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Hi, good morning, and welcome to the Counterpoints.
Emily, how you doing, ghead?
It's really rainy here in Washington, DC, but it's that's December for you here.
It is used to be snowy here in December, but not so much anymore anyway, Thank you for that. Exon wanted to start, wanted to start really quick?
Himn hot just now.
I mean, it's it's obnoxious on my way in. I'm like, this could be snow, and when I was a kid this would be snow. Instead, this is gross. But I wanted to update people real quickly on the thing that still told you about in the morning, where she encouraged everyone to buy Ray Fatt a layer's book of poetry and prose, which came out yesterday called If I Must Die. We've been pushing everyone to buy it over the last week, trying to make it a best seller.
I just checked.
It's number sixty three in the world right now. The publisher, as Crystal mentioned, told me that as of several days ago, already ten thousand orders had come in, probably closer to thirteen fourteen thousand by now, which means it has a real shot of making the New York Times bestseller list in its first week out. So basically, you have until Friday to put your orders in. It is completely out of stock. They sold out their entire first print run, but you're still able to order it.
That just means you won't get it until they do another print run.
So if you already ordered a copy, go get some more, because you know you have people in your life who need.
A great book of poetry and prose.
And it's a message to Ray Fott's surviving family and to the Palatine and people in general that he has not forgotten. He has not been forgotten. They have not been forgotten. We have nothing to do with it commercially. All the royalties go to a surviving family. We just would love to see this sor so, thank you for that.
Keep calling poetry is a great holiday gift.
It is, absolutely it absolutely is.
We have a really packed show today, really packed show today.
The news is relentless. We're going to start actually with a little news.
I guess about Mitch McConnell, and we'll go then into the breaking story that's unfolding continuously about Luigi Mangioni. Kenklippenstein secured the manifesto, released the released the manifesto yesterday, so we have all kinds of new details to talk about. When it comes to the assassination of Brian Thompson. We're then going to talk about updates also relentless breaking news
cycle from Syria. We're going to break down the Pete Hegseth rape allegations from the police report for everyone that's you came out a few weeks ago.
But it looks like he might get through.
He looks like he might get through.
Oh, it's important for people to know whether or not they're depending on secretary as a rapist.
And Ryan suggested we actually like kind of walk through the police report, so stay tuned to go through that with us. We're going to talk about the Trump Department of Justice getting caught by Michael Horowitz, Inspector General who produced actually a very good report on Russia collusion not that long ago, finding improper spying on journalists and Republican and Democratic lawmakers. So people, it was like twenty Republicans twenty one Democrats.
Or maybe reverse twenty one Republicans and.
Twenty Democrats, but absolutely improper spying on journalists to catch leakers. And we've got a great bill Mark clip. You're gonna want to stay tuned for the bill Mark Club.
Yeah, and the ethnic cleansing of Northern Gaza continues with these assaults on multiple hospitals, come a lott When Hospital and Anesian Hospital. We won't have a chance to talk about that day. I'll be on the show tomorrow filling in for Crystal. Sure, sure we'll get to that.
For our Pakistani audience. We had a big.
Story yesterday over a drop site. You can read that there. We don't have a chance to get to that one either. Maybe we can do that tomorrow. Basically, we according to Leeks, we got out of Pakistan. The November twenty sixth massacre that we covered was actually pre planned and it was basically an ambush. Just so maybe we'll talk about that more tomorrow. But so much going on in the world. Let's just get into it.
Let's get into it.
We're going to start with this first tear sheet and just do a kind of quick report from Capitol Hill where Mitch McConnell, who's no longer the Senate Minority leader, he had a fall.
We can put a one up on the screen. This is from the Associated Press.
He fell and sprained his wrist yesterday literally on Capitol Hill. There was you know, you could see medical personnel going into assist him in his office. And the reason we're talking about this is that Mitch McConnell is clearly too old to be in office. And by old, I mean there are people who are older than him. I think Bernie Sanders might be older than him. When I say old, I mean he's incapacitated. He's we're getting to Feinstein territory with.
The Yeah, so I'm curious, do we know physical verse mental incapacity? Here.
I mean mentally, he seems perfectly sharp.
Right, he had that brain freeze, but he had.
That brain freeze. Yeah, I shouldn't say perfectly sharp. He seems, you know, like an older man. But you know, he doesn't seem like Biden. I guess Biden is the comparison. Yeah, Mitch McConnell doesn't seem to have gone to Biden levels.
Right, And what we can reveal here is that there are he's going to enormous lengths to basically cover up, you know, how physically frail at least he has gotten yes, which you know presidents like JFK and FDR all did you know, attempting a tempting to show more physical vigor than they had. But go ahead comes from this comes from your side.
I was just gonna say, I mean, I think it's it's for the reason that you're saying it's important that we probe Mitch McConnell's health right now, because he's still incredibly influential in center Republican leadership. They're about to have the majority, so he's a very consequential figure. Still, he doesn't need to be in office. He's had physical medical challenges, and yet we can put a two up on the screen. This is actually an exclusive image that we have here at breaking points.
This was the day after the election.
Mitch McConnell at Reagan International Airport in a wheelchair being pushed by a staffer. That may not seem like a big deal. There has been reporting that he uses a wheelchair, and there may or may not be a couple other photos of him in a wheelchair floating around out there. I didn't see many, and that's because they're carefully trying to prevent these photos from being published because they to your point, Ryan, it's as similar to FDR and JFK.
And not wanting to give any sense of incapacity, but Mitch McConnell is staying in the Senate too, As he said, make sure that the fight for Ukraine as he sees it is complete.
As a sub committee chair of this important Armed Services panel, he has personally intervened. Probably you know, without Mitch McConnell, Ukraine may not have the funding that it has yes this point.
He has made it a priority.
Now I have my own piece of reporting that I can add to that. A source of mind flew next him on a commercial flight and when they arrived, there was a wheelchair waiting for him, but McConnell angrily kind.
Of refused it.
So you know, it's not that he's constantly in need of a wheelchair, and he's very clear, he's very cognizant of what it represents. His refusal to use it yesterday led obviously to his fall and to his injury, to the injury on his face and his wrists, I think more importantly from a political perspective.
The source also.
Said that he ate a tune a fish sandwich on this commercial flight, but he wasn't in first class. He was not in first class. And at that point, it's like, okay, your flying coach, despite the fact that you could fly first class, because you want to be with the people. You want to show that you're a man of the people. You sit down among these people of which you are one of the men, and you open up a tune
of fish sandwich, go to first class. The level of take that to first class, the people will be okay without you being in there right, just get to come on.
The level of out of touchness at that point is astounding, not surprising, but astounding.
On the line, I try to not bring any like even like you know, fries or anything that's gonna even so if it smells good life fries, No nobody, nobody wants to smell your food.
And it's just a small space anyway.
That's why the world made like granola bars.
That's true. Brian does love granola bars.
That does the trick. You don't need a tune of fish sandwich.
Mitch McConnell, Yeah, to write his point, has put himself in a position on a subcommittee chair arm service where he's and he said as much.
He's not being quiet about this.
He sees the reason that he's continuing to stick around the Senate des try having right. He had that brain freeze everyone remembers where he just sort of seems to pause in the middle of a sentence. Has actually it happened twice? He's clearly so. While he may be on a good day in perfectly healthy mental shape, he may feel like he's him his old self. We can put a three up on the screen. This is more examples of his physical health problems.
You can see just as.
Yesterday, Yeah, banded on his face and his wrist is really swollen and purple. But when I started this black by saying Mitch McConnell's too old to be in the Senate. I mean there are people who are older at this point who are probably sharper. I think Bernie Sanders is older than him.
Although he were in Ukraine, they'd can script him to the front line.
Yeah, he'd be ready to go.
Bernie Sanders, I think also said yesterday in an interview, it's a little bit of breaking news too that this will probably be his last time.
So it will be eighty nine when I get out of here.
Because he was just elected. He got six years. Yeah.
Yeah.
But Mitch McConnell, even after all of these health problems, refuses to resign and continues to put himself in powerful positions. He did step down as Senate minority leader and soon to be sent a majority leader, but he continues to put himself in powerful positions because he is clinging to his ability to continue funneling money to Ukraine. He sees it as an existential crisis for democracy. This is how
he would phrase it. He's not been quiet about any of this, and we think that it's important that he should be transparent actually.
About what his health is and how ill he is.
And there you go, And from that perspective, I understand why he would stay in because when you're a senator and a chairman of a powerful committee that doles out money, it's not as if it's a constant intellectual contest.
He's not playing speed chests all day long.
He just needs to sit in that position, box everybody out, demand that they've moved the money that he once moved, and just stand there until it happens.
So in that sense, as long as.
You're with it a little bit out of the day and you can be wheeled in and out, you actually can do just as much for the most part in that position as you could as a thirty six year old, spry, young senator.
Yep, yeah, no, it makes sense.
Let's move on to the unfolding saga of Luigi Mangioni, whose manifesto was was first released in full by Front of the Show Ken Klippenstein yesterday. We can put V zero up on the screen. This is the manifesto itself. It's very short as far as manifestos.
