The interesting divisions going on here in the United States to tell us that this was one that you picked up on, tell us what's going on here.
So Axios picked up on a polling analysis from a guy on substack, which I thought was really interesting because the polls that he was colllating basically were everywhere yesterday. It was like it was almost like the Beltway didn't realize. This is from Bruce Melman on his subtect, Bruce Melman that subsec dot com. Then Axios picked up on it. It's almost like people here in the Beltway, Ryan are
out of touch. He had picked up on this NBC News poll, and then Axios ran this NBC News graph from a deck that Bruce Melman reported on that's found gen Z is less than half as likely as the Baby Boomers to say patriotism, believe in God, and having children are quote very important to them. Now, I think where this is even more interesting is the massive decline.
So it's not just half as likely. It's that you had Baby Boomers somewhere around sixty seventy six percent when it came to the questions of whether patriotism was quote very important, seventy six percent people between the ages of eighteen and twenty six thirty two percent, So yes, less than half is likely. That's coming down from a very high level seventy six percent. Belief in God and religion
sixty five percent to twenty six percent. Huge difference there having children quote being very important fifty two percent to
twenty three percent. And another really big one here America being the best place to live sixty six percent for the baby boomers, thirty three percent for gen Z. That again was from an NBC News poll that was done by Public Opinion Strategies that Bruce Melman picked up on and then actually was reported on, and people were just sending like wildfire throughout like kind of DC media circles yesterday.
I'm not surprised at all by these numbers. I don't know, Brian, Are you surprised at all by these numbers?
Did we cover this when it didn You flag this for us when at first we've.
Covered similar ones, because it does repeatedly show up in polls. This is probably the starkest divide that I've seen generationally. It's not surprising, but when you're asking sort of big questions patriotism and America are the best place to live like very broad themes. To see it show up I think. I mean, obviously it's interesting, but it's not surprising at all.
And this reminds me of what we've talked about on college campuses, and my perspective from the right on the campus protests is washing a lot of this away as anti semitism, lumping it all together with bigotry. When we had that great conversation with Sofia Southi, one of the organizers at Columbia, it's so abundantly clear that this is not anti semitism from her and some of the other organizers. Not to say there isn't actual bigotry and anti semitism,
and we had conversations about that too. It's disgusting. But from many of these students, they have an entirely different worldview. They're approaching consensus. I mean, this is a flip flop. Baby boomers have a consensus on whether America is the best place to live or that patriotism is very important, which they do. Basically, is there at seventy six percent on that gen z not being at seventy six percent on that is approaching a position of consensus on a worldview.
So no kidding. You know, there was polling that found most of college students weren't protesting, they weren't in the encampments, and that, you know, maybe the represent maybe the opinions of some of the hardcore protesters weren't representative of their peers broadly. That maybe the case. But what we're seeing here is pretty clear as to why their other students weren't, you know, picking them up and throwing them out of
their tents. And it's because there is this deep widespread sentiment that America is not the best place to live, that patriotism.
Is not very important, and there was related there was an there's an interesting annual survey that comes out that says that asks people how democratic their country is, and then they'll say, these are the ten countries where you know, people feel like the most democratic.
China was in the top ten.
Like Chinese people, because when people think of democracy, they think of the ability basically of people, or I would say that the ability of the government to respond to the public's majoritarian wishes, like how What was fascinating is that in the top ten there was no correlation between the trappings of procedural democracy like midterm elections parliament, parliamentary elections, presidential elections, and whether or not somebody felt like they
were in a democratic country. Like France was in the bottom top ten they have elections. The US was not in the top ten of feeling what people saying that they felt like they lived in a democratic country. So there were some that were, you know, procedurally democratic, but there were others that were not. But I don't think you can disconnect what those students are feeling from the cost of college too. Like the whole glory of the US for the post World War two era has been our college system.
Take it to the middle class.
Ticket, take it the middle class.
