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All right, let's talk about Ukraine. This is very consequential.
President Zelenski now giving an interview with Sky News the first time that he has said that he would accept some loss of Russian territory if he says he also gets NATO membership.
Let's take a listen.
No one has offered us to be in NATAL with just one pot or another part of Ukraine.
That's for once. Fuck.
The fact is that it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war because we can just give the native membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control. Fact, yes, it could be possible, but.
No one offered trevorability.
But the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border. You can't give invitation to just one part of a country. Why, because thus you would recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one.
Is Russia juridic.
So legally, by law, we have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia. And here we must not make any mistake to study. But if we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under natal umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under.
Our control, Adali.
That's what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory.
Got it okay?
So first of all, I was told that that's Russian propaganda to accept or even be told that you're allowed to have a some sort of diplomatic solution that would not require Zelenski to give up some territory. But the other part of this that I'm not going to let slide, because this is very obviously his bid for what the
new piece deal will look like. Is that is a perfect articulation of why they should never get membership into NATO, because, as he said, it would be ridiculous to recognize quote unquote NATO nuclear umbrella over the currently recognized areas of control of the Russian of the Ukrainian country and then say that it doesn't apply to Crimea or the other
internationally recognized border. Letting a country that is literally in the midst of a war in to NATO is insane because it allows the revocation of the invocation of Article five and the ability and the necessity of the United States and NATO allies to come to their military defense right. Also, putin invaded Ukraine over NATO, So giving them NATO membership would be the exact impetus to putin to say no, you should not take a deal and you should keep
fighting the war. So it doesn't make any sense on either side. If we need to give Ukraine some fake security guarantee that doesn't actually require us to go to war, fine, I will, I'll allow it even though.
I don't want it.
But NATO membership absolutely not. So like anyways, this is the opening ground from Zelenski. This is how it always looks. You know, you make a maximalist demand and all of that. I'm very curious for how we'll all play out. To be honest, things not looking too fantastic. In terms of
who Donald Trump appointed. He's appointed General Keith Kellogg as the quote unquote Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, who has previously appeared multiple times on Fox News as very pro Ukraine, even including like supplying them with whatever weapons they want. We have a haste here, pulled by Michael Tracy from one of his Fox News interviews. Let's take a listen.
Bottom line, the Ukrainians want to fight. They don't want US troops, they don't want NATO troops. All they wanted equipment, and they're going to fight this to the end. It's very clear to them that this is in a very aggressive Russia move. It's targeted on civilians, it's targeted on infrastructure. You know, we went out pretty far to the to the northeast and we saw some absolute incredible destruction out there by the Russians, and it was targeted on infrastructure,
was targeted on hospitals, it was targeted on schools. It's in fact, the mayor of Kiev told us later that this is genocide, and I think they when we look at what's going to happen over there, I believe it's very important we get them the equipment to fight. They have no intention in to negotiate. They want to eject Russian forces from Ukraine. I don't care if it's a dambas, I don't care if it's crimea and they're committed to it. And I talked to a lot of government officials, military officials,
civilians that are out there. It's a very committed nation. If anybody doubts their their loyalty to Ukraine, their badly mistaken. And again, as I said, I think it's a fight to the finish.
Yeah, I mean I might as well work for Joe Biden, you know, like, what what are you on here?
To the right of Joe.
I mean, he's more hawkish than Joe Biden. He would be the type. We haven't done enough, we haven't shipped more quickly enough, we haven't given them what they needed soon enough, you know. And to be honest with you, that actually is a more logical position than the Biden Let's just like dribble it down over time.
Yeah, I guess the only defense that I've been given on Keith Kellogg is he's a good soldier and he takes orders from Trump.
I mean, okay, fine.
Yeah, but then you also have to reckon with Marco Rubio.
No yo, Mike Walt. That's what they say about all these guys. Don't worry there.
You got a bunch of neo cons in there who are all, like you know, very hawkish when it comes to Ukraine and other conflicts around the globe.
By the way, and that's the problem is that in this case appointing personnel who again, even if Donald Trump says, go get a piece deal with Russia, if you have been on television and you previously advocated for full scale war with Russia, why would the Russians listen to you.
They're going to be like, hey, you advocated for war with us.
I'm not listening to you. Absolutely not with Trump, I mean, or Jade Vance, any of these figures, they have way more credibility to be able to go to Moscow and to actually talk to these guys and get something done. Nobody's going to like it. But that's what an actual successful end to the war would look like.
Did you see the comments from Seb Gorka, who also now has a.
Yeah, oh yeah, we're sorry, I promise as well national security advisor.
