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Breakingpoints dot Com. Good morning, Happy Wednesday, Welcome to Counterpoints. How are you doing, Ryan? Wonderful? Never better? How about you? I'm good. You said you had two pieces of news to mention right off the top here before we dive into what happened there one. So Germany overnight officially authorized the release of fourteen of its tanks news to Ukraine, which we'll escalate the war according to the Russian embassy
in Germany and also according to common sense. And they also authorize other countries that are in possession of German tanks to release those into Ukraine. The US has even said that it's going it's going to move forward with the process of shipping tanks over to Ukraine, which is
what got Germany to go along with it. Yeah, right, and so and then also in the House representatives, the you know, the House Republicans booted Ilan Omar from the House Foreign Relations Committee, Adam Schiff and Swallwell, Eric Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee. I mean to me, it's I get it that Democrats started it when they went after Marjorie Taylor Green. But if you can't be on a committee with somebody you disagree with like that, that's the
first step to the whole thing falling apart. Yeah, they're in a bad tit for tat right now, and voters on both sides will take nothing less than responding for the responding to the tit with the tat right because because once you start kicking certain people off, and this is the problem with censorship as well. That why big tech platforms at first were hands off, because they said, if we take down some things but not others, that looks like we're endorsing the things that we don't take down.
Advertising the same way, if you accept some ads but not other ads, then it's like, well you didn't not take that ad, so therefore you must approve of all
the other ones. Well, this is actually a really great transition into the topic because, as I've been thinking, the topic of our first block here, which is the documents found that Mike Pence's Indiana home, is that we're in locked in this ridiculous pattern where politicians are just throwing stones in glasshouses and wasting all of our time and money in the process. We now have two special counsels into classified documents that were found, the third for Pens
and I hope we don't. This is the news. Yesterday CNN broke that last week twelve documents, about a dozen documents were found in Mike Pence's Indiana home. It is not clear, according to CNN, what those documents are related to, which is a huge piece of this puzzle. Pence asked his lawyer to conduct the search in the wake of everything that have been going on with the Trump documents and the Biden die documents. He immediately alerted the National Archives,
which is what you're supposed to do. Then apparently these documents were entaped up and unopened boxes. That's per his attorney. But Mike Pence has weighed in on the other document scandals in a way that's not super helpful to him right now, I believe we have a clip of what he told David Mure earlier this year. I actually think this was just a November take a listen, take any classified documents with you from the White House? I did not. Do you see any reason for anyone to take classified
documents with them leaving the White House? Well, there'd be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area. Well, there were classified documents, and
they were in, as you report, an unprotected area. So Ryan, what drives me crazy about all of this is that it was clearly there's a substantive reason to be concerned about unsecure documents, whether because there's espionage at mar A Lago or there's Hunter Biden's garage, he's engaged in high level foreign lobbying and there's unsecured documents just laying around the place. The likelihood that these documents were reasonably classified and very sensitive and then actually came to be accessed
improperly is small. And now we have two Special Counsel investigations going into something in which the likelihood for all of this is that people accidentally take classified documents because documents dirty little secret in Washington, d C. Are the classification system is wildly abused, and so it's much more
likely that that was the case. And that's not to negate the reality that there may have been something serious here, but it is to say this coverage has been disproportionate because it's just become a political football in a very
unhelpful way. And so in some ways, Democrats decision to go after Trump over these documents rather than go after him and we're going to talk about what they might also go after him over down in Georgia pretty soon, but to focus on these classified documents rather than let's say, some type of you know, Saudi bribery related to the killing of Koushogi, like you know, something that is a
genuine like world historic crime rather rather than a paperwork violation. However, you know, like you said, depending on what kind of paperwork, names of people who end up getting killed, Like Okay, now you're talking like significant problems, but we don't know that yet, And like you said, it's more likely that it's that it's something small that was over overclassified. So Democrat's decision to go after him for that then sets
them up to be hoisted on their own bootard. Like this with Biden finding stuff in his University of Pennsylvania closet, and then and then his garage next to his corvette or his Mustang or whatever he's gotten there. Uh. And then hilariously, you know Mike Pence, you know, he's he's got some he's got some documents too. It does seem like they came down on Pence a lot harder than
they came down even on Trump or Biden. Eventually, they raided Trump, but he seemed to invite that by being completely shady about the way he was handling and not cooperating them. But Pence's lawyers told the National Archives. National Archives told the Department of Justice. Penzis lawyers were in communication with the National Archives, and they were setting up times to give these documents back, and then all of
a sudden, the Department Justice shows up. Yeah, it seemed like they were eager, like, oh now we've got two to one, so we're back in the lead on this scandal. Well, because it keeps happening with Biden. I mean there's new documents that turn up every few days. So they're in a rhythm, right, like they're ready to go. They know what to do. They have the drill down, that got the personnel ready. Sure, it's a well oiled machine at
this point. Yeah, it's muscle reflex. More classified documents at someone's house, Like, let's jump on it and get the truck ready. And that's again like Pence, you can see. I think it's really interesting in that David Muir back
and forth. He looks very hesitant to me to come out fully and say I did not take any classified documents, because he, just like Trump knows, just like Biden knows that the likelihood that something that was classified and properly or overclassified to your point, ended up in his paperwork somewhere. I mean, at this point you have his lawyers going through boxes that are taped up and unopened looking for
classified documents. By the way, fine, fine, but if we end up with a third special counsel for Mike Pence, it's going to be a great example of how much time we waste by getting locked in these ruts and the tip for tat. It's such a waste of everybody's time, it's a waste of our money, it's a waste of
the media attention, and just all around. I think statement on how silly our politics are right now, and Edward Snowden underlined it if we could put up a four here, So Edward Snowden posted, how is it possible that I have fewer classified documents in my house than the last few White House administrations? The Espionage Act is a quote strict liability crime. Good intentions are no defense under the dumb law. These guys are all unindo I did criminals? Perfect,
He's not wrong. No liaves detected there? Like that? Is that is accurate? Well? I was gonna say you would
remember this, snowed. In the documents that were brought to light by Snowden, the classification abuse was pretty evident just in those I mean, that was like a really good window into how the system was abused, right right, Because and that's why it's such a dangerous path to go down to prosecute somebody like Julian Assange for publishing classified documents, because then the United States government can get around the First Amendment by just classifying everything and saying, well, it's
not that we're censoring the press. It's not that we're restricting what the press can publish. We're just saying you can't publish classified documents. Oh, and by the way everything is classified. And there are a lot of authoritarian, autocratic or autocratic leaning governments that do actually have these State
Secrets Acts where basically everything is classified. And that's what they used then to crack down on any any any media that is not even opposition but just like neutral, saying that, yeah, you reported on a cabinet meeting that was held. Those cabinet meetings are state secrets. You're all under arrest for national security reason, national scurity, This cannot be public information. Yeah, that's a great, a great slippery slope argument at how easily that can turn into something
really dangerous. Right, And the and the reason they so often do it is to avoid embarrassment, right, classification because of shame, like we screwed up. Let's urryup, let's reverse
classify all of this. You see that, you see that happening all the time, and in fact that it showed up in the Twitter files if you remember, the Department Homeland Security has started to try to like reverse classify its efforts around some of these like US Army bots around the world, not for any reason because they used to publicly declare themselves to be affiliate with the army. Now they were getting embarrassed. They're like, oh, this whole
thing's classified. Oh that was Lee's first Yes, let's not talk about this classified. Yeah, but according to the Wayback Machine, it used to say it was a Pentagon account. Yeah, that's classified too. Yeah, wayback Machine is breaking the espionage I yeah, yeah. And I think the big missing piece of this puzzle again is we don't even know what these documents are related to, whether it's pens. We don't know what a lot of the Biden documents are related to.
