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But that's that's the move I think is like put it, put us in your contact for now.
Nevertheless, we persisted, we did, as Elizabeth Wardo, Yeah.
They can't, they can't. They can slow us down, but they can't stop us.
So true. Well, we have a big show today is you can see we get a lot of blocks on the screen there. We're going to start talking about Israel, move on to some developments in the TikTok saga, because there's it looks like Steve Manuchen wants TikTok pretty badly.
Steve Manuchih Saudi money. Yeah, Steven go wrong.
Yes exactly. So if we're getting we're divesting TikTok from China, does it end up in the hands of Saudi's We shall see. We're going to talk about Bernie Sanders and Sean Fain actually calling for a thirty two hour work week. That's going to be really interesting and from a conservative perspective, you should.
Cut the show early in honor, we should cut it.
Really from a conservative perspective, I think there's some interesting arguments to be had there. Trump arrests. That's on your screen because actually both Peter Navarro and someone who was arrested in the defamation lawsuit against Dominion, she was arrested yesterday.
We'll be talking about that. We'll be talking about big updates out of Texas, actually breaking news as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals put the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court decision to allow SB four maybe you've heard about this, which allows Texas basically to arrest people who are in the country illegally, who are crossed into the country illegally. That put it on like blast, basically said you can
do this. Then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal is right afterwards said no, there are oral arguments of this case today.
The crazy circuit you can't do this.
And then the deep state. That's of course on the screen as well, because the New York Times had a story that must be seen to be believed. Ryan has some great reporting out of ron Duras that we're excited to get to as well.
Yeah, that's going to be a fun one. So but let's start with Israel. So on Monday afternoon, Benjamin Yahoo and Joe Biden had their first phone call since February fifteenth.
We can put this element.
Up here, and over the last two days we've been hearing kind of the fallout from this call. And so what both Biden and Netanyaho have been leaking out to the public and sometimes saying just straight up publicly, is that Biden told net Nyaho do not launch an invasion of Rafa, which has now well more than a million people who are taking refuge there. They were pushed out of Gaza City and told told to go down to Conunis.
They were then pushed out of Conyunis and told to go down to Rafa, which these safe corridors were created where.
People were sniped and killed along the way.
They continue to bomb a Rafa, they continue to kind of launch little incursions here and there, but Israel still is holding out the specter of a full scale invasion into Rafa and Emily. The case that Israel is making is that there are still two about two Hamas battalions that are hold up in Rafa, as well as roughly one hundred remaining hostages who.
Have you have to be released.
And Yahoo's argument that he made to the Kanesse yesterday is that you cannot defeat Hamas without dismantling these final two battalions, the Biden administration has said, and Jake Sullivan
gave a press conference on Monday making this point. He says, you can defeat Hamas without going into Rafa, and that the idea that even if you dismantle these remaining two battalions, that that means you have ended Hamas is also a fantasy, like they Hamas has already reconstituted in northern Gaza, because there is no political solution that has been put forward by the parties here and so just eliminating a couple
battalions does not eliminate Hamas. So I think that what's clearly going on here is something different, which is like why would they why would they be going after Rafa, which is, you know, the city closest to the Egyptian border. If going after hamaspittalions in the past has not actually ended the control of the region by Hamasa, but what has it done in northern Gaza, in central Gaza made
it completely uninhabitable. So this, this to me feels like another move by Israel toward making Gaza completely uninhabitable.
Yeah, that's actually an interesting read that we'll get to in a second. We have a clip of Jared Kushner actually kind of getting into that point. But one thing asked in the NBC News article that was just on
the screen. It's interesting Netanyahu told lawmakers quote he had an argument or we had an argument, is how he phrased it with the Americans, and that again, Ran, We've seen some leaks and I'm curious for your perspective on how you read this, because I know a lot of people on the left have read this as the Biden administration is leaking to places like NBC News to show that they are putting room between them and net and Yahoo, that there's you know, all of the space between them
and Net Yahoo. In this case, it actually seems to be legitimate that there actually is some huge daylight between the Biden administration's position, which is obviously much more reasonable. You know, the difference between defeating Hamas and not defeating Hamas is certainly not two battalions in Rafa, right, and
substantively where Net Yahoo is. That actually seems like in this case it is absolutely real and not just the sort of window dressing that they're leaking to the press for the case of perception and.
Rhetorically it's different. But if the United States is still arming sure Israel and is refusing to put into place any restrictions on weapons, then is it just cover for the United States? And actually Lloyd Austin was asked about this specific thing this week at a press conference, saying, you have encouraged Israel many times to let in more humanitarian aid and to reduce civilian casualties. They haven't done, so why not leverage weapons sales, weapons transfers, And Lloyd
also just simply said, no, We're not going to do that. Like, Israel has a right to defend itself and Hamask can lay down its arms at any moment. So the second that there's any pressure applied to the US position, it completely caves, and so you wind up with mere rhetoric. So Net and Yahoo, I think can feel confident coming out of that call with the Biden administrator, with Biden himself saying, you know what, we can move forward on this.
Vidant Patel, State Department spokesperson on Monday said Israel cannot go into RAFA and the AP reporter there, Matt Lee said, you just said cannot, what do you mean kennot. He's like, well, you know, it would be very difficult for them, just logistically, and Matt at least, well, aren't they a sovereign country? And he kind of sort of backed off the use of the word can, because of course, because of course
they can. But it is an interesting point that Vida was sort of hinting at, which is can they like do they have the capacity? What is not talked about much in the US here is that Israel's not doing well in the ground war like they have effectively been able to turn most of gods into rubble, but when they have engaged with Hamas in street battles, they have
often lost. We see almost daily videos of Israeli tanks getting blown up, of Israeli soldiers going down, getting getting evacuated, and so the question is, you know that's happening in these rubble strewn areas, how do they how do they physically do that in a densely populated area. City that was like three hundred thousand people on October six is now like almost one and a half million. How do you even accomplish a street battle?
There? To that point, one hundred and thirty hostages. Some one hundred and thirty hostages remain, and that's been the first priority for months. And to have that many hostages remaining is obviously a sign of a successful military operation. Is a sign of Hamasa's continued barbarity, but of a successful military operation, it is not a sign. So they have. Yeah, and to your point, Hamas has already reconstituted in northern Gaza. Let's put a two up on the screen because this
investigation from Al Jazeera and the Washington Post. This is from the Washington Post. They did an investigation about what happened to two members of an Al Jazeera crew, and Al Jazeera has presented some more evidence about this as well drone footage. This is the headline racist questions about Israeli justification for deadly strike on Gaza journalists. This was in Han Yunis. Two members of Al Jazeera's crew, twenty seven year old, thirty year old were killed on January seventh,
along with their driver. Then two freelance journalists were seriously wounded. They were returning from the scene of an earlier Israeli strike on a building where they had used a drone to capture the aftermath. The Washington Post actually on their website has footage of them operating the drone. The drone footage that they were taking. It's a drone that was being used. It's like available at best Buy. It's basically
a commercially available normal drone that civilians would use. IDF said in a statement the next day that it had quote identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops. Two days later, the IDF said that it had been in response to quote an immediate threat in the area because both men belong to militant groups. This was the claim from the IDF. It doesn't appear that was the case. There's some evidence
that Israel is pointing to. I think it's like a name in a log that Israel's pointing to that one of them was affiliated with a moss in some way. But it's pretty unconvincing evidence. I'm curious what you.
Thought of this. It's this weird. I think gas lighting is overused in our current contemporary lexicon, but it really does apply to the coverage of this war. So the Washing Post writes here, and good for the Washing Post for conducting this investigation.
This is not shade on them, but they.
Write, no Israeli soldiers, aircraft, or other military equipment are visible in the footage taken that day, which the Post is publishing in its entirety, raising critical questions about why the journalists were targeted. Fellow reporters said they were unaware of troop movements in the area. So what they're saying is there was no reason that they can identify, either from witnesses or from drone footage, but there was a security concern going on here, yet these journalists were struck anyway,
it says. It raises questions about why the journalists were targeted. In the days after they were targeted, Israel said publicly they targeted them on purpose because of these claimed links, and so that's where the gas lighting comes in. It's like Rais's questions about why they were targeting. Israel's like, no, we hit the journalists on purpose. This is Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief's son who was killed in this in strike, and they're saying, look, he's a terrorist, like they're all there,
They're all there. There's two freelance journalists that were killed here too. They're all terrorists and we hit them on purpose.
And so.
To then use investigative resources to go back and say, doesn't seem to be any reason why they were struck, when you know, implying that perhaps maybe they were struck on purpose, when Israel has already said they were struck on purpose. Is it is kind of crazy making, I think for for an audience who's like, wait a minute, they already admitted why they did this, and then they continued and they continued to do it day after day after day after day.
Right the first statement said that the aircraft posed a threat to Israeli trups and again you can watch the video. It's clearly a drone that you would pick up at best by being operated by.
And it would be fair to debunk that claim from the IDF. But the IDF's claims always evolve, you know, within you know, there's there's the claim in the immediate aftermath of the attack, then there's the then there's a claim six hours later, then there's the claim the next day,
and so they eventually moved away from this. The drone was a threat to we hit him in a car because of their terrorists, and it took them like a week to come up with this claim that they were that they were terrorists, although they're kind of their allies online were circulating it kind of immediately.
Interviews with fourteen witnesses, the Post says to the attack and colleagues of the Slang reporters offer the most detail account yet of the deadly incident. The Post found no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day. Both passed through is raally checkpoints on their way to the south. Early in the war. One of them had been approved to leave Gaza, which is rare. You wouldn't give that to someone, as the
Post points out, who is a quote known militant. The Post asked the idea of a lot of questions about it, and they just replied, quote, we have nothing further to add, right.
