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Speaker 4: Yes, Well, today we're going to start, obviously in Arizona.
Speaker 4: Huge news from the Supreme courtner zoning yesterday on an
Speaker 4: abortion ruling one hundred and sixty year old abortion ruling
Speaker 4: that is now in effect in the state of Arizona.
Speaker 4: Will break it all down. We're then going to talk
Speaker 4: about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's a conversation with Tom Cotton
Speaker 4: during testimony in front of Congress yesterday, and some other
Speaker 4: big updates out of this.
Speaker 5: CNN has a new investigation into the Flower massacre. Looks
Speaker 5: very similar to the World Central Kitchen massacre. Looks to
Speaker 5: be a deliberate assault on the distribution of aid for
Speaker 5: the purpose of what Lloyd Austin says is not happening.
Speaker 3: So we'll break that down.
Speaker 4: People can also see Ecuador on the screen. Not every
Speaker 4: day that we have Ecuador on the Counterpoints Rundown, but.
Speaker 3: Today we is a wild one good reason to.
Speaker 4: Talk about Ecuador, and a really interesting guest.
Speaker 5: Yes, you may remember gaili Long, former foreign minister from
Speaker 5: a previous show. He's now going to join us because
Speaker 5: Mexico yesterday released harrowing video of Ecuadorian police raiding the
Speaker 5: Mexican embassy in Ecuador, dragging out the leftist vice president
Speaker 5: who they've charged with corruption, and kicking off an international incident.
Speaker 3: And we'll talk about the US response to the behavior of.
Speaker 5: Its US backed regime in Ecuador, which is quickly becoming
Speaker 5: going from one of the safest countries in South America
Speaker 5: to be a US back narco state.
Speaker 4: So Martya Taylor Green is on the precipice of moving
Speaker 4: to vacate the chair charity. I guess filed the motion,
Speaker 4: but when she pushes faux vote on it is anybody's guests.
Speaker 4: And one of the big reasons for that is actually
Speaker 4: a really admirable fight over Section seven two that Freedom
Speaker 4: Caucus type Republicans and Justice Democrat type members can come
Speaker 4: together on and try to get to some reform. It's
Speaker 4: a huge surveillance mechanism. We've talked about it many times
Speaker 4: and most of you are probably familiar with it. But
Speaker 4: there's a lot going on. The Biden administration is backing
Speaker 4: a terrible reauthorization bill.
Speaker 3: Essentially, and that vote is today and tomorrow.
Speaker 5: So this is a six month fight over surveillance authorities
Speaker 5: that is coming down today. Donald Trump weighed in on
Speaker 5: truth Social We'll try to figure out what he was
Speaker 5: trying to say.
Speaker 4: And Norfolk Southern agreed announced that it will settle for
Speaker 4: six hundred million dollars with victims in East Palestine, So
Speaker 4: we'll bring some details, talk a little bit about that,
Speaker 4: and an NPR business reporter of twenty plus years penned
Speaker 4: an essay in The Free Press yesterday. It was super buzzy,
Speaker 4: kind of blowing the whistle on NPR. But I think
Speaker 4: Grann and I will have a lot to talk about
Speaker 4: in that segment. Yeah, all right, let's start in Arizona.
Speaker 4: We can put a one up on the screen. This
Speaker 4: is a report from NBC News in which they point
Speaker 4: out this one hundred and sixty year near total abortion
Speaker 4: band that's still on the books in the state was
Speaker 4: ruled enforceable by the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday. They call
Speaker 4: it a bomb cell bombshell decision that adds to the
Speaker 4: state growing lists of places where abortion care is effectively banned.
Speaker 4: Now more from the article. This is an eighteen sixty
Speaker 4: four law in the middle of the Civil War, before
Speaker 4: Arizona was a state. It made a or a felony
Speaker 4: punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone
Speaker 4: who performs an abortion or helps a woman obtain an abortion. Now,
Speaker 4: there's some back and forth in the courts after row,
Speaker 4: as happened in a lot of states. Arizona is similar
Speaker 4: to a lot of states in this respect. The Civil
Speaker 4: War era law NBC rights, enacted a half a century
Speaker 4: before Arizona even gains statehood, was never repealed, so an
Speaker 4: appellate court ruled last year that it could remain on
Speaker 4: the books as long as it was quote harmonized with
Speaker 4: a twenty twenty two law, leading to substantial confusion in
Speaker 4: Arizona regarding exactly when during a pregnancy abortion was outlawed.
Speaker 4: The other thing I think is worth noting in this
Speaker 4: case is that the Attorney General of Arizona has said
Speaker 4: that she's not going to enforce it, but local prosecutors
Speaker 4: can enforce the old law. So that's not entirely comforting
Speaker 4: to supporters of abortion in Arizona or even opponents of
Speaker 4: this move from the Supreme Court. The other thing that
Speaker 4: I want to point out that I haven't seen in
Speaker 4: a lot of media reports is the way the Arizona
Speaker 4: Supreme Court handled this. Basically, they said, we think a
Speaker 4: decision of this gravity should be left to the people
Speaker 4: of Arizona. Basically that there's legislative supremacy over the court
Speaker 4: in this case, so it's not sort of like the
Speaker 4: Alabama you know, sort of what's the best way to
Speaker 4: put it, like Judeo Christian theological decision about IVF. They're
Speaker 4: actually just saying that we think the people of Arizona,
Speaker 4: this is almost I'm paraphrasing from the decisions the people
Speaker 4: of Arizona, the legislature of Arizona, their representatives should make
Speaker 4: a decision on this, and in fact, it looks like
Speaker 4: that's what's going to happen in Arizona later this year.
Speaker 5: It's like, hey, you know, the people of Arizona spoke
Speaker 5: in eighteen sixty four, fifty years before Arizona was a thing,
Speaker 5: and there were probably what fifteen settlers you know who
Speaker 5: passed on him and voted on that.
Speaker 4: And like how you said before Arizona was a.
Speaker 5: Thing, Yeah, I mean it was a thing. It was
Speaker 5: like part of Mexico and it was part it was,
Speaker 5: you know, home to you know, a lot of indigenous
Speaker 5: population still at the time. But yeah, seven of them
Speaker 5: got together and wrote a law banning abortion. And so
Speaker 5: now but yes, so before we get into Kerry Lake's
Speaker 5: response here, the stage was set by Arizona Republicans. And
Speaker 5: you correct me if I'm wrong, as you follow this
Speaker 5: closer when they passed this fifteen week abortion ban in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two, before Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade was overturned, and they.
Speaker 5: Put into that law a provision that said, if Roe v.
Speaker 5: Wade is ever overturned, then actually forget this fifteen week ban.
Speaker 5: We're going for broke. The entire eighteen sixty four law
Speaker 5: goes into effect. And that's why the court was able
Speaker 5: to make this completely ridiculous ruling and go back to
Speaker 5: eighteen sixty four because they had re upped it in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two. And it's also why Carrie Lake kind
Speaker 5: of knew ahead of time that this was going to happen.
Speaker 3: So it's not as if she can say she was
Speaker 3: caught off guard here.
Speaker 5: Carrie Lake, of course the Republican senatorial candidate in Arizona.
Speaker 5: So we can put up her reaction here to this ruling,
Speaker 5: which is saying that this would be a three. You know,
Speaker 5: this is her saying, I oppose today's ruling and I
Speaker 5: am calling on Katie Hobbs in the state legislature to
Speaker 5: come up with an immediate, common sense solution that Arizonas
Speaker 5: can support. What's odd about this reaction is that she
Speaker 5: was asked about this in twenty twenty two. And this
Speaker 5: is in a presidential debate. This is not like a
Speaker 5: gotcha moment with somebody on a rope line. Here she
Speaker 5: is in a twenty twenty two senatorial debate.
Speaker 6: Carrie will start with you on this one. The new
Speaker 6: law banning abortion, well, the new law banning abortion in
Speaker 6: Arizona after fifteen weeks. There's that law, and there's a
Speaker 6: territorial era law which bans all abortion, zippo. Over which
Speaker 6: law do you think should take effect?
Speaker 5: My personal belief is that all life matters, all life counts,
Speaker 5: and all life is precious.
Speaker 3: And I don't believe in abortion. I think the older
Speaker 3: law is going to take is going to go into effect.
Speaker 4: That's what I believe will happen.
Speaker 6: Okay, but you approve of that at conception?
Speaker 3: I believe life begins at conception. Okay. What do we
Speaker 3: do about abortion pills? What do we do about I.
Speaker 4: Don't think abortion pills should be legal, not in Arizona.
Speaker 5: So there you have Carrie Lake saying, look, I suspect
Speaker 5: and I support the older law going into effect.
Speaker 3: Did she not?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: What explains the change in two years?
Speaker 5: Is it the she lacking that Republicans took and the
Speaker 5: polls in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's absolutely I've sort of seen the
Speaker 4: pattern after Row and again, like Doug Doocey passed that law,
Speaker 4: he was the governor of Arizona, considering.
Speaker 3: He was on two Are complaining about it, he was on.
Speaker 4: Twitter campaigning about it. It's considered sort of moderate, and
Speaker 4: Doug Deucy said, this is not the outcome that I
Speaker 4: would have preferred, and actually a lot of Arizona Republicans
Speaker 4: it reminded me in many ways to what happened in
Speaker 4: Alabama after the IVF ruling came down, where you had
Speaker 4: a sort of race among Republicans to get out that
Speaker 4: statement condemning the ruling and saying, you know, it's not
Speaker 4: a workable solution. It's basically sounding similar to Democrats on
Speaker 4: some of those questions, but with the caveat that I'm
Speaker 4: really pro life, but X, Y and Z.
Speaker 5: So it really is like condemning the panther eating your face,
Speaker 5: you know, after you nominated the panther to the court
Speaker 5: and signed into law legislation that enabled the panther to then.
Speaker 3: Eat your face.
Speaker 4: It does seem like there was something intentionally ambiguous about
Speaker 4: what happened with the fifteen week ban versus. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: does seem like that, but obviously Dougducy says it's not
Speaker 4: the outcome that he would have preferred. Carrie Lake is
Speaker 4: back pedaling. I saw a senior advisor to Carry Lake
Speaker 4: talking to Steve Bannon yesterday saying, you know, this is
Speaker 4: obviously Democrats. Basically Democrats have a huge electoral gift in
Speaker 4: the question of abortion, and so there has to be
Speaker 4: a way to talk about this. And that puts the
Speaker 4: writing on the wall for where Carry Lake is going
Speaker 4: to go going forward. Now, I think a lot of
Speaker 4: Arizona voters are going to be heading to the ballot
Speaker 4: box and making decisions based on economics their pocketbooks in
Speaker 4: the fall. I think it's probably going to be a
Speaker 4: heavy border related election. But man, in terms of mobilizing
Speaker 4: the base or demobilizing the base, not getting people excited
Speaker 4: to vote for, for example, Carry Lake, brutal just I
Speaker 4: mean that will matter the margins.
Speaker 5: So you think Carry Lake going kind of kind of
Speaker 5: wobbly on this from the rights perspective, could kind of
Speaker 5: hurt her with some I think for ground support, Well,
Speaker 5: what do you mean by that.
Speaker 4: I think it's the type of thing that makes a
Speaker 4: kind of the oposite. It makes a suburban woman who's
Speaker 4: really upset with what they see is radical policies from
Speaker 4: the Democrats, from Joe Biden, from Gaho, all of those things,
Speaker 4: say I just I'm not going to vote. I can't
Speaker 4: vote for Kerry Lake. You know, I don't like the
Speaker 4: other guys, but I'm not going to vote for Kerry Lakes.
Speaker 3: I'm staying home, Okay. Yeah, Or they become single issue.
Speaker 4: That on that question, finitely, that'll happen too.
Speaker 5: And come out and say, look, this is we're not
Speaker 5: going to be governed by seven settlers from eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 4: I also think this is such a bad This is
Speaker 4: just a particular, particularly egregious flip flop on such a
Speaker 4: high profile issue for Kerry Lake, where she's on tape
Speaker 4: one way and now it's it just that's one of
Speaker 4: those things that seeps into your public persona during an
Speaker 4: election like this. It's hard to get rid of that.
Speaker 4: Nobody likes to see that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and yeah, the SoundBite is not great for her
Speaker 5: because she also tried to do a little play on
Speaker 5: like all lives matter, Yeah, like she's too kind web brained,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure she regrets that.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, how do you not see
Speaker 3: that coming?
Speaker 5: Like, if you're going to be a calculating politician, then
Speaker 5: be the calculating politician in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Also, wasn't an ancient history. I guess the only.
Speaker 5: Thing you say is that it was pre row and
Speaker 5: that she genuinely just did not grasp, you know, what
Speaker 5: a electoral albatross it would be. Although she seems to
Speaker 5: be in the minority on that, most people who were
Speaker 5: have been pushing this. You're you know, you've been very
Speaker 5: open about this that like this is our view, but
Speaker 5: it's not. It's not an electoral winner. Maybe, so maybe
Speaker 5: she's not. Maybe she hasn't thought about it enough, Like
Speaker 5: maybe it's more of a surface issue for her, because
Speaker 5: if you're if you spend any time thinking about it,
Speaker 5: you're like, this is not going to work out electorally.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, And you know I heard Nancy Mace talking about
Speaker 4: that as a Trump surguit actually on NPR yesterday. She
Speaker 4: did pretty good interview with MPR. As much as a
Speaker 4: loath to like congratulate Nancy may sometimes, but she talked
Speaker 4: about it as a survivor of rape, she said, I
Speaker 4: understand why there need to be exceptions, and I understand
Speaker 4: why this is terrifying to women basically, And you can
Speaker 4: see that's just it's very They didn't expect to have
Speaker 4: to talk about this in that way. They didn't expect
Speaker 4: post row, and I think that's the big mistake of
Speaker 4: both the pro life movement and the Republican Party. There
Speaker 4: was just not preparation, adequate preparation for what would happen
Speaker 4: if Roe fell. People and people on the left too.
