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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints dot com. Let's move on, because there is a sheer level of stupidity that began with a doge but has
now morphed into full fledge insult of people's intelligence. I think Signalgate was a major demarcation point where they were like, we're going to lie to you, and we are going to force MAGA to debase themselves to cover up somebody who's clearly leaking, somebody who ideologically and opponents are already good enough reason we shouldn't even be in the White
House in the first place. And then also turn it into a thing where we're supposed to accept his explanation that this number got sucked into his phone and we're all just supposed to move past it, and that Elon's technical experts were on top of it. Then we have the formula where we take four and we multiply it by one fourth.
Okay, you know what I mean.
There are teachers of grade school math saying what the fuck is going on here?
And we have a week of a tariffs.
Three of my kids, including the eight year old, could do that.
No literally, by the way.
So then we have a week of tariffs, tariffs that are not negotiating. We're manufacturer crashing the stock market. There's no exclusions, and now.
Tariffs are off. It's our of the deal.
Except he says he did it because he got spooked. It's the same thing. And this is a transition to the cope thing where they demand that you debase yourself to the point where there's always logic. It's not stupidity that you must accept their word that you yourself can never put yourself in the mind space of Donald J.
Trump.
And I mean, look, I think they're losing a lot of people, first of all, and second, it's just for anyone out there, like, please, I'm pleading with you to like think for yourself.
I don't know why it's so difficult.
You'd be amazed if you look at comments and all these other people are anybody who is willing to call this out for what it is. They're just like, oh, you know you this was part of the strategy all along. It's like he said, it's because he got afraid. Yeah, and they're like, yeah, but it's not mutually exclusive.
You know.
Trump yesterday said that he makes decisions based on he said, flexibility and his gut. And it reminded me that we've moved so far as a country that it used to be a joke.
Do you remember in two.
Thousand and two when Bush said I make decisions from my gut. He was ridiculed by the American people.
That's right.
I actually tweeted that yesterday. I tweeted the Bush quote. Nobody even got the reference. This was once this was a scandal that this guy's decisions from a gut about who we're gonna bomb. So that's the level of where we're at now, Yeah, that's the level.
Indeed, indeed, it is literally so just think about this. How many people were out two days ago saying that the specific terraf regime that Trump had imposed, including the absurd four times point two five formula that has no basis than anything, that this was genius, that this was going to lead to a golden age of America, that we were going to have this manufacturing revival, that Trump was so strong because he was doing this in the face.
Of market turmoil. He wasn't going to be a Panican. They were arguing in.
Favor of a very specific terror regime and saying that it was brilliant and great and wonderful and going to do all sorts of great things for the country. And then on a dime, when he backs off of it, they go from what is money anyway, and who cares about the stock market? To like, oh my god, the greatest stock market gains in history.
Art of the Deal. It literally is.
That meme come to life where he puts the tariffs on and they say this will create jobs. And then he takes it off and they say art of the deal, and then he puts them on and they say this.
Will create jobs.
Literally that so our producers put together a little mashup of some of the things that Republicans have been saying, starting with Caroline Levitt, who actually does the meme herself, where they were all insisting this isn't a negotiating tool. This is what's happening. These are in place, it's bold, it's brilliant, etc. Right up to the moment that Trump decides to change, and then he's a masterful economic genius.
Art of the deal. Let's take a listen.
The President was asked to answer this yesterday. He said he's not considering an extension or delay. I spoke to him before this briefing. That was not his mind's He expects that these tariffs are going to go into effect and there will be a ninety day pause on the reciprocal tariffs as these negotiations are ongoing, and the tariff level will be brought down to a universal ten percent tariff. Many of you in the media clearly missed the art
of the deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.
Would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiation, Well, we'll look into that.
Will you do a ninety day pause in which you consider.
That or built?
Yeah, you know, I think that the President is going to decide what the President's going to decide.
Here's the thing, this is not a negotiation.
There is no postponing.
They are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.
That is sort of obvious.
What I find so frustrating about the conversation around tariffs is that we all agree on the problem. We all agree that the de industrialization of America led to the downward mobility of the American working class, deaths of despair, people working multiple jobs and not being able to afford the American dream. We all agree that it is deeply unfair for the American middle class to be bearing the burden of unfair tariffs from other countries. We all agree that it is great for the.