And also, you know, setting aside this particular case in general, Hamas's has been the government of the Hamas has been the government since two thousand and six in Gaza. Like a lot of people are going to have affiliations with the government. Yes, the barak Ravid, who's done really really impressive reporting, like tons of scoops for axios. We'll talk about one of his scoops later was in the reserves
in Israel. If Hamas assassinated him, that would not be justified by the fact that he had previously served in the reserves. Like that, it's an insane way to think about people, and it's only I think, made possible by dehumanization, like if you don't, if you don't think about people as the complicated kind of citizens and kind of active members of a community that they are. Israel recently killed
They called it a top Hamas commander. But he was the guy whose job it was to work with the UN and the AID agencies to make sure that there was security around the AID trucks getting into northern Gaza. Israel had previously said that they would not attack the policemen or trying to keep security in these areas. Those policemen are all quote unquote Hamas, because if Hamas is
the government, then anybody working for them is Hamas. And so they killed this guy, found him in a hospital and killed him, and then they announced publicly, we just took out a top Hamas commander.
So and again Israel is claiming that they put out a statement and linked to a document the postnotes. It was dated to Junior twenty twenty two. It had the military winning with PIJ and one of the journalist's names was next to a line item for two hundred and
twenty four dollars. They mentioned a second document that named the other journalist as a squad deputy commander of the Hamasqkaza City Brigade, but did not make that document public and did not respond to numerous requests to review it, and the Post was unable to confirm any other evidence that they were acting as anything other than journalists when they were killed. Again, the quote from the IDEA was that they were flying an aircraft that posed a threat.
It was a civilian drone that you could pick up at Best Buy and they had gone through Israeli security checkpoints. So Brian, it's just right.
And they deconflict all the time with the IDF knows where these journalists are, because it's extremely dangerous to go anywhere without the IDEF knowing where you are. So that's another thing that has raised so many alarms about so many of these killings of journalists, that they get cleared ahead of time to go to an area and then get killed.
It's frustrating from I mean, it's frustrating pureerod. But one of the reasons that it's frustrating from my perspective, like, the fog of war is a real thing, and obviously you know there are going to be in any wars, one of the reasons why we should all just generally oppose war. There are going to be civilian casualties, and it is awful. But the consistent situations that come up, whether it's you can go all the way back to
sharen Akla, you can find many examples of this. It just is the pattern of shifting stories in these cases is frustrating because it goes beyond I think the fog of war often and becomes a ham fisted propaganda strategy that is utterly unconvincing.
Speaking of the fog makersted fog makers of war, Alon Levy has been suspended as the Israeli government spokesperson is fast sating development. We can we can even touch on some of the conspiracy theories about why this has happened, as well as the uh the actual stated reason UH why it why it happened. So there was there was an exchange with a UK member of Parliament UH that people can find online. It's uh, it's really fascinating to
see the back and forth. But the gist of it was that Alon Levy was basically just regurgitating the talking points that uh, that his government has been pushing, you know, for weeks now, basically saying there is no restriction.
On aid entering into Israel.
I mentioned earlier how gas lighting is an overused term, but it's appropriate in the coverage of this war because anybody can see with their eyes, uh, that there is a famine going on.
You know, the the UN is saying, you know, a.
Million people are starving, and that you know, we're that hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine, and in famine, children are dying of malnutrition and starving. Those are the facts on the ground. And then we're told by the IDF, actually there's no restrictions whatsoever on aid and aid can just flow and completely unrestricted.
What that's insane.
So but most of us, you know, we're just you know, we're just suffering through Twitter like everybody else, and we just.
Like watch these lies go through.
This membory of Parliament had recent had just returned from a trip to the to the region and had seen and had talked to people at the UN, talked to people involved in aid distribution, and saw ailon Levy's claim that hey, there's aid can just flow right into into Godza, no problem at all, and she said, hey, that doesn't seem true. I was just there, but it's interesting what you're saying. Are you saying that more aid can get in?
And he's like, absolutely, test us. If the UK sends another hundred trucks worth of aid, the other one hundred trucks.
Can get in.
And so what she does is she takes his comments, sends them to Cameron and says, look what the Israeli government is saying, which is it's almost funny because it's taking what the Israeli government spokesperson is saying seriously as the truth and then trying to apply it as policy when everybody involved in this knows that this is just kind of propaganda, this is just what people are saying. So she takes this and says, look look what he says.
Then he starts backpedaling and saying, well, you know there's you know, we can only do forty four trucks an hour at this at this one crossing, and so She quickly does the math and she's like, Okay, well that's many more trucks that are currently getting in, So we appreciate that you have said, you know, hundred more trucks a day can get in, which is a fifty percent
increase over the number you've said. Maybe backpedals more and starts talking about how well you know, before October seventh, half the truck's getting in or cement that Hamas was using to make tunnels, and gets into this like what are you talking about? Like none of this makes any sense, but what point are you trying to make. We're not trying to send in cement right now, trying to send in food and medicine and maternity kits and like the
you know, the basics that people need for survival. And it became essentially an international incident because he was basically caught lying in public and and the people on the ground had to say, well, no, this is we're actually not going to let in fifty percent more trucks, like it's not going to happen, so they suspend him. That's what That's what happened. But what what a lot of people are wondering is wait a minute, how this is
the thing you're going to suspend this guy for. Like this is the Israeli government's line, Like they say this to everybody who asks the fact that it's not true is not new, Like everybody knew it wasn't true, so
why are you coming after him. People have pointed out that Netya's wife, Sarah Nunya, who has been who has been convicted of corruption herself in Israel, has always hated this guy, that he's kind of a liberal Zionist who protested against the Supreme Court reforms that were intended to basically let the Netnahu family off, and also that he's
getting too popular. At the Kanesset meeting, there was The Times visual reported yes yesterday that Netnya, who said, one of the problems with Israeli propaganda globally is that we don't have we being Israel, we don't have people who can string two English sentences together, two words together, he said. And they're like, what if we give you more money for the hsbara efforts. He's like, no, it's not just money, Like we don't have enough English speakers who are able
to do this. And Levy has gotten extremely popular around the world and so the thinking among people watching this closely is that this was a chance to take him down a notch, that he was getting kind of too good at his job. What's your read on this entire ridiculous situation.
I mean, yeah, it sounds like there are behind the scenes sort of problems, fissures in the Nyahu relationship with the liberal Zionists that plagues Yaho and anyone sort of in the night now who coalition more broadly from his perspective, you know, if you're not quite Ben Gavie, but you're also not Levy, then yeah, that these fissures are real and actually are severely hamper Nyahu's ability to govern as
he wishes to govern. On that note, though, Ryan, it was when you were talking about how Nanyahu's making the point about having people who can string English sentences together, it reminded me.
That Jared Kushner was in string sentences together.
He was stringing those sentences together. And interview with the Guardian, and there is video of a fascinating exchange between the Guardian and Jared Kushner about Gaza.
Let's take a look at that Syria when there's refugees, Turkey took them Europe took them, Jordan took them for whatever reason. Here in Gaza, there's refugees from the fighting from an offensive attack that was staged from Gaza. Israel's going in to do you know, a long term deterrence mission, and it's just it's unfortunate that nobody's taking the refugees.
But also there are real fears on the part of Arabs. And I'm sure you talk to a lot of them who think once Gazin's leave Gaza and ya, who's never going to let them back in?
Maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza at this point. So you know, if you think about even the construct like you know, Gaza, Gaza was not really a historical precedent, right, it was the result of a war. Right, you had tribes that were in different places. Then Gaza became a thing. Egypt, you know, used to run it. And then you know, over time you had different governments that came in different ways, so you have another war. You know, usually when wars happen, you know,
borders are changed historically over time. And so my sense is is I would say, how do we deal with the terror threat that is there so that it cannot be a threat to Israel or to Egypt, right. I think that both sides are spending a fortune on military I think neither side really wants to have, you know, a terrorist organization enclaved right between them in Gaza's waterfront property. It could be very valuable too, if people would focus
on kind of building up livelihoods. You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and that all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation.
Biden should recognize the Palestinian authority unilaterally as a state, and NBS should go to Jerusalem like Egyptian President Unwar Sedet did in nineteen seventy seven, and he should say I'll normalize with Israel, I'll recognize West Jerusalem as your capital, and I'll even pay to rebuild Gaza. If you recognize a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, what do you think?
Good idea?
No, I don't think that's a good idea. I think that there's certain elements of it that are correct. I think proactively recognizing a Palestinian state would essentially be rewarding an act.
Of terror waterfront property. He said, if the money from the tunnels would have been redirected. I think he said towards education and innovation, but it was in the context actually talking about how you could redevelop Gaza in to quote, very valuable waterfront property. Ryan, what's your reaction to the well.
There was also that line he had where he said, for whatever reason, there's refugees, Okay, for whatever reason. Interesting then he also said that Gaza is a construct like so just google to make sure. Wikipedia says the known history of Gaza that spans four thousand years in POMPEII took it at one point, Alexander the Great took it
at one point, Bedwins lived there for many years. In fact, the IDF has tragically destroyed archaeological sites that are some of the most kind of important to archaeology in the world, and have destroyed buildings that are from the sixth and seventh century, just irreplaceable and tragic destruction. So the idea that Kushner says Gaza is a construct of the twentieth century kind of expulsion of people from their land and
what was Palestine is absurd. It is true that many of the current residents of Guys are refugees from elsewhere in what is now Israel. But the idea that the city itself is like a construct literally ignores four thousand years of history. But what could be more tone deaf than Jared Kushner, a real estate developer talking about the water the value of the waterfront propertyoti.
Who negotiating the abraham of course, right, and was basically a Trump's point man on negotiating with Israel period in the Middle East period.
Right. If anybody was responsible for the failure of our policy and the entire policy in the region, it's Jared Kushner, whose bright idea which and this is not to blame just Kushner.
He was the moron that put it forward, but he had.