Everybody will, all these old people say, it's the best four years of their life.
Find your purpose, they fulfill your.
Calling, find themselves like they develop intellectually and spiritually. And then they're thrown into them mall of the economy.
But at least they're they're moving upwards.
Well, you're accruing terrifying debt with every year, right, but now you are accruing all of this debt and you're worried that you're just downwardly mobile relative to previous generations.
And so the paradox of those numbers. Is that if you compare kind of the median net worth of an American twenty five year old or twenty year old to basically anyone else in the world, the Americans are doing better. They but they sense that they're losing ground constantly. The thing is they it doesn't help to be told, well, you're ahead now, right, and it's like you're like headed downhill.
But that's what. So you are ahead compared to other places in the world, you are not ahead compared to what was happening and where you could have been in a prior generation. So you see your grandparents.
Compare yourself to people around the world, you compare yourself to previous generations and people here exactly.
Oh yeah, I mean I look at my grandparents' you know, military career, owned a home and had seven kids on one income in the walk area. Like that's incredible and totally unattainable for anybody. Now, So when they can't do an union, when you can't do that, you're looking at sixty six percent of people and baby Bommers saying America
is the best place to live to thirty three percent. Now, patriotism is going to decline, and then you see the having children things, which freaks a lot of people on the rite out only twenty three percent of gen Z saying that's very important to them. Well, how are they supposed to have kids when their ticket to the middle class has left them thrown into the mall with the rungs, having the rungs up the ladder, having been kicked out and broken. It's like, what did you think was going
to happen? What did you think was going to happen? You look at decline and belief in God. I mean, there's just chaos. To your point, this, Bruce Melman substack, this one makes me the most sad in the sixth chart Sunday thing that actually has picked up on. He said, Americans under thirty rating their lives came in sixty second among nations in the World Happiness Report. Americans sixty plus ranked tenth. So if you're over sixty in America, you're
about tenth in the worldwide happiness ranking. If you're under thirty, you're all the way down. It's sixty two. It's tragic. You can understand why that shows up in the other the other numbers pretty pretty easily. When you see such a stark divide.
I found the top ten list here or not, maybe not the whole top ten are no but Bertron the Twitter account posted this. It's from the Alliance of Democracies dot org. You can find find their report. The countries whose citizens most perceive themselves as living in democracy are China, Switzerland, Singapore, Israel, Norway, Vietnam. That's the that's the top that's the top list. There in the Republic of Congo. For those seven countries, more than seventy five percent of people are on the seven
to ten scale. Where they asked the question, think about your country today, how democratic do you think it is? We're zero, not at all democratic, very democratic. China is fascinating. China and Switzerland next to each other, it's super interesting. And then now here's the list of countries where less than half of the people say they live in democracy and which has all the trappings of procedural democracy. Pakistan, which also has the trappings they hold elections. As we've
covered here, people are correct there not remotely democratic. France, Nigeria, Iran, Peru, which recently had its president impeached after the first indigenous president. Basically ever, in Peru, white people quickly impeached him. Morocco, Turkey, Ukraine, they don't even have the procedural trappings of democracy anymore.
They'll get to that eventually.
They say yeah, and so does Blinken, and he's like, watch this drive, but let's actually watch this solo.
I'm Hungary, which has elections, but the election elections are controlled by the right wing government there. The media is completely controlled by the right wing government there. There was an effort to contest the election, it didn't have a hope.
Venezuela and Greece.
So these are the least the people who don't believe that they live in democracies.
Anyway, speaking of oligarchy, Ryan, we have the story from Open Ai to talk about and Scarlet Johansson, and you did promise a story about Scarlet Johansson, so we'll put a pin in that to do it, to keep people watching because it's a good story. But Scarlet Johansson is locked in a battle with sam Altman and open AI, and actually I think locked in a noble battle with
sam Altman and basically one right open AI. Legally, it looks like she's clearly has the law on her side, which is interesting because there's going to be a lot of novel legal battles and decisions coming out of the AI space, and then.