He went on probably Fox News, I can't remember and said Trump's plan to end the war is to threaten Russia with We're going to give Ukraine everything they want. He said. The words he said is what Biden gave them is going to look like peanuts compared to what Trump is going to promise them, and that's what's going to force the Russians to the negotiating table. And I mean, he's claiming to speak for Trump, who knows if he's
really going to speak for Trump? Who knows? If you know Trump doesn't change his mind, that's also a possibility if you fluitered that at one point, but he's actually going to do something different. But that kind of made sense to me and kind of square. There's the circle of how you end up with all of these extremely pro Ukraine, very hawkish figures throughout his government. We're not
talking about just one or two. We're talking about almost every key position of power at this point, and Trump claiming that he's going to bring this war to claiming that he's going to bring it to this with conclusion. So he's got to kind of like escalate to de escalate mentality.
Potentially, good luck with escalation, right, because who's going to pull the trigger? Put this up on the screen from the Financial Times. Their own people are deserting the military in mass. They can't even find anybody to recruit. Go read their own papers they're talking about. Look at the sixty thousand cases of troops abandoning positions in twenty twenty four, double the number of the past two years. Their latest Pew Research polling shows that half the population is willing
to enter peace negotiation. So at this point, you can give them all the long range missiles that you want. They can't even hold the territory. I mean, go to the next part please. It is that I agree. I mean, you've basically wiped out and it's literally like World War One for the British, the Germans and others. You took the greatest generation, some of the most patriotic folks who believed in the project and all that, and you slaughtered them en mass and now you have to deal with
the consequences. Ukraine has now lost forty percent of the land that it sees in the quote unquote Cursk region of Russia. A literal invasion of Russia, by the way of which we're giving them weapons to defend themselves, makes a lot of sense in a war about territorial integrity.
The entire thing just is ridiculous.
And in terms of how this all works out, And you know Zelenski himself, I don't underestimate him. I think Zelenski knows exactly how to play Donald Trump. Zelenski, even though he way over played his hand and he attacked JD. You know, whenever he was here and on his little campaign stop for Kamala Harris, he knows at this point about how to frame negotiation played at Trump's ego. He will be appearing, it appears on the Lex Friedman podcast. Let's put that up there on the screen.
That'll be very interesting. Actually, And I thought I thought it was a mistake for Rogan to say no to him, because that would have been an interesting.
I would have taken into I agree, I think it would have been a good idea, especially I mean, you know, at this point, you know so many of these leaders and whatever going on on Rogan, so you might as well at least hear what he has to say. And the thing is with Zelenski, as we just learned from the Sky News interview, this guy, when you push him
a little bit, you sometimes get interesting answers. We saw this even in the past with NBC News and others, and he would give away little tidbits about how he views negotiation and truth or and what it actually would mean, you know, or even even when he if he's still sticking to the maximum's position, that's equally interesting too. I'd also like to hear his version of the two thousand and twenty two invasion, because remember he was the one saying,
don't freak out, I'm not worried about an invasion. Also, you know, in terms of NATO, like what he actually still thinks, what his you know, historical version of the war and all that would look like. So I'm glad lex is going to do it, and congrats to him first hearing the interview. What I'm interested in too, though, is how the Trump administration, its very first day in office,
approaches the war. Because you have two options. You can continue doling out the billions that currently have been authorized by Congress at the discretion of the president. If they continue to do that, that's a sign. If they pull it away, that's also a good sign. I want to see whether Keith Kellogg is even received by Putin or even received by the Russian government, whether Lavrov himself will be allowed back into the United States. Maybe he'll have
another Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump. Frankly, I think it would be a good idea. You know, I actually have some exchange, but I want to see the level of emphasis. That will be interesting about what level these negotiations take place, whether it's a Lenska himself is immediately here in Washington, which I'm sure it will be, to try and get a meeting with Donald Trump, how he's received, and what the communicates and all of that start to
look like. But escalation through de escalation is a nonsense policy. It has never worked under Joe Biden. It would make America way less safe. And that is the problem with Donald Trum I'm appointing a lot of these folks is there is immense danger. And frankly, if you were putin you're just gonna be like, Okay, if that's how you're gonna play it, then I'm going to play it too. I've got all these North Koreans at my back. I got a lot of AMMO, some nice suicide drums from Iran.
Let's go. We can just keep going.
And Trump is very easy to manipulate, sho. It really matters who he puts around himself and who has a zar. Ultimately, you know, one of the last thing that I'll say on this is I do think and one of the parts of conventional wisdom that was proven wrong in this election was that voters don't care about foreign policy and it's not going to be consequent.
Now.
You have very few people like to play devil's advocate. You have very few people who said that foreign policy was the number one reason why they were voting. But when Griffin went and interviewed those AFC Trump voters in other interviews I've seen with people who flipped to Trump.
One of the main things that we hear over and over again is about Gaza and is about Ukraine and the sense that the Biden administration, the Biden Harris administration was more concerned about this foreign conflicts and endlessly shipping money and weapons to these other, you know, countries, and you know, in Israel's case, country that is perpetuators committing a genocide, that they seemed more concerned about that and more committed to that than they were too delivering for
people here at home. I think that the Trump's, you know, ability to convince people falsely, but ability to convince people that he would be anti war, that he would be bring these conflicts to a close. I think that was
a very potent part of his appeal. I'm not going to say it is the only part of his appeal, but I think it was undersold part of his appeal and his ability to win you know, convincing victory, including winning the popular vote, which is something that Republicans have long struggled to do in which he's never been able to accomplish. So he does have a mandate from the voters to try to bring this conflict to a close.