And to your point, this could range from being something that is legitimately serious to something that is wildly unserious, like a lunch shorter. So, speaking of a robust free press, there was actually some very good news out of the Department of Justice yesterday, Believe it or not. Let's roll
this is. This is Jonathan Cantor, who we've been talking about for a long time on this show and also on the previous version of it Back at the Hills, as somebody who was really going to potentially bring it to big tech, and it's it's good to see that he's delivering here. So here's here's Jonathan Cantor. Let's role
b one as a legendar complaint. In late twenty sixteen, a Google digital advertising executive asked the following question in an internal email exchange quote, is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and the huge network. The analogy would be if Goldman or City Bank owned the New York Stock Exchange unquote. The answer to Google's rhetorical question is yes, indeed, there is a deeper issue. So the Department of Justice has brought a landmark case
against Google. This is the United States versus Google, and they're particularly going after their ad tech platform, saying that because they own everything involved in it and are just hoovering up all the money, that that's illegal. What did
you make of Cantor's decision to pull the trigger here? Well, that quote he zeroed it on from a Google ad executive, that is incredible, just sort of using out loud speaking of things people wish they could probably make private, just musing out loud about their monopoly power in a way that completely I think it is a great explanation of
the problem with their monopoly power. So for Canter to zero in on this, this is the second major lawsuit that the Department of Justice has filed against Google in two years. The first one was under the Trump administration. That one was for the search engine function. This one is for the ad business. This is the suit says Google believed that quote, it could become the be all and end all location for all ads serving and would
no longer have to compete on the merits. It could simply set the rules of the game to exclude rivals. The result, then, as the DOJ says, is that website creators earn less and advertisers pay more than they would in a market where unfettered competitive pressure could discipline prices and lead to more innovation and tech tools that would
ultimately result in higher quality and lower costs. That's absolutely true, and it's a reason that so many of the libertarian vendors of tech are completely missing that monopoly power is unless you're like fully on the inn ran side of the monopoly debate, power is freedom. It's an absolute obstruction to free markets, and Google, adds is a great example of that. Yeah, let's actually play a little more of
canter here and then we can get Google's response. The Department alleges that Google engaged in fifteen years of sustained conduct that had and continues to have the effect of driving out rivals, diminishing competition, inflating advertising costs, reducing website publisher revenues, steyming innovation, and flattening our public marketplace of ideas. And so if we could put up B three here
with this is Google's public response. They said, the DOJ's lawsuit ignores the enormous competition and add ten, it attempts to unwind acquisitions made nearly fifteen years ago, doing so with harm publishers and advertisers while chilling innovation, chilling innovation, chill innovation. The only part of that that is a factual claim. The others are just okay, unwine acquisitions made fifteen years ago. Fine, yeah, we do want to do that double click it was a big one. So it
DOJ's loss. It ignores the enormous competition ad tech. What competition and ad tech? Right, are you familiar with any competition in ad tech? They think they'll point to Facebook. Oh, that Facebook also is a monopoly that hoovers up. Okay, so yeah, don't worry, it's fine. And another thing Kantor said that I think is interesting is he ended on saying that Google was flattening the public marketplace of ideas.
And this is a point I always appreciate that Matt Storer makes, which is when you have monopolies and as the right has come to be antiganistic and to cheer on people like Jonathan Canter and Lena Khan and the new brandicians, it's because it's been very illustrated, to a very i think extreme point, the way in which monopoly power creates monopoly power over discourse and ideas. And the left has that right now. And it happened at the
Federalists to us with Google Ads. They threatened to deep platform us from the ad business over our comment section. Google owns YouTube. By the way. If they're so worried about comment sections and how that might reflect on a publisher, they should probably be more introspective. But you can see how these little things comments, yes well really from Google that you can really see how these silly things become
levers of enormous ideological power. And that Cantor said that is important because it means he's sort of extending that olive branch to people who want to come into the cult with him. Yeah, let's roll a little bit more. Cantor House here's before. Here are just five examples. First, locking in content creators through tying arrangements. Second, manipulating auctions, including by giving itself a first look and then a last look advantage over competing at exchanges. Third, blocking industry
participants from using rivals technology and punishing those that tried. Fourth, amassing and abusing troves of its rivals bidding data, and fifth depriving customers of choice by degrading the quality of Google's own products. And so that this goes right to what you were talking about, the way that publishers have no choice but to use basically but to use Google, and Google has a they can make the first their
own company then can bid on their own platform. They can make the first bid, then they can sit back let the auction go, and then when the auction's done, they can come in at the very end and be like, yeah, I'll take that, or I won't take that. And then they can also get all of that data so they know what all of their rivals are doing when it comes to these bidding competitions, so that they can then
beat them. And then he talks about how they walk away sometimes with up to eighty percent of the ad money. So you publish something, you make a website, people love it, they come and watch. Or you do it, or you make a show over here at YouTube. People like the show, they come and watch it. Advertisers want to reach your audience, so they pay to reach your audience, and then Google sweeps in and takes half or more of it. Yeah.