Go, and it has a manifesto.
Barely a manifesto has a banger of a first line.
Here to the Feds.
I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country. One of the weirdest openings that any manifesto in history. Ryan, you wanted to do a somewhat dramatic reading of this. We should add that MANGIONI had an extradition hearing yesterday's being extradited from Pennsylvania where he was caught at that Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald's and he's being extradited to New York to face murder charges. So that's what was unfolding yesterday. He will play clips of
this and everything. But Ken said a lot of people in media had this manifesto but were not publishing it. They were publishing just snippets of it and not releasing.
It in full.
Yeah, and what's wrong with me? Why didn't I have this yet?
Yeah?
Who did? Why did nobody give this a riot?
I mean, Ken has been Ken has been all over this, from being one of the first Edge lords to like celebrate the murder of Brian Thompson and since then has has got has gotten some videos out of United Health from you know, obviously leaked by United Health employees who agree more with Ken than Ken's critics, and then he then he got the manifesto as well.
It is utterly bizarre.
I can't even think of a reason why the mainstream press got their hands on this and didn't publish it, but did quote from it.
Earth are you doing?
It's like, I don't even see how this helps manufacturer consenter. It's such just just a just little manifesto. We read some more of it.
This this hit.
I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial, some elementary social engineering basic caad a lot of patients. The spiral notebook, if present, has some has some stractly notes and to do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there.
Yeah, we'll see about that.
I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. And there's a TikTok going around of they had it coming. The song from Chicago with some nice edits a reminder of the US has the number one most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly number forty two. Roughly number forty two is kind of a funny phrase number you're either forty two or or not?
You say roughly forty.
If I'm doing edits of his manifests, I would say just say roughly forty because when you say forty two, that's implying some specificity.
You should have submitted this to drop site.
He should have United is the largest is the indecipherable largest company in the US by market cap. I don't think that's true. Oh, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. I'm here editing the guys.
Everyone's in the process right now. You're seeing behind the curtain.
It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?
No.
The reality is these indecipble have simply gotten too powerful. They continue to abuse our country for men's profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed. E. G Rosenthal, Michael Moore, assuming it means Michael Moore there decades ago
and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play.
Evidently I am.
The first to face it with such brutal honesty.
You know, the last line is actually kind of I think central to the debate over ethics and people's reactions here in that. Brent, I'm genuinely surprised there haven't been similar acts of like anti health care terrorism, because that's how bad the health insurance system is. And I'm not saying obviously nobody is saying, well, maybe some people are. Obviously nothing is justified as a horrible thing to do.
But I'm very surprised that we don't see like, actually more violent protests of how bad our health insurance system is.
It is a little surprising in that sense, because being on the phone with these insurance companies and the best of times is a nightmare situation. Being on the phone with him when they are delaying your treatment for trivial paperwork reasons that obviously were manufactured for the purpose of delaying your treatment in the hopes that you either die or don't need the treatment. It moots the treatment at some point. Yeah, you would kind of think that somebody
would have done this earlier. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of surprising in that sense. Yeah, So I.
Was gonna say, we have a video of him being he shouted something that people we're trying to put together, and I think we have a decent transcript of what was said. This is Lui Jiman Mangioni yelling what you're what you're probably going to hear here is something to the extent of it's an insult to the American people. There's some debate about what he's actually saying. Ken says that it's him saying this is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people.
So let's go ahead and roll this video experience.
So his what his lawyer is saying is that they're strongly implying that a lot of evidence was planted on him. And what I think is going on there and with his this thing stinks here is that they want to give a jury a reason in the face of overwhelming evidence to acquit him. And so what what they're trying to do this is just my guess, is give the jury an excuse to do jury nullification. And people can look look that up. They probably a lot of people
have looked it up. Really, jury nullifications when you you know that somebody did the crime, but you think it was either there's something wrong with the law or you think the crime was justified in that particular circumstance. And so the jury it's kind of I think it's even illegal to do jury nullification. But how they're going to prove it, And so the jurors will say, you know what,
we find this guy not guilty. And so by saying that all this stuff is planted in this it would it would then give a juror who wanted to do that some read to hang on to. That's my that's my guess, because you know they're saying, he's caught with everything manifesto.
We just read his alleged manifesto.
He's on tape, allegedly on tape, you can't really see his face in the fuzzy CCTV.
Video, but found him with a gun that like, you know, the right, you know, So if you believe that all of that evidence is is real and it's actually his like he's one hundred percent guilty. If you believe that and you don't want to find him guilty, then you say, well, maybe they planted it on him. That It's very similar to the kind of OJ defense that they did that they that they said, look.
Maybe maybe they planted this glove, like these are.
These these cops are racist, Like here they are saying the N word. And so for jurors who were like, you know, I kind of want to find him guilty, there was enough of they were able to say, look, maybe maybe this was planted. Because they because there was so much evidence, they couldn't say that the evidence.
Wasn't beyond a reasonable that they had.
They had to say, the evidence is itself fake.
So his attorney, to Ryan's point, said you can't rush to judgment in this case or any case yesterday, and we can put the next element up on the screen. He is he was fighting his extradition to New York City, where actually Alvin Bragg will quote seek the Governor's weren't to secure his transfer. I'm quote coordinating with the DA's office and the assign a request for governors weren't to ensure this individual has tried and how the accountable.
Public safety is my.
Top priority, and I'll do everything in my power to keep the streets of New York safe, said Kathy Huckle, new York governor, in a statement. So that's he Menjioni is fighting this. He's not sort of just like give it, putting his hands up and being like yep, I wrote it all in the manifesto. I'm sorry if this causes any trauma, which, by the way, is a line from the manifesto. So it's kind of an interesting disconnect between what the manifesto says and.
His approach to the case so far.
Right, Yeah, the manifesto is literally I did this and I'm really sorry it had to be done.
Gonna have some problems.
That's a pretty significant disconnect between what he's saying, which is as an insult to intelligence American people. We don't quite know what that's referring to, but it sounded like he was, and we know from his attorney that he's fighting the charges. So anyway, all that is to say, that's a pretty significant disconnect.
Obviously.
Now this is a quote from an enepy see articles is B three.
We can put this up on the screen.
They're digging into his video game use so in the game call, well, I'll just read from this first graft Luigi and Manngioni once belonged to a group of IVY League gamers who played Assassins, a member of the group told NBC News. In the game called among Us, some players are secretly assigned to be killers in space who perform other tasks while attempting to avoid suspicion from other players.
Ryan.
On a scale of zero to ten, how newsworthy is this.
It's not even on the scale. It's just funny. It's just hilarious. Like you've probably people watching this have probably played among Us. I've played it actually with my kids. It's a it's a little kids game, and it's just it's a silly game that you know, college kids play to you can play it as a grown up.
Whatever.
That's hilarious. That's utterly hilarious.
Someone said to NBC News.
I just found it extremely ironic that you know, we were in this game and there could actually be a killer among us.
Okay, funny.
Yeah, I mean if you're if you actually played among Us with the assassin, that is a fun story to tell your friends.
I'll give them that is it aunt tell NBC News, yes, because they will.
And then if your NBC News, it's fun to put at the bottom of the story. Yeah, it's I hope that they understood how ridiculous. They were sounding.
Among us as a child friendly who'd done it? Game in which a group of friends run around several space light space station like maps. The crewmates, who are simply drawn cartoonish looking astronauts, run around the ship and complete tasks. The intent of the game question mark. One member is a killer and attempts to off the other crewmates.
Actually, if you remember, Hassan Piker, AOC and ilan Omar played it on a stream together.
Oh really back during the pandemic.
Got to watch out for AOC?
Interesting?
Yeah, another New Yorker who's mad about the healthcare system.
Just facts, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just just spit in facts now before. There's also some obviously probing of Fluiji Mangoni's Reddit history, so Forbes reports, UHG shooter Luigi Mangoni appears to have been a redditor and he researched back pain and backpacks.
This is really sad, Brian.
The more that we're learning about Mangioni's experiences with his own long term it looks like he had a chronic back problem. Again, this is all being pieced together from the trails, like the breadcrumbs that he left on the internet, But it's turning out to be an extremely sad story.
Yeah, back pain, which thankfully I have not really had to suffer with in my life, but from people who talk about it is utterly debilitating.
Yeah, it is.
When it's not with you, you're thinking about it, thinking about the possibility one little tweak and it's going to be back. When it's with you, it is just absolutely all consuming. And the medical profession when it comes to treating back pain is.
Just no better than random quackery, it seems like.
And so he wound up getting these some screws put into his back that his family and friends say like ended up making them crazy.
That's it.
That's not an uncommon response from people who've gone through this, because it's just the grieving from the life that you had to the life that you now have, I think can send people around the bend.
It's frustrating when you're trying to solve a problem and you're paying into a system and then the system is blocking you.
And that brings us again to.
Like, as awful as Maggioni's alleged decision seems to have been, it is surprising to me that we don't get more like domestic unrest from how bout our healthcare system is.
Because it will drive people crazy, and I want to drive people crazy.