Your term future, we're still intercepted suing them Open Ai. Oh, that's really interesting, robbing content basically for the AI with with a few other small news organizations.
Sarah Silverman, I think is doing something similar. Yeah, absolutely, so let's put this tear sheet from NPR up on the screen. Scarlett johans And says she is quote shocked and angered over the new chat GPT voice, as she should be if you haven't heard the backstory here yet, it's absolutely insane, Like the level of brazenness comes from like only it could only come from Silicon Valley tech bros.
Just reading from the NPR piece here. Lawyers for Scarlett Johansson are demanding that open Ai just close how it developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says sounds uncannily similar to her own. Johanson's legal team has sent open Ai two letters asking the company to detail the process by which it developed a voice the tech company dubbed Sky. Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation that has not been previously reported. After open Ai had
held a live demonstration of the voice last week. Many observers compared it to Johanson's voice in the twenty thirteen Spike Jones romantic sci fi film Her, which, as you may remember, centers on a man who falls in love with the female voice of his computer eye operating system. And if we skip ahead in the elements here, I just want to go ahead and put this next, not the next one, but actually E three up on the screen because it's relevant to what we just read from NPR.
Sam Altman on May thirteenth had just cryptically tweeted her lowercase her, and then the voice comes out. It sounds just like Scarlett Johansson. No, it's just like her in the Spike Jones film Her. So to test this out for yourselves, we're going to play a video that somebody else made comparing open Ai to actually Scarlett Johansson. It's not from Scarlett Johansson, right, This isn't from Scarlett Johansson,
even though it's reading Scarlett Johansson's statement. She did not put this out, her team did not put this out. Someone else made it. But it's a very instructive mashup. So take a listen here.
Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current Chat GPT four point zero system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people. After much consideration and for personal reasons, I
declined the offer. Nine months later, my friend's family in the general public all noted how much the newest system, named Sky sounded like me. When I heard the release demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that mister Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not
tell the difference. Mister Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word her a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human. Two days before the Chat GPT four point zero demo was released, mister Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider before we could connect. The system was out there.
All right, So that was Scarlet Johansson. Not really, that was the AI voice of Scarlett Johansson reading Scarlett Johansson's statement, Ryan, what do you make of all this?
Has anybody ever been more busted than Sam Altman? No, he busted himself, just completely busted.
Yeah, he clearly.
But did he want to be busted? Is he intentionally testing the limits of the law in this case because you mentioned an intercept, I think Sarah Silverman has a similar case to some of the media outlets that you guys have joined up with to challenge legally scraping all of your guys's work and doing machine learning based on it. The fact that he tweeted her after knowing for sure that Scarlett Johnson was going to publicly say this is not consensual. I said no to this. You out used
my voice. It seems to me like he's intentionally testing the limits and is doing a wink in a nod in a way that you used to see from Silicon Valley back when they felt like they were on a pirate ship in two thousand and six.
Yes, that is a very good analogy that this is the old move fast and break things, which is I think a Zuckerberg line, which meant, don't worry about the rules, don't worry about the laws. We're just just go just plow ahead. And what's meta concerning about this, No pun in Town was going.
To say is that, speaking of brazen.
Altman is the guy who we're supposed to rely on as the ethical mind and the ethical soul behind AI, Like, he's the one that's been promising us trust me. I have the interests of humanity at stake here, you know, I'm thinking about the future in ways that the grubby capitalists are not.
Never mind that he moved his thing from nonprofit to.
For profit and the regulators who just don't understand this.
Right, He's the one that we're going to just supposed to trust with this, and now given a very basic test of ethics, he just wildly failed. Like this, this is a test that a third grader could pass. If you ask somebody's permission for something and they tell you no, are you supposed to do it?
Yeah?
A third grade be like no, yeah, some third graders will just plow ahead.
Anyway.
