11/14/23: Israel Claims Total Gaza Control, Biden And Xi Meet, Newsom Cleans Up SF For China Visit, LA Highway Up In Flames, Tucker Joins Spanish Protests, And SCOTUS Creates Fake Ethics Code

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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. It's a great show for everyone today, it's Tuesday. It's especially great because you have Brian Graeme in the house. Good to see my friend.

Going to be an amazing show, always amazing.

I guess all my line it's a bro show, so it's okay, I will allow it.

We've got a great bunch of great topics today. We're gonna go. I came up with amazing on my own. Have you've said that before?

Yeah, that's my cash. Yeah, all right, let's see. We got Israel. We are going to talk a little bit about what's going on in terms of the latest with Netsan Yahu. What the IDF claims of their control over Gaza. They say have total control of the Gaza strip Ryan is going to break down for us some of the things that are going on inside of Israel, some of the domestic consternation, and some we're crackdown on terms of

There's a lot to discuss.

There also is an interesting moment though, because President Biden will be meeting she in the city of San Francisco, which overnight has become clean, and there's a lot to say about that. I think next, we're going to talk about two very important stories. I know many of the people who watch the show are in California, and actually a lot in the city of Los Angeles. We're going to talk about the closure of the I ten, part of some of the reasons possibly behind a fire that

Lots of concerns.

Media is waking up, you know now at this point they're like, oh my god, this man is so old.

How the hell do we drag him across the finish line?

And then ran for now You're going to be our resident Spanish extra. What the hell is going on in Spain? Tucker's on the ground. What's going on there? Ryan will explain all of it to us. So before we get any of that, Ryan, you want to plug the book? Ye here, Okay, it's the Squad Squad all right, and it is a AOC in the Hope of the Political Revolution. You guys are going to be hearing a lot about it. It's an excellent book. And we will also have a

Yeah, And a week and a half or so right after Thanksgiving, if you're in DC, I'll be at Politics and Pros with Crystal.

That's right, So Chris will be interviewing in Politics and Pros. Said last time, that's how you truly have made it.

You go, you get the.

Politics and pros thing, the flagship, you're guaranteed right next to the sex child sex traffick in pizza place. Oh, that's right, I forgot about that. I've actually been there. I looked around of the basement. There was nothing. There's actually not a basis. All right, anyway, all right, we could have too much fun here. Let's start with Israel. Let's go ahead and get to our first element here in terms of what is actually happening on the ground

Here's what President Biden had to say.

Have you expressed any specific concerns to Israel?

Answer?

Well, you know, I am not from reluctant, and especially my concern's going on and is my hope and expectation that there will be uh less intrusive action relative in the hospital. We're in contact and we're with the israelis Also, there is an effort to take this pause to deal with the release of prisoners, and that's being negotiated as well with cutteries are engaged, and so I've made somewhat hopeful the hospital must be protected.

So this is a big question around what he's saying. Ryan part of the reasons that we need to protect the hospital. There was some reporting last night, very very late last night. I wanted to get your take on also update the audience. David Ignatius, who's basically like an employee of the CIA, has to work over at the

I did want to flag it for the audience. He's also possibly get any of your reaction.

Yeah yeah, yeah, So he was sourcing that to an Israeli official. But because as you said, because this is David Ignatious, he's not running anything without running it by his He's very well sourced in the deep state, so he's running This is what I heard. This follows a scoop from Reuters, which actually I think was just based on Hamas's telegraph channel, which if you're in Israeli you are not allowed to read, and we'll talk about that later.

This is important. It looks like it's happening.

This is an important point. It actually kind of ties into the security situations. Let's go and put this up there on the This was a pretty important release from the Defense minister.

This is from the Times of Israel correspondent.

He says that according to their Defense Minister quote, Hamas has now lost control of the Gaza strip as the IDF moves to capture Gaza City. There is no force of Hamas capable of now stopping the IDF. The IDF is advancing to every point Hamas organization has lost control of Gaza. Terrorists or fleeing South civilians are looting Hamas

I'm curious what you think.

Of all of that, and I would add it even a phase one A to I think what is a good analogy, and phase one A would be the shock and awe campaign, right and Israel, the IDF has done its and continues its own shot and all campaign. The difference here is that, Okay, you have reduced northern Gaza and almost all of Gaza City to rubble, and Hamas has gone out through its tunnels down into southern Gaza strip.

We're not gonna worry about that.

Now he has also said, well, we're gonna occupy it indefinitely. US is like, no, you're not we're not doing you're not doing that. He's like, okay, well we're not gonna let the Palestinian authority back in, and US and Arab countries like, what do you mean You're not gonna live?

Soho? So who, yes, who's gonna run? It's not you.

If it's not them, who's which leads then a lot of people say, wait a minute, do you plan?

And they're not being people there. Well, the big question too, is who the hell's gonna run the election? You say you're gonna have an election.

I mean America ran into this problem where we were like, we had to decide basically who was allowed to run and who's not. Oh, it turns out that didn't have a lot of democratic legitimacy with the Iraqi people, and it took decades in order for that to actually material if it even does materialize.

And in two thousand and six, when George W. Bush oversaw that election, Hillary Clinton famously publicly sem publicly was like, would you an idiot? You would hold an election and not be able to rig the outcome?

Right, Which, when you.

Step back a second and think about who's saying that, it's kind of about kind of an amusing thing to have expressed publicly about elections that they're really just theater to put in place who we want to run.

She was livid.

She's like, how, as you know, a custodian of the American Empire, could you hold an election which allows an adversary of in a certain point.

She's not wrong if you're going to militarily occupy a country, and then of course you're going to try and rig the election in the you know, in the direction that you want. And in fact, the irony of all of this is, this is why we have to spend so

And that's literally to where we are right now exactly.

And then we had a coup in a civil war and it's completely failed because it turns out we can't do ninety eight thousand, We can't even do three things at once.

Let alone, like I didn't do coups any what we were trying to do at that time.

So the point though, is that much of this also roots back to that time period. It's why it's very instructive and why we spend a lot of time talking and thinking about it. It also is in the context of what the blowback on America is going to look like. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This was actually a map that was compiled over by Fox News. I actually thought they did a pretty good job. Well, you can see here are now the fifty two attacks

We are not getting embroiled into this. You need to cool it.

Why are you having these long range strikes all the way deep in their territory at the same time, like the Israelis are like, well, has Bola has been firing anti tank missiles at US? They've killed a number of IDF soldiers. I believe a Raeli citizen at an electrical plant was actually killed by one of these missiles just

I mean, when you've got a sexy b one like that, I mean, let's just share those selfies, right, Yeah, you can't.

You just can't help it.

There was a kind of there was a statement from a Hamas spokesperson out of Lebanon yesterday that sounded a little bit like cope that goes to this question of Hesbola, where they said Hesbela's red line is if Hamas is

Of course, I mean that's always the nightmare scenario. It's like you just never know, and it just takes a single instance of one person who didn't plan exactly the right way and things are popping off at the same time.

Ryan, you flag something you wanted to discuss.