Speaker 4: It just seemed so unthinkable that this would actually happen.
Speaker 4: It was like the pipe dream of the pro life movement,
Speaker 4: and it was the nightmare of the actual Republican Party,
Speaker 4: where people are sort of moderately against abortion, but mostly
Speaker 4: in favor of winning elections and gaining more and more power.
Speaker 4: So I just Carrie like to me as an example
Speaker 4: of somebody who was really riding high on the Trump wave,
Speaker 4: somebody who was super popular with Trump's base ultimately lost
Speaker 4: the election. When a lot of people said, carry Lake
Speaker 4: is going to win this thing, like she's a man,
Speaker 4: I've never seen anything like it before. She lost, But
Speaker 4: she was riding really high, and I think the bubble
Speaker 4: kind of popped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so if we can put up a five.
Speaker 5: This is this is to Emily's point earlier that the
Speaker 5: Attorney general has said, you know that she won't enforce
Speaker 5: this a reminder of sometimes every vote does matter. Two
Speaker 5: hundred and eighty votes separated the Democrat and the Republican
Speaker 5: in the Attorney General's jacey. If you remember, that was
Speaker 5: one of the races. It wasn't called for weeks and
Speaker 5: weeks and weeks. She she won it, and now she's
Speaker 5: saying that she's not going to force us. Like you said,
Speaker 5: local prosecutors you know, still still can do that in
Speaker 5: the in the fall, it looks like Arizona is going
Speaker 5: to have a constitutional you know, referendum. Basically in every
Speaker 5: single state, including Montana, Kansas, Kentucky, abortion rights have triumphed
Speaker 5: at the ballot box. And so the ones that we're
Speaker 5: looking at this time are what we got potentially in Florida, YEP, Arizona.
Speaker 4: Florida, Maryland, New York looks like now definitely it's going
Speaker 4: to happen in Arizona. They have to collect three hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty four thousand dollos signatures by July fourth.
Speaker 3: That should be quite doable. Now that's the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: Kyle, we could do it today. Yes, So it looks
Speaker 4: like that constitutional amendment, as you said, Ryan, is going
Speaker 4: to be there. Their efforts underway also in Arkansas, Nevada,
Speaker 4: South Dakota, Montana, Missouri, Colorado. It's possible but unlikely according
Speaker 4: to the AP's analysis, that it ends up on the
Speaker 4: boot in Iowa, Maine, and Pennsylvania in the fall. But
Speaker 4: a lot of swing states in there, obviously Florida, Arizona, Nevada,
Speaker 4: maybe Missouri and Colorado. But states where this is going
Speaker 4: to be a huge issue. Is this is better for
Speaker 4: turnout for Democrats than Republicans. There's just no question about
Speaker 4: it at this point. So actually, in a way, by
Speaker 4: kicking this back to Arizona voters, what the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: did is give Arizona voters a chance to get rid
Speaker 4: of the fifteen week Doug Doosey law.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: What I when I saw that ruling and I wanted
Speaker 5: to check was this Democrats?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: On this seriously, who or do they just really hate
Speaker 3: Carry Lake?
Speaker 5: Like Carry Lake must be thinking to us, So what
Speaker 5: have I done to this Arizona Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: I think there to treat me this way.
Speaker 4: Well, this also happened the day after Donald Trump sort
Speaker 4: of you know, chrisln Sager talked about this, but had
Speaker 4: a little bit of an earthquake or induced a little
Speaker 4: bit of an earthquake in Republican politics with his statement
Speaker 4: on abortion. And his statement on abortion was one that
Speaker 4: basically only Donald Trump can get away with. It's sort
Speaker 4: of a blueprint for other Republicans. And that's where you
Speaker 4: see Kerry Lake, her senior advisors, Nancy Mace, all kind
Speaker 4: of clustering in that region, which is basically saying things like, look,
Speaker 4: we think the voter should have the voters are wildly
Speaker 4: against the Democratic position, which is to not ban third
Speaker 4: trimester abortions. We all basically agree that somewhere, you know,
Speaker 4: meeting in that second trimester is the way to regulate abortion.
Speaker 4: We don't agree with you completely cutting off access. There
Speaker 4: have to be exceptions, and you know, it is an
Speaker 4: electoral disaster, blah blah blah. That's sort of like taking
Speaker 4: from Trump adapting it to different candidates. But I don't
Speaker 4: know how what works if you're not Donald Trump in particular,
Speaker 4: there's just It's like when he went off on Hillary
Speaker 4: Clinton and that one debate you remember, where he was like,
Speaker 4: she wants to rip babies out of wombs. At the
Speaker 4: same time, he also believes like pro life Mike Pence
Speaker 4: type people are kind of crazy and everybody knows it. Yeah, frankically,
Speaker 4: like everybody knows it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yes, he's creeped out by them, yes, but
Speaker 5: he also every time during his presidency when he was
Speaker 5: in trouble, that's.
Speaker 3: Who he would go back to.
Speaker 4: The pro life community because they know.
Speaker 3: It most ardent supporters, and so he knew it and
Speaker 3: they knew it.
Speaker 4: They know it and really resent it. That's part of
Speaker 4: the reason that people were really upset yesterday is on Mondays.
Speaker 4: So they feel like they've really been taken for granted
Speaker 4: by Donald Trump, that he'll go to them when he
Speaker 4: needs that kind of bolstering.
Speaker 5: But then nobody can be happy in America, even the
Speaker 5: even the anti abortion crowd that got rov Wade overturned
Speaker 5: by Trump.
Speaker 3: I think you got to cut the guy some slack.
Speaker 5: He delivered to the right the thing that they've been
Speaker 5: gunning for for fifty years.
Speaker 3: You sound like, yeah, there you go. I mean from
Speaker 3: their perspectives like, come on, what do you want from
Speaker 3: this guy?
Speaker 5: He obviously is personally pro completely opposed to everything you
Speaker 5: guys believe in, like culturally, but he's doing it anyway,
Speaker 5: just cynically, So just ride that.
Speaker 4: No, I agree with that position completely.
Speaker 5: Although it's going to get ritten right in the ground
Speaker 5: right Like the effect that this is having on Republicans,
Speaker 5: it's interesting to think what kind of Republican party you'd
Speaker 5: have if the court just decided not to do that.
Speaker 5: You'd have probably ten twenty extra Republics in the House.
Speaker 5: They probably control the Senate right now and maybe control
Speaker 5: the Center for the next fifty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that's an
Speaker 4: interesting question because I feel like the benefits have been
Speaker 4: pretty marginal to people like olisa slot Can, and like
Speaker 4: there are just some races where like, okay, clearly women
Speaker 4: were super motivated. The pattern of turnout looks like it
Speaker 4: was here. But I think it's a lot of Republicans
Speaker 4: have had this interesting position like this needs to hardcore,
Speaker 4: like anti abortion people like myself have said like this
Speaker 4: is you're not going to solve this problem. Rodrer had
Speaker 4: a good post on this Isessuary you're not going to
Speaker 4: solve this problem at the ballot box at this point.
Speaker 4: All you're going to do is have catastrophic losses on
Speaker 4: every other policy issue. If you force an issue at
Speaker 4: the ballot box, that's going to lose time and again
Speaker 4: because the culture is not anywhere near the anti abortion
Speaker 4: movements position on it, So like what's the wisdom? But
Speaker 4: on that side, you get immense pressure from people in
Speaker 4: the pro life movement who are against this incrementalism as
Speaker 4: like it, and so that's I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 4: smaller and smaller wing as time goes by, But like
Speaker 4: people in the anti abortion movement actually are facing pressure
Speaker 4: from their right, even like hardcore people from their right.
Speaker 4: That is like, and again it's understandable if you believe
Speaker 4: that ending in life after conception is murder, it's understandable
Speaker 4: why people would be against the incrementalism. But politics of
Speaker 4: the possible, I mean, it's just there's really no path and.
Speaker 3: Correct people wrong.
Speaker 5: They often would make parallels to the abolition or the
Speaker 5: anti slavery movement absolutely, which just was a fundamental misreading
Speaker 5: of everything, but like it had the same moral force
Speaker 5: to those particular people who were involved in it. But
Speaker 5: they what they didn't understand is that there is a
Speaker 5: day after you overturn rows.
Speaker 3: And so if you've got this gorilla.
Speaker 5: Which is different than the Civil War and emancipation, now,
Speaker 5: well we don't need to go into reconstruction and Jim.
Speaker 3: Crow and all of that, but there's a day after row.
Speaker 5: And so they run this gorilla campaign to take a
Speaker 5: minority position and make it the law for the majority
Speaker 5: by taking over the courts. But then in the decision
Speaker 5: they kind of didn't have the guts to go all
Speaker 5: the way. Like Alido in the decision says, the Constitution
Speaker 5: is silent on the question of abortion, and therefore it
Speaker 5: needs to go back to the states, to the states,
Speaker 5: and it could even go to Congress. So now you
Speaker 5: you but you recognize that you're a minority position and
Speaker 5: you had to run a gorilla campaign to ban it.
Speaker 5: Now you've thrown it up to the public for them
Speaker 5: to vote on.
Speaker 4: The public's not with you.
Speaker 5: And now you're Roger like, oh, maybe voting isn't the
Speaker 5: way to do this. Let's go back to the course.
Speaker 5: Well you just did. What else is there there's I mean,
Speaker 5: there's like he's saying, wage a cultural war persuade people.
Speaker 3: But okay, good luck with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's really the only route. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: the only way to do it. And it's it's not
Speaker 4: a you know, it's it's definitely not a one that's
Speaker 4: looking great. But Sager pointed this out yesterday on Twitter. Basically,
Speaker 4: he's like, listen, the whole the message of the pro
Speaker 4: life movement, my entire life was let's kick it back
Speaker 4: to the States, and you know that's and now they're
Speaker 4: saying exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3: Of that to the point you just made not like that.
Speaker 4: But what I think is interesting about that is, yes,
Speaker 4: the Republican Party said that the pro life movement itself
Speaker 4: as a whole has Yeah, because again, there are a
Speaker 4: lot of students of a lot of like deep students
Speaker 4: of John Brown and the abolitionist movement in the pro
Speaker 4: life movement, and that take that comparison really seriously do
Speaker 4: see it as a civil rights issue, and in that case,
Speaker 4: incrementalism to a lot of people looks ridiculous. So again,
Speaker 4: there's just plenty of people in the Republican Party who
Speaker 4: are not logically intellectually consistent in their positions on abortion.
Speaker 4: And I feel like that. I'm very curious about Kerry Lake,
Speaker 4: who spent most of her life as a Democrat. I'm
Speaker 4: very curious as to if she ever thought some of
Speaker 4: that stuff through, because from Republican politicians, a lot of
Speaker 4: the pro life talking points are cynical, and you know,
Speaker 4: they're necessary in primaries, and then when push comes to shove,
Speaker 4: it's like, well do I really Usually not, because they're
Speaker 4: electoral consequences that don't jive with the logically consistent position, right.
Speaker 5: And basically, if you're trying to enforce minority position on
Speaker 5: a country that still has some democratic mechanisms in place,
Speaker 5: you can't.
Speaker 7: Do it's nice.
Speaker 5: You either have to be kind of have dictatorial power,
Speaker 5: or like you said, you have to have a cultural
Speaker 5: revolution where everybody just where you win over a majority,
Speaker 5: you persuade a majority of people to.
Speaker 3: Agree with you.
Speaker 5: But you know, the polling and our global experience suggests
Speaker 5: I think that's not going to happen. But I would
Speaker 5: love to see them like try like that. I think
Speaker 5: to me, that is the appropriate way to do it.
Speaker 5: Go try to persuade people rather than having the court,
Speaker 5: you know, come down and tell people what to do.
Speaker 5: So yesterday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin showed up at Congress
Speaker 5: and he was protested during his speech, as pretty much
Speaker 5: everybody is who comes to Congress to talk about anything
Speaker 5: touching on the Israel Gaza war. He was accused of
Speaker 5: facilitating genocide. And so after the protesters left, Center, Tom
Speaker 5: Cotton engagement in a bit of a back and forth
Speaker 5: about whether or not there is a genocide going on
Speaker 5: and whether or not the US and.
Speaker 3: Israel are affecting it. There let's listen to his response.
Speaker 8: Secretary Austin, thank you for acknowledging in response to Center
Speaker 8: Wicker that Hamas committed war crimes on October seventh and
Speaker 8: has been committing them every day since by using human shields.
Speaker 8: I want to address what the protesters raised earlier, is
Speaker 8: Israel committing genocide and Gaza. Senator gott And I, we
Speaker 8: don't have any evidence of genocide being created. So that's
Speaker 8: a no. Israel's not committing genocide and Gassa, we don't
Speaker 8: have evidence of that.
Speaker 5: What do you make of the You know, he could
Speaker 5: say yes, he could say the ICJ has said there's
Speaker 5: a plausible case for genocide.