An entire Republican administration apparatus behind him that pushed forward. And then he had an entire democratic administration that adopted the framing of it, which was to say, we are going to normalize relations with all of the Arab countries in the region, leading with Saudi Arabia and the and the UAE, and we're going to do it by pretending the Palestinian question does not exist anymore, just taking it
off the table. I mean, it's an it's kind of an interesting, like third grade kind of approach to it. It's like, it's a really intractable problem. How do you solve this? And he's like, what if we don't hear me out? And and and the region. And that's why I don't blame him, Like that's an idiotic thing to say. The real idiots are the ones who are like, this kid's got an idea, let's just let's just pretend it does. Let's just pretend the problem isn't there, and we'll and
then we'll sign all of these accords. And Hamas has said that it launched its attack because you know, Saudi Arabia was getting so close to normalizing with Israel and pretending that the Palestinians didn't exist. Now you can obvious Amas has agency did what did you can condemn that?
Uh?
The US has agency, Saudi Arabia's agency, Israel has agency. It was it was predicted and predictable. You know what the consequences would be when you say that, oh, there's this intractable problem and let's just ignore it and I'll go away.
So the other thing Kushner said, quote, I'm sitting in Miami Peach right now, and I'm looking at the situation and thinking what would I do if I was there? So another point just to but he's sitting in Miami be it's more very valuable water for property. But to the point of the interview, by the way, that was it's stamped with the Guardian, because I think the Guardian was the they must have been the first report on
this was actually not an interview with the Guardian. It was in an interview with the Harvard Middle East Initiative faculty chair.
So it wasn't it wasn't reported by the Guardian, reported by.
The Guardian, right, and they stamped their logo on the video, which.
But yes, we put our logo on top of there.
Yes we may already have done that. But Ryan, you were at another State Department broofing asking questions.
I think this is about unra mm hmm.
Yeah.
So this goes too to the question of what will what will Gaza become, you know, when and if there was a day day after this war, and it goes to the question of unrefunding and actually, no want to spoil it. Will just roll this back and forth with me in State Department spokesperson beating Aptel when you originally talked about the allegations against the twelve staff. You had said that UNRA itself was the one that forwarded those
allegations along. You said that you found them credible. But since then, UNRA itself has said that it's staff were tortured by Israel in order to get some of those confessions extracted. Does that change your view of the evidence that was presented by Israel? And if UNRA was credible enough for you to believe the allegations the first time, is UNRA credible enough when they make an allegation of torture against its staff.
I've not seen that reporting, Ryan, but I will just note that we continue to find the allegations that were laid out a number of months months ago to be credible.
And we also welcome the swiftness at which UNRA informed not just the United States but others about this, but also the swiftness in which the United Nations launched its own investigation mechanism and its own independent review, and we look forward to seeing those results, and to echo Secretary Blincoln, we want these allegations thoroughly investigated so that there is clear accountability and measures put in place so this doesn't
happen again. We want all this to happen because we believe very strongly that unreplay is a critical role in producing life saving assistance in the region, not just in Gaza, but the broader Middle East as well. They are vital players when it comes to food, medicine, shelter and other humanitarian support.
Your position, which is in opposition, as they said to so many allies around the world, has encouraged Congress to move forward with a band. There's now an agreement between some Democrats and some Republicans to continue the ban.
I think what throughout the rest of the year is.
That, is that something that the State Department would support tying the State Department's hands even if the report comes back.
You've heard me talk about this before. Broadly, when it comes to the supplemental bill that is being negotiated in Congress, these are active and ongoing things that are happening. So I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole too much, but broadly, we support the contours of this supplemental bill.
So he says, we believe that unreplace is an important role in relief efforts, but also we're okay with Congress barring us from restarting funding for it because presidents make make that makes sense for me.
Presidential administrations are often so cool with Congress stepping in and doing things that they care about. Yes, that's the if presidents care about war powers, it's basically so that, you know, they they want Congress to have more power
instead of them, which is obviously completely backwards. They want to prosecute these words entirely on their own, and now they're using Congress as a crutch, which is funny because they basically are constantly blaming Congress of being overly meddlesome in the business of prosecuting.
Right, But when it comes to banning the US from funding UNRA, which they say is a valuable part of the relief effort, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. They're going to do what they're going to do, rabbit hole.
Yeah.
And also, how do you not how are you not familiar with this massive reporting that UNRA has said that its staff was tortured into making confessions about you know, UNRA complicity with AMAS. That's rather important element if you actually are serious about getting to the bottom of this.
Yeah, And I'm sure that they enjoy answering your questions in the briefing, like, I don't.
Know how much longer I can keep going.
It's it's increasing it seems it's increasingly pointless, exhausting. I got to do some self care after each one of those.
The rabbit hole quote was pretty interesting in that one.
Let's talk about TikTok.
Let's talk about TikTok. So we have a video here of Steve mnusin. Steve Manus is involved right now and putting together some investors who would buy TikTok in the case that the bill that passed through the House and is now in the hands of the Senate is passed signed by President Biden, and TikTok is ByteDance, is forced
to divest TikTok It's US portfolio. Essentially, there are different ways that they could go about divesting that operation, maybe just split off the entire US, but the forced divestment, say it happens, Steve Manuchin, he's going to be there, arms open wide, ready with investors to buy TikTok. And there's some interesting questions about where Steve Mnuchin may get that money. Let's start by rolling this clip of Steve mnuchen talking about the potential deal.
I think the legislation should pass and I think should be solved. I understand the technology, it's a great business, and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok.
You're trying to buy TikTok?
I am because this should be owned by US, US businesses. There's no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company on something like this in China. You say, have you already put a group together? No, I'm working at an explorer group. I've spoken to a bunch of people.
But who would be part of your group?
I can't tell that to you now, but it would be it would be a combination of investors. So there would be no one investor that controlled this. And the issue is all about the technology. This needs to be controlled by US.
Let me ask you a very practical question.
So that was Becky Quick and Andrew Ross working and talking to Steveminution on CNBC. He said he would not get into who's involved, but it would not be any one investor. Let's put this next hairsheet B two up on the screen, semaphore heading good piece and run widen kind of blowing the whistle here on who steamnutin maybe getting his funding from reading from the article they say.
Senator Ron Wyden, the chair of the powerful Senate Finance can be sharply criticized former Treasury Secretary of Stephen Mnuchen and has ties some money from the Middle East in his effort to buy TikTok from its Chinese owner. Manuchin told CNBC last week that he's assembling a group of investors by the platform after the House overwhelmingly forced a bill pass the bill forcing it to either be sold
within six months or banned from app stores. The White House has urged the Senate, where the bill has powerful backers and opponents in both parties, to move quickly. Munuchen gave few details on who might be part of his bidding group, except to say that he was working in
combination of investors. But much of the two point five billion dollars investment funds he raised after leaving office came from governments in Saudi Arabia and other golf states, where Mnusian was a frequent visitor during his time in government. Saudi investments not unfamiliar to former members of the Trump administration whatsoever. So actually this point that Ron Wyden is
making and Semaphore is making. Is a really important one because it's it seems almost impossible that all of that money would be coming entirely from domestic sources, given the Steve Manus and honestly just the way finance works in this country right now, one point I did want to make. We can put the three up in the screen just
really quickly. There's a very important argument about how this bill is crony capitalism and that you have a Steve manusan sweeping in going to make billions off the deal with his investors. Will I'll be sitting back and laughing, and it's because you know, they lobby Congress for this bill to pass, and in the meantime, it gives the deep state access to TikTok. So I agree that it's
crony capitalism. I do just want to point out, though this is up on the screen, quoting from a Wall Street Journal article, actually quoting from a TikTok spokesperson in a Wall Street Journal article. Over the past year, they say we took the unprecedented step of granting Oracle full access to our source code and our algorithm. That's not news. It's been known that this one and a half billion dollar Project taxas initiative TikTok embarked u pun after being
pushed by the Trump administration. Actually at the time this was basically a big PR push that ultimately went beyond PR and actually, as they got more and more pressure, ended up with them giving Oracle Cloud access storing their US data in the Oracle cloud. Oracle is a defense contractor So one point just in this big conversation about how the US deep state's going to get access to TikTok data. They want it. That's why suddenly they're sweeping
through this bill. Well, I mean they're sweeping through this bill because they do want it, but they do likely already have access via Oracle to.
Data that they want, right, it's not just the data they want, they want to control at the root. And so you talked about the golf states that have contributed to Mnuchin's fund. There's a golf adjacent state that has been in talks with Manuchin's fund at minimum that's also relevant here, and that's literally Israel.
So we talked earlier about some good reporting.
The paroctive Vita did He and Jonathan Swan in twenty twenty one had a scoop for Axios, the headline Israeli spy chief and talks to join Mnuchin's investment fund. So that the head of Massad, before he retired from his Massad position, was in talks with Mnuchin to become an investor in in Mnuchin's fund. We don't you know where was that, Where was that money coming from? Did that
money enter into Manuchin's fund. So the idea that for national security reasons, we're going to seize TikTok and hand it over to a fund that has cutter Saudi and Muradi money and maybe Israeli money it was really government money, you know, does not make a whole lot of sense just on its own terms from a national security perspective. Despite Mnuchin's claims that, well, no single investor is going to have you know.
Control here.
If Saudi Arabia has given him a billion dollars and he's and is the biggest leveraged and is the biggest fund in Manution's fund, they have a lot of power there, regardless of what kind of contract you write up about who has what say when it comes to TikTok.
Yeah, that's an interesting point. And you know, in general, my takeaway on this is we are such an oligarchy because it gets back to the binary choice of Trump versus Biden. There's really no good choice in this situation. I mean, I actually think the situation with Chinese control over TikTok has been concerning for a really long time.
I think TikTok absolutely should be banned. I think though the bill that passed the House of Representatives was that that section B in the bill that you know doesn't just narrow this to TikTok is genuinely very problematic. You know, there's a way to do this bill that literally writes out this just applies to tik talk and bite dance.
The decision to broaden it beyond just TikTok and byte dance obviously obviously stems from ulterior motives that don't I mean, it's in the text that is as blatantly of an alter blatantly as an ulterial motive as you could possibly put into the bills by saying, well, maybe this will apply in different cases as well. And you know, instead of just actually doing this as the problem crops up, we can put.