There's a great quote in the complaint where it says, in effect, Google was robbing from Peter the advertisers to pay Paul the publisher is all well collecting a hefty transaction fee for its own privileged position in the middle. It's amazing the racket that they've been able to build under the nose of regulators. By the way, these were a lot of approved makers as the balance Obambaer was terrible for this. Yeah, right right, no, yes, absolutely, we
got two more good counterclips. Let's do be five here. First, a Google employee characterized Google's ad exchange as quote an authoritarian intermediary. Second, a senior Google executive conceded that switching ad servers for publishers is quote a nightmare that quote takes an act of God. Third, a Google employee described the company's scheme to pay publishers three billion yearly by
restricting access to Google ads and quote overcharging advertisers. Fourth, a Google manager made it clear that quote our goal should be all or nothing, use Google's ad exchange or don't get access to our advertiser demand. And fifth, a Google executive detailed the company steps to quote dry out rivals. You can see where their confidence is coming from because they have this repeatedly in Google's own words. You gotta love subpoenis. It's so good, And I think it's a
very I mean, it's a very substantive complaint. And that comes through with thinking kids had a little swagger there, I would say, in a little swagger because he has them in their own words, right, Because when Google responds, He'm like, well, okay, what do you say to Google? Yeah? And he waxed poetic about the role of advertising in a free press and in free expression of ideas toward the end of it, So let's roll this last side. For more than two centuries, advertising in this country has
funded newspapers and other avenues of free expression. Revenue from advertising has provided critical support for content creation, the sharing of information, the exchange of viewpoints, which promote a free and vibrant and healthy society. The Anti Trust Division, and I'm so proud of this, has a store read history of safeguarding competition and offline media, from music to broadcasting
to publishing. It is now just as important, if not more, to protect competition in the digital marketplace of ideas, where powerful network effects make monopoly power even more durable and harmful, and abuses by companies with monopoly power like Google even
more pernicious. It's good stuff. There, you go. That's why this stuff matters, yes, right, Because if you can't that, it leaves you with only a subscription model and without a possibility for an advertising model, which then drives everybody into kind of a niche place. It's nice to be able to have a combination of both of those. Yeah.
And again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, some other attorney attorney's general are in on a similar lawsuit on the state level, a handful of states, kind of a mix of some red and blue. I think Tennessee jumped in on it, filed alongside the DOJ yesterday. So this is
a big, big, big case to follow going forward. There's going to be Google's argument will be really I think instructive and helpful to watch them try to defend this in their own words, because it's really indefensible at this point. Break them up, Break them up. Moving on to Georgia,
we can put up C one here. Georgia prosecutor is saying that a decision on charges is imminent on whether or not to charge President Donald Trump in the effort to quote find what eleven thousand votes in Georgia or anybody around him who knows which cast of characters the grand the prosecutors may decide to indict. The question is whether or not to release the grand jury report that they produced or not whether to release it, but when
at what point to release it? What's your read on this? Right, So, there was a hearing yesterday and that quote about decisions being imminent comes from the Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Williams, who was having to defend not releasing the full report yet, despite the fact that actually a bunch of media organizations have come out and so the full report should be
released right now. There's been a seven month special grand jury, not regular grand jury, but actual special grand jury investigation. They've interviewed seventy five witnesses I think, including Rudy Giuliani and some other folks. And as she was defending the decision not to release that report yet, she came out and said it's because the decision on the charges is imminent,
So no full report yet because we're still deciding. And it looks like potentially she's could be pursuing racketeering charges against Trump over election. That's what the probe, the special grand jury probe, was into his election, trying to overturn the results of the Georgia election in twenty twenty. They think they might have him on racketee hearing, which is interesting, and then they need to Williams needs to decide whether she'll seek indictments from a regular grand jury now that
the special grand jury report is over. I think this is a weird excuse. The prosecutor say it's quite dangerous to release the full report before the charges are brought. But then again, it might be that they want to bring charges that weren't recommended by the grand jury, which by the way, did not even reach out to Donald Trump for an interview. That's what Trump's lawyers are using as a defense. And what if her resistance to releasing the report is strategic, yes, and she's actually quite fine
with it being released. But when it gets released, then she can say, well, the judge forced our hand here. I didn't want to have to do this, but now this report is out and there's all this pressure on me. You see the evidence of the crimes. So yeah, we are going forward with the indictments. Do you think that that could possibly be part of the tactic here or do you think that there is really a decision that
is imminent? And what does imminent mean? Because that could mean to me and it means like stick around because it's happening any day. Yeah, for prosecutors, I don't know. It could mean weeks or months. Well. And by the way, that's the big implication of the story. That's the big news here, that it's Donald Trump being charged with criminal racketeering could be imminent in the state of Georgia. That's
obviously this is not an investigation. I think that there's so many investigations into Donald Trump that you can't pay attention to all of them. But this one is one that really has the potential to be a dangerous one. Now she's saying, to your point, quote, we want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate
at this time to have the report released. So that's her explanation for why she doesn't think the report should be released because it's about treating defendants fairly, which I don't believe. Actually, I don't think she's really interested in treating defendants fairly, because if she were, I mean, listen, this is from Trump's slays. The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other often high ranking official during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with
the president. Therefore, we can assume that the Grand Juriy did their job and looked at the facts and the law as we have and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump. That's an interesting read on their decision not to reach out to And prosecutors are also not the ones you necessarily want protecting the rights of defendants, right, That's not exactly you're going to
lean on for that. That's why I don't believer. How do you think Republicans would respond if they did press charges here? Well, that's why I think the media, this media consortium that's pushing for the report is absolutely right, because if there's witness testimony from some folks that shows there was some sort of racketeering conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes beyond the Trump quotes to Brad Raffensberger that everybody
is already very familiar with. Sure, maybe there's something there, but I think Republicans for the most part, are already completely on the bandwagon that this is whatever is going on, whatever probes are happening in to Donald Trump, it's political bottom line, And maybe to your point, that's why the prosecutor is trying to hold off on something being released so she can make the charges then have it released, as opposed to it happening the other way around, where