President to have leverage in order to demand reasonable things like that country stop allowing fentanyl to murder one hundred thousand Americans every year, and that Mexico do its part to police its own border. And yet when somebody has the courage to show up and stay at Wall Street, screw you.
I am waging war.
I'm waging class warfare on behalf of the American working class. And you elites and Wall Street, you do what you need to do because I'm not going to stop fighting for the American working class.
So did the did the elites on Wall Street win? Now that he's back to the way it's Scott Besson said something, so where I can put this up on the screen D two. This quote from him had gone sort of virally. Says, for the last four decades, Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before. But for the next four years, it's Main Street's turn. I guess it is once again Wall Street's turn.
Soccer, Yeah, that's right.
One of my friends trung Fawn on Twitter, he was like, it was Wall Street's turn April twenty twenty five to April twenty five. Listen, it just demands too much stupidity. If you have an ounce of self respect, you have to understand this for what it is.
Put the Trump truth up there on the screen. D three.
The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago.
Don't be weak, don't be.
Stupid, don't be a panic in a new party based on weak and stupid people. And then he can't come out two days later and he says, I'm doing this because people are afraid, and you know there's other flashing signs that anybody with a fucking brain knows is dumb.
JD. He hasn't tweeted in like.
Five or six days, all right, he re emerged to tweet about.
I mean he's been like retweeting. Yeah, yeah, you know. Usually when they go hard in the paint.
It's on something that they know is politically palatable and or good for them.
Silence, all right.
Same with the many of the I mean even the best, with like MAGA influencers and all these other folks. He looks so stupid. They spent an entire week justifying this. I mean, I can tell you this, you know, for me, as people know, I'm pro tariff, even a ten percent tariff. I'll give you an argument for it later if we want to talk about it in terms of if we want to talk about how it actually prevents transhipment, et cetera.
But at a certain point it feels foolish to dignify it with the justification and response whenever it is so ad hoc and unrooted in any seriousness that we just have to sit here and be like, what are we doing? What are we all doing here? You know, we're just and you know, lost in the hilarity because it is funny. At some level, is people's lives, people's businesses. You know, maybe we'll ask Ryan about this, but he elevated a post yesterday, and this is an actual business who has
a question here. Our customers pre ordered our product for as low as fifty nine dollars.
We have a product that is ready to ship.
The tariffs will now cost US one hundred and eighty nine dollars per unit. Should we Number one wait until it gets better? Number two ship now and eat the tariff costs. Three cancel the order and eat the manufacturing costs.
What does he do? What? What would you do? I don't know what I would do. Maybe I would wait. Hope I can.
Hope I'm in a financial position where I can wait ninety days to make sure I don't have to book any revenue. Hope I'm in Or maybe I'm in a financial position where I have to eat back of the napkin. Math one hundred and twenty dollars costs on a product where maybe my margin was ten percent, you know, to start off with or three, cancel the order and then.
Eat the cost of having produced the damn thing in the first place.
That's right.
Take that and multiply it by I don't know, twelve percent of all US trade. The US economy's worth roughly fifteen trillion, So okay, I mean you can do math. That's over trillion dollars.
It's been infected.
And here's the thing.
If you're Jeff Bezos, you could get an audience with the president.
You can make your case.
Actually, I will let me return to that, because there's a story I want to.
Okay, Yeah, if you're you know, if you're Jeff Bezos, if you're the Walmart CEO, whoever that is. Now, you know, if you're one of the big guys, you can get on the phone with him.
You can make your little trek tomorrow lago.
You can plunk down he's you know, you can get a private audience for him for five million dollars. The price is right there, very easy to make that transaction. If you are any number of small to medium businesses across the country, you don't have that opportunity. And Trump himself has said I'm going to be open to giving some companies carve outs, which goes back to like part of maybe the whole part of what he really likes
about this is he loves being in that position. He loves the CEOs calling him, flattering him and buttering him up and begging on bend Adney for their little carve out for the thing that they need for their business to survive.
He loves the heads of state.