Speaker 3: He could say no. Instead, he said, we don't have
Speaker 3: evidence for it. What do you make of that?
Speaker 4: He said, we don't have evidence for it. And then
Speaker 4: he also said there's quote no question that there have
Speaker 4: been quote far too many civilian casualties throughout the Israel
Speaker 4: Hamas war, and that he is stressed to jo Abgalante
Speaker 4: that Israel's military must protect civilians. So my basic takeaway
Speaker 4: of this is it's super characteristic of the Biden administration's
Speaker 4: attempt to have it both ways, right, like they want
Speaker 4: to be citing international law in one case and then
Speaker 4: shirking it in another. And I know a lot of
Speaker 4: people are familiar with the definition of genocide at this point,
Speaker 4: the UN accept a definition, the ICC definition. I'm just
Speaker 4: going to read it again because I think it's worth
Speaker 4: talking about in the context of the exchange. In the
Speaker 4: so they say genocide means any of the following acts
Speaker 4: committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
Speaker 4: a national ethnical, racial, or religious group. So in whole
Speaker 4: or in part a national ethnical, racial, or religious group.
Speaker 4: And the reason I bring that up is because again
Speaker 4: it shows how the Biden administration wants to have it
Speaker 4: both ways on international law. And that's I think this
Speaker 4: definition of genocide, which was adopted in the aftermath of
Speaker 4: World War Two, is lacking. I think if you are
Speaker 4: destroying quote in part, a national group, basically anything that
Speaker 4: Israel did after October seventh would have been categorized as
Speaker 4: genocide in whole a national group. When you have an
Speaker 4: Ethno state and another Ethno state, there's just no way
Speaker 4: to have that battle. I'm not saying it's right. The
Speaker 4: way is real prosecuted the war. I don't agree with
Speaker 4: that at all, But I also don't think that this
Speaker 4: definition of genocide has stood the test of time because
Speaker 4: it's just I mean, there's almost no way to prosecute
Speaker 4: a war after October seventh, or to respond after October seventh,
Speaker 4: which even Hamas expected what happened and not fall into
Speaker 4: that definition.
Speaker 5: Because it really depends on the definition of the legal
Speaker 5: definition of In part right, because you know, Hamas killed
Speaker 5: several hundred Israeli civilians on October seventh, does that count
Speaker 5: as in part?
Speaker 3: Legal experts generally say no, that's not what we mean.
Speaker 4: We had one on the show.
Speaker 3: In Part right, and he was saying no.
Speaker 4: He was saying no because in October seventh, right, he
Speaker 4: was saying Hamas may have the intent, but they don't
Speaker 4: have the capability, whereas Israel has the capability. And that
Speaker 4: is an understandable distinction. But yes, that question of in
Speaker 4: part is huge.
Speaker 5: And so said Ericott at the State Department, asked a
Speaker 5: really good question which goes to this where he did
Speaker 5: not obviously get a really good answer. But the question
Speaker 5: is one to sit with, which is is there a
Speaker 5: definition of genocide that would allow Bosnia and Rwanda to apply.
Speaker 3: But not Palestine.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: Because the US is comfortable with saying this was this
Speaker 5: was a genocide in Rwanda, this is a genocide in Bosnia.
Speaker 3: The International Court.
Speaker 5: Of Justice, everybody around the world is comfortable saying, right, well,
Speaker 5: the Wigers.
Speaker 3: He also mentioned Rohina.
Speaker 5: I believe because the Wigers you don't have the you
Speaker 5: have the cultural destruction, a cultural genocide, but you don't
Speaker 5: have the kind of mass death that you had in Rwanda,
Speaker 5: the Rohina and in Bosnia. And also that one is
Speaker 5: contested more more so than the than you know at
Speaker 5: the international level Bosnia Rwanda, but.
Speaker 4: A lot of people that embraced that one would.
Speaker 5: Exactly exactly like you'd have, you know, right, ask Jack
Speaker 5: Sullivan or Blincoln exactly right, They're gonna leave at that one.
Speaker 4: It's just so, it's it's and it's typical. I mean,
Speaker 4: we talked last week about this quote that came across
Speaker 4: an Oliver Norse memoir recently where he said, you know, Israel, Britain,
Speaker 4: they were all selling arms to Iran. The thing that
Speaker 4: really disappointed me. And I know saronic obviously coming from
Speaker 4: Oliver North, but in his memoir he says, the thing
Speaker 4: that really disappointed me is basically the United States was
Speaker 4: like lecturing everybody to not do it right while doing it.
Speaker 5: Reminds me of this famous Chomsky interview where he's asked
Speaker 5: what's the difference between counter terrorism and terrorism and he
Speaker 5: says terrorism is when they do it. The counter terrorism
Speaker 5: is when we do it. So, speaking of terrorism, if
Speaker 5: we can put up the third element here Gozen's returned
Speaker 5: to their neighborhood of Conunis over the last couple of days,
Speaker 5: now that the IDF has withdrawn, to find it unrecognizable
Speaker 5: the way the Associated Press lead says, stunned Palestinians found
Speaker 5: their home city unrecognizable Monday as they filtered in to
Speaker 5: estavage what they could from the vast destruction left by
Speaker 5: Israeli troops who withdrew from Southern Gaz's con units a
Speaker 5: day earlier after months of fight and bombardment, and the
Speaker 5: scenes out the scenes are utterly dystopian. Uh and we
Speaker 5: and you don't know, you know, how many people are
Speaker 5: still buried under this this rubble Uh. Families who who've
Speaker 5: returned back can't even kind of figure out which block
Speaker 5: is theirs anymore because it's just so completely flattened and
Speaker 5: rubble strewn. The reporter sees them by one plastic red
Speaker 5: flower that they that helps him identify, like our apartment
Speaker 5: was over here, and the mom puts that, puts that
Speaker 5: in a bag as as they're headed back to who
Speaker 5: knows where. And as the Associated Press points out in
Speaker 5: this article, this is what Rafa would look like if
Speaker 5: if who you know moves forward with with that, with
Speaker 5: that coming invasion, and he has said it's they now
Speaker 5: have a date, you know that it's it's going to happen.
Speaker 5: There's been reports that when the Israelis and the Americans met,
Speaker 5: the Israeli suggested that they're going to buy tents, hundreds
Speaker 5: of thousands, you know, tents for hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 5: people that they're going to move kind of somewhere else.
Speaker 4: They've already bought forty thousand and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're are already trying to purchase forty thousand. And
Speaker 5: the Americans asked, well, okay, that's that's one thing, but
Speaker 5: you've got what about food, what about sewage treatment?
Speaker 3: You know, what about the water, like, what about the other.
Speaker 5: Things that you know, one point three million people would
Speaker 5: need to survive And that that was kind of that
Speaker 5: was kind of brushed off. Going to the question of
Speaker 5: whether or not there's any evidence of genocide. It's one
Speaker 5: thing to say that there that Okay, we haven't come
Speaker 5: to a final conclusion that there're you know, one hundred
Speaker 5: percent certainty that genocide is happening. As Lloyd Austins had
Speaker 5: to say, there's no evidence denies the actual evidence that
Speaker 5: we do have on the ground. And one of those
Speaker 5: and we can go to this next element is before
Speaker 5: the CNN put together an interesting investigation into the flower
Speaker 5: massacre of late late February.
Speaker 3: This was one of.
Speaker 5: The turning points I think for a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: global global opinion. The US had purchased enough flower to
Speaker 5: feed millions you know, to create millions of meals. And
Speaker 5: for about a month, Isra was keeping this flower out,
Speaker 5: not letting it into, not letting into Gaza. Finally, a
Speaker 5: Connecticut based kind of charity was able to contract with
Speaker 5: a couple of trucks and work with the IDF, which
Speaker 5: escorted it in with tanks. And the very first day
Speaker 5: that this flower that had been waiting outside for so
Speaker 5: long came in, the idea starts opening fire.
Speaker 3: And this is what the CNN investigation.
Speaker 5: Finds IDEAF initially said, actually, we never fired, and then
Speaker 5: later said we fired warning shots, and then they said
Speaker 5: we fired at quote unquote suspects. Cianna has obtained a
Speaker 5: bunch of different videos from Palestinians who were there, who
Speaker 5: were filming at the time that this happened, that showed
Speaker 5: that their time line is a lie, that they fire,
Speaker 5: that they started firing at people who were at the.
Speaker 3: Checkpoint, and to me, if.
Speaker 5: You add everything else together, the fact that they had
Speaker 5: been keeping this out for so long and it had
Speaker 5: only let it in under intense pressure, and then you
Speaker 5: learn from this reporting that they did open fire on
Speaker 5: people waiting for them and then did lie about it.
Speaker 3: And it did then lead to.
Speaker 5: What they wanted, which was the rest of the flower
Speaker 5: not getting in, which then did lead to what they
Speaker 5: also have said publicly that they wanted, which is depriving
Speaker 5: Palestinians of food. It's it's kind of one more deliberate act.
Speaker 5: And so that that's why I say that there is evidence.
Speaker 5: Whether or not that Lloyd Austin wants to say it's
Speaker 5: conclusive evidence is a different question.
Speaker 3: But there's evidence.
Speaker 4: But this is Netnyahu's version of the Biden problem, and
Speaker 4: that he has people saying, you know, yes, use food
Speaker 4: as a weapon of war. In what case throughout human
Speaker 4: history has food not been used as a weapon? In
Speaker 4: what case throughout human history are people feeding the nation
Speaker 4: that they are at war with. Well, it's kind of
Speaker 4: what we decided to do after the horrors of World
Speaker 4: War Two. It's kind of how everyone came to the
Speaker 4: table and said, you can't let that happen again. So
Speaker 4: if you agreed to those standards of war, then yes,
Speaker 4: But there are people in net Yah who's right saying
Speaker 4: why are we doing this? This food is going to
Speaker 4: be used to bolster the people who are trying to
Speaker 4: kill us, And so net Yahoo again has to kind
Speaker 4: of try and have it both ways and not say
Speaker 4: outright that they you know, there's a position in the
Speaker 4: Israeli government, and there are factions in the Israeli government
Speaker 4: that don't want to feed Palestinians because it's it's not
Speaker 4: conducive to flattening Gaza, it's not conducive to their definition
Speaker 4: of winning the war, which is still, by the way,
Speaker 4: completely unclear. The Biden administration, which to a point that
Speaker 4: you and Crystal and and Tager often make, is essential
Speaker 4: to the prosecution of this war from Israel's position, is
Speaker 4: not even cued in on what the date is. That
Speaker 4: Yahoo is not telling them the date of this invasion
Speaker 4: of Rafa, probably because of leaking concerns, intelligence sharing concerns.
Speaker 4: But that just tells you how how fraught the relationship
Speaker 4: is right now, or if it.
Speaker 3: Even exists, or if it's a bluff throughout the exactly.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: Hamas reported earlier this week on its on its various
Speaker 5: public channels that that in one day, in three different engagements,
Speaker 5: thirteen IDF at least thirteen IDF soldiers had been had
Speaker 5: been killed in combat. Yesterday, they posted some some video
Speaker 5: confirming that that had in fact happened.
Speaker 3: These kind of setbacks are lining up.
Speaker 5: With the IDF announcing that it's withdrawing from these significant
Speaker 5: areas of southern Gaza. So in some ways it might
Speaker 5: just be public facing bluster from that Yahoo that that
Speaker 5: actually a ground invade is not something that the IDF
Speaker 5: thinks is kind of advantageous at this point when it's
Speaker 5: also continuing to threaten and be threatened by Asbilla up
Speaker 5: in the north. Plus we have waiting in the wings
Speaker 5: the Iranian response to Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate
Speaker 5: in Damascus, which was a massive breaking of international norms,
Speaker 5: which brings us to our next segment on another massive
Speaker 5: breaking of international norms which seems to perhaps triggered, you know,
Speaker 5: by Israel getting a green light to go ahead and
Speaker 5: attack as consulate and Damascus may have led to Ecuador
Speaker 5: believing that it could just smash its way into the
Speaker 5: Mexican embassy in Keto and drag out the former Vice
Speaker 5: President will have kind of harrowing footage of that up next,
Speaker 5: and will also be joined by Ecuadorian for Foreign Minister
Speaker 5: Gilby Longs.
Speaker 3: Stick around for that.
Speaker 5: People may remember this wild footage from back in January
Speaker 5: out of Ecuador. We can roll up this first vo here.
Speaker 5: This was a group of gangs. Gang leader was broken
Speaker 5: out of prison in Ecuador. The climax of this wild
Speaker 5: incenti that you're looking at here is these gang members
Speaker 5: taking over a TV station live on air, holding people hostage,
Speaker 5: and really putting an exclamation mark on what had become
Speaker 5: an extraordinary kind of devolution in Ecuador from one of
Speaker 5: the safest countries in South America to basically what is
Speaker 5: drifting towards a narco state run by kind of US
Speaker 5: back gangs at this point. Now that brings us to
Speaker 5: just last Thursday, that there was this remarkable moment on
Speaker 5: the international stage where you had Ecuadorian forces burst into
Speaker 5: the Mexican embassy. So this footage was released yesterday by Mexico.
Speaker 5: These are kind of basically Ecuadorian stormtroopers here outside of
Speaker 5: the embassy, burst busting their way in here.
Speaker 3: They're looking for the former vice president.
Speaker 5: They run into embassy staff as you see here, top officials.