the report gets released and it's like eh, and then she has to make charges. It's more like, okay, I'll make the charges, then you can see the report. But all anyone's going to care about at that point is the charges. For most Democrats that call with Raffensberger, where he says, look, just find me the eleven thousand votes is enough right there? Like they're like, all right, you're done. Like that that's a crime. I could see. I've tried to twist myself into a way of finding a way
that that would not be a crime. And you could imagine say both Al Gore or George Bush looking at Florida exactly in two thousand and saying, all right, we're down by five hundred votes. Find me five hundred votes. They don't necessarily mean go get a box and stuff it with five hundred votes. They mean they could mean find a county that you know there are butterfly ballots that it could add up to five hundred boats. But I think that requires giving Trump so much benefit of
the doubt that nobody can really get themselves there. That on the other hand, the reporting from from that period and the documentary crew that followed him around, etc. All suggests that in his own mind, Yeah, he may have actually believed this. And it's George Costanza. That's the George Costanza line. If it's not a lie, if you believe it,
the Costanza defense, the Stanza defense. But yeah, I think that's right, And I think that's why you don't get Republicans eagerly latching onto something like this like, oh, this is our opportunity to just give Trump the boot, because it's not as clear cut. And we were talking about this earlier with the classified documents at Mono Lago and why Democrats really wanted to seize on that. It's because they constantly are looking for something that's going to be
the smoking gun, and that call is bad. But again, if you're you can imagine a world in which Donald Trump really thinks that there are eleven thousand votes out there that need to be found and so well, I think it's an inappropriate language and inappropriate pressure to apply in a situation like that. It's not a clear cut, bombshell like piece of wrongdoing to the extent that a man who was elected and one nearly fifty percent of the vote the second time, he didn't quite get there,
but nearly beat Joe Biden. The point is he has tens of millions of supporters around the country. If you want to charge him with criminal conduct, this might not be the thing, like this might not be it the big one because it's it's still just not that big, clearcut thing. But like you said, I think it's a good point. We'll see what's in the report if and when it does come out. Yeah, that could change. It won't change a lot of people's minds, but it could
change some people's minds. Well, who knows. I mean, there was crazy, Those were some frenzied times in the Trump White House, and who knows what Rudy Giuliani or someone else may have said or you know, evidence they may have come across. That actually really is even worse than that call, which was already bad, but even worse than the call. It's entirely possible about pal or somebody like trying to rally like the DHS to seize things, seize voting.
She's and stuff. Yeah, like you could you could see something that being like, Okay, you can't do that, right, that's a crime, right. But her resistance to releasing it tells me there's probably not a bombshell, a real bombshell in it, or there is and she wants to like reluctantly release it. I think that's a good theory too.
All right, Well, we were hoping to be joined by Status Cup reporter Tina desiree Berg to talk about her new reporting down in cop City, but she had technical difficulties couldn't join us where we wanted to let you guys know about it. Anyway, if we could put up her her latest dispatch for Status KUP News called inside
the dangerous domestic terrorism charges against Cop City protesters. I think this is something should be concerning to viewers across the political spectrum, whether you wholeheartedly support the protesters in cop City, which is uh, which is a confrontation in Atlanta between police and protesters who are trying to stop basically the demolition of a wooded area in order to construct a police training center, or if you're completely hostile to them and want them all arrested, uh and charge
and charge with protesting, civil disobedience, whatever it is. Because what they're doing is they're ratcheting up these charges to the level of quote unquote domestic terrorism. UH and so and Tina, And Tina does already got a number of the kind of arrest arrestaurants and police documents related to this from the protesters. She was We can roll some of her footage from from Saturday. She was there as
people were getting arrested. But what's what's your what's your take on the the domestic terrorism book being thrown at the protesters. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And one of the questions I wanted to ask Tina is as you're reading the charges. My read on it is that they're trying
to in order to charge people with domestic terrorism. What they're doing is lumping all of these protesters in with people who, for instance, have been engaged in violence towards police and saying, because you're part of this group that has been engaging in violence towards police, we're charging you with domestic terrorism. You can see on this video, I mean, just stunning scenes out of Atlanta. That seems to be
the argument. It's an interesting argument, especially as you said, you've seen a lot of pushback from the right on January six charges, and that has been a real concern that's mounted that weaponizing these broad charges and these broad labels of domestic terrorism is something that can can certainly
be abused. And in the cases, as Tina points out, the charges for these individuals are not that they themselves in every case were engaged directly in serious violence so much as they were there and breaking the law in some where. The other was so we're throwing the book at you and saying, because you're part of this group, you're a domestic terrorist. Now. I think one interesting thing worth noting is that of the arrests. Only one of those people was from Georgia. To my knowledge, only one
of those people was a local. So that's one thing I have seen folks on the right focus on is the fact that these are all a lot of people from out of town. What do you think of that
read on this? They're conflating or they're lumping everybody in saying if you're there and you're part of this group, and this group, you know the protester, the activist who was tragically shot and killed had a gun, his mother has or their mother, I believe the protester is not binary has said we don't know why the gun may have been there to protect from animals in the forest, because that's what's going on here. So that's certainly seems
plausible to me. But that's what the cops are going to use then, to say this is a domestic terrorist group. They're armed and targeting police. Right, these are these are right, These arrests are coming after the killing of Emmanuel Terran. Protests are known as noticea and there's a there's a there's a theory that's that's kicked around that that says that they did not have a weapon on them. So a police officer was was shot and injured. Police returned
fire killed tord Guita. Uh later, after a very long search, found a weapon. Uh right, there is a there is What people are saying down there is that they suspect somebody else pulled that trigger, but it was not him. Uh well, I mean shooting is foul play on the behalf of the cops that are trying to pin the gun to they killed him, they find a gun, they'd like to say, okay, well he was the one that
was pulling the trigger. There will be forensics done, so we and we good, we should know soon you know whether or not there's there's residue. That's something that can be you know, demonstrated or not. But your point, your point is right on that lumping everybody together is deeply on American and there's also an irony to it that neoliberalism says that, you know, everybody is an individual ripped from community, except when we want to lump you in
