1/7/25: Trudeau Resignation, Bannon Rips Elon, Zuckerberg Caves On Trump, Ski Resort Strike & MORE!

we've got more Elon News. He's now threatening an invasion of Britain and a bunch of European leaders sounding off as they become increasingly nervous that he thinks he can just like jump into their politics and sort of control their political process in similar ways as he did here. Also, Mark Zuckerberg going on Fox News, was this just this morning? That does happen soccer?

So get into some of that as well. And we're also taking a look at this big CNN lawsuit, lawsuit against CNN claiming defamation. They are actually going to trial, which is kind of unusual. Usually they settle in these sorts of situations. But they could be facing huge, huge dollar amounts if the jury finds against them. And it's happening in Florida, which you know, they could find a pretty tough demographic down there, given how much Florida has shifted to the right.

By the way, we're at home because of the snowstorm, it is the roads spartalize. Yeah, yeah, completely impassable here in the Washington, DC area, combined with the fact that DC is also now the Green Zone because of the scary January sixth that happened yesterday, So we had like military tanks occupying our streets as we also had twelve inches of not twelve inches with close a bunch of snows,

So it's a mess out here. Please bear with us before we are able to get back to the studio hopefully on Thursday.

of course prime Minister of Canada and deeply unpopular. He has been in powerful like a decade there, so he's kind of overstayed his welcome at this point, facing blowback not only from the country at large very low approval rating, but also blowback within his own party. So he made this announcement official yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen.

politics here or in many other European G seven nations. Effectively, you know, overall, he came in kind of an Obama style figure, really embraced cultural liberalness, and some of the biggest hits he took were during the COVID era, when you know, they had significant shutdowns. You'll remember the big trucker protests and the uproar over that they took some more draconian measures actually than we did here in the US.

And in addition to that, they had high levels of inflation like many countries did around the world, and he just came to be seen as sort of out of step with the pain that people were feeling in the country at large, and more interested in these cultural issues than he was in making sure that people were really, you know, okay in their day to day lives. So again, familiar story, similar to what's going on here and other

European nations. But Sager, you noted this is what the last G seven leader to move out since the Trump era began, So it is kind of a significant turning point in terms of global politics.

single other G seven nation has experienced significant political turmoil. Germany, Japan, the United States obviously, even you know, if you look at the European Union, you know, even if you think about it, Putin, who used to be called the G eight. So yes, he may have been there during Obama, but let's just say things have changed. I think in the

last several years. The point really here that we have with Trudeau, as you said, is that he became someone who kind of embodied the quote unquote like progressive cultural liberalism, while frankly his country has been you know, destroyed from the inside. I mean, the average home price in Canada now is some seven hundred thousand dollars for people who Canadian dollars, it's not that different than US dollars. People

don't seem to understand that. While yes, the United States is a massive housing crisis and we cover it here all the time, Canada is ten times worse. They also have had significant problems with immigration. They've had major turmoil. Remember even internally Trudeau has flipped on immigration, being like listen, you know, we've let too many people in here. They've

had significant strains on their social welfare state. So they have major problems, and especially going into the Trump era, the Canadian economy is wholly reliant on the United States as a trading partner and with tariffs and with a lot of the disputes that are going to happen, specifically around electric vehicle mandates and others of which they had been penalized under the IRA over milk, over oil, timber, a few other things that significantly cross the border. They

will have to manage their relationship with Donald Trump. You know. The last thing is with the Canada is we shouldn't forget that. On a foreign policy level, they've had significant issues trying to navigate both kind of being a you know, secondary state to the United States pursuing its own policy with respect to NATO, Ukraine. They've had serious diplomatic crises with India, which relates to their own population. So it's

a mess. You know, whoever inherits this from Trudeau is going to have like a global they have to define Canada's role like abroad, or define Canada's role with its major trading partner, the United States, and internally, you know, they have to justify and to change the relationship or at least justify and reset the relationship with the social welfare state to the Canadian to the Canadian populace, which is significantly, you know, very frustrated right now. So it's

it's an interesting thing to happen. And I do think it's a like a world historical event in that his passing, it's kind of like when Angola Merkel, you know, step down like that. That is true the true sign of like where we were in one age and now we're in a different age.

You may even trace it back. I mean, it is ironically I'll say also of course missed the death of Jimmy Carter, and it is there is something fitting about him passing now literally on the day his funeral, literally on the day that Trump is you know, electorally certified, because Carter is really the first that sort of in terms of the US terms, starts to initiate the neoliberal ara. It sort of has one foot in both the New

Deal era and the neoliberal era. And now as Trump I think closes the door definitively on that period of political dominance at that very same time as when when Jimmy Carter leaves this world. Now, I would say that his advent, those pieces of the economic agenda that he brought in, all the deregulation and his embrace of this market driven, value free philosophy. You know, I think that's been devastating ultimately to the country, certainly to the Democratic Party.

So there's something to be said about that as well. But you know, Trudeau being leaving is another sign that this era is done and closed. People are searching for something different, and whether or not they've landed on it is another question and kind of the story that we'll

be tracking over our time. I reference the internal turmoil within his own party, which was kind of the final straw, and it really did break down over in particular Trudeau's response to Trump's potential trade war in the the threat of significant tariffs being marshaled against Canada and Canada's Finance Minister, Christian Freeland, who is herself a very well known figure in Canadian politics, actually have a past personal history with her. She back in the early days before I even was

like a contributor on MSNBC. She went on the Dylan Ratagan Show, where I also was a regular guest. All the times I've actually met her, like way back in the day, but she's become quite a significant figure. She's been the longtime finance minister under Trudeau. She resigned, and in particular she took issue with she did not feel he was taking seriously enough the threats from Trump on tariffs. She did not feel that they were he was setting the Canadian economy up to be able to weather a

potential storm coming from the United States of America. And you know, it's easy to take for granted here the level of fiscal flexibility that we can have being the world's reserve currency, but you know, Canada doesn't benefit from that particular dynamic, so they really needed to kind of

save for a rainy day. And she felt like he was, you know, instead throwing out kind of political political gimmicks is what she called it, to try to save his own ass and rescue his approval rating, which was probably an impossible mission at this point, so she had resigned. The other backstory is that he was also reportedly unhappy with her. He was going to remove her as Finance minister and put her in this sort of like work job with no official duties, so she resigned ahead of that.