Speaker 5: They are throwing, throwing, throwing old diplomats down, down onto
Speaker 5: the down, onto the ground, uh and and dragging out
Speaker 5: uh the former vice president who had been formally offered
Speaker 5: asylum by the Mexican government. It's it's hard to describe
Speaker 5: a greater breach of international norms other than perhaps an
Speaker 5: airstrike on an embassy has happened in Damascus quite recently. Now, uh,
Speaker 5: the US took two days to respond with a very
Speaker 5: modest statement where they where they condemned, where they didn't condemn.
Speaker 5: They the headline on their statement was events at the
Speaker 5: embassy of Mexico in Ecuador.
Speaker 3: Then these of the.
Speaker 5: United States condemns any violation of the of the Vienna
Speaker 5: Conveys on diplomatic relations, so just generally condemning, but they
Speaker 5: never go one to specifically condemn what had just happened.
Speaker 5: This is forty eight hours earlier, bear in mindset. And
Speaker 5: then they write, Mexico and Ecuador are crucial partners of
Speaker 5: the United States, and we place a high value on
Speaker 5: our relations with both countries. We encourage the two countries
Speaker 5: to resolve their differences in accord with international norms, so
Speaker 5: really taking a hands off approach there. They continued to
Speaker 5: be under pressure to say something about what their US
Speaker 5: backed government had done in Keto, and so Jake Sullivan
Speaker 5: yesterday came out at the White House Press briefing, and
Speaker 5: this is how he addressed it.
Speaker 9: Finally, I also want to take a moment before going
Speaker 9: to your questions to address the events of April fifth
Speaker 9: in Quito, Ecuador. We condemned this violation of the Vienna
Speaker 9: Convention on Diplomatic relations, including the use of force against
Speaker 9: embassy officials. We've reviewed the security camera footage from the
Speaker 9: Mexican embassy and believe these actions were wrong. The Ecuadorian
Speaker 9: government district guarded its obligations under international law as a
Speaker 9: host state to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions and
Speaker 9: jeopardize the foundation of basic diplomatic norms and relationships.
Speaker 5: The backdrop of all of this is quite interesting if
Speaker 5: we can put up this fourth veo here. This is
Speaker 5: former National Assemblyman Ronnie Aliaga, who you're looking at here,
Speaker 5: who has created a huge stir in Ecuador over the
Speaker 5: past several weeks by releasing text messages between him and
Speaker 5: Diana Salazar, who was the US backed Attorney General in Ecuador.
Speaker 5: It was Salazar who issued the arrest warrant against the
Speaker 5: former vice president and before Daniel Niboa issued the order
Speaker 5: to carry it out inside the embassy. And what Aliaga
Speaker 5: has been saying is that the text messages between him
Speaker 5: and her confirm that she and the US ambassador have
Speaker 5: been working hand in glove on various prosecutions and and
Speaker 5: political interventions over the past several years, and that Salasar
Speaker 5: is effectively kind of the US's closest ally inside Ecuador
Speaker 5: and is being groomed, being groomed for the presidency. What
Speaker 5: we can add to this, I've spoken to the former
Speaker 5: National Assemblyman for several hours over the past couple of
Speaker 5: weeks and he and he passed on to me we
Speaker 5: can put this up on the screen here, a forensic
Speaker 5: analysis of his of his two phones, because there's a
Speaker 5: lot of speculation in Ecuador that he is making this
Speaker 5: entire thing up, so he sent his He basically allowed
Speaker 5: a Miami based firm to have access to his his
Speaker 5: phones and they confirmed that in fact, these text messages
Speaker 5: between him and the number that appears to belong to
Speaker 5: Salas are are in fact accurate.
Speaker 3: So to kind of give us more.
Speaker 5: Background on all of this is the former Foreign Minister
Speaker 5: of Ecuador, Giomi Long Giomilan, is joining us from like
Speaker 5: much of the government of Rafael Korea of exile, and so,
Speaker 5: first of all, Foreign Minister Long, thank you so much
Speaker 5: for joining us.
Speaker 3: Really appreciate it.
Speaker 10: Thanks very much for the invitation. I'm not formerly in exile,
Speaker 10: but I certainly.
Speaker 11: Don't live in Ecuador right now, unlike many of my
Speaker 11: former colleagues who are in exile who enjoy political asylum
Speaker 11: in a number of countries, actually Mexico being one, which
Speaker 11: we'll discuss with you, Argentina also, but also Belgium, where
Speaker 11: former President Correa himself has been granted political asylum.
Speaker 7: It's not my case, but I don't I don't, I
Speaker 7: don't even ever go about them.
Speaker 3: Would you feel safe going back to Ecuador.
Speaker 5: At this point or do you think that the kind
Speaker 5: of persecution of your party is so broad that there
Speaker 5: might be some risk.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I've been going back to Ecuador. I've been.
Speaker 10: I went back in the most recent elections in October
Speaker 10: twenty twenty three. I was also there in August twenty
Speaker 10: twenty three. I've been going back regularly, and I have
Speaker 10: family in Ecuadors, so I do go back.
Speaker 7: But and it was.
Speaker 10: Better for a while, it's gotten significantly worse now. Again,
Speaker 10: there was allal a little bit, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 10: for a few years I did not go back, and
Speaker 10: it has been unsafe, largely speaking for well for Ecuadorans
Speaker 10: because of the general security situation in Ecuador, but also
Speaker 10: for obviously the political left. Yeah, there are lots. I mean,
Speaker 10: the deep state is very active and very noticeable if
Speaker 10: you've been part of the Gorrega government at some point
Speaker 10: in time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So tell us about Hoorge Glass, the former
Speaker 5: vice president who was dragged out of the Mexican embassy.
Speaker 5: You know what was, what's behind, what's behind these charges,
Speaker 5: and what do we know about his safety because as
Speaker 5: I understand it, the Americans privately did finally tell the
Speaker 5: Ecuadorian government that he ought not to be harmed while
Speaker 5: in prison.
Speaker 3: We'll see you know how effective that is.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So the story of persecution necro is a long and
Speaker 10: complicated one which I'm not going to go into many
Speaker 10: details a belt, but this censed them. The big pivotal
Speaker 10: moment is when Lenny Moreno becomes president in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 10: elected on a continuity ticket after Correa.
Speaker 7: He had been a former vice president of Korea.
Speaker 10: Then he betrays that and does a U, turn sides
Speaker 10: with the Trump administration, does all the things that many
Speaker 10: of US know about, you know, throws Assange out of
Speaker 10: the London embassy, brings Pompeo and Mike Pence Taquito, and
Speaker 10: then signs loads of deals, including an IMF deal, grants
Speaker 10: an an airstrip in the Galapagus to the Pentagon in
Speaker 10: South comm And so I really realigns geopolitically within this
Speaker 10: spield of the United States and within this field of
Speaker 10: the Trump administration.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 10: And then he organizes a referend in twenty eighteen, which
Speaker 10: is the big problem till this day. So I'm just
Speaker 10: going to say quick word about this, the referen And
Speaker 10: while he was still popular, a few months later he
Speaker 10: would have lost it, and he ended his term as
Speaker 10: the most unpopular president in Ecuadorian history. This is Lenin Modno.
Speaker 10: But when he had held referendum, he was still in
Speaker 10: his honeymoon and supported by the media, managed to pass
Speaker 10: this referendum. And there were a few questions. One of
Speaker 10: them was to bar reelections so that Korea could never
Speaker 10: be president again. But the other crucial question was to
Speaker 10: do an overhaul of the judiciary, if you like, to
Speaker 10: purge the judiciary.
Speaker 7: The government morena government.
Speaker 10: I actually called it a decorrealization if you like, this
Speaker 10: a Spanish term, but the dec corea with the president
Speaker 10: the Ecuadorian states, and so you have to get rid,
Speaker 10: purge all the Correista elements of the Ecuadorian state and
Speaker 10: actally includes the judiciary.
Speaker 7: And then he.
Speaker 10: Managed to name all the series of new very direhard
Speaker 10: anti Korea judges who then started the persecution. And this
Speaker 10: was a persecution that was essentially carried out in twenty
Speaker 10: nineteen and twenty twenty in part against fortge Glass, who
Speaker 10: ended up in jail. He did he purchaed six years
Speaker 10: in jail, and another one a big case involving several people,
Speaker 10: including President Correa himself, who got an eight year jail sentence,
Speaker 10: but because he was already living abroad in Belgium, the
Speaker 10: Belgium government, seeing that he was the actual sentence says
Speaker 10: Correa was guilty of psychic influence over others to commit crimes. Right,
Speaker 10: this is actually in the sentence. So the Belgium government
Speaker 10: eventually gave Korea a political asylum based on the fact
Speaker 10: that there was a clear case of political persecution.
Speaker 7: Interpol also denied several arrests read alerts.
Speaker 10: They're called for the arrest of Korea, and so internationally
Speaker 10: the case crumbled, if you like, but domestically in Ecuador
Speaker 10: they doubled down on this, and there is an arrest
Speaker 10: warrant for Korea for several other people and Glass, because
Speaker 10: he was in jail, they managed to start. As soon
Speaker 10: as he was free, they managed to start a new case,
Speaker 10: which is even more ludicrous than the other is this
Speaker 10: essentially has to do with the reconstruction funds after the
Speaker 10: earthquake of twenty sixteen. Ecuador had terrible worth Coak in
Speaker 10: twenty sixteen, and Glass was as vice president, was in
Speaker 10: charge of the reconstruction, and they're saying he use those
Speaker 10: funds not for reconstruction, which okay, he headed a committee
Speaker 10: and those funds were actually used for economic dynamism, you know,
Speaker 10: to stimulate the growth and so on and so.
Speaker 7: Forth, so that's not strictly reconstruction.
Speaker 10: So they're not even accusing him of stealing money using them,
Speaker 10: of not using the funds for reconstruction but for something else, which.
Speaker 7: Was also public policy. So the whole case is a sham.
Speaker 10: So he saw that it was a new sham, and
Speaker 10: so he sought asylum in the Mexican embassy there would
Speaker 10: be in a number of Ecuador and to form a
Speaker 10: correac collaborators former minutes and so on and so forth
Speaker 10: seeking asylum in a Mexican embassy. Over the last few years,
Speaker 10: several of them would give granted safe passage in during
Speaker 10: the previous administrations to enjoy their political asylum as the
Speaker 10: technical term, you know, to be able to reach Mexico
Speaker 10: and enjoy their political asylum there. But this time under Noboa,
Speaker 10: ECUADORI refused to grant the safe passage and in fact,
Speaker 10: as we saw this weekend, quite dramatically storm the embassy,
Speaker 10: which is a massive violation. We could talk about this
Speaker 10: of Article twenty two of the nineteen sixty one Vienna
Speaker 10: Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which is really the ground flow
Speaker 10: of international law, right, it is the convention that establishes
Speaker 10: before any other agreement on international law is made. What
Speaker 10: you know, how we're going to interact between states? What
Speaker 10: are essential rules of the game of diplomacy. You know,
Speaker 10: you have an embassy in my country, I have one
Speaker 10: in yours. We can't touch those. It's kind of common sense.
Speaker 10: Everybody knows that. You know, anybody's watched the kind of
Speaker 10: you know, an action movie knows that you don't storm
Speaker 10: the embassy, right, it's pretty common sense. But they violated that,
Speaker 10: and it's one of the few times that's ever been
Speaker 10: done in Latin American history. So it's very traumatic and
Speaker 10: right now, I could always very isolated.
Speaker 4: So actually on that, I know Ryan has questions about Vienna,
Speaker 4: but I also wanted to ask for people in the
Speaker 4: States trying to like put these puzzle pieces together. This
Speaker 4: question of why is Amlo involved to this degree, and
Speaker 4: obviously the big picture context about crime and cartels and
Speaker 4: COVID and poverty and all of that sort of comes together,
Speaker 4: and Amilo's relationship with Korea and with the sort of
Speaker 4: exiled from her Korea allies. Can you tell us a
Speaker 4: little bit about maybe what's in it for Amlo, why
Speaker 4: Amlo and Mexico are involved to the degree that they're involved,
Speaker 4: and maybe how that speaks to that big picture question
Speaker 4: of Noboha and Buclea and a lot of Latin American
Speaker 4: politics kind of in general.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's actually a great question. I mean, it's Amlo,
Speaker 10: but it's also Mexico. Mexico has a long history of
Speaker 10: being this sort of land for asylum seat, so we
Speaker 10: played a key role in the nineteen fifty four Karakas
Speaker 10: Convention on Asylum, which is sort of a piece of
Speaker 10: international law that Latin Americans are quite proud of, Latin
Speaker 10: American diplomats are quite proud of, because it was a
Speaker 10: precursor law in international law that Latin Americans drafted in
Speaker 10: the inter American system to protect asylum seekers, and it
Speaker 10: was key in a number of ways to establish the
Speaker 10: rules what the rules of political asylum are.
Speaker 7: So Mexico played a big role in that.