with domestic terrorism charges. Then if you're anywhere near somebody else who's doing something that we find criminal, then you also then become a criminal. So all of a sudden, that we believe in community but just to pull out one completely absurd example from Sina Desires reporting, Uh, you know one one suspect is charged and this is this is from from the charging document. The crime they committed
was fleeing from Atlanta Police Department. Investigator Ronald Sluss, causing injuries to Sluss his right knee and right elbow said, injuries being scrapes and cuts. So a person ran and you saw the scenes like those are the types of
scenes that are going on. So somebody is running away from this, a cop chases them, falls and gets cuts and quote literally this is from their own documents, but it gets quote scrapes and cuts on their right knee and right elbow, and then charge the person running with domestic terrorism. We use the word dystopian on this show a lot, but we're not overusing it yet because that what could be more dystopian than that the history of the leveling of domestic terrorism charges, I mean what they're
charging in the document. Again, this is as I'm reading the charges and trying to parse what law enforcement is saying, they really are making that connection between what the group is engaged in and then what they can charge the individuals with. And as you point out from Tina's report, in individual cases, there's some really low level stuff that
doesn't seem to qualify as domestic terrorism. And as much as except for if you're saying because they're part of this group that was engaged in domestic terrorism, et cetera, et cetera, than they are guilty by association because they were involved in a riot that was domestic terrorism. That would be the law enforcement argument. But here's another one for you. Possessing road flares of the same style and type as have been used to set fires on the
property and possessing incendiary devices. So possessing road flares is now crime and not just a crime, but domestic terrorism. And that's what I was going to ask you is do you see this as being in line with the history of abusing the domestic terrorism charge maybe Post nine to eleven in a way that's chilling and attempts to chill and silence activities because a lot of the stuff that they're charging them with is against the law. Evading
law enforcement is against the law. Slap a domestic terrorism charge on top of it. I wanted to ask you what you think about that decision politically, how that kind of fits into the history. It does, and it goes back to the nineteen nineties. Well, actually, I mean it goes back much further than that. You can always take
it back further. But in the nineteen nineties it really ramped up with you know, the ALF and ELF you remember the Animal Liberation Front, Environmental Liberation Front where they started, you know, trying to then you know, slap terrorism charges on people who were engaged in civil disobedience that was extending into you know, significant proper destruction like burning down
you know, a ski lodge or something like that. And then after two thousand and one, with public support for prosecuting terrorism cases at ninety plus percent, that's when the United States government really ramped it up and said, oh now we can really really drive this home. And they've
never really let their foot off the gas. I think there are really serious concerns of the double standard that's applied to over the course of the last few years, the Trump years, And that's what I'm talking about specifically. I'm not talking about in general. I'm just saying this is turnd in the last few years, a double standard that the media applies to political violence on the left and on the right. Which obviously is both wrong, and so I do have concerns about double standards from law
enforcement and for media about that violence. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't distinctions that are well worth maintaining. And when we have charges on the books that exist to add the domestic terrorism charged to people who possess flares as opposed to using the flares for violence, which they don't seem to have this person on, I still think
that's probably an important distinction. Well, what's your point Today we talk about Jeff Bezos, maybe a little Michael Bloomberg billionaires. It'll be a little bit a lot of alliteration. I promise that's what everyone he watches the show Boyds appreciate it. Yes, Well, rumors abound that Jeff Bezos might be selling the Washington Post to then buy the Washington Commanders. He can't get
out of DC. It's amazing. The New York Post reported this. Now, the reason that deal would make sense is because he's trying basically to sweeten the pot for Dan Snyder, who really doesn't like the Washington Post and really doesn't seem to like Jeff Bezos by selling the Post, and then perhaps the theory goes, he'll be able to sell the commanders. He'll feel more comfortable selling the commanders to Jeff Bezos. That's the New York Post report. There are other rumors
Axios has reported just last month. I believe that Michael Bloomberg is also potentially eyeing the Washington Post. A source told Peter king Over at NBC It'll never happen. Dan Snyder detests the Washington Post. No way he'd sell to the owner of that paper. JP Finlay, also at NBC, tweeted, I've had people tell me the Snyder family has absolutely
no interest in selling to Bezos. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, also, you may remember, made a big splashy announcement just last fall that he's going to be giving one hundred and twenty billion dollars one hundred and twenty billion dollars away to charity. Layoff at the Washington Post started just yesterday. They started on Tuesday. This is actually is reported on the plans of an initiative also on Tuesday called quote
Rebuild Local News. So as the Washington Post is laying off these national reporters, there is now a coalition of outlets and media groups that have this initiative called Rebuild Local News. It's been around for a couple of years, but Axios and Sarah Fisher over there reported on the initiative to quote deliver approximately three to five billion dollars into the local news economy from philanthropy, business, consumers, and
the government, mostly through tax credits. Now, they say, of course not all support would be used to hire retain journalists, but if a meaningful fraction was local news would be transformed, the number of local reporters would likely double. Most local news deserts would be eliminated, resulting in a local news
system more geared to serving communities. That's a big deal. Now, I don't really think tax credits for subscriptions to get around paywalls and ad bys are going to do as much as this group thinks that they're going to do. Those are all part of the proposal. It's a package of a bunch of different proposals that comes together in this big, sweeping plan to rebuild local news. As their name says, I'm not sure that that stuff is going
to be some as powerful as they think. There are some steps like changing the way you can apply to be a tax exempt nonprofit news organization via the irs. That's a good thing of scrutinizing media mergers with localism in mind also a very good thing and also could be very powerful. But think about this. The group is predicting three to five billion dollars could double double the number of local reporters. The number of local reporters three to five billion. Bezos bought the Post for two hundred
and fifty million back in twenty thirteen. The paper was actually going to lose money last year per calculations back in twenty twenty two, but they have been profitable in years since Bezos bought the paper. In other words, they don't need Jeff Bezos as much as local media needs Jeff Bezos and needs that money now. It should if it is given, come with no strings attached, of course, so that you don't have billionaires pulling the strings of media. Ideally,
that's not the healthiest media ecosystem to have. That you can see how these numbers just do the math. They're saying three to five billion could totally revitalize local news, could double the number of local reporters. If Bezos or Michael Bloomberg who are looking at the Post really care about journalism and democracy and charity. They'd funnel some of their money to local media with no strings attached. Why.