Coming to call and paying homage to him, and you know, having to having to grovel for some little exception or whatever. And so you know, if you're one of the big guys, you may be able to successfully do that, but if you are the vast majority of businesses, that option is not going to be available to you. So you're just going to have to deal with whatever the hell his gut decides that day is going to be the global economic regime.
Yeah, so stories, this is the problem with all this news is that I'm not actually we're not able to really dig into anything. So literally, this just happened buried in all the tariff news. If you'll remember all that talk about Nvidia H one hundred chips was highly advanced chips. Well, it turns out, and this was publishing a trade publication that the Trump administration is likely to drop the export control on Nvidia's most highly advanced chips.
To China.
Now, how exactly did that come up? That's a massive reversal. Oh yeah, and semiconductor and chip policy. It turns out that Jensen Wang, the CEO of Nvidia, bought the one of those five million dollar things where he was wanted to go and have dinner with Trump, And in his dinner with Trump, it was like, listen, there's no reason to do this.
Now.
Five million is nothing compared to the market cap of Nvidia, one of the most valuable companies in the entire world, and he probably just saved himself literally hundreds of billions of dollars on their bottom line over the next decade. But look, agree or disagree on the China on the chip thing. I happen to think there's no reason at all that we should be exporting them. Maybe you're in support. Do you think that's the process which we should go
about exactly. It's it's ridiculous. And that is the ultimate issue with all of this, you know, and even even his treasury and his Commerce secretary, they had some lines which theoretically I would even be in agreement with. They're like, no exceptions and no exclusions.
Why is that good?
No lobbying that means that no, you know, special cases, winners and losers at least theoretically will.
Apply to everybody.
Yep.
But now Trump actually just yesterday said that maybe we will have exclusions because why because of stuff like this?
And you know, I mean just again, at a.
Basic level, this Art of the Deal and all of a sudden sense, it's like, I just don't know what he needs to do to push some of these folks into reality. I there's the mindlessness and the team instinct on all of this. It's like, what what does he need to do, like literally make you poor? Even at that point, I'm not so sure. I honestly I'm not sure. I don't think it would do anything.
Favrou Actually at a to read, he said, art of the Deal. Number one, impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets, create the conditions for global economic collapse. Number two, make zero deals with zero countries. Number three pause tariff's Number four to clare victory.
Okay.
Also not to me mean how many people who are posting art of the Deal have negotiated like their W two income by like five percent.
It's like, what do you know about art of the deals? Oh? You got your realtor to put in a counteroffer. It's like, what the fuck do you know about negotiation?
No again, listen, I mean, or you want to take it from a business owner who somebody who actually respect We've negotiated deals with some of the biggest companies in the world. Okay, maybe you should listen to me by that logic, but just.
The bottom Let look, I could respect someone more. I actually I don't know if you have. I haven't seen a single person who was previously like, these tariffs are amazing. This is brilliant, delivering for the working classes, telling Wall's dream of the defending the tariff regime as it was, and saying this is glorious for our future. I have not seen one of those people be disappointed that those tariffs are no longer.
Please point not one.
So I could actually respect.
Sort of someone who at least had a consistent position of like, ah, man, I really wish they would have kept those fifty percent tariffs on the SOTHO that would have That was great when that was in place, and I'm sad to see that go. I don't see a sing not one. I have not seen one person say that. Instead, what I see is art of the deal. Like I was two days ago. I was in favor of the crazy formula and the penguins getting tariffs, and I.
Was justifying it all. And who even needs the iPad? You just want that? What is money? Like we all need to pair back.
And then the stock market jumps and he makes this announcement and oh he's so brilliant, he's a genius, this is amazing, etc. Like you should just not You just can't take these people seriously. Just don't take them seriously because they will debase themselves every single time. And if he does something different next week, they'll justify that. And it doesn't matter what it is, does not matter the.
Details of it.
They will work backwards from whatever it is that Donald Trump is doing to their conclusions.
Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Let's go ahead and get to Ryan Peterson. He is the CEO of Flexport. He's the one who really broke the news about that one point five million dollar port call stuff that's about to go into play. He is also such an excellent guest for years now, who is somebody who has broke down all of the supply chain problems with the ports? Remember when what was the Suez Canal was all blocked up like he is a go to source, an odd guest.
He's an odd lots guest.
