Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
We have an amazing show for everybody.
Did we do?
It's another bro show.
There we go sad circumstances because one of Crystal's kids is sick, but she will be back. She says that one of our kids is on the mend and the well is looking so don't worry about it. But we're going to give her all the time that she needs. And we thank you all for some of the messages that you guys sent in. But before we get to that, man were setting up these stories is tough, especially on a day like today.
We have so many things to go over.
Ryan and I. Number one, We're going to start with the twenty twenty four race. We're going to go over since things look like where they're trending for the general election. Biden and Trump, we've known that for a while. We're going to look at some of the things that are good for Biden, some of the things that are bad
for Biden, same with Trump and vice versa. Also some breaking news yesterday, the Texas governor appears to be kind of putting his middle finger in the face of President Biden and the Supreme Court after being ordered to take down some razor wire at the US southern border. This is setting up a possible confrontation with the federal government. Lots of Republican governors backing up Governor Abbott, and this certainly could be a major story. On top of what's
going on with the border crisis continuing. We're also Ryan and I going to break down some of what's happening with the hoo thies and continuing war in the Middle East. Biden administration continues to say we're not at war in the Middle East. We just happened to bomb three countries in a single day. Boeing, You guys know, I love
airline stories and everything to do with that. Boeing, the manufacturing crisis and more is just getting way worse for them, Alaska Airlines CEO saying they found multiple doors with loose plugs, and we have confirmation now from the Seattle Times that it was in fact Boeing's fault for misinstalling that door. We're also going to talk about zen nicotine subject near and dear to my own heart here, Ryan, and we're going to talk about Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader.
He wants to ban zen pouches and nicotine.
Interesting. He came for four Loco first and now he's coming for this. And then John Stewart. John Stewart is returning to the Daily Show. He'll be the executive producer there and it'll be hosting the show on Monday, trying to rescue the corpse from what Trevor Noah has left behind. And then finally, Emily cop is going to be joining us actually in the studio. She is a phenomenal reporter at the right. Is it right to do us right to know?
Yeah?
I've used some of her work here in the past. It's about lab leek. Why don't you tell us?
Yeah, I think reasonable debate on this question around COVID origins is over as a result, Yes, of her latest reporting, which comes from a bunch of Foya documents that she pulled up without teasing too much of it. It's shut. This is it.
Yeah, case is the case. It's the case is closed. It's been closed for a while in my mind. But Emily is the one who gave us the evidence. So we're going to talk to her, and you know, again, I want to give total accolades. She has been an absolute warrior on the subject now for a long time. But let's go in and begin with the twenty twenty
four race. Where do things stand exactly? I have been keeping my eye ryan on the Biden HQ website and on their Twitter page in particular, because this has given us a real preview and how the Biden administration is going to be campaigning. And over and over again we see a consistent theme. Abortion, abortion, row, brow bro. That's all they want to talk about, and for good reason, it seems to be the best, single electoral thing that
they have for them. Here was President Biden just a few days ago in one of a major campaign speech.
Here's what he had to say.
Listen to what he says.
Trump says he's proud that he overturned Roby Wade. He said, and I quote, there has to be punishment for the woman exercising the reproductive freedom. He describes the job's decision as a miracle, but for American women, it's a nightmare. So let's be absolutely clear what Trump is bragging about.
The reason there are twenty one states where abortion bands are in effect May with no exception for rape or any other or ancest is Donald Trump.
There you go, so you can see a preview of where things are going. At the same time, President Biden got a pretty good lift yesterday, Ryan, he got the endorsement of the United Auto Worker Sean Fayne, who we've covered a lot here on the show from his time at the strike. He actually delivered that endorsement yesterday. Let's take a listen.
Now, here's what Trump did to help the American auto worker in our twenty twenty three historic stand up strike. Now that he's running for president. He went to a non union plant inbided by the boss and trashed our union.
Right.
And here is what Joe Biden did during.
Our state up strike.
He heard the call and he stood up and he showed up. So that's a choice we face. It's not about who you like, it's not about your party. It's not this bullshit about age. It's not about anything but our best shot at taking back power for the working class.
All right, Ryan, So abortion and unions, Normally I would say, yeah, that's pretty potent. At the same time, the bullshit about age, I'm not so sure that, mister Fine should be. Let me ask you this, if you would you want Joe Biden UAW members, would you want him on the line next to you or would you want him well into his pension and to his retirement which you.
Fought very, very hard for your more recent deal.
UAWS are no different than the rest of Americans in nessents that they don't get a choice.
Yeah, this is it.
Yeah, Yeah, Buden or Trumps and both both of these rallies are actually useful windows into the other problem that Biden has, because both of them were disrupted by protests.
Oh my Gaza over ceasefire.
My colleague Prem Tucker over at the Intercept has a good piece on how there was a lot of dissent within the UAW about the timing of this endorsement that they wanted that the UAW has come out for a ceasefire, and there were people inside the UAW, who are saying, get the UAW back to it's sixties and seventies roots
of being a kind of vehicle for social justice. Broadly, UAW sponsored the Marshall Washington for instance, like they're the ones that financed Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, and that has been that has been something that has been near and dear to their legacy for decades now. And there was a major disruption at the at the endorsement ceremony where the UAW protest UAW members protesting the president over Gaza at his speechman Asss where you know,
the centerpiece of it was abortion rights. Again, you had endless disruptions from the audience protesting his support for unconditional support for Israel's war on Gaza. And so what it's showing is that he can't really go anywhere, you know, for the for the next year, unless he can get to some type of resolution or they put in a different candidate who's not so closely associated with And what kills so many progressives is that it's true he was
the first president to join a picket line. Sean Fain, there's a kind of that's my president vibe that he has and maybe he will be your president right one day down the line. He did. He did join Faine on the picket line. They did win a historic contract. And it is true that abortion is on the bout, Like all of these things are true, but they're being stained by the blood of so many innocent Palestiniam.
Glad that you put it that way, because that's like the dichotomy of Biden. And also even with the Union Front wanted to make sure that we flag this. Faine actually in his speech even was like, look, some people are not going to Overbiden. Some he's like, and many people even admitted, don't forget this. Some forty percent of Union households went from Trump in twenty sixteen. I don't know the exact numbers for twenty twenty. I was struck by Sean O'Brien, who we've actually had here on the show.
He's the president of the Teamsters Union. He was actually on Fox News yesterday and he said, listen, you know, we've invited Trump. We want to come meet with him, and I think that demonstrates where some of his base actually was.
He said a little bit of this yesterday. Let's take a listen.
So we met with Donald Trump two weeks ago, and we are meeting with our general executive Board and rank and file members at the Teamster headquarters on January thirty.
First.
We've extended the invitation to President Biden. We're talking to the White House now to try and schedule both on the same day. And we think it's important that we're meeting with all candidates. We have a very diverse membership one point three million members, so we owe it to our members to do due diligence and make the recommendation what's in the best interest of teams to members nationwide.
There you go.
So he's invited President Trump.
I mean, he hasn't endorsed him per se or any of that, But I mean, I look, I always think that these union guys have a much better pulse of politics because they got real memberships that they got to deal with, you know, they got to get reelected, they got to make sure that their constituentsy are satisfied. Look,
most likely he's gonna endorse by it. But the whole point is that even even inviting Trump there, I mean, in a certain way, Sean Faine has been a little bit more partisan on that, but Faine, like I said in the speech, is still realistic that he's like, look, not everybody is going to spore by it, right.
Some people are going to spot Trump, right.
And and the way that it went down with with Trump and the strike with with Trump going out and speaking to a non union crowd and invited literally by literal management, Uh, you know, didn't didn't leave Faine whole lot of choice. Although the UAW certainly didn't make it easy for Trump to come address Like it wasn't as if Trump really had he could have dropped in on a picket line and that that could have been interesting. But it wasn't like the UAW leadership was gonna make
it easy for Trump to show his show his support. Uh, O'Brien is is following in the footsteps of this like one hundred year union legacy of pushing for support from both parties. Because whoever is in the White House, you know, working people are going to have interests that they're gonna that they're going to want to, you know, push any particular White House, whether it's Trump or somebody else. So by by keeping those doors open, you know, that can
be useful to teamsters. The Teamsters members themselves. The best thing perhaps that we have about Biden is the n l RB. His appointments to the NLRB have been consistently maybe the most pro worker in the agency's history. Uh. Whereas the Republicans on the NLRB continue to vote with bosses,
with management against workers. And so there is a push from people like Hawley and others in the Republican Party to create a kind of worker uni party so that there is there is power when it comes to the FTC, the FCC, the nl RB, other agencies that you've got kind of wholly populist right pro worker Republicans who become commissioners on these boards, right, and then you've got democratic pro worker boards because for forty years, the corporate bosses
had the opposite. No matter who was in the White House, corporate in America was able to pick who ran these administrative states. So there's a war over the administrative state. And O'Brien kind of being friendly with Trump can help grease some of that.
It's absolutely true. And that's the thing I mean Trump, you know, we shouldn't forget he played foot set rhetorically. Unions in generally basically just didn't pay attention to it while he was in the White House, but maybe it's very possible you get actually this time around. Returning to abortion, one sign again that this is just going to be front and center for the Biden campaign. Let's go and
put this one up there on the screen. Kate Cox, who you will remember we actually covered her here on the show, the Texas mother who experienced like that nightmare situation where you know, because of the abortion law, was not able to get an abortion even though you know, she what was it, Her fetus was diagnosed with something.
It was like completely it was a it wasternal diagnosis, and they're like, no, we're not doing anything until it dies, which you at extreme risk because you could you could die from an infection, like you have to get you have to get that treated immediately, you know, if a fetus dies inside of you, and they're like no, yeah, you just wait until then and you could get stepsis and die as a results. So she eventually had to leave.