But again just a sign of how unpopular he'd become, even within his own party. I think his approval rating overall in Cannon with something like twenty eight percent, after having at one point had an approval rating well in the high sixties. So a massive fall here, and the Liberal Party overall set for based on the polling, set

for potentially massive, massive losses in parliament. One of the big warning signs as there had been a special election I believe in around in and or around Toronto that you know, should have been a safe seat for Trudeau's party and they lost, like it was narrow, but they should have won by like twenty points and they lost, and that was a real eye opening, like, oh shit, like this is really bad. This is a political disaster Freeland, for what it's worth, is also one of the people

who is mentioned as a potential successor to Trudeau. She's one of the more popular figures in the party, so she's someone to watch as well. But it's also important to note, you know, they're going to have to go through these party elections before Trudeau officially steps down, so he will continue to be head of state for some period of time while that is all being resolved.

opportunity in the country. So nonetheless, it's very import and I think part of the reason that you and I really wanted to lead with it is that it just feels truly like a major, like a global event, in that you know that period is over and we are certainly like in a new period. Yes, you know, I find interesting, I really do.

knew this and resign. If Canada emerged with the US, there would be no tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be totally secure from the threat of the Russian and Chinese ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together. What a great nation it would be. What do you think about that? Zager?

need to inherit all of that. Also, we already guarantee their security through NATO, so you know, kind of works out already for them if you were to ask me, you know, I think I think things are good as they are right now. Also, you know you have all that vast territory. Oh is that a Salem sighting seance. I've shut my door to keep the cat out. Let's see if he allows that or if he's gonna start

beating on the glass at some point. But yeah, yeah, in terms of this whole annexation thing, I guess it's just trolling. Probably it Also, I mean on a base, on like a literal level, there is truth to it, Like their economy is wholly relate on us. Their security is wholly reliant on us. They are a vassal state and have been, you know for quite some time, sorry Canadians, is true. You know, your first vast state of the UK, now your vast state of US. That's what your long

history kindom has been. And I think Trump he's either trolling or trying to put them in their place for future negotiations, if I had to guess, that's probably where it is. Remember, they do have I mean, you know, I just put them down. They do have a lot of leverage over US as well, through their dairy farmers, through oil, through timber. There's a billion, hundreds of billions of dollars of goods that move across that border, a lot.

but they've got plenty. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a couple things that I think are interesting about this, not that I really take it all that particularly seriously, but the interest in Canada and in Greenland are both sort of like tastic tacit acknowledgments that climate change is real. It is literally reshaping the globe. And that's part of the interest, in particular in Greenland is these new shipping lanes that are opening up because of so much ice

melt in the Arctic. And then the other piece is like, I'm not interested in any new imperial projects from the US, but if Canada, if Canada was interested in if there are like some people that live in the fifty people that live.

the screen. This is from mister Musk himself. He says, algorithms tweak coming soon to promote more informational and entertaining content. We will publish the changes to add ex english. Our goal is to maximize unregarded user seconds. Too much negativity is being pushed that technically grows usertime, but not unregretted user time. Many people noted that he is not exactly himself following this new encouragement of positive, informative, entertaining political

content on Twitter. Here he is replying to someone f you retard and then immediately posting, please post a bit more positive, beautiful informative content on this platform. And Ryan's point, which I think is an important one, is like, oh yeah, now that you and your guy are coming into office, suddenly it's like everybody calling to let's just be positive, Like the world's actually a beautiful place and things are going great, So we're going to use the algorithm to

promote good news about the new incoming Trump administration. And you know, I mean, it's just like another example of the way Elon clearly bought Twitter to be an ideological weapon for himself and whatever political movements he aligned with aligns with, So no one should be surprised when he's just out and out announcing the way that he's shaping the use of this platform in you know, directions that he thinks will be beneficial to him and his goals.

the before times. And actually I would say it was even crazier and more chaotic then in terms of what the you know, when real quote unquote free speech and all that would rain. There was some crazy shit that was going around on Twitter on Facebook.

were crazy times. So this experiment has been run and on an engagement level, it just doesn't work, I do think, I mean, I guess you're right in terms of electorally, the interesting point on it is about specifically that now that Donald Trump is president, trying to vibe and tone shift it towards something positive. Again, I just don't think

that it's going to work. I also would note that this came after Elon himself found the very first time that he has truly pissed off a significant portion of the Baga political base, and since then has really been trying to retrench and move away from and engage with

topics that get those people back on his side. That is actually what I would say is behind all of this is that for the very first time, Elon got really a taste of his own medicine, or not his, of what it's like to be engaged in politics online, which is it's a dirt. You know, it's dirty, it's a nasty business. You took a position, you insulted a significant portion of the people who voted for the political party and for the candidate that you pushed, who happened

to just disagree with you on a policy. You call it what did he say? There are idiots or my mouth breathing morons or something like that.

