. It's he's just pandering to this you know,
Speaker 1: increasingly working class base that they're that they're pulling in
Speaker 1: and that in fact, what they're going to do is
Speaker 1: continue to deliver for the one percent. That would be
Speaker 1: the cynical interpretation. I like to I like to think,
Speaker 1: I like to be more hopeful about our political prospects,
Speaker 1: even in the face of all of the evidence that
Speaker 1: you know that nobody is actually serious about doing any
Speaker 1: of this. So uh, you know, until Desantus kind of
Speaker 1: marries you know, what he's going to do with the
Speaker 1: government to an agenda that he's that he's saying he
Speaker 1: stands behind, I don't think it should be taken seriously
Speaker 1: as a matter of policy, which is which is ironic
Speaker 1: given that you know, DeSantis is the one, you know
Speaker 1: who always talks about how he's kind of the policy want,
Speaker 1: how he's the one who's going to get things done,
Speaker 1: and then he puts out a plan that is you know,
Speaker 1: just in complete contradiction with it's with both ends of it,
Speaker 1: and some of that.
Speaker 4: Is like a fundamental ideological disagreement. As you know, like
Speaker 4: he says achieving three percent growth by incentivizing investment, eliminating
Speaker 4: bureaucracy and red tape, and keeping taxes low, and outlines
Speaker 4: in a matter of like ten bullet points, how you
Speaker 4: get to that number three percent growth with cuts to
Speaker 4: red tape, so extending individual tax rates and further simplifying
Speaker 4: the tax code, which is very general. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: hard to know what that means. You know, he's trying
Speaker 4: to make permanent, full immediate expensing, maintained territoriality, and for
Speaker 4: the strength and base erosion memorvers measures to ensure corporations
Speaker 4: investing in America. And you know, I think you actually
Speaker 4: can hit that three percent growth number with those targets.
Speaker 3: If I had more specifics and like.
Speaker 4: Was able to do the back of the napkin math,
Speaker 4: I believe that you probably can get to that three
Speaker 4: percent growth number. He's talking about unleashing American energy independence.
Speaker 4: I think that would be incredibly helpful. Reforming our immigration system.
Speaker 4: I think that would be really helpful for wages personally.
Speaker 4: And you know, like what does it mean when he
Speaker 4: says going to China? He says DeSantis will incentivize the
Speaker 4: repatriation of US capital from China through state strategic tax
Speaker 4: abatements and aligning market incentives with strategic goals to help
Speaker 4: secure our supply chains and invest in America. You can
Speaker 4: read that as either industrial policy or tax incentives and
Speaker 4: or crony capitalism, right, depending on how you want to
Speaker 4: see it.
Speaker 3: You can look at that either way.
Speaker 4: And I think it's hard to know what that would
Speaker 4: actually in practice be from a president run DeSantis, but
Speaker 4: that's sort of the nature of campaigning rhetoric is there's
Speaker 4: a good I think this is a really good improvement
Speaker 4: on the Republican Party of twenty twelve. He talks like
Speaker 4: Masters did about people being able to raise a family
Speaker 4: on a single income, and so I think it's an
Speaker 4: interesting I guess combination, or it's an interesting bridge between
Speaker 4: the old Republican Party and the New Republican Party, or
Speaker 4: where people think the sort of the post Trump Republicans
Speaker 4: think the New Republican Party needs to go. Whether their
Speaker 4: motives are pure is obviously up for debate, and whether
Speaker 4: they actually want to take the steps of implementing policies
Speaker 4: that might take a little bit away from the top
Speaker 4: and bring some to the bottom, not you know, by
Speaker 4: force of the tax code or anything like that, but
Speaker 4: of realigning economic incentives is a different question.
Speaker 3: But I do think it's at least a little bit.
Speaker 4: Of a w that the rhetoric has shifted, because that,
Speaker 4: even if they don't know, it is putting pressure on
Speaker 4: them to deliver. If you say you're going to do
Speaker 4: X and you don't do X, that is an added
Speaker 4: little bit of pressure from the voter.
Speaker 3: So maybe that's something to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Our parties have shifted places over the course of American
Speaker 1: history many different times. The parties themselves have no ideology
Speaker 1: other than to remain in power. So this is I
Speaker 1: think a much more interesting Republican party kind of left
Speaker 1: to grapple with than the one in say twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: or over the last forty years before that. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is it's interesting.
Speaker 3: Agree. Let's talk about Ryan's favorite member of Congress.
Speaker 4: Dan Goldman's New York who I think has been trying
Speaker 4: out He's been tasked with trying out the Biden Allies
Speaker 4: new spin narrative. They're talking points when it comes to
Speaker 4: the allegations against Joe Biden pertaining to Hunter Biden and
Speaker 4: James Biden and all of the Biden's basically financial interests
Speaker 4: and business interests. We have a sot we're going to play.
Speaker 4: Let's role see one first and.
Speaker 3: We'll get into it.
Speaker 6: Could you just with specifics, tell us these phone calls
Speaker 6: that were as a matter of such a discussion.
Speaker 1: Yesterday, what were they about?
Speaker 6: Would what would then Vice President Biden say in these conversations,
Speaker 6: you know, walk us through what happened, right, So let's
Speaker 6: put this in context. Bo Biden got very sick in
Speaker 6: early twenty fifteen. He died in the spring of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 6: which was right in the middle when Devon Archer had
Speaker 6: his business dealings with Hunter Biden. At that point, Joe
Speaker 6: Biden and Hunter Biden began to speak every day because
Speaker 6: they were both devastated by Bo's death.
Speaker 1: They spoke every day.
Speaker 6: The witness testified that over his ten year relationship with
Speaker 6: Hunter Biden, there may be approximately twenty times when in
Speaker 6: one of those conversations, Hunter Biden would put his father
Speaker 6: at a dinner, not at a business meeting, at a
Speaker 6: dinner that he was having. If he happened to get
Speaker 6: hold of his father and would ask his father to
Speaker 6: say hello to whoever was at the table, and that
Speaker 6: was essentially the extent of it. They didn't he it
Speaker 6: was unclear and the witness testified. This is not me
Speaker 6: saying that the witness testified that a lot of times.
Speaker 6: Most of the time, Joe didn't even know who the
Speaker 6: people were at the dinner table.
Speaker 4: It gets better. So that's Dan Goleman. He is member
Speaker 4: of the House Oversight Committee meeting. He was in the
Speaker 4: closed door testimony with Devin Archer, and that was MSNBC's
Speaker 4: Morning Joe asking him to kind of debrief what he
Speaker 4: heard in that testimony. He claims Archer debunked the entire
Speaker 4: narrative basically, which we can get to into in.
Speaker 3: Just a moment.
Speaker 4: Let's also play Representative hyms On. I think this is
Speaker 4: also MSNBC. This is C two the Republican is.
Speaker 7: It's just this internal primal urge to visit retribution on
Speaker 7: the Democrats, and the problem is they can't find a fact. So, look,
Speaker 7: is there problematic questions about Hunter Biden and I said
Speaker 7: something that shouldn't be controversial, which is that if you
Speaker 7: committed a crime, you should be held accountable. But have
Speaker 7: they pointed to anything to suggest that Joe Biden engaged
Speaker 7: in corrupt behavior. No, And on the contrary, Hunter Biden's
Speaker 7: business problems partner said, yeah, he was on some phone
Speaker 7: calls talking about the weather, talking about the weather, exchanging pleasantries.