This shit, She left the state. She became kind of a national figure because of the story because she especially I believe she was already a mother. She'd like wanted another baby, and so she's kind of that protop right exactly for a lot of people in the pro choice movement kind of the effects of this. I know the pro lifers were arguing and they were like, well, you know, not theoretically, technically, you know that the diagnosis doesn't necessarily
mean what it means. I'm not going to sit here and litigate, you know, medical conditions of a twenty first week fetus, but I will say, you know, politically, I think we've seen enough data to know where this bears out, and I think it's probably a smart move on behalf of the Biden administration. She will be joining Joe Biden at this d of the Union. We will be doing live coverage here of the State of the Union. And you know, the State of the Union right before the
election is always a vehicle for the presidential campaign. If we think back to Trump in the twenty nineteen presidential State of the Union, it was the exact same thing. It was about the immigration, it was anti impeachment some of that was going on, and a lot of it was about the economy, about low interest rates, etc. So these are always a good way to look at things
now in terms of the election. Something we flagged yesterday we want to make sure again everybody takes away is that while Trump definitely won, and he won by double digits, there's some troubling data for him, and even in the GOP poll. So let's put this up there. Steve Kornaki flag this. We have never seen a gap he says, between the independent vote and the Republican vote in the New Hampshire GOP primary, like we saw in the New
Hampshire primary of tuesday. Trump won Republicans by forty nine points, but Nikki Haley took independence by twenty two points. That is a swing of seventy one. The previous high on that was forty points. So I just think we all need to pause and maybe just think a little bit about the fact that Nikki Haley was able to dramatically win over these independent voters such that we could view her as a vehicle as we saw here before Ryan, how many clips did we play of Haley voters be
like on voting for Biden. So if that's a preview of things to come, well, you know, an independent voter or others who were so critical in the twenty twenty two midterms, a lot of them swung Democrat. They don't even like the Democrats, they're not particularly pro Biden or any of that, but they genuinely are so repulsed both by stop the Steal and by abortion that they're willing
to come out and to vote. And there's something very interesting there where it's look, I think if you just live your life in online circles, you know, it's hard to put your finger on that, but we always need to remember, even even the people who watched the show, the vast majority of the people who watched the show, you're just not you know, on average, you are not one of the deciding votes. Whenever it comes to the election, I know who you're voting for, not even even if
you know here're voting for. I'm talking about the median voter. Median is like fifty five years old and doesn't have a college degree. Just think about that. I mean, it's crazy. There's so much older than the vast majority of people who consume content online. And the fact is that young voters. Yeah, I mean, they can think affect things on the margins, but in general.
Like you, people don't vote.
And when you don't vote, it's like, well then your voice is not going to be heard. And the election is going to be decided by people who are way older than you and consume very different media than you. I think that's another critical point I want to put it.
If I were going to try to offer Trump some cope, you would say, all right, well, a lot of those nicky Haley people were actual Democrats, right, they're Democrats anyway, who became undeclared just so they could mess in the primary. But having covered so many elections, it is extremely rare that shenanigans like that move things beyond on the margins, and so you anytime you try to explain things with shenanigans,
you're probably going to outsmart yourself. And so you're probably seeing what you think you're seeing, which is that a
lot of independence. And even if you take ten twenty percent of the and move them aside because they were just the nineteen year old Democrat who voted in the primary, you're still talking a fifty point swing, which is which we've never seen before as somebody who wins in a blowout fashion double digits like that in New Hampshire usually is it going to be at least even yes, or winning with independence not getting crushed with independence?
The final piece of data. I want everybody to take away from this is that things are both looking good and bad for Biden. So this is why we're putting these two things together. Put this up here. So you know, just yesterday we saw a new poll Susquehanna decent pole out of the state of Pennsylvania, decent sample size and all of that, and what do they find. Biden forty six point eight percent, Trump thirty nine point three, not sure at seven point six, and other at five point six.
So you know, we've got some undecideds there enough, you know, if they all went Trump to put him over the edge. And he definitely did compete in the state pretty well in twenty twenty and obviously won the state back in twenty sixteen, and you should never count him out, especially I think in the industrial Midwest in general. The K and S rule was to add five to a Trump number in any of these regions. But here's the thing. In twenty twenty two, the K and S rule was reversed.
You actually should minus five for Republicans. So that's one of those where that's why it's not really a rule, it's more of a vibe. And you know, for these it's just you used to say, I don't know, I don't know. You could really read things two ways. So I would look at this and be like, man, you know, Biden, I'm feeling pretty good. But then let's put the next one hair up on the screen. How popular is Joe Biden. Well, he's got a fifty five seven percent disapproval rating and
a thirty eight point eight percent approval rating. That's putting him in Jimmy Carter territory going into the general election. He's got a seventeen point spread between disapprove and approve. He's been unpopular now for years, for the vast majority of.
His short presidency.
He only was really popular for a year, and as you could see from that trend line, things did not go well for him.
You know.
October twenty twenty one really is I think, just such a turning point for the Biden presidency because it's the chaos of Afghanistan. And by the way, supported Afghanistan. I actually supported withdrawal, but let's be real politically, it was a disaster. Let's all just be honest about that. Media bears responsibility, but Biden does too, you know, just for
the total chaos. But on top of that that was, you know, that was in the midst of like vax craziness, COVID craziness, delta variance of diapers, ninety percent inflation is just never recovered from that. So I could look at this thing truly two ways, the twenty twenty two data, I'd be like, Okay, I would not feel great.
If I was Biden, I would feel okay.
And then I could look at it the other way and in any traditional metric with the economy where it is and everything else, and I'd say, Man, you know, Biden is going to get you know, absolutely creamed in the election. So it's one of those where we're going to continue to try and present this case. I just encourage everyone, like, don't live in a bubble and try to look at contravening data and just mess with it in your head. Don't have to draw a conclusion of
either or just anything could happen. That's my main takeaway.
What's what's been so interesting to see is that consumer confidence and people feelings about the economy have absolutely exploded in the last two months.
Yes, there's see the last three months in particular.
You're seeing the biggest swings in an upward direction. Perhaps then you've seen like since they started looking at the data, and so if that continues, that's extremely helpful for Biden because then you would have a year of people feeling good about the economy and which could be enough time for a lot of people to recover a lot of what they lost through inflation and the precarity of twenty twenty one. Yeah. So yeah, it's this is a wide open race, even though both people ought to lose.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I've said that. You know, it's pathetic that either has a fifty percentage, and yet that's the situation. Immigration top issue in New Hampshire for Republican voters, top issue in Iowa. Huge, if you're watching and consuming any conservative media, this is it number one. And if you were looking at GOP voters and others, if you want to se like the main reason people are going to vote Trump, this is the issue. And now we are
seeing a major standoff. You guys did a great job yesterday of covering the Supreme Court case, but there's been some major development now since, which is after the Supreme Court issued in order where they said that Texas officials cannot obstruct federal what is it Federal Border Patrol agents from cutting the wire. They have now began actually putting even more razor wire at that border crossing, which has
now become like a critical juncture. Now I was explaining this to you Ryan people, are you know, many people, including the Texas governor are showing, you know, they're making this a big show, many GOP governors joining them as well, being like that's right, Like he's defying the law technically. And I asked some of my Republican lawyer friends, I said, Okay, what's going on here?
So the technical explanation is this.
The court order says, well, you can't obstruct the FEDS from cutting the wire, but that doesn't mean you can't put up a ton more wire. So there's definitely a little bit of a loophole. It's certain, you know, almost certain the Biden administration they either may challenge us in court, they could send the FEDS and the mill. They could try and federalize the Texas National Guard which is putting
this up. They're all kinds of very interesting possibilities. Jorge Venturo, he's a great reporter over at News Nation, actually did a segment of showing how the Texas officials actually putting up even more razor wire after the decision yesterday.
Let's take a listen to some of his report.
Texas officials say they are going to hold the line and double down on their operations to side Shelby Park. Actually, right now we're waiting to see Texas officials installing even more of that razor wire and anti timing fencing.
Now.
The reason why they're installing some of that razor wire and fencing on top of the shipping containers is we have witnessed several migrants went on top of the shipping containers and entering Shelby Park illegally that way, Texas officials say they're going to continue to beef up security here. As of right now, federal agents are still not allowed and shall be parked.
We take a look at the sea, don't we Here.
We're actually waiting scene right now migrants have actually been.
Blocked by that razor wire. They say they've been here for at least two days.
Here we have three migrants from Venezuela who cannot enter Shelby Parking. So this is exactly what the state of Texas is trying to do.
So that was a important view kind of into the whole standoff. I know you guys covered it a little bit yesterday, but I think the background on all of this is, obviously we've had between six and eight million people cross the border illegally since Biden took office. This has led to massive debates about catch and release, about
the remain in Mexico policy, about our asylum laws. We could probably do an entire episode just on the background of this, but the main political issue is that the scenes of just like millions of people coming across, I think everyone can just agree like this is not an
orderly process. Yeah, And that's where I think the Biden administration suffers is that there have not been three years now in a policy that they have been able to find other than the original Trump policy, which was just straight up remain in Mexico, meaning you have to apply for asylum there and then if you're adjudicated and improved you can enter where if you were trying to and you are allowing people basically to enter the border and
you're doing it even crossing illegally, but then declaring asylum and then try to adjudicate that here if you're not going to hold them in some sort of detention center. Catch and release is the inevitable outcome, and there's varying data people like to put. Liberals like to say that there's a ninety percent show uprate to the first court hearing. Conservatives are like, yeah, but what about the final court hearing whenever they lose their asylum claim. There's a lot
of adjudication over asylum itself. But overall, Ryan, I think this is a sleeper, potent issue, and I have not seen the mainstream media actually catch up to it yet. I've seen I saw coverage of the Scotus ruling, but this particular one with the Governor Abbot basically saying I'm going to defy this, I have not seen it yet. Before we get into Governor Abbot's statements, do you have anything you want to go into, just.
That it's fascinating, how like you said, little of an issue. This is both among the mainstream media but also among Democrats democratic voters.
They're si to pretend they're like, don't care, right, it's very odd.
Yeah, you'll if they see some images at the border, they might say, oh, that doesn't look great, right, not very rational, but it's but they're not going to spend any political capital on it. They're not gonna They're not going to criticize Biden. They're in such a difficult jam because they're they're kind of ethics around immigration were forged in the Trump years, and they took I think some positions because they were anti Trump that they don't actually hold.
You know, they became far more kind of pro immigrant and pro immigration than a lot of their kind of a yeah, let's be real are but they were driven by animates towards Trump, and so with Trump gone, now they're like, we actually are not that pro immigrant. Yeah, well but now we're kind of stuck because we have signs in our yard.
Exactly, and I think a lot of them are behold into a lot of these immigration groups. You know, I maintained the literal most genius move that these governors did was all right, you guys are sanctuary cities. We're just gonna ship them to you. Guys can deal with it. You have all these laws right to shelter, et cetera. And now all of a sudden you've got Long Island Republicans and know they're sounding like people down in Texas,
They're like this is crazy. They're taking our our housing and you got people's sleeping Boston Airport, and I mean the clips on this stuff.
I cannot emphasize.