I mean, some local outlets are great, some are just as awful and biased as the Washington Post before and after they had sort of been gutted by changes in technology and the economy. But you should rather have biased eyes on our public affairs than no eyes at all. What happens in the darkness, as Washington Post might say, is that democracy falters and democracy dies. And that's a really serious problem, and we've seen examples of that that
we're going to get into in just a bit. But consumers have also woken up to the problem with bias, and so I think that's that's slight a slight improvement. Anyway, if you're going into your local newspaper and you know exactly how biased it is, you can sort of appreciate the reporting and interpret it with that lens of knowing that it's biased. So why, of all charities in the world is local media worthy of money? Corruption, as we just said, is metastasizing and festering without it. We've seen
example after example of this. National media is fanning the flames of division. There's actual academic research showing that the death of local news is tied to the rise in division school board decisions. For instance, this is a really great example that could have been dealt with after they were brought to light by a local media coverage, are now immediately going viral and becoming fodder in a national culture war in ways that just explodes local communities, makes
them way more bitter and divisive. And again, if you'd had a local news reporter who knows all of the players in these hearings, the ecosystem would have been functioning way more healthily. That's why, for instance, look at George Santos. This is a great example George Santos. A local outlet called The North Shore Leader with a Republican partisan Republican publisher, by the way, was calling attention to inconsistent inconsistencies in
Santos's story during his campaign. No other local outlets picked up on the story, nor did national media. The publisher told PBS that that might have been because it was a busy cycle and people were distracted by bigger races, so it stayed in just this one local outlet that many voters may have missed, rather than getting pick up from other outlets in the community. As the publisher told PBS, though quote, nobody else covers local news and local communities
like the local newspaper does. Again, you might hate your local newspaper, or you may have hated it when it existed ten years ago, but without any eyes on all of these goings on, public officials are corrupt, right because they know they can get away with it. They know they're not going to have to answer to the local reporter.
They just might have to answer to somebody on the national beat on some major story, but on the little things, on the tiki taki stuff, they're not going to have to answer to anybody because nobody is following it, except in the case where their constituents might have time or interest in following it. But that's not everyone, and that's
not every issue. There are all kinds of small things that happen in local government, that happen in local school boards, that happen from public officials, that create these that create
major problems. And when you don't have the eyes of the press in the community, even if you hate the press, the reason that it's important to improve the press, to fix the press, whether you believe in challenging it through outlets like this, or you know, trying to improve other the existing institutions, which feels like a losing battle at this point. It needs to be improved because it's an essential part of the way we function as a constitutional republic.
Without the press, without a free press, corruption runs amok, and so on the local level, that's a hugely, hugely important issue. It's very worthy of charity, it's very worthy of people's money. If they're going to give money away, maybe they should help, you know, local papers develop sustainable plans. If you're sort of funneling billions of dollars into local papers, Okay,
sustainable plans would be very helpful. We all know that Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg own major national media outlets for reasons other than charity, right, We know Jeff Bezos doesn't own the Washington Post to save democracy from the darkness. But it would take just a fraction a fraction of their wealth to utterly transform local news, and that would go a shockingly is shockingly long way towards transforming our
politics for the better. Speaking of extremely wealthy people and corporations that may not be the most sympathetic cases, but our instructive ones. Nonetheless, what's your counterpoint today, Ryan Taylor Swift. So yesterday the Judiciary Committee convened the first hearing of the year, where senators bombarded witnesses with Taylor Swift quotes. To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can't have too much consolidation, something that unfortunately for
this country. As a ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well. The focus was on Live Nation's abusive monopoly practices. And here's Clyde Lawrence of Lawrence the Band laying some of that out. There's literally not been a single time in our career when we've played at a Live Nation venue where we had any opportunity to not have Live Nation be the promoter, or not have Ticketmaster be the ticketing company, and the seat Geek CEO was on hand to explain how all of
this works. Because Live Nation controls the most popular entertainers in the world, routes most of the large cores, operates the taking systems, and even owns many of the venues. This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its monopolistic influence over the primary ticketing market. As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the US, the
industry will continue to lack competition and struggle. There was also plenty of lying in real time fact checking. Here's Ted Cruz questioning the Live Nation president. How about on the ticketing side, what percent of the market you'll have? I would estimate, depending on how you want to count, what's in the market between fifty and sixty percent fifty and sixty And depending on how you count it, does anyone have a markedly different measure of that? Yes, sir, yes, senator,
they could. They have eighty seven percent of the ticketing contracts at the NBA and the NHL arenas, they have ninety three percent of the ticketing contracts at the NFL stadiums. And of course there were more and more Taylor Swift lines. I have to throw out, in difference to my daughter Eliza, one more Taylor Swift quote. Karma's a relaxing thought. Aren't
you envious? That? For you? It's not. That's all I've got to say, thank you, all right, So, and I'm not going to punish the audience with many more of them. But it was just all day long. Any Clobachar jumped in on the fone right right out of the gate, didn't Bloomenthal of course, all of them, Yeah, every single one had to do it now to start with, of course this is excellent, my Ticketmaster Live Nation. Destroy them, fire them into the sun, break them, up, them out.
They're the worst. But what's amazing is you know who agrees with that is big Tech. So after the after the election, uh uh, And I got this email that was sent out by net Choice, which is the I got to say email and immediately forwarded to Rachel Beauvart. Yes, and so here here's what net Choice suggested to Congress right after the election, and this one that jumped out
at you too. Congress and progressives like Amy Klobuchar are spending all this time going after tech leaders, including Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple, which are far from monopolies. Instead, the government should use existing laws and resources to protect consumers and investigate ticketmasters anti competitive practices in the concert marketplace, like literally, yes literally telling Congress to go after Ticketmaster and not them.
And and there's a reason for this too, So what and they They elaborated on this argument yesterday in a statement kind of celebrating the ticketmaster was under the gun, basically said, and it goes back to this consumer welfare stand which is, you know, for forty years has been the way that we kind of do anti trust policy, which says that as long as a consumer is benefiting, like as long as you can't identify particular price increases, then it doesn't matter if they control one hundred percent
of the market and they're abusing everybody else in the market, their suppliers, other customers, et cetera. As long as the consumer is doing okay, then it's fine. And so what Big Tech is saying is they are clearly in violation of anti trust law based on the consumer welfare standard. So go after them and don't change the laws, the anti trust laws to reinterpret what it means to be a monopoly, because what Big Tech has said is that, okay, Google is not a monopoly when it comes to search
because it's free to do search. Google is not a monopoly when it comes to ad tech because it's free for the consumer to read these news outlets. Is it a problem that, hey, we're ripping off everybody in the back end and kind of restructuring the culture and the economy doesn't matter because it doesn't violate the consumer welfare standard. Don't worry about it, right, exactly, don't worry about it. Go after Listen to Taylor Swift, go after Ticketmaster instead.