And I think they will hold him accountable if he doesn't do what he promised to do.
I certainly hope so, I mean, he won't get re elected. But whoever takes his mantle, if you want to add, if you're listening.
If you if you actually want to run.
You know, to be able to run on a successful foreign policy of bringing this horrible war to a close is something that I think American people actually want to see and especially a lot of these disaffected working class voters disgusted by watching millions and billions of their taxpayer dollars being sent abroad and all this care and concern. You know, we literally have civil society programs paying yarn salary.
Shops in Kief must be nice. I know a lot of people who live in Asheville, North Carolina, who got their shops blown apart. Nobody's paying their salary. And that's the point where, you know, everyone says that that's a ridiculous comparison, but at a deep level, Americans do know it's true. They know it's true that when your prices went up in the grocery store, you know, it just hit my big grocery hall after a long time, you know, when you got to stock up your fridge and you're like,
how is this even possible? When you look at the at the bill for just basic stuff, and then you know, I went back and you know, reordering stuff from Amazon. I encourage people to go look at what you were paying for paper towels or other basics five years ago.
It's crazy.
You're selling about one hundred two hundred percent increase in price wasn't that long?
You know that we all remember. And then meanwhile, we've got all the money in the world for foreign conflicts.
So that is something where I think it hits home to every American and I think you're right. I think the voters would actually punish him. The question is whether you know we can have somebody on the Democratic side who could successfully prosecute an argument about that, which I would hope to see as well, because I think it's important to keep these things in check.
I think Gaza and Ukraine really undercut democratic arguments when it came certainly to being any sort of moral force. Yes, and also you know, when it came to saying this guy is like chaotic and it's too much chaos when he's in office and they're looking at these foreign wars. And also I think that fueled this sense that you know, you don't really care about me, You're not going to
really deliver for me. So I think in a certain way, even though again very few people would say foreign policy was their number one issue, I think it was very central to the case that Donald Trump successfully prosecuted against Kamala Harris and the Democrats, and it would behove him to keep that in mind as he moves forward with his illustration. Speaking of foreign conflicts and wars, this was quite a stunning and unexpected development. We can put some
of these images up on the screen. The Syrian rebels have now retaken Syria's largest city of Aleppo. This is as of Saturday, that's according to you know, groups that are on the ground. You can see some of these images. Apparently these fighters faced pretty small, limited resistance and Aleppo. I think they themselves were surprised at how easily this went. The pro asade. The government forces that were there basically scattered.
Apparently even the retreat was quite chaotic, and they've continued to advance since then. So you know this. Obviously, the Serian civil war has been ongoing for quite a number of years at this point, beginning really under the Obama administration, the bombedmanstration famously really backing and going all in with these rebel forces. And just to keep everybody in mind at this point in particular, the main faction here at this point is effectively an al Qaeda.
Offshoot, no it is now they have they have.
Put out new rhetoric to try to be like, oh, we're different now, like we're more modern, et cetera. But the rebels here are basically Al Qaida. So that's who has been able to effectively retake a lepo. And let's put this tear sheet up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. That helps to explain the timing of
why this is happening. Now when you know the this group of rebels, they've continued to be able to hold a certain amount of territory within Syria, even as the government has retaken a lot of the territory that had previously previously been claimed. But you have you know, Hesbla has really been dealt a serious blow by Israel, and so they were sort of out of on a commission to be involved here. You have to back the Assad government.
You have Iran also distracted, you have Russia distracted in Ukraine. So a bunch of the best significant backers of the Assad government are kind of either under my undercut have been devastating blows or they're distracted in various other conflicts, in particular with regards to the Middle East in Ukraine, and so that created the opening here that the rebels were able to see it.
It's crazy to watch I mean, you've been covering these conflicts since my very beginning of journalism, and to see, you know, Aleppo back in the conversation is wild, especially for those of us who remember the Gary Johnson What is Aleppo one of the great moments in television history? Yeah, like you just said, though, let's all be very honest. We've got straight up al Qaeda aligned rebels who are the ones who have taken over control of this city.
How that will play out interesting to watch, It's honestly kind of terrifying, because really what we have seen. First of all, Also, I can't forget this either. There are that of American soldiers who are in Syria illegally for no reason, who are now in the or basically in the middle of a major conflict zone.
Are they going to be attacked?
Last time I checked, al Qaida doesn't like us, and so there were actually just air strikes yesterday from the United States and a tens that were deployed apparently against Iranian proxies. But then that gets to a bigger question, who do we even want to win in this war? Previously, these al Qaeda rebels were the ones who the United States backed. It's very clear. It was clear by like twenty fifteen that all of the quote unquote moderates were dead.
They had no chance. The Islamists were the only ones who had an effective fighting force except for the Kurds, who we backed and then decided not to back.