This next a just one point on that this is where the Supreme Court's bizarre libertarian interpretation of corporation as people comes into play because if corporations are people, then a bill that targets an individual corporation is a bill of attainder, which is you control left the constitution for that one ban in the constitution, you can't basically what you know, what what England used to do, which we fought against, was, you know, they'd try somebody for treason
and the jury would be like, eh, we don't, we don't think you made your case here, and then Parliament would be like, this person must be executed and they chop his head off. And and so that was a bill of at tainder, which is like going after an individual. And so right there, and a constitution says Congress can't do that to individuals. Congress never meant that a company
was an individual. But Supreme Court is, you know, rethought know humanity to include corporations in its definition of people, which would then require them to say, you can't do this anyway, go.
Ahead, yeah, and so put the if we put the next element up on the screen here, you can see so that section that we were just talking about, where it involves you know, companies that have at least twenty percent a foreign A hostile foreign country has at least twenty percent. Enemy country is at least twenty percent stake in an app. Actually a lot of apps have international headquarters. As Axios points out here, these numbers actually really surprised me. Ryan.
So this is from Access In twenty twenty four. Not only are a greater number of apps from China and but more apps from that region have made it to the top ten most downloaded apps in the US so far compared this year, compared to just one in twenty twenty one. So Timu really popular, starting to get really popular. Cap Cut that's another app by byte Edance. Sheen. Obviously they're an e commerce app there, I mean a lot
of people think of them as a website. By Timu and Sheen have apps, and so we're increasingly getting into a situation where, yeah, I mean, this is a real problem. Josh Holly has been making a really good point about how, you know, American creators, American consumers shouldn't have to be responsive to China at this point that TikTok is an American industry. If, as byte Dance insists, TikTok is truly just an American company. It's based in America. It's for Americans,
you know. Ultimately, though, what we know from Great Reporting and Forbes, the w Was Street Journal, and other places is that even with Project Texas, the people who are involved in Project Texas, this big effort to make TikTok more domestic here in the States, they're still getting plenty of requests for the data from Paiging. So I think there's a real point to be made. I think also the latent threat of TikTok, because you know, we are aware that the Hawks are beating the war drums with China.
So whether or not you agree with them, the threat of a hot war, a hot conflict over Taiwan is real. Whether or not we like that, that is real. And so the latent threat of a potential hostile enemy in a hot war controlling a huge source of news, the primary source of news in fact, for young people in this country, that actually can put the lives of American
men and women on the line. I think the Layton Tech the latent threat of TikTok if a hot war erupts, is worse than you know, in this case meta Instagram, And I think those threats of censorship and propaganda are huge with those other giants. But the hot war question is a really really big one. But that just brings us back to this oligarchy, like your options suck. Either way, it's cronyism. If TikTok wins, it's cronyism if TikTok loses.
And my solution to the hot work question would be, all right, Oracle already controls their data and their UH and their and their kind of algorithm, or has has like direct access to it, and therefore, like if there is a national security crisis of some kind of war, then your defense contractor already has it, so don't you don't need to turn it over to Steve Mnuchin, Muhammed bin Salmon and Mosad.
In meantime, it's.
Such a perfect I mean, if there are Saudi investors ultimately involved, even indirectly, and then.
You have to be they have a big piece of Twitter, like they they love all this stuff.
You're reporting on Twitter. And Saudi's has been also wildly undercovered by the rest of the media.
Right where they bribed engineers to get them to out the names of Dissonance, who they then killed and and Ron Wyden in this report. He's like, maybe a company and maybe a country that puts spyware on the wife of a Washington journalist Washington Post journalist's phone, then lured him into a consulate and chopped him into pieces. It's not the company that we want to force a sale of it. Social media app too.
Soccer's friend Hassan Minhaj was censored on Netflix and Saudi Arabia for Yes, like if.
We're if we're going to censorship?
Good Lord freaked out. Yes, it's the same thing with Yes. The neo conservative position on Saudi Arabia has put them in so many binds over the years that they just laugh and smile their way through on CNBC hits. And here we are.
Should we talk Bernie.
Let's talk Bernie because this is such an interesting topic. Ryan Bernie Sanders and seean fain. Bernie Sanders in particular has actually introduced legislation. But Bernie Sanders and Shron Faine wrote a joint op ed calling for the thirty two hour work week, and Bernie's bill is focused on the thirty two hour work week. Tell us what he's proposing?
Yeah, and Ernie staff are saying, I saw some of them last last night that they have not gotten a reaction this positive to legislation that they've put out in years, that the kind of the kind of outpouring of support
for it has been extraordinarily heartening. But essentially, all this bill does is take current law as it applies to overtime, which currently sits at you know, forty hours, and ratchets that down to thirty two hours and says if you work over thirty two hours, then you start getting paid. Overtime doesn't mean you can't work forty hours, It just means.
What it does is it incentivizes you know, companies and people to try to increase productivity and basically, you know, work less and move and move toward a place where we have kind of a more just and decent society. One of the counter arguments, of course, as well, now you're going to force people into working more jobs, and companies are going to you know, try to automate away hours and try to shrink down the number of hours that people have.
The response to that is, what are you an idiot?
Think?
You think that that's not.
What corporations are doing. Like, the number one goal of corporations today is adopting AI and automation to try to minimize labor costs, like they're already doing that. So what this is a response to that crisis. And what it says is that, Okay, you're trying to reduce people's hours anyway, what we're requiring is that you pay people a little bit more on the way there.
And so I personally don't support like a federal mandate, But one of my predictions, like for the next thirty years, maybe even like the next ten years, actually probably closer to the next ten years, is that a thirty two hour workweek will become normalized in corporate culture. Now that's very optimistic, but there's a reason I say that. In Bernie Sanders op ed with Sean Fann in The Washington Post touched on it in a really really interesting way.
They talk about how the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law in nineteen forty. Then they write, unbelievably, eighty four years later, despite massive growth in technology and worker productivity, nothing has changed. Let that sink in for a moment. In a nineteen seventy four office, there were no computers, email, cell phones, conference calling, or zoom in factories and warehouses. There were no robots or sophisticated machinery,
no cloud computing. In grocery stores and shops of all kinds, there were no checkout counters using barcodes. Think about all the incredible advancements in technology, computers, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the huge increase in worker productivity that has been achieved would have been the results of these changes for working people. Almost all the economic games have gone straight to the top, while wages for workers are stagnant or worse. And it's
a really really important point about technology. You think about when you wake up in the morning. If you are a white collar, if you're blue collar, you have to check your phone for professional reasons. Maybe your shift got changed, maybe you got an email from your boss changing a meeting time and you had to drop your kid off at three pm. Thought you could get out, but now you can't. You're constantly changing to your phone, even if it's eight am, even if it's seven am and you're
working out. That's not leisure time because you are always working. You're sending work emails, sending work texts. You were constantly you know, thinking about or in communication and thinking about via smartphones and email apps on your smartphones about work in general, and again it could just be it could be shifts getting changed around that make it hard for you just to put your phone down and actually be without your phone, because your phone is a work device.
And so we just have we haven't shifted the way we think about work. We haven't shifted the way we think about even just smartphones period. And this is a shot producer Mac who is not giving me my leisure time right now because he's texting us as we're talking
about smartphones. But in all seriousness, I really think conservatives are way behind the curb and talking about work, and that Bernie Sanders and Sean Fainn are actually onto something that's way less radical than it sounds to a lot of people on the right who are like, what are you talking about? Thirty two hour work week? This is America, So this is a very different work culture than it was just fifteen years ago.
I also think of this show as my leisure time. There's a there's a famous example that Adam Smith, basically the father of modern economics, has where he talks about a pin factory like a needle factory. He's like, basically says, like, imagine that you've got. You know, it takes one hundred people a week to make a hundred pins at this factory, and now all of a sudden and it's profitable, it's doing well. Now, all of a sudden, an innovation comes along.
Somebody figures out a way that it takes only half a week to make that many pins. He's like, he says, in a rational and a just society, those hundred people would work twenty hours a week, and the rest of that time would be spent with their family, with their church group, with their community, playing softball, just enjoying life.
We'd have just as many pins.
The capitalists would make just as much profit, and the world would just be a better place instead, because of the power embedded in the political economy, everybody works the same amount, gets paid the same amount, but all of that surplus value that was created by that innovation gets
just seized by the person that owns the factory. And for Smith, who is much more lefty than people give them credit for, because they haven't actually read the wealth of the nations, he was like, that's wrong, Like, the workers should in society, should take the advantage of that of that innovation, not the capitalist class that is just going to then you know, produce inequality. Uh, you know, fretter right away, and and you know, create an create an unstable society along the way.
Yeah, and I think you know, there's there's a really interesting point to that Bernie Sanders makes. We have a clip of Bernie Sanders. Let me actually table the point and we'll get to the site here because Bernie's explodesive exchange for the reporter. It is really I think, so it's absolutely been to Bernie though. Let's roll this clip.
Senator Sanders, can I talk to you about the thirty two hour work week? It seems like Fox business, It seems like democrats want businesses to be taxed more pay their work.
I didn't get to ask a question. Okay, thank you, senator.
You want to hold it.
Okay, we held a hearing on a thirty two hour work week because what we have seen is that over the last fifty years, despite a huge increase in work of productivity, almost all of the New Wealth has gone to the top one percent, well sixty percent of the people living paycheck to paycheck. Many of our people are exhausted. We work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world. I think it's time for a shortened work.
I ask you a question about that. It seems like democrats want businesses to be tax more, pay their more lower prices, and now pay people not to work.
You know what, I would like to see how.
Our business is going to survive that?
That's the question.
How can businesses survive all of those proposals?
And mister Bezos pays an effective tax rate lower than the average work I think we have a real problem in our tax system. I think that billionaires have got to stop pay their fair share of taxes.
