Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. S'm Ryan Graham. I'm
Speaker 3: here with Emily Dushinsky. Emily, how you doing great.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited about the new set. How about you?
Speaker 3: Ryan, It's looking great.
Speaker 4: Please don't please don't blame me for the Lenen book.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Emily insisted on bringing that in. We do
Speaker 3: have some incredible news for this new set, and that is,
Speaker 3: you know, former President Trump was arraigned in Miami yesterday
Speaker 3: on thirty seven counts of being a complete idiot. He
Speaker 3: is the first former president ever to be charged with
Speaker 3: this level of idiocy. We're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: that pretty soon. We're also going to talk about a
Speaker 3: lot of developments out of Ukraine, including news around the
Speaker 3: nord Stream pipeline that the Ukrainians were warned not to
Speaker 3: blow that thing up. Apparently they didn't get that memo.
Speaker 3: Thing got blown up, seems like it. Yeah, unfortunately, how
Speaker 3: that happens. We're also going to talk about new news
Speaker 3: on Wuhan and the lab leak. Fascinating report from Matt
Speaker 3: Taibi and Michael Schellenberger identifying three lab workers by name
Speaker 3: who were sickened in November twenty nineteen, which up ends
Speaker 3: the wet market case that's always been made because the
Speaker 3: wet market case points to early twenty twenty. So if
Speaker 3: you have cases coming out of the Wuhan lab, as
Speaker 3: we knew about already, but now they've identified them by name.
Speaker 3: So we're going to talk about that later. What else
Speaker 3: we got.
Speaker 5: We're going to try to get to the bottom of
Speaker 5: some news that Starbucks has in some ways tried to
Speaker 5: downplay their support for Pride Month. Ryan, you're going to
Speaker 5: talk about inflation. I'm going to talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Espionage Act. And we're so excited to have
Speaker 5: the one and only Glenn Greenwald here to talk about
Speaker 5: all kinds of stuff. Actually, we're going to be covering
Speaker 5: some stuff out of the Middle East with Glenn Yeah.
Speaker 3: But first there's a piece of news that I think
Speaker 3: the mainstream media is not paying enough attention to that
Speaker 3: developed yesterday on Katie Helper's show that could actually change
Speaker 3: the course of the upcoming election and change the course
Speaker 3: of history. Let's roll this interview Katie Helper did with Cornell.
Speaker 5: West and you, of course, when you announced you were
Speaker 5: with the movement for the People's Party the MPP, do
Speaker 5: you have an update about this?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 7: Yes, no, that that process is very much in movement
Speaker 7: and I look forward to it. You know, I'll always
Speaker 7: have gratitude for the tremendous work of the volunteers of
Speaker 7: the People's Party and so forth. But there was so
Speaker 7: much going on internally, and therefore we had to be
Speaker 7: able to keep the focus where it belongs. And so
Speaker 7: we're still I am still deeply committed to a broad
Speaker 7: coalitional sensibility and the United Front, and so I invite
Speaker 7: variety of different organizations and that includes the People's Party.
Speaker 7: But I'm certainly moving in the not just forward, but
Speaker 7: won't look forward to being a part of the nomination
Speaker 7: process of the Green Party.
Speaker 3: And so Corner West had initially launched his presidential campaign
Speaker 3: as a candidate of what's called the Movement for a
Speaker 3: People's Party, which wasn't much of a threat to the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party because the People's Party doesn't really have ballid access.
Speaker 3: There may be a couple of states where they have
Speaker 3: a path to ballot access, and so it would be
Speaker 3: more like Corner West could do interviews and make speeches,
Speaker 3: but if people wanted to vote for him, they basically
Speaker 3: have to write him in. The Greens, though, you know,
Speaker 3: have much more infrastructure, and so this means that if
Speaker 3: he can win the Green Party primary, which is likely
Speaker 3: but not guaranteed because the Greens are wild, then he
Speaker 3: will actually be on the ballot if he stays in
Speaker 3: through the general election. And you know how many votes
Speaker 3: were Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona to well, No, it's an
Speaker 3: important point.
Speaker 5: Infrastructure is the exact word that I was going to use.
Speaker 5: When you can plug into something that already exists, even
Speaker 5: if it's fairly minor compared to the two party system
Speaker 5: Republicans and Democrats have, that actually makes a difference. That
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton will insist that she lost because of Russia,
Speaker 5: because of Jill Stein and Susan Sarandon in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: But in all seriousness, there's.
Speaker 5: Math that shows, you know, not because so many people
Speaker 5: were stoked to maybe vote for Jill Stein, but because
Speaker 5: they really didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton, they
Speaker 5: did peel off and they did end up casting bots
Speaker 5: for Jill Stein.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you stay home.
Speaker 5: All kinds of stuff can happen when you have another
Speaker 5: candidate in the race, and when you have a really
Speaker 5: close race, as we've seen in the last couple of cycles,
Speaker 5: where to your point, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and those electoral
Speaker 5: votes can be decided by such a slim margin.
Speaker 4: This actually really matters, especially somebody with a name recognition.
Speaker 5: And I can't think of a Green Party candidate in
Speaker 5: recent memory who has the recognized ability of Cornell West.
Speaker 3: Right. There hasn't been really since Ralph Nader, I would say.
Speaker 3: And it's really a humiliating blow to the People's Party
Speaker 3: as well, which had a lot of potential when it
Speaker 3: first launched. And it's kind of a lesson to organizations
Speaker 3: not to get bogged down in internescing warfare and so
Speaker 3: much drama because Cornell West specified with all of the
Speaker 3: internal things going on at the People's Party, I thought
Speaker 3: it was a better idea for me to go with
Speaker 3: the Greens. If the Greens are seen to be kind
Speaker 3: of a well functioning organization compared to you, then you've
Speaker 3: got a lot of problems.
Speaker 5: Well, speaking of people with problems, let's transition to the
Speaker 5: big news out of Florida yesterday where former President Donald
Speaker 5: Trump was actually in a courtroom. He pleaded not guilty
Speaker 5: to all of those charges against him and the sensitive documents,
Speaker 5: the classified document case. Again, he is the first US president,
Speaker 5: either current or former, to be indicted with a criminal
Speaker 5: indictment on a federal level. This from the BBC, who
Speaker 5: had a reporter in the courtroom. Quote, he appeared somber
Speaker 5: and subdued in court, sitting in a dark suit and
Speaker 5: red tie with his arms across, which Ryan just mocked
Speaker 5: up so perfectly for everyone to see. This is the
Speaker 5: Trump lawyer says, quote, we most certainly enter a plea
Speaker 5: of not guilty. By the way, we should mention it
Speaker 5: is Donald Trump's seventy seventh birthday today. In honor of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's seventy seventh birthday, I think Ryan, we should
Speaker 5: roll probably the seventy seventh funniest clip of Trump ever,
Speaker 5: which is from a speech he gave yesterday after appearing
Speaker 5: in court, which CNN and MSNBC, by the way, refused
Speaker 5: to air because they said it would be just like
Speaker 5: a campaign ad.
Speaker 3: Well, people missed out because absolutely iconic moment, maybe even
Speaker 3: his epitaph. I like to picture him as entering his
Speaker 3: plea to the court with this right here, we can
Speaker 3: roll a five.
Speaker 1: I did everything right, and they indicted me right.
Speaker 5: And he loves these clips. How much I've already seen
Speaker 5: like ten times this morning.
Speaker 3: Maybe it can be my ring tone.
Speaker 4: Oh, you should have a video ring tone.
Speaker 3: Everything right, And you pointed out early it sounds like
Speaker 3: he's doing an impression of himself. It's like a Trump impersonator.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 5: And again there were videos, so that basically here's the
Speaker 5: timeline of events. Trump shows up in court, pleads not guilty.
Speaker 5: There's all kinds of you know, sort of the usual
Speaker 5: media circus outside of the courtroom.
Speaker 4: He then goes he's in the car.
Speaker 5: He starts posting to truth social things like quote one
Speaker 5: of the saddest days in the history of our country,
Speaker 5: we are a nation in decline. That seems to have
Speaker 5: been something he posted while he was in the motorcade
Speaker 5: leaving the courtroom going to Trump National Durel. He then
Speaker 5: shows up or maybe this was right after the courtroom,
Speaker 5: he goes to Versailles, so a Cuban spot in little Havana,
Speaker 5: starts meeting with Trump supporters. Basically, he prayed with them.
Speaker 5: They sing Happy Birthday to him. And this is another
Speaker 5: thing that corporate press cut away from because they said
Speaker 5: it looked like a campaign ad.
Speaker 4: They didn't want people to see it. There's enough of this.
Speaker 5: I think Jake Tapper in particular pulled away from it
Speaker 5: and said we've seen enough. And then he gives this
Speaker 5: speech later that evening, which the CNN and MSNBC also
Speaker 5: don't cover because again they say the usual sort of
Speaker 5: it's full of lies, which I'm sure it was Nicole Wallace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Nicole Wallace even asked them to take the vo
Speaker 3: which is like the kind of the b role playing
Speaker 3: in the background off because it was distracting from the
Speaker 3: brilliant words of the MSNBC commentators, like, come on.
Speaker 5: That's really rich coming from Nicole Wallace, who like lied
Speaker 5: from the podium during the Bush administration.
Speaker 4: Professionally, she did do that.
Speaker 5: I want to ask you about this one quote from
Speaker 5: Trump's lawyer, who said, outside quote, we are at a
Speaker 5: turning point in our nation's history. The targeting prosecution of
Speaker 5: a leading political opponent is the type of thing you
Speaker 5: see in dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela. What is being
Speaker 5: done to President Trump should terrify it. All said is
Speaker 5: of this country. I want to ask you about that
Speaker 5: in particular because I think that's a preview of a
Speaker 5: huge part of the messaging strategy throughout the campaign and
Speaker 5: in the primary as well, that Donald Trump is a
Speaker 5: target of something transformative in the country. Like if you
Speaker 5: are concerned, if you have that sort of hazy feeling
Speaker 5: that something's wrong in the United States, you need look
Speaker 5: no further than what's happening to Donald Trump. This is
Speaker 5: the sort of pinnacle of America's transformation from republic to
Speaker 5: banana republic, and especially in places like Florida. He goes
Speaker 5: to Versailles right afterwards, in little Havana and starts making
Speaker 5: this argument. I think that's really interesting. I think there's
Speaker 5: definitely something I'll talk about this in my monologue. With
Speaker 5: the fact that he's actually if he wins the primary,
Speaker 5: which he's the front runner right now, he's likely to
Speaker 5: face Joe Biden. It's Joe Biden who appointed this special
Speaker 5: council and Merrick Garland who ultimately has purview over.
Speaker 4: The special Council.
Speaker 5: I think that's an impactful, a consequence argument to take
Speaker 5: to the campaign. True.
Speaker 3: I think it's certainly the best argument that they have
Speaker 3: at this point. And I think that both things can
Speaker 3: be true. I think it is crossing some type of rubicon.
Speaker 3: And also Trump just walked right into it. I think
Speaker 3: it was Cernovich's response one of the right wing influencer
Speaker 3: who said that you know it is they are unfairly
Speaker 3: targeting Trump, but also Trump walked right into this. Trump
Speaker 3: fell into a trap, however you want to describe it.
Speaker 3: You read that indictment, you're just shaking your head all
Speaker 3: the way through, Like, how can a criminal be this
Speaker 3: stupid in the commission of his criminality A he had
Speaker 3: unilateral authority to declassify documents, yet caught a classified document charge.
Speaker 3: Like that's level of idiocy number one right there. Second,
Speaker 3: he was willing, at one point talking to his lawyers
Speaker 3: to destroy the documents to try to get out of
Speaker 3: the jam he was in, which means he would no
Speaker 3: longer have the documents, which means he's okay not having
Speaker 3: the documents, which means just give them back, man, and
Speaker 3: then you're out of this. Like, then you're out of trouble.
Speaker 3: Even if you moved boxes around and did shenanigans for months,
Speaker 3: if you eventually gave the documents back, there's no way
Speaker 3: the prosecutors could come and say, well, he held on
Speaker 3: to these documents for longer than we would have liked.
Speaker 3: Therefore we're going to launch the first prosecution of a
Speaker 3: former president. Like, no way, I think would they have
Speaker 3: gotten away with that. Only his actions in this case
Speaker 3: made it possible for them to do it. Now I'm
Speaker 3: excited for a bigger case to come like that. I
Speaker 3: don't I don't get excited about seeing a president get
Speaker 3: locked up for paperwork and classified document stuff. Rather, I
Speaker 3: would like to see him prosecuted for a coup attempt
Speaker 3: or something something bigger, like let's go to the part case. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's go to the heart of the system and like
Speaker 3: actually battle it out there. Otherwise I say leave it
Speaker 3: to the voters.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, obviously leave it to the voters. Is
Speaker 4: my position that as.