We don't want those third graders shaping the entire future of humanity?
Do you currently have a third grader?
Second and fourth?
It just sounded so visperal for you.
So I'm leaving my kids out of this because they're in different grades. Yes, yeah, they could run over and absolutely would not run.
Not even in fourth grade.
No, okay.
But the reason I think this resonates with so many people is because it's so brazen, but also because people can connect the dots and see how this will be used for them. They know that people because people have been dealing, by the way, with like revenge porn on individual community levels, not just celebrities. The celebrity cases are
the ones that get the most attention. But you can see where this is going really quickly because people see where some of this stuff has gone already very quickly. People are dealing with this stuff in high schools. How you can use AI right now to do horrible things that are not consensual, especially young girls. But you can see, you can connect the dots between what happened here to Scarlett Johansson. It's just disgusting to treat this like and
I get this is not pornographic. This isn't you know, it's it's not content that's humiliating or embarrassing in any ways. It's just you know, reading as a voice that's reading. But you can the possibilities with AR absolutely endless, and the way that they can be used to target people that don't have the resources of a celebrity to release a lawyer cractice statement to NPR and have a full media blitz defending yourself. That is not going to happen to the kids who deal with this in Fort Wayne
and Dana at their high school. And for Sam Altman to be so cavalier about it, it just speaks to something that is so rightfully out of fashion for the rest of the country now, which is this, although it's becoming defensible again with the sort of e act accelerationism crowd that is reacting to some excessive you know, zeal among people who just want to control everything. I understand that, but do you get why people maybe want to control everything because you're doing this. You're doing this.
If a good thing that could come out of this, well A, she should see them, but B there should be a ban on producing AI products that allow you to take somebody's voice and then recreate it, because, like you said, you're gonna have middle schoolers who will take voice memos yes from a friend or who they thought was a friend, feed it into some program, and then make new voice memos and pass them around as if
this is these are the real people. And Altman is showing here that AI absolutely cannot be trusted on this question.
Yeah, yeah, And the legal point is really interesting. One of the things that's been circulating since this happened is going back to what happened with Bette Midler and Ford.
Do you remember this?
I think these the yuppie commercial campaign for Ford. Bette Midler said no to having her voice used, and then they hired a Bette Midler impersonator, and Bette Midler won that battle. Right, So this is a legal framework that should give Scarlett Johansson actually a pretty good defense or a pretty good advantage in defending her rights against what Sam Altman just did. Who knows if Sam Altman, with all of the resources of Open AI, was even aware of that, if any of his legal team actually was
aware of what happened with that case. My assumption is that they were and that they are still But maybe they weren't, and they're just they don't care. They're testing the waters. They have all the money in the world to do it, and you know they're ready to go have fun, move fast and break things and you know, do no evil. But their definition of evil is probably different than a whole lot of other people's. Now, Ryan the Crowd is in suspense.
The my Scarlett Johannes story actually does kind of flow into the impersonation point.
Also it does so back in.
Back in the back in the Obama era, basically the contest among media organizations was who could get the biggest celebrities.
It was pretty gross but to.
Come to the White House correspondent to dinner, but fun for reporters. We were the huffing It Post. We were the cool kids in town. We were run by Arianna Huffington, who knew from La knew absolutely everybody in La. It was so it was actually a contest of like who could compete for second place.
Of getting the best sotties, uh.
And it would usually be Bloomberg for just because they had they had this huge party at the French Embassy and so they would be able to get like the second best celebrities. We'd always get the top A list ones. And so a couple of years we had Scarlett Johansson at our at our table. I would not get invited to these these French embassy parties. Even though I was at the kids outlet, I was still doing reporting that that made the cool kids very uncomfortable. Obama just constantly
was trashing us. Yeah, like he just he's like, why won't the Huffing Post just get in line?
Didn't last up? But well not that we don't.
We don't know.
So yeah, so we so Scarlete and hands and of course did get invited to the French embassy party.