And the thing is about Ryan is he has such intricate data because he helps all of these global shipping customers that he actually can tell you about the real time impact that he is seeing. We are going to get into the shipbuilding problems and stuff that we've seen, and how somebody who actually has to grapple with this stuff, like for real, moving trillions of dollars of goods all across the world, what this means for them. So let's go ahead and get to him. Joining us now is
Ryan Peterson. He's the CEO of Flexport, as I said, an absolute go to resource of mind for anything concerning global shipping. He really set DC ablaze after he realized and noticed what it's not some sort of terraff regime that is coming in for fine or for customs duties at ports. Let's go and put this up there on the screen because I want him to break it down
for all of us, he says. On April seventeenth, the US Trade Representative's Office is expected to impose fees of up to one point five million per port call for ships made in China and for five hundred thousand to one million dollars if the ocean carrier owns a single ship made in China or even has one on order
from a Chinese shipyard. So Ryan, can you break down just how extraordinary of an imposition that would be and what some of the numbers behind these global shipping companies are with respect to Chinese made ships.
Yeah, and to be close, it's a fee on the owner of the ship or the operator of the ship rather, but obviously they got to pass it through to the people shipping cargo on that boat.
And yeah, well, first off, there's not a single.
Ocean carrier that comes to the United States that I can find that doesn't meet these qualifications that doesn't have at least one ship made in China or one on order from a Chinese shipyard. Chinese shipyards have been dominating recent years. I think they're producing between sixty and seventy percent of the world's container ships and that number keeps growing. They've been and there's almost none made. There were none
made in America last year, no container ships. It's Korea and Japan that they're taking market share originally was Japan.
Korea.
Hyundai built big shipyards back in the nineteen seventies and has been taking first took market share from them, and now it's China leap frogging Korea as a big deal. First off, the obvious trick to avoid paying because it is per port call. And what the obvious trick here is for the ocean carriers to just make fewer port calls. And so instead of stopping it Seattle than Oakland, then La, you just skip the small ports and go straight to LA because you'll save three million bucks by doing so.
And so that's a really bad deal.
I mean, Oakland's a major export hub for all the agricultural products coming out of the Central Valley Seattle. I mean these are just major hubs, and there's a lot of exports going out, and so if the ships aren't stomping there, it means you got to run trucks or trains all the way to southern California hugely inefficient, costly, and it's hurting American exporters, which is sort of like the exact opposite of the stated goals of administration.
That's right, how likely is this to go into effect? And then also to the extent that you can say. And then also even for these larger ports like we all saw in COVID, there was a huge backup and this was part of what crippled the supply chain, and that's part of what fueled inflation that became, you know, the number one political issue and in many ways is
responsible for for Trump ultimately getting re elected. So help us understand some of these pieces of how this will actually all work in practice.
Yeah, it's hard to say how likely it is.
I think in the in the form that was proposed a month ago, they've already started. You know, I did that sweetstorm, and then the next day I heard I got a couple of texts like, hey, people are talking about this in Washington.
And then the next day.
The Wall Street turnal reported that they're considering revising it. I'm not taking credit for that, but it's possible that they are. They've been pretty reasonable about taking feedback from the from I mean, they took feedback from the market yesterday and uh kind of put paused on the Southeast Asia and other pariffs.
So it's possible to build be talking about Ryan.
And that was just art of the deal. That was the plan the whole time. I don't know it's now market anyway.
The heart of the deal, it is like do something crazy and wait, everybody think there's no you know, no hope, and then switcher through at the end. So and the April seventeenth date, I don't think it's set in stone. It's very possible that there's flexibility and that you know, I just said, we can't really say what will happen. The biggest clause in fact in this you mentioned, yeah, there is a there is a what will happen in LA would.
Be congestion like we saw in COVID.
I mean, if all the ships go there at LA or at Long Beach Port just can't keep up. They barely kept up with a twenty percent increase, which is what you saw during COVID. But if you know, all the ships only went there, it would be a massive surge. So but actually there's another clause in here, and this one I think is almost certain to go away because
it's just too bad for American exporters. The other closet that within seven years, fifteen percent of exports from the United States must travel on American made ship crewed by American citizens and there's only twenty three of those container ships in the world.
Today, and none of them go where our exports are going.