But a complicated story.
The whole point though, is that it's a mess and the idea what has happened here with Russia involved in Ukraine, with Iran basically all eyes on Israel. Hezbola, of course, has now been decimated in this war. They're no longer Assyria as a major, as a major, really important battleground.
The assad government has lost a lot of the.
People who are its most effective either fighters, funders, you know, people who would pay it a lot of attention. And they've been very weak for many years now, so there can't rely on Russian barrel bombs to bail them out of the city of Aleppo this or maybe they can, I don't know.
Well.
Another thing that was really significant that was noted in that Wall Street Journal piece is the Wagner paramilitary group RUNT, because you remember, headed by Predosian and he tried to do the coup against Putin and then oh it turns on you know, their pamplain something happened the hoops. So Wagner paramilitary group was really critical in Syria, very important for backing Asad, and they're now you know, defunct, so that may have been the most significant backer for the
Asad regime. I think Hesbela was also incredibly important to
based on the reporting here as well. So the fact that Hesblo's dealt such a significant blow by Israel, and I think your question of like who do we who would we and want to win is important one because we shouldn't be left out of this equation either, because even though you know, we aren't as engaged in you know, backing the rebels and arming them, at least not that we know as we once were, we've continued our policy of really trying to sort of isolate and sanction Damascus
and the Esava regime, which has left them also incredibly weak and helped to create this vulnerability and you know what is now a hot warn additional instability in the Middle East as well. So we have our hands in this conflict.
Obviously, our hands are all over this thing. We're literally the reason this country basically burned to the ground.
I mean, and no one is saying Asad is a good guy either or like there's no one like no good guys.
Oh he's a hero or whatever.
You're like, Okay, I have to pick between al Qaeda, and we have to al Qaeda Iran and Asad. It's like, all right, well, it's a tough, tough choice in terms of like what we want, what we really want out of Syria is some sort of you know, regional stability. Do you think al Qaeda can deliver you know, real regional stability or whatever to the people of Syria. Good luck? That'll be an interesting one for a lot of the religious minorities who live in Damascus and elsewhere throughout the country.
So the likelihood of this just accelerating even more conflict over there is a huge problem. That's literally how Isis was born, you know, in terms of the vacuum of the Syrian Civil War, and so now we're back into this and it's just another great example of the fortieth order consequences of American form policies.
Yeah, thank you.
One of the leaks that came out, you know, in the twenty sixteen era was Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton, we're on the side of al Qaeda in Syria. So you know, don't take it from me, take it from him. And you know, with regard to Israel, they love to see this too because it just means that their adversaries are further distracted with another, you know, hot conflict that they now have to deal with. Keep in mind, we haven't talked about it as much, but Israel's been bombing
in Syria as well. They've been upset because they felt that Syria was a hub for various weapons transfers to their enemies, including Hasblas. So they're you know, very they're also delighted with this chain of events. So, you know, if SOD is able to regroup or if the rebels continue to take ground, regardless, what had been a sort of tenuous stability in that country has now definitely been broken.
Definitely.
All Right, all right, let's go ahead and get to Matt Stoller in this whole d banking conversation sparked by Mark Andresen on the Joe Rogan podcast.
All right, so we've.
Got Matt Stellar standing, by the way in on this whole de banking situation. He of course writes the big sub stack and is an analyst of the American Economic Liberties Project, right to see you as always there.
Good to see you, man, See you all right.
So let's take a look at these comments that Indreason made which sparked this whole conversation.
Here we go Sally, for example, with this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau CFPB, which was the it's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agent. See that she gets to control and it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants. Right, And if you read the constitution, like there is no such thing as an independent agency, and yet.
There it is. What does her agency do.
Whatever she wants?
What does it do?
Though?
We basically did terrorize financial terrorize financial institutions, prevent crypt fintech, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with a big bankery. Oh yeah, just terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services. And can you give me an example, you said, you know, de banking. This is where a lot of the d banking comes from,
is these agencies. So d banking is when you're you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system, like they did to Kanye exactly like they did to Kanye. My partner band's father has been d banked. Really, we had an employee for what for having the wrong politics, for saying unacceptable things under current banking regulations under okay, here's a great here's
a great thing. Under current banking regulations. After all the reforms of the last twenty years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person PEP. And if you were a PEP, you were required by financial regulators to kick them off of your to kick them out of your bank.
You're not allowed to if you're politically on the left.
That's fine.
Because they're not politically expressed.
So no one on the left gets d banked.
I have not heard of a single list as of anybody in the left getting doe.
Can you tell me what the person that you know did, what they said that got them d bank?
Well, I mean, David Herwitz is a right wing you know, he's pro Trump. I mean, he's said all kinds of things. You know, he's been very anti Islamic terrorism, he's been very worried about him migration, all these things, and they debanked him for the bank tod So you get kicked out, You get kicked out of your bank account.
Just so people understand why in recent is so significant. I mean, this is one of the most influential Silicon Valley venture capitalists funders. So what you say is quite consequentially has a lot of way with the Trump administration talked to us about you back here.