Let's put this up there please on the screen, this internal State Department memo which was actually blasting Biden in US policy.

Can you tell us a little bit about it.

So, the State Department has what's called a dissent channel, and the State Department officials at the top brag about how proud they are of this, that it allows people to air their grievances and to and that that's the way that you get to kind of the right decision. At the end, you hear from all sides. In reality, they're not so pleased that this descent channel exists. They're super not pleased when this channel leaks into the public. This one, the ones that have been coming out recently

Since then and.

Before then, everybody understood, from Israel to human rights organizations, that these numbers are accurate. Like if you go back and look the IDF estimates about around civilian casualties or around casualties, I should say, are the same as roughly the same as the Ministry of Health was always coming up with, and the State Department knew that, and the administration knew that because the administrator was all in the state'smartent.

We're always relying on these numbers.

And so to have Biden say that we don't know whether the pal scenes are telling the truth about these sent a signal that there would be no consequences for civilian casualties because you could just deny them and so the State Department pushed back on that. There's there's now a letter coming out from i think in the New York Times from like four hundred Biden staffers. Put part of this trend of staffers and lower level official pushing letters.

Pushing back at the intercept.

Today we have a letter from about one hundred and fifty Obama staffers to Obama saying, come on get tougher. Interesting on Biden kind of reaction to one another letter that's going out. So there is a lot of dissent going on because you can only deny this, you know, for so long.

And then actually all of that kind of flies in the face though of how the official Democratic Party is operating. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is important. Can you tell us about what you have here? It says that the House of Representatives has organized bipartisan member transportation to the rally tomorrow to support Israel. It's being run by the Democratic Minority leader, Jakim Jeffrey. So there is a protest or whatever, a march, gigantic march today,

The organizers are expecting two to three hundred thousand people just because the six just as bigaus of that one. I think, you know you're going to have buses from all over the country coming to DC.

It's there is a small peace.

Block that is that is part of it that wanted to say I stand against anti Semitism, I also stand against war, but most of it is just generally supportive of Israel's war effort. And so to have the House of Representatives making by partners and travel rangeents, first of all, just walk.

I mean it's from yes, yeah, thank you. We're talking like ten blocks.

Yeah, well less that's ridiculous.

But so the letter that I obtained says, if you if you're a member of Congress that wants to go to this rally, we have a range transportation and RSVP to Keem Jeffries. Basically this is later today the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I also reported this yesterday, will be streaming that Hamas atrocity video that the IDEA has been screening around.

You know, two journalists throughout Israel and else.

They did it in New York and then you hear from people who've come out of it. And so if you are a Palestinian, you know, watching this as you know the death Holls, who knows, maybe it's pushing thirty thousand. You know, the ministry official who was in charge of the count was at Al Shifa hospital. So how is that how.

We can now?

I agree with Biden that we might not be able to rely on these numbers as much anymore, but in the wrong direction, it might be actually much worse than we understand. So if you're somebody in gods at watching this, you're you're not seeing the United States as a kind of interlockert or who's trying to bring people together to end this. Yes, you're seeing them just one squarely.

That's what I think, you know has to be squared here, And it's just obvious, like the democratic entire democratic leadership from the president on down, like there's yes, there's maybe twenty thirty.

Or whatever, eighteen to twenty. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, I mean, And that's why I just think people also need to be very real about where the US political system is right now, whether it is reflective of actual like small d democratic concern I don't think So although I do still think people underrate, you know, just how pro Israel a lot of the American population is. We'll see and you know a reflection of that is going to be. We had a big ceasefire protest was here in the US where I'm a massive protest here Austin yesterday.

I had said ten thousand, but you look at the drone footage, it's like the whole It's like, yeah, city was.

Out this as London.

Actually, we'll probably cover it on Thursday, just some of the outbreaks.

One of the biggest in British history.

I was going to say, I think since two thousand and three might be the largest protests to actually take place there. So big stuff is happening. Let's move on now to Israel and what's happening on the ground. So Bib Nasannah, who took to the US air waves as he did all in English, of course, in order to telegraph directly to you. He was actually asked though, He's like, hey, are you ever going to take responsibility for what happened on October seven?

Let's take a listen. I know you say the time for that will come after the war. Why won't you take responsibility now, I've.

Already addressed that many times, and I said, this whole question will be addressed after the war, just as people would ask, well, did people ask Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor that question? Did people ask George Bush after the surprise attack of November eleventh. Look, it's a question that needs to be asked.

This question will asked, and I've.

Said and I've said, I've said that one thing that is important, and I've said, We're going to answer all these questions, including me. I'm going to be asked tough questions right now. I think what we have to do is unite the country for one purpose, one purpose alone, and that is to achieve victory. That's what I did. We formed a unity government. The country is united as never before, and I think that's what we have to pursue. And what the people expect me to do right now

Israelis who are disappointed that you still won't take responsibility.

You say, well, I.

Said that I'm going to answer all the questions that are required, including the questions of responsibility. There will be enough time for that after the war. Let's focus on victory. That's my responsibility.

So this is especially ironic comment the nine to eleven one. Would we have been better off if we did not immediately rally around the flag and instead asked Georgia were like, hey man, how exactly does this happen on your watch? You had a briefing on what was it, August ninth or something like that. Bin Laden determined to attack the United States. So what happened there? Wait, the FBI and the CIA were like screwing with each other and they just happened to miss you know, the Saudi agents that

And nobody was able to put that out together.

Now, let me ask whether we would have been better off asking all those questions. We didn't find out any of the facts I just laid out. We probably didn't find out till what two thousand and five, two thousand and six. Well, by that time, we're in the middle of a dam insurgency in Iraq, and you know, even the FDR example, there is a lot of stuff that happened inside the State Department where America would have been

They're smart enough where they understand that.

Yeah, they're much smarter than we were after nine to eleven, where we were just like rah rah oh my god, George W.

Bush through out a pitch at Yankee Stadium.

And to the Israeli public's great credit on this particular question, they have not let him, yes, sweep these questions under the rug because the answers are all obvious and none of them are useful for Beebe. And we've talked about this before. One of the answers, or two of them. One is his attempt to take over the judiciary to

So that was a choice that was made that.

Yeah, I was also very hostile to the south of Israel because, as we talked about right afterwards, a lot of lefties that lived down there, and so all of these different moves he made, along with allegedly having the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in world history and missing it, all of those things combined to create an opening for Hamas that appears to have shocked Hamas as well, you know, as well as the Israeli defenses, like they did not

Well, congratulations to them.

They're certainly very smart people, who, of course, you know, would never have anticipated that taking hostages of children and all that wouldn't invite a massive military response.

Ryan, you did flag.

However, there's some stuff going on inside of Israel that I want you to be able to break down for us. We can go and put this up there on the screen, guys about Israeli civilian and human rights inside of the country right now and some acts of protests and others. Can you just tell us about some examples about what you're seeing.

Yeah, So, the the Kanessea has passed legislation since October seventh that criminal that criminalizes effectively criticizing the war effort, criminalizes any support of that, anything that could be remotely understood to be uh support of Palestinians broadly. Uh, and even criminalizes particular news consumption, not just the Hamas kind of telegraph you channel, the telegram channel that's.