And I wonder if psychologically it was a little bit harder for him because he grew up a rich prep school kid who is not used to being told no.
Well, apparently his family owns a nursing home that is riddled with problems.
Complaints, also called a nursing home.
Right, yes, absolutely, yes, yes, but actually this one appears to be exceptional in rankings like national rankings.
I can find out what we're talking, but yes, exceptionally.
He went to this rich prep school called Gilman in Maryland.
If you're from Maryland and you saw this, you're like, Okay, this tracks yeah Gilman kid, Yeah, Gilman Kid.
Could Papa do this?
Well?
That's I just think it's an insane statement on not insane, it's like the least surprising statement actually, but it's a very powerful one on how horrible the healthcare system is. Is that you can come from a background of privilege, and unless you're like tippy tippy top of the one percent, you can have the same terrible experience with the healthcare system.
It's like a shared socioeconomic experience. Now it's obviously much worse for people who can't afford health insurance and or struggle to pay their bills and have kids and are doing two jobs to have their health insurance.
It's insane.
But you can actually still be wealthy in this country and our health insurance system can utterly fail you in the most frustrating ways. And that actually goes to your point about how frustrating it must be if you are privileged and you're used to having everything be at your fingertips, you can see psychologically how that could drive you even crazier.
Yeah, And also, and not to undermine our man's fundamental point here, but the healthcare system is also not magic. Like there are there are some things that even the best, the best providers, the best physicians, with all of the money in the world can't fix. Like that's that's just a fundamental part of the human condition and it always will be right no matter what Peter Tiel tries to do with young people's blood or whatever.
Just now we are we are we are so some level.
Yeah, so his family, including his father there apparently this is just they own lore in health systems. It's a for profit nursing home they've been fine for health inspection violations according to records that have been posted as all of this has come out, and it's got like a two out of five Medicare rating Quality Measures rating of two out of five, so it appears to be you
know not. Someone was posting about it saying that it was a measure of hypocrisy, and it's like, well, if Maggioni is guilty in this case, it may not be hypocrisy. It may be his partially psychologically and we're trying to do like armchair psychiatry here, but it might have been what drove him insane is that his own family and his own privilege was built on a system that was hurting him too.
I mean, that's something that I can volunteered at.
That he volunteered at that nursing home. Of course reports when he.
Was in high school, right, so he may have seen it all up close.
Yeah.
Well, Bill Burr on his Monday Morning podcast went on a similar rant to the one that he went on over the weekend. To that Crystal and Sager covered Let's roll this clip of Bill Burr weighing in on the media coverage this time of what media coverage and just general people's general reactions to what's happened with MANGIONI.
You know what's annoying me about this, this kid who killed this ceo is none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable. After we've all given them our money every fucking month and now we finally need you, and all you do is deny us, And then these pussies and all of these things are
taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I gotta be honest with you, Okay, I love that the fucking CEOs are fucking afraid right now. You should be, by and large, you're all a bunch of selfish, greedy, fucking pieces of shit, and a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. That's why it looks clean. That's why these people look, oh my god, oh he was just you know, walking into a hotel. It's like, okay, but what was his job, what did he do?
What was the results of it?
The every man truly, and if you're not if you are horrified by that argument from Bill Burr and you're like a beltwey journalist or pundit, then you should go sit down at a bar in normal America and talk to people.
Yeah, and a lot and a lot of the people who are saying, look, we have lower costs and these people with some of these some of these outcomes are better. And also the insurance companies are not. You know, the real problem the problems for providers. A United Health is a provider too, they own they're like massively involved in the provider side as well.
But the CEO was making ten million dollars a year.
It's one thing to say, this is a really difficult problem to solve, and we're all trying.
We're all working together to try.
To make sure that we can give the best care to the people who need it. When you walk when you say that and then you walk out of the room with a bag filled with ten million dollars, people are going to give a little bit less credibility, yes to how concerned you are.
And when that ten million.
Dollars is just a little kickback for the billions that you're sending to shareholders who are also walking away with that money, you lose even more credibility around how serious you are about taking care of patients.
I had Ken on actually Undercurrents to talk about Ken.
I kind of disagreed with the way that you reacted immediately, but I also think it's really precious to see Chris Cuomo just retired to his fainting couch and clutch his pearls over the reaction of people like you and Taylor Lorenz because about just tone policing about the United Healthcare CEO, Like he doesn't have a leg to stand on unless he's using all of his journalistic resources to probe the corruption in the health insurance system regularly, which.
He's not doing. He only cared when Ken was mean.
To the dead CEO who was appears to be unjustly murdered, And so that's like, it doesn't make the murder right, but it also doesn't give you any more credibility when you're weighing in to tone police people who are upset about the healthcare system and you're not regularly concerned yourself about the healthcare system.
Yeah, and Don Junior showed unusually poor instincts out of the gately on this. He did the whole put the image of the guy up and said, you know, Internet, do your thing, and his all of his replies are just like, I don't see anything done.
He put an image of Mangionia, yeah.
Yeah, saying like the Internet do your thing, like go find this killer.
Oh, and all of his followers were like, I don't see nothing. So that was it was.
It was like, oh, I forgot, I forgot. Don Junior is a prep school kid, but not the kind that Luigi became, because he's really done a good job of of donning the garb of the populist and he missed.
He missed. His dad would not have made that mistake.
It would be interesting to see, I mean, because at first it started, nobody really knew what to make of it, and it started as an example of like disorder and chaos on the streets of New York City, right. It starts as a narrative like that, which, by the way, this as it unfolds, this is Gotham City, Like this is straight out of freaking Batman. Like that's how sad, and like Bruce Wayne this, yeah, it's insane.
Bruce Wayne was the victim, not the killer.
I don't know, but Bruce Wayne the richest man in the world, and all he wants to do is go, like round up a few muggers. How about you build a hospital, Bruce Wayne.
Actually think i'd actually watched the Ryan Grim written Batman.
Yeah, Taxtatman. It's ridiculous, but.
That is exactly what you're like. It is like ripped out of a Batman plot.
But I mean it's just like if your energy, if your moral energy, is going to it is like more directed to being outraged at Edgelord's like Ken for like maybe being callous. You don't have to agree with the way Ken and Taylor Lorenz and others approached the initial reports to be like, hey, maybe the main story here, you know, it's like, don't don't kill people in the streets of Manhattan and cold Blood and uh, don't run a system and benefit from a system that is like
sucking the life out of people. Seems like a fair two things can be true assessment here.
Maybe Oh yeah, okay, I don't like killing. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable about killing.
Okay, Well, we've established that everyone should see Ryan's belt today. By the way, it's very whimsical. It's not the belt of an edge lord in news out of Syria. We can put this first element up on the screen top. US Military Commander in the Middle East, General Michael Carilla, visited US commanders and troops as well as members of the SDF at several bases in Syria yesterday. That is cursy of reporter Jared Sezba and Ryan Also The New York Times was just like tallying up all the countries
that are currently bombing in Syria yesterday worth mentioning. It's Russia, Aaron, Israel, the United States, and Turkey. So five countries right now actively bombing Syria.
So you can understand everybody gets in Yeah, that's right.
And C two, we want to put this up on the screen as well.
US troops are staying in Syria, according to the White House. And I actually asked Rand Paul yesterday that that'll it will air today on undercurrins. I asked him if it's possible that we actually might up ending end up sending more troops to Syria as a result of this, because he's saying, you know, we do have nine hundred troops in Syria right now, at least that's the troops that we.
Know about in Syria.
Right now, and he was saying that's a target, that's not a detern. There's the line that he is totally fair assessment. But I asked, you know, some of your colleagues going to use the point that you just made us and excuse to bring more troops in. And I think the Reuter's article by Jeff Mason that we just had up on the screen seems like it's potentially going
in that direction. I don't know, Ryan, do you think it's possible that we end up putting more troops actually in Syria right now amidst all of the chaos?
You know, I think that they're much more likely to flood you know, weapons to our proxies and mercenaries and rather than try to deploy more troops, more US troops just before a new president comes in, because I think that's true, I think that's tricky politically. I don't know, let's let's let's play, let's play your Rampaul Cliffs.
I think C three B.
Yeah.
In the scuttle butt on Capitol Hill, of course and in beltwayh media is that this is just posing a real threat to Taulsi Gabbert getting confirmed as Trump's Director of National Intelligence. She's literally meeting with senators like yourself on.
Capitol Hill this week.
What do you think that this helps or hurts taulsy Gabbert's actual ability to be confirmed in any way, Senator Paul.
Not necessarily.
You know, I think that the history of Syria in the Middle East is such a complicated one that it isn't really clear. You know, Like I say, were there positive aspects to uh, the sod regime? You know, very few, but one of them was the protection of Christians. You know, Is there you know, pluses and minuses to Galani or this new offshoot of Alvenusra.
Yeah, there certainly are.