Yeah.
Yeah, So this is a this is a con right, and it's important to distinguish between two things.
Right.
One is if you say something or you make a political statement that people don't like, can you lose access to your bank account? And that is a real problem because it does happen, and it happens to people on the right, and it happens to people on the left. It's not that common. But you saw it with in Canada. You saw it with Canadian trucker protests. You've seen it. You saw it with WikiLeaks, you saw it with a lot of pro palest Indian advocacy, you know their Venmo accounts.
Twenty twenty one, PayPal said, we're concerned about people who might be spreading misinformation, right, so we're going to implement new You do see this fear on the part of financial institution's financial censorship. It's a real thing.
Okay.
The other side, though, is that you have people that are engaged in what regulators see as potentially risky activity. So this would be things like crypto. Right, if you're using crypto and you're engaged in sort of things that look a little bit like money laundering, or if you're doing things like putting taking ten thousand dollars of cash and depositing into a bank account every day for a month, banks are going to be suspicious and they are are going to file suspicious activity reports.
They're required to.
They are required to, and our banking system works by saying if a bank is suspicious of you for engaging in all sorts of activities, mostly money laundering and fraud or other forms of scams, they are required to take action. Now those are different things, right, Those are very different things. And we do know that debanking for political purposes happens, but we also know that banks are required to actually implement law enforcement and to be a little bit suspicious.
It's a little bit like you go to a stop sign, right, There's no due process at.
A stop sign.
Even if running a stop sign, you know it doesn't going to cause any problems, you still have to stop at the stop sign.
So that's the way our banking system works. Now.
By what Mark Andresen is doing is he's conflating these two things intentionally. And the reason he's doing that is because he has specific investments in companies, two of them that I can think of, one called lend Up and one called sinnapps that have both been put out of business by the Consumer Financial Protection Agency for stealing from customers, all right, or for collapsing and costing people their life savings. These are not crypto companies. One of them is a
paidy lender. The other one is a fintech firm that connects people from apps to their bank accounts, and it was just forms of fraud and the CFPP went after his investments, and he's mad about that now. The CFPB is a consumer financial protection agency. They don't actually do the things that they don't go to banks and say we're really nervous about you having these people banking.
Those are other agencies.
The CFPP is the one that protects consumers, and it's also one that in the past couple of years has actually tried to say as part of their regulatory authority, we don't want debanking based on race, religion, political views, etc.
Etc.
And they've been stopped by Trump judges from actually trying to prohibit those forms of dbanking.
So that's what's going on.
The defense full disclosure, I consider Mark a friend. But the actual defense of this that I have seen, let's put the next part up there on the screen. This is from a pro crypto advocate, Nick Carter, and he writes here about quote operation choke point two point zero
crypto in his crosshairs. As I understand it, the defense that Nick and others have put forward on Andresen's comments is that the FDIC and the US government have put in place very onerous regulations basically disallowing crypto companies to be able to do business, allowing an effective monopoly to
the banks. And so what Andresen there is talking about is about this US government regulated sec FDIC initiative which allows them, under this quote unquote Operation Choke point two point zero to basically disincentivize crypto, other fintech or whatever innovation.
So what's your response to.
Neck, Well, that's not what he said.
Yeah, I mean that's you know, if if Mark Andresen is going to say I don't like what the FDIC is doing, and I don't like what they're doing to prohibit bit crypto businesses from operating. He should say that, but he didn't say that. He said I don't like the CFPB, right, which isn't doing any of the things that he suggested.
And this person doesn't even claim they are right.
Right, and he didn't say Nick has to be clear.
Nick has been like, I think he misspoke, and this is what he was talking about.
Okay, well, yeah, I'm saying no, fair.
Enough, but I'm only taking his comments. I mean, and he spent a while on Joe Rogan saying they're terrorizing financial institutions for political speech, right, And and then you know they're kind of like, oh, well he didn't he didn't really mean it, all right, Well, then don't say it, right. I Mean, the point here is if you want to have a debate about crypto, and we can have a discussion about crypto and you know the banking system and that,
that's fair. But the point here isn't to have that discussion. The point here is to say, if policymakers are going to regulate crypto in a certain manner, it means that if you say something that they don't like, that they can debank you. And that's a con it's not true.
What they should be saying is they should keep those two things separate and say we want to have a debate about whether you should be able to do your crypto thing, which you know, or and we're going to have a discussion about dbanking because you say political speech. But I think it was pretty clear in that clip that Mark Andreeson put out to millions of people. He was saying you could be dbanked because of what you say.
Right, you can that it's the CFPB the the way, Yeah, exactly, that's right, it's the CFPP doing it.
And he didn't say, oh, by the way, I have these investments that ended up hurting a lot of people and the CFPB, you know, for deception, not like you know, and and the CFPB came in and said you can't do that.
Right, He didn't say that either.