it needs to be destroyed entirely. And say, I mean, he sounded like, you know, the simpler things that Steve Bannon and culture have been saying about h one B's and that I'm sure you would probably echo in yours in some ways in my comments as well, he sounded exactly like that. And now you know, three seconds later when he's on Doge, when he's got you know, in the Elon camp, suddenly there's a suddenly white people are lazy and we need to have h one B labor.

the way they raised their kids. The way they raised their kids is like the model that the Vike is pushing, which I always found to be really sort of like soulless and horrible because it was all like from the time the child is born, we have to get them in the right playgroup. We have to get them or in the right preschool, we have to get them in the right tutoring said. They need to learn Latin, they need to be on the violin. Fencing is the best way to get into an ivy League school. So they

need to take up fencing. And it's like Jesus got like, let these kids have a life ounside of your goals and aspirations and molding them into the perfect like market shareholder, value driven machine. So that was the part of it that I was like, Oh, actually, the culture I've seen that you're describing isn't an immigrant culture necessarily. It's this elite white culture that I saw in Manhattan.

our kids have turned out great. You know, I think they what are they? Oh my god, we're going in such a candent, but I think they both went to Harvard and they clerked for Kavanar or whatever. But they're around my age, so it's like, well, what else have you done? But what's going on here?

market based success and ignores any other values. And part of why this was so such an incredible moment in the Trumpest movement is in some ways at least the idea of trump Ism was a rejection of that was saying like, no, we shouldn't just be driven by like, oh, we can lift the GDP by a little bit, and that's what we should do. It's like, no, there are other values that matter, and there are other human qualities too that matter. So that was part of what I

found so extraordinary about it. Not to mention it was just like the sort of things that Republicans say all the time about like black culture or Latino culture or whatever. Now the gaze is turned on white people and there's

a big uproar over it. But anyway, I think it was a very important actual moment in the you know, as the next Trump administration is forming, and as we're getting a picture of what these divides are going to be and what these fights are going to be, because you and I have been talking about how there are these vast ideological divides between the Elon Musk view of the world and at least the Trump narrative that's been

sold of the world. Now, Trump of course comes in and wholeheartedly backs Elon and had already I mean, he'd already affected or taken this position, so you know, it wasn't new, but you know it is in some ways that illustrated how that position is directly contradictory to the narrative that he has sold of the world that has made him such a political sit It.

the most contracts. Now here's a big question, what is Donald J. Trump's White House going to push which is going to include in that bill because the Republican Party currently, as is constitutent in Congress, spans the gamut from we need unlimited legal migration, including a massive expansion of H one B to air immigration moratorium like where I am, and all kinds of stuff that's in the middle. Now it's going to be some sort of quote unquote compromise.

We have no idea what that looks like. But if is Donald J. Trump, for example, going to side you know, with the fortune five hundred, not just rhetorically, but be like, no, I won't pass a bill that doesn't include uncapped H one B country quotas. You know, these are all like actually interesting questions.

engaging or whatever. One thing people have found is that there is a mass number of people myself and yourself included, many people have been tying it to like, if you've posted about Israel's genocide and gospel, I.

really being super promoted by the algorithm. And Steve Bannon, who's always an interesting voice on these things and has been extremely adversarial towards Elon Musk for a while now actually, and has been kind of consistent in it to his credit, he weighed in and described these as effectively communist social credit scores. Let me just see where. Let me pull up this video and start a little ways in so you can hear Bannett's comments about this.

on a movie. It's the objective. Whatever happens doesn't matter. It's the objective. It's the objective of the accounts and nothing else. They say it when it all costs, Hey, you have to win. You don't need anything else. He must have adoration.

If I want to be the superhero. I want to put the cape on and kind of skip around.

instituting these scores. All of these things are you know, attempt to use this tool that he purchased for his own ends. Sometimes those ends may have, you know, things that I agree with, they may be in line with things that you agree with, and sometimes they won't be. And that's why I've tried to consistently say the problem here is the principle of having oligarchs with so much power,

including power within media, obviously power within government. Now he feels like he can wait into politics in any number of countries and try to control the outcomes around the world, and that is something that on principle we should reject because it's short circuits the actual functioning of democracy here. And so now that some portion of the MAGA sees that, now they've become aware of, like suddenly they're realizing, Oh,

it turns out x isn't a free speech platform. For example, it turns out Elon is perfectly willing to censor when he finds the content to be to be inconvenient for him. This has again long been the case, but now on the right there's increasingly more awareness of it because it's been trained at some of them. I mean, he's like banned gropers and stuff like that who have been critical

of him. In this H one B visa fight, he actually banned I can put this up on the scrange just get your reaction to this, as well as Steve Bannon. He actually banned this journalist who did a deep dive into Adrian Dittman. For people who are not initiated, there's been a whole theory that this character on Twitter, Adrian Dittman, who sounds a lot like Elon and is this massive Elon simp that this was actually Elon's old account. So this journalist went and like actually found out, No, here

is Adrian Dittman. He is an actual human being. Here's where he lives, Here's what he does, not like his specific house, but like here's the country he lives in. And Elon apparently banned this journalist for revealing the truth about Adriane Ditman. And I guess the theory is quote unquote doxing. But seemed like a perfectly legitimate journalistic enterprise. And again it's not like, not like this journalist posted Adrian's house or you know, specific like address or anything

of that nature. So anyway, it's kind of wild, especially because you would think that he would be happy that the truth about this was exposed. But I guess he kind of liked the game of people thinking that Agel was him or whatever. I don't know.

those sorry to burst your bubble. Nobody's perfect, nobody is ever going to be you know, some great uh selfless hero Elon's in this game, you know for and also look, I mean in the H one B thing in particular, that might be the single biggest threat, you know, if there was a restriction to the Tesla business. Tesla right now is not doing that well. Their stock has popped, but they have major problems going into this year with sales,

and they've had this price cut strategy and others. Right now the stock you know, which is a significantly put pressure on them to deliver and to they all these promotions and other things. A lot of the great you know, original sales of the company and the hype surrounding that on top of Elon himself is like personal image has been starting to show in some of their sales data.