Speaker 7: You know, is that in the category of you know,
Speaker 7: presidential family members that are problematic, Billy Carter, Hugh rod
Speaker 7: And maybe it's in that category, but is you sure
Speaker 7: and absolutely not a crimes Okay.
Speaker 4: So first we have the gross invocation from Dan Goldman
Speaker 4: of the Biden family tragedy as it pertains to Bo Biden,
Speaker 4: as though that would somehow prevent Joe Biden from fundamentally
Speaker 4: understanding right and wrong as a man who has been
Speaker 4: in Washington, d c. And representing we should add Delaware
Speaker 4: for decades, as though he doesn't understand the ethics of
Speaker 4: business interests and government, And then that would somehow reasonably
Speaker 4: cloud his judgment in a way that makes it hard
Speaker 4: for us to judge him as voters as citizens now,
Speaker 4: and then you have Jim Himes saying they were talking
Speaker 4: about the weather. According to Devin Archer, and if we
Speaker 4: go out of order here, I'm so sorry. If we
Speaker 4: could put C four up on the screen, this is
Speaker 4: a tweet from Tom Bevin reacting to reporting that the
Speaker 4: Bidens were using burner phones, and Tom quotes need burner
Speaker 4: phones to talk about the weather because Biden told Archer
Speaker 4: to get burner phones.
Speaker 3: And this is just three days before there was.
Speaker 4: A meeting with Joe Biden at the White House, So
Speaker 4: they were just using those burner phones to talk about
Speaker 4: the weather.
Speaker 3: As Tom jokes.
Speaker 4: So, Brian, what is your reaction to what seems like
Speaker 4: a coordinated and it's hardly unusual to have coordinated talking points,
Speaker 4: you be trotted out by people and they're defending a
Speaker 4: politician under fire. What do you make of these these
Speaker 4: these new defenses from Democrats.
Speaker 1: Well, let me first say that, you know, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has been much more involved with his kind of family's
Speaker 1: finances than I think people understand. And I've done a
Speaker 1: lot of reporting on this in the past, and people
Speaker 1: should be able to look up some of my older
Speaker 1: reporting on Joe Biden, James Biden, Hunter Biden, going back,
Speaker 1: you know, to the nineties and the two thousands, and
Speaker 1: so I think we have to bear that context in
Speaker 1: mind as we're thinking through, you know, what Biden's role
Speaker 1: was here at the same time, I would say that
Speaker 1: if Biden is getting on the phone with Hunter Biden
Speaker 1: and making pleasantries to you know, let's say, business partners
Speaker 1: at a dinner, unless Republicans can come up with something
Speaker 1: more than that, like, unless they can prove or show
Speaker 1: or you know, have some kind of evidence that that
Speaker 1: Biden was getting paid or that Biden you know, was
Speaker 1: aware of you know, who those people were, then I
Speaker 1: don't think they have what they think they have here. Now.
Speaker 1: I do think it's fair to say that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: knows that Hunter Biden, oftentimes when he's putting them on
Speaker 1: the speakerphone, is doing it so that he can impress people.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes those people are ones who are paying him
Speaker 1: for his last name and for his access. And I
Speaker 1: think if you're a liberal kind of watch watching this
Speaker 1: right now, you should, you know, think about that, think
Speaker 1: about what is what is Biden? What does Biden think
Speaker 1: in that moment? And he probably knows exactly what's going on. Now,
Speaker 1: this idea from Comer that therefore Joe Biden is guilty
Speaker 1: of being a foreign agent, I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's been remotely proven, because you'd have to show
Speaker 1: that Biden did something. Now, Okay, yes, Biden did fire this,
Speaker 1: uh this, you get this, get this Ukra brainting prosecutor
Speaker 1: fired who was investigating Maarisa. But that was also American
Speaker 1: policy at the time, so that so you can't completely
Speaker 1: you can't really hang your case on that. Was there
Speaker 1: anything else that Biden did when it came to Romania
Speaker 1: or China or anything else related? You know, those things
Speaker 1: remain just allegations, not even specific allegations, just kind of
Speaker 1: brow kind of smoke. There is a lot of smoke,
Speaker 1: and I do think that it was unethical and I
Speaker 1: think that Hunter Biden was exploiting his father's grief at
Speaker 1: that time. You know, it is one thing to talk
Speaker 1: every day in this period of grief. It is another
Speaker 1: thing to put your dad on speaker phone when you're
Speaker 1: at a dinner party with your business partners like that.
Speaker 1: You don't get the kind of grief exception for that move.
Speaker 1: You know what you're doing there.
Speaker 4: And that is so interesting. No, that's so interesting because
Speaker 4: I think that's why they were doing this. Right, Like
Speaker 4: Joe Biden is not a stupid man when it comes
Speaker 4: to the blurring of line between government and business. Again,
Speaker 4: like the man that represented Delaware for decades, Like he
Speaker 4: absolutely understands, as a man who's in the Senate for
Speaker 4: a very long time, exactly how these things are supposed
Speaker 4: to work, exactly how influence pedaling works. He's been the
Speaker 4: chair of the Senate Foreign Relations commit Like he absolutely
Speaker 4: knows what these things are. And that's why I actually
Speaker 4: think this is a really good point, because what Republicans
Speaker 4: are very they really feel like each new revelation gets
Speaker 4: them closer to maybe an impeachment hearing being opened. And
Speaker 4: we talked last week about Kevin McCarthy floating that if
Speaker 4: people stop cooperating, and obviously Archer ended up actually testifying,
Speaker 4: So maybe if that was subtly about Archer or about
Speaker 4: other things, that's off the table for the speaker now.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: But fundamentally, why would Joe Biden allow Hunter Biden to
Speaker 4: come with him on Air Force two? Why would Joe
Speaker 4: Biden stop by Cafe Milano where he knows damn well
Speaker 4: that Hunter Biden's clients are there and seeing him is
Speaker 4: what gets Hunted the money? Why would he say, quote,
Speaker 4: I hope you know what you're doing. That's his own
Speaker 4: admission to Hunter Biden when he takes on Barisma as
Speaker 4: a client when Joe Biden has been fingered by the
Speaker 4: Obama administration to lead you crane cause for the Obama
Speaker 4: White House. Well, because there's always plausible deniability with something
Speaker 4: like this, all Hunter Biden needs is the Biden last name.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden doesn't need to actually do anything other than
Speaker 4: hit the links, go to the golf course with Hunter's clients,
Speaker 4: go to Cafe Milano, be on speakerphone, and as long
Speaker 4: as he like, he actually doesn't have to talk about
Speaker 4: business at all. I find it extremely hard to believe
Speaker 4: that never happened in any sort of broad context whatsoever.
Speaker 3: In fact, I'm sure that it did.
Speaker 4: But unless you have a smoking gun audio of that
Speaker 4: conversation and Joe Biden, you know, being explicit about any
Speaker 4: sort of quid pro quo, which, again, like that's what's
Speaker 4: so slimy about this is that he knows there's always
Speaker 4: plausible deniability. He knows that all he has to do
Speaker 4: is show up and show these clients that Hunter is
Speaker 4: in contact with his father.
Speaker 3: That's all he has to do. And Hunter can talk to.