Speaker 5: Well, now we should say there is no trial date
Speaker 5: yet set. It is still supposed to be handled by
Speaker 5: Eileen Cannon. That's on her docket. She's a federal district
Speaker 5: judge in South Florida, actually was appointed by Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: So there may be interesting developments in that case. And
Speaker 5: let's put up a three. This is a thread from
Speaker 5: Jonathan Turley, who has actually really defended He's a professor
Speaker 5: at the GW George Washington University Law School. If you
Speaker 5: watch Fox, you'll see Jonathan Turley fairly frequently. He's sort
Speaker 5: of a defender of Donald Trump against the excesses of
Speaker 5: the what would you say, like the intelligence community, the DOJ,
Speaker 5: the FBI over the last several years. Really cojin, I
Speaker 5: think helpful arguments in many cases that you don't hear
Speaker 5: in corporate press, but that are actually like substantive and helpful.
Speaker 5: He says, though, that there's an ironic element to.
Speaker 4: The pylon in these cases.
Speaker 5: With the cases in New York, two cases in New York, Miami,
Speaker 5: and then one expected in Georgia, Trump dance card is
Speaker 5: filling up fast. While federal cases are often given priority,
Speaker 5: the multiple fronts could reduce the window for the federal trial.
Speaker 4: Why does that matter?
Speaker 5: Well, because we are six months out from actually being
Speaker 5: in a presidential year. The Republican primary has already started
Speaker 5: in earnest.
Speaker 4: What do you make of that point?
Speaker 3: Ryan great point he's got so many charges is they
Speaker 3: don't have time to try him. And the other point
Speaker 3: that I think people are missing is that, let's say,
Speaker 3: by some miracle, you get through this trial, you get
Speaker 3: two of the conviction phase, he's found guilty, which I
Speaker 3: think I think a jury of all Trump supporters would
Speaker 3: find him guilty in this case, because there is I
Speaker 3: feel like there's still a sanctity in the jury process
Speaker 3: and in the criminal justice system that people feel, even
Speaker 3: as they might hold contradictory opinions about the nature of
Speaker 3: the republic, etc. I do think even a Trump in
Speaker 3: panel jury, Trump supporting panel jury would be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you did this, Like you're guilty of at least some
Speaker 3: of these counts. But let's say that happens. There's then sentencing,
Speaker 3: so he's released awaiting sentencing, and there's the appeals and
Speaker 3: Eileen Cannon is going to allow him to go free
Speaker 3: obviously during the appeals process, and as so as long
Speaker 3: as that's playing out, I think this just becomes a
Speaker 3: news event rather than something that puts him like behind
Speaker 3: bars even with a conviction until the election. Like, I
Speaker 3: don't see any way that this gets done before the election.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll say, you could you know, say this
Speaker 3: clip and play it if he's getting hauled off in
Speaker 3: handcuffs before the election.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well yeah, it doesn't seem like any of this
Speaker 8: is likely to be resolved before the election at all,
Speaker 8: which again to the other point about the potency of
Speaker 8: the campaign argument about being the target of the sort
Speaker 8: of transition to banana republic America, which you know, if you.
Speaker 5: Think that we've become a banana republic, you may think
Speaker 5: that that started a long time before the Trump indictments.
Speaker 5: But if you don't think we've become a banana republic,
Speaker 5: that's another question. I'm going to get into a lot
Speaker 5: of this and our block later in the show, so don't.
Speaker 4: Want to get too far.
Speaker 3: We do have a little more complaining from Trump. I think, yes,
Speaker 3: rolled this was it a two. I think this is
Speaker 3: some more gripes from former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 9: Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous' abusive power
Speaker 9: in the history of our country.
Speaker 6: Very sad thing to watch a.
Speaker 9: Corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on
Speaker 9: fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other
Speaker 9: presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a
Speaker 9: presidential election in which he is losing very badly. This
Speaker 9: is called election interference and yet another attempt to rig
Speaker 9: and steal a presidential election. More importantly, it's a political persecution,
Speaker 9: like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation.
Speaker 9: This day we'll go down in infamy, and Joe Biden
Speaker 9: will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt
Speaker 9: president to the history of our country, but perhaps even
Speaker 9: more importantly, the president who, together with the band of
Speaker 9: his closest thugs, misfits and Marxist, tried to destroy American democracy.
Speaker 3: Marxist never sounds like natural coming out of It's always
Speaker 3: off a teleprompter.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: Trump thinks a lot about Marxism. On that note, let's
Speaker 5: roll a four. This is Mark Arubio making a connection
Speaker 5: sort of back to again.
Speaker 4: This clear messaging that's I.
Speaker 5: Think probably potent with a certain swath of the electorate,
Speaker 5: connecting the dots between all kinds of crazy things that
Speaker 5: people might see happening in their world and the indictment itself.
Speaker 10: You think this sends here. The next Republican president is
Speaker 10: going to be under tremendous pressure to bring charges and
Speaker 10: indict Joe Biden, his family, his crackhead son, whoever. The
Speaker 10: pressure is going to be extraordinary. They're going to turn
Speaker 10: us into So we're decadent and we're in decline.
Speaker 3: Because we are.
Speaker 10: We thought we could do anything we wanted with our economy.
Speaker 10: We could center jobs and factories overseas, break our politics,
Speaker 10: break our culture, break our society. We don't need parents,
Speaker 10: we don't neighborhood, we don't need family anymore. All these
Speaker 10: crazy ideas, and now reality is catching up.
Speaker 3: No doubt, we're in some type of vicious cycle. We'll
Speaker 3: see where it heads. We'll keep covering that. Moving on
Speaker 3: to Ukraine, extraordinarily reporting from the Wall Street Journal, if
Speaker 3: we can put this first up, which finds that, according
Speaker 3: to the US intelligence sources, the US warned Ukraine please
Speaker 3: do not attack the nord Stream pipeline. This follows previous
Speaker 3: reporting that came from the Washington Post that said that
Speaker 3: a unidentified European intelligence service had told the United States, Hey,
Speaker 3: look out, the Ukrainians are planning in June to rent
Speaker 3: a boat. Half a dozen of them are going to
Speaker 3: go blow up blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in
Speaker 3: connection with this kind of NATO exercise that's going on.
Speaker 3: We now know that that was the Netherlands, according to
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal, So Dutch intelligence told the US intelligence.
Speaker 3: US intelligence then relate it to Germany. Now we know,
Speaker 3: according to these sources, that the US also reached out
Speaker 3: to Ukraine and said do not do this. And there's
Speaker 3: a fascinating line in the Wall Street Journal piece that
Speaker 3: says the United States asked its Ukrainian counterparts whether it
Speaker 3: was true that they were planning to blow up the
Speaker 3: North Stream pipeline, and the Wall Street Journal says it
Speaker 3: is not known what the response from the Ukrainians was.
Speaker 3: Did the Ukrainians feel like they had a green light
Speaker 3: at that point despite whatever warnings were being given by
Speaker 3: the United States. The reporting is that they told them
Speaker 3: not to do it, they did it anyway. So are
Speaker 3: they a rogue client or was there some backchanneling that
Speaker 3: maybe this is something that the United States is comfortable with.
Speaker 4: I think this is an absolutely huge report for so many.
Speaker 5: Reasons, because particularly what you just flagged, which is This
Speaker 5: is a quote from the Wall Street Journal report quote,
Speaker 5: it couldn't be determined how the Ukrainians responded. What do
Speaker 5: you mean It couldn't be determined how the Ukrainians responded because.
Speaker 4: Clearly this is a leak from the CIA to the Wall.
Speaker 3: Street In other words, the CIA won't tell them.
Speaker 5: Exactly, but the CIA will tell them that they knew
Speaker 5: in advance of the plan, Which gets to when we
Speaker 5: were talking about the Washington Post story not too long ago.
Speaker 5: It really felt like American intel agencies trying to wash
Speaker 5: their hands of this and say we know who it is.
Speaker 5: But in the process of saying we know who it
Speaker 5: was and it wasn't us, they're revealing that they may
Speaker 5: have been able to stop it. And I think this
Speaker 5: is connected with more big news. This is also from
Speaker 5: the Wall Street Journal. We could go ahead and put
Speaker 5: b two up on the screen. Think about these two
Speaker 5: stories at the same time. Here's the headline, US set
Speaker 5: to have proved depleted uranium tank rounds for Ukraine.
Speaker 4: This is from the Journal.
Speaker 5: The Biden administration is expected to provide Ukraine with depleted
Speaker 5: uranium rounds following weeks of internal debate about how to
Speaker 5: equip the Abrams tanks the US is giving a Kiev,
Speaker 5: US officials said Monday.
Speaker 4: The proposal has been debated at the.
Speaker 5: White House, where some officials have expressed concern that sending
Speaker 5: the rounds might open Washington to criticism that it was
Speaker 5: providing a weapon that may carry health and environmental risks. Okay,
Speaker 5: so more stuff headed over to Ukraine. And at the
Speaker 5: same time, we don't even know what was going on
Speaker 5: with the CIA and with Ukraine. Clearly we were not
Speaker 5: involved in their plans when it came to blowing up
Speaker 5: the Nord Stream pipeline.
Speaker 4: We may have had knowledge and didn't.
Speaker 5: Stop it or per the Wall Street Journal's report, it
Speaker 5: said the CIA actually determined they couldn't take it. Seriously,
Speaker 5: they didn't think Ukraine had the capacity. It's an exact
Speaker 5: quote from here. They didn't think Ukraine had the capacity
Speaker 5: to carry out such an attack. So we can be
Speaker 5: that ignorant of actually the country, the military operations of
Speaker 5: the country that we are sending so much equipment to,
Speaker 5: and these two headlines can appear basically side by side
Speaker 5: in a matter of days together.
Speaker 4: It's remarkable.
Speaker 3: But I think providing depleted uranium to a war effort
Speaker 3: in this part of the world would only matter if
Speaker 3: there's some type of significant agricultural production going on over there.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with whether or not in Ukraine and
Speaker 3: this area do they grow much wheat or anything over there?
Speaker 3: Do they supply much to the global population, Because if not,
Speaker 3: I don't think the globe has much to worry about it.
Speaker 3: But if they do, then maybe you know, dropping depleted
Speaker 3: uranium rounds in the bread basket of the world is
Speaker 3: not the most thought out plan.
Speaker 4: You'd think you'd think.
Speaker 5: And yet this is in the context of the Spring offensive,
Speaker 5: which became a summer offensive. We're hearing spring offensive for
Speaker 5: so long turns into a summer offensive, and so the
Speaker 5: argument from Ukraine, this is also in the general report,
Speaker 5: is that.
Speaker 4: If you don't supply us with.
Speaker 5: This heavy equipment now, then Russia is able to hold
Speaker 5: their own during the offensive. Offensive doesn't go as planned
Speaker 5: and you start losing support in Congress. Support from Congress
Speaker 5: starts to wane because it's not the momentum has shifted.
Speaker 5: People are getting exhausted of the war. So you give
Speaker 5: us what we need now. But of course this has
Speaker 5: been the argument at every point in the war. We
Speaker 5: need to go full im pedal to the metal every
Speaker 5: step of the way, because if we don't, we're going
Speaker 5: to have to keep going pedal to the medal everyoy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it has its cycle, right, it has its
Speaker 3: own momentum, in its own logic. If you're going to
Speaker 3: supply the tanks under pressure, you finally agree, okay, we're
Speaker 3: doing these tanks. Then if you only supply the kind
Speaker 3: of generic rounds, then they start to get wiped out
Speaker 3: by Russian forces. And so then you come back and say, well,
Speaker 3: if you're supplying the tanks, then you've got to give
Speaker 3: us the depleted uranium rounds because the tanks aren't as
Speaker 3: effective if you don't give us those depleted your BRAINIU rounds.
Speaker 3: You do that, you're like, oh, well, we need air
Speaker 3: support for these because now we've got these multimillion dollar tanks, yes,
Speaker 3: that are just getting you know, lit up all over
Speaker 3: the place. We don't want that. And now we need
Speaker 3: longer surface to air missiles because you know, now we
Speaker 3: need to protect our airsport. Now we need more land
Speaker 3: to land missiles because we need to reach further behind
Speaker 3: because you know, we got to defend against the artiller.
Speaker 3: They are taking our tanks and next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, we've spent another couple hundred billion dollars moving
Speaker 3: weapons over there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, And let's put B three up on the screen,
Speaker 5: because this is also important context. You have in Germany
Speaker 5: right now, the biggest NATO drill, the biggest NATO military
Speaker 5: exercise I'm reading from DW quote since the military Alliance
Speaker 5: was formed in nineteen forty nine, and Germany is serving
Speaker 5: as the host in the logistical hub.
Speaker 4: So this is happening right now from.
Speaker 5: June twelfth to June twenty third, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: aircraft up to two hundred and fifty will be stationed
Speaker 5: across six military bases, with twenty five countries taking part.
Speaker 5: The US alone is sending one hundred aircraft across the
Speaker 5: Atlantic over to this drill. And now here is a
Speaker 5: quote from a someone at the German Institute for International
Speaker 5: and Security Affairs, Torben Arnold. He says, quote, of course,
Speaker 5: this sense a clear signal saying that even though this
Speaker 5: airspace is extremely busy, they are prepared to say we
Speaker 5: will defend every centimeter of NATO territory, every centimeter of
Speaker 5: NATO territory. We've got Sweden about to join NATO probably
Speaker 5: in a month or so, and all of this like
Speaker 5: really really really fine line that is being towed, every
Speaker 5: fine line that's being towed, with the equipment that keeps
Speaker 5: getting sent over, the intelligence reports that keep coming out,
Speaker 5: is happening in the context of this really fragile ecosystem,
Speaker 5: NATO ecosystem, and really fragile balance with two nuclear powers
Speaker 5: essentially engaged in a proxy war.