This is enough go viral in the right on such a level that to a certain point other than those who are dealing with this, like in Chicago, you know, California and New York, they are living people like Democrats and Republicans are living in a different reality. But this is one of those I think reality forcing events, specifically because it might lead to confrontation between the state of
Texas and the federal government. So Texas Governor Abbott put out a statement yesterday, let's put this up there on the screen, and can we bring our nice little highlight function there and I'm going to read this. He says. President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to
secure the border. President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their end mass parole into the United States by waste seeing taxpayer dollars to tear
open Texas border security infrastructure. President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the twenty eight legal entry points along the state's southern border bridges where nobody drowns, and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grand Let's go to the next one, please, because this is an important pullout, they say, for these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article one ten, Clause three, to invoke Texas's
constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. Now, as I said, all of this is being framed by the Texas governor and by DeSantis. You know, even Governor Young Cain backed them up. They're like, hey's standing up to President Biden. I want to be very clear, they're not in violation of the Supreme Court agreement, are they sup Court ruling? The loophole is as long as you don't obstruct the Feds from cutting the wire, you can still keep putting up wire. Now will the Feds take them to court
and say, hey, you need to stop. I don't know, I mean, that seems politically pretty nuts on their part, but you know, it's one of those where they're in a major standoff because border according and let me give the Biden case. The Biden case here is that the border patrol needs secure access to all points along the border. That's their case.
The border Constitution gives the yeah, yeah, gives.
The Constitution gives the federal government and the authority in order to take control and to have you know, supreme supreme governance over border policy, even if you should disagree with it. Texas is like, no, this obviously this is our border state border in the Constitution, they have the ability to invoke that invasion clause, which is one that goes back a long time. You're speaking to a native Texas here, and you know, we take it very seriously.
The ability, you know, the whole what was it Jade Helm or whatever during Obama and all of that invoking the Texas or in you know, bringing up the Texas National Guard to guard against Obama and the federal government. This is deep within our DNA. My only point just being that at that time that was definitely political. This time, I think this is and I think political in the wrong way. Maybe good for Texas at the time, but not nationally this time, because it's a forcing function to
get them, media and others to grapple with it. I think they're in a tough spot because effectively, what the Biden administration is saying is if they do challenge this is they're like, no, we need more unfettered access for people to be able to cross the border. The Biden administration, they're not stupid, they know this is a huge problem for them. But the groups, obviously these immigration groups and others are the ones who are like, no, you need
to go through. I've seen people like Beto O'Rourke and other Texas Democrats saying, you know, the federal government should go in there and cut the wire. I mean, you know, it's like it's one of those where I just think politically, given where national sentiment is on this and immigration is the number one issue where Biden loses amongst the general public and amongst independence, he's in a tough spot with
this case. And as long as that, as long as Texas and all of them are, you know, whatever in the spirit violating the spirit but not the letter of the law, I think they're coming out on top in this debate.
Ryan, Yeah, there's no better kind of epitome of our failed immigration policy than if you had a bunch of Texas Rangers laying down razor wire followed by a bunch of CVP guys cutting it right behind him, what is happening? And then behind them is a bunch of rangers laying more down. You've got hundreds of guys just fighting over razor wire, and then you've got immigration crisis around.
Around the rest of a bunch of patients in Venezuelans and Somali's being like, hey, can I come and.
With no with a system does the last updated in the nineteen eighties, and what we are immigration policy now is depending on who's in the White House. They just execute it like wildly differently and then fight about it in the courts until they're thrown out of office and somebody else comes in.
It is really unfortunate, actually, because any serious effort to try and do anything about this has been killed basically left and right, and even the Biden administration.
I mean, they just, you know, they look ridiculous. Yeah, they just look ridiculous.
And John Kirby, we're gonna put this, you know, we can play some of this when he's asked about the razor wire. These people are like twisting themselves into knots literally to try and to defend the policy of which currently stands and which you know they're trying to stand up to Texas, but then they're also not trying to endorse like completely open border.
Let's take a listen to what they said.
Does Razor wire work?
Does Razor wire work for what?
Does it work for the border patrol to allow them to have the access they need to be able to to better process people that are trying to get across the border. I don't think so, and that's why we asked for it to be removed.
So yeah, there you go. It's like work for what.
But the problem that Trump was asked if the air strikes are working exactly, it's a problem that they have proms blow up, right.
The problem that they have is that the Border Patrol Union is like, no, we need this, like we actually need people to cross in an orderly fashion at the legal entry points. That's kind of what's the major stand.
Ups The migrants would want that too, I'm not so sure. I'm not sorry, So that's why a bunch of guys waiting on the other side of that.
But look, maybe I think that the major point is this is part of what obscures it as well, this razor wire. This is a dent in the issue. All right, Like the major problem is, Yeah, you can basically walk into this country and be like I fear fear for my life, and you can get stay here for like two or three years while your case is adjudicated, even though you're an economic migrant, and you get a work permit from the federal government. Now listen, I think that's
crazy and I don't think that should be allowed. A lot of people, though, they do think that.
Pretty sure, you don't get a work permit, which creates this underclass of well, okay, very it's hard to get the work so.
You can get the work permit. Some people don't get the work permit. This also comes to the whole question around everify. The Biden administration has been much more liberal in terms of and I mean in terms of like, oh like handing out Well.
They give a bunch of Venezuelan's work permits, but it's not them.
There's different legal hard to get minutia that goes into this as to whether you have a like a legitimate asylum claim. And I know that this is very very difficult, and it can also be very emotional because it's like, well, well, what qualifies as asylum or not. It's like, if you literally are being gunned down by gangs in the street, does that qualify of asylum. Some people would say yes.
I personally would say no, because I would say it's like, listen, that's a domestic problem, and that's your issue.
If you want better government, you guys can deal with it in your house.
Ryan, I'm sure you're about to throw on my face like, well, it's your fault that those gangs exist in the first place. I'm like, well, you know, yeah, that's technically true. But at certain points, like I like, what you can have this? Gyah, I've done this so many times.
It's like I've been sitting here so many times.
So I mean, I guess what we can come to some sort of consensus at least on this is that the problem is that the incentive to fix it is also very low. And perfect example of this, let's put this up there on the screen, is that Mitch mcconnald just yesterday told a closed door meeting of Senate Republicans that the politics of the border quote has now flipped for Republicans casting doubt on the ability for any sort
of Ukraine border deal. He says, the politics of change, and because he says, Trump, who he's referred to now as the nominee, wants to run his twenty twenty four campaign centered on immigration, and the GOP leader says, we don't want to do anything to undermine him, demonstrating.
I mean and what he means by undermind.
Yeah, because normal people might not understand, yes, that what they mean by undermind is implementing their preferred policy.
Well, okay, so yeah, so I'll give the defense.
The defense is is that any sort of bipartisan deal would undermine the total preferred policy of the Republicans in Trump. So why would we compromise now when Trump, the nominee, not only wants to run on the issue, but if he wins and he can implement his policy. Now, I will give you the counters to that. And by the way, I do not support the bipartisan immigration deal. I am a pretty big border hawk, but I will I do
live in the reality of the system. And I can tell you that when Trump had unified control of Congress and he was a president, he also was not able a comprehensive border deal done. Those are the facts. I just want to be very clear. The issue too, is that unless you have a sixty vote majority or whatever in the Senate, you're gonna have to go bipartisan there no matter what, especially because they're not going to kill the filibuster. You're going to do a bipartisan deal now,
or you're going to do it in the future. More likely you just going to do it never because the issue actually does work very well politically for most people.
Yeah, I'm just so used to Democrats coming up with excuses for why they can't do things and how they're going to do things in the future that whenever I hear it from any party, it's like you would rather this just be a giant mess than actually than actually solve the problem. So if you want to solve the problem, and I would tell Republicans, Democrats are flat on their
back right now. They're ready to trade away the entire store, steal it from them, and then if you do take power in the future, be even more terrible.
And as possible.
I do think it's I do think that that's the end of my Republican consultant here.
Well, yeah, thank you. Ryan. I do think that one of the major problems for the Republicans in that right now was that a large portion I would say half or so of the caucus they didn't even want Ukraine aid anyways.
So they're like, why would I compromise with you on the border.
I'm not going to hold you. I don't care about Ukraine. I don't care about Ukraine AID. You're the one who cares about Ukraine. You're like, I'm sitting here and I'm just negotiating on the border. So I think that political calculatus behind it was very stupid from the beginning. And also what everybody forgets is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson said, I don't care what you guys are doing. You either do HR two, which is
the House Republican bill, or nothing. That's the only thing.
I would agree to, right because Johnson's already kinda have to shovel. He's going to shove a spending bill down the right wings throat in the House. He's like, now you want me to do something else? They don't like too, and they get out of here. So it is that funny situation where the Senate likes to operate as if
the House doesn't exist. Like that's kind of it's almost in the constitution that the Senate will pretend the House doesn't exist, right, and then they will pass all these things and they'll find out the House, it's like.
Just not interested in playing it along with them.
My question for you is, how do you think that Biden will handle this. Do you think he will escalate to the court or do you think because right now the media is not paying attention and it's just a Republican story, this is not.
A bad moment for Biden.
Emily made a really interesting point elevating some reporting that it looks like Biden may have cut a deal with Amlo. What Biden will try to do is reduce the number of images that we're seeing along along the border that will damage him politically. One way you do that is you work with the Mexican government and say what do you need? And there were there were a lot of reports that Trump did the same thing that in election years.
He talked to the Mexican government and either he wants a caravan, or he doesn't want a caravan, or you know whatever, whatever he can do. The Mexicans do have a significant amount of power to you know, block people down, you know, from using the train system from down at the border, down with Guatemala and otherwise to influence what we're seeing at the Mexico US border. So I think Trump will do a lot of that because he's got
that that he has leeway over. That's foreign policy. Pick up the phone, am Low, look buddy, now, no, Amlo. Then has political decisions he has to make about whether or not he wants to do that, or whether or not he wants whether or not he wants to and how much he wants to anger Trump because you have this weird irony that Trump would actually be upset because he wants more chaos, yes, at the border, so he can complain about the chaos. It's all cynical, top to bottom,
all the way down. Yeah, it's very both party.
It's honestly very sad.
It is. It is actually a tragic situation because you know what we're talking about this in politics and all that, we're talking about millions of pepieces people's lives. Yeah, and a lot of them die actually on the journey. It's a very difficult journey. A lot of them, you know, children and others.
It's one of the expos It's just one of the biggest things they're going to do in their entire life. It's uprooting. It's bad from the place that they were born and raised somewhere that they don't.
Know right, And there's a lot of uncertainty involve which why it's not really fair to anybody, both the people who live here and the people who are coming here. But anyway, the point is is that it ain't getting resolved anytime soon. And this is definitely a major standoff, and I am very curious to see how the Biden adminstration handles if they're going to escalate it or if
they're just going to let it sit. Kind of where things are the current staces is not a terrible situation for Biden because look, it's to his benefit that less people come in the Texas Governor. I mean, this guy like he can write off this for the rest of his life. I'm telling you, you know, in terms of like this is mobilized the right in a way that
I haven't seen. Also in a long time, he got Governor Youngkin Abbot, every Brian Kemp and all these people are like, come on, Governor Abbot, all of this, Abbot's going to be a star, you know, in the Republican Party. Righting off of something like this. He wants confrontation with the FEDS. I wonder if Biden will give it to him or not. I don't really think it's in his interest either. There is no major, as you said, democratic constituencies like no, Joe, go stick it to Graud.