Speaker 4: Other people that are not his father that can maybe
Speaker 4: advance his policy interests and That's where I think Republicans
Speaker 4: would be wise to focus on for the future. Are
Speaker 4: there people that aren't on the Biden administration sanctions list
Speaker 4: that were, you know, in Russia and Ukraine that are
Speaker 4: tied to Hunter Biden. Are the results that we can
Speaker 4: see sort of tangibly directly, whether it was in the
Speaker 4: Obama administration or the Biden administration. You know, when it
Speaker 4: came to Tony Podesta, you could look at how many meetings
Speaker 4: he had with Clinton State Department, for instance, as he
Speaker 4: was representing Yanikovich with the Paul mannifort when it came
Speaker 4: to Ukraine, like, you can look, there are things you
Speaker 4: can do to show what, you know, tangible results were.
Speaker 4: So I'm interested in where that conversation goes. But to
Speaker 4: your point, I actually think that's that's so interesting. I
Speaker 4: don't know that they're ever going to get a smoking gun,
Speaker 4: precisely because you don't ever need a smoking gun to
Speaker 4: do influence peddling in this country.
Speaker 1: I think it's also possible that Hunter Biden, in the
Speaker 1: grips of a multi year vender, didn't actually do much.
Speaker 1: That he was exploiting his father, exploiting his last name,
Speaker 1: and then exploiting all of his clients, pocketing the money
Speaker 1: and spending it just as fast without actually delivering. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if his like, you know, not showing up
Speaker 1: for work is one of the things that could in
Speaker 1: the end get him off of a feign charge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you have to spend a certain amount of your
Speaker 1: time doing lobbying. I think it's more than twenty percent
Speaker 1: of your time doing or or you have to do
Speaker 1: something material to benefit these clients. And he'd be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well guess what I was on skid row. I was
Speaker 1: not actually lobbying on behalf of these Chinese energy companies
Speaker 1: or Romania or Ukraine. I wasn't showing up for these
Speaker 1: board meetings. I was wasted. So anyway, we'll see this.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the Republicans have their work cut
Speaker 1: out for them if they're going to, you know, find
Speaker 1: the evidence is going to land this, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is unseemly just like Hunter Biden should not have
Speaker 1: had one of his first jobs be at BNA, the
Speaker 1: bank that Biden represented, in the credit card company that
Speaker 1: Biden represented, Delary shouldn't have become a lobbyist for MBNA.
Speaker 1: You know, he shouldn't have done all of the things
Speaker 1: that he's done throughout throughout his career. And Joe Biden
Speaker 1: could have told him, if you want to do this,
Speaker 1: you're a grown man, but you cannot use my name
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to help you along the way
Speaker 1: because I ethically I find this to be repugnant. Joe
Speaker 1: Biden did not do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and partisan spin is partisan spin. I mean, you
Speaker 4: know Him's and gold Goldman are going to represent their party.
Speaker 4: This this new line of defense feels a bit desperate
Speaker 4: to me and especially Jimes. It's very rich talking about
Speaker 4: his talking about the Republican Party's lust for retribution as
Speaker 4: his own party is championing the multiple indictments.
Speaker 3: Against Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Again, like as politics, a little lust for retribution is
Speaker 4: pure politics. And we'll just before we wrap here, put
Speaker 4: C three up on the screen because we've been talking
Speaker 4: a little bit about the Pharaoh charges. This is on Newsmax,
Speaker 4: saying basically that he thinks Archer's testimony opens up a
Speaker 4: fair charge Devin for Hunter Biden because or actually he's
Speaker 4: even saying potentially Joe Biden. The Democrats have consistently taken
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's position saying he never spoke with anyone Hunter
Speaker 4: Biden was doing business with. And yet we learned today
Speaker 4: that over twenty times, in fact, Joe Biden, while he
Speaker 4: was vice president, spoke with people who were sending the
Speaker 4: Biden family members these suspicious wires that the banks nor
Speaker 4: anyone else in America know the purpose of the wires.
Speaker 3: Before.
Speaker 4: We've talked about Farah here a lot, because if you're
Speaker 4: interested in corruption in Washington, DC, you go to the
Speaker 4: Fair Database. You can just about any day of the
Speaker 4: week have a bonanza just looking at who's representing who
Speaker 4: in Washington and exactly how much money they're making for it.
Speaker 4: It is basically the quintessential bipartisan griff. It's a World
Speaker 4: War Two era law meant to sniff out people who
Speaker 4: are spreading propaganda for a foreign agent, foreign country.
Speaker 3: And you can imagine why.
Speaker 4: That was important at the time that the law was enacted,
Speaker 4: just for the sake of transparency. They don't make it illegal,
Speaker 4: but you have to be transparent about it. And so
Speaker 4: it's been weaponized, i would say, in recent years and
Speaker 4: against kind of Trump allies. But you know, I think
Speaker 4: it's important here that whether we're talking about Jared Kushner
Speaker 4: or Hunter Biden.
Speaker 3: This the more information the better.
Speaker 4: The more people are being interrogated on this basis the better,
Speaker 4: because these are serious loss They're in place for a reason,
Speaker 4: and corruption is again like this is the quintessential bipartisan grift.
Speaker 4: So as far as I'm concerned, the more information we
Speaker 4: can get on this, the better, I guess. I guess
Speaker 4: I wish the media was as curious about Hunter Biden,
Speaker 4: and I guess potentially Joe Biden, although I agree with you, Ryan,
Speaker 4: I don't know how.
Speaker 3: Much is there there.
Speaker 4: I wish they were as concerned about that as they
Speaker 4: are about Jared Kushner or Paul Mannifort and when it
Speaker 4: comes to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Tony Podesta. But I
Speaker 4: guess that's a conversation for another day.
Speaker 1: Speaking of foreign influence, the Republicans are going after Blackrock
Speaker 1: as well. The House Republicans are investing Gating whether or
Speaker 1: not the investment firm has been putting money into Chinese
Speaker 1: companies that are involved in either human rights abuses or
Speaker 1: in backstopping the People's Liberation Army the Chinese military. What's
Speaker 1: your read on this latest move from House Republicans Emily.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really interesting because if we put the
Speaker 4: next set of elements up on the screen, the specific
Speaker 4: allegations are pretty fascinating. You would think people would have
Speaker 4: more shame than Blackrock seems to. This is the House
Speaker 4: Like Command in China, led by Mike Gallagher. The committee
Speaker 4: found that black Rock, across just five funds, as Philip
Speaker 4: Wegmann of Real Clear Politics reports, invested more than four
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty nine million in companies that the Committee
Speaker 4: says pose a national security risk to the US. Now
Speaker 4: is that just bloated neo conservative language from the committee.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: If we dive in and keep going on this tweet thread.
Speaker 4: They have the receipts. They have some really specific receipts. Actually,
Speaker 4: we're talking about aviation companies. We're talking about aircrafts for
Speaker 4: the People's Liberation Army. We're talking about cell phone telecommunications
Speaker 4: infrastructure in the CCP spy apparatus. If you're watching this,
Speaker 4: you see these all listed out on the screen. This
Speaker 4: is Morgan Stanley, not Blackrock. Everything that I just listed out,
Speaker 4: We can then move to the Blackrock slide that we
Speaker 4: have prepared here that Philip tweeted out of the screenshots.
Speaker 4: So when it comes to Blackrock also Aviation Industry Corporation
Speaker 4: Morgan Stanley there as well. They are making aircraft for
Speaker 4: the PLA that includes, as the Committee says, the fifth
Speaker 4: generation J twenty fighter jet, and a munitions company, a
Speaker 4: Chinese munitions company that produces artillery shells for the People's
Speaker 4: Liberation Army. Now, whatever you think of the United States
Speaker 4: policy towards China or China's policy towards the United.
Speaker 3: States, it is the likelihood that those.