So uh she uh, he said. I think it was her brother that she that she was with.
Uh.
And then a couple other Huffing Post reporters. My wife and I like, go with her in this limo to the French Embassy. We're not invited, but she's like, look, I'm Scarlet, your hands and I can get you and get you guys in. So we get to the gate and she's like, these are my friends and they're like, well they're not on the list that it can't come in. And the look on her face, I've never seen anything like it, Like it was like the first time she'd been told no.
I think she was a child actress, right, I don't remember. So she's just like stunned.
This is Brian Graham, more.
Like Scarlet Johansson. You're telling me, no, you're a security guard here. And so she recovers and she's like, who runs this? Who's your manager?
You speak to the ambassador, the ambassador.
Bigger people come over, and it took a while, like it was not they did not just roll over.
But she fought it.
But she was not. It became a matter of principle. She was not fighting for my wife and I. She was fighting for her, for the principle that if she says that these people are cool and her friends, that damn it, they're coming into this party. And so eventually they're like, okay, fine, just how many of them? She's like, she counts, all right, fine, come on, come on in. And the thing was surreal. It's like Henry Kissinger over here. It's like the really grossest place I've ever been. I
think I stayed for about fifteen minutes. I think this is this is insane. But then so then later and this is where the impersonation comes in. And I won't say who we did this to, but we did in April fool's prank where we made a fake like New York phone number and texted one of our reporters saying it great, great hang out with you.
It's Scarlet, I've.
Got a I've got a cousin who wants an internship with the Huffing New Post and he and started a text.
You pulled an Altman, You fully pulled an Alton.
And started a text conversation.
Had the person convinced that this and he never told anybody that he was texting with Scarlett Johansson. Eventually good for him. Well, eventually we called it off or like this could end badly? Yes, yes, I told him so. Anyway, she should sue us too, but we didn't do it publicly.
Same moment. If you're watching, it takes a certain dose of wisdom to pull your chips and just go home take.
The l exactly.
But this is the kind of thing that people will do, these kinds of pranks, and they're not This was funny, I was going to say, but it almost could.
You know it could end badly, It could.
End very bad, but good for scholar giants and fighting for the free press through rebevels with Henry Kissinger coming to the Henry Kissinger part to toe Champagne with Henry Kissinger and get you know, more scoops about how great China is. I'm sure that's what he was dishing out at the time.
I wonder. I was like, oh my god, that is it's.
Hard to say. It's hard to say. But all right, well that was a hell of a story.
There you go. I don't know, storytime.
Yeah, it was good. It was good. All right, let's move on to the next block. We have a great interview. Super excited to have Gabriel Shipton, brother of Juliana Schlange, in the studio with us.
This week, Juliana Sane noted a rare win in his legal battle against the United States, with a high court in the UK ruling that he was is able to appeal the US extradition and also dealing a blow to some of the US efforts to make assurances about.
The conditions that he would be.
Kept in if he were to be brought back to the United States. To talk more about this, were joined by Julian Sanger's brother, filmmaker Gabriel Shipton.
Gabe, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Thanks for having me guys, So tell us, So.
You were out there hearing on Monday, what were your expectations going into it, and you know, what was the what was the tone of it, what was the how'd you feel about the result?
Well for us, you know, as Julian's family going into this hearing where they could have turned around and ordered his extradition, there were some people saying they were from there basically yes, yeah, there were some people saying there are US marshals in the court even ready to pounce. So going in there, there's a lot of it's very tense, too, very tense for us, and this decision obviously was a
huge relief. You know that Julian liftsified another day in this ongoing extradition proceeding, the mood in the court I think was.
A bit different.