This is from literal Wall Street people that I've read who are analyzing the stock, so H one B and keeping labor costs and all of that down is actually vital to Tesla the company. Also to SpaceX, by the way, which are you know, miraculously to companies which heavily rely on what engineers, and on keeping and making sure that the talent of all of that is paid as little

as possible. Well, you know, miraculously. Of course, He's going to use his tremendous wealth and his control of this platform to protect what is the most vital part of his entire network, which is the stock of Tesla. So I think people should also be very clear eyed where all of that is. There have been times where Elon, as you know, sometimes Elon will act in such a way which is beneficial to you know, whatever, But at the same time, like, let's not forget where all these

people's bread is buttered. This applies to everybody, to Zuk, to Elon, to Jeff Bezos, to Tim Cook, you know, and all these other folks. I mean, what I do at least appreciate about this is that for years, so many of these people want wanted to claim that their company's success and future and all of that is wholly

you know, divorced from the United States government. But what you are obviously seeing in real time is that the policy of trade, the policy of tax, the policy and foreign policy of the United States government is the is the actual, like major determination of a lot of these companies' success and the opening of trade to China. I mean, why do you think Tim Cook is given a million dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration fund out of the goodness of his heart? Or because China is their number one

market for iPhone and they're already having problems. You know, why do you think so many of these people are you know, Amazon, one of the companies most susceptible to tear iff pressure is going to be Amazon because half the ship people buy off of there is not even half, probably more is made in China. Crap the lithium that is in a Tesla battery, Giga Shanghai, one of the largest producers of Tesla's in the world, is he located there? All of this You know, I could go on forever.

oh this is so principal, blah blah blah. One of the things that they got pulled down of the original bill was restrictions on high tech investment in China, which I'm sure that was like that was the most important part of this fight for Elon when he saw that and was like, oh, we can't have this, so let me throw a fit about these, you know, and try to create an ideological point that conservatives can agree with in an effort to strip the sound in the bill,

and lo and behold it stripped on the bill, and suddenly he likes the bill and the bill passes. So yeah, he has his own ideological and personal self interest goals and everyone needs to keep their eye on that ball. At the same time, you know, there's been we covered yesterday with Ryan the whole like going after here Starmer and bringing back up these grooming gangs from ten years ago, horrific scandal. Like don't get I don't want to minimize it,

but it was a decade ago. There have been, you know, lots of reports analyzing what happened, and actually the criticism is that the recommendations of those reports have not been implemented either under Cure Starmar or under the previous conservative administration.

But you know, it's pretty clear what's going on here in terms of him trying to rescue his own reputation with Megan, not to mention, you know, the the other side of it, as he gets to meddle in other countries politics and see how it goes for him there, and see if he can get an administration that's more friendly to him there as well. So the latest in this battle, as he says this on Acts, he says, America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.

Yes or no, you know, shit posting, but anyway, and I say yes.

now that he has real political power. Someone made a good point, you know, now in what is it January seventh, so thirteen days, Elon Musk will be a United States official and all but name, he effectively will be like an envoy of Donald J. Trump, whether he's appointed by the US government or not, you know, going out and interfering in the internural politics of the UK, specifically with

an ideological movement like Nigel Farage. Here calling for Nigel Farage saying he doesn't have what it takes to be reform leader. I mean, that is one of the most insane statements I've ever heard. Nigel Farage is almost single handedly responsible not only for reform, but for being the og on Brexit, for calling so many of the anti EU forces, for coalescing the criticism of the conservative and

liberal governments, and of being anti neoliberal itself. I mean, this is like, I don't know, I can't even think of a comp here in the Honestly, the comp would be saying Donald J. Trump doesn't have what it takes, Like,

are you sterious? This is one of the most important political figures in UK history and like to say he doesn't have what it takes whenever he was responsible for building this thing out of nothing, for having UKIP be the force that it was for criticizing, you know, for pushing Brexit then criticizing the neoliberal Brexit that eventually happened,

is just ridiculous. He's the only person who has any sort of name ID credentials, you know, credentials, and frankly, just like the credibility on all of these issues that these voters, you know, who have been betrayed by the Conservative Party and by the Labor Party. For Elon to just you know, decide willy nilly to these people, you know that this guy doesn't have what it takes is ridiculous. I mean, Faraje himself came out and spoke against that.

A lot of the people who've worked for him, people like Raheem Kassam and others, have just been like a sorry, Elon, your moron. You know, this is a real This is just one of those like arrogant parachuting in and deciding that you think that you know better than others. And you know, maybe it worked in America.

is an extremely transactional figure. And by the way, Elon is a lot more popular, although his popular is kind of going like this in the US at this point, but he's way more popular in the US than he is in the UK, so that gives him more cultural power as well. I mean he's now a US citizen, so that also gives him more power in terms of

the say of our politics. Is the foreign national just popping into UK politics and trying to tell them what's But Farage is in a position where he thinks he could achieve potentially and his party could achieve real power, so they don't want to embrace, for example, you know, not even controversial like criminal figures like Tommy Robinson, who that seems to be the source of the rift between him and Elon, because Elon has also been going to

the matt defending Tommy Robinson, who's in prison for lying about this fifteen year old Syrian refugee and claiming that he was part of these grooming gangs, which was found to be inaccurate. He kept doing it and then is ultimately thrown in prison for it. And you can debate whether that's an over the top reaction or not.

those issues which was a sleeper with the British working class. Yeah, that's about immigration and about the refugee crisis, as we also saw with serious rape allegations and cover ups for example in Germany and Sweden and elsewhere. You can debate that if you want to, but I'm telling you that it was very important. The thing is with e On is they kind of like came out of nowhere.