Speaker 4: Artillery shells could be used against American sales members of
Speaker 4: the American military in the years.
Speaker 3: Ahead is not that low. There's a likelihood.
Speaker 4: Sadly, that's where we are that the very artillery shells
Speaker 4: that Blackrock is funneling people's investments into it could be
Speaker 4: used against people in the United States of America. This
Speaker 4: is again an investigation that the Select Committee has opened.
Speaker 4: I think those receipts are pretty strong. Obviously, Morgan Stanley
Speaker 4: and Blackrock are denying that they've done anything wrong. Ryan,
Speaker 4: what do you make of I keep referring to them
Speaker 4: as the receipts like we're at a real housewives reunion,
Speaker 4: But what do you make of the evidence the committees presented.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole thing feels a little schizophrenic to me,
Speaker 1: because our our economies are completely entangled with each other
Speaker 1: as a direct result of American bipartisan foreign policy to
Speaker 1: make China, you know, to give China permanent what do
Speaker 1: they call it, permanent normal relations or a normalized PNTR
Speaker 1: permanent normalized trade relations, which came in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties as a that was a kind of Clinton Clinton
Speaker 1: Agenda item that was backed heavily by Republicans. We are
Speaker 1: we produce, you know, most of our consumer goods over there.
Speaker 1: Uh they you know, they purchase enormous amounts of our
Speaker 1: of our debt. But then but then we then we
Speaker 1: want to uh then then and we do draw some
Speaker 1: lines around you know what US companies can invest in
Speaker 1: and not invest in. But now the House Repulicans want
Speaker 1: to take it even further and say, well, okay, this
Speaker 1: isn't specifically outlawed, but if you look, you know it
Speaker 1: is a company that has connections to producing you know,
Speaker 1: ammunition which you know legitimately could be used against Americans
Speaker 1: in Taiwan at some point, which and I say, it
Speaker 1: feels schizophantical. I was like, all right, well, look, if
Speaker 1: that's our policy, then then ban it. If or if
Speaker 1: we're really worried about Chinese shells, you know, landing on
Speaker 1: the heads of American soldiers, better thing to do would
Speaker 1: be to make sure that that never happens, that the
Speaker 1: Chinese never fire shells on American soldiers, because I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think the American soldier is going to be
Speaker 1: that much more upset if he gets killed by a
Speaker 1: black Rock funded munition or a munition that was you know,
Speaker 1: funded by you know, some other fungible resources to China
Speaker 1: put toward its munitions factor. I think primarily the soldier
Speaker 1: would just prefer not to have been killed in the war.
Speaker 1: And so I think everything needs to revolve around the
Speaker 1: question of how do we avoid a completely unnecessary war
Speaker 1: like it's it's talked about in Washington and nowadays almost
Speaker 1: as if this this is destined to happen, that nobody
Speaker 1: has any choice, that we're headed towards this conflict. But
Speaker 1: this would be a war of choice, like there are
Speaker 1: other options that are available. And so then the question
Speaker 1: is does this type of stuff make or more likely,
Speaker 1: or make or less likely? Is it does this set
Speaker 1: us up to be, you know, to have more independence
Speaker 1: from China, or does it put us on a collision
Speaker 1: course for war? And I don't know exactly the answer
Speaker 1: to that, but I think it. I think that there
Speaker 1: is something incoherent about the way we're approaching it here.
Speaker 1: What would you have them? Do you think if if
Speaker 1: House Republicans could write write the law and kind of
Speaker 1: force Biden's hand to sign it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a really good question because it gets
Speaker 4: into you know, when when Donald Trump, for instance, what
Speaker 4: was referred to as the Muslim Band, tried to identify
Speaker 4: problematic countries that people shouldn't be traveling to. And if
Speaker 4: you're just gonna it's like when they tried to do
Speaker 4: this with TikTok. One of the TikTok bills didn't actually
Speaker 4: mention China specifically. It was like broadly trying to define
Speaker 4: a hostile foreign nation. And then you get into a
Speaker 4: lot of different questions about different countries and where there
Speaker 4: are competing interests. By the way, you can look at
Speaker 4: the way that people who talk a big game about
Speaker 4: China look at Saudi Arabia for instance. Uh, And there's
Speaker 4: a really serious, I think question of how you decouple,
Speaker 4: How do you how do you deal with a country
Speaker 4: that is implicated in sort of intentional, coordinated government human
Speaker 4: rights abuses on your average citizen, let alone in Chinjong
Speaker 4: for instance, how do you how do you deal with
Speaker 4: that while also not you know, decoupling in a way
Speaker 4: that that starts a war. Obviously, Taiwan and Chips a
Speaker 4: huge question on the table. Obviously Blackrock is going to
Speaker 4: look at the fact that Intel is here in d
Speaker 4: C right now pouring millions of dollars into a lobbying
Speaker 4: effort to allow them to continue to have big business
Speaker 4: in China. That obviously will boost the Chinese government, the
Speaker 4: spying apparatus, et cetera, et cetera. And Blackrock is saying,
Speaker 4: we are trying to raise money for American pension funds.
Speaker 4: What's what makes us so different from Intel? What makes
Speaker 4: us so different from Walmart or wherever else? If we're
Speaker 4: we're all sort of boosting the Chinese economy, which is
Speaker 4: fundamentally dependent on the American economy. They need us, and
Speaker 4: that's why this trade war has been so bitter. And
Speaker 4: if we fully decouple from China, and there's an argument
Speaker 4: that there's sort of there's a desperation that leads to
Speaker 4: a potential invasion of Taiwan, which is obviously, as our
Speaker 4: government has said, our redline that you know, involves a
Speaker 4: hot conflict. I mean, this is it is an absolute mess,
Speaker 4: and basically it's the result of elite mismanagement over the
Speaker 4: course of decades that we're in the situation now, and
Speaker 4: nobody should have any confidence whatsoever that that's going to
Speaker 4: get better to prevent a hot conflict where actual lives
Speaker 4: are on the line, because they're the ones that have
Speaker 4: screwed this up for decades. And now we're in a
Speaker 4: position where it's like, okay, so we're just going to
Speaker 4: you know, posture about the evils of the CCP and
Speaker 4: the PLA, and a lot of us can agree on
Speaker 4: those things, but you know, what does that look like?
Speaker 4: Like you are we going to then take on Intel?
Speaker 4: Are we going to take on other companies?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 3: How do you decouple in that way?
Speaker 4: I think obviously there's a difference between you know, Walmart
Speaker 4: and people who are investing in munitions investing in aircraft.
Speaker 4: I think that's obviously glaringly should be something that executives
Speaker 4: are ashamed, Like Larry Fink shouldn't for many reasons, but
Speaker 4: this one particularly feel comfortable walking into like cocktail.
Speaker 3: Parties in Manhattan, l or La.
Speaker 4: Like in a healthier society, he would be he would
Speaker 4: be a pariah because of all of this. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, to your point, like there isn't a
Speaker 4: fundamental incoherence too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it also feels like with the increasing climate
Speaker 1: collapse that we're seeing, how many three weeks of one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten plus degrees in Phoenix, for instance, And
Speaker 1: that's just one part of the world that it's pathetic
Speaker 1: for the world leaders to be this close to like
Speaker 1: some type of a hot conflict between the two biggest economies,
Speaker 1: rather than sitting down at the final stages of negotiations
Speaker 1: around how we're going to maintain the inhabitability of this planet.