One they got rid of the dictator, but two will they replace that with a religious intolerance towards others? I don't know that it definitely change just her chances. I think her twenty year military career, she's a lieutenant colonel. The way she's been treated unfairly by the intelligence state, putting her on a terror watch list and obstructing her ability to travel, I think that she's gaining momentum. There
was a rally recently with military veterans. There's a lot of senators that have come out for so I think they're gonna have a tougher time defeating her. They will try, and these are the people who are part of what they call the bipartisan consensus in Washington foreign policy consensus, which is one of, you know, give aid to everyone, give arms to everyone, and be involved in everyone's wars.
It's a policy of you know, eternal intervention. And those people are always going to be opposed to anybody questions that. But I for want, am enthusiastic about her nomination and will do anything I can or everything I can to try to help her.
I really like the music behind the clip that had me on the edge of my seat listening to Ram Paul like, where's this is really suspenseful.
He's like, you're watching Jack. Yeah, it was a teaser clip. I was like, yeah, you're ready to yeah so. But but anyway, I think that gets to the point about the future of US involvement in Syria because the scuttle
buck being that Tulsa Gabbert now she's just tanked. And I think, and I say this in an episode which is going to air in a bit that it's maybe more likely that Tulsa Gabbert gets confirmed as a result of this because now you have even people like Lindsay Graham talking about the problems with the rebels now that they're in power, and so it all becomes so apparent, like post Asad, the various factions, and the sort of ridiculousness of the United States arming Brandpa mentions.
At one point in twenty sixteen, Elon.
Musk tweeted this recently to an LA Times article about how the Pentagon and the CIA were funding different warring factions in Syria at the same damn time. It is so absurd and that will be in full bear now that a Sad is gone.
Yeah, And the awkward part here is that, right, so has always had these these kind of complex politics that are not not squarely put into isolationists or anti war because she was a strong and relentless supporter of the global War on terror against you know what what she what whatever she wants to call it, like Islamic terrorism, whatever she is, like yes, like she seems like her her like hostility to Islamism and sometimes even Islam just shines through and like as powerfully as Air Towan and
the Kurds, like you know, fine, you know, it's it's it's intense, and so now that those factions that she has been uh no, fighting against literally and and also politically for a decade have actually won, right before potentially she gets into the position, uh is she going to be trying to arm opposition groups to the new kind of dominant groups in Syria because she's so.
Hostile to them, And it's going to be interesting.
I mean, the whole thing is like, it's just absurd. Like there was a there was a New York Times report that said, in Washington, American policy makers are telling all of the kind of Jahadis groups or whatever you want to call them, that they better not ally with Isis, which means the American policy is basically coming down to, we draw the line at isis al Qaeda?
You know what?
Okay, al Kada offshoot former isis Okay, but isis absolutely not. We have we have it's the line in the sand is our red line. We're not allying, but yeah, we have standards. Meanwhile, literally, the al Qaida guy in Damascus, now, well.
He has such an interesting story, by the way, and I was curious to ask you about this.
His personal story is.
In itself a testament to the follies of US interventionism. He was at least reportedly radicalized by US policy and Israel right.
Well, Yes, his family was displaced from the Golan Heights in what sixty seven when Israel occupied the Golan Heights and then yes, and then he was radicalized further in two thousand during the Israeli crackdown on the Second Intifada and the collapse of the peace process there. And then he goes to Iraq to fight along with other insurgents against the against the American invasion of Iraq, and he talks about that in his CNA interview and elsewhere where.
He says, basically what the argument that he's making.
Is like, the US was wrong to invade.
Everybody believed the US was wrong to invade and occupy Iraq. I went there to fight them, that was the right thing to do. But the way that many of the people who fought them did so deliberately killed civilians. He said, I never participated in that. Groups I was involved with did I have broken with them? And a lot of that is the ideological splits with al Qaeda and ISIS
are overblown, Like the ideology is still pretty similar. What he has recognized is that politically speaking, this idea that you're going to create a caliphate in a world that is hostile, abjectly hostile to you, and that you're hostile to as well, is absurd and will never work, that the world will unite against you and destroy you. And so it is a pragmatic pivot to say, look, we just you can't do that. We don't have the assets to accomplish this goal. Therefore it's a complete suicide mission.
And he was not interested in a suicide mission.
So he understood good that he had to talk about recognizing all the different sects and ethnicities and religions in Syria. And so, you know, if he's going to get off the US terrorist and he had to pick the right enemies. What he did is he very strategically.
Targeted.
You know when after violently went to war with al Qaeda in ISIS in Syria and then and then kept coming back. This is what you were hearing from American sources, kept coming back to the US, Look, we're fighting your enemies here, aren't.
We your friend? And they'd like yeah, maybe.
So it wasn't as if the US started arming necessarily this force, but they stopped trying to kill him and otherwise made it possible for him to have room to maneuver.
Interesting other anecdote from his life or point for its it's probably more powerful than an anecdote, is that he was actually detained in Abu Grabe by when he went to Iraq, he ended up detained in Abu Grab by
US forces. So he has his own history with American interventionism, and I think that's why it's sort of naive and probably why even the Lindsay Grahams of the world are now expressing sort of skepticism about how Golani governs as they're cobbling together a new government in Syria right now. So the pessimism is probably more warranted than any optimism we're hearing from people referring to the freedom fighters in Syria right now.
And also we can get to some of that pessimism in this next point, which is that the two main invasions and incursions going on in Turkey now, I mean in Syria are being led by Turkey and by Israel.
On the Turkish side, they've been relentlessly attacking Kobani, which was a symbol of Kurdish resistance to ISIS back in twenty fourteen fifteen, and when the US got involved in that fight, bombing kind of isis positions as the Kurds held out in Coobani, that that ended up turning the tide and creating this and really cementing this alliance between the Kurds and the and the US in north in
northern Syria. For our Friday show, we're going to interview an American who fought with the Kurds and was up was there even even fairly recently. So stick around for
that for that Friday show to learn more about that conflict. Now, the American alliance with the Kurds appears to have led to and this is all developing now something of a ceasefire around Cobani in exchange for the Kurds withdrawing from mon Beach, which was another huge battle back back in twenty sixteen, which our guests actually participated in.
So he can he can talk about that that the liberation of mon Beach by.
The Kurds was was a pivotal victory. They are with this is this is what the news reporting is that the Kurds are going agreeing to kind of withdraw from Eastern Aleppo Province and from mon Beach in exchange for Airdwan calling off the massive murderous assault on on the Kurds. Well, we'll see how long that lasts. The Kurds nobody has been betrayed I think, in the region more times and by more people than the Kurds, who were absolutely screwed in Syke's Pico by the Kurdish. The Kurdish region UH
covers deliberately Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. So if you if you if you look the map where those four where those four countries intersect, that's that's all a Kurdish region.
They basically just drew a circle.
Around it and divided them among those four different countries.
The thinking being.
Making these countries more ethnically diverse would make it easier for colonial domination of them UH, and then dividing the Kurds would make it harder for them to attain any any semblance of self determination or any nationality. And in fact, you know it has there are there is obviously a Kurdish you know, ethnic solidarity, but all of the different Kurdish groups of Iranian Kurds are racking Kurds, Syrians, Turks
like they have their beefs inside a rack. You've got two Kurdish factions that are constantly you went to war with each other in the nineties, and it's and you know, there's a lot of kind of hostility among them, and you divide and rule, you know, classic British policy, updated updated for today. And so if if you want to bet on anything, you can bet on the Kurds being betrayed.
The the more, the the the even more threatening assault on Syria has been coming from Israel, which and we can put this up on this screw means from drop site News, which is they have been just absolutely annihilating any semblance of Syrian self defense or sovereignty. They started by going after what they said was a chemical weapons depot, Like what, what do you want chemical weapons to wind
up in the hands of ISIS or al Qaeda. I was like, okay, well, you've launched more than three hundred air strikes at this point according to the Syrian Observatory there and only a couple of those are at the
alleged chemical weapons place. Otherwise you're going after radar, you're going after defensive weapons, You're going after helicopters, airplanes, airports like they're rapidly and systematically destroying the entire kind of infrastructure of this of the Syrian state while creeping further and further into Syrian territory around and beyond the.
Goal on Heights.
There was an opportunit unity to reach out. And even if you want to stick with the chemical weapons, the OPCW is there to deal with chemical weapons. This is the United Nations institution that has set up for this. Jolanni has made it very clear that he wants his group delisted from the terrorist that he wants to be
part of the world of Nations. If the requirement is that you send in inspectors and you put the chemical weapons and trucks and you take them out, obviously he's going to agree to that.
Instead.
And so Israel had an opportunity, and Jolanni and the rest of this faction that took over Syria has been very clear that they don't actually have a beef with Israel, to the chagrin of the Access of Resistance, and so Israel had an opportunity to say, good welcome, give up those chemical weapons, sign a peece steel, and let's let's coexist here peacefully. Instead, immediately they send in the tanks and are just leading this kind of rampage across Syria.
The infighting over chemical weapons is just such a disaster.
Different factions they.
Could easily just get the OPCW to come in and grab them.
And different groups are getting bombed by other groups for taking the Asade what is said to be the Asade stash, and it's just a complete.
Disaster, which is obviously what was always going to happen if ended up being toppled.