It actually is disgusting to use it as a cultural cudgel and displays that you don't actually and aren't actually serious about the issue. The other thing that's happened here that I wanted to quickly get to is a bunch of European leaders now react acting. You've had Emmanuel Macron wide in. Let me get rid of that. There we go. Emmanuel Makron joins growing criticism of Elon Musk in Europe.

He's added his voice to a growing chorus of European criticisms of Elon Musk, joined the Norwegian and British prime ministers and a German government spokesperson on Monday, and responding to a barrage of hostile posts by Musk, Macron said, specifically, ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world's largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections,

including in Germany. You also had the Norwegian leader saying, I find it worrying a man with enormous access to social media and huge economic resources involves himself so directly in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not the way things should be between democratic allies. In Germany they had similar comments saying like hands off our democracy

was one of the one of the comments here. So there's a huge backlash among European leaders who of course feel like you know, they don't want they want to learn some of the lessons from what happened here and

the level of influence that Elon Musk has. The UK is moving to potential, potentially block some of the contributions that he could theoretically make through a corporate entity into British politics so that they, you know, don't have the same level of corrupting influence of money that we have

had here as well. And also the Europeans are more open to the idea of we could just ban the platform, like we could just take a harder line in terms of allowing Twitter, you know, our citizens to have Twitter access at all. So I think those are all things at the on the table. Now that Elon has made it quite clear he wants to use Twitter as a weapon of Ryan called it like a weapon of regime

change in these various countries. Now, whether you'd have the same success in these countries as he has here is an open question. But clearly, when you're talking about the richest man on the planet, he's going to have some influence, He's going to have some sway, especially when he has this very powerful social media platform.

in their own right and in general. You know, when I would say this about any country us going and trying to inter I mean just imagine if there was like some British oligarch who came over to hear and was trying to tell us, so I'd be like, shut the fuck up, get out of my country. And look the UK and Germany and others as beaten down and ridiculous to some of their populations. Maybe from time to time. They themselves are a proud people with their own long history,

and I would not personally recommend it. I would never you know, have the gall to go to the UK and be like Nigel Farage, you don't have what it takes, you know, when you're a guest or something else in another country. I think you should act that way. And especially now for Zuckerberg, for Elon and all of these other folks. I mean, this is part of the problem that they've always had. These are not just American companies, they're global. I mean, you know, his Meta has three

billion daily active users. The United States population is only three hundred and thirty million. That means that the vast majority of their user base is foreign. You have the same thing with I think with Twitter it's still a bit more skewed, but you know, they have a very large percentage of the user base and others, so you know, you also need to tread lightly. And this is also probably some of the problems that they themselves have faced. We'll see how it works out. I honestly have no idea.

Two is all political content will no longer be censored on the Instagram platform, meaning that previously people who needed to opt in to view accounts such as Crystal and I to engage with anything political, that gait will be taken off, he announces as well. About what did he say, He says that specific topics like gender and immigration will no longer be censored, so it is just tonally. I want everybody to listen to this because again, this is

like the biggest vibe shift I have ever seen. Let's take it to get.

but there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content. But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just one percent of posts, that's millions of people, and we've reached a point where

it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our polllo in restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here's what we're going to do. First. We're going to get rid of fact checkers.

I also was subject, yes, but but I will note that it was a confirmation to me in that I got piled on by a bunch of Ukraine fanatics because I had put out a post being like, hey, you know, it's insane that Ukraine is assassinating Russian generals on the streets of Moscow, and the community note was like, this is a normal practice during war and it cited the US operation to kill admiral like Yamamo and World War Two, and I'd like to be like, yeah, that's the same,

except for the US was on a client state of anyone else during World War Two, and we do weren't reliant on i don't know, like the UK or whatever just to apply all of our weapons when we were doing that. So I'm just saying, you know, it has bad context. And I'm very against the policy.

but it was interesting. In the first two years of us starting rising and all of that, both of us are masked somewhere around two hundred thousand followers on Instagram. We have not gained a net follower in over three years because of this policy. Just to show what it means, which basically, if you post anything political, people have to opt in to seeing political content. So this effectively has removed political content from their algorithm. Here, Zuckerberg says they are reversing that.

and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive. Fifth, we're going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US based content review is going to be based in Texas. As we work to promote free expression. I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally, we're going to work with President Trump to push back

on governments around the world. They're going after American companies and pushing to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional.

trust lawsuits. It is under active litigation right now from the United States government over you know, Department of Justice antitrust violations. So that's one. Two is obviously they also were on the different side of the literal popular vote of this selection. You know, one of the things that he notes in there is that the legacy media has constantly been pushing this narrative that you have, this narrative that you know, misinformation is a threat to democracy that

he has said. He's like, clearly, you know, we are out of step, he says, quote with the mainstream discourse on even cites issues like gender and immigration, two of obviously the most hot button issues. So it is both like a retrenchment of a quote unquote like woke content moderation. But I think obviously it fits also with his you know, the company itself metas a multi one hundred billion dollars or whatever market cap. I don't even know what it

is right now. This is a company tremendously vulnerable to Department of Justice policy, and he wants to get on the good side of Donald Trump. Remember he's donating as well one million dollars through the Donald Trump Inaugural Fund. So there's a confluence of personal interests of cultural interest.