Speaker 3: However, there was a massive blow dealt to Russia yesterday
Speaker 3: with when Emily's favorite author, Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of
Speaker 3: the viral sensation best selling author Eat Prey Love.
Speaker 4: Before virality was really a thing yux.
Speaker 3: She sold more than twelve million copies of this book,
Speaker 3: Eat Prey Love, and she's got a new one out
Speaker 3: that is set in Siberia the nineteen nineties, and amid
Speaker 3: pushback from Ukrainians that worried that the novel would somehow
Speaker 3: kind of glamorize or humanize Russia, she has pulled it back, apologized.
Speaker 3: I don't know if she's going to reset it somewhere
Speaker 3: else or just hold back until she feels like the
Speaker 3: temperature has cooled down and you can write a book
Speaker 3: about Russia obviously raises all sorts of questions. Are we
Speaker 3: allowed to read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. But this feels like
Speaker 3: the kind of thing you're going to get before a
Speaker 3: fever breaks. Like this feels like fever activity, like total delirium.
Speaker 4: You're saying this isn't rational, insane?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Elizabeth Gilbert can set her next story
Speaker 3: in Siberian Russia in nineteen nineties and it's not actually
Speaker 3: going to help the Russian war effort. That's my take.
Speaker 5: Well, actually, when I was reading this story, which is absurd,
Speaker 5: by the way, I think the message of Eat, Pray
Speaker 5: Love is largely terrible. The book is very readable. The
Speaker 5: film is very watchable as well. Julie Roberts does a
Speaker 5: great jobs. But this is an interesting little thing. From
Speaker 5: the report, Gilbert announced she was pausing the project due
Speaker 5: to from Politico, a massive outpouring of reactions from Ukrainian
Speaker 5: readers who worried the book would romanticize Russia at a
Speaker 5: time when the country's accused of committing war crimes. Over
Speaker 5: the weekend, more than five hundred people dished out one
Speaker 5: star reviews on the Goodreads platform, while others reacted with
Speaker 5: frustration to the initial book announcement on Twitter.
Speaker 4: So there you have it.
Speaker 5: As soon as it starts hurting the bottom line because
Speaker 5: people flood Goodreads with one star reviews, she yanks the
Speaker 5: book and puts out the statement about how it's potentially
Speaker 5: harmful to Ukraine during this war, and maybe Elizabeth Gilbert
Speaker 5: has enough money, and it is just really genuinely sensitive
Speaker 5: to the criticism.
Speaker 4: Either way, when.
Speaker 5: You have a book coming out that's going to be
Speaker 5: flooded with one star review saying you're a Putin stooge,
Speaker 5: it makes sense that she's like, hey, I don't think
Speaker 5: it makes sense. I shouldn't say it makes sense, but
Speaker 5: you can see the logic behind the publisher and Elizabeth
Speaker 5: Gilbert putting their heads together and saying we need to
Speaker 5: rethink this whole thing.
Speaker 3: I feel like, though, for a book like that, no
Speaker 3: press is bad press, and I think she still would
Speaker 3: have sold a ton of copies and maybe even sold
Speaker 3: more copies because of the controversy, because now I didn't
Speaker 3: know Elizabeth Gilbert had a new novel coming out about
Speaker 3: Russia or about set in Russia. Now I know now
Speaker 3: maybe it's on my list when it eventually does come out.
Speaker 3: But so this I feel like this is more cultural
Speaker 3: pressure than it is commercial pressure, because I don't think
Speaker 3: she would have I don't think this would have hurt
Speaker 3: her commercially. I think she still gets booked on Fresh Air,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a really good point.
Speaker 5: I think it's the cultural pressure that creates the commercial
Speaker 5: pressure in the sense that Elizabeth Gilbert, there's this it's
Speaker 5: a very real thing with cancel culture, where people know
Speaker 5: that like no press is bad press, and something will
Speaker 5: suddenly get a ton of attention, like look at Joe
Speaker 5: Rogan thriving.
Speaker 4: No matter how much.
Speaker 5: The corporate press tries to say that he's a bigot
Speaker 5: and a conspiracy theorist and a crazy.
Speaker 4: Person, doesn't matter. He does just fine.
Speaker 5: But if you run in Manhattan literary circles, then the
Speaker 5: cancel culture is very real because the people who are
Speaker 5: responsive to it are going to be the ones that
Speaker 5: make it uncomfortable for you in those spaces, and maybe
Speaker 5: on Fresh Air, maybe the politics and pros tour that
Speaker 5: you wanted to go on. That's where it becomes problematic.
Speaker 5: And to somebody like Elizabeth Gilbert, who already has enough money,
Speaker 5: what hurts at this point is sort of taking away
Speaker 5: this taking some stuff out of the virtue signal deposit bank.
Speaker 5: That's like the worst thing that can happen to you,
Speaker 5: not withdrawing from the actual bank.
Speaker 4: Account love on this show.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I actually have a copy.
Speaker 5: Well, we have a big news, a big report to
Speaker 5: go through. That was news broken just yesterday by Matt
Speaker 5: Tayubi and Michael Shallenberger over on their substacks at Public
Speaker 5: and Racket, both great publications. This is a huge development,
Speaker 5: I think, and we're going to learn more about it.
Speaker 5: Seems like as lowly as the week goes on. Ryan,
Speaker 5: I'm super curious to get your reaction to the news
Speaker 5: they broke.
Speaker 4: Here's the crux of it.
Speaker 5: According to multiple US government officials interviewed as part of
Speaker 5: a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people
Speaker 5: infected by the virus by COVID nineteen patients zero included
Speaker 5: Ben Who, a researcher who led the Wuhan Institute of
Speaker 5: Virologies gain a function research on stars like coronaviruses, which
Speaker 5: increases the infectiousness of the viruses. Sources within the US
Speaker 5: government say that three of the earliest people to become
Speaker 5: infected with stars COVID two were Ben who You Ping,
Speaker 5: and Yan Shu, all members of the Wuhan lab expected
Speaker 5: to have leaked the pandemic virus. They were working with
Speaker 5: the closest relatives as SARS COVID two and inserting gain
Speaker 5: a function.
Speaker 4: Features unique time.
Speaker 5: Who you followed the story really closely, the intercepts and
Speaker 5: some of the best reporting on the potential for the
Speaker 5: lab league. What do you make of the scoop here
Speaker 5: from Shallenberger and Teybi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was nice of them to credit us with
Speaker 3: some of that reporting in their piece. And I want
Speaker 3: to shade my comments here for people who don't regularly
Speaker 3: watch the show, because I think people who normally do
Speaker 3: probably have a lot of this context and probably already
Speaker 3: trust both Matt Tayibi and or Michael Schallenberger. There's an
Speaker 3: enormous number of people who don't. And I've had my
Speaker 3: debates with Shallenberger, and I'm you know, and I think
Speaker 3: he's an interesting person to engage with, but I'm not
Speaker 3: going to take what he says as like gospel. So
Speaker 3: let's start from that perspective, but go through what he found.
Speaker 3: So they have government sources that are saying that the
Speaker 3: three people that were infected in November twenty nineteen were
Speaker 3: Ben who you ping, and Yan Jew And like you said,
Speaker 3: Ben Who is it kind of the top protege of
Speaker 3: a woman who ran the WIV And if it can
Speaker 3: be confirmed that Ben Who was the first or among
Speaker 3: the first people infected, that is a game changer.
Speaker 4: Smoking gun.
Speaker 3: Now, there's a lot of reason now, and this is
Speaker 3: back to the people who might have some skepticisms, There's
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons to believe that this is true.
Speaker 3: One is that in May of twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal reported that according to US intelligence sources,
Speaker 3: three Wuhan lab workers were sick and in November twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: So we have known at least that the intelligence community
Speaker 3: believed that to be a fact since May twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: If you look at the timeline, and if you look
Speaker 3: at the source of the Wall Street Journal Murdoch Paper,
Speaker 3: it seems possible that those are Trump administration officials who
Speaker 3: had access to that information. And even though they were
Speaker 3: out of office by January twenty twenty one, May is
Speaker 3: close enough that they may have been the sources of
Speaker 3: this information, and so the left then Democrats are going
Speaker 3: to have some skepticism about that. But we know, but
Speaker 3: we do know that there were intelligence reports at the
Speaker 3: time that said three workers. Now were those workers that
Speaker 3: picked it up at say, the wet market and then
Speaker 3: came to work and just you know, the you know,
Speaker 3: COVID was everywhere in Wuhan, not just at the wet market,
Speaker 3: and so there were still those questions outstanding. If if
Speaker 3: it turns out now the wet market was January and February, December,
Speaker 3: January February that there was this outbreak there, so November
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense. You can't go back in time. However,
Speaker 3: let's say that was already spreading in November. It depends
Speaker 3: who those workers are. If it's confirmed that it was
Speaker 3: these three workers who were working directly on the stars
Speaker 3: COVID like touch stars, like Chmeric viruses, that that's a
Speaker 3: huge development and really backs up all of that, all
Speaker 3: of that previous reporting. The other key point, I think,
Speaker 3: and I and good on Shellenburger for including this. He
Speaker 3: wrote that he and TeV wrote that other news outlets
Speaker 3: have been circling this. Yes, and we often as reporters.
Speaker 3: You know, it's called hearing footsteps. In the business, we
Speaker 3: hear footsteps, and sometimes you move your pieces a little
Speaker 3: bit further because you hear those footsteps. Usually it's reporters
Speaker 3: don't include that. But I like the transparency of that
Speaker 3: because now we're going to find out, Okay, is that true?
Speaker 3: And can these other outlets. The Times of London, by
Speaker 3: the way, has done some really interesting reporting on this.
Speaker 3: Can those other outlets land this same scoop? Because there
Speaker 3: there is going to be soon testimony that the administration
Speaker 3: is giving the Congress, and there are other and there
Speaker 3: are other reports that are supposed to be coming and
Speaker 3: Shellenberger and TV are shining a spotlight on those. So
Speaker 3: are they going to come out? So I think if
Speaker 3: you're somebody who's super skeptical of both Tybi and Schellenberger,
Speaker 3: you can just wait a couple of days, a couple
Speaker 3: days because they because they have kind of lay it
Speaker 3: put out on the line like this, believe that this
Speaker 3: is that this isn't the last you'll hear about this.
Speaker 5: Yes, So they have a source, they say, who was
Speaker 5: asked how certain they were that these were the identities
Speaker 5: of the three Wuhan Institute Virology scientists who developed symptoms
Speaker 5: consisted with COVID nineteen in the fall of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: When they asked, we were told, quote one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: Another thing to note from the report from Matt Mike
Speaker 5: and then Alex S. Guten Tag with third reporter on
Speaker 5: the byline is next week the DNI is expected to
Speaker 5: release previously classified material, which may include the names of
Speaker 5: the three scientists who are the likely among the first
Speaker 5: to be sickened by Sary's code two. So keep that
Speaker 5: in mind that they expect, based on their reporting, the
Speaker 5: Director of National Intelligence next week to release a report
Speaker 5: that actually names the three scientists involved. They also have
Speaker 5: a source saying there are one hundred percent certain those
Speaker 5: are the three scientists, and the Times of London quotes
Speaker 5: an anonymous US State Department investigator.
Speaker 4: This was on Saturday.
Speaker 5: Quote it has been increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute
Speaker 5: of Rology was involved in the c creation, promulgation and
Speaker 5: cover up of the COVID nineteen pandemic. One thing I
Speaker 5: like about their report is they're onto a similar line
Speaker 5: that we've talked about a little bit, which is, why
Speaker 5: do you have Anthony Fauci continuing to sort of try
Speaker 5: with Francis Kahns to steer the media's and the public's
Speaker 5: attention away from the Eco Health Alliance. Grant, why do
Speaker 5: you have them trying to just credit the lab leak
Speaker 5: theory when, for instance, the United States government really does
Speaker 5: see China as a hostile foreign adversary, especially the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: There's no like that. It wasn't as though he.
Speaker 5: Was like really soft and easy on China and never
Speaker 5: really missed a rhetorical opportunity to bluster for the most part.
Speaker 4: So why would they step away from that?
Speaker 5: Well, because if we can establish these connections to the
Speaker 5: Wuhan Institute of Orology.
Speaker 4: Which look very very clear.
Speaker 5: At this point, they quote an expert saying the ben
Speaker 5: Hu thing is a real smoking gun.
Speaker 4: I completely agree with that.
Speaker 5: And if you establish that connection, then man, it's bad
Speaker 5: for the United States government because it looks like we
Speaker 5: may have had a role.
Speaker 4: We may have had a.
Speaker 5: Role in funding it, in funding research that was being
Speaker 5: done sloppily without proper oversight. They show a video actually
Speaker 5: from the whun Institute of Arology, and I think ben
Speaker 5: who actually in the public and racket report from Chinese
Speaker 5: state media before the pandemic, where nobody is wearing proper
Speaker 5: protective gear.
Speaker 3: You can watch the video at that public post, and
Speaker 3: they're just messing around with vials, like without even gog,
Speaker 3: like without even like the poor protection like goggles and
Speaker 3: like a thin mask, like not even that.