These are ships that are serving the domestic ocean freight market, meaning traveling to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto.
Rico as well as you know.
This is called the Jones Act, so you have to in order to travel domestically, you have to be made in America. So it's kind of a Jones Act on steroids. And the Jones Act is I think you can very clearly say Jones Acts of failure.
It was.
It was designed to promote American shipbuilding, and we didn't make any container ships last year, so like we've got to try something else.
That's why I really want to stick to that point because this is very important.
Let's put this one up on the screen, guys.
The next one, which really underscores Ryan's point about the number of ships that were actually built in the United States compared to China. What's the statistic is that China produced more ships in twenty twenty four than all of the United States since post World War two era. Just to give people an idea, as you said, we have not We did not build a single ship in twenty
twenty four. The Jones Act thing that you just brought up reminds me of the tariff discussion, where we have in a regulatory regime which is designed to quote unquote promote shipbuilding by creating a ring around the industry, but simultaneously we give no money to the shipbuilding industry, incentives supply chain all of the industrial production that the Chinese offer. And so what happens you both have a regulatory thing that increases costs while also not building anymore ship So
you have the worst of both of those things. So I'm curious for your reflection based upon that, that policy that they're putting into place, and also the lack of investment right now coming from the White House on any of this.
Yeah.
Actually, well we should know. There was an executive work right last night, and it does.
It does.
It's not clear enough about like what benefits there will be, but a very clearly states hey, we're gonna we're gonna The biggest probably barrier to ship building the United States, by the way, is things like the California Coastal Commission. I mean, good luck trying to make a shipyard on the West coast of the United states.
These guys won't let you.
You know, you can't have a beach hut, like you're not building a ship yard, and so there's it's regulatory. Can you get red tape out of the way. Can you actually allow these things to get built? The model here the real thing that really danger here, And actually I would look at it the same way we're looking I look at these tariffs is if you're just putting up protective barriers and protecting US industry and sort of
coddling our industry. Yes, you might actually make some companies out of that, but what would they be good companies?
Like?
Would they are?
You?
Just because if you just make crappy products and the only reason those can survive is because there's no competition from abroad. All you've done is like hurt the American people on a net basis. What the lesson to learn here is from East Asia where they went and industrialized, and the key requirement of the successful countries that industrialized was that you must export. Your products must be good
enough that people in other countries want. So you don't just give them money, but you give them benefits when they export. You give them encouragement to go and export. And you require it in order to hit subsidies, you must be able to win export markets, and so you actually see advantage Like India tried to make their car companies in India that only serve domestic and were protected from foreign automakers, and their cars didn't improve from.
Like the nineteen fifty to the nineteen nineties.
Malaysia as well, Yeah.
Whereas Japan and Korea actually focused on export markets and made great cars and great companies and kind of took over the world. So if we're going to rein industrialize, it really has to be export oriented. And that's what's so dumb about this policy is like you're going to cap American exporters and decap them and say, hey, you gotta you have to travel on American made ships. Oops, there are none like good luck exporters.
You know, it's like it's really bad policy.
Give us some sense of what you're seeing, you know, from your vantage point economically and how you think you there's sort of like a reaction like Trump's rolled back all the teriffs.
Of course he hasn't.
There's still massive teriffs on China, well over one hundred percent ten percent tariffs almost across the board around the world. So you know, what are you seeing in terms of what the fallout from that could be? When indicate early indications do you have?
Yeah?
So when it was the big reciprocal tariffs on everybody, I mean that was sort of nuclear winter for the international trade community. People were really it was really scary couple of days. We uh for our customers. You know, flex sports designed to ride out anything. We have a really strong balance sheet and we believe deeply that like the technology we're building and over the long run here is just going to be like people will want it, regardless of how much trade there is.
But we're very word for our customers.
In fact, we saw that twenty eight percent of all the ocean of all of our customers that we surveyed, said that they would cancel all ocean freight bookings entering the United States as soon as went into effect. Wow, that we didn't actually see that yet, but that's what they told us they were planning to do. Now, obviously, the ones that aren't China have now said okay, the ten percent week is business as usual basically, and then
China re entered. Ones just got hit with a much bigger tariff and I think a lot of folks are going to be in a world of pain. This is this is really ugly if you're if you're and it's just a huge number of companies, I think you're gonna have mass bankruptcies of companies in the United States if this goes through.