And I mean, for me, it's just crazy. This is a man who I watched in real time go from giving a speech defending the ability of Holocaust deniers, which I agree with, by the way, as unpopular as that may sound, to be able to post on a Facebook platform. He then reverses that policy some years later, giving into

this you know, legacy media stuff. Then five years later decides to give this Georgetown speech where he's like, actually, we stand for free expression and that's why you should ban TikTok. And now it's you know, it's just the constant moving around shows both the influence of corporate Uh, these corporations are under both from their shareholders, from the media and others,

but also just it can be so capricious. Yeah, because just why And you know, if they had just stuck with the first principles from the very beginning, they would have been better off.

Spring and this idea under like the Obama era. You know, Obama was very close with all of these tech titans and they were kind of an integral part of the democratic coalition at that point. All of this sense of the coalition of the ascendant and how this like liberal democratic order was just going to grow and you know, justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron and Barack Obama, like this

was the model for the world for the future. And then in the Trump era, you know, in twenty sixteen, the sense from Zuckerberg and I think some of these other tech titans is that Tump is kind of this was kind of an aberration, right, this is a weird

moment in time. He doesn't win the popular vote. Hillary Clinton is a uniquely flawed candidate who runs a uniquely bad campaign, and so the bet is effectively on the resistance, and you know, there's all this concern about misinformation and Russia and foreign interference and all of these sorts of things. And you know, and also the Trumpest movement did take a lot of energy and have a lot of sort of like you know, far right internet culture embedded into

that initial Trump campaign. So there's a fear about that, and that's how they place their chips in that era. You know, that kind of continues through the Biden era and now with Trump winning and you have the rise of the right in many countries around the country and the really the fall of the neoliberals in all kinds of countries around the world, the bet is being placed

very differently. You layer on top of that, like this was not just to bend the name that to Trump, it was also been the Knew video to Elon, which is you know, adopting the community notes, moving to Texas,

adopting some of elon sort of framing and language. So he's recognizing these two power centers in American politics, both of whom can cause real problems for him personally, real problems for his company's bottom line, and he's doing what he can to get on the right side of both of them, and Donald Trump being the uniquely brazenly transactional person that he is, Like, if you're out there flattering him and say I'm gonna work with you in your

noble mission to embrace free expression, which of course is bullshit. Trump is like wants to, you know, make people it easier for to suit people for libel and defamation. He wants to ban flag burning. I mean, he wants to deport anyone who says something he doesn't like about the country of the foreign country of Israel, et cetera, et cetera.

But he knows that if he flatters Trump and frames him in positive terms, that that's going to be better for him, and that that may well short circuit some of the cases against him and certainly will help to undercut any additional enforcement action against him. So yeah, I see this in align with Tim Cook and Sam Altman.

Altman is the one, the other one who's the sort of prime example of doing the need ben not just to Trump but also to Elon, with whom he has like personal grievance but has gone out of his way to be like, Oh, I think Elon's going to do a great job at doje. I know he would never use like personal animis or petty grudges against people. Of

course he wouldn't do that. So this is kind of the story of this moment in time and of the way these corporate titans are reading the global political mood and certainly the American domestic political mood.

joining Meta's board of directors. We have massive opportunities. He is the president CEO of UFC, built into one of the most popular, fastest growing, most popular sports enterprises in the world, and an entrepreneur Trump. Yes, that's right. He's also friends with Donald Trump. So two birds with just one stone. I think they're with Zuck. You know what I was fascinated by is, like you said, it is clear to me that Bezos and Zuck I think I mean jealous may be too. I think jealous is the

correct word with Bezos. I don't know if that's the correct word with Duck. But these guys are online and they're you know, they're annoyed that Emon is soaking up the role that Zuckerberg, for example, once held under the Barack Obama administration, the pinnacle of American leadership, of innovation, of you know, the next step for American GDP. And

so Zuck is watching all of this happen. He also has the Hydra, which he frankly created, you know, by bending the knee to Cheryl Sandberg and all these other idiots who he hired for the content moderation. I mean, do you remember how ridiculous things got Crystal where they had the independent Facebook board like the Supreme Court.

right to those names in particular. So all of these tech oligarchs that we're talking about, I think all of them, maybe not yeah, all of them, maybe not Bezos, And to be frank we don't really totally know, but they're all engaged in arms raies right now over AI and the amount of money and corporate focus on AI really dwarfs pretty much anything else, and that is going to be there are going to be critical decisions made with regard to govern contracts and with regard to potential regulation,

which company gets a leg up, which company doesn't, Which company is favored in this giant global arms race to achieve the you know, the best age AI, and too you know the arms race ultimately to achieve artificial general intelligence AGI. That's the subtext of all of this as well, and so a lot of this jockeying and positioning and trying to curry favor is also about trying to obtain

favored status visa VI. That race which is going to be incredibly consequential for all of our lives and is really kind of happening behind the scenes and is the context for a lot of these fights, including the H one B fight, by the way, is like a side event to the main event, which is this battle over the development of AI, which requires massive both electricity resources

and what they call compute like computer analytical resources. Altman is at odds with Microsoftware now his partner, because of the amount of commute compute that he wants and the

amount of corporate resources that that is required. So in any case, that's the other sort of underlying piece of business piece of this that you know, we all need to keep our eyes on because it could end up being in the quite near term, extraordinarily impactful on human life, on the labor markets, on our country, on geopolitics, et cetera.

reverse it overnight. So there you go. All right, let's go to the next one.

are extremely expensive to live in. We're asking for a couple of dollars wage increase so that we might have a prayer of being able to afford a life here. Here's an image of some of the workers here. They say, ask me about this pick line wage twenty one dollars,

asking twenty three dollars, burger twenty five dollars plus. Ye, just speaking to the unbelievable cost of living that you know in order to live in these ski towns that you're ultimately subjected to that certainly goes for housing prices even to a greater extent. Can show you some of the images that are coming out because they're pretty interesting that people who are going to these resorts are sharing. Here you can see long line just to image here.