That that is like definitely going to get you arrested.

Interesting, But you can't be on different WhatsApp groups that are sharing news from God from reporters in Gaza.

Uh.

There have been people that have been arrested for just sharing the kind of handles of Oh here's some good people to follow on Instagram. Sure like that that has gotten you arrested. This weekend, there were two there, Uh, there were two Israeli leaders here in Washington, d C. One is a Israeli Jewish labor leader. The other is the only female Palestinian member of the Kanesset. They found an organization called Standing Together and they're kind of doing an American tour.

I saw them over the weekend. They said.

One of the things that organization did right after October seventh is they set up a hotline for people who were either arrested or fired for making public comments that ran a foul of these new laws. And they are

They said. They're in the high thousands.

There's a viral video that's gone around of a Palestinian woman who's an Israeli citizens wat you saw that. The cops show up and they're like, you are supporting terror, and she's like, and you can tell in her eyes that she did not, like she she knew she didn't even post anything. And they said on her what's app status had said basically, may God grant them courage and victory or something like that. And she's like I was

Yeah, owned community.

And you can tell, you can just tell from her body language she's telling the truth, but you can also see in her eyes that she feels like she's on the precipice of getting sucked into this, the abyss of this, of this system, of which she may never emerge.

My question to you was going to be so WhatsApp, for example, they brag about anten encryption and all that.

So how do the Israelis even have visibility into this? Is it? Is it like cooperation with meta they own?

No, I would I would work well if it's if it's your WhatsApp status's public, right, Yeah, So a lot of this is a lot of this is public, and a lot of these WhatsApp groups, you know they're public. You'd have you know, like a public people sort of

That's pretty crazy, all right.

So there's a lot of stuff going on inside of that. And you also, you guys wrote this up over at the intercept. You can break this out. I know a lot of our viewers actually will be interested in this. The Anti Defamation League, the ADL, has now mapped Jewish peace rallies with quote anti Semitic attacks. So this is almost too much of a parody, but give us the details, Ryan.

This is the kind of the logical, kind of endpoint of what you were seeing over the last several weeks of all of these different commentators posting images of you know, one hundred two hundred thousand people marching in London or New York City and saying, you know, look at all of these anti Semites.

I fear for myself.

But that's but the actual marches are saying we want to cease fire in the war. Like it's it's not a it's an anti Semitic march. It is an anti Israel war march. And so it makes sense that then the Anti DeafNation League, which has been pushing for a long time to say that criticism of Israel is the same thing as anti Semitism, for them to say, all right, if you attend one of these marches, that's a hate march and you're anti Semitic, and you're going on you're going on the list.

So even if you're Jewish, it's not even if Semitic, especially.

Ok oh, okay, especially then because that's more of a threat.

So they say, well, the ADL told the intercepted does not consider Ceespire protests anti Semitic, just anti Israel. It's CEO Jonathan Greenblad has now said otherwise. After thousands of Jews called for a ceasefire, ADL DC released a statement equating anti Zionism with anti Semitism. Greenback piled on, calling the groups that organized the protest Jewish Voice for Peace hate groups. Roughly five hundred Jews, including twenty five rabbis,

So basically, so basically imagine that that ideology is in power in Israel. Yes, because here we can be like John green Blatt going, you know, doing his thing where he you know, he's calling.

He can say whatever.

It could be annoying because you could sub tweet it or something like that lead to a boycott or something.

But at the end of the day, like we're not going to like, you know, go to jail for it.

But if in Israel you and I you know, might you know be facing cops on the other side of the door, and you'd be.

Like, no, it was him.

He's a guy.

Yeah, yeah, I've almost made They would review it.

They'd be like, how did you respond when he said that thing?

Interesting, Well, they can roll the tape, they could go ahead and they could see how it is. So that's that was an important thing that we wanted to highlight for everybody. Just a couple of different fragments I think to, you know, tie a blow on this for inside of Israeli society. Like number one is that Netanyahu himself has a direct interest in drawing this thing out as long

And underlying all this, for the people who have been following along is he's been facing all of these corruption charges that he can get out of as long as he's in office. Yes, so the entire world is held hostage. I've wondered if they could just come up with a deal and be like, it's fine, you're not I prosecute you and your wife for these corruption charges.

I have said this before.

I genuinely think he's a villainous figure no matter what is actually especially if you support the state of Israel. I think the most patriotic thing you can do is if you're a controversial person and you know, we should look to British history for things like this. Chamberlain like, whenever he knew he was going to lose a vote of no confidence, he didn't want to leave. He was like, okay, I'm out. The public will and support me form a coalition government.

I'm done. And a lot of people have had to make that choice in the past. It's brutal. It's not like history treated him all that well.

He died of cancer very shortly afterwards, and he's probably still considered Chamberlain. Yeah, he's like one of the worst pms in British history, and yet he did the honorable thing at the time there was a I forget I think it was hh Asquith. Same thing in the middle of World War One. He lost power and he said, okay, I'm done, and he had to turn over power to somebody who we genuinely hated. That's how it goes sometimes

You should put the country above you and your own personal interest.

And unfortunately, Nea I was chosen not to make that decision. I genuinely think it may be one of the worst things that's happened to Israel as a result of this, and has guided so many of their worst decisions, which will remain perilous. I think in the many years to come, it'll fall out. Okay, move on to the next part. We're going to talk about Xijingping and President Biden, arguably, as I said, the most important meeting in the entire world. So let's go and put this up there on the screen,

And it really basically amounts to.

They're like, hey, we're gonna do an exercise over here, so don't shoot at us. It sounds stupid, but this is very basic but important military to military stuff that's supposed to go beyond the diplomacy and just make sure no accidents.

They had cut off that channel after.

The shooting down of the Chinese spy balloon back in February, so they have resumed some of that. The other thing that's going to happen is that at the APEC conference, and it actually stands for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation I apologize for missaying it earlier. The point though, is that the economic piece of this is actually really key. There was a presumption that some trade agreements and other things may be announced that doesn't yet appear to have materialized

Meeting that's not the same.

You know, China's economic slump right now is probably one of the biggest news. They have a huge real estate bubble, their overall consumption and economy is really hurting. Zero COVID really hurt them badly. They've had problems restarting manufacturing. They have real energy problems as well. Cole and even they had rolling blackouts for time across the country kind of shook the foundation of the CCP's control over it. And then at the same time you've got she who is

It feels to me like they're going through a period similar to ours. You know, we had the mid post World War two era up through up through the seventies. Every generation I felt like the next generation was going to do better, like that was the and you can even run it back before with the blip and the depression that kind of.

Produced the American dream. To go back to your point about the Chinese dream.

Yes, that was the thing that allowed so many people to accept a lot of the indignities that come with contemporary life that Okay, this sucks, but things are better for me than they were for my parents, And I'm going to make them better for my kids than they

Right Well, I think America's trade are going to I think America's trade policies had a lot more to do with that than the CCP. But I mean, I guess you can't you can't blame them for taking advantage of stupid people.