So it's like I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. And with someone like Nick Carter, I mean, fair enough, the guy misspoke, but you can't just say, oh, well, yes, there are these massive conflicts of interest and oh he didn't. You know, he didn't mean what he said, even though he said it to millions of people. And then I'm going to talk about the thing I want to talk about. It's like, you can't. That's not a form of fair policy.
I think that's fair. I think what as I understand it, there are two things happening. There's this conversation about the D banking for political purposes, and I do think it's pretty clear the cfeb Row hitch opra In particularly spoken out against D banking, so we got to give him that benefit of the doubt. On the crypto side, I
think what it is a lot of regulatory fear. I mean, let's be honest too, there's a big right wing kind of you know, like a marriage I guess now with the crypto industry, and so that is the lens through which they're looking at it about quote unquote being d banked for these purposes. I do, do you think it's
an interesting conversation. For example, I saw David Marcus, who previously led the Libra project over at Facebook or I guess Meta now talking about being D banked, and I was like, well, you know, to be honest, I think that was a good thing. I don't really want the global financial system to be run also by meta, So there are there.
Is also I think that still has a bank account.
Yeah, Medasaw is a make account.
But the point was, actually you and I talked about Libra a lot at the time, because Libra, for people who don't remember, is what was it. It was basically like a platform for global financial transactions that will be run by Meta on it. And I'm getting a lot of this, you know, technologically and correct, but it was effectively.
Changing it measure blockchain which they would adjudicate and run to get around the global financial banking system and effectively allow them to control payments, which has been very profitable for Visa and for all these other places.
I would be very concerned about that. So I think it's a fair conversation around regulation. And I guess I'm not giving more quote unquote benefit of the doubt or whatever, but that does seem to be like the high.
IQ version I guess of what's happened.
It's just hard for me to accept that when that's not remotely what he said. It's like he didn't even talk about crypto, does he. I mean, he's about political speech later okay, later on he gets a crypto. But the other piece about it that irritates me is this characterization of this agency, which was inspired by Elizabeth Warren, but Obama wouldn't even put her in as the first head of the CFPB because he was, I don't know, afraid, And then it's portrayed as just like her personal governmental.
Arm and they have the authority to do anything, including terrorized people.
I mean, he's talked about that.
He consistently said they terrorize and it's unconstitutional. On all of these like ideologically freighted arguments about how we never had an administrative state, which is not true. I mean, that's that's just not a real reading of history. I think there's a broader point here, though, which is that the Trump administration is coming in on a populist wave that is different, I think than the traditional Republican Party, and I you know, we all know people on the
New Right. They have different views about how to regulate the relationship the government and the state, sorry, the government and private interests.
And one of the things that's happening.
Is there's this attempt to kind of subvert the New Right within the Republican Party by conflating legitimate points of disagreement like crypto policy, with this other thing like should
we have an administrative state that could protect people? And I can guarantee you that the CFPB can be a super useful tool for Trump to protect his new working class voting coalition, But it is also something that I think a lot of the billionaires that are backing him really would prefer out of the way so they can steal from that working class coalition, right, And that's the tension.
And I think the danger here among populists on the right is that they fall for the cultural arguments that are I think legitimate, but are conflated and I think dishonestly with the broader attack on the administrative state. So that's what I worry about him.
What do you mean when you say how Trump could use it? Like, could you give an example?
Well, I mean, you know Synapse is a good example, right.
Synapps is a is a company that you know connects connected new fintech you know apps to a bank account. And they had a dispute with the bank that they were working with, which is called Evolve Bank. And there there there's hundreds of millions of dollars that are caught in the middle. No one knows what happened to the money, and now a lot of people are missing their life savings. I don't know if if those are Trump voters or if they're Biden voters.
My guess is it's probably both.
And the CFPB came in and is investigating and trying to, you know, get some of the money out and get some of the money back. That would be an example, but there's a ton of other examples, from you know, payday lenders to just Wells Fargo with the with the bank accounts right, you know, opening up fraudulent bank accounts.
It's just like anything that banks can do to screw you over or Venmo or any of these payment apps or or the new big tech payment systems, like there is supervision that is coming from the CFPB.
All of that stuff can be really useful, you know.
I mean, think about all the surveillance that these companies can engage in over your payments and how they can manipulate what you pay. All that stuff can be overseen by the CFPB or by other administrative agencies and or it cannot be right, or you can just have let meta and Walmart and whoever just kind of worked together to charge you more when they know you'll pay versus not. And I think that's kind of the open question, right
is where where is Trump going to go? And we can see that this is a move from Mark Andriesen, who's a very smart guy, to push the Trump in a certain direction.
As another example, just last year, they returned one hundred and forty million dollars to consumers who were hit by illegal junk fees and banking auto loans remittances. You know, over its lifetime, it's returned nineteen billion dollars to consumers.
Kyle actually was hit with.
Some of these, yeah, illegal fees that he was, you know, a beneficial area of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And I think your point, which has helped me understand what's going on here, is that it's very easy to be like, oh, Elizabeth Warren's associated with it. You don't like her, right, she's this you know, political villain or I'm trying to
create her as this political villain. Ergo, this agency that she's somewhat associated with must be part of the bad administration, that administrative state that you want to just get rid of. When in reality, this is probably one of the parts of government that has been most effective in actually protecting and delivering for regular people.