And I don't I.
Personally predict there will be another deal to get done with China. I don't think Trump wants that to be his legacy. Is just like central planning of the economy that puts tons of companies out of you know, overnight out of business and creates unemployment in our country.
Ryan, So there's a ninety day pause, et cetera. Ten percent tariff, but as you just alluded to one hundred and twenty five percent or maybe one hundred and fifty percent, no one is actually clear on that.
What the tariff rate there is.
I believe it's about twelve percent of US What is it twelve percent of trade there? Stands with in terms of goods with China? Since you have some insight into this, what are the categories of goods that are coming over on these ships? Like is it everything furniture? You know, what type of inputs and others. Can we expect to see immediate price hikes, consumer hikes and bankruptcies?
What industry should we be looking at.
Certainly the stuff that's been the hardest to move out of China has been consumer electronics. There's just this whole ecosystem of subcomponent manufacturers that you just can't lift and shift it. So, I mean apparel, things that are were the main input is just cheap labor that largely left China over the last fifteen years are ready because China is no longer the low cost labor provider for the world. It's actually the high skilled manufacturing center, and so it's higher.
It's things that are more intricate that are that then that require lots of subcomponents. So yeah, consumer electronics is the big one. Your iPhone's made in China, you know. So they've got some production and they're shifting more, but it's most of that those things are made in China, computers, TVs and and a broad range of stuff, you know.
But there is some furniture from there. A lot of furniture has already moved to Indonesia and Vietnam, but we have some the Terrafona sofa from China is going to be one hundred and fifty nine percent if I'm doing the math right in my head, or one hundred and fifty four percent. Excuse me, Yeah, it's it's ugly out there.
Wow.
Well, thank you so much. Ryan.
It's really just so useful to get your perspective since you deal with like the nuts and bolts of how this will actually work.
So thank you for taking the time. I know you're extremely busy guy.
That's right, Thank you, Ryan. We appreciate you. Everybody, go follow them on Twitter. The best insights out of anybody out there. Somebody actually does the work.
Thanks dude, Thank you our pleasure.
So we have a few major updates for you with regard to the Trump administration's immigration policy. And let's start specifically with the big anti Semitism crack down, the whole of government, whole of society, anti semitism crackdown, and can
put this up on the screen. So the US Citizenship and Immigration Services they're announcing that they will begin considering alien's quote anti Semitic activity on social media and physical harassment of Jews as grounds to deny immigration benefit requests, including applications for lawful permanent residence status and foreign student
visas per USCIS. Under this guidance, we will consider social media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting anti Semitic terrorism, anti Semitic organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any discretionary analysis when
adjusting immigration benefit requests. This guidance is effective immediately. So, first of all, as you guys likely know, when they say anti semitism, sure they mean actual antise, but they also just really mean any criticism of Israel.
And this is.
Abundantly clear if you look at the students that they've gone after, not for any sort of criminal activity, but literally for things like writing an op ed, sharing things on social media, or being married, being married to the wrong person, thank you, or in some instances there's no indication that they were even involved with the protest whatsoever.
So it truly is now.
And here's the thing again, Sager kind of goes back to our Cokee bloc. Like all of the people who were concerned about social media censorship and cancel culture and weaponization of government against certain viewpoints, etc.
There are few who have been consistent.
The vast majority have nothing to say about every part of the state being used to ban criticism of a specific foreign country, including denying you know, foreign student visas, including denying Okay, you're here, you want to marry an American citizen, you are applying for a green card, all of those sorts of things.
If you have said the wrong thing with.
Regard to Israel Palestine, it is really outrageous. And of course does not just stop with immigrants or permanent residents, mass crackdown across the board on anything that would be critical of Israel.
Well with the anti Semitism and activity, what does it mean? I mean, you know, these terms are supposed to have meaning. Well, if we're going off of what the holocau ihr A definition, then we are literally talking about criticism of a foreign government. And I mean that's part of what is just so sickening. We're talking about subjecting this standard to any potential resident or imigrant to the United States of America based upon
their views of a foreign government. And what's even crazier, and I don't see a lot of the right wingers doing this, is is there like, hey, so it's just it's not any other religion. So you could be anti Christian or anti Muslim or anti Hindu or anti what else?