Speaker 5: And so if you can imagine being, for instance, Mike Pompeo,
Speaker 5: Secretary of State, Donald Trump, President Trump administration in general,
Speaker 5: sort of being opposed to the permanent bureaucratic state at
Speaker 5: places like the NIH and the people like Anthony Fauci
Speaker 5: over the course of your presidency and getting intelligence reports
Speaker 5: like we know at this point, you know, the CIA,
Speaker 5: Mike Pompeo State Department, they seem to have known since
Speaker 5: the very beginning. In Pompeo would say this, it has
Speaker 5: always been clear through the intelligence that the lab leak
Speaker 5: was plausible, if not likely. And imagine you're getting those
Speaker 5: briefings you're Trump and you're Pompeo or whomever else, and
Speaker 5: you're the one that's overseeing Fauci, and you realize that
Speaker 5: he may be invested in some sort of cover up
Speaker 5: just to cover his own butt because there was our money,
Speaker 5: taxpayer money, was being sent over there without any oversight
Speaker 5: at all basically and could have been involved in a
Speaker 5: leak from the lab because there was no oversight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and ideologically too was Fauci's a huge champion of
Speaker 3: gain A function research and pushed back against the pause.
Speaker 3: Last point, the public racket article includes comments from Alina Chan,
Speaker 3: who we've had on this, who we've had on our show,
Speaker 3: is one of the first and most prominent kind of
Speaker 3: skeptics of the natural origin theory, wrote a book on it,
Speaker 3: and so I think for people who are curious about this,
Speaker 3: I think her kind of validation of this, of this story,
Speaker 3: I think is important. Absolutely, we got some Reddit news.
Speaker 4: We do have some Reddit news.
Speaker 3: So over a reddit you may have noticed, if you're
Speaker 3: headed over there, that a bunch of the subreddits have
Speaker 3: gone dark. So let's first of all the basics as
Speaker 3: I understand it. You tell me what you understand about
Speaker 3: this Reddit for many years did not have an app.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a phone app, and so people developed
Speaker 3: apps for it because it's which is a very reddit
Speaker 3: type of thing to do. It's a community driven bottom up.
Speaker 3: They call it the front page of the Internet, but
Speaker 3: it's it's to me other than Wikipedia, it's the most
Speaker 3: successful kind of broadly moderated community, kind of radical anarchist
Speaker 3: expression of a utopian vision of the Internet. And so
Speaker 3: you had a bunch of different companies that then that
Speaker 3: made apps that people have been used, and they relied
Speaker 3: on access to reddits API to build that app. Now
Speaker 3: Reddit is charging. They say they're going to start charging
Speaker 3: these companies for this API in ways that the companies say,
Speaker 3: we'll put them out of business, but in ways that
Speaker 3: Reddit says are just necessary to cover their own costs
Speaker 3: of hosting and that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: And so subreddits, about thirty five hundred subredits in total,
Speaker 5: are going dark. They're protesting this by making their communities
Speaker 5: private because of the charges. So those third party app
Speaker 5: developers that Reddit has said are just absolutely necessary. The
Speaker 5: mods over on those subreddits have said they're making the communities.
Speaker 4: Private for forty eight hours, so.
Speaker 5: That means about thirty five hundred those subreddits are going
Speaker 5: to be inaccessible. And those are five of the ten
Speaker 5: most popular communities on the site period. So that's our gaming,
Speaker 5: our music are today, I learned, and our picks each
Speaker 5: have memberships of more than thirty million people. Thirty million people.
Speaker 5: I'm not a big redditor at all. I rarely use Reddit.
Speaker 5: But last night I was making tacos and I was
Speaker 5: looking at soccer Tuesday.
Speaker 4: It was Taco Tustay. Yeah, I was making tacos for
Speaker 4: Taco Tuesday and I was.
Speaker 5: Looking for recipes and I only this is actually what happened.
Speaker 5: I only had mozzarella cheese, and I turned, as one does,
Speaker 5: to Reddit for exit some ideas about how to make
Speaker 5: mozzarella cheese work really well in tacos, and please don't
Speaker 5: flame me in the comments. I'm so sorry, but it's
Speaker 5: all I had. And I went over to Reddit and
Speaker 5: two reddits that I clicked on that were offered helpful
Speaker 5: information were dark, And you know what, it was awesome
Speaker 5: because I just had this sense of like, this is
Speaker 5: the cool thing about Reddit. It's a cool thing like
Speaker 5: you said about Wikipedia, that there's still this grassroots element
Speaker 5: to it, and you really can stick it to the man.
Speaker 5: If you're a Reddit mod and you're just like you're
Speaker 5: a mod on a subreddit, a really popular subreddit, that's
Speaker 5: absolutely fantastic. That's a very cool expression of power and
Speaker 5: the the it seems by the way they'd party party apps,
Speaker 5: Apollo Reddit is fun Sink and red Planet. Their reddit
Speaker 5: is saying that it's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 4: They say it's multimillion.
Speaker 5: They spend multimillions of dollars on hosting fees, and they
Speaker 5: need to be fairly paid if they're going to keep
Speaker 5: supporting these apps. Quote, our pricing is based on usage
Speaker 5: levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they have.
Speaker 5: There's some like mathematical legitimacy to that, but I think
Speaker 5: what's so cool about seeing the subreddits and the mods
Speaker 5: go dark is that they're showing Reddit actually with the
Speaker 5: real market value of those apps is because their consumers
Speaker 5: demand them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that you got you got stopped from
Speaker 3: crossing the Reddit picket line, and your great in your
Speaker 3: effort to find mozzrell cheese tips. It's funny what you
Speaker 3: end up doing.
Speaker 5: I just use the Mozrel cheese with no fancy tips
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 4: I just on a cast.
Speaker 3: It was fine.
Speaker 4: It was totally fine.
Speaker 3: But how bad can it be?
Speaker 5: No, it was fine, But again, like I didn't even
Speaker 5: realize this was happening, because this was before I started
Speaker 5: the show. Prep really in earnest, and so wasn't I
Speaker 5: wasn't trying to cross the pigling, but that said, I
Speaker 5: do like it.
Speaker 4: Just when that happened, I.
Speaker 5: Was like, this is actually really cool, because this does
Speaker 5: matter to Reddit if people are getting bocked out by
Speaker 5: the mods that their platform empowers. Like, what is central
Speaker 5: to Reddit's business model right now is that they have
Speaker 5: people who volunteer as mods and keep these platforms in
Speaker 5: good shape by Reddit standards. They're relying on free voluntary labor,
Speaker 5: and that free voluntary labor saying no.
Speaker 3: Interesting thing to think about is did you follow the
Speaker 3: report recently a couple of weeks or maybe months ago
Speaker 3: at this point, about Alexis o'hannian stepping down from the
Speaker 3: board of Reddit, And so for people who didn't follow this,
Speaker 3: Alexis is a co founder of Reddit, kind of founder
Speaker 3: also Trivia, married to Serena william that's his real claim
Speaker 3: to fame, and he when he announced he was stepping
Speaker 3: down from his role in the company, he said he
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to look his children in the
Speaker 3: eye and said he did everything to advance the cause
Speaker 3: of equity, and so he didn't want to be the
Speaker 3: white guy who was, you know, sitting in the seat
Speaker 3: that ought to be held by a black woman or
Speaker 3: black man, and so he said, I'm going to leave
Speaker 3: the board as long as my replacement is. I think
Speaker 3: it was a black woman, maybe a black person of
Speaker 3: either gender or I can't quite remember. But it raises
Speaker 3: a question of did he see this train wreck coming?
Speaker 3: Like did he? And and kind of did that contribute
Speaker 3: to his interest in being like, you know what, this
Speaker 3: is going to be a mess. Let me let me
Speaker 3: step aside here. Whether or not he did or didn't there,
Speaker 3: it does point to this phenomenon that and there's a
Speaker 3: name for it. People in the comments might know for it,
Speaker 3: but it was coined around the time that black men
Speaker 3: mostly I think it's all black men started winning the
Speaker 3: oral elections in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, just
Speaker 3: as de industrialization was kind of ripping the guts out
Speaker 3: of the cities. And another example of the phenomenon is
Speaker 3: that just as medical doctor salaries kind of plateau and
Speaker 3: then start to decline slightly, that's when medical schools start
Speaker 3: letting in lots of women. So it's as soon as
Speaker 3: things start to take a turn and become more difficult,
Speaker 3: that's when white men are like all right, you know what,
Speaker 3: let's let everybody in here. So it may be a
Speaker 3: total coincidence, but it seems like another example of that
Speaker 3: phenomenon at work that is.
Speaker 5: Really interesting, and read it as an example of sort
Speaker 5: of disruption post twenty sixteen, I would say disruption the
Speaker 5: tech community in general when you had platforms like Reddit,
Speaker 5: like Facebook, like Twitter. Twitter is another really good example
Speaker 5: of this being run very differently because there was a
Speaker 5: different set of pressures, or actually there was a lack
Speaker 5: of pressures relative to what there is now on those
Speaker 5: platforms has caused I think, whether these things are directly
Speaker 5: connected to that or not. The heightened business pressures because
Speaker 5: you have way more government oversight post twenty sixteen for
Speaker 5: various reasons, some of which.
Speaker 4: Are good and some of which are bad.
Speaker 5: I think that's really caused a lot of tension and
Speaker 5: strain inside.
Speaker 3: And I saw a post on Twitter that tried to
Speaker 3: explain this phenomenon as this is like nine to eleven
Speaker 3: for the worst person that you know, which okay points
Speaker 3: for being funny, but I don't think that's quite fair
Speaker 3: to Reddit. And I really am rooting for Reddit and
Speaker 3: redditors to kind of resolve this and keep the site thriving. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: as even if that was a pretty funny quip.
Speaker 5: Absolutely two things can be true at the same time,
Speaker 5: speaking of things that we're trying to figure out whether
Speaker 5: or not they're true, Starbucks is reportedly we can put
Speaker 5: this first element up on the screen from the New Republic.
Speaker 5: The New Republic reported that Starbucks denied its union's allegations
Speaker 5: of a ban on pride, a ban on pride decorations. Essentially,
Speaker 5: this is something we also saw allegedly happen over at Target.
Speaker 4: But originally the story was that it was way more heavily.
Speaker 5: The New Republic was reporting way more heavily on the
Speaker 5: side of the union's allegations being credible.
Speaker 4: Right the Starbucks union.
Speaker 5: Their original headline, I think was actually that Starbucks banned
Speaker 5: pride decorations according to union.
Speaker 3: If you can go back to the URL actually because
Speaker 3: URLs are forever, yes, and the RL is Starbucks take
Speaker 3: down Pride decorations, discussing cave far right.
Speaker 4: There you go, and then it's like mad loves right right.
Speaker 3: And so then the story was updated when Starbucks came
Speaker 3: out and said, look, this is not our policy. We're
Speaker 3: not stopping pride decorations from being put up. However, that
Speaker 3: produced a response from the union, which was the original
Speaker 3: source of this claim, saying that even if there isn't
Speaker 3: a corporate directive that has been launched, it is the
Speaker 3: functional policy that they're seeing on the ground. We could
Speaker 3: let's just roll one. This is one typical kind of
Speaker 3: post that that's come from Starbucks union members.
Speaker 11: We're looking at here, Well, those are our marplights. We
Speaker 11: have had them up every year for I don't know
Speaker 11: as long as I've worked here. This is the first
Speaker 11: year that no one hung them up and they're.
Speaker 12: Just sitting in So why are those in this bucket
Speaker 12: right here instead of hanging up during Pride Month in
Speaker 12: a Starbucks.
Speaker 11: Well, Starbucks says that it's unsafe. We don't have a
Speaker 11: ladder to be able to hang them up properly, so
Speaker 11: we're just not going to hang them up this year.
Speaker 12: And so Starbucks has had these hanging up in the
Speaker 12: lobby before this year, correct, every year for.
Speaker 11: As long as I've worked here, which is five or
Speaker 11: six years.
Speaker 4: That's really crazy.
Speaker 5: Can I just say quickly without having a lot of context,
Speaker 5: because that's a local sort of set of allegations that
Speaker 5: neither of us has talked.
Speaker 4: To the people involved. What's kind of amusing. I don't
Speaker 4: know if amusing is the right word. I don't want
Speaker 4: to trivial anything.
Speaker 5: But if this is the first year that that local
Speaker 5: Starbucks has unionized and they're saying it's unsafe to put
Speaker 5: up the pride decorations, there's actually a possibility that the
Speaker 5: store is scared of the union in some sense, if
Speaker 5: they're putting workers in like unsafe working conditions and they
Speaker 5: don't have the right kind of ladder. I'm not saying
Speaker 5: that's what happened, but I'm saying that that also could
Speaker 5: be a layer to this.
Speaker 4: It may it may or may not be, but quickly,
Speaker 4: that was my first thought when I saw it.
Speaker 5: Because a lot of these Starbucks unions are within like
Speaker 5: a year of existence.
Speaker 3: Yes, many, there are many layers to this, no doubt.