But right, and remember in two thousand and three when the US invaded Iraq, the thing that we did was called deepathification, which meant we wiped out the entire Iraqi bureaucracy and military. Anybody who had anything to do with the military of the bureaucracy was fired. Done, you're out.
And what did that do. It took tens of thousands of men, many of them young men, who were just punching cards, who were willing to work for whatever government came next, and it made them completely untouchable, and so they funded an insurgent, They joined an insurgency the state. If you collapse the state, some power is going to come in. So Israel by deliberately destroying the state capacity right at the outset is going to create a failed state and a civil war, and not a clean civil war,
but just faction against faction. And clearly strategically they believe that a massively weakened and constantly fighting Syria is somehow geostrategically beneficial to them right across the border, rather than having an actual functioning state. But that misunderstands what has always come out of those types of situations. When you get your failed state in Afghanistan, you know, Alkaiti gets refuge there failed state in Iraq and Syria over the last ten fire, and then Isis blows up out of it.
You don't know what you're going to get, so I guess good luck with all that. Like, but it seems like the only strategy they have is throwing more American bombs at wherever they feel like.
Well, let's watch Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, respond to some questions along these lines. This was from yesterday.
Ran.
Yeah, a lot of sentiments have been expressed, such as Syrian lead, smooth transition, unified Syria, although we are seeing it being dismembered before our eyes, and so on. But nobody speaks of these Radi attacks three hundred, that they struck three hundred military sites. So why are you not
talking about what Israel is doing to Syria? What it has done to Syria in the last twenty four hours, So destroyed the navy, destroyed all the air force and did all that is the purpose, and that is the purpose to have a the medathriized Syria.
So I will let Israel speak to its own operations and what it is they are trying to accomplish. I will say that on behalf of the United States, We're going to discuss them, uh, these matters with them privately before I appine on them publicly. I would say that broadly speaking, we of course don't want to see any action that makes a Syrian lead process more difficult, and we ultimately want to see a peaceful process for not an escalation of the conflict.
So you think what you're saying is that what Israel is doing, whether it's conquering the rest of the Gulan and so on, the attack that it's conducting it is like thirty five kilometers from Damascus and so on, that is a private matter. So is that a private is that? So is that decision no siety.
First of all, let me just point out with respect to the location of Israeli forces, and I'm not attesting one way or the other. I know they are conflicting claims about where they are, and they have strenuously denied that they are close to Damascus. They have said that they are in the in their forces on the ground are in the buffer zone. And I spoke to this
at length yesterday. But no, but when it comes to their operations, I think it's appropriate for us to speak to them privately first ascertain what it is they're doing before we you pine on that publicly. They are close ally of bars, and that's what we're.
Going to do.
This administration cannot leave stood enough. Well what have you been here for?
They'll leave, and I don't think you'll like who replaces them.
Ryan, No, I don't think so either. No, We'll be here to complain then too.
Pete Haig Seth, obviously Donald Trump's nomination for Defense secretary, went on Hannity this week, and while the Trump campaign and Trump himself has been backing Pete Haig Seth pretty enthusiastically, along with basically the entire conservative movement in the MAGA movement. At this point, Hegseth went on Fox. Obviously his mom went on Fox last week as well, but he went
on Hannity to offer obviously vigorous defense of himself. So let's go ahead and roll this clip of Pete Hegseeth on Sean Hannity's show.
You had a consensual relationship, it was investigated, you were fully exonerated, and correct me if I'm wrong.
Here, wasn't there videotape evidence.
That was largely responsible for exonerating you.
I mean, in addition to personal personal witnesses and all of that. It was fully investigated at the time, years ago, and I was completely cleared. And that's why, Sean, you know.
What I look forward to. I looked forward to the FBI background check. I look forward to the actual under.
Oath conversations with senators as we go through the process.
Because again, this is what the Left.
Does, Sean.
It's the anatomy of a smear. They take something and then they add anonymous sources and contortions and flat out lies, and then they try to try you in the media before you can even get into the doors with senators.
So that's Pete Hegsath commenting on these rape allegations or this rape allegation from twenty seventeen, and now that his confirmation. Having met with Joni Ernst, jani ern saying she's had very good conversations with Pete Heggseth, herself a survivor of sexual assault.
She says that she is now feeling good about the nomination. They're having good conversations.
It looks like Hegseth is on a path to being confirmed, whereas a week ago people were more skeptical about whether that happened. I think it has always been likely that he was going to get confirmed, even if there were going to be troubles along the way.
But Ryan, you.
Thought it would be good now that it looks like Heigseth actually is going to be confirmed, and there's doubling and tripling down on the nomination to actually go through the police report from twenty seventeen, and you've pulled the relevant excerpts.
Yeah, and in the spirit of treating our audience like adults, wanted to go through and and put forward the different pieces of the police report that would enable you know, Hannity and and Hagseth to make those claims and to be clear, none of what we're saying here is that this is a good guy. This is a good dude, this is a moral guy. He's not nominated for being
a moral guy. He's nominated to run the Secretary of Defense, which is reminiscent of Arlo Guthrie's line in Alice's Restaurant, where you know he can't he gets a deferment to get drafted to go over to Vietnam, and he's like, you're telling me that I'm not moral enough to go burn babies, women and children over in Vietnam because I'm a litterbug. So that's that's a scale that we're talking about here. But the question is is he guilty of
sexual assault and why we're charges not pressed? And I think if you go through the police report you can you can decide for yourself whether or not he should have been And I think, but I think you'll understand a lot more about it then then we get in the press was just kind of vague allusions to it. But the police report is out there. It's twenty two pages. It's not that long. You can read it. You could put up D two here, which is the beginning of
this police report. Jane Doe in twenty seventeen goes to a hospital where she is from says that she was the victim of sexual assault about roughly a week earlier at a conference in Monterey. The nurse reports it to the police and put up D three here. Essentially, her version that she tells the police is that she's at this conference. She goes to a bar. She's hanging out with Pete Hegseth and another woman.
Hexith is a speaker at the content at the conference. She's his handler.
Yeah, and she winds up blackout, drunk, either drugged, some other situations. She has barely but any memory of it. The memories come back to her over the next several days, and then she goes to the hospital and reports this crime. So that's essentially her version of it. So to counter that version of it, Hegseeth or as defenders would basically have to show that she was not significantly intoxicated. And so the rest of the police report kind of invest
basically investigates that question. And so we can put up the next element on the screen here.
This is her saying she was in contact by text messages between Jane Doe and.
They got at them.
Yeah, he was.
Giving off quote creeper vibe, a creeper vibe. So to the point you were making Ryan, this is information about Pete Heiss like sort of being very flirtatious. He's a new baby at the bar with all of these women who are not his wife, and he is just giving off a vibe.
He's trying to get people up to his room.
Is what the kind of that's the gist of those memories.
From the night, So you can put up the next element here. These are text messages that she exchanged with her husband, and you can you can read them for yourself.
You can find them in there.
And he's like whoa, He's saying, her world, it's like two am.
You're usually not out at two am.
She doesn't respond to him anymore after about two are you okay?
Where are you? What's going on? And you can see that.
He was at the conference. Her husband's also at the conference.
Right, you can go to D six here. This is another person that was with them.
She was aware of the situation. That's why that's her sort of use to the police report here. She told this person or the Jane Doe told the person that she must have fallen asleep.
Yeah, that's right.
And this person said that the Jane Doe did not have a hard time walking and was slurring her words, which is.
From HEGs Us.
You can read that in different ways depending on how you're seeing the situation. You can say that means she knew exactly what she was doing, or you can say that means she must have been later drugged if she had no memory of the situation. But I think probably Hegsas sees that as sort notch in his corner.
And so D six is the key spot here. That is kind of what Hannity and Hegsath they're referring to. There, they found a bunch of surveillance video from the hotel. So they're walking together kind of arm in arm neither you know, the morning. She doesn't appear to be intoxicated, because her assertion was that.
She was blackout drunk.
Video of her kind of arm in arm walking normally in the morning undercuts that. Basically, here they talk, they get surveillance video of them by the pool, and also looks like talk to a security guard who kind of went to break up kind of an argument that they were having by the pool. The security guard says that Hegxath actually seemed kind of drunk. He yells at the cop at one point, I have freedom of speech. It's two am and he's being told to quiet down at a conference.
He's drunk, and he's like yelling at the.
At a I've got free speech, but yelling at a mall cop that he has free speech. And this is going to be our secretary of defense. But what oh, none of this is funny except that part. I mean, that's pretty funny. The security guard says that Jane Doe
was there and did not seem inebriate at all. So again, think about if you're a prosecutor, you're gonna have to bring all of these you're gonna have to bring this surveillance camera, you're gonna have to bring this security guard who was gonna say okay, she says she was blackout drunk.
She did not look that drunk to me.
And that excerpt also showed the police officer saying I found additional security footage of them walking arm and arms, smiling, and neither appeared to have an unsteady gait.
That's the quote from the report.
So was that so we could put up the next one here.
This is at the bar.
So basically what's going on here hexeth is Hexath is at the bar.
And he's hitting on a woman.