I don't want to think about it.
They don't exactly they don't want to think about it. They just kind of want the whole thing to go away. So we'll see. All right, let's move on to the hoo thies. This is one where right, I'm really going to rely on you for this. I will just kick things off with a really funny clip from the Pentagon where Pentagon reporters, who are smart, they're like, hey, so are we at war in the Middle East?
They keep asking them this, yeah, question.
You guys bomb three countries yesterday, so what's going on?
And the Pentagon just to continue to be clown itself and say, no, we're not at war in the Middle East, even though yes, we did bomb three countries yesterday.
Let's take a lesson, Well, Carlo, we've been working for a very long time on regional security and stability, not only in the Middle East but around the world. And so we'll continue to work very closely with allies and partners globally to address tensions in the Middle East. You know, since Hamas's attack against Israel, of course, we've been very focused on deterrence and on preventing a wider regional conflict, and we'll stay focused on that.
And what about his words on the brink is the US on the brink of war right now in the Middle East.
We are not at war in the Middle East. Clearly, there are significant tensions in the Middle East, and again we're working closely with allies and partners to de escalate and reduce those tensions where we can, recognizing the fact that you know, others have a vote as well.
Okay, got it very clear, We're going to keep de escalating tensions with these bombs.
It seems obvious to me he doesn't want to say we're at war because legally we're not at war, and legally Congress is the one who is supposed to authorize war.
The best one was on Tuesday, one of the many countries that we bombed with Somalia and the AFRICAM put out a statement announcing the bombing and said, in an act of self defense, Yes, the US forces bombed al Sha Bob Millits. It's like self defenselew. You flew halfway around the globe just to bomb people in Somalia, and you're going to pretend to tell us that this was about self defense. Maybe you needed to do that. Maybe these were the worst people on the planet, and it's
wonderful that your your bombs blew them to smithereens. But let's not pretend that this had anything to do with self imminent self defense. And you had uh, you had Mike Lee, Todd Young, Chris Murphy and Tim Kaine. Who are you know, these are some you know, serious very across the yeah, across the board.
Here.
This is not this is not Bernie teaming up here with anybody righting to the White House saying if these are that, you have the right to respond immediately in a self defense capacity. Obviously there's a ship somewhere, there's a boat coming at it, or a missile coming at it, you can take action against that threat. Nobody says you need to like get a declaration of war to Congress before you can stop a speedboat, you know, with with explosives attached to it. If you are in prolonged hostilities
that you have entered yourself into, you need authority. Even Ben Cardon, who's as close to the White House as hawkish as you can get, said that if they're going to continue this, they're going to need to get on sound or legal footing. So across the board, people are recognizing that this is not really sustainable.
I love hearing from the Defense Department.
Because the words that they use are so just the opposite of what we understand them to me.
Well, they're all couched in legality.
So like you said, US forces have the authorization to act in self defense basically anywhere, and they can do anything that they want. That's why they say it all.
And they keep saying that we really don't want the war to spread, want we want the hostilities to de escalate. And the way their argument to give them as much credit as possible, is that that deterrence is the thing that is going to de escalate. And the way that you get your deterrence is by dropping bombs everywhere, because then everybody's scared of you and they're going to re treat problem for them is that there's no evidence that are on or its.
Proxies are deterred by the fact that we have lots of bombs.
To that, Ryan, there was an interesting thing I wanted to get your take on. Let's put this up there on the screen. Where the US is currently asking China to help bail it out of the Red Sea attacks. It says the US has asked China to urge Tehran to rein in the Hoothy rebels. According to American officials, they've repeatedly raised the issue with top Chinese officials in
the past three months. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and others actually spoke directly to the head of the Chinese Communist Party's International department, so did the Secretary of State, and yet there has been zero Chinese pressure so far. What do you make of this?
Is it an admission of diplomatic failure?
Is it?
I mean, I personally think it's just humiliating because you have your main geopolitical rival and you're going to them and you're like, hey, guys, this is bad for you too, and they're like, is it They're like, because I'm raking in cash, you know, I'm like, you're your carriers the ones who are paying all these extra prices euros. You guys are the ones paying for the inflation. They're like, we're sitting here pretty, We're actually doing fine.
The fact that this idea ever got off the State Department whiteboard shows just how bankrupt and out of ideas they are. So we could count the layers of absurdity here. First of all, the Houthis have actually, uh, the Houthis are warning ships before they fire on them. And the Houthians have told Russia and China that they're not going to attack Russia, Russian, and Chinese ships as long as
those ships are not going to Israeli ports. We don't talk about that here in the United States because we pretend that the Houthis are a kind of nihilistic bunch of pirates who were just doing these things, these mean things to these ships for no reason. Russia and China are both aware of what the who these regional interests are, and what their global interests are and what their domestic interests are, and it's not to attack Chinese and Russian ships.
So why are the Chinese and Russians so concerned about?
Now?
Some of a lot of Chinese goods operate on US linked ships. So that's where the US thinks. Okay, China is having a problem here because now shipping costs are going up. Do we have the we can put the Suez Canal traffic?
Guys, can we please put up the next elements three element?
So you're seeing Suez Canal traffic just absolutely plummet. That's raising prices of shipping. The State Department thinks to itself, Okay, well, now the Chinese are upset because they're spending a little bit more for shipping costs. That's absurd because you know, China is sitting on you know, mountains of our cash for geopolitical advantage. They're constantly spending that money, and they're they're okay to take a little tiny hit if if it is causing us as much geopolitical damage as it is.
So right off the bat, there's no reason to think that the Chinese are going to bail us out, because we're getting hurt worst by it than they are.
The maybe third or fourth layer of absurdity.
Is that China. First of all, Tehran does not run the hooties. Tehran has influence over the bothies. US has influence over Israel. Israel operates with its own a agency. Good point as well.
But China does not run Tehran. They talk sometimes and they do business.
They talk.
You have influence that China is a big country that Tehran's going to listen to.
Absolutely, China's on the phone the Iranian the I told him he's going to pick it up.
He's taken that call. He's leaving whatever meeting, is going to take that call. That does not mean that he's going to do whatever China asks them to do.
Good point.
Yeah, I think all of this, you know, is as we always say, you know, it's not like the hooty thing came out of a vacuum. A lot of it stems back to Israel. And this is where the interesting point about is really pressured domestically for a cease fire may be increasing.
Let's put this up there.
We gave some of the preview of this the last time that we did a show together Ryan about these Israeli hostage families that crashed into this Kinesset meeting. But this time, you know, it's really starting to get attention internally, and they say, here, these really hostage families. Quote have nothing to lose in this push for a new deal, and the new deal that the Israeli government the warcap it had approved was a release of all hostages in
exchange for two months. Easefire doesn't seem that it's being widely entertained, but clearly there's a lot of pressure because you have one hundred and thirty two hostages who remain in captivity. They say twenty eight of them are believed to have been dead either of injuries of Hamas or claim to have been killed by Israeli troops currently in
the situation. But in general it does seem that many of these families have quote now mounted large scale demonstrations, met with officials, and are papering the entire country with posters, including traveling abroad to try and drum up global awareness. What do you make of that pressure inside of Israel and what effect it might have here on the heavy.
Situation I think politically speaking. Oh one complication that also never gets mentioned the press, that we should yeah let our viewers into is that Hamas does not actually have all of these hostages. Like Hamas has released a lot of the civilian ones, what's remaining are mostly.
Reservists, et cetera.
Yeah, but a bunch of gangs and thugs and other groups went over the border on October seventh and have some we don't know, nobody knows how many, but it absolutely is some and a non trivial number. And so it's not even clear that Hamas and Hamas might be embarrassed in that sense, because you know, they're supposed to have total control.
So you mean like criminal gangs palaestin In Isami Chihan.
And they might not even know where they are, have the compacity, like Hamas could reach a deal with Kut or reaches a deal with Israel, and then Hamas might not be able to deliver on some of these So some of that is embarrassing for them. But separately from the Israeli government perspective, I feel like they have politically,
they have two options. You know, they can reach a deal that releases the hostages, or they can achieve their military objectives of annihilating Hamas, wiping out the Palestinians and kind of basically repopulating it with Israeli settlements, which you hear from so many of the far right members of the of the current Israeli government. They are clearly failing at that first one, like Hamas is not eliminated. Their efforts to clear buffer zones the other day led to
twenty one Israeli casualties. And so I think from an Israeli public that is saying, Okay, you're not accomplishing your primary objective. If you were, then maybe we could understand what you said in the beginning that you were going to be ruthless with the hostages. But if you're not accomplishing you're a military objective, then just get the hostages back, like you no longer have an excuse to refuse to negotiate over these hostages.
And so they came forward with this two months cease fire offer.
Whether it'd be a pause, release all the hostages, there'd be some release of Palestinian hostages, and then the hostilities would resume. And Hamas, and I think a lot of Palestinians is like, so in two months, are you going to let in enough humanitarian aid? It's not an end to this crisis. And then we've lost our bargaining ship, and then you're just going to just continue carpet bombing the place.
That's a good point, that's actually a good segue to our next part here about the hostage of what is the demolishing buildings and the buffer zone. This is where those twenty four soldiers were actually killed. And one of these missions. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was part of the mission. It says Israel demolishing buildings to create a buffer zone within Gaza. It's unclear today what that buffer zone exactly, is how big it would be and whether it would be sanctioned by the
international community. So Ryan, can you give us some of the details here and how this will fly in the face and you have problems with overall US diplomacy.
So basically, the Iron Dome cannot protect Israeli kibbutzim that are right up against for obvious reasons right now, if you're that close. And that's why so many basically all residents in Israeli residents of that area have safe rooms so that these mortar shells are constantly fault you know, coming from Gaza and landing near these team and so
they would sleep in safe rooms. And they thought that that was kind of enough that they could kind of quote unquote manage the conflict in the long term.
October seventh proved that not to be the case.
And so currently you have a displacement crisis in Israel because you have tens of thousands of people from the north that have left North of Israel, that have left because of the fighting with Hesbela, And you have tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of people who have left the Neck of Desert because of the hostilities in Gaza, and so they're living in hotels, they're living
with relatives. There was already a housing crisis in Israel, which is related to why there are now seven hundred thousand settlers in the West Bank, because it's cheap housing for the Israeli population, just like in the United States. The one way we buy off our population cheap housing, go west, young man. And so in order to relieve that, they're trying to get people to be able to move back to the kibbutzs in southern Israel. And and what what they are now saying is we need a buffer zone.