Speaker 3: So let's read Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trall's comment to the
Speaker 3: New Republic. He said, we unwaveringly support the LGBTQIA two
Speaker 3: plus community. There has been no change to any policy
Speaker 3: on this matter, and we continue to encourage our store
Speaker 3: leaders to celebrate with their communities, including for US Pride
Speaker 3: month in June. We're deeply concerned by false information that
Speaker 3: is being spread, especially as it relates to our inclusive store's,
Speaker 3: our company culture, and the benefits we offer our partners.
Speaker 3: The benefits we offer our partners. That is a reference
Speaker 3: to a previous claim that the Starbucks Union had made
Speaker 3: that said that Starbucks had changed its gender affirming health
Speaker 3: insurance policy. To push back against the union, Starbucks says,
Speaker 3: that's just simply not true. That perhaps somebody had a
Speaker 3: bad insurance experience, but that's not There has been no
Speaker 3: change in that policy. Starbucks Union, you can find there,
Speaker 3: you can find their account on Twitter. They they're putting
Speaker 3: out a bunch of different cases of workers saying that
Speaker 3: they've tried to put up Pride decorations and been told
Speaker 3: not to either because it breaks the uniformity of stores
Speaker 3: that there's been a regional director. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: claims and counterclaims flying back and forth. My sense is
Speaker 3: that this might also be related to the climate that
Speaker 3: has the kind of backlash climate yeah, that was produced
Speaker 3: through the bud Light boycott and the Target boycott. You
Speaker 3: might just have individual managers of stores who are kind
Speaker 3: of pushing back in a way that isn't reflective of
Speaker 3: a corporate directive, but that maybe corporate is okay with
Speaker 3: What's what's your sense of how this is unfolding?
Speaker 5: You know, it wasn't until we were talking before the
Speaker 5: show and you advanced that explanation that I could make
Speaker 5: sense of why this is so confused regionally that you know,
Speaker 5: there are probably different places, like they are different targets,
Speaker 5: and we heard some regional discrepancies and how Target was
Speaker 5: enforcing the way that it had perhaps moved its pride
Speaker 5: displays after the tucking swimsuit controversy erupted and the boycott started,
Speaker 5: that you know, in the South, for instance, or in
Speaker 5: the Midwest, that Target had moved some of its pride
Speaker 5: displays in ways that it may not have in California
Speaker 5: and New York or something to that extent, although you
Speaker 5: heard that the Burlington Target may These are all like
Speaker 5: these are all just like anecdotes, but it shows that
Speaker 5: it's possible, sort of on a regional level, people who
Speaker 5: get complaints even in Burlington. You know, you can have
Speaker 5: a conservative family or two that complaints in Burlington and
Speaker 5: to the point where the manager says, you know, the
Speaker 5: cost benefit analysis here it's worth it to just pop
Speaker 5: this in the back for us. And so people are
Speaker 5: just sort of making those decisions without any overarching corporate directive.
Speaker 4: That's entirely possible.
Speaker 5: That makes the most sense to me that you know,
Speaker 5: they're on a regional level. These pressures and sensitivities are different,
Speaker 5: and what you're having is people respond to them that
Speaker 5: way as opposed to overall. Hunter Schwartz had an interesting
Speaker 5: had an interesting little report where he actually took the
Speaker 5: top ten mostly of the Fortune fifty and engauged who
Speaker 5: actually changed their logo to Pride and from last year
Speaker 5: to this year, and found that it actually was basically
Speaker 5: the same, like there was no difference. Wall Street Journal
Speaker 5: showed they had a headline that said companies quiet diversity
Speaker 5: and ability to talk amid the culture War and actually
Speaker 5: have a chart of earnings calls where executives mentioned quote
Speaker 5: ESG DEI, environmental, social and governments, diversity, equity, inclusion or
Speaker 5: sustainability verbatim in their earnings calls over the recent quarters.
Speaker 4: And you do see a dip.
Speaker 5: It's still higher than what it was in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: so still higher post twenty twenty. But I think there
Speaker 5: is something going on post bud Light, post target where
Speaker 5: companies are extra sensitive and just realize that in the
Speaker 5: same way they were sensitive in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Because these companies, these guys don't believe anything.
Speaker 5: They're not red or blue, they're green, and so they
Speaker 5: ultimately side on the with money. So in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: where you see all of a sudden, all of these
Speaker 5: corporations become, you know, start giving money to open like
Speaker 5: Marxist organizations like Black Lives Matter Global Foundation, which none
Speaker 5: of them supported Marxism. Are you telling me that's insane
Speaker 5: that these like massive corporatists were just like happy to
Speaker 5: bank roll Marxism. No, they saw it as an advertisement.
Speaker 5: They saw it as a way to like rehab their
Speaker 5: public relations or to prehab their public relations. And in
Speaker 5: the same way they were sensitive to the political climate,
Speaker 5: then they're sensitive to the political climate.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One thing that is really interesting too about this
Speaker 3: case is what it shows about some elements of today's
Speaker 3: union movement. So what we can clearly say for sure
Speaker 3: is that this is not directly about wages and benefits.
Speaker 3: So the very traditional kind of bread and butter, nuts
Speaker 3: and bolts union movement was collective bargaining to increase, you know,
Speaker 3: increase your wages, increase your benefits, also workplace safety, and
Speaker 3: so I think a lot of this is being kind
Speaker 3: of understood as part of safety and the idea of
Speaker 3: we're feeling safe and comfortable at work. So I think
Speaker 3: that's how workers are understanding this as related to working
Speaker 3: conditions rather than just as fighting a culture war within
Speaker 3: their own corporation. Though it is also that which is
Speaker 3: which is just an It's an interesting kind of statement
Speaker 3: in reflection on where kind of the labor movement is,
Speaker 3: particularly among young people today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Katie Hertzog had a good point on Twitter yesterday
Speaker 5: where she was responding to a poll that found increasing
Speaker 5: opposition to trans participation in women's sports, and just made
Speaker 5: the point that like the t of the LGBT is,
Speaker 5: you know, the support for the full sort of tea
Speaker 5: agenda has dipped in a way that's reflecting on the
Speaker 5: LGB part of that you know, broader movement. And I
Speaker 5: think that's absolutely like to the point where people walk
Speaker 5: into a Scarbucks in twenty twenty three and see the
Speaker 5: Pride flag with the because because now most corporations use
Speaker 5: the full Pride flag, not just the rainbow colors, but
Speaker 5: also with the pink and blue and white, if not
Speaker 5: even like more detailed flags than that.
Speaker 4: People walk and see that.
Speaker 5: That does feel divisive to them, because that feels like
Speaker 5: you're saying, you know, I necessarily by shopping at the Starbucks,
Speaker 5: I'm not just looking at the flag that you know,
Speaker 5: I saw people posing with when Obergefell was handed down,
Speaker 5: But I'm seeing something that implies, you know, about books
Speaker 5: and classrooms and kids' sports and bathrooms and locker rooms,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And when you graft that package onto the
Speaker 5: other one, I think that's where you start to see
Speaker 5: the consensus breakdown and people feel like when they walk
Speaker 5: into that it is much more controversial in many parts
Speaker 5: of the country. And that's I think exactly what you
Speaker 5: see happening with bud Light and with Target, where most
Speaker 5: of the country has very little opposition to gay marriage,
Speaker 5: to same sex relationships period. It's the tea that makes
Speaker 5: them feel a little less comfortable with the full thing,
Speaker 5: and that has actually increased and that's interesting and I
Speaker 5: think that's probably what companies are experiencing.
Speaker 4: And one final point.
Speaker 5: Is Starbucks was really accused as a jack of ben
Speaker 5: article I referenced a lot where they quote I think
Speaker 5: this was in Missouri. They quote a Starbucks worker who
Speaker 5: was trying to unionize as saying they felt like they
Speaker 5: were being forced to work as unpaid social workers or
Speaker 5: untrained social workers. And the safety question is so interesting
Speaker 5: because that's where these things clash. And if you're considering
Speaker 5: gender affirming care, gender affirming sort of ideological policies at
Speaker 5: Starbucks as part of safety, that also comes into to
Speaker 5: clash with like, for instance, the bathroom policy that really
Speaker 5: did for Starbucks workers to act as untrained social workers
Speaker 5: and put them in situations.
Speaker 4: I mean, I saw it with my own eyes.
Speaker 5: I watched I got locked into a Starbucks, but I
Speaker 5: was fine as the workers who were having to confront
Speaker 5: somebody who the police had to lock into the Starbucks
Speaker 5: in order to you know, calm right.
Speaker 3: And the whole time you think, the whole time, you're thinking,
Speaker 3: I don't get paid enough for this, not trained for this,
Speaker 3: and I don't get paid enough for this. People can
Speaker 3: help us out, though, because this shouldn't be a he said.
Speaker 3: She said, Like, the question is like, is Starbucks, you know,
Speaker 3: still allowing for pride decorations and stores so if you
Speaker 3: are going to Starbucks or you work at Starbucks, just
Speaker 3: let us know in the comments, like what city or
Speaker 3: town you're talking about, and whether or not you're seeing
Speaker 3: any you know you're seeing any decorations.
Speaker 5: That's right, rian you are going to be breaking down
Speaker 5: for us right here. Some of the new numbers on inflation.
Speaker 5: A little bit of good news as how a lot
Speaker 5: of people are interpreting it, a lot of conversation about.
Speaker 4: Where the rate hikes go from here.
Speaker 5: But I always find it really helpful when you take
Speaker 5: these numbers and make them intelligible.
Speaker 3: So what have you got today, Yeah, let's have take
Speaker 3: a look at these inflation numbers. You can put up
Speaker 3: this first tear sheet. So the headline news coming out
Speaker 3: of this was basically inflation cooling to its lowest reading
Speaker 3: in two years, down to four percent year over year.
Speaker 3: And so I think I think it's fun to just
Speaker 3: take a look at where prices are flattening and where
Speaker 3: prices are still going up, and then think about what
Speaker 3: that tells us about our priors when it comes to
Speaker 3: both monetary policy, interest rate policy, and fiscal policy. Relating
Speaker 3: back to the checks that were cut a child tax credit,
Speaker 3: the American Rescue Plan, the IRA, all of these things
Speaker 3: that we were warned was going to cause runaway inflation.
Speaker 3: Larry Summers said that you're going to need ten percent
Speaker 3: unemployment for several years in order to kind of tame
Speaker 3: the inflation that came from the American Rescue Plan, which
Speaker 3: he described as a cataclysmic kind of policy disaster. He
Speaker 3: could not have been proven more wrong more quickly than
Speaker 3: he was. Doesn't mean he won't be invited on air
Speaker 3: to continue opining on the way that people need to
Speaker 3: be driven into misery in order to bring down inflation.
Speaker 3: So if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Speaker 3: you can find, uh, you know, very detailed breakdowns around
Speaker 3: you know, where prices are going up and where and
Speaker 3: whether or not, which reminds me of this funny Emily.
Speaker 3: Did you see the the back and forth uh with
Speaker 3: wh Who's who's the Elon Musk flunky David Sachs, David Saxson,
Speaker 3: Matt Iglesias. Sack looked at an employment report and said that, wait,
Speaker 3: three hundred ninety nine thousand jobs added. How's this possible?
Speaker 3: Everywhere I look people are getting laid off and Aglaia
Speaker 3: is like it's in column too if you want to
Speaker 3: check out where where jobs are going up, which is
Speaker 3: which people immediately pointed out was just like that kind
Speaker 3: of a pc perhaps apocryphal quote about Nixon from a
Speaker 3: Manhattan socialite who was like, how could how could Nixon
Speaker 3: have won? I don't know anybody who voted for him.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, it is true that tech is losing
Speaker 3: some jobs, but there are there are people that are
Speaker 3: hiring elsewhere. And so so if I put it out
Speaker 3: the uh uh, this this table on jobs that are
Speaker 3: the prices that are moving up and down. If you
Speaker 3: take out food and energy, you still you still have
Speaker 3: a pretty pretty cool inflation number. I think five roughly
Speaker 3: around five point so that's five point three percent year
Speaker 3: over year, which is you want it to be lower
Speaker 3: than that. But that's not it's not ruining. It's not
Speaker 3: ruining the country, and I think it's and we should
Speaker 3: be careful about getting too excited about the energy prices
Speaker 3: coming down because Mohammed bin Salman, in order to finance
Speaker 3: all of his different acquisitions, has said he's going to
Speaker 3: jack up gas prices and also probably to hurt Biden.
Speaker 3: So twenty twenty four we're probably going to see higher
Speaker 3: gas prices and that's gonna that's going to impact these
Speaker 3: numbers that you're seeing. But the biggest crisis is still
Speaker 3: here and that's in what they call shelter and so
Speaker 3: that's both rent and mortgages. That's eight percent year over year.
Speaker 3: So if you're if you're seeing if you're seeing prices
Speaker 3: at the at the grocery store, used car price is
Speaker 3: down four percent. Uh, you're glad to see that that
Speaker 3: those things are becoming more affordable. Egg prices coming down,
Speaker 3: But if you're still seeing eight percent year over year
Speaker 3: increases in housing prices, that's that's a crisis. And then
Speaker 3: the other the other big jump that you see is
Speaker 3: in what they call transportation services. That's ten point two
Speaker 3: percent year over year, and that's everything from you know,
Speaker 3: Uber other ride shares, which you can see everybody understands
Speaker 3: like those are getting more expensive, to train fares, bus fares,
Speaker 3: but also airline fares like you've seen you know, the
Speaker 3: cost of air of airplane tickets just soaring over so
Speaker 3: that that's that's taking a huge chunk out of you.