The woman wants absolutely nothing to do with him, and she goes and gets Jane Doe, which she tells the police she brought her in to be a crotch blocker. Now I think she was being polite to the police there, and in her description of that term, everybody knows what the arm is, we don't have to use it here, uh, And so so brings Jane Doe in there to just get get this creep off of me. And so then Jane ends up, you know, spending a lot of time chatting with him.
Right the witness.
She was hoping that Jane Doe's presence would detour Hexas attempt.
To have sex with that witness. And he was touching her knee.
It's uncomfortable apparently, and she said that he seth invited her back to the hotel room and she politely declined that. And this is where the Jane Doe gets involved.
So we can go to D ten.
Then this is Hegsas's version of the story, where he's basically saying that they walked back to his his room together.
He doesn't remember even getting into that argument by the pool, but again that's there's witnesses.
Right, so the guys seems like pretty drunk. Based on all of this. He says he's kind of surprised that she's coming back to the room with him. M hm, you know, because clearly like he was hitting on somebody else the whole night.
He's like, what's going on.
Like, how is this happening? So Hegsath independently, you know, told the police. Jane Doe stated that she would tell her husband that she had fallen asleep on a couch in someone else's room. Haggxath continue to ask Jane Doe if she was okay because he did not want Jane Doe to get in trouble. Haggxath told Jane Doe that she did not have to worry about him saying anything. Haggas stated Jane Doe showed early signs of regret. Haggath did not elaborate on the signs of regret. I think
why that's why this part is relevant. The stated that she would tell her husband that she had fallen asleep, is that Haggxath would not have known that there were these other text messages where she's telling other people that she kind of fell asleep. That would be kind of corroborating evidence that she'd.
Like, how would he have made that?
Because that's that's a pretty specific detail. And then she did then go and say tell people like, look, you know, I fell asleep in somebody's room.
Sorry.
Elsewhere in the police report they quote the person that whose room she came back to saying that she got into the room with her own card, no problem, didn't seem drunk, and then then did not seem hung.
Over in the morning.
Yeah, so you know, nobody can know what happened in the room. But the claim was not that he, you know, violently kind of forced himself on her. The claim was that she was blackout, drunk.
Or to consent or to inebriated to consent essentially.
And you can see why there's so much evidence that would have been presented in court that would have undermined that claim.
It would have been very hard.
And this is what the this is what law enforcement in the area has since said, is that we would have to have had proved this but beyond a reasonable doubt, And this is very much he said, she said, situation with a lot of evidence against that. She said, part of it doesn't mean that's impossible. It doesn't mean her story is impossible. It just means that proving her story
would be borderline impossible. So this is twenty seventeen. She gets a lawyer and starts making noise in twenty twenty, and it looks like we don't know the date of the settlement. Actually, it looks like it happened shortly after the lawyers got involved in late twenty twenty, So areund December twenty twenty, so I would assume that the settlement happened in early twenty twenty one. You can see why someone would try to make noise about a Fox News
host that they had an encounter with. And obviously there's a police report in this situation. She got a rape kit the next morning and there was saman so you can understand why she would try to.
Bring this up and why Heike Seth, who didn't want to.
Set go public about it.
She still we still don't know who she is.
It's the situation, you know.
Yeah, her husband's now being interviewed, and like her, her husband in this police report is presenting evidence that undercuts.
Her own story.
Yes, if you're reading between the lines, you're like, he doesn't seem to buy it. You could see it if you're reading this police report, read the met.
Too part of this.
Either way, you can say you can understand where it would galvanize her to say, hey, this powerful married man was being really creepy to me and it ended up in a tragedy for me, or you can see where it would be like, I bet I can get money at this point because he's not.
Going to want this to be public.
So you can read it in a couple of different ways, but I think the most important way to read it. Ryan said, it just can't be proven. Hegxeth has obviously copped to the adultery. He's admitted that.
Right, and he literally had just had a child with the woman he had a fair on it was previous.
Why, Yeah, it's really good.
You can read the email from his mom. His mom's like, you're such a dog. Stop treating women so awfully. Yeah, it's really gross, and it's extra gross when he's then draped with all this like Christian morality and preaching.
Well, you know, I will say a lot of people who are late in life converts to like zealous Christianity, like they're really on fire, have very hard backgrounds, and they tend to be people who are clinging to their faith because they feel so emotionally desperately in.
Need of it self spiritual medication.
Maybe, and it's kind of what it's there for, but it does. It's not to me.
That's like not a surprising thing from somebody who's ardently Christian. I've interviewed Pete Hegseth and he's surprised me. I interviewed him last year and I was just surprised by how sort of I was surprised by.
How intellectual he was.
And that may sound ridiculous, but I know people kept biases against Fox and Friends hosts. I kind of did going into the interview because they turn on a lot of books that are you know, they're books to sell books. But he's he's more he's a more nuanced figure than I think people give him credit for being. But clearly a rampant adulterer, does not have a history of treating women.
Well, he's a dog.
He's a dog. Clearly drinks too much, but I also.
Or drank too much.
That night there was a there's right now a weaponized smear campaign that's very obvious to Republicans, and it's backfiring on people who don't want Pete hag Seth to be the Defense Secretary, including Jenny Ernst, who's very close. I think with people in like Pentagon circles who don't want a disruptor obviously to get in the middle of their system.
Two things can be true.
The system needs to be disrupted, and this particular disruptor might not be qualified. The thing I would worry about, I'm curious what you think about this is compromot blackmail on the head of the Pentagon. If he's been drinking and sleeping around for so long, that seems to be a pretty serious concern.
I mean for the intelligence community. Yeah, that's a big concern. I have no interest in the Pentagon being a well functioning institution. It's a good line and like waging effective wars. So if he's compromised good, it's bad. Like it's a bad thing, it's bad for the world. Yeah. So if he's bad at running it good and maybe he'll bring a wrecking ball to some of the corruption in there.
Maybe more likely he's just completely ill equipped to run an institution of this size, and the institution will eat him up.
Who knows, we'll see.
Donald Trump announced yesterday that he was picking FTC Commissioner current FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to lead the agency, which is obviously now helmed by Lena Kahn, who would cover a lot on this show. Ferguson is kind of a known figure for people who follow these types of things. But let's go to the next element here. This is Trump appointing Andrew Ferguson.
And this was being circulated by his yeah, allies, Ferguson. There's some question as to whether or not Ferguson himself was circulating this, but certainly, certainly his allies.
We're circulating this.
And if you're just watching it, I mean, if you're just listening to it and not watching it. Emily, this is kind of not if you like Lena Kon.
It's a big chunk of text, but it says successfully fought to end the Biden FTC's anti business policy of refusing to end merger investigations early and allow firms to close their deals as soon as the FTC finds no competitive harm. Represented Virginia numerous other states in the landmark anti trust suit against Google's ad tech monopoly. So I just want to note those two things being literally together in the bullet points. This is the nuance of the rights opposition.
To Lena Khan.
There are some people on the right, including Jdvance, who've been very positive about Lina Khan, others who have been sort of in the middle about Lina Kon, and then a third group that are just absolutely opposed to Lina Con in every turn. Ferguson appears to be somebody in the middle. Yeah, So, like you can see, they're bragging there about him being part of the anti trust monopoly suit against Google. I'm sorry, the ad tech monopoly suit
against Google. Obviously it's an anti trust one as well. But and then the next bullet point is about over reach, right, anti trist overreach, And that's sort of interesting.
Yeah, And they and that that a sheet talk that memo talks a lot about being too tough on mergers, that Lina Con is too rough on the business community, that they're going.
To do a lot of deregulation.
It's ironic that and almost poetic and anti poetic whatever that Trump made this move ousting Lena Khan and replacing her with Ferguson. On the same day, one of one of her most significant victories.
Came through.
If you can put up this this Fox Business article on the on the screen next the Kroger Albertson merger was was blocked as a twenty four billion dollar merger that that Lena Khan had had fought and arguing not just that it would be bad for consumers, there's kind of there's been there's agreement across the spectrum, even among the kind of pro business side, that if you can prove that there is going to be harmed to consumers, then then then you can block a merger. That's called
the consumer welfare standard. Now, the if you can prove it is the part uh that the pro business side hangs her hat on and says and just constantly argues, well, all these mergers.
Are going to be good for consumers.
We're going to give you lower costs, and look you're going to it's going to be wonderful, trust us, and then it happens and then it's not and it's done, so you're screwed.
In this case.
She argued that actually additionally, the FTC and going back to its original meaning when you know when it was it was created, and so when some of these acts were created, that that enabled its powers, the power of workers and the and the well being of workers matters too, And so she argued that this merger would would depress wages, would make it and would would hurt worker power, which is also an interest of the federal government of the people of the United States, which is kind of a
radical take, like, well, we're supposed to care about workers, but yeah, actually it's in the law, you're supposed to here she is, I love this talking to Hassan Piker on his stream about this this decision being blocked.
What kind of labor protections does that offer to people that are working at these corporations.