You can see this video too of people waiting in line. I guess that's for like the ski lift, just having to stand around. This person says, the longest lines ever, no excuse, operational managerial fail. During the busiest week of the year, twenty thousand dollars vacation with two to three hour lines for lifts at least discount those who bought

lift ticke as wall strake was occurring. Or you could just pay your workers a little better, how about that, and get them back and get them back on the job, because this is insane. I've just got one more video for you so you can get a sense of the scale of the disruption. Here. This is a video you can see of the massive lines waiting again for the ski lift. So let me give you some of the backstory on what's going on here, according to the Ski

Patrollers Union. Here is some local news coverage. Veil Resorts sense in Colorado ski patrollers to break the strike as Park City strike continues. The Park City, Utah Professional Ski Patrol Association went on strike December twenty seventh at Veil Resorts, Inc's largest US ski area, vuying for higher wages. A walkout of ski patrollers during the busy holiday period in Park City has yielded long lift lines, limited terrain, and swelling crowds as the strike stretches into its second week.

They say that they are looking for higher wages starting at twenty three dollars an hour and better benefits. They also express frustration about the prolonged negotiation processing and a social media post. They are ready to get back to work as soon as Veil Resorts offers a fair contract.

So Saga a pretty fascinating labor dispute here, And some of the background story on this is also really important because even though this is you know, very specific context of specific like recreational sport activity, you know, some of

the broader themes here are really important. Twenty three dollars an hour may sound like, oh, that's a pretty good wage, or the twenty one dollars an hour that they earn right now, you might think like, oh, that sounds pretty decent, But when you factor in the cost of living in these towns, like there's just no way to make it.

And these giant companies have bought up a bunch of these different ski resorts in all kinds of towns across the country, and they've sort of pushed out to the extent that, you know, the certain of these ski towns had a local economy and local vitality begin with, they've

like pushed out the locals. A lot of out of towners coming in buying up the property, making it insanely expensive, and then crowding out even things like you know, local restaurant owners and local business owners, so that the only game in town in terms of a workforce are these relatively low paid, hourly jobs where you don't have a prayer of hoping to be able to like live and eat and exist in the town where your job actually is located.

in a hotel room six or whatever. You could buy the ski passes for a little bit less, and yes it'd be a bit of a pain, but you could make it work and it'd be one of those things that we would be equivalent to taking the family to Disneyland, for example. So this was a sport that no, it has never been accessible to people who are you know, lower middle class, but I would say middle class upper

middle class historically has been something that is there. It has since moved to the bastions of the ultra wealthy and of people who are making over five hundred thousand dollars. We're about to show everybody a video which actually shows explicitly how that's been the strategy. Now to what you just pointed out, this is obvious. I love Park City, Utah. I don't even skate. It's one of the most beautiful

places I've ever been, such a gorgeous town. As you just said, the local businesses and all that are exactly what make it nice and good. I can also attest that the twenty five dollars burger is in fact reality. Yeah, but what it demonstrates is the same problem here of you both make the cost of anything fun and nice in America. You just make it outrageously expensive, and then you also treat the workers as shitty as humanly possible to roll up as much profit as you possibly can.

This is a story of everything, and that's why I noted it that we used to be a middle class thing. I think Disney is another perfect example of this, where you have the cost of these Disney trips now costing tens of thousands of dollars in some cases if you have a large family, something that people have been doing in the past. I think Vegas is another one. You know, if we had the era in the old days, the Christmas family vacation and all that, a sixty dollars hotel room,

that's all gone. And so really what we have is like, if you want to go on vacation in the Continental America, you are just competing with you know, like a price war. And then the people themselves who are actually working and staffing and delivering this product are making absolutely nothing. You know, it's not just me saying this. There're so many people, even rich people, who are like, are they seriously destroying this entire experience just to not pay these people two

dollars more per hour. They're like, I can't even believe this. Yeah, and that it just demonstrates their greed, you know, that they that they're willing to hold the line on an extremely extremely like it is not out of left field, it's not too much of an ass. It barely even keeps place with inflation.

consolidation is killing ski towns. But I just want to play a little bit of a portion of it that focuses on the cost of living and how impossible it is for workers in towns like Park City, Utah, where this labor dispute is occurring.

in which they work. But of course, in a small town environment like this, and considering the competitiveness of housing, most rentals never make.

into the workers that are there. I mean, you've just turned these places, first of all, any local character that exists gone, Locals cannot afford to live there, housing stock bought up by people who are you know, wealthy millionaires from all over the country, if not all over the world, who are there like twice a year. So town is

effectively vacant when it's not peak season. Locals pushed down, and workers treated as basically like indentured servants who you know, can't afford to live in the town and are even being gouged in terms of having to pay this like four hundred dollars monthly parking pass, which is totally completely insane. So yeah, it demonstrates the fact that they won't give them their freakin two dollars an hour raise because they're afraid.