Speaker 10: But then in the sixties, seventies and early eighties, in
Speaker 10: the sort of heyday of military dictatorship, particularly in the
Speaker 10: Southern Code, Mexico was the land of exile or political
Speaker 10: asylum of the opponents that were being persecuted by all
Speaker 10: these military Cold War US backed largely military regimes. So
Speaker 10: Mexico became famous as a sort of safe haven. It
Speaker 10: never did have the military regimes that other countries in
Speaker 10: Latin America had, and so Mexico's kind of got this
Speaker 10: kind of prestige. There's also something called the Estrada doctrine,
Speaker 10: which is a doctrine of a former foreign minutes to
Speaker 10: Mexico that has a big impact on the doctrine of
Speaker 10: Mexican foreign policy, but the foreign policy of other Latin
Speaker 10: American states. So there's a whole sort of Mexican I
Speaker 10: will say, almost the institutional culture of international law and
Speaker 10: asylum law, which is symbolic here, and it kind of
Speaker 10: had been a little bit abandoned in the last ten
Speaker 10: twenty years in Mexico, you know, after joining NAFTA stopped
Speaker 10: sort of being seen like this, and AMLO really insisted
Speaker 10: on bringing back this sort of age old tradition of
Speaker 10: Mexico being a land of asylum. And when you had
Speaker 10: during the Trump years this kind of conservative backlash in
Speaker 10: Latin America, including coups like in Bolivia, like where did
Speaker 10: people seek refuge? Where did people hide? You know, people
Speaker 10: who had been part of Evo Morales's cabinet. So they
Speaker 10: went to the Mexican embassy. I actually they went to
Speaker 10: the Mexican and the Spanish embassy in the Bolivian case,
Speaker 10: and in Ecuador, when Moreno started persecuting the left, they're same,
Speaker 10: they went to the Mexican embassy, and AMLO eventually granted
Speaker 10: people asylum, and a number of people asylum. Right now,
Speaker 10: Mexico is the place where there is the greatest number
Speaker 10: of Ecuadorian refugees. There is some in Argentina, has just said.
Speaker 10: President Corprea himself is in Belgium, but lots of people,
Speaker 10: lots of former ministers are in Mexico. So Glass went
Speaker 10: to the Mexican embassy. This seemed to be the logical
Speaker 10: sort of place to go to. And yeah, I think
Speaker 10: it speaks of two things, so answering a question, One
Speaker 10: is Mexican tradition. The other is Amlo, who's kind of
Speaker 10: on the political left, so there may be some sympathies there,
Speaker 10: but I think it's more of a political left that
Speaker 10: wanted to revive this age old Mexican tradition right and
Speaker 10: to go back to the estrata doctrine I've just mentioned.
Speaker 10: And the other element is, of course the geopolitical context,
Speaker 10: with since twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, a sort of right
Speaker 10: wood shift in the hemisphere which is less aggressive now
Speaker 10: because Bolsonado's not there anymore, and have been a few
Speaker 10: victories for the left in Colours and Chile elsewhere, but
Speaker 10: there was fifteen twenty sixteen a big pendudu shift to
Speaker 10: the right and an authoritarian right which persecuted people, which
Speaker 10: meant there were suddenly, just as you had in the
Speaker 10: sixties and seventies, Mexico playing that role again.
Speaker 5: And let me ask you about these charges that have
Speaker 5: been leveled by Ronnie Aliaga in his conversation with me
Speaker 5: and also in these videos that have gone viral inside Ecuador.
Speaker 5: One of the charges he made is related to the
Speaker 5: assassination of Fernando Vievisensi via Essensio. People will remember, probably
Speaker 5: we covered this. This was the presidential candidate, kind of
Speaker 5: anti corruption crusader who was assassinated out right after a
Speaker 5: rally as he's walking to his car. People probably remember
Speaker 5: seeing that footage. What Aliaga says is that Diana Styles
Speaker 5: Are the Attorney General, told him that she had dinner.
Speaker 5: She had a dinner with the US ambassador, and the
Speaker 5: US ambassador told her that they had three field offices
Speaker 5: working on this because Viavisensio was a high level kind
Speaker 5: of US informer US asset uh and that they were
Speaker 5: putting out a five million dollar reward for any information
Speaker 5: leading to his killing, and that they knew their investigation
Speaker 5: had already uncovered the fact that it was the Los
Speaker 5: Lobos gang that was behind his assassination, these are Narco traffickers,
Speaker 5: but that Correa's party was surging in the elections, the
Speaker 5: first round was coming in two weeks, and that it
Speaker 5: would not be good to get that information out because
Speaker 5: the time the Ecuadorian media was blaming Correa and Correa's
Speaker 5: party for this, for this assassination.
Speaker 3: So it's better to you know, allow that to play out.
Speaker 5: Rather than give a gift to the left, you know,
Speaker 5: heading into the election. Niboa does end up then winning
Speaker 5: a very tight election in the second round against Correa's party.
Speaker 5: So what do you make of these allegations from Aliaga
Speaker 5: and are they how seriously are they being taken.
Speaker 10: In So these allegations which are just coming out, and
Speaker 10: you know, it seems they seem to be certified by
Speaker 10: this by this US.
Speaker 7: Based verification, you know it verification.
Speaker 10: Outfit, which is going to be very important because he's
Speaker 10: going to have the proof that this is legitimate. Uh,
Speaker 10: These they're going to I mean only just starting to
Speaker 10: play out now, and because of what's just happened in
Speaker 10: the Mexican embassy in Ecuador, this kind of news cycle
Speaker 10: that is focused on that. But I think once the
Speaker 10: story is out and once it's it hits the mainstream press,
Speaker 10: including outside Ecuador, it's going to have a huge impact
Speaker 10: because they confirm a lot of our suspicions and a
Speaker 10: lot of the accusations that were leveled at Salas R
Speaker 10: back then, and I've been leveled at Salas are back.
Speaker 10: So that's the sort of equivalent of the attorney general
Speaker 10: in Ecuador. FI scale can always say in Ecuador, the
Speaker 10: prosecutor general, if you like, who did not prosecute and
Speaker 10: has did not accelerate investigation before the elections, as you
Speaker 10: just said, because it would have deflected attention or accusations
Speaker 10: away from Cosmo and Kraismo was ahead in the power
Speaker 10: and she's been the arch persecutor of Coraismo and the
Speaker 10: left in Ecuador in the last few years.
Speaker 7: So it's extremely serious.
Speaker 10: But it would mean that the prosecutor general, the attorney
Speaker 10: general would would have acted in a politicized way, would
Speaker 10: have decided to not investigate a crime and who the
Speaker 10: authors of that crime are, or at least delay it
Speaker 10: for political purposes so that you know, Coraismo would get that,
Speaker 10: you know, the the yeah, I would get accused of
Speaker 10: this crime during elections, and bearing in mind that Bavisensio
Speaker 10: was an arch opponent of coraismo, sort of one of
Speaker 10: those kind of very yeah, I mean, sort of played
Speaker 10: the role of a whistleblower, you know, and sort of
Speaker 10: a very you know on the media, constantly sort of
Speaker 10: throwing accusations pretty much against everybody. He was that kind
Speaker 10: of character, and he was we always suspected supported by
Speaker 10: the United States. We're now going to see whether there's
Speaker 10: any more evidence for this, but this was kind of
Speaker 10: vox popular, right. It was the rumor everywhere in the
Speaker 10: political circles that censor was essentially a US agent. Whether
Speaker 10: that's exactly true or order, whether he was supported in
Speaker 10: some way or another, we're going to find out. And
Speaker 10: then when he was murdered, when he was assassinated in
Speaker 10: something which really hurt Ecuador and democracy and the ecuador elections,
Speaker 10: right because he was a presidential candidate, and this is
Speaker 10: the first time in contemporary history that you have a
Speaker 10: presidential candidate that's murdered in Ecuador. I mean, he wouldn't
Speaker 10: have won the elections. It didn't change the outcome. While
Speaker 10: it did in a way, but it wouldn't It's not
Speaker 10: as if it was leading the polls. He was depending
Speaker 10: on different polls, in fourth, fifth place, sixth place, whatever.
Speaker 7: But you know, it was still traumatic, was you know,
Speaker 7: a crucial sort of Yeah.
Speaker 10: It was a political well known politician in Ecuador was
Speaker 10: running for the presidency. He was murdered, and there are
Speaker 10: lots of suspicions at the time that his murder was
Speaker 10: politically motivated in order to hurt Karismo.
Speaker 7: That because he was such sort of an art.
Speaker 10: Critic of Charismo, because he was, you know, constantly throwing
Speaker 10: accusations of Coarismo.
Speaker 7: The natural conclusion of that.
Speaker 10: Would be that it was Corraismo that had him murdered,
Speaker 10: which so you see after his murder, which was on
Speaker 10: the ninth of August, I believe yes, and the actually
Speaker 10: of August, you see between the ninth and twentieth of August,
Speaker 10: a decline of the leading candidacy of the Cordista candidate,
Speaker 10: the left wing candidate, and she, you know, Luisa Gonsiles
Speaker 10: lost probably eight seven, eight nine whatever points.
Speaker 7: She might have.
Speaker 10: Made it without the need for a runoff, without the assassination,
Speaker 10: did recuperate a few. It's right towards the end, when
Speaker 10: it became clearer and clearer that this was not a
Speaker 10: you know that there were there was more and more
Speaker 10: evidence showing that it was a sort of deep state
Speaker 10: narco plot that had nothing to do with Goraismo. So
Speaker 10: I mean, yeah, we I think it significantly changed the
Speaker 10: results of the elections.
Speaker 7: We don't know what would have happened.
Speaker 10: It's very difficult to establish counter factual here, but certainly
Speaker 10: it's very very serious. If judicial authorities in Ecuador decided
Speaker 10: not to investigate this crime, or to delay the investigation
Speaker 10: of the crime in order to prejudice a candidacy, it
Speaker 10: would have been it was a massive judicial wrongdoing and
Speaker 10: you know, intervention in the in the electoral process, in
Speaker 10: democracy essentially, And if the US supported this, if the
Speaker 10: State Department or it's US representatives in Ecuador supported this,
Speaker 10: it is extremely serious. And it's appears from the preliminary
Speaker 10: information that we have that the Prosecutor General, in these
Speaker 10: chats with a former member of Congress, Roniel Jaga, is
Speaker 10: saying that she was backed, supported, encouraged by US diplomats
Speaker 10: to do this.
Speaker 5: And yeah, that does that does indeed, that does indeed
Speaker 5: appear to be what the chats say. And as I've said,
Speaker 5: the Miami based forensic firm confirms that these chats are authentic.
Speaker 5: There was for for people who are confused about why
Speaker 5: that would be needed. Uh, there's this app called Confeede
Speaker 5: used down in South America, which you can you can
Speaker 5: pay a little extra to get to get to get
Speaker 5: it so that as soon as you press the button,
Speaker 5: the message goes away.
Speaker 3: You read it and boom, it's gone.
Speaker 5: So people in that said, there's no way he has
Speaker 5: these because they were communicating via confide. And as he
Speaker 5: showed me, he always carries two phones, so he would
Speaker 5: film himself reading the message, and so he has the
Speaker 5: film of all those messages, and so he sent he
Speaker 5: sent basically the metadata and the guts of all both
Speaker 5: of those phones to the Miami based firm to confirm
Speaker 5: that his story actually does line up that that is
Speaker 5: what he did. Will continue to follow the story because,
Speaker 5: as you said, the US involvement here is extraordinarily you know,
Speaker 5: profound and crucial and the result has been basically a
Speaker 5: collapsing of the of the state and society of Ecuador.
Speaker 5: But gil Me look looking forward to have you on
Speaker 5: again and we'll continue to follow this.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Pleasure all right, up up next, major surveillance reforms in Congress,
Speaker 5: voting today and tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Stick around for that.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, it sounds like the same old story
Speaker 4: over and over again, and that's because basically it is
Speaker 4: the House of Representatives is in a state of chaos
Speaker 4: on the press appress of getting rid of the Speaker
Speaker 4: of the House. Right now, once again little Rinson repeat
Speaker 4: going on, but this time it's over an inch in
Speaker 4: an issue that has real bipartisan support against Section seven
Speaker 4: oh two. This has become a flash point in the
Speaker 4: House Freedom Caucuses battle with Speaker Mike Johnson, who they
Speaker 4: accused rightfully of working with Democrats. Now, from Mike Johnson's perspective,
Speaker 4: he would say, who am I supposed to work with?
Speaker 4: I have a one vote margin here in the House
Speaker 4: of Representatives. My majority is slim one vote, so we
Speaker 4: kind of have to be at the table with Democrats.
Speaker 4: But the Freedom Caucus believes rightfully again that he's made
Speaker 4: a lot of promises about not doing omnibus bill, about
Speaker 4: not funding the war Ukraine, and then seems to be
Speaker 4: moving closer to Democrats on the issue. So Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 4: Green actually released a letter she sent to Mike Johnson's basically,
Speaker 4: I think well characterized as an airing of grievances. Ryan,
Speaker 4: It sure seems like an airing of grievances. In fact,
Speaker 4: the Hill outright called it an airing of grievances against
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson. Yes, yes, exactly happy and you can actually
Speaker 4: she tweeted out the full letter, which I'm sure Mike
Speaker 4: Johnson was very happy about. That's D two. It's a
Speaker 4: it's a long letter, and she goes through seven points
Speaker 4: essentially and walks through things that Mike Johnson says and
Speaker 4: seems to be renegging on. She also talked to CNN
Speaker 4: about her plans just for this week, So there's a
Speaker 4: real question here if Mike Johnson survives the week. And
Speaker 4: again section seven zero two hugely important part of all
Speaker 4: all of this. But let's listen to Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 4: in this interview with CNN talk about what happened after
Speaker 4: she released that letter and sent it to Mike Johnson.
Speaker 9: So you sent this letter out to your college this morning.
Speaker 4: What kind of response have you got?