He's all up in her grow Ryan. So if you were just listening to that clip, Bernie Sanders is just playing wildly.
It's going to turn violent.
Yes, he's about to fight her.
Reporter fast war in the hallway.
In the hallway, yes, but really that's classic Burnie it is.
Yeah, I mean, like he doesn't want to hear the nonsense from the Fox Business crowd. But yeah, he turned straight to the camera.
That was my other favorite part. When you said Fox Business, he rolled his eyes super exasperated and just addressed the camera straight down the lens.
And people like overtime, like overtime is Overtime is the thing that gives you a little.
Bit of breathing room.
When the company is forced to give you overtime, they don't want to give you overtime, you know. They try to figure out ways to either cheat you out of it or to have enough people on staff that they don't need to get there. So what this does is it will would make it easier for workers to get
the overtime that they deserve. And if a company can't figure out a way to get everything it's done, everything done that it needs done with its workforce working thirty two hours a week, then all right, you got to pay him overtime.
Well, you just said something interesting, which is what they deserve. And that's where I think actually just will be surprised by how quickly and I could totally be proven wrong on this, it's happened before, But how quickly different corporations adapt after people like Bernie Sanders kind of moved the Overton window on this question. They quote in the Washington Posts. They say studies have shown that workers are either equally or more productive during a four hour, four day work week.
One study found that worker productivity rose with fifty five percent, saying their ability at work increased after companies adopted this new schedule. That's I think that's the important point.
There's been a ton of pilot programs of this, and everywhere it's been implemented, the company's been happy and the workers have been happy. Yeah, so give it a shot now. We also wanted to play this fun CNBC clip since we've we've already got Fox Business in there. We can't neglect their ally in the class war. A great clip recently from CNBC talking about the presidential election.
Let's roll this one.
We often say, you know, when you look at between the policies that Biden or Trump would take in that it's not like we have a Bernie Sanders socialist running. I mean, you don't have some of the worst case scenarios where they're really anti capitalists. Even Biden, who is favorable higher taxes, is still pro business. Generally you're not trying to so you should have any business opportunities. So you know, there's definitely pros and cons of each of them.
You had, you know, Trump, who could actually bring a much more tariff oriented mindset to certainly to China. But you worry about like what do you bring tariff against against everything they're going to be We're talking about the FED. You know, Trump has made a very cleary he's anti palace, with questions who would he put in Some of those people have been actually quite hawkish that he's rumored to
talk about. So we'll see how that impacts things, But in general, we'd say it's not going to be a major difference one or the other despite all the noise.
Very happy for the squawk Box. They are getting the presidential election that they wanted.
I like that we had classic Bernie and then classic squawk Box, which is that they can't quite decide if Biden and as a socialist or a capitalist.
It's the same thing with the one whenever Bernie does something like a thirty two hour work week, they're reminded that, oh, yeah, it could be worse.
You always see that play. Yeah, well, let's move on to the Trump arrests that we've been teasing at the bottom of the screen. Yesterday was unfortunate for several people sort of in the broader Trump orbit, one of whom is Peter Navarro. So maybe a familiar face to some folks who can put this first element up on the screen. This is CNN headline x Trump aid Peter Navarro begins
serving prison sentence after historic contempt prosecution. He is the first former White House official actually to be imprisoned for a contempt of Congress conviction. A lot of people may think immediately of Steve Bannon in that case, because he was actually prosecuted and convicted on a pretty similar charge, also from non compliance in a January sixth Committee subpoena.
He wasn't in the White House during the period that the House Committee was a subpoenaing in regards to but that judge has let Bannon delay serving the four month prison sentence that he was actually given while his appeals are continuing to play out. While Peter Navarro actually did report to that federal prison in Miami, he spoke for thirty minutes at a gas station yesterday and called it quote unprecedented assault on the constitutional separation of powers. The
other quote, he said, I am pissed. That is what I am feeling right now. Kind of an interesting case, actually, Ryan, he was subpoena for documents and testimony at CNN says related to efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election. He rebuffed the demands, claiming that Trump had asserted privilege over the requests and arguing the House Committee must negotiate with Trump directly to sort out that dispute. Then he was charged in June twenty twenty two with two counts of
contempt and was then found guilty on both counts. As people may remember last September. So that gets to the separation of powers question he's raising. He was saying that Congress had to work that out with Trump, who had asserted power over the documents. Let's put up D two. Now, a lawyer was this isn't a separate case. This is a pro Trump. Michigan attorney, as the Associated Press headline says, who was arrested after a hearing in DC over the
leaking of Dominion documents. Stephanie Lambert they Wright was arrested by US marshals after hearing over possible sanctions against her for disseminating confidential emails from Dominion voting systems. Lambert obtained the Dominion emails by representing Patrick Byrne, who is, as the AP says, a prominent funder of election conspiracy theorists being sued by Dominion for defamation. The US Marshals said that Lambert was arrested in quote. Local Chargers of Michigan.
Judge in this earlier this month issued a bench warrant for Lambert after she missed a hearing in her case. She's charged with four felonies for accessing voting machines in a search for evidence of a conspiracy theory against Trump. She acknowledged passing on the documents or passing on the records from dominion to quote law enforcement, and attached an affidavit that included some of the lets emails was signed by a county sheriff in southwestern Michigan who's investigated false
claims of widespread election fraud from the twenty twenty election. Goodness, Ryan Peter Navarro, Let's start with him. Interesting case because it's definitely unprecedented overused word, but actually he is the first former White House official, as we mentioned, to be charged in a case like this one, a breach of what until Trump would have been considered Washington norms to actually jail Peter Navarro over his non compliance with the subpoena.
Especially because the committee that he was subpoena to testify in front of no longer is in operation, like they've they've done the report, they put it out there. I'm kind of conflicted. I'm torn on this one because on the one hand, you look at other countries that are constantly jailing each other's political opponents, and it might be satisfying to the partisans on each side, but I never look at those countries with envy, Like gee, I wish that that basket case of a system was the basket
case of a system that we had. There's something about allowing people to lose with grace that allows for the peaceful transfer of power, which is one reason that I think that Democrats should have immediately come down harder on Trump rather than waiting four years, because he attacked the foundation of democracy, which is the peaceful transfer of power.
People take for granted how important and beneficial and innovation that is to humanity, like for millennia, Like the way that power was transferred created wars between rival factions that you know, thousands or millions of people would get caught up in and killed in over just you know, who got to have who got to have power, something that you know, most of the peasants who were getting killed as a result of this. They weren't going to see any benefit one way or the other. It's just they
were just getting caught up in this stuff. On the on the other hand, you do want Congress to be able to have investigative power and you and you do want when somebody is subpoena to come like if you don't want to testify to me, just plead the Fifth Amendment like that's that's that's why the Fifth Amendment exists. But showing actual contempt like that, and that's what it is. It's like, you've got a subpoena, I'm not showing up.
I think it's illegitimate. I've contempt for this subpoena underminds the ability of Congress to then investigate. So I'd say to you know, people who are you know, the megotypes out there, like what you know, what if you want to investigate Hunter Biden or and Hunter Biden just says, no, I'm not showing up, Like should that be okay?
Is that fine?
Or do you ought you to respect subpoenas.
The Stephanie Lambert case is interesting in this context too, because we're in this one up doom spiral of norm breaking and I think that's really relevant in the January sixth stuff. But the January six committee stuff. One of the reasons Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon ignored these subpoenas because they always saw the January six Committee as illegitimate.
From the beginning, Nancy Pelosi refused to see Kevin McCarthy's choices for committee members, and then proceeded to tout the committee as a bipartisan one because Liz Cheney and Adam Pinsinger were on it, and the media basically gave her opacity that as well, and continuously referred to it as
a bipartisan committee. It's true, it's bipartisan, although you know, technically true it was bipartisan, although again she refused to seat, as is the norm, the picks by the Speaker or by Kevin McCarthy at the time, not the Speaker of the House yet I don't believe but that that's why
Bannon and Navarro refused. And the January sixth Committee's hearings were again produced by a former ABC guy and very much not designed to obtain the truth, but to obtain what one side of the narrative determines is the truth. There weren't a lot of cross examinations of people like Cassidy Hutchinson, who now appears very clearly to have spewed mistruths.
And they were making a cool documentary exact true crime.
Exactly it was. It was true crime and almost explicitly intentionally true crimes made for TV documentary. So that's where this comes from. And we're about to have the same thing happen with elections. I don't know if you saw this. Katie Porter apologized to the pod Bros. The pods Bros, Yeah, rigged, but then.
She argued that because it took away from her point, which is that it is rigged, which was not rigged in the sense that election officials aren't the votes accurately.
That's what she was saying.
Right, And AOC recently talked about essentially how corporations buy elections and the contention, and Trump did not make this point elegantly. He did not make this point well at all, and he made different points. He flirted way too much with the dominion voting stuff. But Trump allys have been very clearly making the point that Mark Zuckerberg basically bought the twenty twenty election. Mark Zuckerberg and some other billionaires
basically bought the twenty twenty election. Per Mollyball's Time article about how a cabal of well funded.
Illegally subsidized like some absentee voting and stuff.
Right, that's it, right, is so like poured a bunch of money into dem districts. And again, that's not the definition of rig that everybody uses a lot of people use the definition to mean like dominion stuff, which is absolutely a conspiracy theory and insane, ridiculous nonsense, and it
is not true. But it is kind of getting to this point where terrifying, as you said before, when you look at other countries that are constantly jailing political opponents and constantly having a quite elections that people aren't comfortable with, that people question and don't have faith in. We took that for granted for a really long time, and we're in a doomspoo right now where public faith in elections I only see it eroding over time, not going back in a better direction.