What they would say is they're afraid that next holiday season they're going to realize this was a successful tactic to go out during peak season, and they're going to do it again and again. And I would just say, like, okay, well, you know, you probably could afford to pay them well enough so that they'd be happy and they're not feeling like they have to like split your throat every holiday season because this is their peak season as well.

are we doing here? That's crazy, you know, and just demonstrates again that the way that these private equity companies and others have rolled all the stuff up, milked as much as possible, is that they are making it impossible to have a good time in this country unless you are stupendously.

like being indentured servants for the day. But yeah, in terms of an attainable vacation spot, in terms of a sustainable workforce that's actually able to live, in terms of having any sort of local culture, Like everything just disnified playground for the rich. That's what it is.

put this up there on the screen. A Florida jury will decide if CNN defamed a security contractor so the details everybody stick with me. Goes back to twenty twenty one from the US Afghan withdrawal. So basically, in November of twenty twenty one, DNN ran a five minute long lawsuit a segment about private contractors who were charging large sums of money to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee the country.

This was the direct quote from Jake Tapper. Dnn's Alexander Marquett has discovered Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success. The only security contractor mentioned is this man, Navy veteran Zachary Young, whose operation had actually been paid by several large companies including Audible, Bloomberg, etc. At one point in the segment, his face was shown on screen above the graphic referencing

black markets and exorbitant fees. So that is the core of Young's defamation lawsuit. The reason why, in particular that he's able to quote unquote at least allege damages is because his business suffered significant monetary damage as a result of this CNN report. Now we should note that actually

DNN did issue a correction about four months later. Jake Tapper or Jake Tapper and CNN read an on air correction to the story and actual some of the emails that have now been released show that inside of CNN there was concern that this did not meet editorial standard. Nonetheless, STNN still alleges that it is not liable for defamation, as they issued a correction some four months later. However, it was enough to reach the standard for a judge

to allow us to go through. Now we should say that that is extraordinary already, because it is extremely rare for a news organization to be able to even to not have the case thrown out. In terms of scrutiny, the judge, Florida Circuit Judge William Henry ruled that Young's activities were legal, preventing the network from suggesting to jurors

that he has been engaging in illicted activity. That's really important because if the jury determines the term black market refers to illegal activity, DNN would be found to have quote knowingly published false information as network journalists agn knowledge they're reporting. Did not find evidence that Young had committed

a crime. So, you know, on the merits crystal, they are facing some serious issues and sociologically, when we think about the jury pool and all of that, they could be they could have a real problem on their hands with this case.

kind of sloppy, kind of sensationalist. They also acknowledge like they think this guy who's now suing them as like a shitty person, and they have this sort of like personal animus against them that also against him, not that they knew him personally, but they thought he was sort of like sketchy and sleazy, and so that could have animated some of the editorial direction of the segment as well.

And so their star anchor, Jake Tapper is involved, He's having to be deposed, what is going to come out in discovery, what's going to come out in the trial, even if they ultimately prevail here, just getting that little window into the behind the scenes of how CNN actually operates and actually puts together these stories could in and of itself be at the least embarrassing to them, who like to hold themselves out as this like gold standard

of journalism. Clearly in this particular instance, they certainly fell short of that.

these potential jurors. How we're revealing here, how you really can see where the actual editor of as to CNN over years is now going to screw them with the jury pull So, for example, the first perspective juror, when asked if they could be fair, says, I dislike the media, especially CNN. Another says I'm not a fan of CNN, but about a dozens in between said they had no issue.

Another potential juror said he believes media outlets think they can say anything about anyone and pretend to be the victim when called out, and another said he could be impartial, but added nothing negative against CNN. I just don't see the way things that they do, you know. Another, my personal favorite, says, it's killing me sitting here. I'm hyperactive and I smoke, plus I have to pee. Who is I think all of them.

I know you served on a jury. You're much more of a believer, I think in jury trial than I am, just in terms of your ability to.

it's possible that they do that. They can, you know, prove enough like just incompetence versus some sort of intent here to be able to slide. I think that's entirely possible. But and you know, the amounts will be significant, but they'll be fine. This is a you know, gigantic company

and conglominary et cetera. I think probably more important is just what is learned in the context of this trial, whether it's embarrassing to the company itself, embarrassing to Jake Tapper, embarrassing to his team, etc. Nobody wants that peak behind the curtain. It's going to be messy seeing how this sausage is made.

to whether you can even argue any of this. And yeah, you just said, I mean, if Jake Tapper and his team are found liable here, that will be a massive blow to them. It also will you know, to show everybody else and others, including us in our business. I just don't understand how this ever got to air, because you know, you and I both know the standard for saying somebody is doing something illegal or even sketchy is so high. Also, this guy not a public figure. That's

another one which is very important. You know. Look, we can talk about Elon, Mark Zuckerberg, all these other people, all of them fall under the public figure standard. This is just some random dude who's involved in business or whatever, private military contractor to name him. The Newsworthy standard of that has to be very high, and you have to have dead to rights, you know, evidence that this is

going on. I mean, I think clearly what happened is the reporter didn't like him, and the editorial team also found it. I guess gross that people were charging to get people out of Afghanistan and they were like, screw him, We're going to go after him. But that is the exact reason you're supposed to have editorial standards to make

sure something like this never happened. So pretty extraordinary. Nonetheless, the jury did eventually get picked and they're going to trial, so it could be like Fox where they just settle before that. You know, if I've seen NS legal team looking at this, you may you know, you might need to pay, Like you might need to pay big time to make this go away because Florida jury, I need to go and check how exactly it works with the

damages and everything. But if I recall the Gawker case also was out of Florida, and if we'll remember, that case basically shut down the entire website forever. I'm not saying that's going to happen to CNN, but you know, nobody wants to pay half a billion, three quarters of a billion dollars out all because your reporters did a stupid job. But they may decide that that is the that that's the best course of action, just to try

and not set a standard. But that's why it's risky when you go to trial, a jury trial like this, Absolutely anything could happen.

best to get there in the studio. And it's great to be back, Crystal.