I mean, we did trade.

We did trade policies in South and Central America, we did trade policies in Africa, we did trade policies in Vietnam. And it's China that's like, you know, kicking everybody's but they.

Were, they were the best equipped to take advantage of US stupidity. The thing that I would really say is the economic peace to this is pretty much baked in at this point.

This is when you can't deny with Trump.

I mean, the trade war is probably the single most bipartisan accomplishment that he had. He destroyed at least the public trade consensus. Behind the scenes, there's many Republicans and Democrats who want to return, but.

There's no there's no announcement coming in this meeting.

Of oh, we're going to get rid of the three one tariffs, the national security tariffs. There's no way that even Biden, you know, could try and do something like that. At best, they could only try and you know, bring back TPP through another name. But even from what we've seen so far, that's not really what's going to happen. I think Taiwan and the military is going to dominate

Recently.

Everything has been about Oh, China's supporting Russia in Ukraine. Oh China refuses to condemn what's going on in Gaza, And it's like, well, okay, but maybe we should just talk about, like, you know, US and China, which has to do with Asia and our largest trading partner outside of Canada and Mexico, and how are we going to figure this out? And what you know, what are our actual redlines in the region, and is cooperation even possible?

What can you know?

All these things look like it's but my biggest critique of the Biden administration's foreign policy is that they refuse to conduct foreign policy honest for US interests and in whichever country that we're dealing with. You know, our relations with India really took a massive beating over Ukraine because they continue to buy Russian oil. And it's like, what the hell does it have to do with US and India relations. This is the largest now population on planet Earth.

Joe Biden. Biden, I remember this.

I remember the very last speech he gave as vice president, the last policy speech, and he still uses it to this day, although it's less cogent and he's like, you know, nobody has spent more time with Shi Shinping than me. I've sat across the table from him, you know, I've looked him in the eye and all this stuff. This is a man you can work with. And that was

So, as we said, there's just a lot going. There's a lot headed into this meeting.

You know, there's, of course there's gonna be ramifications on Ukraine, There's gonna be ramifications on Goza and all of that. But the single question is like, how are we going to conduct relations between our two states? What is our military red lines and others? What is going to be communicated by President Biden directly to she's face, And how the hell can we even continue to trade and coexist in this world as we move forward?

And what she has said, you know, semi privately, And it's funny what counts We're so out of the loop when it comes to China that it's funny what counts as private because it's like the speech is given to you know, millions of y sometimes even millions, but it gives them been Chinese, so they're secret of One of his themes is that he does not trust the United States because he thinks the United States is trying to undermine other powers throughout the world.

That he believes, as The.

Times puts it, he agrees with putin on that the US likes to orchestrate quote unquote color revolutions around the world. And one reason that he believes that is because we do like to do that. And it also puts into context the kind of weaker genocide, the cultural genocide carried

This is my thing with China is. I just think that the best thing that they've got against us is they're like, oh, you guys talk about Demi And I've had, you know, one of my old professors in graduate school,

How much free speech do they have in Iraq?

And then we would say you know, oh, you guys should do this, and they're like, well, we don't want to hear about democracy promotion from the people who took over Iraq. And then we would be like, hey, can you get Kim Jong un to relax? And they would say, well, you know, you guys, he's not going to listen to you because you killed Saddam Hussein and Kadafi and it was the regurgitation from their point the Kadafi thing was a massive.

Because he gave up his exact weapons, and that's what they bring that up.

He's like, why would we trust you?

You took him, You literally bombed him, and he had a rod shoved up his ass because he gave up his nukes.

He's like, you think we're going to give up our nukes?

You think we're even going to take you seriously after you've done something like that. Never And they literally laugh at America's face. And part of the thing is is and I've always advocated for on the show. Everybody knows I'm basically like a realist and that is a pejorative term in many cases, but I mean it in terms of like the international relations case of Look, it's like China,

They deeply matter to us. They can't stand you. You want to take them over.

You have all hated each other for the last two thousand years, and we're finding ourselves in the middle.

List.

When you talk like that, I think we can all be honest, you know that, then we can really just we can actually say like, here's why we care, here's what we want, and all that. But for decades, you know, American foreign policy has been all about you know, like even trade liberalization with China. It was never honest that

It's just been ridiculous.

You know.

The net effect has actually been importing Chinese autocracy to America, where big business hears about what the CCP thinks as opposed to a more democratic China.

It's just been a ridiculous policy, I think.

And that's before you even get to our like number one body the Kingdom of Saudi.

Ira exactly literal kingdom. They know.

That's why they laugh at us, and honestly they should laugh whenever people are so naive to talk this way.

Belying all of this.

The APEC conference being held in the city of San Francisco is a sudden and miraculous cleanup that has happened across the city, where many people have asked, hey, this has been you know, let's all be honest.

I love San Francisco.

Nobody loves California more than I do, even just as a visitor.

I think he is the most beautiful state in the country.

Barnunn that said, let's be real about San Francisco, Los Angeles and the level of just like street crime and just like public disarray, use fent and all homelessness, et cetera, public defecation, et cetera.

It's not a fun place to live.

I am curious for people in the comments section.

Yeah, can they clean up the smell?

Like?

I know they can clean everything up, all right, A lot of San Francisco stinks, all right, Californians know, but the point still smelling.

Pe Somebody ask Alf Gaven Newson, like, hey, are you only cleaning this up because the president or the premiere of China is coming. And he was like, yeah, actually, I'm really not making this up. Take a listen to what he said.

Anytime you put on an event, by definition, you know, you have people over your house, you're going to clean up the house. You have twenty one the world leaders, you got tens of thousands of people coming from all around the globe. What an opportunity is showcase the world's most extraordinary place.

San Francisco.

Folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town. That's true, because it's true, But it's also true for months and months and months prior to APEC have in different conversations that's true.

Because true, that's true. You can't make this up.

And I actually thought Peter Doucy over at Fox asked the White House a great question, and he was like, Hey, why does does the president care more about what she shinpin things of San Francisco than people who live in San Francisco. And they're like, oh, we just totally rejected the premise of your question and all of that, and to a certain extent, you know, with the cold Gavin K.

Newsome thing.

It's not that they don't have a point Ryan that cities, you know, you shouldn't spruce something up nicer whenever somebody's visiting. But I think that the drastic comparison from where things were to how things are today is why a lot of people who live in these cities are pissed off about it, because they're like, wait, so you could have

Let's take a listen to that.

While San Francisco is in the spotlight for the Asia Pacific Economic Conference, city leaders are making sure the city shines.

Tourism is our business here in San Francisco, and we need to focus on making sure that the tourist dollars still come back.

Caltrans repaving major roadways like the Harrison Street off ramp from the I eighty bart doubling down by deep cleaning their stations overnight.

More often the city had gotten a little bit dingy over time.

Scrubbing and powerwashing is happening all over the city.

Yeah, the bottom of shoes look clean.

It's noticeable how clear the streets look, and how few homeless encampments there are on major thoroughfares.