Well, Stephanie Lambert's defense is kind of funny, she argues, so she basically is getting locked up for getting access to dominion emails under an NDA and under the secrecy of a lawsuit. That she's involved in and then leaking those, you know, breaking the NDA and leaking those. What she says is that she discovered evidence of a crime that
Dominion had committed. And her argument was if she found a severed head in discovery, that of course she would have to then call the authorities and say, hey, there's a severed head here in this evidence box, and doesn't appear that anybody has told anybody about it. So, you know what, fair enough, I think that that particular example would in fact require her to go to law enforcement.
And break her NDA.
Absolutely.
So her claim and her analogy then rests on whether she can prove that what the emails that she discovered related to Dominion prove a crime. And it has been established at this point that it did not. That that's not that's not where the quote unquote rating would have happened.
Yeah. Absolutely. Let's move on to Texas big news. Actually, in a story that was big news yesterday, there was continuous big news when the Circuit Court of Appeals weight in. So let's start with E one. This is a tear street from NBC News. Supreme Court allows Texas to enforce immigration law. That law in question is SB four, which stands for Senate Bill for it allows Texas. Basically, this is a new law gives local police the power to
arrest migrants. The three liberal justices dissented in this case. They rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration that said states do not have authority to legislate on immigration. It is solely a federal government issue. That's also what was actually at issue in a case that we talked about just a few weeks ago, of the enforcement of border laws. Texas is trying to put up different types of barriers in the Rio Grande in sections of the border.
That is really similar. It's basically a clash over federalism and state versus federal powers. This is really similar to the law. As NBC WWO said in that first tear sheet can go into effect. Well, litigation continues in lower courts. It could still be blocked at a later date. Well, funny enough, Ryan after Ken Paxson, we can put E two up on the screen. He's the Attorney general of Texas. He said, huge win. Texas had defeated the Biden administration
and acl US emergency motions at the Supreme Court. Our immigration law as before is now in effect, as always, it's my honor to defend Texas and it's sovereignty to lead us to victory in court. Well, that victory was short lived. We could put the next stair shape up on the screen. This is E three because then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in to put that immigration law back on hold. There are arguments in court
on this law actually today, Ryan. So it's an evolving situation and reminds me a lot of what happened in Arizona with then Governor jan Brewer when she passed I think it was called SB ten seventy. I think this was back around like twenty eleven during the Obama administration, these questions over state powers federal powers when it comes
to enforcing immigration laws. At the time, the Obama Biden administration and now the Biden Harris administration maintains basically that states cannot take these actions to crack down on illegal immigration. And that's again at issue here in the spfore controversy.
Yeah, and so Mexico responded to this ruling from the Supreme Court yesterday by saying that they're going to enter a Friend of the Court memo that and and there, and they also said publicly, we're not dealing with Texas as a sovereign government, like Texas is not negotiating with Mexico as a country, like just like Mexican states would not be able to negotiate with the United States. And so they said they will not coordinate with Texas on
deportations and otherwise they're like get out of here. Like our partner in Mexico's and our partner that we deal with is the United.
States of America.
Not doing immigration with every individual states raises questions over like how Texas plans to enforce this, How Texas is going to go about figuring out you know, who, you know, who it believes is in the country legally or or illegally. Is Texas going to create its own laws around this issue? Are they going to actually respect American laws? Like if if somebody has a deferral of prosecution from you know, some type of parole situation with the with the federal government,
does Texas honor that. Does Texas say that anybody with a green card doesn't count? Does Texas only allow for uh, you know, full law on citizens to count, or is what what if Texas decides that actually naturalized citizens don't count, and only kind of native born citizens count. Like what would stop Texas from passing laws to that effect if they can just do their own immigration policy.
And those are the those are the reasons.
For instance, that the three liberal Supreme Court justice said that this would just create complete and total chaos if it was allowed to take effect, and which is why you know, they they argued that it should be you know, stayed in an emergency basis the fact that the Fifth Circuit, which is made up of strong conservatives is yes, you would generously call them kooses, I would call them, Uh, your generosity also said, uh, that this has to be
stayed pending. These these arguments goes to how huge a kind of break you know that this would represent, because what if what if New York besides to start doing its.
Own sanctuaries are exactly this.
Well, sanctuary cities are the opposite which are saying, we're not touching immigration law. Well, it's all to enforce it, right, Well, I mean if they can't stop, they cannot actually stop like a raid from happening in their city. What what they can do is they can say, if we arrest somebody, we're not doing your immigration work for you. We're not going to check their immigration status and we're not going to turn them over if we discover.
But but it doesn't act.
Stop immigration authorities from like going into state Philadelphia.
Sure, but if illegal immigration is a crime, they're not enforcing laws against the crust. That's part of the same right.
You know, states generally enforced state laws and not federal laws.
Sure, that's sure, sure, sure, But I mean there are plenty of state statutes that are violated by people, whatever it is, fake social Security cards. And the sanctuary says we're not complying with immigration authorities. And I think it's interesting because actually, to this point, the Constitution is not clear on this question. And Ken Paxton, in his statement after the Supreme Court initially ruled, said the Constitution is clear Texas has the sovereign authority to defend its borders
from cartels, et cetera. And this is where Texas Republicans and Republicans in general favor the invasion language because they think that makes the constitutional powers to enforce immigration more clear. Now, I don't blame Texas for doing what it did at all. We probably disagree on that. We definitely disagree on that, but at the same time, I actually do not think the Constitution is clear on this question whatsoever, which is why you have this ping ponging back and forth in
the court. And the other thing that's probably worth mentioning is this flood of people that have come into the country over the course of the Biden administration is not the same as what's happened before, where you have people who are actually illegally crossing the Rio Grande and then
sneaking into different parts of America. That's still happening, But I don't know how much this law even affects what's happened over the last couple of years because so many people right now are here on temporary humanitarian parole, and
that's basically Republicans. In my own entire objection to what Joe Biden has done is that it's created the system of mass humanitarian parole in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands a year, and so if you're here in humanitarian parole, you're not getting deported by Texas police or any.
What Texas would have to do is then go find people who've actually been in Texas for like ten years but are undocumented and don't have that paperwork protection. And then they wrote into the law that you can't arrest people what in hospitals, schools, and churches, but they can go everywhere else and try to And then how do they guess, like are they just just papellis and they're just asking people for papers? Like on the streets of San Antonio or Austin you set up and that was Arizona?
Was that traffic stops?
I remember?
Right? Yeah?
Right? So then exactly yes? And so then do you have Texas rangers setting up checkpoints like in cities throughout Texas so that everyone who's walking down this particular street has to go through this checkpoint. So all the people who are like cheering this like you're potentially opening the door for a papers please society. And okay, now that now they're asking for immigration papers. If I really want to pander to to the right, what if they start asking for vaccine.
Passport but blue versus red stage Yeah right.
You want you? Does that sound cool?
Like checkpoints where you have to not just have your immigration papers in order, but all your other papers.
You have to be up to date on all of their you.
Know, you can't have any back taxes paid, no lean, no leans against your house because you know you didn't pay.
You your water bill.
Gun permits yeah yeah yeah, pat you down.
You have a gun.
You have a gun permit?
Yeah No. I mean, I think it goes back to what we were talking about in the block about Trump arrests on the being on the cusp of careening down the slippery slope oligarchical doom spiral where everyone in power is just constantly one upping each other in response to what they perceive as a norm breach. Well, we're going to just keep breaching norms until we get to that point. Now. I genuinely again, I don't think the constitution is clear.
I think Texas is in a very real dilemma where the Biden administration's policy has radically transformed Texas, has created in those border cities serious safety concerns, serious public health concerns, serious welfare concerns, like I mean the literal welfare of these communities like Alpasso, where you have people in tragic circumstances, sleeping on the streets, in dirty conditions, not enough to eat, you know, these uncertain futures, and it's a real problem
for Texas and Texas should be able to try to take steps to disincentivize people from coming into the state if that's the will of the voters and the Republican representatives, I mean small are Republican representatives. I do think it is. There's a substantive question here. I think the Constitution doesn't have an obvious solution, which is why the stuff ping pongs through the courts and why again, basically, you can't
do anything in Congress because we are an oligarchy. There's no way to get around the fact that Congress should be acting in these cases. And there's just no way for you know, you have the bill HR.
Two that got to give at some point, though, right you'd.
Think although under Biden were up to uh several millions, uh just conservative estimates around four million people. And if that's not what's going to give.
I'm still shocked that Republicans didn't take the all of the authorities that Democrats were ready to hand to the executive when it came to immigration, which then a Steven Miller type in the Trump administration could have ripped wide open and done extraordinary amounts of damage if he wanted to. But for political reasons they said no because it's you know, it's not enough, and they didn't want to give Democrats a win.
Well, Trump was willing to negotiate with Pelosi on DAKA. I mean, that's what it.
Been doing back in the day.
Yeah, he was. And you know, obviously that got stopped because probably people like Steven Miller were so upset that Trump even flirted with that.
But yeah, yeah, so and talk deep state. So New York Times has deep state trending by with with it with a very interestingly chosen, really bizarre kind of decision to make this like a six or seven minute opinion video.
By the opinion pages.
So it's not I'm sure the reporters over at the Times would want me to reiterate over and over that this was the opinion side of the New York Times that did this, not the kind of news reporting side, because I'm sure they're like, oh my goodness.
What is this.
Uh so we're not we don't, we're not going to play the video. This is there there their copyrighted material. We'll let you go over and you can check it out over at the over the New York Times. But essentially, what it's it's kind of it's it flirts with being satirical at times like it it comes in with like this heavy tone that they're going to kind of investigate the Trump administration's claim that a deep state has really
kind of taken over the government. And they go to the EPA and talk to somebody who you know, is in charge of water quality. They go to somebody in NASA. We can move off the element now if you want. They go to somebody that you know who created it. Basically this program that showed that you can kind of hit an asteroid or a meteor and send it off course, you know which anybody who has seen Don't Look Up can say, you know what, forget the metaphor about climate change.
If we don't want to get hit by an actual comment, it be nice to study how to like deflect a comment rather than like it don't look up spoilers like leave it to the tech guys.