The judges are sort of taking on the gravity of what this means, not just for Julian, but what it means for freedom of expression in the United Kingdom, and they spoke to that when they rejected this US US assurance from the DOJ from the State Department that said that Julian could seek to rely on the First Amendment, but they wouldn't guarantee a First Amendment that would apply
to Julian. And so the UK courts actually rejected that assurance and said that's not good enough because what that would mean for citizens in the United Kingdom is that these secrecy laws, these espionage laws, could be used potentially to suppress the freedom of expression of people in the United Kingdom. So that's a huge rebuke to the DOJ, to the State Department, I think quite embarrassing as well on the world stage, having a diplomatic note rejected in
that fashion. They could seek he could say it again, he could seek to rely on the First Amendment defense.
You can seek to rely on the First Amendment. Yeah, but you can't have actual First Amendment protections. Yes, you seek to you can try, yeah, yeah, well you can give it a go. Well, anybody's allowed to try exactly Well.
And Gab I was going to say, if we keep pulling at that thread from the position of the UK, there's a serious question about free expression in journalism, and I wanted to see if you could explain just a little bit more what Ryan was just saying. You can seek the protections of the First Amendment sort of hypothetically,
but what does that what are they talking about. Practically, that would mean if you're in the UK reporting on things that the United States Security Apparatus is unhappy with, they can you know, do what they will if they become unhappy with it. Is that kind of what's going.
On here, that's right, And if these judges had accepted that assurance that that's exactly what it would mean for all journalists in the United Kingdom that they wouldn't actually have free expression rights in their home country because the US could use the USDJ could use its espionagic laws to reach into the United Kingdom and go after any journalists.
And the judges actually acknowledge the gravity in court they said, you know, this has a massive meaning, not just for Julian but for all the people in the United Kingdom. So I think it really frames now the next appeal as a freedom of expression case which hasn't been which haven't been really been done in Julian's case for a
long time. And I think that's going to have repercussions back here in Washington, because I don't think the DOJ ever really wanted to have a freedom of an expression case going on.
This.
I think that's a really important point, the DOJ wanted to prosecute one of the most important publishers and journalists of the last fifteen years. But they somehow thought that they could do that without getting into a debate over freedom of expression and the free press, that they could just talk about hacking and cyber this and cyber terrorism like Mittri McConnell and Joe Biden have referred to them.
But yeah, that was always that was always ridiculous because that's that's not what it's that's not what it's about. And so, how has the public and when I mean public, I mean public, I mean public officials that you're meeting with on a regular basis, How has their reception of the case evolved over the last year or so.
Well, there's a lot more room now to hear Julian's perspective on this case. You know, the perspective that we bring.
That I bring is Julian's brother to Washington, and I think I've been here every month for the last three months, for a week, you know, working away in Congress, and the amount of attention that we get, the amount of meetings we get just increasing exponentially, People very high up, you know, in the in the Congress who hold these high positions are willing to hear a different perspective now, which would never have been possible. And just last month
you had President Biden. He was asked is he considering the Australian request to drop the charges, and he said, yes, we're considering it. And so even at the highest levels, you've got the Biden administration saying we're considering dropping this, but the DOJ is pushing forward. So there's this sort of a little bit of a divide between the institutions here that I think shows some movement in the case, and we're here to make sure that Julian's perspective is carried through into the Congress.
Well, on that point about Biden saying yes, I'm making this consideration, I'm also curious, GiB about how geopolitical negotiations might be changing the way some people are thinking about this, ally in Australia, obviously in an ally as China, hawks are increasingly concerned about Taiwan, increasingly concerned about that whole
area of the world. Is there any sense that you get as you're talking to members that they see Julian as a kind of in the way that they're looking at negotiations with this hugely powerful ally that they're concerned or that they want to be sort of a hedge in a potential conflict with China. Just trying to think of why over the course of the last year people might be more interested in having that conversation.
Yeah, certainly.
And I think if you look back into the reporting that's going on around the Alliance in Australia, Julian's always mentioned whenever there's an Alliance discussion and how that is a reflection of Australia's true position in the Alliance that the human rights of Australians don't actually matter within this sort of alliance structure, and carrying that through into the meetings on the Hill. Obviously members who are more concerned about foreign relations it really carries with them.