It's also it doesn't technically technically violate the consumer welfare standard by their argument. In some ways, I think you can probably show how it does, right, you could, Yeah, And I thought it's harder. Ted Cruise's question was really good there, because that's one way these companies get around it is they create these BS calculations by their own metrics, and then when you ask about specific individual cases like the NHL, for instance, as the other witness brought up,
you can see this is a joke. I think he said, like, what eighty seven percent of NHL stadium venue agreements. I mean, that's insane and definitely not good for consumers. Right, So it might be true that it's Division III college basketball arenas. You can just walk up to the window and buy a ticket, or you know, if you're going for a drag Queen story hour at the local library, Ticketmaster Ticketmaster. Right, it's free and it's it's not a live Nation Ticketmaster
event you can just walk right in. So therefore we only really control fifty to sixty percent your Thanksgiving dinner for instance. Yeah, didn't use ticket Master for that. Yeah, right, So clearly we're not a monopoly over events. No, you're the point that you just made from the Netrocee email, which is so funny because we didn't talk about this before at all. But I also thought it was a funny email. It's like they're saying, don't change the law. The law works, just go after the people who are
violating the actual law. Take that, like, let's let's use this as the most clear cut, instructive example about why the consumer welfare standard works to regulate monopolies. Leave us alone because we're not in violation of it. That's one thing that's always funny about government regulations is that a lot of the other big players really love to see it right because they know it'll put the smaller guys out,
Like they'll lobby for more regulation. Tim Carney has a great book called The Big Ripoff that you can read on this. They lobby over and over again for more regulation because it ultimately works out better for them In this case, it's two big guys debating whether it's Ticketmaster or Facebook, Google, Meta whatever it is, debating over this regulation.
But so funny and frankly they're not half wrong, Like they ought to crack down on Ticketmaster like big Tech and Titus with there both right, they should, but that's not a reason to just let Google off the hook. Do you think they want to sell tickets on Facebook? Oh, I'm sure they would actually Google, And I'm sure Google and Facebook would love to get into the ticket space business. You know what, I bet artists would love it if
all of them were in the business. Yeah. Well, speaking of the potential for censorship, we'll be talking about a pretty incredible case out of India after this. Twitter and YouTube have censored a BBC documentary that was critical of Indian Prime Minister Nerandra Mody, raising all sorts of questions about the role of big tech increasing authoritarian societies as well as now the biggest democracy in the world in India.
And so for a little bit of backstory, Conscian Gupta, who is his title, is a senior advisor of the
Indian government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He posted that this BBC documentary that looks into Mody's role in the Gujarat Masacer back in two thousand and two is quote a hostile propaganda and anti Indian garbage unquote, and said that the Indian government under Indian under new Indian kind of anti free press laws, had asked Twitter and YouTube to take down links to the documentary as well as the documentary itself, as well as any commentary kind of
around it, and that both Twitter under Elon Musk and YouTube owned by Google had complied with this. Some members of Indian members of parliament even had their tweets taken down. Amusingly, well I put that in quotes, two John Cusack tweets were blocked in India. You can still see the John Cusack tweets here in the United States and around the world,
but Indian audiences would be blocked from seeing them. A number of Indian members of Parliament attempted to pot to get around it by posting links to the Internet Archive, and rather shockingly, the Internet Archive took it down, so you couldn't even go through that way. They're now left to a telegram audio channel, basically the only way an Indian audience can now hear this documentary is through a
telegram channel. So Elon Musk free speech absolutist, but he has waffled on what his definition of free speech is relative to local laws. So what do you make of this, this latest development from Musk. I think it's a very big test for Elon Musk that so far is not going well. And you have a big story on that exact question right now. What this tells us about how Elon Musk is looking at the platform. Ken Clippenstein tweeted about this, and Jack Dorsey liked Ken's tweet about your story.
That sounds kind of meta. Jack is liking Ken's tweet about a Ryan Grimm's story. But I think it shows that there's some This is a there's some dubious decisions happening at Twitter headquarters, helmed by a suppose of free speech apple salutist that does have a lot of foreign business ties, lucrative foreign business ties, and all kinds of
different pots on the stove. And for the reasons you've been raising over the course of the last year, basically since Musk flirted with buying Twitter first, this could be a real problem for him, right because he has all of these his other companies have these other you know, they're other goals that the Tesla has been trying to get into the Indian market. And I was, I was thinking this morning. I was like, man, I wish Emily were kind of a more doctionnaire, just straight up musk
defender so that I could do. And I told you so here. But you you've been you know, you've been skeptical of musks approached in foreign countries for this exact reason, China in particular. But he had already failed the test in China before he took over Twitter by doing a red carpet ceremony in Shinjong when the Tesla factory opened there. We're really lucky actually to have a guest who can
weigh in on this today. The documentary, by the way, BBC documentary is called India the Modi Question, and we're going to hear more about it right now. And so Rakeip Nayak is a is an Indian journalist who's been who's been covering this situation. Rakeev Uh, thanks thanks for
joining us. Can can you talk to us a little bit about the relationship between the Modi government and big tech companies over the years, because this is certainly not the first time that the Modi government has kind of pressured Silicon Valley to censor critics or to censor news reports. But it does seem like some type of a line was crossed here. That seems like it was kind of the most well, I'll let you speak, because there was
even a raid by police of Twitter headquarters previously. So to say that this crossed a new line and setting that aside might be wrong. But how are people in India responding to this? Yeah? Definitely, I mean Indian Prime Minister neither mood He has used his emergency powers to block access to the BBC documented in India. And I mean, as you ask, I mean, this is not the first time that such kind of a crackdown on the content
Poston and social media has happened in India. It has been happening and exacerbating all the past nine years under his rule. But definitely, the way mister Moody's handling the whole fiasco right now is unprecedented. And this is a direct attack on press and directly why leads freedom of
expression and the right to information. And I mean, see, we need to see this desperation to censor the documentary in a broader context, which is the G twenty summit that is upcoming later this year, and mister Moody's using this is an opportunity to ball through his image both nationally and internationally and is spending big money to get
favorable courage. But that momentum has been disrupted by the sudden release of this documentary that has rightly put the much needed spotlight on his murderer's past, and his information ministry has sent over hundreds of requests to different social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter to censor and withhold posts with videos and links to the documentary, and unfortunately, the so called flag bearers of free speech like Musk