Speaker 3: But and then a food away from home eight point
Speaker 3: three percent. So in other words like going out to
Speaker 3: eat is costing you a lot, but food at home
Speaker 3: down under six percent. So those are the things that
Speaker 3: are that people are still, you know, really feeling according
Speaker 3: to the data. So what's your read on as you
Speaker 3: just go around the world where inflation is compared to
Speaker 3: where it was a year ago.
Speaker 4: You know, that's why I really don't like.
Speaker 3: What are you looking at? What's your point today?
Speaker 5: Well, by now you've heard a lot about the Espionage
Speaker 5: Act recently in light of Donald Trump's indictment by Special
Speaker 5: Consul Jack Smith. Many of you have known a great
Speaker 5: deal about this World War One era legislation for years,
Speaker 5: following the cases of Eugene Devs, the Rosenbergs, and all
Speaker 5: the way up to Julian Assange.
Speaker 13: Donald Trump is not a whistleblower or a journalist or
Speaker 13: a foreign agent. He didn't leak a military report to
Speaker 13: the press for the betterment of the nation, nor did
Speaker 13: he hand out anti warflyers. He is the former president
Speaker 13: of the United States accused of stowing away boxes and
Speaker 13: boxes of some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.
Speaker 5: So there's ali velshie Over on MSNBC making the Trump
Speaker 5: comparison within all that historical contact that we've been hearing
Speaker 5: so much about recently. He says Trump is different. Therefore
Speaker 5: the implication as well, maybe it's okay. Well, let's remember
Speaker 5: the Espionage Act is basically a blunt force instrument of
Speaker 5: the security state to punish enemies of their agenda, basically
Speaker 5: at the drop of a hat. That's what the historical
Speaker 5: context really shows. As you may know, thirty one of
Speaker 5: Trump's thirty seven new charges were brought under the Espionage
Speaker 5: Act by Jacksmith. As Eli Lake wrote in The Free
Speaker 5: Press this week, quote this is his headline. Trump probably
Speaker 5: broke the law, but that law shouldn't exist. Probably is
Speaker 5: an important word there. We actually haven't heard much from
Speaker 5: Trump's defense team in the last few days. It would
Speaker 5: hardly be shocking to learn the indictment was built by
Speaker 5: excluding maybe some key context, given our DOJ's history of
Speaker 5: making similar decisions when it comes to Trump related PISA
Speaker 5: warrants PISA warrants, for instance.
Speaker 4: But who knows, not me, certainly not anyone else in
Speaker 4: the media. And that's okay.
Speaker 5: In terms of whether Trump's conduct was dumb, dangerous and
Speaker 5: a violation of this specific law, the current evidence suggests
Speaker 5: the answer to every single. One of those questions is yes,
Speaker 5: but two things can be true at once. Trump's conduct
Speaker 5: was dumb and silly, and so is the Biden administrations.
Speaker 5: Why well, Elia Lake makes a lot of good points,
Speaker 5: some of them are critical. Here comes the what about segment?
Speaker 5: What about Joe Biden? What about Hillary Clinton? Isn't it
Speaker 5: facile and partisan? What about isms? To not just admit
Speaker 5: Trump is corrupt rather than pointing elsewhere? Well, First, nobody
Speaker 5: needs to admit Trump is corrupt.
Speaker 4: He basically campaigned on being corrupt.
Speaker 5: And Second, as Andy McCarthy pointed out on Fox this week,
Speaker 5: the law is basically what about ism. You're always weighing precedent,
Speaker 5: meaning what about this person? What about that person? This
Speaker 5: is exactly the argument James Comy made when he announced
Speaker 5: the FBI would not pursue charges against Hillary Clinton in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. This is an exact quote from his statement
Speaker 5: the day he announced he wasn't going to bring charges.
Speaker 14: Quote.
Speaker 5: Although there is evidence dents a potential violation of the
Speaker 5: statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is
Speaker 5: that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors
Speaker 5: necessarily weigh a number of factors Before bringing charges. There
Speaker 5: are obvious considerations like the strength of the evidence, especially
Speaker 5: regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a
Speaker 5: person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in
Speaker 5: the past. Intent, by the way, is pretty key in
Speaker 5: the Trump indictment. This exact statement could be extended the
Speaker 5: Komi statement to Joe Biden's trove of around twenty to
Speaker 5: thirty classified documents that were located last year, some of
Speaker 5: which contained very sensitive information about Iran Ukraine. And more clearly,
Speaker 5: you could make the case he was in violation of
Speaker 5: the Espionage Act or there's pretty strong evidence he was
Speaker 5: in violation of the Espionage Act.
Speaker 4: And yes, Trump is charged with.
Speaker 5: Having many more documents, and he's also charged with obstruction.
Speaker 5: That absolutely makes his case more serious. Although Clinton could
Speaker 5: possible belie've been hit with obstruction charges too. But if
Speaker 5: you're going to charge one president with Espionage Acts Act violations,
Speaker 5: that another could be charged with and likely won't given
Speaker 5: what happened with Clinton, for instance, you don't have the
Speaker 5: moral high ground when it comes to quote the rule
Speaker 5: of law, which James Comey has been talking about all
Speaker 5: over the media recently.
Speaker 4: Worse yet, this is exactly the point about the Espionage Act.
Speaker 5: It is a blunt, forced instrument the security state clings to.
Speaker 5: The Obama administration used it to seize James Rosen's emails
Speaker 5: and target many others many times over. This is why
Speaker 5: the journalists reflexively siding with Smith here because they hate Trump,
Speaker 5: are playing an incredibly dangerous game. The Espionage Act exists
Speaker 5: to punish them. It's so intentionally broad it can be
Speaker 5: used to do whatever the Feds want with it when
Speaker 5: they want to. Obama suffered little repercussions for his abuses
Speaker 5: of the Espionage Act, but journalists and whistleblowers did. The
Speaker 5: more the media cheers Smith and Garland and Biden on,
Speaker 5: the more power this law will continue to have over them.
Speaker 3: We are joined now by Glenn Greenwald, my former colleague
Speaker 3: over at the Intercept and the host of System Update
Speaker 3: that's the name of the show at Rumble. We're going
Speaker 3: to talk about his interview in a Moment that he
Speaker 3: did with RFK Junior, particularly a fascinating and revealing exchange
Speaker 3: with RFK Junior over his policy on Israel and how
Speaker 3: it compares to his policy as relates to Ukraine. But
Speaker 3: first I wanted to get you on the big news
Speaker 3: from yesterday, Trump turning himself in for idiotically holding on
Speaker 3: to all of these documents, one of the governments trying
Speaker 3: to get them back. Emily and I were just going
Speaker 3: through what I think is my dream scenario, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to get your take on this, and it would
Speaker 3: be that the thing is punted past the election. Trump
Speaker 3: is convicted of on these Espionage Act claims. It then
Speaker 3: goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court rules
Speaker 3: the Espionage Act unconstitutional and ditches the entire law so
Speaker 3: that they can free Trump. I'm curious for your take
Speaker 3: on these Espionage Act charges and also would that be
Speaker 3: a dream scenario.
Speaker 1: I mean, anything that does the Espionage Act to me,
Speaker 1: would be a huge gift to the United States. The
Speaker 1: idea that this law is one of the most repressive
Speaker 1: on the books, one of the most unconstitutional, flagrantly repressive laws,
Speaker 1: has been something that has been kind of gospel and
Speaker 1: left loberal politics for decades. It goes back to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen would where Wilson enacted it with the explicit purpose
Speaker 1: of criminalizing people who dissented from his desire to involve
Speaker 1: the US in the European War in World War One,
Speaker 1: and many socialists like Eugene Debs and others were prosecuted
Speaker 1: on the grounds that essentially opposing the US war policy
Speaker 1: meant they were aiding and abedding other countries and acting
Speaker 1: as agents of those countries.
Speaker 14: And then that was the law that was unearthed.
Speaker 1: During the Obama years to start attacking whistleblowers at a
Speaker 1: record pace. And the reason is because it's a law
Speaker 1: that basically ensures the government can win. That was the
Speaker 1: law that Daniel Alsburg was tried under. He intended to
Speaker 1: go on the stand and argue to a jury of
Speaker 1: his peers that yes, he leaked the Pentagon papers, but
Speaker 1: it was justified for him to do so because the
Speaker 1: government had no right to conceal it in the first place.
Speaker 1: And the judge immediately shut it down and said, under
Speaker 1: the Espionage Act, it doesn't matter what your motive is.
Speaker 1: It's a strict liability statute. And that's what makes it
Speaker 1: such a horrifically powerful weapon in the hands of the government.
Speaker 1: And there is an irony that the Trump administration prosecuted
Speaker 1: Julian assanj under this and others. Trump cheered Snowden's prosecution
Speaker 1: under it, and else Trump himself faceds prosecution under this law.
Speaker 1: But a principle civil libertarian, somebody who has worked, for example,
Speaker 1: what the ACLU would have no choice but to say,
Speaker 1: in all instances where this law is applied, it's an
Speaker 1: unjust outcome.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's very well, said Trump's One of Trump's
Speaker 5: attorneys previewed, I think a pretty potent line of argumentation
Speaker 5: they're going to be making in defense of this indictment
Speaker 5: or in defense against this indictment.
Speaker 4: Yesterday, I said the.
Speaker 5: Courthouse, she said, basically, this is starting to make the
Speaker 5: US look like Cuba in Venezuela, and this is our
Speaker 5: transformation towards Banana republic. As you point out, Glenn, this
Speaker 5: is a nineteen seventeen era law that was sort of
Speaker 5: immediately used to prosecute people on political grounds after being enacted.
Speaker 5: How do you think that argument is going to work
Speaker 5: for the Trump team? Do you see it where you
Speaker 5: have Joe Biden actually prosecuting the front runner in the
Speaker 5: Republican nomination, not necessarily like a Eugene Dubs figure, but
Speaker 5: like the Republican front runner here? Do you see that
Speaker 5: along the lines of the argument the defense attorney is
Speaker 5: making there, how do you think this goes for them?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a huge imony here in terms of my
Speaker 1: own trajectory and my own career and belief system, which is,
Speaker 1: I watch President Obama immunize the entire Cia and all
Speaker 1: Bush officials for any prosecution for War on Terror crimes,
Speaker 1: including torture. And there was a consensus in the Washington
Speaker 1: media and political class when he did that that he
Speaker 1: did the right thing, just like Nixon did the right
Speaker 1: thing when Forward did the right thing when pardoning Nixon
Speaker 1: on the grounds that, oh, only banana republics prosecute former
Speaker 1: presidents by subsequent administrations. And my argument at the time
Speaker 1: was no, Actually, what happens in the Banana Republic is
Speaker 1: there's a two tiered system of justice, one for elites
Speaker 1: and one for everybody else, and not prosecuting war on
Speaker 1: terror criminals is what would make us this kind of
Speaker 1: Banana republic. And now here we are finally a person
Speaker 1: with power seemingly being prosecuted. But for me, the problem
Speaker 1: it becomes it's still selective. It's selective in a different way. Clearly,
Speaker 1: Trump is an enemy of the political establishment in the
Speaker 1: way that say, others who did similar or worse things,
Speaker 1: like David Betraeus and Leon Panetta and arguably Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: didn't was not and they did not spend a single
Speaker 1: second in jail. They weren't charged with Espionage Act violations.
Speaker 1: And so I do think there's a highly political you
Speaker 1: put a molment to it, And just imagine if we
Speaker 1: watched what's happening in the United States, happening in one
Speaker 1: of the designated bad countries, where a current resident imprisons
Speaker 1: or his administration is trying to imprison his leading opponent
Speaker 1: heading into an election, we're all poshal that opponent is leading.
Speaker 1: We would immediately say that's proof of bespotism, Like when
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin presided over Nabalne's corruption charges. That was what
Speaker 1: was said, and it's hard to distinguish. I think what's
Speaker 1: going on here.
Speaker 5: I think that's especially true in lend of the fact
Speaker 5: that Clinton actually could have also had the obstruction charges,
Speaker 5: not just the ESPIONAC violination violations, but potentially obstruction charges too.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 14: I mean, she lied to the government.
Speaker 1: She said there was no classified information having ever gone
Speaker 1: over her service. She repeated that multiple times to investigators
Speaker 1: when it turned out to be false.
Speaker 3: I'm curious, if you put Trump on the couch, how
Speaker 3: he wound up in this situation, Like for somebody who
Speaker 3: has talked so frequently about the deep state coming after
Speaker 3: him like this is this is basically his number one
Speaker 3: argument that he's been making for you know, because you
Speaker 3: are judged by who your enemies are, and like, look
Speaker 3: at who my enemies are. They you know they want
Speaker 3: to destroy me. Therefore I must be doing something right?
Speaker 3: What what about that did not get internalized for him?