It does.
And we had a group of politicians here from Australia Bipartisan Group last year and they were they made an incredible impact in terms of explaining to them, explaining to Congress people what's actually happening back in Australia and the sentiment among the Australian public, because ninety percent of the Australian public wants Julian brought back, and it's having a detrimental effect on the alliance because it's like one point of contention really in the in the alliance between the
US and Australia.
It's a really incredible statement about how desperately the US wants Julian Assange behind bars here in the United States, that they are willing to upend their relationship with Australia when they're they keep blaming they're doing this pivot to Asia and the Pacific and willing to upend their relationship with the UK and double down on a trump Ara
prosecution and double down on a trump A prosecution. Do you have a sen and you have the President himself saying, you know what, actually, we're open to dropping this in our talks with Australia, which takes it out of the dog like. It was an unusual thing for him to say, because typically a democratic president will say, Ah, we don't get involved in expect department matters.
Actually that day I asked you, and I I asked the State Department.
I was that you always refer questions to the Department of Justice on Juliana Sange. But today the President said he was talking to Australia about it. You can't, so it's now diplomatic, it's now in your domain.
And they did. Then they finally commented.
On it and had a back and forth claimed why it was a legit prosecution because it brings it out of that realm of oh, this is just prosecutors kind of doing their work. But what is your sense of what is what is the impulse here? Like, why is it so fanatically necessary for them to pursue this in the face of all of the kind of political obstacles and problems that it's causing for them around the world.
Yeah, well, I think there is. You know, there is a division. And so you've seen Bud and saying making these comments, as well as all the pros freedom organizations ruting to the president as well in the New York
Times calling on the President to drop it. So I think there is a division between those who want to pursue this prosecution, the sort of Mic Pompeos of the world, the sort of hubris from these sorts of characters within the intelligence community, and those people who see it as a sort of albatross, political albatross around their next So I think there is a division forming and I think
the political cost. Now we're reaching a point where the political cost of pursuing this actually outweighs the benefit of dropping it, particularly after this decision in the UK courts where the UK has actually said we're not going to accept your assurances. This is going to affect the freedom
of expression of all people in the UK. I think that is a really strong rebuke and that will feed into the cost of pursuing this and hopefully shift the balance so that the DOJ can now can take another look at it and say, well, actually, you know, maybe it's not worth us pursuing this. It's incredibly embarrassing, it's affecting our relationships. Might be time to bring it.
The next step is that he will fail and appeal, and then the question will be does the Department Justice respond to the appeal or what yeah were?
So they'll set an appeal date now, and that appeal will be based on these freedom of expression questions. So the appeal will be I think that it's going to move quite quickly. They've got four days to submit schedules and things like that, and then the court will set an appeal date. So the lawyers, Jillian's lawyers are expecting an appeal date even before the summer, so there could
be another hearing before the summer break in August. But then whether that result comes back before November, I'm not sure. And could that appeal result in his release potentially if the appeal, if it goes Julian's way and they it would block the extradition and then it would be up to the DOJ again to say, Okay, we're going to take this to the Supreme Court of the UK. So that could be a perfect neat endpoint for the DOJ just to say, oh, yeah, this is this has gone on too long, this is too hard.
We lost, let's move on.
Yeah, and it's the UK's fault.
We can blame the UK.
We you know, we still pursued it as much as we could, but the UK courts blocked us.
And you mentioned November. Do you feel like there's a race against the clerk? Are you worried that Pompeo, the Pompeos of the world are coming back to power. It's it's hard to like imagine a worst situation than the current administration, which is has been prosecuting him these years.
Yes, that's what Maybe there is a worse situation. I don't know where do you come down on that.