Am I missing seek sickism for any of these?
And that would be fine, But this is actually that's the problem with these types of exclusions. It also is just genuinely like unskilled based and ideological, which is just as bad as any sort of This is literally just as bad as like a racial quota. We need racial quotas of x amount of black people to come. Can you imagine what people would do. It wouldn't even matter who they are, It's just based on the color of their skin.
Yeah, well we're talking about okay, so freedom speech, freedom and religion famously in the same amendment first Amendment, and so yeah, I mean this is the equal and being like we're just not allowing any Christians that, we're just not allowing any Muslims in, We're just not allowing any Jews.
I mean, if you are basing entry based solely on speech and in particular I mean, listen, I would object on really on the grounds of a wide range of speech, but if you are focused in particular on you are not allowed to have a particular view of our foreign policy of a particular foreign nation.
Like this is just complete insanity. You could not.
The turnaround between basing an entire movement on being anti woke and embracing the most authoritarian woke elements and embodying the state and using all of the levers of the state, including things like.
The HHS, to effectuate your goals.
Like the fact that so few have anything to say about this again tells you how seriously you should take their commitment to literally anything, because this was so central, The anti woke backlash was so so it really was for a time the thing that was holding the Republican Party together. And now they just turn on a dime and are like, oh, they need safe spaces, and you know, this is a microaggression. And here's a college student who
felt bad on campus because of a slogan. So we need to you know, we need to crack down and have arrests and deport people and hold them into detention, et cetera.
It is wild.
This is the worst nightmare of any sort of woke style revolution about the are using the federal government and subjecting it to people, and even for those who are you know like, oh, it's only just immigration. Well, we've already had several US citizens who have literally had their rights denied and been expelled from college as a result
of demands from the United States federal government. These are US citizens who have attended and paid for a full year, four year college degree, who violated no university or no university rules and are being forced out by the government for their attendance to this place. So that in and of itself is professors have also been fired. And again
this is not the government, They're not government employees. We're talking about leveraging the government power of funding or whatever demands and taking over the Middle Eastern Studies department at Columbia University. That is literally out of the anti racist playbook. If you guys have ever had the misfortune the.
Wildest dreams, they could not have achieved this level.
That's what I'm saying.
As I actually read the anti racism book by I've read them both by I Bringing Kenny, he actually proposes similar things to what they are doing now for anti Semitism, going in leveraging the government demand, you know, implementing quotas. I mean, can you imagine if they took over the history department or whatever at the United at at the University of Alabama, that would be insane, that.
Is what they are doing.
Now, that's right, what are we doing here?
And for all of you people like Soccer who are who are here for the mass deportation? Okay, is it really your priority to have huge numbers of ICE agents tracking down some student who posted an op ed who is here legally, by the way, lawfully you know, on a either student visa or legal permanent resident, Like is
that your priority? Because there are finite resources here. So instead of getting the you know, we're going to round up the criminals and the terrorists, instead you're getting like, you know, Mackmood Khalil, who dared participate in some protests, or you're getting the girl who was vanished on the street, disappeared because she dared publish the student newspaper op ed calling for her university to divest from Israel. Like, it's just it's just insanity and hypocrisy all the way around.
And as Sager said, if you think this is just about immigrants, it's not. It's not even close to that, because you already have students who are being punished US citizens students. You already have them calling these protests, investigating
these protests as quote unquote terrorism. There is going to be a huge there already is a huge crackdown against any of the speci It comes at a time too, where they've basically, i mean, Israel has lost effectively the entire American population outside of like Republican boomers.
That's the only there's new polling that came out.
Asking about people's opinions on the state of Israel, and the only demographic group that hadn't really moved and still had a positive opinion of Israel was literally like older Republicans, not even young Republicans. Young Republicans, and I'm talking like under fifty Republicans under fifty. Now Israel is underwater with their opinion. It's only older Republicans are the only ones
who still hold on to this view. So, you know, Ryan said this, and I think it is it offers a little bit of hope, even as it's a very hopeless situation. The Washington politicians had no limit for the amount of slaughter that they would allow Israel and support Israel and ship the bombs for Israel to commit, But
the American people did have a limit, of course. It's you know, they like have completely turned on what has been a multi multi decade long project and really glowing sent bipartisan glowing sentiment around this country.