Speaker 1: But I guess you know this is you know, that
Speaker 1: would be my ideal world, but that's not the one
Speaker 1: that we're in.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Elon Musk, who's ex which formerly was Twitter,
Speaker 4: filed a lawsuit against an anti hate speech purported an
Speaker 4: anti hate speech group this week that I think raises actually,
Speaker 4: I think perhaps one of the most important conversations in
Speaker 4: American politics and culture in general right now.
Speaker 3: But this is from NBC News.
Speaker 4: X Corps, the parent company of social media platform formerly
Speaker 4: known as Twitter. It's like Prince, filed a lawsuit in
Speaker 4: San Francisco Federal court Monday against a nonprofit organization that
Speaker 4: monitors hate speech and disinformation, falling through on a threat
Speaker 4: that had made media headlines hours earlier, so you have
Speaker 4: just hours between those headlines and the actual lawsuit itself.
Speaker 4: So it was in the US District Court for the
Speaker 4: Northern District of California and accuses the Center for Countering
Speaker 4: Digital Hate. So the CCdh of orchestrating quote a scare
Speaker 4: campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform by
Speaker 4: publishing research reports claiming that the social media service failed
Speaker 4: to take action against hateful posts. Now in the filing,
Speaker 4: the Twitter lawyers, the ex Court lawyers alleged that the
Speaker 4: CCdh carried out quote a series of unlawful acts designed
Speaker 4: to improperly gain access to protected ex court data needed
Speaker 4: by the CCdh so that I could cherry pick from
Speaker 4: the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on
Speaker 4: X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the
Speaker 4: platform is overwhelmed with harmful content. This is actually fascinating
Speaker 4: because one of the biggest problems social media companies have
Speaker 4: right now, and in fact why you see over and
Speaker 4: over again in the Twitter files and the Facebook files
Speaker 4: that Jim Jordan has started sharing and people like Matt
Speaker 4: Taibi and Michael Schallenberger have been covering excellently, what you
Speaker 4: start to see is that these companies are so terrified,
Speaker 4: maybe not under Elon Musk, but they're so terrified of
Speaker 4: pressure from the media. In many cases, which is odd
Speaker 4: that the media is acting is like the censors, the
Speaker 4: defenders of free speech in the First Amendment are the
Speaker 4: ones that are pressuring these companies and also from the
Speaker 4: government to crack down on hate speech. And fundamentally, it's
Speaker 4: a question of how we define hate speech.
Speaker 3: So hate speech. So here's more from NBC News.
Speaker 4: The research report that drew particular i R from ex
Speaker 4: Corps claimed that the platform had failed to take action
Speaker 4: against ninety nine percent of one hundred posts flagged by
Speaker 4: the CCdh staff members that included racist, homophobic, and anti
Speaker 4: Semitic content. Now, I don't think this research is public
Speaker 4: and the NBC thing says that New York Times, Washington Post, CNN,
Speaker 4: and NBC. They've cited their research, so that that is like,
Speaker 4: actually pretty key.
Speaker 3: How are they defining hate speech?
Speaker 4: How are they defining defining racism, homophobia and anti semitism
Speaker 4: anti semitism in particular, Ryan, this is where we find
Speaker 4: found agreement that sometimes it is defined so broadly that
Speaker 4: it becomes almost meaningless. I think the same thing is
Speaker 4: true of racism and homophobia. When you're calling people who
Speaker 4: just disagree with Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem racist,
Speaker 4: you know, whether they're white, black, Hispanic, if you're if
Speaker 4: you're calling that racist, I think that's a crazy definition
Speaker 4: of racism. In the same way that I think we
Speaker 4: agree some of these definitions of anti semitism are crazy
Speaker 4: and harmful to the cause of actually identifying and stamping
Speaker 4: out the scourge of anti Semitism.
Speaker 3: What do you make of the suit, Ryan, I think.
Speaker 1: You know, Twitter had, under Elon Musk, the ability to
Speaker 1: go to these advertisers and show them all of the
Speaker 1: data that is in their possession, do all of the
Speaker 1: fancy analysis of that data, and show two let's Nabisco
Speaker 1: or whoever is upset about the alleged hate speech and say, look, no,
Speaker 1: this this little nonprofit they cherry picked, they stole our data.
Speaker 1: It's it's unfair the way that they're you know, singling
Speaker 1: us out. And here I can promise you that this
Speaker 1: is a platform that is going to be safe for
Speaker 1: your advertiser advertisements to appear on. And here's how we
Speaker 1: can make those promises. Elon Musk either you know, fired
Speaker 1: the teams that were capable of doing that, or just
Speaker 1: decided not to do that, because the message he himself
Speaker 1: was delivering publicly was the opposite. He was yelling at
Speaker 1: these advertisers saying that you know, they ought to be
Speaker 1: standing up for free speech. And if they if they
Speaker 1: pulled their money. If you remember the very beginning, he's
Speaker 1: he threatened them that he was going to stick his
Speaker 1: army of people on them and like boycott, boycott them
Speaker 1: and kind of a proto bud light thing. He never
Speaker 1: managed to kind of pull any of any of that off.
Speaker 1: And so the whole I mean, it almost seems like
Speaker 1: too easy of a shot to dunk on him for
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy around the free speech here. He's a free
Speaker 1: speech app absolutist who's suing a nonprofit yeah, for speech
Speaker 1: saying that it's speech you know, was insulting to them
Speaker 1: and harm them. But yeah, like that, I have zero
Speaker 1: sympathy for him because he he has all of the
Speaker 1: Twitter data. Like if Unilever is concerned, you know, if
Speaker 1: if he wants to meet Unilever's concerns about the platform,
Speaker 1: he's capable of pitching them, just just like any other
Speaker 1: social media platform is. But he doesn't want to. He thinks,
Speaker 1: rightly or wrongly, but he thinks that Unilever's concerns are
Speaker 1: flawed and get in the way of his, uh you know,
Speaker 1: the way that he wants to run his platform and
Speaker 1: the people that he wants to allow, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: on onto his platform. And so to me, you can't
Speaker 1: have it both ways, Like you don't. You don't get
Speaker 1: to decide for Unilever where where they want to, where
Speaker 1: they want to advertise. I do agree with you that
Speaker 1: I've I've always found it a little bit corrupt when
Speaker 1: digital media companies are doing this kind of crusading reporting
Speaker 1: about who's advertising on Facebook or Twitter or Like and
Speaker 1: and calling all these advertisers and it really feels like
Speaker 1: pressuring them to stop advertising with them. And I call
Speaker 1: it corrupt because they are direct competitors, like digital media
Speaker 1: wants those advertisers. So if they can get these huge
Speaker 1: accounts to you know, respond to my request for comment
Speaker 1: about why you know you're advertising with Facebook or with
Speaker 1: Twitter despite the fact that you know X person said
Speaker 1: X terrible thing on Twitter. You don't respond by you know,
Speaker 1: twelve tomorrow or I'm going to write a story that
Speaker 1: you're still advertising with them, and so then you know
Speaker 1: they pull out. Now they still have this advertising budget
Speaker 1: lo and behold, they run that advertising budget with the
Speaker 1: with the companies, with the digital media companies that that
Speaker 1: drove drove them away. And so I have never thought
Speaker 1: that there's a directive coming from the sales team like
Speaker 1: please do this, but the economic and financial incentives are
Speaker 1: such that it's it's always kind of made that feel
Speaker 1: pretty icky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is a big problem with advertisers. And
Speaker 4: I think that's actually probably why you see the lawsuit
Speaker 4: and I actually don't know what they're going to be
Speaker 4: able to show that was illegal unlawful, like that's I
Speaker 4: think that's pretty difficult given where to your point a
Speaker 4: about coming from a free speech absolutist sort of amusing
Speaker 4: but Secondly, I actually don't know what in that report
Speaker 4: is going to actually constitute defamation or fraud or anything
Speaker 4: like that. It reminds me actually of the story about
Speaker 4: the Southern Poverty Law Center we talked about not that
Speaker 4: long ago, where they had to admit in court filings.