Speaker 1: Mostly support, It's been pretty incredible. Everyone's flying into town
Speaker 1: today this so.
Speaker 4: I haven't spoken with.
Speaker 1: Everyone, but most of the members I've talked to agree
Speaker 1: with what I've said, they may not come out and
Speaker 1: publicly say it. Many are relieved I've said it, and
Speaker 1: I've even heard within the ranks of leadership there's agreement there.
Speaker 7: So there's agreement for members of the readership with a.
Speaker 1: Letter with much of what I said.
Speaker 4: The letter. Ryan's laughing over it made me laugh. It's
Speaker 4: very It reminds me of Trump being like many people
Speaker 4: are saying that I wrote the greatest letter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that.
Speaker 5: Meting with the guys, like all my friends are just
Speaker 5: out of the picture here having an amazing time.
Speaker 4: They're standing out a frame. You know, we're all having
Speaker 4: a blast.
Speaker 3: We're all going to overthrow the speaker.
Speaker 4: So Matt Gad's last night around eight pm on his
Speaker 4: podcast said, if Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix Fiza,
Speaker 4: we are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix. Now.
Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Green is not a member of the House
Speaker 4: Freedom of Caucus anymore. She's sort of Freedom Caucus adjacent.
Speaker 4: They kicked her out. They're having all kinds of internal battles.
Speaker 4: You can go watch our long interview with Freedom Coccus
Speaker 4: German Bob Good that we did late last year.
Speaker 3: Useful idiot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he called Marjor Taylor Green. He told us that
Speaker 4: Marjori Tailler Green was a useful idiot. So go ahead
Speaker 4: and watch that if you need a primer on all
Speaker 4: the Freedom Caucus dynamics at the moment. But they are
Speaker 4: all in alignment on this question of seven oh two,
Speaker 4: which is becoming again. This is one of the things
Speaker 4: in the push and poll that Mike Johnson has with
Speaker 4: the Freedom Caucus type Republicans. Marjor Tayler Green has already
Speaker 4: filed that motion to vacate. That's what got rid of
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy. It's what Nancy Pelosi herself got rid of
Speaker 4: after she watched Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan use it
Speaker 4: to get rid of John Bayner. She said nope. But
Speaker 4: then Kevin McCarthy made a promise to the Freedom Caucus
Speaker 4: to bring it back if they elected him speaker. They
Speaker 4: elected him speaker, then used the motion of Va Kate
Speaker 4: to get rid of him. Marjorie Taylor Green is now
Speaker 4: doing the same thing to Mike Johnson, but hasn't actually
Speaker 4: forced the vote on getting rid of Mike Johnson yet.
Speaker 4: She could do that basically at any moment. You know
Speaker 4: that that's not parliamentarily accurate, accurate, but it could basically
Speaker 4: happen any day if she has enough support to force
Speaker 4: that vote on getting rid of Mike Johnson. And if
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson does not come to the table on FISA reform,
Speaker 4: that's going to be a huge problem for him. That
Speaker 4: could lead to getting rid of the Speaker of the House. Now,
Speaker 4: Brian and I would love to see section seven h
Speaker 4: two reformed finally, because this is I mean, people who
Speaker 4: care about government surveillance going back years, this has been
Speaker 4: one of these central problems, one of the biggest sources
Speaker 4: of abuse. Trump tweeted recently true social recently recently that
Speaker 4: FISA was abused against him.
Speaker 5: That is, he tweeted last night, kill PIZA. It was
Speaker 5: illegally used against me and many others. They spied on
Speaker 5: my campaign.
Speaker 3: DJT.
Speaker 4: It's funny to say someone who is like upset saying
Speaker 4: kill PISA because FISA came out of the Church Committee
Speaker 4: era to like protect people against government surveillance. But because
Speaker 4: the civil state is so powerful, FISA as this protective
Speaker 4: measure is abused.
Speaker 5: So people are trying to interpret well what does this
Speaker 5: mean about the details of this ongoing seven zero two fight,
Speaker 5: And a lot of people are interpreting it as he's
Speaker 5: with the Matt Gates side, which I think is a
Speaker 5: totally fair reading of it.
Speaker 3: And so this is a live fight.
Speaker 5: So the House Rules Committee produced a rule last night
Speaker 5: that will be voted on on the floor later today
Speaker 5: unless he pulls it, which is as he's done before.
Speaker 3: Gates has said he's against the rule with a one
Speaker 3: vote margin.
Speaker 5: If Democrats don't join, that means it could the rule
Speaker 5: could go down. There are basically three key things that
Speaker 5: they're fighting over in seven oh two. The main one,
Speaker 5: you could call the back door search loophole, which is
Speaker 5: seven oh two allows the NSA to basically spy on
Speaker 5: any foreign person outside of American soil. So they then
Speaker 5: use that authority to gobble up basically the entire world's communications.
Speaker 5: Within the entire world's communications, you obviously have hundreds of
Speaker 5: millions of Americans communications.
Speaker 3: So what the NSA says is, well.
Speaker 5: We legally acquired all of this data and all these communications,
Speaker 5: so now we can search it and we can search
Speaker 5: it for Americans because we acquired it legally.
Speaker 4: Right, We don't need a warrant.
Speaker 5: Because we already we already had the legal authority to
Speaker 5: pick this stuff up. It's like, if you get a
Speaker 5: warrant to search a home and you find something that's
Speaker 5: a different crime than the one you're looking for or
Speaker 5: a different person, you're allowed to use that.
Speaker 3: So they're trying to kind of shoehorn it into that, but.
Speaker 4: That doesn't even make sense because that would be like
Speaker 4: you would be like going into a different house.
Speaker 3: Yes, actually they didn't have.
Speaker 4: A warrant to go into a different house.
Speaker 3: None of it. None of it makes sense. And so
Speaker 3: but the courts have upheld it.
Speaker 5: And so what civil liberties advocates have been trying to
Speaker 5: do for years is to close this back door search loophole.
Speaker 5: And so that's a that's a key live fight right now.
Speaker 5: The second one is the data broker loophole, which probably
Speaker 5: people are probably pretty familiar with, which is that the
Speaker 5: US is not allowed, you know, to collect American data
Speaker 5: without a warrant, you can't do it. And so aside
Speaker 5: from the back door search loophole, what they have is
Speaker 5: a data broker loophole.
Speaker 3: Private companies are allowed to collect all this data.
Speaker 5: So they go out then and they buy up the
Speaker 5: data and then they search it that way. And this
Speaker 5: this would this amendment would say you can't do that.
Speaker 5: It's called the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act,
Speaker 5: which passed unanimously through the Judiciary Committee with the support
Speaker 5: of WHO Representative Mike Johnson at the time. Mike Johnson
Speaker 5: has now made a change in the rule last night
Speaker 5: that will make it impossible for there to be a
Speaker 5: vote on the bill that he the amendment that he
Speaker 5: claims to support the bill, he claims the support the
Speaker 5: Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act.
Speaker 3: And so Mike.
Speaker 5: Johnson is currently screwing everybody on closing the data broker loophole.
Speaker 5: Then the third one is what Mike Johnson's done. He
Speaker 5: has turned over a lot of the bill to the
Speaker 5: Intelligence Committee. This is Republican Mike Turner and Democrat Jim Hymes,
Speaker 5: who were absolutely just in lockstep with the intelligence.
Speaker 4: Community and the Biden administration.
Speaker 5: Like Mike, they were out a couple you may have
Speaker 5: seen this couple weeks or a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3: They were out there saying they leaked this news.
Speaker 5: About how the Russians were using nukes in space and
Speaker 5: therefore we need to hurry up and give more spying
Speaker 5: authorities to the government, like it's been bad faith from
Speaker 5: start to finish. One of the provisions that they are
Speaker 5: putting into this so called reform and that they're saying
Speaker 5: is a narrowing would actually allow the US to spy
Speaker 5: on any American business if it has some connection, some
Speaker 5: foreign connection. And so what civil liberties folks pointed out was,
Speaker 5: so you can just walk into Starbucks then, and without
Speaker 5: a warrant, you can hit their router because there are
Speaker 5: Starbucks everywhere around the world. A lot of these kind
Speaker 5: of landlord firms own properties all over the world, so
Speaker 5: you could so that basically all these landlords you can
Speaker 5: search them. And you can imagine why this would be
Speaker 5: valuable information to the FBI. Did this person go to
Speaker 5: this Starbucks? What about this person that lives in this building?
Speaker 3: For months?
Speaker 5: Mike Turner and Jim Himes said that people were just
Speaker 5: fear mongering and lying and that the bill wouldn't actually
Speaker 5: do this. So the new language that came out last
Speaker 5: night says that all of these authorities on businesses remain
Speaker 5: in this new bill, but there are carve outs for
Speaker 5: food service and for landlords, which is an admission that
Speaker 5: the critics were correct. And what it also means then
Speaker 5: anything there are like four carveouts that they list in there.
Speaker 5: Anything not mentioned there would then be subject to this
Speaker 5: warrantless spying, like whether it's a bowling alley or something. Hey,
Speaker 5: they don't serve enough food, you know, and that the
Speaker 5: pizza that's spinning underneath that land that doesn't count as food.
Speaker 3: That's cardboard. So therefore we as.
Speaker 5: The FBI NSA, we can go in and we can
Speaker 5: scoop up all of this data.
Speaker 4: Here we laugh, but they will sink to know.
Speaker 5: Also, it's not food. It is cardboard. So you have
Speaker 5: to be like, all right, fair enough, they're serving cardboard.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but what if you eat the cardboard?
Speaker 3: Does that mean food? That's why you got to go
Speaker 3: That's why you got to go to the courts here.
Speaker 5: So basically, what started out as reform could end up
Speaker 5: with an actual expansion of surveillance authority. And it's all
Speaker 5: up to Mike and who his whole career twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: he voted for the toughest surveillance reform. His whole career,
Speaker 5: he has been a surveillance.
Speaker 3: You know critic. Yeah, he's been with the Freedom Caucus
Speaker 3: on everything.
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 5: Now that he's in power, the question is can he
Speaker 5: stand up to the intelligence community or not?
Speaker 4: And I think that goes back to the way Matt
Speaker 4: Gates put it. He said, if he won't, he's unwilling
Speaker 4: to fix FISA. We are left wondering what he is
Speaker 4: indeed willing to fix. And that coming from Matt Gates,
Speaker 4: someone obviously who Kevin McCarthy just yesterday said I am
Speaker 4: not Speaker of the House right now because one member
Speaker 4: didn't was upset about an ethics complaint about whether he
Speaker 4: had sex with the seventeen year old girl. And McCarthy said,
Speaker 4: I don't know if he did it, but that's what
Speaker 4: this was all about. The point is, Matt Gates, that
Speaker 4: was a hair trigger because the majority is so small
Speaker 4: and the motion of a kate just requires one member.
Speaker 4: It's already been filed in this case. And so where
Speaker 4: you have that sense of betrayal that Mike Johnson his friends,
Speaker 4: with many of those Freedom Caucus guys who could be
Speaker 4: easily persuaded by this argument. Granted, where else do they go?
Speaker 4: You know who else is going to be Speaker at
Speaker 4: that point, and it doesn't serve their purposes. I think
Speaker 4: a lot of them ultimately aren't happy about how everything
Speaker 4: has gone post McCarthy. And you know it's easy to
Speaker 4: get to laugh at that and be like, yeah, no kidding, well, yes,
Speaker 4: no kidding. So all that is to say, Mike Lee,
Speaker 4: here's a good tweet from Mike Lee. This is D five.
Speaker 4: Mike Lee has this point that Ryan just made Speaker
Speaker 4: Johnson and Jeffries Minority Leader Jefferies. I came Jeffries voted
Speaker 4: for a Five's a seven oh two weren't requirement back
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen, and then he said, why do the
Speaker 4: Intel Bros. Trademarket to tell House leadership what to do?
Speaker 4: This is also D six. This is a tweet from
Speaker 4: an expert on seven oh two at the Brennan Center,
Speaker 4: So from the left surveillance, anti surveillance experts from the
Speaker 4: left laying out exactly what Ryan just said. And I
Speaker 4: would encourage everyone to go check out this thread. It's
Speaker 4: called RISA. That's the version of the bill that has
Speaker 4: this ridiculous permanent reauthorization basically embedded into it. Such a
Speaker 4: familiar tactic to a lot of people ryan coming with
Speaker 4: the label of reform and actually having a backdoor either
Speaker 4: reauthorization or a permanent codification of these types of these
Speaker 4: types of rules. Now, let's roll D four just so
Speaker 4: people can get a taste of how doggedly the Biden
Speaker 4: administration House Republicans and Senate members and Senate Democrats that
Speaker 4: are so tied to Section seven o two because they
Speaker 4: get these briefings, they go into the you know, they
Speaker 4: go into the secure briefing center, get this terrifying information
Speaker 4: from the FBI, and then Russian space nukes. Russian space nukes,
Speaker 4: They're coming for everyone.
Speaker 3: I don't even go to space anymore after hearing that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's too dangerous. So anyway, let's listen to Jake Selban.
Speaker 9: The administration strongly supports the bipartisan bill whose text is
Speaker 9: now with the Rules Committee, to reauthorize this Essential Intelligence
Speaker 9: Authority and other files of provisions before they would expire
Speaker 9: on April nineteenth. If we lost seven oh two, we
Speaker 9: would lose vital insight into precisely the threats Americans expect
Speaker 9: us in government to identify, encounter terrorist threats to the homeland,
Speaker 9: ventanyl supply chains, bringing deadly drugs into American communities, hostile governments,
Speaker 9: recruitment of spies in our midst transnational repression by authoritarian regimes,
Speaker 9: penetrations of our critical infrastructure adversaries, attempts to illicitly acquire
Speaker 9: sensitive dual use and military commodities and technology, ransomware attacks
Speaker 9: against major American companies and nonprofits, Russian war crimes.