So one thing that our lawsuit alleged was that if this merger goes through, it's going to mean higher grocery prices for shoppers, but it's also going to be worse for the workers. And this is the first time that the FTC has ever sought to block a merger, not just because it's going to be bad for consumers, but also because it's going to be bad for workers. And you know, especially in recent decades, anti trust enforcers had not really been focused on the worker harms as much,
and that's something we've really looked to change. So the complaint lays out how previously, when there was, when there has been competition between Kroger and Albertson's, that the workers at each store were able to use that competition as leverage when they were trying to bargain, and that if you allow these two companies to merge, that leverage that comes from having a potential alternative employer or an alternative store where customers can go if there's a strike, but
eliminating that leverage point and bargaining leverage would ultimately be bad for workers. So again this is still being litigated, but that was in the complaint as an explanation for
why this merger would be bad for workers. When the FTC team put on the trial, they actually had on the stand some of the workers that are currently employed by these stores so that they could also share their experience and just generally, I mean, there's a lot of empirical evidence that now shows that after mergers, workers have seen you pay cuts or a limit in any pay rises. You often see layoffs, you can see workers have less negotiation power to figure out well I even have a stable,
predictable schedule. And so you know, these are all dimensions of competition on the labor front that are important to protect for people.
First of all, it's pretty cool to have an FTC chair that goes on a Sundpiker's stream.
We were four years in power. It was. It was quite a run.
We'll see, we'll see where it goes from here. The big fear among supporters of the kind of Lena Khan approach to FTC was that Melissa holy Holyoak, who is a commissioner on the on the FTC, that she would get the chair gig. And she's as hostile as you can get to the kind of con canter wing wing of that bipartisan, transpartisan movement. So the fact that she
didn't get it is something. But the fact that somebody got it who says that that she was too tough on mergers, like the day that she blocked this like huge, because what the Wall Street Journal would always say about her is she filed another frivolous BS case that's just gonna eat up money. And then when a judge, you know, gets this complaint, he's gonna knock it away because you know, this is a this is a child who doesn't even belong in this job, and she doesn't understand how the
law works. And time after time after time, the judges are like, these are good points.
This merger's blocked.
Well, what she said on Hassan show there is like, so it's one of the reasons conservatives don't like hers, because, as Rachel Bovert has talked about to us and others, is the consumer welfare standard of Robert Bork was gospel on the right for a really long time, not just the political right, but just sort of the pro business community for a long time. The consumer welfare standard and what Lena Kahan was saying there is is not.
When we're saying pro business, they mean pro big business.
And also the mergers and acquisitions lawyers who make money on these.
Mergers absolutely pro oh big business.
And the consumer welfare standard is predicated on this idea that consumers will choose to shop at places where they treat workers well, and that is not the case when you have monopolies, right, Like, it's this ridiculous sort of cycle.
And right, I just looked this up.
Actually, we invited Andrew Ferguson to come on a Friday show with Matthew Stoller to talk about conservatives and antitrust policy back in June and never got a response. So your point about Lena Kon going on the Hassan Pikers stream is really interesting because one of the reasons Khan irked a lot of people in the business community is that she's just she's the new brand ician, right, Like she's actually like very much, very much in the moment,
and that was irritating because it was a threat. It's like, this is a this is a popular movement behind Lena kan People seem to like what she's saying. There's a lot of media interest in her, and that poses a threat because it makes the right more interested in warding Lenacon.
Matt Gates very supportive.
For Lila Kon, for example, also a conservative.
Conservative, so you can see why they would be threatened by Lena Kon like actually getting invitation even to go talk to Hassan Piker.
I don't know which way it went.
Maybe they pitched her to Hassan, but either way, Andrew Ferguson is going to have a slightly tougher for time on this one because Lena Kon obviously was popular in new media spaces like this one.
Yeah.
Indeed, let's move.
On to this Inspector General report that was published yesterday by d j IG Michael Horowitz a familiar name to a lot of people because he published an Inspector General report on some of the Russia collusion, FAISA application, malfeasins that happened surrounding Carter Page and all of that stuff, and was popular on the right because of that report.
Rightfully so, because it was a good.
Report and needed to be done. But this next one maybe slightly less popular with the right. It was published yesterday and found that the Department of Justice under Donald Trump and his Attorney General Bill Barr improperly spied on members of Congress, congressional staffers, and actually journalists as well, in an effort to track it down who was selectively leaking.
We can put the first element up on the screen.
This is a report from Politico. The headline is watchdog faults DOJ and Trump's first term for secretly obtaining records of lawmakers and journalists. It's a little bit more complicated than just having done it secretly, and we can go through some of the inspectors some of the Inspector General report Ryan, because I think it's fairly important now that we have another Trump administration suiting up, and before we do start going through it, we can put it up on the screen.
Here.
This is the E two tear sheet. You can see the PDF of the report itself.
You can go through it yourself.
It's very long, but very long and very detailed, sort of step by step process of how warrants were retained, how warrants were obtained or obtained poorly or improperly in many cases. But essentially, the Trump Air Justice Department was doing something that was I think perfectly reasonable and understandable for the Attorney General would do, which is tracked down the selective leaks that were coming out of classified information
weaponized against Donald Trump. We now know for sure, and we knew this at the time in many cases that these selective leaks were giving a very false picture of what was happening with carter Page. They were leaking to show that carter Page and others were like definitively involved in some strange plot like ripped from a Clancy novel about Russia collusion that just there wasn't there, and so Bill Barr was trying to track down who was leaking
this class fed information. His deputies were trying to track down who was leaking this classified information. So in the process, though the dj was not following the proper channels that you need to man the reading this report. One reason that's kind of an interesting read is that the bureaucratic process of obtaining these.
Ports insane, which it should as it should be.
Yes, absolutely, one hundred percent as it should be. Did were you going to say something ran?
No, no, just yeah, like it's and uh. Eric Holder put this in took place actually after the DJU basically spied on James Rosen, the Fox News White House correspondent, who was working on a story with with a source regarding North Korea's kind of new something something involving North Korea, and they swept up his communications, and the entire media left to right stood up to Eric Holder and said, this is outrageous. Many of us call on him to
resign over that, including us over the hoving impost. And in response to that pressure, he put in this new policy that if you're going to pick up the communications of a journalist, even if it's incidental in a report on a car, investigating a car teller or something. If you wind up, if you see a journalist there, you need to come to the Attorney General himself and make your case that this breach of our norms, because it's
just norms. Legally, you know, if they get a warrant, they can go after anybody they want, but the norms are the journalists are to be protected, and so they've set up these special protections that also cover members of Congress, which to me, I think are also good. Like members of Congress, whether you're Marjorie Taylor Green or Adam Schiff or AOC, I think should be off limits.
Dana Rhorbaker, Yeah, absolutely. So let's get into what Qurowitz found a little bit here. This is where we'll start. On page five, we can put the next element up. Says he found that the Department failed to convene the News Media Review Committee they have a committee committed to any such things to consider the compulsory process authorization requests.
The Department did not obtain the required DNI certification in one investigation, and we were unable to confirm whether the DNI certification it obtained in another investigation was provided to the Attorney General before he authorized the request, and the Department did not obtain the Attorney General's express authorization for the ndos that were sought in connection with compulsory process, with compulsory process issued in the investigations. So that's from
the executive summary basically. But yeah, on this next element, you can see they're talking specifically about the New York Times and the Washington Post. CNN is swept up in this, they say, as we describe in this chapter, chapter three of the report, the Department complied with some, but not all, of the then appical provisions of the news media policy in CNN and New York Times and Washington Posts, many of which provisions have been put in place beginning just
six years earlier. That's what Ryan was referencing from twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen, which horror, which references a lot in this report. He says, in our judgment, this deviation from the Department's owned requirement indicates a troubling disparity between on the one hand, the regard expressed in Department policy
for the vital role of the news media and American democracy. Yes, I know, the DJ loves that so very much, And on the other hand, the department's commitment to complying with the limits and requirements that it intended to safeguard that very role. So basically, if you go into the report, what happens with these journalist communications? These are non content communications requests, so they're trying to pull who the journalists were emailing and calling, and that in and of itself
would be enough obviously to figure out who's leaking. And that's why you need to have the provisions that were put in place followed, because it's a very serious thing.
When you're looking.
At who journalists are talking to, you should be the absolute highest standard. And so when we have potentially cash Hotel coming into the FBI and a loyalist like Pambondi coming into the DOJ, Bill Barr was kind of a loyalist but ultimately really bucked Trump. So imagine what a loyalist who's even sort of more maga than Bill Barr might do in some of these situations, even if they're
kind of swampy like Pam Bondi. Legitimately is these are really serious things, really serious powers that I would just tell the right canon will be abused against conservative media. Little guys like imagine, imagine right the slippery slope as these powers start getting abused, because there are and it always happens this way, there are rightful uses of these powers when selective leaks of classified information that can damage national security literally can Yeah, that's a reasonable use of
trying to figure out who is leaking. I don't think it's necessarily a reasonable use of going after journalists communications, but it may be a predicate, a reasonable predicate for an investigation. And it is what convinces you to let those powers get bigger and bigger and bigger.