Speaker 4: You know, they like to act as though their designations,
Speaker 4: which I think smear Christians Conservatives in ways that are
Speaker 4: you know, some of those groups that they identify absolutely
Speaker 4: deserve to be on their hate map, their hate list,
Speaker 4: whatever it is. Some do not, And they had to
Speaker 4: admit in court filings they're being sued by one of
Speaker 4: those groups. They had to admit that they were subjective
Speaker 4: and you know, not that their opinion basically. And that's
Speaker 4: when we when we're you know, throwing around words like racist, homophobic,
Speaker 4: anti semitic, it's always been a matter of opinion. We
Speaker 4: haven't always agreed on what the definition of those terms are.
Speaker 4: And I think that's an important thing to recognize. There
Speaker 4: was a time when you know, there's just abject and
Speaker 4: discussing denial of to call racism actual racism. And so
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, I think that stuff is all important,
Speaker 4: but I also think the weaponization of those terms is important,
Speaker 4: and advertisers are are not going to catch on to
Speaker 4: that because they don't want to risk advertising on a
Speaker 4: space like Twitter where people are going to send them
Speaker 4: messages and easily be able to tweet and be like,
Speaker 4: why is your advertisement showing up next to this tweet?
Speaker 4: So some of the I'm looking at I should correct myself.
Speaker 4: I think some of this stuff actually is public. I
Speaker 4: think the research here a lot of it actually is public.
Speaker 4: And some of this is a stretch. Some of it
Speaker 4: is absolutely hate speech, and it's absolutely like just incitement.
Speaker 4: As an advertiser, you would never ever want your content
Speaker 4: showing up next to this is one of the tweets
Speaker 4: quote Hitler was right with a montage of Hitler attached
Speaker 4: to the words you can understand why, yeah, you Andi
Speaker 4: Lever wouldn't want to be next to that tweet, you know,
Speaker 4: advertising for their soap. So it's both a problem for
Speaker 4: Elon Musk and a problem for these groups.
Speaker 3: Ryan.
Speaker 4: As you mentioned, it was actually like NBC News that
Speaker 4: contacted Google about the comment section of The Federalist one time,
Speaker 4: trying to get us kicked off of Google's ad platform,
Speaker 4: which is a monopoly.
Speaker 3: It wasn't Google. It was actually NBC News.
Speaker 4: Other journalists, again taking down a competitor by saying our
Speaker 4: comment section as opposed to Google, which runs YouTube by
Speaker 4: the way, you know, it was was beyond the pale
Speaker 4: and meant we should get off of the Google ad platform.
Speaker 4: So ads are actually where we're testing, stress testing our
Speaker 4: concept of free speech in an interesting way. So it's
Speaker 4: a it's a lawsuit definitely to keep an eye on,
Speaker 4: because it does in and out itself micro cosmically kind
Speaker 4: of stress tests all of those questions.
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure what's actually going to be illegal here.
Speaker 3: So good luck to Elan. I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That's the luck out there, buddy.
Speaker 4: All right, Ryan, Well you're going to talk to us
Speaker 4: about some breaking news out of Niger. You're in France
Speaker 4: right now, so actually sort of well placed. What have
Speaker 4: you got for us?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the French interests in Africa have been challenged
Speaker 1: a lot the last couple of years, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get into you know, where that all's come, where
Speaker 1: that all's come from, where it might be going. We
Speaker 1: can put up our one here. Europeans, particularly French people,
Speaker 1: are now being evacuated from the ger after this, after
Speaker 1: a coup last last week and protests against kind of
Speaker 1: French what they call occupation. You know, the presence of
Speaker 1: French troops inside France. It's not just the French. If
Speaker 1: you can put up R two here, the US has
Speaker 1: a military presence in Nager as well, and reporting here
Speaker 1: from Cena that US troops are being restricted to the
Speaker 1: American base as as as things get tense in the country.
Speaker 1: Part of the politics that are unfolding here are related,
Speaker 1: to believe it or not, the Wagner Group. The Wagner
Speaker 1: Group has been heavily active in Russia and has been
Speaker 1: able to kind of fill a vacuum that's been created
Speaker 1: by a lot of anti French hostility that stems not
Speaker 1: just you know, from a colonial hangover, but more more
Speaker 1: recently related to kind of the French and you know,
Speaker 1: incumbent government's inability to put down the islam extremist militant movements.
Speaker 1: Put up R three here. This is this has been
Speaker 1: in Nager and other other surrounding country is a huge
Speaker 1: kind of boon for for the Wagner Group and for
Speaker 1: and for Russia. Uh and you as you see another
Speaker 1: great game playing out between the United States, France, Russia,
Speaker 1: China to try to get to get a sense of
Speaker 1: kind of where where we're talking about and what's going on.
Speaker 1: I assume not everybody knows exactly where, you know, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about, and if you what, what's what's key here?
Speaker 1: And we're going to get I'm gonna get into this
Speaker 1: in a minute. Is the country just to the northeast
Speaker 1: of of Nigeria, that is that is Libya and the
Speaker 1: crisis in Libya that was fueled by the by the
Speaker 1: French and supported by the United States and the US.
Speaker 1: We think about it as just a US kind of
Speaker 1: run operation against Katafi, really kind of French run with
Speaker 1: US support, and that is how it's viewed in Central Africa.
Speaker 1: And so the US is you know, has did it
Speaker 1: self no favor supporting that. The French are the ones
Speaker 1: that have kind of taken a lot of the hostility
Speaker 1: to back up. If you guys, if you remember the
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of Islamist organization, terrorist organization Boko Haram,
Speaker 1: which was famous for kidnapping hundreds of girls. They under
Speaker 1: pressure ended up allying with the Islamic State and creating
Speaker 1: kind of a new insurgent movement that operates throughout Central
Speaker 1: Africa and Burkina Faso, Mali and Najer and the result
Speaker 1: has been enormous instability. So in twenty twenty you had
Speaker 1: a coup in Mali and so that and then again
Speaker 1: another coup in Mali in twenty twenty one, so the
Speaker 1: military hunta is in charge over there. January twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: you had a military coup in Burkina Fasso, so the
Speaker 1: military junta is in charge over there. That kind of
Speaker 1: left Nagerer a little bit isolated. Nazer had its first
Speaker 1: kind of peaceful quote unquote peaceful transfer of power in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one when President Mohammad Bazoom took over. I
Speaker 1: say peaceful in quotes because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: allegations of irregularities and there was like a ten day
Speaker 1: shut off of the internet, and you know, a kind
Speaker 1: of brutal crackdown, and so to say that it was
Speaker 1: a perfectly peaceful transfer of power wouldn't be fair, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was a peaceful transfer of power compared
Speaker 1: to some of the civil wars in the region in
Speaker 1: the past. So in Najer recently you had a movement
Speaker 1: that's called M sixty two, which which people can look
Speaker 1: up and it's it's fascinating kind of combination of civil
Speaker 1: society groups, you know, the trade trade unions and others
Speaker 1: who were frustrated economically as well as frustrated at the
Speaker 1: lack of success in the war against the new Boko,
Speaker 1: the new bulk of ram Uh. And so uh, you've
Speaker 1: you did not have the M sixty two movement kind
Speaker 1: of lead this coup, but you have seen them, uh
Speaker 1: supporting the coup leaders. And also you've had a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the streets celebrating the kind of uh
Speaker 1: the French ship uh, you know, the kind of anti
Speaker 1: French sentiment, and and also then elevating Russia, saying that
Speaker 1: they would prefer to align themselves with Russia, which you know,
Speaker 1: ought to be a huge wake up call that if
Speaker 1: you have uh, you know people in the streets, you
Speaker 1: know that are that are massing in numbers higher you know,
Speaker 1: anybody can bring a few people out on the streets
Speaker 1: and put a camera in their face, but if they're
Speaker 1: massing in high enough numbers that they're staying out there
Speaker 1: for several days and waiving Russian flags, like you you
Speaker 1: have a problem, and so there's there are now real
Speaker 1: concerns that we're going to have a war in Central Africa.