It is that's exactly right.
And I would say, like another example that is not you know, poor put upon consumers, but is maybe more what Mark Riesen is talking about, which is competition. They just implemented what's called an open banking rule right where they said, your data at your bank account, right is yours and if you want to take it somewhere else you can. They have to make it easy, easier to switch bank accounts with all of you know, your bill pay and all the rest of it. And that, you know,
one of the reasons. So I got screwed by Capital One. They they said, oh, we're going to pay a certain interest rate. And then a few years later I was on my bank account. I was like, oh, I'm not getting what happened. They're like, oh, you you know, there's some technically I read about that, yeah, you know, And then there was a class actually made the lost because they right, but I wanted to switch and it was it's a pain in the ass to switch bank accounts.
Right.
So this open banking rule, which was put into statute in twenty ten, right, and Rohe Chopra finally implemented it. Right, it's going to go into effect, and that's going to allow new companies, new banks, new FinTechs to come in and compete for your business. Right, it's going to help innovation, and it's going to threaten the bank the big bankers, Well, the big bankers are really mad about it in our suing the CFPB about and that's that's kind of a big fight.
Now.
If you accept Mark Andriesen's argument that the CFPB is this Elizabeth Warren agency that's just out for terrorizing, you know, financial institutions. It doesn't like competition, then why are the bankers suing to block the CFPB from forcing the banks to allow competition?
Right?
That's kind of the question here, And and I think we we have to move beyond these old kind of hoary arguments about about the administrative state and get to the point which I think Trump is going to realize, which is that this is a complex society. You have to figure out how to govern it, right, And I don't think Biden figured that out. I don't think we've we've had effective governance for a long time, and we need it, and they're going to have to figure out
something right. And I think if you listen to Mark Andreeson, they're not going to They're not going to figure.
It out right.
And then you're going to see the same thing we've seen for a long time, which is swing backs, swings back to the other party, right, And that that's the broader point here. It's not just about the CFPB, It's about can you accept governance?
Right?
Interesting rebuddle. Thank you, appreciate it, Matt.
Always great to see you.
Thank you, Yeah, thanks for having me.
Bernie Sanders, who's model of class first, anti billionaire politics has just been dramatically vindicated by the sweeping verdict against the Democratic establishment, had some advice for Democrats who were thinking about the upcoming DNC chair race. In particular, he said, quote, if the Democratic Party is to become a small d Democratic party, the first job of a new DNC chair is to get super pac money out of Democratic primaries.
APAC and other billionaire funded superpacks cannot be allowed to select Democratic candidates. Now, that's something that I and others have been calling for. After all, sure will be difficult to get the Supreme Court to overturn the rash of decisions which have flooded unlimited money into our politics. But at the very least democrats within their own party contests can model cleaner elections by banning super PACs from playing
at all. This would prevent massive interest groups like APAC and cryptolobbyists from having more ability to pick Democratic candidates than Democratic voters do. Apparently, However, MSNBC they found this suggestion from Bernie to be what are we preposterous? Just take a listen.
So you have Bernie Sanders tweeting on Monday.
If the Democratic Party is to become a democratic party, the first job of the new DNC chairs to get the super pac money out of Democratic primaries. APAC and other billionaire funded super PACs cannot be allowed to select Democratic candidates.
They typically don't.
They're not going to put their money into a DNC chairman's race. So again, for me, as the head of former head of a party, as county chairman and a state chairman, that to me is shortsighted. Thinking about where the landscape is one thing that has very little to do with the other super PACs and all those guys play in elections and campaigns. That's a different conversation than running for chairmen and telling the people.
Who will write checks, we don't want you write checks.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. With all due respect to Senator Sanders, you know you might want to join the party if you want to have some Well, there is that, so you know, just on its face it that's problematic for me. Now in terms of the money, Look, that's not the DNC's issue. You're you're exactly right, mister Sherman, that that kind of money is in local races and state races,
and the laws vary by state. So you for the DNC to spend its time and energy on what State A says versus what State B says, what versus what see canadacy is just doesn't make any sense to me. There's so much work for the next chair to do that would not be in the top ten of things that I focused on.