Speaker 3: Because if they if you believe that they're coming to
Speaker 3: get you, just give the boxes back like that. That's
Speaker 3: the part that has me head scratching about like the
Speaker 3: way that this unfolded. How how do you how do
Speaker 3: you think about why Trump now? Because for Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 3: I think Hillary Clinton knew she was not going to
Speaker 3: be put in prison, So you can explain why she
Speaker 3: would be shady about uh and and be willing to
Speaker 3: lie to these prosecutors because like they're not coming to
Speaker 3: get her, like they want the documents back, they don't
Speaker 3: like that she's using this this server, but she's pretty
Speaker 3: confident that they're not actually going to put her in prison,
Speaker 3: and that confidence was born out by Coombe's decision, not
Speaker 3: the prosecutor. Trump, though, shouldn't have that same confidence, like
Speaker 3: he really they really are coming after him. So it
Speaker 3: it almost feels like, for the kind of movement that
Speaker 3: he's leading, why wasn't he more careful?
Speaker 14: It's a good question. I think.
Speaker 1: The best analogy, and I know this seems odd because
Speaker 1: it's impossible to extract all this from its ideological baggage,
Speaker 1: is what happened in Brazil with Lula de Silva, where
Speaker 1: I obviously played a big role in those events, so
Speaker 1: I have pretty up close insight.
Speaker 14: Lula never believed.
Speaker 1: That he would be in prison because he was a
Speaker 1: two term president, beloved on the international stage. He left
Speaker 1: office with an eighty six percent approval rating, and at
Speaker 1: exactly this point, the analogous point in the election cycle
Speaker 1: for Brazil, one year before the twenty eighteen presidential election
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, when he was leading all polls, they
Speaker 1: came and they charged him with multiple corruption crimes, arrested
Speaker 1: him and sentenced him to eleven years in prison.
Speaker 14: And when that happened, he began.
Speaker 1: To view all of the people responsible for that was
Speaker 1: such disdain that he no longer recognized their legitimacy. The
Speaker 1: lead prosecutor in Lula's case ran for Congress and won,
Speaker 1: got the biggest vote total in his state, and they
Speaker 1: just removed him from Congress on some concocted corruption ground.
Speaker 1: And now they're looking to do the same with the
Speaker 1: judge who presided over the case is now a senator.
Speaker 1: So this vengeance factor when you spend time in jail
Speaker 1: is very high. This is, you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: an establishment that twice impeached Donald Trump, that has now
Speaker 1: indicted him twice, that makes no secret about their desire
Speaker 1: to put him into prison. And so yes, you can,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, say well he should therefore be
Speaker 1: even more careful and not hand them weapons to use
Speaker 1: against him. On the other hand, I think when you
Speaker 1: feel genuinely persecuted by unjust authority, which is definitely how
Speaker 1: he and a lot of his supporters feel, and I
Speaker 1: think with good reason. Remember Chuck Schumer warned him this
Speaker 1: would happen if he challenge the CIA, they'll get They
Speaker 1: have six different ways to get back at you, and
Speaker 1: that's what has been happening throughout his presidency with reshigate
Speaker 1: and now these impeachments and now these indictments. I think
Speaker 1: there's this kind of sense that I'm just not going
Speaker 1: to play ball with these people. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: recognize the legitimacy of their demands for these documents back
Speaker 1: because they're out to get me no matter what I do,
Speaker 1: and war is the only the only way to go
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 5: It's important to take Chuck Schumer both literally and serious.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, it was the most amazing moment of
Speaker 1: candor I've ever seen from the top level Washington official.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, pivoting to your interview with RFK Junior recently, Actually,
Speaker 3: we'll we'll just play this clip and just to set
Speaker 3: it up you you asked him basically, why is it
Speaker 3: that you're skeptical about funding for the war in Ukraine
Speaker 3: because of the needs of people here at home, but
Speaker 3: not the same for Israel' Let's let's roll that clip here.
Speaker 1: Why are we in the United States transferring billions of
Speaker 1: dollars of aid each year to a country Israel, whose citizens,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways enjoy better standards of living
Speaker 1: than a lot of the ways American citizens live. What
Speaker 1: is your argument for why we should send so much
Speaker 1: money to Israel, but not to Ukraine.
Speaker 6: You know, the historically that argument has been that Israel
Speaker 6: is the model democracy in the Mid East. It's the
Speaker 6: only democracy in the Mid East, and as a democracy,
Speaker 6: it's it's a model for peacekeeping for and there's never
Speaker 6: been a time in history when a democracy has has
Speaker 6: gone to war with another democracy. So I think art
Speaker 6: policy in the United States should be to support the
Speaker 6: the growth of democracies around the world. You know, if I've.
Speaker 1: Ever that was the that was the argument for going
Speaker 1: into invading Iraq. We're going to spread democracy in the
Speaker 1: Middle East. That's the argument for supporting the Ukrainians, which
Speaker 1: is the Ukrainians are democracy in Russia's autocracy.
Speaker 6: There's a and Glenn, I agree with you, and I
Speaker 6: think there's there. I do think there's a difference between
Speaker 6: what we did in Iraq, which is imposing a US
Speaker 6: system which I don't think was really democracy at the
Speaker 6: point of a gun, and you know, going in in
Speaker 6: a preemptive war, which we've never done in our history
Speaker 6: on a pretext in which we lied to the American
Speaker 6: public about weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 6: You know, and our policy of assisting and existing democracy
Speaker 6: in the Midiest that has had a long relationship with
Speaker 6: our country, and long and supportive relationship with our country.
Speaker 6: But you know, I think you raise some important points.
Speaker 6: I think it probably at this point in the history,
Speaker 6: Israel is you know, is much better able to take
Speaker 6: care of itself than it was in the past, and
Speaker 6: we need to look at all those things.
Speaker 3: That was a long clip, but I wanted to play
Speaker 3: all the way to the end of it because it's
Speaker 3: a remarkable moment in an interview where you kind of
Speaker 3: see him think through the position, and by the end
Speaker 3: of it, he's like, actually, you know what, Glenn, maybe
Speaker 3: Israel is ready to stand up on its own two
Speaker 3: feet and we should reduce the amount of spending with
Speaker 3: their which is an incredible turnaround from just days earlier,
Speaker 3: where he had denounced his friend Roger Waters over Israel
Speaker 3: related tweets, concerts, etc. Were you surprised at the way
Speaker 3: at the kind of arc of his answer there.
Speaker 14: Yes and no. I mean this is what I took
Speaker 14: away from the interview.
Speaker 1: Obviously a lot of people were angry about his extreme
Speaker 1: pro Israel narrative, which is way beyond what even Democratic
Speaker 1: members of Congress will say. They're much better at pretending
Speaker 1: to care about Palestinians than he bothered to do. And
Speaker 1: other people were angry about his views on China, essentially saying,
Speaker 1: we're doing to China exactly what we're doing to Russian only,
Speaker 1: you know, basically and stupidly provoking them with encirclement physically
Speaker 1: around their country. But although you know, I didn't like
Speaker 1: his answers on Israel up until that point, what I
Speaker 1: find so fascinating about him Ryan is that if you
Speaker 1: look at his life, you know, you can't find a
Speaker 1: more charmed life to be an establishment figure. He had
Speaker 1: two uncles who were senators from the Democratic Party, or
Speaker 1: rather his father and an uncle were senators.
Speaker 14: His other uncle was the president.
Speaker 1: He comes from this beloved Democratic Party dynasty. He's married
Speaker 1: to a very popular actress in Hollywood. He's wealthy, he's
Speaker 1: well known, he's famous. And what has clearly happened. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a long time an establishment Democrat. He's supported it,
Speaker 1: endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. That's how much of
Speaker 1: it ingrained in the establishment. He was in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. And we've all had those moments where we
Speaker 1: kind of become radicalized when we realize in an issue
Speaker 1: that we know a lot about that the establishment is
Speaker 1: lying to us, and we start thinking, well, if they're
Speaker 1: lying to us about this, maybe I've been propagandized and
Speaker 1: deceived in other areas as well. He had the same
Speaker 1: answer on Rushigate. You know, I had previously said he
Speaker 1: was a supporter of Rushgate. His campaign contacted me and
Speaker 1: said they didn't think that was fair, but he said, no,
Speaker 1: you're right. I was a supporter of Rushigate because I
Speaker 1: got duped by the propaganda. And once I started hearing
Speaker 1: people in the context of COVID tell me, oh, vaccine
Speaker 1: skepticism means you're a Kremlin agent, I started realizing, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, how is this actually being used.
Speaker 14: And then the more I looked into.
Speaker 1: It that I read the Journal report, I saw that
Speaker 1: I had been deceived, and a lot of that comes
Speaker 1: from COVID radicalism.
Speaker 14: And I think that has made him somebody, even at.
Speaker 1: The age of sixty eight, who is now starting to
Speaker 1: really question a lot of things he's long been conditioned
Speaker 1: to believe, and is very willing to be open minded
Speaker 1: and hear arguments against even his most core convictions in
Speaker 1: a way that I find very rare. First of all,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that in an interview before, but also
Speaker 1: very encouraging, if more than any particular policy view. I
Speaker 1: think that character trait of being intellectually humble, of realizing
Speaker 1: some of your views may be grounded in unthought through propaganda,
Speaker 1: is an incredibly valuable one to have in in a
Speaker 1: major presidential candidate.
Speaker 5: Yeah, not to mention a willingness that sort of works
Speaker 5: through them actually on air, not behind closed doors in
Speaker 5: the proverbial smoke fill back room.
Speaker 4: I think that's like a huge distinction as well.
Speaker 5: Do you get the sense I remember when Justice Democrats
Speaker 5: tried to cobble together that Ukraine letter and ended up
Speaker 5: retracting it.
Speaker 4: What was that like six months ago?
Speaker 5: At this point, do you get the sense, Glen that
Speaker 5: this switch that Ukraine perhaps is a window into an
Speaker 5: awakening for other Democrats Because it seems to me like
Speaker 5: the democratic establishments clinging to their narrative on Ukraine is
Speaker 5: similar to clinging to their narrative on Israel.
Speaker 4: But for people outside.
Speaker 5: The democratic establishment, they see that doubling down and they
Speaker 5: wonder why they would be doubling down. So do you
Speaker 5: get the sense that he might be representative of other
Speaker 5: democratic voters.
Speaker 1: I think, so, you know, I think the interesting thing
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, we've had politicians before this is
Speaker 1: in the first time SAYWHI was wrong, But.
Speaker 14: Usually it's because they're forced to.
Speaker 1: Like Hillary Clinton, running for president in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: was required to say I got the Iraq War wrong
Speaker 1: and apologized. So was John Kerry because the voters demanded
Speaker 1: that what rf K Junior is doing is something that
Speaker 1: is likely to expel him from his political and social circles,
Speaker 1: saying I got Russiagate wrong by being too gullible about it.
Speaker 14: And I don't.
Speaker 1: Believe the word in Ukraine is a just word that
Speaker 1: we ought to be pursuing and involved in the United States.
Speaker 1: And I think when someone makes those kinds of admissions
Speaker 1: against their own interests, that's when you can believe more
Speaker 1: in the authenticity of those convictions.
Speaker 14: So the question of how much space is there in the.
Speaker 1: Democratic Party to start opposing Biden's bellicos rhetoric about Ukraine
Speaker 1: and fighting the Russians until the end after a year
Speaker 1: and a half now of all this fighting and killing
Speaker 1: with no end in sight, I think it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting one.
Speaker 14: The problem, of.
Speaker 1: Course, was that no Democrat, not AOC, not Ilion Omar,
Speaker 1: not Corey Bush. None of them voted no on that
Speaker 1: original bill. They all lined up unanimously and said yes,
Speaker 1: we support the Biden more policy in Ukraine.
Speaker 14: And that eliminated the space for you know, liberal.
Speaker 1: Pundits, even left wing pundits, to kind of start arguing
Speaker 1: against the war, because no one in the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: was doing that. If RFK Junior can create space and
Speaker 1: have debates and be seen and be heard as I
Speaker 1: think you will be, and start articulating this case, I
Speaker 1: do think there's some latent, you.
Speaker 14: Know, kind of.
Speaker 1: Hesitation or resistance, if you will, to this fact that
Speaker 1: we're now involved in yet another war and endless word
Speaker 1: with no one insight.
Speaker 14: That is increasingly dangerous.
Speaker 3: And I think the rhetoric and the argument around the
Speaker 3: spending money over there while not spending it here is
Speaker 3: is really powerful and resonates in a kind of common
Speaker 3: sense way. But what I actually love about it is
Speaker 3: that it will eventually force the government to make the
Speaker 3: real case, you know, for why it's spending that money overseas,
Speaker 3: because this is not charity, you know, We're not we're
Speaker 3: not shelling money out to Israel. We're not spending money
Speaker 3: in Ukraine or other you know, military bases around the
Speaker 3: world because of our benevolence, because we're just have generous
Speaker 3: feelings towards the rest of the world, like the Empire
Speaker 3: has very specific and distinct advantages, you know, to the homeland.
Speaker 3: And so it's not as if when you spend money
Speaker 3: in Ukraine, you know, you're not yet you're you're you
Speaker 3: don't have money to spend here in the United States.
Speaker 3: The United States can borrow it will United States. That's
Speaker 3: a at a reserve. And you know, seventy eighty percent
Speaker 3: of that money that we allegedly send to Ukraine never
Speaker 3: leaves northern Virginia or suburban Maryland anyway. And so it
Speaker 3: would be fun to see the government have to actually
Speaker 3: make that argument say that, no, don't worry, it's not charity.