Speaker 1: You have a country Chad is being encouraged to start
Speaker 1: sending troops into Nager to reinstall the president who's detained.
Speaker 1: There's this organization over there called the Economic Community of
Speaker 1: West African States, which is fifteen countries, and several of
Speaker 1: those are the ones that are now now of coup governments.
Speaker 1: The ones that do not have coup governments or are
Speaker 1: still aligned with the West are threatening Nager that they're
Speaker 1: going to send troops in and reinstall the president if
Speaker 1: they don't do that, but to go back to Libya
Speaker 1: for instance, Where did this all come from? In twenty ten,
Speaker 1: the United States and France decided that it was in
Speaker 1: our interests to go in and take out Kadafi and
Speaker 1: insert ourselves and help produce a civil war. That produced
Speaker 1: one of the most kind of famous hot mic moments
Speaker 1: from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We roll R
Speaker 1: five here.
Speaker 3: Yes, we came, we saw he died. Didn't have anything
Speaker 3: to do with your visit, now, did so?
Speaker 1: That's in reference to the killing of Kadafi, And so
Speaker 1: here we are now more than ten years out kind
Speaker 1: of still living with the instability. The forces that were
Speaker 1: unleashed in Libya have created the kind of insurgency that
Speaker 1: is now spreading throughout the region that Russia is able
Speaker 1: to exploit. All of this, of course, on the backdrop
Speaker 1: of the shift towards clean energy, Africa being a source
Speaker 1: of the rare earth materials that China and the United
Speaker 1: States are competing for in order to power this transition
Speaker 1: to a clean energy economy. So emily it hasn't gotten
Speaker 1: a whole lot of attention here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Certainly in and France it has. Macrone has said that
Speaker 1: it's absolutely untrue that he's going to send troops in
Speaker 1: because the coup government, in order to kind of buttress
Speaker 1: its own kind of strength with the public, is warning
Speaker 1: the French are coming. The French are coming, because you know,
Speaker 1: if you can elevate your the boogeyman of Macrone sending
Speaker 1: in troops, then they're hoping people will rally around them.
Speaker 1: He has said absolutely not or not, they're not going
Speaker 1: in there. But Nager is the kind of leading source
Speaker 1: of uranium for for France and Frances is a heavier,
Speaker 1: heavy nuclear industry, economy. So you know, it's it's unclear
Speaker 1: where this is going, but it looks like it's not going.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's not going in a very peaceful place.
Speaker 4: Colonialism very much still with us, as the show the
Speaker 4: story shows pretty clearly, and the point you just made.
Speaker 1: About what is your point today, Let's talk.
Speaker 4: About Dana Bash of CNN, who, in a conversation with
Speaker 4: Holster Frank Lunz, so, I guess it's considered a writ
Speaker 4: of center Polster. She I think also just revealed a
Speaker 4: really problematic sentiment that persists it will never go away
Speaker 4: despite you know, years of reckoning with a lot of
Speaker 4: this from our media.
Speaker 3: So let's play the clip of Dana Bash.
Speaker 8: Let's look specifically about the former president and the support
Speaker 8: before we get to the focus group that you did.
Speaker 8: The support that he has nationally has grown since February,
Speaker 8: twelve points since February, and DeSantis, who was just right
Speaker 8: behind him at a time, is now even further behind him.
Speaker 8: Who are these people who aren't part maybe necessarily of
Speaker 8: like that Trump core what we call the Fifth Avenue
Speaker 8: Republicans who you know, he famously says I could shoot
Speaker 8: somebody on Fifth Avenue and those people will support me.
Speaker 8: But the people on top of that who are looking
Speaker 8: at everything that's going on that happened on January sixth,
Speaker 8: and they're saying, Okay, I'll throw my support behind Donald Trump.
Speaker 9: Okay, the less educator you are, the more likely you
Speaker 9: are to support Donald Trump. Lower income people have been
Speaker 9: unemployed at some point in the last five years. It's
Speaker 9: a associate economic level that was once a Democratic voter,
Speaker 9: which is quite interesting. The people have come over to
Speaker 9: the GOP that gave them the majority in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 9: A lot of them, maybe fifteen percent, have been voting
Speaker 9: Democrat in the past, and they were simply frustrated, fed up.
Speaker 9: They feel ignored, forgotten, even betrayed. And there's a level
Speaker 9: of anger there that brought them to Donald Trump because
Speaker 9: he represented and offered to be their voice and to
Speaker 9: speak for them. And what has happened is that group
Speaker 9: has actually grown over time.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to unpack there, But I want to
Speaker 4: first say, I think it's pathetic that Frank Lunz, an
Speaker 4: elite polster, Kevin McCarthy's roommate, at least at one point,
Speaker 4: is the intermediary between Dana Bash and those voters. Right,
Speaker 4: So you are going to talk about American politics every
Speaker 4: single day and ask, with befuddlement to a Beltway polster,
Speaker 4: what explains something that if you went to a bar
Speaker 4: in Iowa you could find out with much more context
Speaker 4: and texture in five minutes than if you've sat in
Speaker 4: CNN's air conditioned studio and talked with your intermediary between
Speaker 4: the people in you, Frank Lunz, like a multi millionaire
Speaker 4: Beltway inside Polster, Dana Bash shouldn't have to ask Frank
Speaker 4: Lunz this question with confusion, and in fact, the idea,
Speaker 4: the notion that she's confused by it in and of
Speaker 4: itself is just I don't know. I want to use
Speaker 4: the word frustrating, but it's beyond frustrating. I mean, it's pathetic,
Speaker 4: it's sad, and it's a huge story of what's wrong
Speaker 4: in American media right now, because that same question was
Speaker 4: being asked repeatedly in twenty fifteen, not even just twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, after Donald Trump said what he said about
Speaker 4: John McCain, after Donald Trump said what he said Russia.
Speaker 4: If you're out there, let's see those emails. After Donald
Speaker 4: Trump said you know if I were president Hillary Clinton, you'd.
Speaker 3: Be in prison.
Speaker 4: He has all of these moments throughout twenty fifteen and
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. During his presidency, we were sort of breathlessly asked,
Speaker 4: who would still support him after the stormy Daniel stuff?
Speaker 4: Who are these these Christian voters who are electing a
Speaker 4: man who who seems to be of such poor character
Speaker 4: and doesn't truly care about Christians, as though they're all
Speaker 4: rubes that don't understand. Donald Trump is in no ways
Speaker 4: an evangelical Christian. He's the man who famously at Liberty
Speaker 4: University referred to quote two Corinthians instead of the Second Corinthians.