Having been a long time resident in the BA area, you just naturally starting to wonder if like houseless folks being displaced.

Public Works is installing decorative crosswalks in North Beach and Chinatown, and the Webster Street pedestrian bridge and Japantown was recently repainted the year of Buenna. Gardens at the Moscone Center are decked out with new colorful landscaping and murals, paid for by the Clean California Grant, just in time for the twenty thousand high profile CEOs and heads of state coming into town next week.

Must be nice. It looks like a beautiful city, doesn't it. Not the one I remember though from the last couple of years.

Seok, it looks clean, but once the company leaves, you look under the bed, you open the closet, all the crap poores out. You didn't really clean it, you just shoveled everything away.

Yeah, I asked, But then my question was like, well, what the hell happened?

And then also my big one is the city and Gaven News And this is where I really want to talk to you about the city and gavenusome. And this really extends to what we're going to about to talk about next about the ien in California or in Los Angeles is have claimed now for years, they're like, we can't do anything about this. The Ninth Circuit has tied

That's outrageous to me.

Also, they'll still find it to be filthy.

Oh yeah, of course, you're right, especially if you're coming from Japan. What the hell is sing later on the road you call this?

Clean this up for us? Like, what are you talking about? We spent last month.

But it's possible they had some type of informal budget for lawsuits, so it's you know, it may be that, you know, once in a while you're like, you know what, we're just going to break the law and we're going to let these people so us and we'll figure it out after company leaves.

I just think it's one of those where the local people in San Francisco should really be demanding answers on that, because, like I said, I mean, and I actually, I'll be honest, I believed some of the leaders. I'm not saying that they weren't doing enough, but they were like, there truly is.

Nothing we can do about the homeless encampments, and I was like wow.

And so I was reading about it and seeing this Ninth Circuit ruling, and it all relates back to the idea that you could it's a violation or to clean up homeless encampments and all that about displacement has to do with shelter rights in the California state law as well. And it genuinely did seem like a Gordon not that

It's the same question of like, well, why was this not done.

Previously as part of a post COVID vitalization, Like don't you want to make money?

Do you want people to stop leaving?

There's a you know, a lot of viral posts about San Francisco, but on some of the saddest ones are like here's a condo that somebody bought in twenty nineteen for one point five million, and they're selling it for seven hundred and twenty six thousand. I mean, yeah, it's funny at a certain point, but it's also like, hey, that's somebody out there who's out seven hundred grand and it's probably upside down on their mortgage and near the deal, you know, near bankruptcy.

That's actually not funny at all.

And there's a lot of people who are like that, you know, probably middle class folks who are on the outskirts or are dependent on that for jobs. So it's not always just the big tech people who are paying the price. And look, I mean, I'm only saying this because out of love, truly. I'm not just one of those people from Kansas who's like, screw San Francisco who's never even been. I love that city. I think it's

I started early yesterday morning in an industrial area near fourteenth Street in Alameda, so intense that melted fences and guardrails along the ten freeway and caused chunks of concrete on the freeway's columns to break away. Two fire trucks were damaged, and cars, palettes, shipping containers, and more, and the storage yards burned. Took more than one hundred and sixty firefighters hours to dost the flames. Crews were monitoring

So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is really no joke about what's happened. Part of the reason we wanted to cover it is that California news is very often criminally ignored here in Washington. And the thing is ryan is that three hundred thousand people take this road or this section of the road every single day, and now it's going to be shut down

Angeles the one oh one.

And by the way, I don't live in Los Angeles, so if I'm saying anything incorrectly, please forget me.

I'm doing you people with favor.

State Route sixty two hundred thousand vehicles a day will be added one will have one hundred and nine thousand vehicles per day added, and the closed section currently averages two hundred ninety two thousand. So an additional between intertain five State Route sixty and US one oh one is going to have to pick up a significant chunk of the number of cars that usually move through this heavily

They think about these issues it.

Could be part of It depends on how quickly they get this fixed. Like if we're talking about weeks or months, this is you know, this is going to bring It's so politically toxic that it's hard to even find the words for it. Philadelphia had half of ninety five we call it just ninety five over here on the East Coast not done ninety five. So we had half of the ninety five that was incapacitaty thing was hit by a truck or something. And they whip that thing together in like a week.

That was a big deal for Governor Josh Shapiro.

He was like, this is the only thing I care about until this is done, because it's not just Philadelphia traffic, it's also the artery connecting DC and New York. And so they moved quickly and it was up so fast. I don't know how long it's going to take them in Los Angeles, but I can't imagine that a political animal like Newsom is going to make sure that it moves.

As quickly as possible.

But this thing, you know, the California Democratic Party is a complete mess.

Yes, exactly. Also, you're going to be able to actually do it yeah, and.

I think this is a huge test for Karen Bass, for Governor Newsom and others.

So the details of this.

Some furthermore that we have is that of the one hundred columns along the swath of the freeway that were damaged, nine or ten were actually damaged severely, which means that they will have to do some infrastructure tests and if not, if they do have to be redone, the entire overpass may have to be torn down and refitted or retrofitted, which is I mean, that's a month long construction project, and it really again just highlights that you have a

Yeah, yeah, for sure, you don't want to sit in that hand sanitizer palettes.

Come on, what are you guys doing while you got a storage somewhere? I don't know. Also, does this not even work against covid' that's the other thing.

Yeah, it's probably, yeah, it's and it's anyway, we don't need to go into all that.

We certainly don't.

Only to say for Californias and LA people who watch the show, we feel for you and we think it's a tragedy about what's happened.

There more time to listen to breaking points, that's right, Far.

More time to listen to VP in your car. So this you know, let's let's look on the bright side.

Okay, moving on to the next part here, something I really wanted to talk about with Ryan.

Let's put this up there, please on the screen.

New report from the Wall Street Journal with a lot of interesting little tidbits. Headline, Oregon decriminalized hard drugs. It isn't working. Majority of voters now want to undo a pioneering change as public drug use has become rampant, so they say. Nearly three years ago into the experiment, the proponents hope would spark nationwide relaxation of drug laws. Many an Oregon have now turned against decriminalization, known as Measure one to ten, which passed at that time with fifty

Business owners and.

Local leaders are upset liberal voters who hope decriminalization would lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug users have taken advantage of a new state funded rehabilitation program. Quote change appears likely a coalition of city leaders, police chiefs district attorneys have called on the state legislature to recriminalize hard drugs. A measure to do so in works on the next year's ballot, and a new poll finds the majority of Orgonians support the idea. So, Ryan, you

Oh yeah, So my book came out in two thousand and nine, and it made I think several points that are quite relevant to this debate. One is that drug policy does not exist in a vacuum. That drug policy is kind of the last thing that matters for drug policy. What matters more for it is economic policy for.

The most part.

But also, you know, broad broadly speaking, the things that are shaping the world and shaping the culture shape shape what drugs, you know, become kind of popular in a moment. In other words, Oregon's decriminalization law has probably less to do with the fentanyl than the fact that China is pumping fentanyl into the United States, Like you know your organ's law is going to move.