So we're going to demolish all of these uh civilian and residential areas that are kind of within X distance. Yes, and this one was only six hundred meters away from from a Kablutz. But there's others that are that are further away. Say anything with a line of sight they're going to knock down. International law is extremely clear.
I was going to say, so, how does this complicate US diplomacy, international law?
And under international law, if you want a buffer zone, you have to use your own territory to do it, Like you don't want to live too close to us. It's like, it's like if San Diego wanted a buffer zone between it and Tijuana, they'd have to knock down san Diego. You can't, you can't go into Tijuana, be like this is too close. Yes, we're leveling this right and so separately the United States, international law whatever that
is what it is. The United States has said one of their lines, and I want to call it a red line, because they've said there are no red lines. But one of the public things that they've insisted Israel not to is take land from Gaza to create buffer zones. They've said, do not do that. Is Israeli government continues to say, we are going to do that.
So I have some update on that.
John Kirby was actually asked about this by the Financial Times. He says, quote, we do not want to see the territory of Gaza reduced in any way. However, the Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln struck a softer line on Tuesday, saying that while the US is clear about not encroaching on Gazen territory, there might be scope for quote transitional arrangements. Not exactly sure what that means, but.
I think actually the euphemism just dropped.
Yeah. I love that the major actual diplomatic crises that might come out of this may not involve America.
It's actually probably Egypt. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Egypt actually lashed out yesterday saying that extremist Israeli leaders are seizing Gazen Egyptian buffer Zone territory because of nets and Yahu's suggestion that Israel is going to have to take control of the one hundred yard buffer zone on the Gaza side of the Egypt and Gaza border. The Israelis are like, Hey, this is the Philadelphia Corridor, this is the above ground and through tunnels. This is where a lot of the supplies and the smuggling and the
weapons and all that comes through. The head actually of the Egyptian State Information Service said on Monday. This is an attempt to create legitimacy of the Israeli government's real goal of occupying the border corridor in violation of the security agreements that have been signed between those two neighbors.
Will remember that if we go back and we think about Oslo, and we think about some of the other international gream all the way going back to sixty seven and you know, Jordan and all the control of the border and all of that, Egyptian control of that border has always been very important. The Rougha crossing today remains
the main thoroughfare of humanitarian aid and others. And especially if we consider, you know, in the future, the idea of people in Gaza crossing the Israeli border to go work in Israel probably seems like zero.
For me, What do you think in five years, I don't think that's.
Going to happen. And so if that's the case, it's very hard to see.
Yeah, it's just not going to happen.
Right, So if we think about that, then we're talking about really the only way in and out of the country, and they're like, no, we're going to take control of that. That really is going to rankle a lot of people. Inside of Egypt, because this is now a problem of sovereignty on their part and of violation of agreement that they have signed. And these people have fought two wars in the past.
It's not a joke, right, and the Egyptians and the Palestinians and the UN have all said this humanitarian crisis, where we're talking about two million people being in the grips of famine, on the brink of starvation, dying from disease, is caused by the Israeli government, you know, restricting the amount of humanitarian aid that can get into the country. There is also a border in the north between Israel and Godz that is just completely shut down. Israel has
complete control over that. If they could load every truck and make sure that all that's in there is baby formula, diapers and aspirin and roll those trucks through there, there would be no question, because these these are the ones loading the trucks that there are going to be weapons
or RPGs or new amo for Hamas. The people in the north are perhaps suffering more than even the people down in the south because Israel's blocking getting humanitarian relief through their own border and is also bombing any convoy that goes from the south up to the north and refusing to deconflict. And so you have a situation where people are just scrounging, like absolute hunger Games style stuff in the north. And so Egypt is the like. And you think we're going to turn over the southern border
to you as well, which is our border. Given what we have seen, you do like you have lost all moral legitimacy to maintain any any any any immigration or border control on the Egyptian side. And so and also CC and BB have not spoken since October seventh, is what the reporting is. Wow, and they crazy it's there, nator like because the Egyptian and Israeli normalization was one of the great triumphs of Israeli foreign policy.
All right, final thing, Ryan, you've got You have got a story for us involving playing cards.
Why don't you tell us?
So we have a picture of said playing cards you can put up there screen. These are reminiscent of what were these the same playing cards from the Iraq War and now these are being sold and you have the exclusive on the story, so go ahead and tell us about it.
Yes, in fact, we do have an exclusive here. So a group of critics of Israel's war effort, okay, led by a man name Ashesh Prashar, who's a kind of UK kind of political consultant. You may have heard of him, well known in the UK. Worked for Boris Johnson Tony Blair as when Tony Blair was Midi's envoy. The rest of the folks involved in this are remaining anonymous, but they have created a deck of cards kind of modeled after the US created deck of war criminal cards in the era during the Iraq War.
Remember they were going out out and try.
To They're also working loosely with international human rights organizations and prosecutors around the world. Uh in at least these countries Switzerland, Mexico, Bolivia, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and Columbia. And in each of these countries they are they're finding they're working with either human rights organizations or prosecutors to try to file charges if they can get an Irish judge to issue arrest warrants anybody who comes into the EU
at that point going to struggle point. The cards are a propaganda device to keep it in the mind, keep it in people's minds. But here let's here. I'll show you a couple of them here. So here we got.
Uh.
The sixth of Spades is Brett McGirk, who is kind of the midi Us, the Ace of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs. Matt Miller impressed, impresses the spokesperson, Matt Miller. So let's see if you can follow. You have any money on you?
Yes?
Here?
What do we need?
Okay, let's play for twenty What do you think twenty bucks?
Geez?
Okay, here you go.
You got to follow? How about you? How about you follow? You want to follow that yaho?
Yes, I'll follow it.
Here we go?
Yes, all right? Right, oh, all right, it's yours. It's here's Ryan.
Thank it, keep it and you can keep that in Yaho.
Okay. If you see him, report him to authority. All right, we'll have a link down in the description for all of it.
You can keep it, all right always at the war Criminals dot com if people want to buy their own deck.
That is a pretty prized up.
Forty percent of profits are going to Gaza charities. Uh. The rest is being kept for taxes and also for possible defamation judgments in the future, which is always nice to set that aside. If you've got a deck of work criminal.
Cards, interesting stuff, we'll have a link down there in the description. Okay, let's move on to Boeing. There's some crazy stuff going on in the world of Boeing. The Alaska Airline CEO, who originally it was their plane that was affected by those loose door plugs, has now come out and said to NBC News that actually they have found many other aircraft that have been affected by that issue.
Here's what we had to say.
We found some loose bolts on many of our Max nine So those many, Yeah, so those are things that are going to be rectified through the inspection process.
Flight twelve eighty two was a new Boeing Max nine.
The door plug covers an unused emergency exit in planes with fewer seats.
It makes you mad. It makes you mad.
That we're finding issues like that on Branding airplanes.
Thankfully, no one was sitting next to the plug when it exploded. Looking at that video and those photos, did you think, my god, what if somebody were sitting there.
There were only seven open seats, and we had a guardian angel honestly on that airplane, and I just want to take a moment here to say how sorry I am for our guests on flight twelve eighty two for what the experience was just a terrifying flight. It makes me angry. Tom Boeing is better than this, and flight twelve eighty two should never have happened. Should never have happened.
That's a pretty diplomatic way of saying, screw you Boeing again. And look, Boeing has had some real issues now in the last month, let's put this up there. In the last twenty days, Boeing seven thirty seven has a panel ripoff in midair, cockpit windows cracked. On January thirteenth, Boeing seven thirty seven stranded Anthony Blincoln, Boeing seven forty seven
cargo plane burned up in the sky. January twentieth, Boeing plane in Atlanta loses a wheel, and January twenty fifth, Boeing has to pause all production quote for a quality
focused day. And I would say that's pretty warranted because the news is now coming out from the Seattle Times, which has done phenomenal investigations into Boeing now for years and years, and they say that the door plug that blew off of the Alaska Airlines Max nine jet this month was removed for repair and reinstalled by Boeing Mechanics
at its rent in assembly line. Starting a person who was familiar with the matter that Boeing is refusing to comment, saying that they cannot do so because of the NTSB investigation. But this shows that currently Boeing had the key role in installing and checking that part. Previously, Boeing was trying to put some of the blame or at least cast out that it may have been their fault, it could
have been their supplier, Spirit Aerosystems. What people forget is that Spirit aerosystem is actually spun off by Boeing back in two thousand and five. It was part of their whole financial reorganization of the company. You can spin it off, you can still buy from them. It's all just bs, you know, in terms of boosting their stock, same thing
in terms of the stock buybacks. But what's coming to light now is a genuine crisis I think you know for this company because you have now three incidents from Alaska Airlines to the seventh third seven max is that literally fell out of the sky and killed hundreds of people in the span of what five six years. That's how you kill one hundred year old company. Yeah, when people are dead, and as the CEO said, I mean, if somebody was sitting there, it's very possibly could again
sucked out of the sky. And actually even if nobody was sitting there and that accident happened at higher altitude from what I had read from aviation experts, absolutely it's on the table. For there was an incident over a United flight many many years ago over I think it was over the ocean. It was like somewhere to Honolulu. Same thing as like nine people got sucked out of the plane. They never even found their bodies. Imagine that.
That's a whole other story too. And they definitely and they would have been directly responsible for that if it's their fault here. Yeah, when as a as a.
Flyer, you start going from oh Man, I hope I can get the emergency roads, I can have extra leg rooms. You like, hope I don't get the emergency road because I might get sucked out the door and into the sky. Then you know you have a problem. Ye Pete Buddha Judge is announcing. You know, the Lever News has been doing great work past the Road Is News organization. Following some of that, the Buddha Judge announced they quote bigger
picture exam of Boeing issues. I don't know what little picture the Buddha Judge and his FAA were looking at when it came to Boeing, because basically, Boeing is it like Boeing is the is the kind of US airline manufacturing.
We have a duopoly in airlines, right, we have Airbus and we have Boeing. And it's a tragedy, it's offense.
It was an Airbus plane that stranded justin Trudeau, you remember, hilarious, Yeah, that's what I bet that was Shenanigan.
Yeah, the part of somebody. Here's the thing, here's why it matters. The most Airbus is European company. So that means that let's say, push comps to shove, and we've got to look out for ourselves. We've only got Boeing, that's it. They cranked out one hundred thousand planes in World War Two. Nowadays we really trust US pilots on top of a Boeing aircraft. I don't know. And they've got a century now you know of of work that
they have done to invest in this brand. It was one of the most important iconic brands in the world. I would say, think too of the eighties and the story you know, actually even before that, of the pride that the people in Seattle and in Washington had of working for this company, of knowing that millions of people set foot on their aircraft, that you know, they had one of the low the best safety rates.