Speaker 4: He is not a man he says the Bible is
Speaker 4: his favorite book. I think that's a Trump quote once,
Speaker 4: but I'm not confident that he reads it all that often.
Speaker 4: And I don't think a lot of Christians have been
Speaker 4: Christian Conservatives, Evangelical conservatives, white evangelical white evangelicals have been
Speaker 4: persuaded otherwise. And again, the answer to this question is
Speaker 4: perfectly obvious, and it's one that Dana Bash should actually
Speaker 4: be asking Democratic polsters. Why do Republicans who are not
Speaker 4: as she refers to those fifth avenue. Republican voters, the
Speaker 4: people who stick with him time and time and again,
Speaker 4: why do they go with Donald Trump? Because their alternative
Speaker 4: for years has been Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: That's their alternative.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden won't even get out there and debate, despite
Speaker 4: the fact that a lot of his party wants him
Speaker 4: to at least debate. Maren Willimsen posted a poll yesterday
Speaker 4: showing Robert daf Kennedy at about thirteen percent of the
Speaker 4: vote and her around ten percent. So that's a quarter
Speaker 4: of the Democratic electorate. Joe Biden was around sixty three
Speaker 4: percent in that poll. It's about a quarter of the
Speaker 4: Democratic electorate right now openly supporting another candidate other than
Speaker 4: the sitting president of the United States.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is falling asleep in meetings.
Speaker 4: He's fumbling all kinds of things, mixing up all kinds
Speaker 4: of things in ways that I just continue to test
Speaker 4: the limits the possibilities of how incapacitated a president possibly
Speaker 4: can be. And yet that's why it's just is so
Speaker 4: abundantly obvious. The media doesn't ask those question of Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: and so then they end up looking like this, trying
Speaker 4: to figure out why people who are not necessarily MAGA
Speaker 4: rallygoers are voting for Donald Trump, and it's because the
Speaker 4: media has shielded the Democrats from criticism. It's because the
Speaker 4: media has in fact allowed Joe Biden to do things
Speaker 4: that take those swing Republican voters and put them in
Speaker 4: Trump's camp. They just have allowed that, facilitated it in
Speaker 4: so many different ways, shielded Democrats from reasonable criticism, to
Speaker 4: the point where, Yeah, a whole lot of people are
Speaker 4: pulling the lever for Donald Trump when their alternative is
Speaker 4: Joe Biden. It's just so so obvious. Plus it's equally obvious.
Speaker 4: I mean this is Sacer and Crystal talked about this
Speaker 4: a little bit yesterday, but I think it's worth repeating.
Speaker 4: The New York Times actually does They did a poll
Speaker 4: with Sienna that came out, as Crystal and Sager discussed,
Speaker 4: they were able to break with the Republican electorate into
Speaker 4: three groups the magabase, So that would be Danna Basher's
Speaker 4: Fifth Avenue Republicans. Donald Trump famously said I could shoot
Speaker 4: someone on Fifth Avenue and people still vote for me.
Speaker 4: Persuadable voters, and then voters who are not open to Trump.
Speaker 4: So of the Republican electorate. You have thirty seven percent magabase,
Speaker 4: thirty seven percent persuadable, and twenty five percent not open
Speaker 4: to Trump. So that thirty seven percent of persuadable voters
Speaker 4: is really who Dana bash is talking about. And if
Speaker 4: we look at that thirty seven percent of persuadable voters,
Speaker 4: they are they less of them earn one hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars a year or more, and less of them have
Speaker 4: a college degree than people who are not open to Trump.
Speaker 4: And that continues, as Frank Luntz highlighted rightfully in that segment,
Speaker 4: that continues to decline the more supportive you are of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. And the one that really stood out for
Speaker 4: me is this is their view on the issue of
Speaker 4: whether America is in danger of failing. Eighty percent of
Speaker 4: the Magabase says yes, America is in danger of failing.
Speaker 4: Sixty one percent of persuadable voters say America is in
Speaker 4: danger of failing, twenty five I'm sorry thirty seven percent
Speaker 4: of that trunk that are not open to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Only thirty seven percent of them say America is in
Speaker 4: danger of failing. And so, why then would people continue
Speaker 4: to support Donald Trump in the last six or so
Speaker 4: months after, as Dana Bash says, this information, You know,
Speaker 4: did they not watch Liz Cheney's Select Committee hearings.
Speaker 3: How could they possibly be coming to this conclusion? Is
Speaker 3: it because they're simply ignorant?
Speaker 4: Is because they're bad people, They're they're bigoted, they're racist,
Speaker 4: or they just simply don't believe anything. We journalists, the vanguard,
Speaker 4: the interpreters of truth and reality, are telling them. That
Speaker 4: has to be the only explanation. I Actually it's because
Speaker 4: life is not so great outside of the air conditioned
Speaker 4: CNN newsroom. That's pretty clear. Again, if she had just
Speaker 4: taken the time instead of asking Frank Lentz, maybe went
Speaker 4: into Trump Country or the suburbs where people are those
Speaker 4: parents in Dearborn, miss Evangelicals and Muslims are coming together
Speaker 4: and talking about books like Gender Queer being in libraries
Speaker 4: for really young people, and then seeing the teachers union
Speaker 4: that is allied very closely with the Biden administration, defended
Speaker 4: by the Biden administration defend books like that the alternative
Speaker 4: and this is a real problem.
Speaker 3: Like the fifth.
Speaker 4: Avenue quote has always been interesting because as pathetic as
Speaker 4: that is, that it's our state of affairs right now,
Speaker 4: the alternative, so many people don't see it as being better,
Speaker 4: and that is fundamentally I think a huge continues to
Speaker 4: be a huge blind spot for the media that knows
Speaker 4: a lot of powerful people in Democratic circles trusts, a
Speaker 4: lot of powerful people in Democratic circles actually trust a
Speaker 4: lot of people in never Trump Republican circles who are
Speaker 4: of their same income class level.
Speaker 3: And also just say, look.
Speaker 4: Around you, America is not in danger of failing when
Speaker 4: they don't live in communities that are ravaged by the
Speaker 4: opioid crisis and de industrialization. And you know, I'll add,
Speaker 4: though a lot of you may disagree the sexual revolution,
Speaker 4: when they don't see that every single day, you obviously
Speaker 4: are going to struggle to I think, really fully come
Speaker 4: to terms with that. And it's not just post January sixth.
Speaker 4: This has been happening since Donald Trump proved to be
Speaker 4: one of the most bizarre people who has ever run
Speaker 4: for office in the history of American politics, since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: Since twenty fifteen, and they still have not been able
Speaker 4: to sort of wrap their heads around this phenomenon.
Speaker 3: And I think part of that.
Speaker 4: Is because they're asking Frank Lunz, Ryan, what did you
Speaker 4: make of Dana Vash's befuddlement in this context? Maybe I'm
Speaker 4: being uncharitable. Maybe she was just asking a reasonable question.
Speaker 4: I think it's fine to ask that question, although my
Speaker 4: impression is that she's genuinely stumped and confused by the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's not your job to be charitable.
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Speaker 3: We appreciate it so much.
Speaker 4: We're so glad to have Ryan here with his giant
Speaker 4: head in the studio. It makes it seem Ryan almost
Speaker 4: like you're here in the States.
Speaker 1: Just loom looming over you from that that that wide
Speaker 1: shot incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love it, I love yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: See you next week. Have a great week. Everyone,