The numbers underneath it all is it's a macro issue. Are the bigger macro issues.

The other The other point that I made in the book, and so as I was publishing the book, kind of the the movement was kind of nascent, but it was the pendulum was swinging toward more liberal drug policies, and I warned that the history of drug policy in the United States is not a Martin Luther King type thing where it bends towards justice. It doesn't all move in

I said, that's the only difference.

But it still allows all of this public consumption which the public hates. Alcohol is legal, but we don't allow people to just be passed out all ox is not really acceptable or because that's because we have a we have an actually regulated system around this very addictive and dangerous drug.

Alcohol and even smoking, if you think about it, I mean, you can't just smoke anywhere in most of this country at least this point.

But if we but if we just said, look, alcohol is illegal, but it's not criminal, so bootleggers can make it, people can drink it. Wherever they want and just get a little ticket and the treatment won't work. That's the third point. Our treatment system is this ancient alcoholics anonymous system that only really works for certain people. Insists on pure abstinence, pure sobriety, does not allow any medication assisted to treat method but yeah.

It's certainly not methodone.

But then to box oone and some other more recent less addictive medications that can help with opioids. We treat opioids just the same as we treat alcohol, and it's absurd and it's not working.

See this is interesting though, because it kind of belies something that I've always insisted on is I read Michael Schellenberger's book and it's the only book that ever I was not for drug legalization a problem. I'm still think I'm complicated on it. That said, I was like, if I was ever for it, this is the way it would work, which is, yeah, you can do drugs, but if you're getting high on a public bench, you're going to jail or you're going to rehab.

You have no choice.

This middle ground where we're at right now, not as much in Washington, DC. We still have some of a problem, but not even close to the zombies of San Francisco to Los Angeles and to skid skid Row is honestly burned into my memory from twenty and twenty two. I had never seen I still have never seen anything like.

One one report I read which is just so horrible. There's a lot of these women.

One of the reasons why when they're addicted to fentanyl is they've taken math so they can stay up all night so that they don't get robbed or raped in the middle of the night in some of these en camps.

Sexual anybody.

Sexual assault in these camps is absolutely rampant, right, And so you don't want to condemn people to that, of course not.

It's like it's worse than prison almost in some cases. And so so anyway, so what I've looked at here with the enforcement mechanism is they say, quote, some six thousand tickets have now been issued for drug positions possessions as decriminalization and went into effect in twenty twenty one, but just ninety two people have called and completed their assessments needed to connect them to services, so voluntary services. It's clearly now we've had real world experimentation here.

It's not going to happen because I think a lot of people know that there's nothing on the other end for them too. That those ninety two people, they'll sign up for what's called kind of a twenty eight day wonder, yes, where you go to this treatment center for twenty eight days, you read the big book, you sit around in your folding chair, you work, you color, you write, and then twenty eight days later you kind of kicked. You're kicked back out, and you probably have a long criminal record

This work for you.

Now, obviously some people can get there, but overwhelmingly people just don't see a way to get from here to there.

Opiate recidivism rates are so high.

I mean it depends on the drug like heroin versus fentanol and others, but even just based upon the people I've seen, you know, interviews and anecdotes and others for people who even who want to get clean and who have gone to multiple, you know, long treatment centers.

As you're saying, I mean, one of the dangers.

That I've actually had read a lot about was that in some in some cases these three week or four week centers, it's it almost leads and sometimes to.

Worse verses because their.

Tolerance is drawn down and they end up taking the similar amounts or chasing a short and high and it leads to an overdose, which puts you obviously in a really peralleuls situation. It literally could die. One thing, though, and this kind of I don't even know what to make of this. I wanted you to break it down for me. Let's put this please up on the screen. This is from the organized from OPB and they actually show that drug decriminalization and organ did.

Not cause more overdose deaths.

So what are we to make of this, because, as you said, yeah, they're still getting street drugs, but it didn't lead to more overdoses. Is this indicative that drug use just stayed the same, that it didn't actually impact it, that it didn't that the only real impact it appears to have had is more public drug use? What does an overdose rate and death actually mean for drug policy?

Like?

How are we supposed to look Because the people were pointing it to me as a victory, But the more I was reading about it, and this is from the NYU public health study of what's going on in Oregon, I was like, well, you can actually read this a couple of different ways for victory or honestly just stasis for what's happened.

I mean, I would say that the more that you can take the criminal justice system out of out of drug policy, then the more you're bringing the public health system in. And while you're unlikely, like I said, to kind of eradicate the addiction crisis, because that's a much steeper hill to climb, and like we were just talking about so many of these treatment centers are actually just kind of medicaid scams that aren't.

Serious about getting people sober.

You can, however, keep people safer because you know, more people are going to be comfortable going to get going to the hospital, more people are going to be comfortable calling an ambulance. More may you probably have more access than ur can as a result, which is the kind of overdose antidote. So I think that that could you

Well, I mean, I think they should get a choice. It's like, listen, you can go to jail too, like you know, you have an option. I believe that's how Portugal does it. So Portugal has legal drugs, They even have what is it safe injection science and all that. That said, if you are publicly intoxicated, strung out, committing street crime and all of that as a result of your addiction, you only have two choices, which is rehabilitation.

And or jail. But they're not going to tolerate, you know, some of the stuff that we see on the streets of California.

That stick does give people an incentive that's also not ideal. If you can couple that with real training and education and also then economic opportunities on the other side, then people can say, then people have an actual choice, like, oh.

Here is a good life I could have.

That's an alternative right now For most people, that's not They don't realistically see that possibility.

What non a rehabs have you seen be successful? It's an end for anybody.

They call it pup and orphan.

You could go back to read this piece I edited by Jason Cherkis at the Huffington Post called Dying to be Free. Just google that and it explains a lot of what we're talking about here. But suboxone and bupe

But this is like, this is up against fentanyl.

Which is kind of a new it's it's a kind of new, fearsome kind of level of of potency that's out there. So you know, this was designed for heroin and other opioids. It you know, so we're in a we're in a difficult spot, but that's what I would if you have people who are in those circumstances, you know, check out medications is the trigument.

Well there you go.

All right, So anybody struggling, go ahead and look into that. All right, let's move on to the next part. Ryan, I'm going to lean on you for this one because

This other nonsense.

So the Supreme Court, we keep saying, they, but there's kind of one guy that well, Claire.

Thomas is the worst. But I will say, I mean the rest, like, what was it soda? My oar also spoke at some of these conversations there was a book problem that was going on there. So it's yes, it's definitely Colrace Thomas is on the bleeding edge. But a lot of these people, I think need a little well reminder, you know, slap on the wrist, just to say, hey, hey, what's going on here. The Senate Democrats and a lot of others had been pushing a congressionally imposed code of ethics.

Is it not?

Is it actually enforceable. What are the consequences to all of this? Give us some of the details.

I mean, it's not really real what it And people if you're watching a pause and read the preamble there, which tells you everything you need to know about it in one sense, and I can read from one part.

Basically, they say.