And bigger, and the right exactly, and these norms get loosened in a ratchet effect. It moves one direction and only tends to move in one direction. So let's say, well, Adam Schiff is one of the members of Congress that they spied on here, and Swallowell like, let's say you hate Adam Shift.
And Cash Pattel by the way, and Cash Battel twenty one Democrats and twenty Republicans.
And Cash Betel is a great example here. So so take take Adam Shift. You hate Adam Shiff, you think he's a trader, you think he should be spied on. He's now an incoming senator, if there's a Democratic administration in the next ten to fifteen years, you know he's going to be likely CIA chief.
He's going to be pissed. You spied on him.
You want him with all these powers Now now he can spy on you in reverse.
So that's my message to the right.
Now, the message to the left would be like, all right, you spied on cash Pattel. The left, Yeah, yeah, Democrats spied on cash Pattel when he was a Hill staffer. Now he's gonna be running the FBI, and he's pissed. He's very pissed, like he has sued you know, everybody involved. His case got thrown out, but he's like, guys angry as he should be. You spy on a Hill staffer and so now he's going to run the FBI. Look what you did, Like, so don't don't do this stuff.
Yeah, it's serious.
I mean it is really serious when you start setting, when you let the precedent slip like this and don't get caught until there's an inspector general report a long time later. And part of this is you're supposed to give reporters enough time to respond, and that wasn't done in all of these cases to actually have a legal
response to their communications being pulled to the government. As a journalist, I mean, right now, we've seen how crucial independent media has been and independent voices in Congress, like people who are willing to book the party line. We've seen how important that is to understanding like Cash Purtel as Matt TeV came on Undercurrents last weeked and made this point. He was like, the new nes memo that we were told by selective leaks, by the way, was
absolutely wrong, was vindicated. And Cash Bettel was basically the author of the Neuns memo. Those independent voices have been like really important to understanding what's going on when nobody else in the Republican Party wanted to really talk about how bad the FBI was was were hesitant to question the Russian investigation. Initially, it's easy to forget there was even hesitation on the right about that, but there was These independent voices in Congress and in the media are
some of the more important voices right now. There's a lot of literal disinformation coming from the establishment, and so as soon as these powers sort of slip into getting bigger and bigger without proper oversight. Then guess who's coming after independent media. It'll be Adam Shift, It'll be Eric Swallwell, it'll be those types of people, or maybe even like on the right. I think right now, people on the right are primed to over use these powers because they
have good reason to want to know what happened. And that's how things end up getting expanded in very bad directions because it's like it's easy to convince people you should be going after and you should be using this power, and so you sort of feel like you have permission to make the power broader and broader.
Yeah, got to protect what's left of this republic.
Let's do it.
And so it's been a bleak show. You know, we talked about war, ethnic cleansing, sexual assault, the selling out of the anti trust agenda. So let's do a little palate cleanser and talk about Bill Maher for a little bit.
Let's talk about Bill Moore.
And it's a palate cleanser because this clip is sort of delightful in some ways as either a point about cancel culture never existing or about cancel culture being over.
So let's go ahead and.
Roll Bill Maher talking to actor Zachary Levi on Club Random and Zachary Levi for Contacts, came out in support of Trump, like right before the election. It was a matter of days before the election, and he was talking to Bill Moore on Club Random. Let's go ahead and see how their exchange went.
You got canceled for for basically say.
Have I been canceled? Well, I hope I haven't been canceled yet.
I mean, if it happens that happens, like.
I mean, come on, didn't you lose jobs for that? Isn't that what canceling is?
No for coming out and voting for Trump? Yeah, I mean, listen, I have yet to see what the ultimate effects of all that are going to be. I already had multiple jobs that I was in the process of shooting or that I have yet to shoot, and none of those have been compromised. All those like, none of my producers or any of these studios behind those films or projects have called and said, hey, listen, this is a you know, a lying too far and we can't have you associated
with the project anymore. We're all still full steam ahead on those How it ultimately like plays out in the future, I don't know. You know, I'm going to sit down with my team.
I have yet.
I've been in Eastern Europe making this movie all during the election and everything. I mean, I was all, you know, kind of disconnected a lot from what was going on other than social media and following the news and kind of seeing the play by plays. But you know, I'm gonna sit down with my team and we'll talk about because I haven't talked to any of them. They might say, hey, listen, we've had some phone calls with some people and they don't want to work with you anymore.
I don't know.
I could have sworn that already happened.
No, No, yeah, I think it was because when I did the town hall with Tulci and Bobby, so basically I was stumping for Bobby.
I really wanted Bobby to be Bobby Bobby Kennedy.
Yeah, he sat there, and you know, I don't agree with everything, but among people in my field, especially who were considered liberals, I have definitely been the most supportive. You know, his general view of health and medicine and how it all works and what's important is closer to mine than Western medicine.
So I think funny thing there was zachar le By saying he hasn't yet lost jobs, and bellmart saying I could have swore that happened, because it takes us back to the central point of the cancel culture debate, which is are you just getting criticism or are you actually facing consequences?
And I don't know, I.
Think Ryan would probably agree, and it gets to your great essay Elephant in the zoom or reported essay Elephant in the zoom like part of cancel culture was absolutely absolutely real. There are people who said it never happened, it was never real, it was consequence called.
It was sort of always incoherent.
On the one hand, people were saying, it's just consequence culture, but also it's not real, right, like you're just you're just getting you're just facing consequences for your we would name it right, Yeah, exactly, you're just facing consequences for having unpopular opinions. But but also like, this thing is not really happening. It's it's not at all, you know, a problem, don't worry about it. There's nothing to see here.
So that said, I think this is maybe becoming incoherent on the right because the second Trump administration or the second Trump election. What's interesting about it is you get the guy winning the popular vote, you do have sort of a broad swath of celebrities coming out supporting him. Still a lot of celebrities supporting Kamala Harris, no question about it. These tech guys now coming out support of
Donald Trump. We talked about the Federalist headline like the day before the election, which was it's no longer there's no social stigma around supporting Trump anymore. So this is going to this could potentially be incoherent, right, like if the social stigma around supporting Trump is mostly gone, which I agree in the rest of the country outside you know, some type of like C suite at the thirty Rock building. If you say that, then it also says like cancer culture's kind of over.
Yeah, it was a wave.
It a wave.
Yeah, I'm totally over and some I think I think the more hermetically sealed ecosystems are still operating under some of its ideological riggors. But in general, yeah, oh of course, yeah, yes, not so much. Yeah, there was a right and the rights. The rights probably isn't quite over yet because you guys were later and adopting it internally and so you've got to it's got to work through your system. They're your own like mirror world bizarro version of of cancel culture.
Yeah it will.
You're not sufficiently sufficiently anti woke like it like.
This is a raging debate on the white right right now, yes.
Which is which gets weird because it's like, you say anything related to racial justice, diversity, make any basic point. Tell me if I'm wrong on the right. People are like, DEI woke. Yeah, You're like no, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm just saying, like, everybody should be treated with the equality. Did you say equality? This happened equity?
This happened to me once when I was like, maybe the Conservatives should put a woman.
On this cancel hert hancel this woman.
I was like, it doesn't have to be any specific woman, but if you believe that men and women are different, then maybe a woman will have valuable takes on abortion, maybe maybe a pro life woman.
Drag this woman. Yeah, it's been nice working with you. You're finished.
Yeah, that is the kind of thing you say.
You say anything that gets anywhere near it.
It's like, whoa, yeah, we much.
Well because and this is actually I think becoming a serious problem because there is a need, there's a legitimate need for litmus tests. If you're the Trump if you're the incoming Trump administration, you were trying to put all
kinds of litmus tests. And this was a problem for Jonie Ernst about loyalty up on the hiring process or the confirmation process, because you know that the second somebody is like Bill barr And is not fully loyal to Donald Trump or Mike Pence is not fully loyal to Donald Trump, then boom, like your whole agenda could crumble.
It could become a house of cards.
So they're trying to not build a house of cards, They're trying to build a house of stone. And that's where their litmus tests are becoming important to them. And so they use these types of stand ins as litmus tests.
And it can, like I think.
Really poison or pollute I should say pollute the discourse because it's not honest.
Always take it from me, it's toxic.
Take it from Ryan, it's toxic. It's toxic.
And so maybe the mainstream wave of cancel culture is coming to And there was a time when if Zachary Levi had just breathed so much in Trump's direction, he legitimately probably would have lost jobs in Hollywood. Maybe, yeah, it happened.
I mean there were some pretty yeah. Twenty sixteen, Yeah, seventeen, twenty.
Sixteen, seventeen eighteen. Trump is a Russian asset. You're yeah, one hundred percent, you're a trader, all of that. So this is sort of a fun note to end the show on Ryan.
There you go, thanks for tuning in. I'm excited about the Friday show me too.
Yeah, if you missed earlier on the show, we're talking to you basically an American leftist who went to fight for the the anikocamis the of the YPG, which good for him.
It'll be interesting conversation, especially this week. So thank you so much for tuning in Breakingpoints dot com if you want to become a premium subscriber.
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