At a basic level, they are bombarded with propaganda and told that all of these images, which are uncensored and coming out of Gaza are necessary to accomplish an end. And actually even if you look at polling or whatever,
they would buy that in the interim. But now after what is it's April tenth, so eighteen months or so, people are like, yeah, I'm just not buying this anymore, right, you know, I mean, how exactly what these people are paying attention even if you're tangentially paying attention, and the entire podcast ecosystem is moving against them. We had Tim Dillon being like, as America just working for Israel. THEO Vaughn just yesterday is like, I feel like we're owned
by Israel. We didn't even know about it. I mean, you can see this stuff pervading into the public sphere. Even Rogan has said a few things you know about Israel. So look, it's it's getting pumped into the bloodstream in a way that is not it is. You know, it's not explicitly leftists or anything like that, but people are noticing, People are noticing.
Yeah, and having our government seem to bend to the will of Israel is not doing anything in terms of some of the tropes like this is only furthering to fuel the very anti Semitism that you purport to be concerned about. I just want to let me give a quick court update here, because this is really significant. We covered earlier this week Supreme Court siding with the Trump
administration on the Alien Enemies Act. That is, of course the justification the law that was invoked that Trump used to ship hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to this dungeon on Bukelly's Dungeon down in El Salvador with zero due process. Supreme Court says, okay, you can, We're going to lift the temporary restraining order. You can go forward with these but they say you have to provide reasonable notice to
people who you are going to deport under this provision. Now, they didn't define what reasonable notice was, so you know, that left a lot of questions. They also said it can't be done as sort of like a class You have to file these individual habeas petitions in the district where those migrants are being held. So most of the migrants have been moved to Texas and Louisiana. These are
districts that are seemed to be more sympathetic to Trump. However, now the Trump administration has just received two pretty significant court defeats in the wake of that Supreme Court decision. So let's put this up on the screen from Politico. You had two different judges, one in New York and one in Texas, who have now both limited Trump's bid to deport alien enemies. Back to back rulings. Somebody go
ahead and read you the details here. You had one federal judge in Texas on Wednesday, who was a Trump appointee, block the Trump administration from deporting people designated as alien enemies, citing that Supreme Court ruling and warning of the potential for irreparable mistakes. You had another Manhattan District judge who came out with a very similar ruling. This was a
Clinton appointed federal judge. Now, because of what the Supreme Court did, this doesn't mean a blanket restraining order on all deportations. They only apply for those districts, But the Texas one in particular is significant because so many of these migrants are being held in Texas in preparation for these type of flights, and also indicate that you know, the federal judges, whether they're appointed by Democrats or Republicans, have a lot of deep concerns.
Both about there.
There's two pieces here that still have to be determined whether these individuals even qualify as Alien enemies under this act because they have to be proven to be Trended Aragua gang members. We know it can put this next piece up on the screen. We had previous reportings saying, hey, seventy five percent of these people that you shipped off had zero criminal record. Bloomberg did analysis. They found ninety percent of migrants deported to El Salvador had no US
criminal record. So question number one is, okay, is it just they have a tattoo to you you don't like like you are they actually in trend To Aragua?
And question number two.
Is whether this was a lawful invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to begin with, because they're using this, you know, claim that Venezuela has invaded the country by their proxies in Trendo Aragua. Previously, Alien Enemies Act has only been used in like real wartime, like World War One, World War two, that sort of thing. And so this is, to say the least, an extraordinary interpretation that the Trump
administration has gone with. But it seems like even that little opening that the Supreme Court gave of you have to give reasonable notice and there has to be some ability for these migrants to be able to pursue their claims. That seems to have provided the window for these two federal judges to be.
Able to push back. You have two interesting tros.
Were waiting to see what that is as you also, Piasco told us about there's been no merit ruling yet based on that basis, and could be rolled up over to the Supreme Court. Okay, I think that's it for today.
Guys.
Do you have anything else you want to go into? Okay, very good, all right, we got to get we're filming this out of order. We were guest standing by That's why I'm doing this.
All right. We will see you guys later.
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