That they were embarrassed that they didn't have a code. And they say, look, we do have a code. We call it a common law code. We do the right thing. There's laws, there's general ethics rules around here that we've all cobbled together to, you know, make sure that we're operating as ethically as possible. But we're super embarrassed that people keep saying the Supreme Court doesn't have an ethics code, whereas Congress does, the White House does, and the judiciary

Books are fine otherwise they the code.

It's like fourteen pages long, but it basically boils down to, uh, don't do things that appear to be unethical. But then you're like, okay, well a lot of this stuff appears unethical.

Yeah, so are you doing an.

Ask on the in terms of the specifics like what about the private jet travel some of the stuff that had not been disclosed any of that, so none of that is in there.

Now, And it says you should like endeavor to be transparent, but it doesn't say like every six months you're going to submit to this authority that you know you're you're like the way that you know, the Senate and the House have disclosed your White House has like offices that like have paperwork where you submit your paperwork and.

You say, here's here's my here's my holdings.

Like that's how we know Joe Manchin owns a coal company interest.

Because he had to disclose that.

So they suggest you ought to do that, but they don't really necessarily, you know, they don't send any deadlines or any specifics about like, okay, how you're going to do that.

Let's put the ap article on there, because they also have some of this. They just say that the Supreme Court says it's adopting the Code of Ethics but has no means of enforcement. So then my question is kind of around Democrats and should they retain control of the Senate or should they ever have unified government again under Biden? Would a Code of Ethics pass?

Do you think?

Or is it more of a rhetorical device now since the court is republican or conservative control.

I think it could still pass because you saw people like Roe Connor are the ones that have made big stink about this.

And he responded to this.

By saying that this is this is ridiculous, like there's nothing really in here, like we should still codify this, and the point of there being no way to enforce it is both true but also kind of beside the point in the sense that it's the Supreme Court, Like who's going to enforce it?

The super Supreme Court? Right?

Our system is checks and balances, so other branches are the ones that have to check other branches. You know, who's going to the same with Congress like that. You can have a House ethics committee, but ultimate if the House votes to overrule that. That's what the House does. Like, that's the supreme authority. The House is the House, the Supreme Court, or it is the Supreme Court. That's just so the House or the White House or and the Executive have to come in and check them if they

Yeah, that's a good point.

So the Democratic bat ECUs Bill quote would require that justices provide more information about potential conflicts of interest and written explanations about their decisions not to accues. It would also seek to improve transparency around gifts received by justices. Currently has no prospect of becoming the law. But yeah, I mean, I think it's true, and I think there were a lot of the Republican defense of this has really annoyed.

Me because they'll say, well, this is just retribution.

For row versus weight, and I'm like, yeah, that's probably true. Like, let's be real, that's true. That said, it's still not chill to be having your house be bought by a billionaire and be going on crazy vacations. And something I've personally observed with a lot of these people is that they're locked into jobs where they make three hundred thousand a year, but they're constantly socially in the room with people who are multimillionaires and or billionaires, and they get

You can quit. You can probably go make millions of dollars.

Absolutely, But they want to have both the power and the prestige. It doesn't that seems to irk them at their core.

And members of Congress face this too.

Senators, you're especially where they're like, I have more power than this person, right, why does this person get to fly for free, get to fly, yeah, sane or whatever.

Well they're not a senator. Yeah, it's like you can. You can do it too if you want, you know.

I read an article actually about five senators in their eighties. All of them are multi millionaires. One of them's like sailing around the world. The other one's hanging Barbara Boxers hanging out a multi million dollar mansion. Tom Hard and yeah, Tom Hard did this, and I was like, hey, you know this, and a lot of people were dunking on it, but I said.

No, this is a good thing. You should tell it. Yeah, there's life after leave. You should get out there. Yeah, Tom Fleets, It's like, if that's what it takes. Yeah, you being rich and old is fun.

That's That's something I've learned from a lot of old people. So they should try it instead of just hanging out here for two.

I guess Trking is when he retired, Democrats were so mad because they knew they were going to lose this twenty fourteen.

They knew they were going to lose that seat.

And when we asked him in the hall, why are you retiring, He's like, I want to sail around the world with my wife.

He actually did it.

Yeah, he's like, I don't want to do I don't want to do this anymore.

Right, Well, he made the recall. Good for you. You know.

Now he's eight years old and he's living a good life. And who replaced him?

I'm curious.

Jony Ernst, Okay, well it didn't work out that well, but it worked out.

No Democrats were right.

Okay, let's go to Biden. Speaking of Democrats, some cope that's going on over there. There's the new panic in Washington. Biden is too old.

He's too old. He's too old.

What are we going to do about it? He's just so old. Let's go and put this up there. Nate Silver kind of really, I think has become a leading voice amongst the like the what center left commentariat, if you can even call on them, just to be like, no, guys, Biden actually is way too old and he really should step aside. His headline is just quote, if Biden cannot run a normal campaign, he should step aside. Democrats are taking a huge risk either way, but they should not

Quote.

It's in part for they talk about the paragraph where well sourced this Royal Social Reporters talks about Biden, says refuses to accept his capacity to do the job. The oldest president in history when he first took the oath, Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in the manner of previous incumbents. He simply does not have the capacity to do so. His staff doesn't trust him to even try, as they make clear by blocking him from the press.

Biden's bid will give new meaning to a.

Rose Garden campaign, and it requires accommodation to that unavoidable fact of life, and Silver says it is not entirely obvious how to regard this claim. Martin is a fairly straight reporter. This is an opinion piece, but it is worth listening to because he's a well informed observer. And if that is a consensus view within the White House quote, it would be extremely foolish to nominate an eighty year old man who is not up to the rigors.

Of a modern presidential campaign.

So, I mean, on a certain point, it is crazy because you can see how the gambit could work. It certainly could work, but it's a lot like Hillary where but what if it doesn't work. Pretty good, there's a pretty good chance it may not work. I actually think Biden has a far higher chance of losing the Hillary ever, did you know in twenty and sixteen, and obviously Trump still won that election. I think it's absolutely coin toss.

And one way you can tell how how bleak it is for Democrats is the answers that Jonathan Martin comes up with and not his answers, not blaming him for them, but you know, he's collecting the quote unquote wisdom of the kind of conventional forces that make up whatever accounts as the Democratic Party today. And they basically say, you got to have roma Manuel come in and share your campaign because he curses a lot and he's got a lot of energy, and you should have Bill and Hillary

But that's it, Like that's it.

So let's say he actually implemented every scheme and he said, bring ron Klain to do some things because ron Klain's good, ron Klan's good, fine, bring him in. Let's say you do all of those things like that's it, Like that's that's your whole thing, and that that fundamentally shows you how brittle the whole operation is because you still have you know, Biden then and then Harris as your as

Guess what, Chuck.

Schumer, Dick derb and rakeem Jeffers, these are pretty serious people. So now you're over that hump and now you're into a primary.

That's what it would take basically. Yeah.

But so there's this there's this insistence that there are no adults that can do that, that there is no that the party is hollow, that a party can't decide anymore. There are individuals within the party who could they chose not to And if this goes in a direction looks like it's going in, they're going to make Ruth Bader Ginsberg's decision not to step off the Supreme Court look look modest.