In the entire world.
And then you know, all throughout the nineties and the two thousands, they start spinning off companies, they start reorganizing, they're moving their headquarters. It becomes basically a financial bank as opposed to an actual airline or sorry, an aircraft manufacturing company. And now you really are reaping the rewards of that. And the craziest part is we all thought it had stopped after those two planes five.
It was a wake up call for that.
It should have been the wake up I mean, you know, hundreds of people were dead.
It's a problem with it's directly your fault, yes, and it's it's a culture. You saw it change, you know, coming out of the kind of New Deal era. You've got this like consensus between the state and these giant corporations that there is there's a welfare general welfare kind of attitude or around the business approach in eighties and nineties, it becomes just pure financialization, like how do we extract as much capital out of this company and give it
to investors. And so that's why you see them spending so much on you know, stock buybacks and otherwise just hiring a bunch of people who are like McKinsey types to look at their system and figure out ways that they can make it more profitable. The board that they going lobbied against a rule that would have required that most of their board know what they're talking about when it comes to like flying an airplane, because instead they say, you mean, having Nikki Haley on your board is not
actually turns out to the company. It turns out that it is a benefit to the company in terms of profitability and making sure that you can keep the money flowing into the company and then back out to investors. But yeah, it turns out Nicki Haley doesn't know a whole lot about actually flying or building an airplane. And they fought against a rule that would have required the board to know what they were doing.
And this is why it's tragic, is look at the Alaska Airlines guy. You know, at a certain point it's like, and by the way, a Last Airlines. I love a Last Airlines, so great, great airline if you get the chance to fly it. The thing is is that they're pissed because they're like, who else we're supposed buy airplanes from? Yeah, well we had a deal. We paid you billions of dollars for these aircraft that we're fly. Yeah, that's it.
It was like, we're supposed to just work. And now you know, like you said, his brand is tarnished.
It's not just him. United also they were a huge purchaser of a seven thirty seven Max nines. Let's put this up there. The CEO of United and now Alaska Airlines are coming out and they are really pissed with Boeing and the manufacturer. I mean what they're saying, and you have some of the quotes here are just withering. They say, well, we're at least going to build a plan that doesn't have to have the Max ten in it. This is United Airlines, it's one of the largest airlines
in the world. We will hope Boeing gets its certification at some point. We're just going to build an alternative plan that doesn't have that that's devastating. And already Delta actually just bought a ton of air buses. I believe that they already had existing in their talk. But the same problem remains is that if you have US airlines and even buying from a US company, that increases all
the problems with globalization with where it's assembled. I mean, I saw a meme posted online, so like, guys, you know, Airbus is a company where they barely work like thirty five hours a week, and they get You're these Euros who barely even show.
Down in August.
They almost August Airbus shut down. They barely go to work, and they build better planes than us.
What the hell is going to the south of France sipping sipping, Uh yeah, Rose exactly.
Yeah, They're going to promots and hanging out in Burgundy and all this. And it's like, and the joke's on us because our guys are boeing, are getting paid like not a lot much money.
They barely have they've been living, functioning.
They they have non functioning pensions, and there's CEOs and executives are flying around like gajillionaires. There's also been a really troubling report from view of the wing. These are some airlines specific aviation news outlets which have been fantastic, And this one just came out a couple of days ago. It says Boeing whistleblower production line quote has an enormous volume of volume of defects on the Max nine and
we're not installed. This came one of their whistleblower says, I will save you waiting two years for NTSB to just come out and give it to you for free. The reason that door blue off is stated in black and white in its records. It is very stupid and it speaks volumes of the quality culture at certain portions of this business.
Why did the left hand bolt fall out?
Simple, as has been covered in numbers of articles, there are four bolts that prevent the mid exit door plug from sliding up off the roof dress stop fittings that take the actual pressurization loads in the aircraft. These four bolts were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane. That's it.
Our own records reflect this.
How crazy is that the four bolts that are supposed to be there to make sure that the door does not fall off in the middle of the sky did not work. It's just nuts. I mean, we're sorry, we're not installed on the aircraft whenever it was delivered to Alaska, which explains why their CEO is so angry there in that interview.
So, you know, just another examp sample of the degradation of that company.
Some we talked. I did a monologue on about the financialization. It really is a tragedy and it gets to exactly what you said about the government and more. Okay, let's move on now to like I said, the fun segments, to the two fun ones that we had to get into the show. Senator Chuck Schumer, who has long been kind of a hall monitor whenever it comes to substances that people may be enjoying. Say, you know, for Loco, which was certainly quite a bit of.
Fun, that was barely new for it.
I barely know. It was actually banned my freshman year in college, which we will never forget. I can tell you those of us who were in a fraternity at that time. Chuck Schumer now returning to another fraternity, I guess substance of choice, which is zen calling for a crackdown and a pouch full of problems.
Here's what he had to say, pouch packed with problems, high levels of nicotine. So today I'm delivering a warning to parents because these nicotine pouches seem to lock their sites on young kids, teenagers and even lower and then use the social media to hook them.
Uses the social media to hook them. I'm not so sure about that. One zin for those who don't know, is like the oral nicotine pouch. It was developed, you know, after many of the cancer problems came to light around chewing, tobacco, smoking, etc. And there's actually been a real resurgence, i would say, in nicotine usage these days because they've been able to disaggregate it from you know, tobacco and the carcinogens which are in that. It just led to a lot of
really interesting discussions if people are interested. Andrew Huberman did an entire episode on nicotine. There's been a lot of discussion about the no tropic effects of nicotine. Again, if you are able to look at it in a synthetic form, which is you know, actual house quality control and all that stuff behind it, as opposed to inside of a cigarette, which is addicting you to smoking, I think there's a legitimate conversation I think to be had around all of that.
But culturally this one is very interesting because clearly they've touched a nerve. This very much gets to some of the barsool conservative ideas and things that I've put out before here on the show. For example, one congressman actually tweeting out quote Zin, come and take it in the same way that we have the don't tread on me flag and other things.
What do you make of this, Ryan, Because.
What fascinates me is Chuck also wants to legalize pot. So how can you be for legal weed and want to crack down on zin nicotine pouches, which already I believe in the city of New York you have to be twenty one years old or older to buy.
I know, at the very least wherever.
The places I buy is from, you have to be twenty one years old or older in order to be a consumer. And these people are pretty religious about checking it. So I mean, this idea that they're being targeted towards children and all that seems ridiculous to me. You could make that case for Chinese vapes for what are those
called the health bars stuff like that. Yeah, maybe, but even then I wouldn't necessarily say that you should ban it, although it's probably way less healthy to vape than it is to use zin, which is the most ironic part.
Of all this. If Chuck does ever succeed in legalizing weed, yes, I'm sure on day.
Two he will be coming after weed company for marketing to kids.
So in that sense, I doubt that in that sense it will be consistent, which and you know, I actually think that that's a good place for a society to end up.
That interesting that adults should.
Have you know, reasonable access to you know, high quality and regulated products that are aren't going to poison you, and that kids should not be marketed to that, and that you know, developing brains should be you know protected from zin and whatever whatever else. It's like, it's not as your brain is developing, it's not good for you.
Well, it's interesting to me. Listen, you are absolutely right about weed. Let's let's be very very clear about that. But what's fascinating to me actually is that this actually has caused a little bit of an organic pushback inside of Congress. So, for example, you had many Republican congressmen and senators go on the record. Senator Tommy Tubberville says, quote, it's going to make a lot of people mad.
He wants to do that and then also cut out menthol cigarettes.
We don't need to do that. The menthol one I have always found fascinating, and maybe you and I can talk about it, because why would you target specifically menthol cigarettes? Now, their justification, as I understand it, is that menthol cigarettes are predominantly smoked by people in the black community, and thus you should ban menthol cigarettes basically for the own good of the people who smoke them. Now, that's to me seems outrageous because it's like you're protecting white cigarettes,
but you're not. You're gonna regulate black cigarettes. Like, first of all, that's insane, and it's not just black people smoke menthols. I think a lot of people smoke menthols, even amongst the twenty percent of Americans are today who do still smoke. But like, how can you move to ban one type of cigarette which is preferred by some and then leave others as completely legal.
That makes absolutely zero sense to me.
The only discrimination to me is that is that you can countenance is around age and so maybe you've got some life call monitors who would say, well, the you know, kids like menthols more. But you're right, it's it's it's it's racial.
No, But the public health justification I've seen explicitly says this is trying to protect Black Americans. Like they're they're being honest about it. The people who want to ban the menthols. So I'm like, what, what, Like, how can you first of all, you're making a decision. Are menthols somebody else? Are Menthols more carcinogenic than Actually, I honestly don't know. The most I've ever read into it really
was the racial angle. But I mean, I would just say this with cigarettes, with nicotine, with any of these things, it's like people who drink alcohol. Nobody is drinking alcohol and be like, this is really good for me, you know what, I'm really improving my health right now.
Nobody there was an attempt of people to full them.
For the red wine thing.
Yeah, this is BS okay, And nobody even believed that exactly.
It was people it was something that they could joke about while they were relaxing and have a good time. Everyone understands that's a trade off. Same thing whenever it comes to cigarettes, I know a lot of people smoke cigarettes. Nobody smokes because they're like, this is really good for me. Okay, They're like, I enjoy it. It's a trade off. I know that it makes some.
People because they think it helps them keep weight off. Okay, but once again, like you know they're doing that, but they know it's hurting them.
They know that they have what is it a twenty six hundred percent or whatever increase? Even nicotine full mea culpa. I use nicotine. I mostly to nicotine gum, not a lot, but I and you know what, I know that it is what is it a vasoconstrictor. I know that it will have downstream health effects. I'm willing to make that trade off because of the no tropic benefits. I think that it's a very very powerful not tropic I think it's one where there's actually.
A lot of discussion that remains to be had.
Where As a society, the vast majority of Americans either used to smoke or lived in a smoking household forties and sixties and all that.
You know, you can think of the mad Men and all.
That, and then because of public health, we just all stopped using anteine for a while. I mean, listen, was it a that benefit or not? Like maybe we definitely, you know, we live longer, but yeah, what about our mental clarity? You ever see those guys in Apollo? What does everyone doing in Apollo thirteen?
Yeah?
Figured, I think we got to the moon?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like you think they figured out how to put a round filter into a square hole or whatever. You think they did that all by themselves. Okay, they need a cigarette now. Look, I'm not promoting smoking, and it definitely is very bad for you. Same in terms nicotine. It is a highly, highly addictive substance of which I have seen people.
Go way down the rabbit hole.
Many of these frat kids are not using it for no trupic benefits. They're just buzzed out of their minds all the time.
That's said.