Speaker 7: And more.
Speaker 4: My absolute favorite part of that is when it's actually
Speaker 4: not bad strategically messaging, when he's saying, we need seven
Speaker 4: or two to do what the people expect us to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And Russian war crimes. They can't investigate Russian war
Speaker 5: crimes without this story. All that's a lie. All that's
Speaker 5: a complete lie. They have the authority to do overseas searches.
Speaker 3: And they can even continue their investigations.
Speaker 5: They're doing this fear mongering over the authorities expiring on
Speaker 5: April nineteenth, But the authorities are like, everyone that's stamped
Speaker 5: is good for a year, so it's actually good for
Speaker 5: well into twenty twenty five. So all of it is lying,
Speaker 5: All of it is fear mongering. What should what do
Speaker 5: you think? What should people root for? At this point,
Speaker 5: I'd say voting the rule down later today the House
Speaker 5: floor and forcing Mike Johnson to at least allow a
Speaker 5: vote on the fourth Amendment is not for sale. At
Speaker 5: least allow vote.
Speaker 3: Look. Oh oh, and there's one other thing that they've
Speaker 3: done here.
Speaker 5: They and Mike Turner didn't appear to realize this, and
Speaker 5: the Rules Committee hearing last night, they put two provisions
Speaker 5: in that specifically grant new protections for members of Congress
Speaker 5: when it comes to surveillance that do not apply to
Speaker 5: anybody else.
Speaker 3: So it's it's the.
Speaker 4: Can't foil them, can't surveil them.
Speaker 5: They get amazing healthcare and a cool pension, and so
Speaker 5: that one of it would be one of them is
Speaker 5: like they get noticed, you know, they get noticed, and
Speaker 5: you need different authorities. Like basically it sets members of
Speaker 5: Congress apart in a way that they hadn't been before.
Speaker 3: It has been used against them, and it comes from Yes.
Speaker 5: A member of Congress was spied on like a year
Speaker 5: ago or two years ago or so. It was a
Speaker 5: kind of rank and file Republican who had been really
Speaker 5: supportive of like five authorities.
Speaker 3: Right, I forget, I forget who exactly it was.
Speaker 5: But as a result of that, they're like Okay, fine,
Speaker 5: we'll we'll stop surveilling members of Congress without going through
Speaker 5: these these hoops, rather than what you would hope Congress
Speaker 5: would demand is actual reform for all American citizens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's just so ridiculous, and it's a
Speaker 4: great example of why so many people are upset with
Speaker 4: Mike Johnson, but also how the kind of DC blob
Speaker 4: feels the public. Time and again, it's plainly unconstitutional. If
Speaker 4: they want it to be constitutional, they should make that
Speaker 4: case as to why we should amend the Constitution to
Speaker 4: allow them to do that.
Speaker 3: And Marjorie Taylor Green's list of grievances was mostly.
Speaker 5: Abortion related, Green New Deal, climate change trands, stuff like.
Speaker 3: It was a four page list.
Speaker 5: Hopefully people like Gates can channel her into a seven
Speaker 5: oh two direction.
Speaker 4: Oh, they absolutely are, Yeah, I mean they're absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4: Margor Tayler Green's.
Speaker 3: Got if you got this club, you might as well
Speaker 3: wield it for something useful.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it comes down to again, if you're not
Speaker 4: all of those grievances from Marjorie Taylor Green, it was
Speaker 4: basically about Mike Johnson saying all of these things before
Speaker 4: he became s talking a really big game about what's
Speaker 4: wrong with Republican leadership in DC, you know, voting by
Speaker 4: or ruling by omnibus. That's packed with all of these
Speaker 4: handouts to the left special interests via nonprofit funding and
Speaker 4: grants and all of that. But what a lot of
Speaker 4: people see, and we just talked about this, but it's
Speaker 4: worth emphasizing what a lot of people see in that
Speaker 4: is this is the Mike Johnson like, this is the
Speaker 4: central This is one that we all agree on. You've
Speaker 4: agreed with us on this for years seven oh two.
Speaker 4: This was used as a weapon against Donald Trump politically.
Speaker 4: It is one of the most glaring and egregious things.
Speaker 4: And if you're flipping on this, we can't trust you
Speaker 4: on anything else. And Matt Gates basically came out and
Speaker 4: said that last night.
Speaker 3: So that's that's.
Speaker 4: Totally on the table in these conversations about the motion
Speaker 4: of vacate, no question about it. So stay tuned. We'll
Speaker 4: see what happens by the end of the week. I
Speaker 4: think Johnson, I don't think they have anywhere to go.
Speaker 4: They learned that after McCarthy, so I don't think they'll
Speaker 4: they'll vacate Johnson. But that's totally up in the air
Speaker 4: could happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, call your member of Congress, tell them not to
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 4: Get rid of seven oh two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Form seven oh two whatever.
Speaker 4: Get rid of.
Speaker 3: What they want to do is a stupid rule.
Speaker 4: Down, Yes, vote the rule down. All right. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about Norfolk Southern, which has Yesterday it was announced that
Speaker 4: Norfolk Southern reached what could be the largest settlement in
Speaker 4: the history of railroads in the United States over the
Speaker 4: train derailment in East Palestine. We can go put the
Speaker 4: first element up on the screen here, six hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars to residents and businesses in East Palestine, Ohio and
Speaker 4: some I think it's like within a ten mile radius,
Speaker 4: something to that extent. So on Tuesday, the lead attorneys
Speaker 4: representing the victims of Norfolk Southern announced the Atlanta based
Speaker 4: company had agreed in principle to a six hundred million
Speaker 4: dollar class action lawsuit settlement. It does, though still in
Speaker 4: the to be approved by a US District Court judge
Speaker 4: in Youngstown. I'm reading now from the Canton repository. Now,
Speaker 4: based on our research and settlements are often confidential, but
Speaker 4: this looks significantly larger than any other derailment settlement that
Speaker 4: we're aware of in the United States, said Jane Conroy
Speaker 4: of Simons Tanley Conroy, one of the lead attorneys, in
Speaker 4: a zoom interview with the Canton Repository yesterday. Although Ryan,
Speaker 4: I want to put this next element up on the
Speaker 4: screen as well. This is actually a tweet reacting to
Speaker 4: the settlement by Aaron Brockovich, who is quoting one of
Speaker 4: Julia Roberts's big lines, obviously based on her own life
Speaker 4: in the movie. Aaron Brockovich quote, before you come back
Speaker 4: here with another lay mass offer, I want you to
Speaker 4: think real hard about what your spine is worth, mister Walker,
Speaker 4: or what you might expect someone to pay you for
Speaker 4: your uterism, miss Stanchez. And then Aaron Brockovich added, the
Speaker 4: money never makes them whole. That's a I think a
Speaker 4: really apt way to put it. Looking at the sixth
Speaker 4: dread million dollars settlement class action lawsuit that is going
Speaker 4: to be spread across many many people in East Palestine,
Speaker 4: many many businesses in East Palestine, and the money never
Speaker 4: could make you whole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And there's still open questions about uh criminal guilt
Speaker 5: here like there have there there have not been prosecutions yet.
Speaker 5: There there are important questions that investigators need to be
Speaker 5: asking about. Uh, you know, in particular, you know, what
Speaker 5: did the company know when they did the controlled demolition?
Speaker 3: Did how was it was that actually necessary? Did what
Speaker 3: information did they have?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 3: Did they did?
Speaker 5: They did they willingly, you know, create an environmental catastrophe
Speaker 5: in order to just get the trains moving a little
Speaker 5: bit quicker.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know they they have claimed that they really had
Speaker 5: no choice, but there the evidence does not seem to
Speaker 5: be lining up in that direction. And you know, this
Speaker 5: does not admit any any guilt. So you know, hopefully,
Speaker 5: you know, prosecutors are still looking at this, you know,
Speaker 5: if you know, if if history.
Speaker 3: Is any guide, they're not.
Speaker 5: But you know, you've got jd Vance, You've got Shared Brown,
Speaker 5: You've got you know, politicians from both parties who continue
Speaker 5: to put pressure on Norfolk Southern Yet the jade Vans
Speaker 5: and Shared Brown's real safety reform. You know, we haven't
Speaker 5: seen that, you know, we've we've seen that get bottled up.
Speaker 5: So you know, they it's good that people are going
Speaker 5: to get some compensation, but systemically it looks like so
Speaker 5: far the culprits are getting away with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really important point that bill, the JD
Speaker 4: Vance Bill, has gone basically nowhere in Congress because of
Speaker 4: opposition to people who you take money from the industry,
Speaker 4: are close with the industry. That's a real uphill battle. Now.
Speaker 4: As the attorney said, Norfolk Southern actually settled quicker than
Speaker 4: what was expected and right, and you made this quick
Speaker 4: yeah yeah, and looks like victims could potentially get money
Speaker 4: by the end of the year, which is I mean,
Speaker 4: that is fast as these things go. But the other
Speaker 4: important point that you made, Ran is that they're not
Speaker 4: admitting any guilt, so no liability, no fault admitted in
Speaker 4: this settlement. But they're also still facing a lawsuit that
Speaker 4: was filed by the Ohio Attorney General for environmental damages
Speaker 4: that resulted after the derailment, and Yost has said Dave
Speaker 4: Yos the Age has said he wouldn't settle the suit
Speaker 4: quote without a detailed understanding of what happened, who is responsible,
Speaker 4: and how we avoid other communities like East Palestine from
Speaker 4: being victims to this type of incident. Also worth noting,
Speaker 4: as The New York Times does, that the National Transportation Safety
Speaker 4: Board is continuing to investigate the incident, hasn't released its
Speaker 4: own report into what happened. So there's plenty more in
Speaker 4: all of this to come for getting to the bottom
Speaker 4: of actually what happened. Now a little bit more the
Speaker 4: details of the settlement. The lawyer said that it would
Speaker 4: provide payment to residents and businesses in East Palestine and
Speaker 4: also the affected surrounding communities within a twenty mile radius,
Speaker 4: pending the court approval that we mentioned earlier. Now East
Speaker 4: Palatine alone is almost five thousand people and they would
Speaker 4: all be eligible for payment from the settlement. Then it
Speaker 4: also has a voluntary program that would compensate individuals within
Speaker 4: a ten mile radius for past, present, and future personal
Speaker 4: injuries that result from chemical exposure at Norfolk. Southern highlighted
Speaker 4: their contributions to the community, which again like they've already
Speaker 4: poured more than one hundred million dollars into different infrastructure.
Speaker 4: You know they've done community They say they've done two
Speaker 4: million dollars for community directive projects, four point three million
Speaker 4: to upgrades drinking water infrastructure, five hundred thousand dollars for
Speaker 4: an economic development grant, and that huge one hundred and
Speaker 4: four million for community assistance to communities around East Palestine
Speaker 4: including Ohio and Pennsylvania twenty five million dollars included in
Speaker 4: that for regional safety training improvements to their city park,
Speaker 4: direct payments to residents twenty one million for that, and
Speaker 4: then nine million dollars to local first responders. So just
Speaker 4: the cost of doing business, I guess for Norfolk Southern
Speaker 4: until Congress acts and steps in.
Speaker 5: Here, right, it's the it's the right.
Speaker 4: They seven hundred million dollars.
Speaker 5: Using the money that they're saving by you know, reducing
Speaker 5: the number of workers that they pay and keeping their
Speaker 5: pay low.
Speaker 4: Yeah, seven hundred million dollar accidents so far, you can
Speaker 4: you can put a price tag on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Indeed, until Congress does anything, this is basically what you're
Speaker 4: stuck with. But I thought that Aaron Brockovich quote was poignant.
Speaker 4: The money never makes anyone hole these some people's homes,
Speaker 4: it's their community. It's just unbelievable, but believable that Norfolk
Speaker 4: Southern settled so quickly, given I think what we will
Speaker 4: continue to find out about their liability. Let's move on
Speaker 4: to this extremely buzzy viral story that The Free Press
Speaker 4: published yesterday from a current, at least as of right now,
Speaker 4: employee of National Public Radio. Right at least as of
Speaker 4: the time the op ed was published. Is Ury Berliner,
Speaker 4: who has worked for NPR for more than twenty five years.
Speaker 4: For more than twenty years, I think he said twenty
Speaker 4: five years, penned an article sort of blowing the whistle
Speaker 4: on the internal ideological bias at NPR, which again people
Speaker 4: will laugh at because it seems so obvious. But he
Speaker 4: does have kind of an interesting quote when he writes
Speaker 4: about Actually he acknowledges that in this article for the
Speaker 4: Free Press, we can put the first element up on
Speaker 4: the screen that's a picture of him, and the headline
Speaker 4: is I've bet at an NPR for twenty five years.
Speaker 4: Here's how we lost America's trust. He does cite in
Speaker 4: fact polling that shows NPR it was celebrated internally by NPR.
Speaker 4: This was one of my favorite parts of his article.
Speaker 3: But the poll.