Yeah, it looks interesting because it's one of those where again he really could win. And that's the most same thing. Yeah, And that's why they're doing it is because it's just convenient. It's a gamble. But they don't want to take the downside of the bet. And really, what bothers me about them is they're a sheer arrogance. So, for example, Ron Klaine was attacking David Axelrod for pointing out that Biden is too old, and probably he called him a prick.

You would really love to see that guy. I would love to see too. Yeah, all of us would love to see it. If only somebody could make that happen. You can tell the press team let us in there, let him sit down. You know.

What silver Even points out is that Biden has now the fewest presidential press conferences per year except for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, with not really good company that you want to be keeping there.

And one guy was to mention the other like an alcoholic.

Like well.

One of the reasons why that's even more important is that with these press conferences is that at least Reagan and Nixon would take questions in different formats, they would do sit down, actual interviews.

Biden doesn't even do any of that.

So the press conference or actually what we opened our show with, it's very rare actually for Biden to respond to shouted questions from the press. Usually his team will just hound you out of there immediately after taking a photo and he won't reply, you know, to shouted questions. Trump used to do stuff like that all the time, which is why at a certain extent, like his press conferences and all that didn't even matter just because he was on a.

Day to day basis.

When we were there, we had almost a guarantee if we were going to see Trump, we're going to hear from the president, you know, we can ask him at least something about what's going on. It's extraordinarily rare that he didn't want to say anything to the press. Biden is really just so inaccessible and it's not even me. I mean, he has had no sit down even with traditional majors. Every once in a while he'll do an interview, you know what was it? And when he went to Arizona,

I mean even George W. Bush was more And this is his first time. Can you imagine a second term? I know, yeah, and eighty three or something.

When you do watch him take field a couple questions like we had at the top of the show. As human, you're kind of like holding your breath and rooting for him to like be able to finish the sentence, and that that's just like to deny that reality doesn't doesn't serve you as a pundit, even if you're just going to get like made fun of by the White House

Rama man. You can't make him younger. Yes, no, you're You're absolutely right.

And it's one of those where a lot of the advice in there was basically just keep a low profile, you know, keep doing what you're doing.

And the thing is, I actually agree with all of that. If I was him, that's all I would do.

I would He once made fun of Rudy Giuliani for saying all that came out of his mouth was a noun a verb in nine to eleven.

If I was Biden, it would be a noun a.

Verb and abortion That's all I would talk about all day long until election day for the limited times that I'm actually able to speak properly. However, that's a very risky gambit when you're going up it's against such a talented politician like Trump, and they're not even really having an open democratic process.

So we'll see, we'll see.

Speaking of democracy, Ryan, You're going to have to break this down for me, because I don't know what the hell is going on.

You've had your eye on it.

The only reason I'm even acquainted is because Tucker Carlson apparently went from the UFC with Donald Trump and Madison Square Garden and the next day is on the ground in Madrid immense significant protests. He spoke to some of the Spanish press while he was there, and I'm gonna get your reaction.

On the other side, anybody who.

Would violate your constitution, potentially use physical violence to end democracy is a tyrant, is a dictator, and it is happening in the middle of Europe.

So we thought it just report covers that it's getting.

Oh, if your government is allowing foreigners to commit and hurt you, they're committing war against you. You know, our news media doesn't report a lot of things, and in our time here. It's very obvious that the socialists in the Alliance and the separatists are trying to end the rule of QUN Spain.

If you don't have freedom of speech, you don't have the freedom to defend yourself, and you can't vote your way out of it. The system is rigged. You're in real trouble, real trouble. So I'm really rooting for your success if.

The we're actually seeing how important but it's happening here.

No, the world is not seeing how important it is. But we hope to change that.

Yeah, so you will, thank you very much.

To you very much.

Okay, what's he talking about a socialist revolution in Spain?

That doesn't sound good. Civil wars great things that have finished that. Yeah, well it.

Didn't work out so well, no Rank or with Franco did it. So tell us about what too, baby, tell us what's happening.

Socialist will rise again. So I was there.

I was there this summer as this was kicking off, and when I came back, I actually solved the Catalonian independence crisis here here on Counterpoints, people can go watch that.

But so we saw this coming.

Basically what happened is that there was an election. The far right was the plurality leader. Then came the socialists, but the right could not come up with enough to get over fifty percent to form a government.

They've tried.

Socialists have carectake here in power, waiting for the Right to figure out if they could actually get their act together.

Here's the funniest part.

In twenty seventeen, there were a bunch of illegal referenda held by the Catalonian independence movement, basically in Barcelona and around there, where they were going to vote on whether or not they would be independent and this, and the government said, you cannot vote on whether you're going to be independent, you can't be independent. They insisted they're going to have the vote anyway. People might remember from the

So what would they say in response to.

They would say it's illegal to like basically pardon criminals, because you are like, that's what they're doing. So there's some truth to it, Okay, Yeah, but the right would have done it too, So they say conservative and judges don't say that Socialist Leader Pact damages the rule of law.

It does because it violates the amnesty deal, violates a twenty seventeen law that was passed inside of Spain Catalonia for the breakaway and the referendum says it will the previous leader had agreed not to defuse the conflict, and now the socialists will quote unquote take over the government. Now what are some of the other aim I mean is that the only thing that they're protesting, Like what percentage of the vote did the socialists get in the vote?

A lot?

I mean it was there's still number two yes, and they were the right was expected to win an outright majority with that, and they came in, they underperformed and the Socialists overperformed, so that they were already frustrated there and so now they're like, oh god, we need a couple more percentage points.

Where are we going to get it?

And it's like all these damn separatists and I think they felt like the right feels like the leaders betray them because they like are right wingers also, so like why aren't you with us?

And so what they say is that quote fears of this is from the Financial Times. Fears of the amnesty law is opening away for Parliament to interfere in court decisions has prompted a statement from the Supreme Court of Spain which says a government changer a comment Chamber emphasize the need to guarantee judicial independence from all institutions and underscored the Court's duty to safeguard equality in the application

So this actually is pretty crazy.

They're not just saying it's like you helped organize a referendum, They're like, straight up like criminal terror. I mean, terrorists is a is a you know, I'm not going to say the word whatever in Spain.

In Spain they.

Probably would, but I don't know enough in order to use the term and apply to them. But it seems to me like that is why it's such an emotional issue.

It's like it'd be like if, in order to form a government in Israel, one of the coalitions said we're going to pardon, We're going to pass a law that says net ya, who's not guilty of any times?

Wow, that's pretty wid It's that. It's that, Yeah, it is.

So they're not wrong to be upset, but you know the socialist are like to stay mad. Like you would have done the same thing if you could have gotten them to agree gotten yes.

All right, Well, so we'll continue to track it.

Spain always does pop off in terms of protests social listen to right wingers fighting in Spain. What could go wrong? It's not like it's ever happened before. Anyways, Ryan is a pleasure hosting with you. Hold the book up again. Get people to taste Squad. Squad available now.

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M