Well, so I think what's happened with you know, the Australian advocacy which has been very very important in this case, and Biden saying the Presidents saying that he's considering dropping it, I think now is the time to really move and to end this right now. We don't know what's going to happen after November. You know what administration you know
will be will be sworn in in January. So I think now is the time to really make the best move to end this based on President's comments, the support from Australia and the UK court decision does.
Like a dive with a bone.
Now, last question, how is he doing? Mental health wise?
I know it's just absolute torture to be in the conditions that he's in, Like, how is he faring?
Yeah, he's holding up. You know, there's obviously it's a lot of relief now that he's got a sort of path, Yeah, a little bit of a glimmer of hope and a path to keep fighting, because that's what it is.
He's not been extra dieded.
We can keep fighting, we can keep mounting his political pressure. But you know, he's hanging in there. His health is deteriorating. You know, I'll go and see him next week after I leave here. So, yeah, he's hanging in there. And he was telling me the other day he's in prison with there's an actual cannibal who's been put into the
prison with him. So these are the sorts of people that he has to deal with on a day to day basis, These extreme crimminals, the most violent criminals, predatory criminals in the United Kingdom who he's sharing a jail with.
Well, thanks as always for joining us in good luck on Capitol Hill today.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
All Right, Well that does it today on this edition of Counterpoints. We will be back, of course on Friday with a great debate on weed that Ryan set up. This is Ryan's pet issue. In fact, you can see his book This is a Country on Drugs right behind us. That's a great book. Is that your best selling book?
Buy Them Both? We've Got People was my best selling book?
Okay, but that one.
The problem the problem with.
That one for sales is that it really appealed to like twenty two year old men and.
Not allowed to dispose bal income.
Yeah, those men don't buy books by weed. They will steal it from the library, or if any of their friends do buy it, then they'll just they'll pass. Thirty people will read one copy, which is great, that's fine.
Yeah, happy, happy with that.
But yes, the published industry will tell you that like something like ninety percent of books are bought between bought by women who are like thirty and up. And even if even if the books are read by men, it's the woman in their life that buys it for them and gives it to them.
That's good.
So if you ever are wondering, like how do publishing houses make decisions, they make decisions thinking, you know, what will forty five year old woman want to read and buy?
Makes sense?
Actually buy. They don't care if you read it.
Well, I hope they buy Counterpoints or Breaking Points premium subscriptions so they can get all of Counterpoints Friday early to their inbox. You go, because they want, you know, their husbands to watch this great wead debate that we have coming up, and you actually, with the move of the Biden administration that we talked about last week, we're going to get into that. I think we'll actually start with it. But this is really important to a lot
of families. There are, you know, scientific questions that are increasingly very important to a lot of families, and I'm excited to sort of dive into the policies. Not my area of expertise, but you know, the people, you know the issue. So I'm really really excited for this one.
Yeah, we'll have John lou Becky, who you guys may remember we've interviewed him before. He's a veteran who advocates for the use of kind of psychedelics and MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder. He talks about his own experience overcoming PTSD, you know, through the use of MDMA therapy, MDMA assisted therapy. And then we're gonna have Kevin Sabott, who is basically the kind of leading anti pot voice
in the country. I've known him since he was an official in the Obama administration, but he he is the He is basically the man when it comes to.
Like beating up on the pot crowd.
Buddy of Staggers, I believe Sager like looks up to him when it comes to forming his own kind of intellectual edifice around his like anti pot thinking.
Yeah, Soccer is popping his popcorn right now. He's ready to rumble.
And we actually invited Saga.
It's too humble.
I think he had he had something else going on, but we do. We do want him, maybe him and lou Becky like, at some point in the future, it'll be fun to have Sager as the kind of guest on one of these debates.
Buy Sager a bunch of caffeine, lock him in a room for an hour before the debate, and let him loose red bulls something. Yeah. Uh, he's just so similar to his numbsis destiny? There you go, just bounding the caffine. All right, Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. We will be back here on Friday. Make sure to stay tuned for that, and then we'll be back here next Wednesday.
See you later then,