Speaker 4: Let me just read from him. He says, if ever,
Speaker 4: our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that
Speaker 4: we had a higher trustworthy score, that's a CNN or
Speaker 4: the New York Times. But the research from the Harris
Speaker 4: poll is hardly reassuring. It found that three and ten
Speaker 4: audience members familiar with NPR said, they associate MPR with
Speaker 4: the characteristic quote trustworthy. That's what NPR was internally celebrating,
Speaker 4: because it was higher than the trustworthiness of The New
Speaker 4: York at times. But he also does write into that
Speaker 4: question of like NPR sort of a punchline in conservative circles, like,
Speaker 4: of course, you know, the NPR tote bag crowd is
Speaker 4: something that everybody makes a joke about. Of course NPR
Speaker 4: is liberal, he says. If you are conservative, you will
Speaker 4: read this and say, duh. It's always been this way,
Speaker 4: he writes, but it hasn't. Back in twenty eleven, although
Speaker 4: NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left, it still
Speaker 4: bore a resemblance to America at large, twenty six percent
Speaker 4: of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three percent as
Speaker 4: middle of the road, and thirty seven percent as liberal.
Speaker 4: By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different. Only
Speaker 4: eleven percent describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative, twenty
Speaker 4: one percent as middle of the road, and sixty seven
Speaker 4: percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal.
Speaker 4: We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates
Speaker 4: and traditional liberals. He goes on to complain about coverage
Speaker 4: of the pandemic of the lab leak of the Hunter
Speaker 4: Biden laptop, of Russiagate. He talks about how often NPR
Speaker 4: would interview Adam Shift but then Shift, but then how
Speaker 4: quickly Russiagate faded from NPR's coverage after the Muller report
Speaker 4: came out with basically no Maya Kalpa. He also has
Speaker 4: a really interesting section about how NPR's union has pushed
Speaker 4: for affinity groups, as he calls them to allow or
Speaker 4: to require NPR management to tackle this is his word
Speaker 4: DEI issues in the coverage, and that's a particularly interesting
Speaker 4: one where you bring labor into this question of ideological
Speaker 4: bents and newsrooms. I don't know what you make of that, Ryan,
Speaker 4: and I don't know what you make of this whole article.
Speaker 4: I'm curious.
Speaker 3: It is an interesting phenomenon in that.
Speaker 5: Know, the traditional role of unions has been to fight
Speaker 5: for better job protections, wages, benefits, general workplace issues, but
Speaker 5: to be kind of ideological, ideologically and politically agnostic in newsrooms.
Speaker 5: The last five six years you have seen a trend
Speaker 5: where staff unions have argued much more around editorial content,
Speaker 5: which is kind of which is an interesting development and
Speaker 5: an interesting way to think about unions. He also said
Speaker 5: that he felt like NPR was kind of too too
Speaker 5: supportive of the Palestinian cause.
Speaker 4: Oh you found a tweet, actually an interesting tweet for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so in a couple Actually, z squirrel flagged a
Speaker 5: couple of these that Twitter account.
Speaker 3: So one from October twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Three, it's about a Barack Revied reported that there was
Speaker 5: going to be an event in New York called the
Speaker 5: Antifada fund Raver and so somebody else, somebody.
Speaker 3: Else sounds like just such a great time.
Speaker 5: So somebody else then posted, uh, one hopes at one
Speaker 5: hopes a lot of FBI and NYPD types will be
Speaker 5: in attendance, also press taking pictures and getting names. Opportunities
Speaker 5: like this are hard to come by. Yuri Berliner retweeted that,
Speaker 5: so no, which is you know, you can be like, look,
Speaker 5: I don't think there should be an anti fat A fundraiver,
Speaker 5: Like that's that's one thing. To say that there ought
Speaker 5: to be FBI and NYPD surveillance of people who are
Speaker 5: outside of it is is in contradiction with Berliner's claim
Speaker 5: that he's like anti censorship and like, you know, pro
Speaker 5: free speech, and it's published in a what does she
Speaker 5: call her news outlet, free press?
Speaker 4: They Wise newsletter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, but Barry Wise would have you know eagerly.
Speaker 5: You know, that's exact same position.
Speaker 3: In fact, I mean it speaks.
Speaker 4: To a broader problem with like the Bill Ackman sort
Speaker 4: of contingency on the Center that has been sort of
Speaker 4: very critical of Harvard, and I think rightfully highlighting a
Speaker 4: double standard. But some of those same people are in
Speaker 4: favor of restrictions or will have inflated definitions of anti
Speaker 4: Semitism that will broadly sweep speech into the category of
Speaker 4: hate I think in ways that are objectionable. When, for example,
Speaker 4: talking about as he does here, pro trans advocacy groups
Speaker 4: briefed their newsroom and asked them not to use the
Speaker 4: term biological sex. MPR brought them in as part of
Speaker 4: this DEI push that is broadly swept into this category
Speaker 4: of hate speech sometimes and that's wrong, but it's not consistent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think newsrooms should not newsrooms, I think
Speaker 5: should make their own judgments and should not be taking
Speaker 5: guidance from advocacy groups one way or another. On you know,
Speaker 5: it's fine to like, obviously you should talk to everybody.
Speaker 5: That's what reporters do. They go up and talk to people.
Speaker 5: But I and I actually think so. One of the
Speaker 5: things he complains about was that this database that was
Speaker 5: listing the kind of rais and gender of the guests
Speaker 5: that were on air, And I actually kind of disagree
Speaker 5: with him on that one, because if you let you know,
Speaker 5: if you are just blindly booking guests, and let's say
Speaker 5: you're a white guy and most of your friends are
Speaker 5: white guys, like you're going to end up not through
Speaker 5: any kind of conscious bias, you're just gonna be booking
Speaker 5: endless white guys. And that is a disservice from my perspective,
Speaker 5: to your audience, because you're you're cutting out a lot
Speaker 5: of interesting perspective by keeping this really tight circle.
Speaker 4: And so what even accidentally.
Speaker 5: Actually right, Yeah, And so what a database does is
Speaker 5: after a couple of months, you look at it and
Speaker 5: you're like, oh, we've had like thirty guests and like
Speaker 5: twenty eight of them are white guys.
Speaker 3: Two of them were white women.
Speaker 5: Like, maybe we need to make a more conscious effort
Speaker 5: to not just call the people that we know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's if that's what's happening, as opposed
Speaker 4: to like if there are internal quota systems, because the.
Speaker 3: Way I'm interpreting the quota system should be come.
Speaker 4: On the quota session.
Speaker 3: Yet believe h Look, come on.
Speaker 4: I think it's yeah. I feel like you can make
Speaker 4: that internal effort to include genuinely diverse voices, whether that's race, sex, ideology,
Speaker 4: which I.
Speaker 3: Know NPR not doing so great on that.
Speaker 4: Yet not doing so great on that all the time. Although,
Speaker 4: like I said, I was listening to Nancy Master an
Speaker 4: interesting interview with them on the arizon A Supreme Court
Speaker 4: thing just yesterday, so I think they still try. But
Speaker 4: whether they're actually capable of that is a different question.
Speaker 4: Because this is one of the biggest problems in media
Speaker 4: right now, is the idea that people who for example,
Speaker 4: support Donald Trump. Nancy Mace huge Donald Trump supporter, but
Speaker 4: she's a little different because she has this different perspective
Speaker 4: on abortion, and that's what they were interviewing her about.
Speaker 4: But people who support Donald Trump, for example, I don't
Speaker 4: know if you were still at HuffPo when they have
Speaker 4: post when they did the asterisk thing with Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: donald Trump as a racist bigot. So if you extend
Speaker 4: that to Donald Trump supporters, that means they're necessarily supporting racism, sexism, bigotry, etc.
Speaker 4: Which is not the case for why a lot of
Speaker 4: people vote for Donald Trump. If you have that sort
Speaker 4: of categorization and say this isn't ideological, it's like joy
Speaker 4: Reads saying we want more Republicans on our network. We
Speaker 4: want more List Cheney, more Adam Kinsinger on our network,
Speaker 4: but not Ronald McDaniel. That's probably the biggest problem with
Speaker 4: like ideological diversity is that it's not even seen as
Speaker 4: a lack of ideological diversity in some newsrooms because they
Speaker 4: categorize people who support roughly half of the country who
Speaker 4: voted in twenty twenty voted for Donald Trump. So if
Speaker 4: you categorize them as supporters of perpetuators of racism, sexism,
Speaker 4: migatry in that sort of direct sense, then you're not
Speaker 4: going to think it makes sense to interview them. I'm
Speaker 4: not going to interview you know, strom Thurman on this
Speaker 4: this You know that would have been a mistake back then.
Speaker 4: It's a mistake now we can't repeat it.
Speaker 5: It does feel like NPR in recent years has taken
Speaker 5: on a more kind of democratic feel activist. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: like they really do feel like a lot of the
Speaker 5: assumptions that the standard Democrat makes about the world are
Speaker 5: the assumptions that the NPR is also making about the world.
Speaker 5: And the Russia Gate situation, I think is a good
Speaker 5: example of that and the way that they handled Trump
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 3: Like I was listening to an interview with Scott.
Speaker 5: Walker a couple of months ago, and basically every single
Speaker 5: question they asked Scott Walker was about January sixth, then
Speaker 5: like was election stolen?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It's like all right, Like and come on in PR,
Speaker 5: is there anything else you can Is there anything else
Speaker 5: you want.
Speaker 3: To talk about here?
Speaker 5: Like it's twenty twenty four, now move, let's you've got
Speaker 5: Scott Walker, like ask him some other questions like what
Speaker 5: labor anything?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot that could be asked.
Speaker 5: And then like why is Then then they'll say why
Speaker 5: is Donald Trump obsessed with this?
Speaker 3: It's like, yes, you're the one that stops.
Speaker 4: Talking about one hundred percent? And you know, I was
Speaker 4: listening to NPR. I just looked this up and was
Speaker 4: obviously on March twenty first, because that's the date the
Speaker 4: story was published. But I was listening to a segment
Speaker 4: on the Murphy versus Missouri case, and they were talking
Speaker 4: to Barbara McQuade, who's former US attorney for Eastern District Michigan.
Speaker 4: If you watch MSNBC, you have seen her all of
Speaker 4: the time, and the conversation it was on point was
Speaker 4: out rageous on free speech and the press and the
Speaker 4: First Amendment. It was like to hear journalist talking about
Speaker 4: that case with a former prosecutor in the way that
Speaker 4: they were, which is basically terrifying, but basically saying, like
Speaker 4: the First Amendment, you know, the government has to police
Speaker 4: dangerous speech, et cetera. Just like operating on that presumption
Speaker 4: and acting as though anybody who questioned that was either
Speaker 4: a victim of right wing disinformation, which has been a
Speaker 4: charge that Matt Taibi has been hit with and Glenn
Speaker 4: Greenwald has been hit with. I mean, it's just so
Speaker 4: disturbing to see that baked into the presumption again from
Speaker 4: like a news outlet that's not supposed to be super
Speaker 4: far to the left. It's funded by taxpayers to some extent,
Speaker 4: like it's National Public Radio. It's just unfortunate. And part
Speaker 4: of the reason I want to do this segment is
Speaker 4: that I feel like a lot of people have a
Speaker 4: lot of nostalgia for NPR, like they grew up listening
Speaker 4: to NPR, even across socioeconomic divides. It's just in the
Speaker 4: past it was kind of a consensus outlet, like a
Speaker 4: lot of people listen to it. They might have disagreed
Speaker 4: with it. Conservatives definitely disagreed with it, but it's convenience
Speaker 4: listen to.
Speaker 5: And there's each Each local station is so important because
Speaker 5: you know, I think a city is really enriched by
Speaker 5: having a local public radio station that then feeds up
Speaker 5: to the national one. And I think we are enriched
Speaker 5: as a nation as as like a single people to have,
Speaker 5: you know, one place that everybody kind of trusts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you're sitting in traffic frustrated.
Speaker 4: Yes, I completely agree with that. Before we wrap the
Speaker 4: show today, RN, I just want to say that seven
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars from Norfolk Southern I just quickly looked
Speaker 4: it up. They had almost two billion in stock buybacks
Speaker 4: in twenty three, so seven hundred million dollars basically six
Speaker 4: hundred million in the settlement more than one hundred million
Speaker 4: so far in voluntary payments to East Palestine for infrastructure
Speaker 4: cleanup and all of that. So a company that has
Speaker 4: a round two billion dollars in stock buybacks in a year,
Speaker 4: it's a seven hundred million dollar fine. Essentially, it's the cost.
Speaker 7: Of doing business.
Speaker 4: Well, that does it for us. On today's editional counterpoints.
Speaker 3: Ed move bark to all who celebrate.
Speaker 5: I'm going to a feast later, but I feel like
Speaker 5: I didn't earn it because I did zero fasting.
Speaker 4: You really, I mean, you did not earn it at all.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go. It's not just a feeling.
Speaker 4: You really didn't earn it.
Speaker 3: But I'm gonna go anyway. There's just food on the table.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be there.
Speaker 4: There you go, There you go. Well, we'll be back
Speaker 4: next week with more counterpoints. Make sure that you subscribe
Speaker 4: to the premium version at breaking points dot com because
Speaker 4: we do have some really cool stuff coming down the pipeline. Actually,
Speaker 4: I don't want to give anybody a date yet, but
Speaker 4: sooner than you might even think, you're just within the
Speaker 4: next several weeks, So stay tuned everyone, We've got some
Speaker 4: fun stuff coming up.
Speaker 3: See that, see you that