Wow, these people are so accustomed just swimming in the water is a big money political corruption and donor domination that they cannot even conceive of doing things a different way, as MSNBC has always done towards Bernie's incredibly common sense approach. They can do little other than Scoff and sneer writing him for not officially being a member of their little club. It's worth taking note, by the way, of who these
three actually are. You've got Michael Steele, a former Republican Party chair who is considered apparently to be a more worthy ally and advisor than Bernie Sanders. Leah Daughtry is a former chief of staff to the DNC chair. She was prominently featured in a New York Times article in twenty nineteen about panicked Democratic insiders who are organizing an internal effort to stop Sanders. Let me give you a little taste of that article so you can get a
sense of her politics. Quote from canopey filled fundraisers on the coast to the cloak rooms of Washington. Mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in twenty twenty could be complicated by mister Sanders in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how mister Trump himself sees the Republican nomination in twenty sixteen. Because God forbid, the guy with an actual organic populist following represent this
decrepit party and then coming out the trio. You've got Alicia Menendez, who happens to be the daughter of the guy who was convicted of selling his Senate influence for gold bars and other goodies. Gee, can't imagine why MSNBC is lost half of their viewership. In fact, while I and others have said plenty and written plenty about how Democrats need to embrace a populous class war frame, the obvious first and essential battle in this fight is the
one that Bernie Sanders identifies, getting money out of politics. Ironically, since Trump just won while raising vastly less money than Kamala did, the old excuse the Democrats can't unilaterally disarm lest they be electorally destroyed, that is now totally bunked. They have got no plausible excuse left to keep orienting their party around the needs of their donors instead of the needs of workers. In a new op ed, Rocanna and Larry Lesseg lay out some specific ideas for how
to begin this fight. One battle is demanding, as Bernie did that the next DNC chair bans super Pac money in dem primaries. But the other front is in the courts. In fact, the corruption case against MSNBC host Alicia Menendez's dad provides a roadmap forward because it proved that super pac giving could in fact constitute a quid pro quo. That was something the courts had previously said was impossible. Now they use that flawed rationale to strike down all
limits on super pac giving. That's why billionaires can give one hundred million dollars to super pac but individuals can only contribute a few thousand dollars directly to a campaign. But plainly, if Menendez can be convicted for accepting super pac contributions in exchange for political favors, then super PACs can be part of a quid pro quo and thus subject to contribution limits. That alone would represent an absolute
sea change in the campaign finance landscape. For example, Barry Maddilson just effectively reportedly bought our foreign policy with a one hundred million dollar contribution to a Trump super pac. That's why evangelical end time zionis psychos like Mike Kacabee are now in key positions of power. If she can only kick and say five or ten thousand dollars, we might have gotten a little bit more sane foreign policy team ount of Trump. And that is obviously just one
example Trump's political project. It's largely not that antagonistic towards billionaires, which is why so many have backed him. They get their tax cuts and their government goodies. All they have to do is to stay on Trump's good side. His villains are immigrants and cultural elites like Hollywood and academia, so he can fully pursue his political project while sucking up hundreds of millions in billionaire cash with little conflict. For Democrats to answer trump Ism, however, they need to
go full class war. And you ain't waging class war as long as your entire party apparatus and leadership class is designed to cater to billionaires. In their op ed, Conna and Lessig say that this dynamic results in what they call golden handcuffs. The treasure the Democrats raise from the billionaire class then locks them in to a status quo friendly orientation, and you can actually see those golden handcuffs snap into place in real time over the course
of the hairt campaign. My friend Branco marsaitiic over at Jacobin ran the data, and I have yet to see anything more compelling in terms of understanding Kamala's momentum stall and eventual loss. So if you look at this chart. The blue line you see here tracks quote democracy rhetoric over the course of the campaign. That would include the use of words like authoritarian checks and balances, insurrection and
the like. The red line tracks quote anti elite rhetoric over the course of the campaign, so that would be words like elites, billionaire's, corporate greed, things like that. You can see as the campaign went on, Kamala's brother in lawn uber exec Tony West, got his way. The campaign backed away from their price gouging corporate greed rhetoric. They put tim Walls on the shelf, and they lean into
the Liz Cheney strategy. It was a disaster. Now we've covered here the research from the Center for Working Class Politics that found democracy rhetoric was the least effective of all messages for working class wing voters. Conversely, a populist economics pitch was the most effective and yet the most powerful ad that the Kamma campaign cut, which focused on price gouging and greedy landlords, never even saw the light
of day. That makes no electoral sense. It only makes sense once you understand that the campaign's first goal was not to win, but to keep their big money backers happy.
To not rock the boat.
Now, if you don't change that dynamic, this party is never going to change. But of course no one should be under any illusions of the difficulty of accomplishing this shift, because not only our messages and issues selected to put donors at ease, candidates are as well. Have you ever wondered why so many politicians, both left and right, are bland, talentless, well credentialed packs. The reason is they were not selected
for their deep insights, ratorical skills, or leadership prowess. They are selected because they are either themselves wealthy self funders, or because they are skilled at separating rich people from their money. That was the secret to Kamla's success, and it's the reason why so many of the Democrats in leadership are from New York and California, because that's where
the money is. So if raising money is your primary skill and the key to your political power, you are probably not going to be too eager to shift to a model that might actually prioritize not being repellent to voters. Now, if all the questions facing Democrats as they consider a new chair, this one is non negotiable. Will they ban
big money from party primaries. That answer will tell you whether Dems are serious at all about change, or, as Bernie and I unfortunately suspect, just interested in keeping their lucrative racket. I know this a little bit of a weedzy debate, but it's an absolutely
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