You're talking about how great SDI was in the nineteen eighties and how much you supported Star Wars.
There you go, yeah, I meant got to work those got to work out those lasers so you can target the meteors and save planet from extinction. Basically they talk to a bunch of bureaucrats who are doing like genuinely good work and saying like we have we have uncovered the deep state. So there's there's a lot to unpack about this argument. I guess we can just roll through this first, Elon Musk.
Bringing the nuance.
They are the mouthpiece of the state, help helping to get this thing trending, though probably didn't need much help because of how kind of absurd the whole thing was, so we.
Can take it, take it piece by piece.
By the way, that is a man who has how much how many billions in.
States that well is more deep state than this guy. He is the deep state. Yes, yeah, Elon Musk is the deep state.
So it is kind of interesting that.
It is getting But although he's starting to surface like he's so you know, he's gotten so powerful, he's not even deep state anymore. So two things. One, to me, the deep state that Trump is often referring to is like the CIA and the National Security apparatus that you know that he believes correctly kind of tried to undermine his his presidency, Like that's that's really what he means, what his And I'm curious if you agree with me
on this. What his more ideological right wing allies mean by deep state is actually the EPA and the broader administrative states. That's such an interesting but they wanted that that's the deep state.
They want to disband it.
Where if I bet if you said that Trump they're saying the EPA is the deep state, you'd be like, what are you talking about? You know, I'm sure he's annoyed by the EPA when they get in his way around development projects.
But when he's talking deep state.
He's talking Russia Gate and spying on his campaign and all and all of those types of things, right, Like those are like.
I think that's a really interesting point. I was thinking about this yesterday, but I think you put it. I wasn't thinking about in the word the way that you put it, which I think is really well done. Because there's the deep state that is sort of the Schedule F priands of people like Groundo. Santa's Schedule F would basically allow the president. But I love this proposal. I love Schedule F. I think it's in the New.
York Times video. They warn't about Schedule F, which would what allow basically allow the administration to root out a bunch of civil servants without kind of the kind of worker protections that have been built up over time.
And the idea in conservative circles is that basically, at vast bureaucratic institutions like the EPA for example, any given president really doesn't have control over his own executive agencies like the EPA actually, thanks to Richard Nixon, falls under executive powers, meaning you are the one, the president is
the one who's technically in charge of these bureaus. They say, with the vast growth at some of these organizations, Department of Labor, et cetera, they are not really under the president's executive perview constitutional perview because they're so powerful on their own. This is being litigated in the Chevron case that's going through the Supreme Court right now, which will
be huge news when it's decided around June. But basically executive powers is the question of Schedule F. And so yes, when some people say deep state, I think they do really mean like the EPA, whatever, as when I say it, I typically only mean the National Security Apparatus. But I think the word, to your point, has been used interchangeably, which allowed the New York Times to sort of construct this giant s draw man about how gosh, what is
the quote from this video that's so good? There's one quote that I particularly love from the video about how you're right. It is kind of like it's kind of tongue in cheek and then also kind of not tongue in cheek, you know, like they tried to they tried to like sort of be very clever about it.
Well you're looking for it.
I'll make the point that I think that what a lot of Trump's allies are doing is weaponizing his and his supporters hostility to the national security deep state in their unrelated attack on the rest of the government.
Right, Like, their real.
Goal is to get rid of the EPA and the NLRB and Department of Labor, Department of Education. They want to get to get rid of it. They've always wanted to get rid of all this cfp B. Whereas whereas most of I think Trump's base like the CFPB, Like if you tell them what the cfp B does, it's like the place that you can go to complain if
you get ripped off by a corporation. And and they're going to like they've paid back billions of dollars to Americans and uh and go after fraud, but you know, engaged in by corporations or the FTC breaking up, breaking up monopolies and stopping mergers that would be harmful to consumers, workers, environment, et cetera. Like most of Trump's base, I've been it's like, no,
that's that's a good thing. Do you like Cowley and uh and you know, and on other kind of maga Senators people new right folks are totally into, you know, that element. But the kind of corporate wing is not at all into what Lena Khan is up to and would love to kind of make her collateral damage of an attack on.
The deep state.
Yeah, it's just quote unquote deep state in the national security sense.
Yeah. I mean again, like I'm hardly a libertarian or part of the corporate wing of the conservative sphere, but I think, you know, there's this argument especially I actually wrote a piece a couple of years ago called like the culture something like the War on energy is part
of the culture war something like that. I don't remember exactly what the headline was, but basically, from a conservative perspective, the EPA various regulations that come out of the EPA, which is actually what's on the docket in the Chevron case. What's that issue in the Chevron case that's going through the Supreme courts right now about how these agencies can act on their own versus you know, through various other exercises of constitutional power, whether it's from Congress or the
President of United States. That's you know, sort of what you have is unelected people in Washington, d c. Through some of these agencies making decisions that should be made on a state or local level, or should be made by the President themselves, or at the under the authority the president themselves. And technically they are acting under the authority of the President themselves. But the question of whether that power has become overly broad is a very real one,
and it does. You know, there are corporations that really love these executive agencies because they feel like they have the revolving door power and can bend them to their will. And so if you disempower the agencies, consolidate some of them, Like I wouldn't fully get rid of the Department of Education, which has been a goal of the conservative movement for many, many years, but dramatically shrink it down. I think that
would give teachers unions less power. It certainly would give teachers unions less power, but it would empower them more on the local level. So anyway, all that is to say, the conflation is a real problem for the right because there are obviously consensus points between people like you and me on the national security deep state. Those are not consensus points at all on the broader executive power question.
And there's an interesting unchallenged assumption in the New York Times video where they can saying that these you know, these government people are doing this good work for you. Trump wants them to work for him. Yeah, But the unchallenged assumption there is that the president doesn't work for the people like you. Actually don't you want the bureaucrats to work for the president? Now for the New York Times,
they don't if the president is Trump. And during you know, twenty seventeen, you had all of these cases of of bureaucrats and I cheered them on undermining Trump and like pursuing because that's that's a political struggle. But you know, you'd have these social media accounts that would like go
rogue against the Trump the Trump administration. But if you think about it from a shoe on the other foot perspective, Let's say a Bernie Sanders, you know, Pregaza gets elected president and he has an agenda, radical agenda that he wants to accomplish, and a bunch of the bureaucrats don't like his agenda and work to sabotage it. I would be outraged. Mm hmm, Like, I know, I didn't elect you. I elected Bernie to implement this agenda, implement his agenda.
Yes, so I get like so.
The Times has an interesting kind of contradiction there that they need to work out.
Yeah. Their quote is when we hear deep state, instead of recoiling, we should rally. We should think about the workers otherwise known as our public servants, that every day superheroes who wake up ready to dedicate their careers and their lives to serving us. These are the Americans we employee. Even though their work is often invisible, it makes their
lives better. But if Donald Trump is re elected in an act scheduled, if that could change, he would have the power to evsterate the so called deep state and replace our public servants with people who work for him, not us. Of course, from the perspective of like the real left, yes, the revolving door at the EPA between Exon Mobile is a very real thing.
Do they really work for us or do they work for Exon Mobile their future employees? Now, like some of these agencies are you know, doing great work like that, like the FTC.
That we mentioned.
But if I had one criticism editorially kind of stylistically of the Times video, it mocks the entire idea, and so it's you're never going like it was. It was clearly intended for people that already agree with them, yeah, to like buck up their their take rather and like look, look how you know ridiculous these people are that don't understand that.
You know, NASA does great work and they it's great work.
And the late Department of Labor, you know, that's the other one they mentioned, Department of Labor rescuing thirteen year olds from working in slaughterhouse.
It's like, although it's not doing a great job of that either.
Which means that we need to fund them more, not do more, not do less.
It means we need to cut down the revolving door problem of industry lobbying. The Department of Labor rind closed doors.
But it's it's there's there's no persuasion attempt in the video at all.
It just it just mocks the entire notion.
And so which, okay, you know that's that's their editorial choice if they don't want to try to persuade, and maybe The Times is just given up on trying to reach an alternative audience that doesn't already agree with them. But that would be a shame because of how you know, hegimonic they are at least over mainstream media.
Well, Brian, you have a great story that you reported out over at the Intercept Intercept about Honduras.
Fun.
This is a fun one.
Tell us what the hell is going on?
So we can put this put this one up on the screen here.
So the story went up last night over at the Intercept and it's a complicated, but not that complicated story. So if you're just listening, the headline on this one is Honduras ratchets up battle with crypto libertarian investors rejects World Bank court. The subheadline after the Honduran president repealed a law granting unfettered authority to outside investors. Crypto keistadors took to this to a World Bank arbitration court. I'm pleased with myself for crypto keystadors love it.
I think that's I think that's a good one.
Let's start with the initial irony that this that these are crypto libertarians who are using the basically one of the great biggest examples of a globalist institution, which would be the World Bank. Like they're supposed to hate the World Bank. Instead they're using the World Bank.
Ron Paul raged against the World Bank for.
Years and now and now these crypto bros are trying to use the World Bank to force Hondoras to do fill in the blank. I'll explain what they're doing here. So for this you have to back up to two thousand and nine. You could start. So Manuel Zelia, as the president at the time of Honduras, is left leaning president who starts to try to reform the constitution or try to challenge the limits on running for another term. The military overthrows him in a coup which was supported
by the United States. It does not appear that it was orchestrated by the United States.
Maybe we'll learn more.
There are a lot of ties between the coup lotters and the United States officials. Regardless, Hillary Clinton a State department like immediately is pleased by the coup and supports kind of a new person taking power. After Zelaya is ousted, there are then, you know, kind of bogus rough elections that are held that see portfolio. Lobo Sosa, right wing,
right wing president take power in Honduras. He immediately moves to undo all of the worker protections and the land reform and the other kind of left wing social policy that Zalaya was putting into place. At the same time, the head of the National Congress, Juan Orlando Ornandez, puts forward legislation that will carve out up to a third of Honduras for these radical liber this radical libertarian idea, which is that you can just have this like this
American corporation. You can have this territory and it's called a z and you can create your own laws. You will be a sovereign government. You can you can create a city, you can you can pretend that you are an actual government and that we will honor you as a government. And they do all sorts of like insane things like based on the amount of property you own,
is how many votes you get in the election. It's like it's like how libertarian, you know, you can get rid of pedophilia laws like it's like a libertarian kind of fever dream. They take bitcoin as like, you know, as kind of legal tender in these areas.