Speaker 3: We're not supporting Israel just because we love the only
Speaker 3: democracy in the Middle East, which is so offensive to
Speaker 3: Iraq and leban and come on, man, they have elections.
Speaker 3: Why do we keep we even went to war to
Speaker 3: make a raq A democracy. Stop with this call it
Speaker 3: one of three that now none of them are very functional.
Speaker 3: So but that's not why we're supporting Israel. We're supporting
Speaker 3: Israe because we want a beachhead in the Middle East
Speaker 3: for our geopologis.
Speaker 1: How can you say that a government like the United
Speaker 1: States that is the biggest sponsor of the Saudi desbit
Speaker 1: and of Egyptian authoritarians and countries all over the world,
Speaker 1: actually cares about spreading democracy. The thing they're really interesting
Speaker 1: to me, Ryan is there's space obviously in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party for opposing the war in Ukraine. Trump is doing that,
Speaker 1: for example, But a lot of people dismiss that and say, well,
Speaker 1: conservatives don't want to fight Russia because the real goal
Speaker 1: is to fight China. What RFK said was hees China
Speaker 1: and Russia in exactly the same way. We have eight
Speaker 1: hundred foreign bases all around the world, while China has one.
Speaker 1: We're encircling them in Guam and Australia and Japan and
Speaker 1: South Korea with newcor tip missiles aimed at Chinese cities
Speaker 1: and newcor capable B fifty twos.
Speaker 14: Buzzing over their head.
Speaker 1: Biden but is the first president to say I will
Speaker 1: go to work with China over Taiwan.
Speaker 14: And his argument is the people who are.
Speaker 1: Paying for this neo conservative war mongering mentality, not just
Speaker 1: in Russia, but also in China and in general. Are
Speaker 1: the American people who are suffering at home because all
Speaker 1: their money is going, as you say to a lobbyist
Speaker 1: in northern Virginia and Maryland or too, you know, the
Speaker 1: coffers of Vladimir Zelenski and Israeli military agencies and increasingly
Speaker 1: arms dealers to prepare for war with China, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't benefit anybody, And the people who pay the most
Speaker 1: are the American people.
Speaker 14: I think that is a very powerful argument if you
Speaker 14: make it consistently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right because exactly because if you have to
Speaker 3: make the argument that the empire actually is beneficial to
Speaker 3: the United States, then the questions, well, who who's it
Speaker 3: helping here in the United States, Because you know, the
Speaker 3: regular person in America is that I'm not seeing it now.
Speaker 3: If you look at the kind of median income and
Speaker 3: the housing values in Northern Virginia, then things are going
Speaker 3: quite well. But if you're looking at the rest of
Speaker 3: the country, not so much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the confluence of Ukraine and China is really interesting
Speaker 5: because that's the test, right, you know, there are really
Speaker 5: good reasons I think to be wary of where a
Speaker 5: relationship with China could go in a.
Speaker 4: Million different directions.
Speaker 5: But the capture of the conservative movement by the defense industry,
Speaker 5: that's really going to be put to a test. It's
Speaker 5: one thing to oppose Ukraine, it's another to see where
Speaker 5: that policy evolves on China.
Speaker 3: And the last question for me on the Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: it is interesting to think about where this is going.
Speaker 3: My sense on Ukraine is that they just seem to
Speaker 3: be hope that this just goes away, that maybe this
Speaker 3: is the spring offensive is the end, and then there's
Speaker 3: some type of kind of no, there won't be a
Speaker 3: negotiated you know peace where they sign paperwork, but it's
Speaker 3: just the war basically peters out and it and the
Speaker 3: the lines get frozen where they are, and that then
Speaker 3: they don't have to take a stand on this on
Speaker 3: this question anymore. But then then you have the question
Speaker 3: of China, like you said, like how how bellicos and
Speaker 3: confrontational are they going to be? But there doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be energy for any kind of an anti war
Speaker 3: movement within the Democratic Party. Where do you see it going?
Speaker 14: Yeah, and the big question is why not? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, why are neocons from the Bush and Cheney
Speaker 1: era almost entirely now.
Speaker 14: With embedded within the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: They're not just anti Trump, their anti Republican Party and
Speaker 1: pro Democratic party they perceive, I think correctly, the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is the better vehicle for the fulfillment of their
Speaker 1: foreign policy agenda, which is always about increasing and seeking.
Speaker 14: Out confrontation and war.
Speaker 1: And the question is why is there no space in
Speaker 1: mainstream liberal left discourse to raise these issues. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of energy that goes into the trans debate and
Speaker 1: the culture war, but almost none. There's no one, almost ever,
Speaker 1: who talks about foreign policy and war in the US
Speaker 1: security state any longer. And this is what excites me
Speaker 1: the most about Rfka juniorth candidacy is that I think
Speaker 1: he will be kind of a like a foreign in
Speaker 1: aside like your reminder that these values are values that
Speaker 1: people who identify as American liberals are supposed to embrace.
Speaker 1: And the question becomes, why is it that you know,
Speaker 1: nobody seems to mind within the Democratic Party that Biden
Speaker 1: is not just devoted to endless war with Russia over Ukraine.
Speaker 1: After President Obama repeatedly said Ukraine does not a vital
Speaker 1: interest in the United States. We should not risk confrontation
Speaker 1: with Russia over who governs eastern Ukraine or Crimea. That
Speaker 1: was Obama's emphatically stated view. And also why is Biden
Speaker 1: so willing seemingly to fort with the possibility of war
Speaker 1: with China, which would be, you know, the ensure the
Speaker 1: immediate extinction of the human race. And I think the
Speaker 1: problem has been the left flank of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: like AOC and the Squad and Bernie have been very
Speaker 1: focused on the culture war.
Speaker 14: Bernie kind of always still focused.
Speaker 1: On some of the economic policies on which he typically focuses,
Speaker 1: but that has left a huge hoole for people leaders
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party, including on the left wing, to
Speaker 1: talk about these issues. And I do, to Emily's question,
Speaker 1: think that RFK Junior has a very significant space to
Speaker 1: kind of drive through there and become the person who
Speaker 1: reawakens a lot of those lurking sentiments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think that's right. I think Bernie, the Squad,
Speaker 3: broadly the Democratic Left, I've just wanted to put their
Speaker 3: heads down and focus on domestic stuff, some of the
Speaker 3: culture stuff, some of the class stuff. But just and
Speaker 3: and maybe it has something to do with the you know, Russia,
Speaker 3: and the way that Russia Gate unfolded makes them like
Speaker 3: even less interested and get entangled in that because there's
Speaker 3: no there's no advantage in a democratic primary because but
Speaker 3: maybe RFK Junior shows that there is a constituency.
Speaker 14: Quickly on that.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the best MLK speeches ever was
Speaker 1: when he delivered in Riverside Church in Harlem exactly a
Speaker 1: year of the day before he was murdered, and his
Speaker 1: argument was he apologized for not focusing enough on the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War until later than others did, because he realized
Speaker 1: there's no way to extricate American empire and militarism and
Speaker 1: imperialism from the domestic agenda.
Speaker 14: They go hand in hand. You cannot win one without
Speaker 14: winning the other.
Speaker 1: And this attempt by these kind of new Democrats to say, well,
Speaker 1: we can just let the CIA and the FBI go.
Speaker 1: We don't really think there are enemies wars as long
Speaker 1: as we're not sending American troops or something Americans will tolerate.
Speaker 1: It's not going to work because it shapes the priority
Speaker 1: in character of the US government.
Speaker 14: In fundamental ways.
Speaker 1: That means that the US government will be geared toward
Speaker 1: these kind of corporatists and imperialist policies.
Speaker 14: There's no way to separate those.
Speaker 4: That's the real culture war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's exactly right, because you're trying to
Speaker 3: and trying to be a progressive party within the empire
Speaker 3: is going to have so many contradictions embedded in it.
Speaker 3: And you know MLK was pulling those apart in that speech.
Speaker 3: And if you don't, you're just become part of the machine.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and I mean you, I mean I once heard
Speaker 14: about this.
Speaker 1: But the time the establishment really turning against Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King was when he began becoming an outspoken opponent to
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. They were okay, not all of them, obviously,
Speaker 1: but like kind of the liberal establishment of the New
Speaker 1: York Times and the like were okay with the racial
Speaker 1: justice Agenda and the Civil Rights Act and the like.
Speaker 14: That was what Lyndon Johnson ended up doing. It became
Speaker 14: a Democratic Party cause.
Speaker 1: But when he started saying, we have to stop the
Speaker 1: war in Vietnam, the US is the greatest purveyor of
Speaker 1: violence on the planet, the New York Times, the Washington
Speaker 1: Post liberal opinion makers really went after him.
Speaker 14: Because that's what becomes uniquely threatening.
Speaker 3: Good piece on that by Zedjulyn. If you go zed
Speaker 3: Jelani MLK and intercept his great piece on that will
Speaker 3: come up. And last question, what do you think of
Speaker 3: the new set?
Speaker 1: Let me check that out. First of all, you already
Speaker 1: lied and told me that the last question was the
Speaker 1: last question.
Speaker 4: So I've already trusted.
Speaker 14: Let me see it. Can we put I've only seen myself.
Speaker 14: I have to see this.
Speaker 3: You can't say.
Speaker 14: Aesthetic critique on Twitter.
Speaker 3: I'll send you a pic.
Speaker 14: I think it's very fucking good. I think it's I
Speaker 14: like the color scheme. I like how gigantic I am.
Speaker 14: So yeah, I'm not even a positive feedback so far.
Speaker 4: You're like an Easter island heads.
Speaker 14: I hover above you, guys.
Speaker 3: It's very it's very positive, very very intimidated. Back here.
Speaker 5: Well, we couldn't think of a better better guest for
Speaker 5: our first day on the new set than Glenn Greenwald.
Speaker 4: Go watch a.
Speaker 5: System update over on Rumble. It's fantastic. Subscribe on locals Glenn.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 14: Great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Have a good day, and then I'll do it for
Speaker 3: the first episode of Counterpoints over here on the new set.
Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for bearing with any technical difficulties, but I
Speaker 3: think it was pretty smooth.
Speaker 5: We think it went great, and that's a huge Submid's
Speaker 5: all the hard work Griffin and Mac, the production team, Colvin,
Speaker 5: everyone has been putting into this new set. They've been
Speaker 5: working over the weekends at nights like literally building this,
Speaker 5: putting it together for many, many months behind the scenes.
Speaker 5: We are enormously grateful to them for all of that.
Speaker 5: And one thing I want to say, just to wrap
Speaker 5: up the show Glenn's point.
Speaker 4: I mean one thing to underscore.
Speaker 5: It's absurd that Joe Biden should not have to confront
Speaker 5: these arguments, whether they're made by RFK Junior or Mary
Speaker 5: and Williamson on a debate stage on pressing issues.
Speaker 4: Like Ukraine, like Israel, like everything.
Speaker 5: The idea that the man is just going to skate
Speaker 5: to a second term without actually having to confront anybody
Speaker 5: on a debate stage, I think is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It's so wild because a Democrat could challenge him in
Speaker 3: a serious way. I think RFK Junior is going to
Speaker 3: have a ceiling. Maryann Williamson has a ceiling. But the
Speaker 3: opening is very much there for somebody if they would
Speaker 3: take it. But it feels like it's a situation where
Speaker 3: if you challenge Biden and you beat him, you become president.
Speaker 3: But if you challenge him and lose, you're you'll be
Speaker 3: driven out of the Democratic Party. And it shows that
Speaker 3: so many members of the Democratic Party who are in
Speaker 3: good standing value their good standing more or even then
Speaker 3: their ambition to become president of the United States, which
Speaker 3: is just an incredible comment.
Speaker 5: It's why basically only Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: When that was ripe for the taking.
Speaker 5: And on that point, we stand with James Vanderbeek, which
Speaker 5: as we close out the show, I will just say, man,
Speaker 5: you know what I love about James Vanderbeek and Crystal
Speaker 5: and you Ryan is that you guys work so hard
Speaker 5: and do a fantastic work, but at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, you love your kids more than anything, and
Speaker 5: you show I think it's especially important to show.
Speaker 4: People my age how you can make that happen. So
Speaker 4: congratulations to both you and James Vanderbeek.
Speaker 3: Is he of what's Vanderbeek's like relation to kids or whatever?
Speaker 4: Homesteadying has a ton of kids.
Speaker 3: His social media is just all of I gonna start
Speaker 3: following this guy. He seems like a big deal.
Speaker 15: Yeah, we had to basically explain what a big deal
Speaker 15: James Vanderbeek was to Ryan, and I shared a very
Speaker 15: embarrassing story about my crush on James Vanderbeek in middle
Speaker 15: school with the team.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to share it here, but needless to say.
Speaker 14: I was speaking.
Speaker 3: You just shared it.
Speaker 4: No, it involves an iPod video anyway.
Speaker 5: On that note, thank you so much for tuning into
Speaker 5: the first edition of Counterpoints here on our new set.
Speaker 4: Thank you to the team.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for all the premium subscribers for
Speaker 5: making this possible.
Speaker 4: You can watch the.
Speaker 5: Full show start to finish, no interruptions. If you are
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Speaker 4: Hope everyone has a good week.
Speaker 3: We do see you later.