or caving to the pressure and complying with the government order. And honestly, I wonder if Mosk's free speech absolutism was meant only for the global North and the for right and not the countries in the global South. But it's not surprising to me his focus on making quick profits at Twitter makes it very vulnerable to pleasing the Indian government as the country is one of the biggest markets
for social media company and it's not just Musk. Right now, before Facebook has done the same and over the years they are allowing platforming of hate speech and hate speeches on their platforms that target country's religious minorities, especially Christians and Muslims. And some of our viewers may not know much about the Gujarat massacre. Can you talk a little bit about what that was and what the documentary exposes
as Modi's role in it. So Ryan, what happened on February twenty seven, two thousand and two was that a train filled with Hindu devotees was passing through Godra town in Gujarat State when it caught fire and led to death of fifty nine people, and the Hindu parade groups and the state government immediately put the blame on Muslims, which was later disputed by an Indian government investigation in two thousand and five that said that the fire was
an accident not caused by Muslims. Nonetheless, the accusitions were enough for the star of an anti Muslim violence which resulted in killing of more than two thousand Muslim men, women and children and displacement of another two hundred thousand people. And the BBC documentary on Prime Mister Moody is a damning piece of journalism that looks at his that looks at what mister Mody really is, a bigot who has built his political career on fanning anti Muslim hate, bigotry
and violence. And to be honest, Ryan, what has been told in BBC documentary is already known across India since two thousand and two. But the new piece of information that this documentary adds is the findings of an inquiry conducted by the United Kingdom government right off the riots, which without ifs and butts, holds Narindermodi, the primester of world's so called largest democracy, directly responsible for slaughter of thousands of Muslims and it was all pre planned. The
report says. I'm quoting from the United Kingdom's own report that on one pretext or the other, the Hindu extreme is led by militant groups like Wish were in the parishid were going to attack the Muslims. They had computerized lists of Muslim homes and businesses they were supposed to target, and which is quite telling of the fact that the government officials were aiding it. There was widespread and systematic use of rape as a weapon to target Muslim woman
and to put it precisely. It was a mini Rwandan genocide which had the seal of mister Moody. And there were police officers who filed afidevit before the Supreme Court saying that he gave explicit orders to police not to act and let the Hindus rent their anger. And in retribution furious back, mister Mody jailed one of those police officers under under bogus charges. And I mean it's also important to talk about the victims of the Gujrat two thousand and two. Their wounds are still fresh. I have
met the victims just this past October. I met one of them who had to take asylum in the UK, and the whole Indian judicial system has miserably failed them. Just yesterday, a court in Gujrat acquitted twenty two Hindu
extremists accused of killing seventeen Muslims, including two children. And this past August, mister Mody's Home Ministry shamefully gave a go ahead to the premature release of eleven extremists who were serving life sentences for brutally gang raping a pregnant Muslim woman and killing fourteen of her family members, including
her two year old daughter. During the violence, and not just that, even activist activists spearheading the legal fight for justice and holding mister Mody to account were thrown in jail after Indian Supreme Court in June twenty twenty two cleared mister Modia of complicity by ruling that there was
no evidence against him. But Ryan, one thing I do want to make clear is that this documentary is also a stock reminder to the world that the person who they think can usher the so called world's largest democracy in prosperity or turn it into a global power is a myth because politicians with blood of inn since citizens on their hand, can only do one thing that is oppressed, divide and rule, and that's what mister Moody in India
is doing today. Kiep. But I want to pick up on one thing you said, which is a lot of the Modi's involvement in the riots back in two thousand and two is pretty widely understood and known in India. So how then does this censorship decision, which is getting international headlines and his big news here in the United States, how does that play in Indian politics? Does that change modis standing? Is it a sort of political net benefit or a net disadvantage for him and not lost for him.
Just on a purely political level, How does this affect his political standing in India? I think it won't affect him politically because right now he has a strong loyal base. And in twenty fourteen, when he was he was brought into power, it was because of his mother's past years of his Islamophobic past. He was he was taken into power,
he was brought to power. But but I think definitely it will create a lot of noise internationally and within the country from the minorities, from the religious minorities, and from the victims who who who are still waiting for a still waiting for justice. But I don't think it
is going to be a disadvantage for him politically. Uh. But but as long as far as his support basis concern, Uh, they are more emboldened, they are more I think they're they're they're happy about what they see in the documentary because this is this is what their ideology of hin Hindutwa, Hindu supremacism stands for. That is anti Muslim hate and bigetri Well Rockley, that's you know, incredibly important context, uh for these the dystopian decisions made by Musk, Twitter and
Google's YouTube to censor this information. I appreciate you joining us today and that does it for us today, and we got anything else. I was gonna say once again, there was sort of a through line, and we didn't do it intentionally, but of creeping authoritarianism on a global level, not just an indeply dystopian stuff, deeply dystopian stuff that's
happening from a collection of people who operate globally. Right, So not just censorship in the US or censorship in India, but people in the US helping for them to be censorship in India of a documentary out of the UK. Right. And if people think that, well, I don't care about India. So you know, if the Indians want to change the Indian laws, then they can change Indian laws, not my problem.
Musk shouldn't be criticized for this. I think people need to understand that we're a connected world and the same kind of corporate power currents and the same political currents that are coursing through India are also coursing through the United States. And if you think that you can allow the collapse of democracy and freedom of expression in India and it will not bleed back into the United States.
I think you're mistaken. I think you should care about the right of Indians to freely express themselves and to share whatever information they want for its own right on its own grounds. But if you don't, you should understand that it's going to come home at some point too. And that's why the DOJ lawsuit that we covered earlier in the show against Google is so important. That's why reigning in the abuse of the classification labels is so important.
A quote from Rand Paul, he said, I haven't actually been to a classified hearing where I actually thought I heard a secret. He said that just last night, and I saw the quote and wanted to bring that because I think it all gets to the overarching theme of how people are using national security implications to abuse public trust and to abuse the system. And they're doing it not just in the United States, but, as you said,
on an interconnected global level. So we'll obviously continue to watch that theme as it develops on a daily basis. We will, all right, and we'll see you next time.