Did you watch Anakapolco by the way, in Hi. It was a great documentary about an attempt that basically do this.
And so they're trying to do this all over the world, but Honduras is one place that they picked on and it did not end well, by the way, I'm surprised then. Well, and so the Supreme Court of Honduras at the time says, you can't do this, this is this is unconstitutional. Hernandez, as the President of Congress, sacks a bunch of Supreme Court justices, puts in new Supreme Court justices and amends a constitution and says and the new justices are like, actually, oh, this is this is totally fine.
You can do this.
Hernandez then takes power after Lobo Sosa implements these these z laws.
Why are we talking about Hernandez?
Lobo Sosa, his his brother Tony Hernandez, who's a congressman, was a well known narco trafficker, like one like who prosecutors federal US federal prosecutors later said was moving monumental amounts of cocaine now and and also that he was funding the campaigns of the past two presidents, his brother and the one before him. Now, remember that Zealia was overthrown in two thousand and nine ostensibly because he was
trying to extend to a second term. Well, lo and behold, all of a sudden, the new Supreme Court that Hernanda's put into place doesn't have problems with new terms anymore. And so in twenty seventeen, he runs for re election, funded by narco traffickers, again through incredibly irregularity. It's just ridiculous, ridiculously fraudulent election. He claims victory, and the Trump administration
quickly recognizes him and says, this is our man. You know we Hernan Hernanda's president going to continue to be This is while America knows that he's deeply tied at the hip with drug traffickers. So he finally leaves office in twenty twenty one, and by then he's lost usefulness to the United States. So, along with his brother, the president is himself arrested and indicted and earlier this month, convicted of being a co trafficker. So the Hernandez brothers
are currently sitting in American prisons. Meanwhile, Shiamura Castro, who is the wife of Zelia, wins in the twenty twenty one presidential election legitimately on kind of a left wing platform that she's going to fight back against this narco corruption. She's going to roll back these kind of right wing policies, and she's going to bring in Zelia's agenda of the land reform of worker rights, and she promises that she's going to kick these crypto bros out of the country,
that this is obscene. We're not turning our country over to these guys. So she very quickly passes through the National Congress a repeal of these laws. If there was sovereignty and democracy in Honduras, if that's what we respected, that would be the end of it. Be like, hey, yeah, your coup government handed over a bunch of the country to you. But now your coup government is in prison, a federal prison in the US. So you lose, you pack up and go home. No, of course that's not
how it goes. So the crypto crowd sue goes to the World Bank, which has en up you know, through the Central American Free Trade Agreement, had set up this obscure court that is that is part of this this theme that developed over the last few decades called basically investor settlement dispute resolutions, so that you take the you take a sovereignty out of the question, and you have like the World Bank or the WTO or some other global financial institution sets up an arbitration court, and if
a corporation has a problem with a government, they take it to that court rather than rather than having to go through you know, Honduran courts. The idea being that these governments are so corrupt they can't be trusted. But the actual idea being that the corporations can corrupt the global financial institutions and win and win judgments there that they can then get an American court to enforce and then they can start seizing Honduran property all over the world.
So the response from Shiamora Castro was, you know what we're at, We're leaving this World Bank court. We're not playing this game. We're out of here.
And so she did that. Last week.
I spoke to the Commissioner that she is appointed to oppose these these crypto bros. He said that the World Bank Court has acceded to its request to leave. I reached out to the crypto folks for comment. Uh, they said, it's unconstitutional. She can't just walk away from this court. The Honduran government tell me, know, like, that's not at
all what the policy is. You know, it takes Congress to reach a treaty, but you can walk away from this court, like the treaty allows a mechanism for you to walk away.
What I think will still happen is they'll continue this case.
It might even win an arbitration ruling, you know, you know, in absentia, and then they'll start and force seeing this judgment against Honduran assets all over the world, exacerbating the problem for you know, the economic problems for Honduras. The crypto dudes are suing for eleven billion dollars.
I think that you can google this, but.
Honduran National Government's annual budget is something like seven billion. The GDP of Honduras is like thirty billion. The context, of course, is that this has led to a surge in migrants coming to the northern border as the narco traffickers took control. In the wake of this kind of US supported coup an attempt to like turn it into some libertarian paradise.
This is such an incredible story. The narcos, by the way, that have been tried in court by the US, part of their defense has been that they were on really friendly terms with the US government. It's one of the paragraphs the US had no evident problem with that free willing narco state. Well, Hernandez was an off and remained useful. Yet once Castro took power in a backlash of the US field corruption, the U United States suddenly rediscovered its respect for the rule of law and the sanctity of
contracts with US investors. Unfortunately, probably going to see something similar play out in Haiti in the days and weeks
to come. This is a very interesting story in the ongoing saga of the marriage between crypto and Power's similar to kind of how the Internet started in not even how the Internet started, but how the Internet kind of took off in the nineties and the aughts, as you know, the sort of jungle the wild wild West in a great way, A lot of Americans saw this as like the frontier, and then quickly it was captured by powerful interests.
Silicon Valley used to see themselves as the cowboys, and some of them still do, like Jeff Bezos and his dumb cowboy hat. But you have seen the marriage between people like Elon Musk. As we were talking about earlier, talked about how the New York Times is the mouthpiece of the state. Elon Musk is tied at the hit to the.
State requires an authoritarian government. It turns out, so now crypto and again unaccountable.
Well, Paul was right about the World Bank, by the way, I think we've talked about that before. But the marriage of crypto and power, the marriage of crypto in the World Bank, that's it seems to be a pretty interesting statement on the direction of crypto.
It sure is. And I can wrap by saying that, like the going and going to comment for this company Prospera, which is the one that is suing for eleven billion dollars, was one of the more interesting.
Kind of exchanges I've had.
So I reached out to the communications department for the company and they wrote back.
And then I can send these to producers. We can put them up.
They wrote back and said, you'll be hearing from the office of the Technical Secretary. And I'm like, oh, so they're really going with soul, we're a government thing. And so then I hear from Jorge Colleendres and his signature says Technical Secretary, Republic of Honduras. But then under it it says the Republic of Honduras. Yeah, Republic of Honduras. Then underneath there's his manager General Service Provider. Like this
this this interesting blend of public and private. And he says, you know, dear Ryan, attached to will find my office's statement on the unconstitutional withdrawal from ic SID by the Honduran government, and then attaches this this letter which has may we can, I can, I'll give this producers too. It's got it's got seals on it. It's got like government signature, is it like it really like is saying that it is a government And they say in the
in the beginning of the statement. A Prospera ZED is a local government and special economic zone of the Republic
of Honduras. It is governed by the Technical Secretary, a Honduran citizen by birth, appointed by the Government of Honduras and empowered by Article three twenty nine of the Honduran Constitution and the Zeed Organic Law to oversee the implementation of new policies and rules designed to foster economic development, facilitate job creation, attract national and foreign direct investment, and safeguard the fundamental rights of the workers and residents of
this special jurisdiction. So like they're all in on the idea that like they are an actual government that has been created by the Honduran government, and that the Honduran government cannot undo the creation of that government.
You know what special Economic Zone sounds like to me is like United Fruit owning the railroads. It's just it's the echoes are really really strong here. And then you have the United States suddenly rediscovering the rule of law because they want to protect corporate interests if that's what ends up happening, and it's echoes of the past are very strong in this case Special Economic Zone.
What's funny, though, is then I also got a second reply.
So the.
Comms folks sent me off to the government, local government, but then somebody else from the corporation also as I sent it to a big channel, somebody else got it, and they're like, I'm busy, I can't respond now, but and sent like a five hundred word response which was basically saying Honduras is basically in league with like Cuba and Venezuela and we're fighting for fighting for freedom.
Yes, so we got yeah.
I mean that's also just all of these echoes of the past in this case study, where it's like, I don't want to sneer at people, whether they're in America or Honduras or you know, people who really love Bukele who had a failed crypto experiment. But it's there are good reasons that people sort of and they probably would find common ground with the two of us on a lot of issues, Like hardcore libertarians that really believe in the vision of crypto and the mission of crypto. I
don't want to come across as sneering about that. And similar in the past. I mean there are people who.
Yeah, and this is controversial stuff within the crypto world, Like a lot of crypto people are like this is this is crazy, Like you try to do your floating cities and realize that that wasn't going to work, so now you're just going to like third world countries and trying to just take territory there. Yep.
And a lot of really great visions get derailed by billionaires derailed by billionaires and captured by their interests, and they end up ruining people with good intentions lives in the process.
All Right, I just sent back the emails perfect.
So if you're watching this, you probably saw them. I haven't seen them yet. I look for it. I'll have to watch to see the emails, f Ryan. This has been another fun edition of Counterpoints.
Always always a good time here.
We got to talk about Honduras. We got to watch the State Department.
Yeah, and there's a hearing this afternoon or this morning that I'm headed to now where the Assistant Secretary donlu is going to be solo testifying at the house. He's the State Department official who basically nudged Imran Khan out of power yes back in twenty twenty two, so it'll be interesting to see if he gets questions about that or the US is response to the brazenly stolen election of February eighth.
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But only if you guys do a couple more subscriptions.
Yeah, flood flood us with subscriptions.
Today and then we'll do a Friday show.
Then we'll take them to Crystal and Sager and say, look, the people are calling clamoring for Counterpoints.
Friday, but not yet.
So for now, we'll see you next Wednesday.
Sounds good to see you guys next Wednesday.