You know, okay, you know, if we live in a free country now, many people would say soccer, how is this so hypocritical whenever it comes to your stance on weed, and people say that, but people misunderstand that I am not for I do not believe in the criminalization of marijuana. I do, however, however, think that there is a very unhealthy trend amongst people who use marijuana who are like, yeah, but this one kid with siegers took it and it
cured them. And it's like, yeah, but you don't have epilepsy, dude, Like you don't have child to have epilepsy. Like you're just a stoner, Like you're just sitting on your ass doing nothing. And I think that there is not the same, and you correct me if I'm wrong. More immersed in that world perhaps than I am. There is less of an acknowledgment for people who are daily pot users in
that doing that they understand fully. They're like this is bad, Like this is not good for me, right, And we have seen an explosion of high THHC products that are on the market, totally unregulated, most of it coming from China, some of it you know, really really unhealthy, and really, you know, this is.
The other part nobody wants to talk about.
Same with alcohol, you know, as alcohol can be very conducive to horrible behavior like drunk driving and to substance spousal abuse and all these other things. Ask any cop how many alcohol related instances are in marijuana? You know, it's driving while impaired is not necessarily good. We don't have the same cultural stigma against it. And you know, I recently tweeted out a chart kind of wish we'd pulled it for this segment which is about the drug
induced psychosis. Cannabis is actually the number one substance that they have seen in which there is drug induced psychosis, even more so than alcohol, cocaine, methampheta and other There's been long, you know, Tell your children in the book written by Alex Barentson, a link and even Joe Rogan, a you know, marijuana fiend, would acknowledge this, is that there is a link between very very high THC, which is very much on the market right now, and people
who are predisposed to schizophrenia having a full blown psychotic break.
And people who would advocate for pot need to understand that.
Yes, yeah, yeah, I think I think that's fair. And for a community in the society to get there, you've got to have it legally, you got to have it regulated, you have you have to have access to product that you you know, can trust and can can analyze and can understand. H And I think that a free people can work can work that out. But I think you're right that culturally people need to acknowledge the downsides as well in a way that they don't quite with alcohol. Well,
in alcohol is worse. What do you mean by that? So, like you said, everybody that drinks knows is bad, yeah, but also fun yeah or whatever. For some people that's not even fun anymore. They're just kind of can't just can't quit, right, that's right.
And there are a lot of people who have like full blown alcoholism, which we don't talk about it, not from this country, right, Yeah, But.
I think there's less willingness to recognize the downsides if we'd compared to compared to alcohol. I think one reason for that is that the downsides of alcohol are so much more obvious and clear and dramatic than the downsides of weed. That doesn't mean that there aren't downsides of yes, marijuana and cannabis, So you've got to I think that is something they should.
I just wish I could hear that more from people who are obsessed with pot, because you know, all the data right now tells us that the increase, for example, in pot usage, everyone's like, see there's a lot more popular. A lot of it is daily smokers, Like we have a whole new generation of high potents and the LBHC exactly, edibles you got, marijuana and drinks now, lollypops like all this.
I can't even keep up with what the hell is going on here.
And within all of that, there is not again the same culture at least from my you know, from my view of what I've been able to find, same thing In terms of smoking. It's like, hey, you know, inhaling, smoking your lungs is still bad for you, Like it doesn't not just because it's not cigarettes doesn't mean that it's like good. Whenever you're smoking marijuana constantly all the time,
there are a lot of you know, health effects. Again, I would recommend Huberman did an entire podcast on marijuana, THHC and all of that.
There's a lot of linksage.
Because nicotine went out too, you should It's it's.
Very interesting, and I want to be very clear here. It is a highly addictive substance for which some people who use it will find it incredibly difficult to quit.
Uh.
There's a lot of differences in between people's genetics and their tolerability. Just as I'm a coffee fiend, I love caffeine, I always have, you know, I can drink five six cups of coffee.
I know people who have one and they can't even function.
So I mean, every every person is different, and you know you should never there's no such thing as a free lunch. Like whenever you're you know, riding high on nicotine, you're going to be coming down. Trust me, Like you know, there's there's gonna be dow. The question is is like is that useful to you? You know, are you making an informed choice? Like?
How does all that work?
I think we should have the same culture around that with marijuana, of which I do not currently see right now.
Yeah, I just year and everywhere. Also, the smell is terrible.
Let's be honest, all right, you can't walk down the city street without smelling this shit.
They call it skunk for a reason. I kind of like the smell.
But I miss I wish Crystal is here. I wish I wish she was here to talk about this. Does move on to the John storet block, the final the fun segment here. I'm really curious to see what you think because you worked professionally in media whenever he was a really big deal. So the news is in. Let's put this up there Daily Show here, it is your moment of Zen. John Stewart will be returning to the Daily Show, hosting it on Mondays and will be the
executive producer. This is after Trevor Noah has exited the show. This is after, let's be honest, since he left, it's just been a disaster. It hasn't even come close to the cultural touchstone that it was under John Stewart. Trevor noh never was able to capture any of the energy. I think it was because Stuart at his best, at his best, and this is where I'm really curious, was able to skewer CNN, MSNBC and Fox. He was deaf, definitely a thorn in the side of Fox and Roger
Ailes and all of them hated him. But seeing Inn and Am as soon as he hated him too, mainstream media because he made fun of them ruthlessly. He was He's liberal, obviously, you know, Krystal I interviewed him. You can go watch that a couple of years ago if you want to.
But in the Trump era, he never was able to recapture some of that.
So when Crystal and I interviewed him, for example, he would criticize the liberal media, but in a almost like a left perspective. He'd be like, well, you guys are obsessed with Trump too, and it's like, well, that's not really like what the criticism is, I guess per se. So do you think he will be able to bring the same magic that he had from the twenty tens to the current era, especially because we have lived through his Apple Show, and let's be honest, the Apple Show
was not as good as a Daily Show. It just wasn't.
But he even on his Apple Show he had moments where he's his interviewing technique, his style unparalleled. I agree, And he makes it look so easy too, which is an extra humiliation for the media, right because like, you see him do it, and the viewers like, well, this is just a comedian with using very very basic common sense language to just eviscerate this Larry summer Zoo or whoever it is, and you're like, well, I wish it. If it was that easy, he wouldn't be he wouldn't
be who he is. One of the coolest things I ever did on a Valentine's that we went to in two thousands taping of the Daily Show. Oh interesting, Chris Rock was the guest.
Wow, what year in two thousands, two thousand, Holy three, nine eleven.
That's wild, it was.
And I went to his rally when I was a freshman in college.
I remember that rally. Hey, that was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed myself. Yeah, but the.
Guys it will be. And he was like the conscience of the left in a way because he was against the Iraq War, and like it was back then, there was no social media to go to kind of connect with like minded people, so all you had was the mainstream media gaslighting you by telling you that there's weapons of mass destruction and we have to go to war, and we have to cut soul security and all of
these other things. And the only kind of safe space, so to speak, was the Daily It was eleven o'clock, the Daily Show.
You just watched it like I would watch it online back in you know those old viewers pre YouTube.
I also, I was still in the clock. I don't even remember. I honestly, I never watched it live. I was I was living abroad.
I was in high school at the time, and I you know, you'd have to fire up a VPN and then try and go watch it on the Comedy Central website and filter through all the crap ads of whatever looked like you O seven. But you're right, you know, because of opposition of the Iraq War and kind of that dissonance, he him and Vice were really at the center.
But there's a cautionary tail there. Look advice today.
And then also with Stuart, like you said, some of his interviews that he did, like with the veteran secretary or with at that woman at the Defense Department, I forget her name, the number two, Kathleen Hicks. I think where he humiliated her on like why can't you pass an audit? She was just so arrogant and annoying. He had a few and I mean he's done incredible work on nine to eleven firefighters, first responders, on the burn pits. He probably a single handedly is responsible for that. Let's
put that aside. Though in terms of his monologues and commentary, it hasn't gone viral in the same way. So that's where I'm really curious to see.
Yeah, because the problem that he's going to have is Okay, let's say he makes fun of Trump's I mean, let's say he makes fun of Biden for being super old, like he's easy stuff, right, and you know, everybody laugh. But on so many Democrats, we're like, that's but that's a but her emails.
They can't handle that. Yeah, exactly, you're so that is so right.
In the old days, he could make fun of Obama and there was not a predisposition of the liberal viewer to be like, that's racist, right, you know, but it was funny.
It was just funny.
The liberals consider the stakes so much higher today than when you know, Obama running against McCain or sighting. They see Trump as this kind of existential threat to everything that they hold dear, and therefore any criticism even that would even criticism and they're like, yes, that's true, I agree with you, but you should not say it right now because the threat outside the gate is so much greater.
Where does that leave? And that's I think one reason he kind of left originally, He's like, where where does that leave a comedian who wants to skewer all sides.
Part of the reason I'm sad that he's coming back is that linear TV is just not the same. I mean, he left in twenty fifteen, it was already on his way out, and now let's put this up there just to give people. An example, plus Can't Resist Donkey on CNN. CNN's ratings are now behind the History Channel and quote an obscure Western network in primetime ratings. They are struggling to get even half a million people total, not you know, in the Key demo to watch.
That's insane. I mean it's like, I mean, at certain.
Points, it's like a third of what we do here on like a daily basis, right, And that just demonstrates to you, like how much cultural cachet that they will have, you know, amongst the elites and all that, and how few people actually watch the network. It's all the right people. But in their defense that people will watch their stuff, yeah exactly. Well, no, you're exactly right, and that's not
good for them, not always good for them, exactly. And the other thing is with Stuart is you know, at the end of the day, how they make their money there over at Comedy Central is people watching live right. Yeah, if you want to play the YouTube game, which kind of what he was doing a little bit previously, that's fine, but there's a lot less money in that. It's it's a very different you know, environment and all of that. So I'm really curious to see what he does with this.
The return of the Monday Night will be interesting. But even more interesting is what talent is he going to tap? You know, who is he going to have actually host or is he going to bring back a rotating cast of characters? And you know, that's what he was really really famous for doing, and he built such a talent.
His talent basically every one of his correspondents became like a megastar.
Yeah, John Oliver, I'm trying to think about the Beast Samantha. Yeah, well, some cautionary in tails there too, isn't there? Ryan?
Anyway, we are I wish him nothing about the best. I love John Stewart.
So he was a major inspiration to a lot of the work that Chris and I even initially, I remember we've started rising like and it started taking off. I was like, who are some people we can like look and model ourselves? Afterwards, Stewart's name was at the top of the list.
And by the way, I've been trying to get him back here for a long time.
So John, if you're listening, you were welcome back here anytime and we could talk and I'll ask you a many of these questions to your face. But otherwise we have a great guest standing by Emily Cop to talk about that Lablik reporting. Let's get to it. Joining us now is Emily Cop. She's a reporter at US right to know, she's done some of the best work that there is on the Lableek hypothesis on that investigation. She's joining us now for our latest report. Thank you so
much for joining us, Emily. Great to be here. Absolutely so. We've covered your work here for a long time, and we have one of your latest that we can put up there on the screen. Let's see it. US scientists proposed to make viruses with unique features of stars Kobe two in Wuhan.
All right, so it's a headline of.
Which is you know, we've got a little bit of some jargon in there, unique features stars Kobe two. I think that's COVID Wuhan. I think I'm a little bit familiar. Some of our viewers probably know. But just break this down for or the average person. They have a little bit of familiarity with COVID, with the lab leak and more. What did you find in this report?
Sure, so it's a little bit of an understated headline. I'll give you that, but takeaway is origins of COVID
solved question mark. Basically, what we found is that some of the most unusual features of the sarscovy two genome, the things that made sarskov two sars kov two the most pathogenic virus of the last one hundred years, were I mean, they're very rare in nature, but they were central to the esoteric research interests of the top coronavirus virologists in the world, Ralph Barrick and the top coronavirus collectors in the world, Peter Dazak and the.
Wajuantitute of Virology.
We also found that while these scientists told the US government that they were going to be doing this high risk virology at UNC under relatively strict biosafety protocol, they were at actually going to secretly be outsourcing much of this research to the Wuhanasitute of Virology under an inadequate biosafety level, essentially in order to save on costs and to be able to do the work more quickly. So you know, obviously that is very concerning.
Yeah, yeah, I would say.
So let's talk about the Alex Washburn at All pre print that kind of led that led to this reporting that you did, And so we can go back to Bob Gary too, who was a Tulane University virologist who people might recall was involved in this that first kind of famous now infamous conference call with Anthony Fauci February second or fourth or whatever between the first and the fourth, where the virologists all at the beginning are leaning towards a lab leak, and by the end of it are
pronouncing and organizing public statements and articles saying that there couldn't have been a lab leak, and everybody is crazy who thinks it is. So Bob Gary at the time observed the makeup of COVID nineteen and identified some unusual features of it, which takes us to the washburn paper. So what did Bob Gary find and how important was that to your reporting?
Sure, So I'll start out with what is I think indisputable at this point from our reporting, and then I'll get into the more controversial stuff. So the stuff that's indisputable is that the scientists working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology were interested in making engineered viruses in the lab and testing whether they could infect human receptors. And they're so called gold standard would be to identify viruses
that could cause disease. They were also knowledgeable about two things that could essentially supercharge a coronavirus into that gold standard of something that could cause disease in human humanized mice. And those two features were I fear in cleavage site at the S one S two junction of the spike protein, and a receptor binding domain that was very good at
latching on to a receptor called ACE two. And when sars kov two first came out, those virologists who initially said privately, oh, no, this looks engineered, and then came out with a paper that said, if you think that this is engineered, you're crazy. They were privately very concerned about these two features if you're in cleavage site at the S one S two and the fact that it was sort of immediately very good at infecting human cells.
And so the documents that we obtained show they lay out their plan to create a model where they could create engineered viruses with these features that we later see in SARS Kobe two, but that are exceedingly rare in nature, so that all is.
Indisputable at this point.
I think there have been people, you know, people like Robert Gary who have really nitpicked and said, well, it's not a fear and cleavage saite at the S one S two, it's a fear and cleavage side at the S one or S two. But you know, the new documents we obtained make it very explicit that they were interested in precisely viruses like source Kobe two. The Alex Washburn paper that you mentioned around restriction sites, I think that's a little bit more controversial and requires a little
bit more scientific inquiry. But what they found in twenty twenty two is that a pattern of restriction sites. And restriction sites are essentially little bits of code that occur in the genome that can be used in the lab to enginr new viruses, but they also can occur naturally. But what they found they did statistics around how likely is it that we would see this precise pattern, and
they found it to be very unlikely. And so the new documents that we have, i mean, confirm their intention to create synthetic viruses with these restriction enzymes in six pieces, which is what the Washburn paper found, And they also include a budget line for one of these specific restricts, right.
Let's talk stop there and talk talking about that. So the paper says, okay, there's these six different you know, whatever they are, and they basically predicted, Okay, if you were going to do this, what you would need would be this one particular enzyme of thousands of enzymes commercially that are available to do this research. And what you found is that they in fact did purchase that enzyme and did use this, you know, which suggests that they're
doing the exact thing that was predicted. So not only do you have a regression analysis that shows the chance of this being formed naturally is infinitesimally small, but then they add a prediction on top of it that you would need this particular enzyme, and the chance that they actually then purchased that and it all being a coincidence takes it from infinitesimally small to me two impossible to
be anything other than a smoking gun. So why is it still considered somewhat controversial even among you know, some people who have always who have recently been said, yeah, I believe I lean toward a.
Lab leak, but I want to see more scientific inquiry on this.
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of hard for us lay people to evaluate because it does require knowledge of statistics and of bioengineering. So the number of people who can really evaluate these claims, I think is pretty small. But some scientists who are a bit more skeptical, like Alena Chan, they basically point to other viruses in nature that are very similar to Sara Kobe to having similar restriction sites.
Then you get kind of.
Another layer of complexity, which is that there is a debate about how many silent mutations you would see around these sites in nature versus in the lab. And so I think that's something that scientists need to douke out. I think another I guess, just a cautionary word I've heard, is that Ralph Barrick, this Corona virologist who was working
very closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He was known for doing this sort of work without any of these sort of markings, without leaving the restriction sites in He patented no Sum technology, no Sum being the name of a insect in North Carolina where he's based. So it's almost unusual to find a pattern like this if we expect it to be Barrack's idea that the.
Wuhan lab was working with Yeah, I mean, what's really concerns Manly is I've never believed, obviously in natural origin. But let me ask you, then, chrisal often does this, how would you steal man?
You know, your reporting?
What natural origin hypothesis at this point even bear scrutiny for a seasoned healthcare reporter like yourself? What would the you know? The critics critics say in response to this, I know I feel the same way. That's why I'm asking you.
Yeah, well, I think the possible coincidence of the pandemic first being detected at the wet market that I think that story still hasn't been told. How is it that that was the first place where we started detecting cases. I think the idea that early cases clustered around the wet market is based on a really bad analysis. I think the idea that spillover occurred at that market is based on an analysis that was recently recently.
Suffered a major correct correction.
Exactly.
So it's hard, but I do, you know, I'll give it to my opponents, I guess and say that I think it is hard to explain, just given the information that we have, the limited information, why it was the wet market that you know where we first Can.
We just say that, well, yeah, that's where the Chinese first report of the cases. I mean, they're the ones who are responsible for you know, they control the information that we get, not like not vice versa. It's not necessarily organic.
Continuing to like occupy the mind space of the urologies who think are a natural origin. I would say some of the first people who detected the pandemic were doctors in Wuhan, you know. I would also say I've done reporting showing that the doctors in Wuhan were censored very heavily and face a lot of retaliation for early reporting. So whether that early reporting is actually reflective of the earliest cases, I'm not competent in that great point.
And so I mean, given the documents you've obtained in the work that you've done, right now, news outlets are busy submitting their different articles for Pulitzers. You know, I think I don't even know if US Rights Know is eligible for a Pulitzer. I think you deserve one for the work you've been doing on this. Thank you, But I'm I'm curious what it's been like to see so little mainstream media follow up on this reporting, because we're talking about a pandemic that killed at least twenty five
million people. Correct me if I'm wrong here, up ended our geopolitics, up bend at our politics, our economy. The number of people who are suffering from you know, having lived through COVID, you know, on on and on is
just the damage is incalculable. And the evidence points to a small group of people breaking rules because you know, the Obama administration had put in place restrictions around this type of research that they went around in order in order to do this small group of people we're talking fewer than a dozen, perhaps doing something not on purpose, you know, but recklessly knowing that it was a possibility.
Anthony Fauci in twenty fourteen said, you know, the potential risks outweigh the outwagh the benefits of this type of research. I think that's absurd given the costs that we've endured. So what's been like from your perspective to see so
little follow up at this point? The New York Times, if you only read the New York Times, you believe that it's open and shutcase, and it came out inatural order, came out of that and you're racist, and it was a bad and then it was a raccoon dog and yeah, so what's been like to know the opposite and to watch this unfold? I mean, it's maddening.
It makes me feel like I'm losing it a little bit. But I mean, I think some of the things that are at player are the same things that are making
this show so popular. I think the mainstream media is becoming culturally irrelevant, and to me, I think my theory just kind of coming out of the health reporting space and knowing kind of the culture, and some of the editors who are running the health and science desks at these major outlets, I think they're friends with Fauci, to be honest, I think it's just personal relationships and they really admire him, and I think they have a hard
time grasping the idea that someone who had good intentions and who might not be a bad person might have made a catastrophic error in judgment.
Yeah. I mean, to me, the smoker, if you'll remember Donald McNeil, who worked for The Times. He got fired. It was a bunch of controversy and he came out later and he's like, look, I didn't believe it because I was friends with these guys. He literally said that to him.
We have the emails of them, like directly lying.
He came out and is like, I've known Anthony Founci and Peter Dazak for thirty years. I believe them, And he's like, and they misled me. And he's open about it. But he can only be open about it because he's no longer within the system. So I guess, finally, you know, we can bring this. You've effectively solve the case for us.
But what else is there?
Like, you're obviously going to continue on the story. What other things are you going to potentially inquiring? Can our audience help you? What can people point you in the right direction?
Well, your audience can definitely, you know, follow us obviously. I think we're punching up above our weight, but we're not the New York Times, so that every little bit helps every follower, every subscriber to our newsletter. I think next steps this, you know, latest document set I think lays out how SARSCOV two probably got its unique features, but we still don't have the starting genomic sequence. And even the guys, you know, the virologists who very strongly
favor a natural origin. Have said a smoking gun would be identifying that virus in that lab in twenty nineteen.
Got it.
So I think if we can confirm that they were doing this experimentation with fear and cleavage sites with receptor binding domains that strong or that binds strongly to ACE two, with something like sars Kobe two, that would be I mean game over, like truly game over and disputably got it.
So I think also one thing the audience could not do is jump in and be like I always knew this from day one, such a you sliss point to make stop it, because even if we definitely did, even if yeah, it's dismissive of all of the great works that so many journalists have done to confirm your hunch, that your hunch, I'm sorry, yeah, YouTube, audience, your hunch is not worth much.
That's right now, He's all right, He's right, And this is why we need you to do the work that you continue to do so people can follow you on Twitter.
What's the most helpful way people can help you.
I think subscribing to our newsletter US right to now okay are most helpful.
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