5/22/25: DC Embassy Shooting, IDF Fires At EU Diplomats, Trump Ambushes South Africa Pres & MORE!

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Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Ryan Groom, great to see.

You, sir, Nice to see too.

We have a lot of news to get through this morning, including some breaking news of dual murder last night and what appears to be a blatant act of political violence. We'll break that down for you. We also have a lot of updates coming out of Israel and Gaza. We have naturally, specifically out of the occupied West Bank. We had a wild situation unfold in the White House yesterday when the South African President came to visit and we actually have someone from South Africa to break down some

Through the House. The margin was one vote.

I will remind you that we just had one Democrat, Jerry Connolly, pass away, so he literally ends up being the margin. That actually ties into some of what's going on with the stock market too, so we can talk about that there. We have some court updates with regard to deportations, a judge saying that Trump is blatantly defying their court order. And we've got some AI team ups going on that are kind of interesting.

Ran.

Yeah, more concentration in the tech spaces. That's what we need, open AI teaming up with Apple to make some tepa super smart smartphone, smart or smart.

Something that I can't even really wrap my head around. So well, but we'll do our best. But let's go ahead and start with that breaking news right here out of d C last night. Can put these images up on the screen too. Young Israeli embassy staffers were murdered near the Capital Jewish Museum in d C. According to officials, they do have a suspect. We'll tell you more about him in a moment. They were fatally shot, they say, at close range, while they were leaving an event Wednesday

It seems like he may have tried to get into the event, or may have had ideas plans to get into the event, was not able to do so, and so hung out outside and then you know, shot people who had had come outside, killing them both. He there's video of him chanting Free, Free Palestine as he's getting arrested.

We're talking about this a second.

Kenklippenstein obtained and postages is his manifesto, which is what you would expect from kind of a hard left activist. Yeah, it's you know, people can people can find it pretty easily.

We can put a little bit of it up.

But it's it's rather kind of standard fair Certainly chat GPT could whip this up for somebody. A kind of the sectarian left are arguing arguing on behalf of you know, the use of political violence. To me, it's civilian. You know, civilian violence against civilians has never justified period. You know, you'll often have Israel say that they killed someone in the Hamas like Ministry of Finance.

But if you're which is wrong.

But and the principle holds across the board, if you're not carrying a weapon in war, yeah, then you're not a legitimate target.

Yeah yeah, I mean these are two young Israeli staffers, and you know, if you do care about the cause of Palestine, you also know the way that this will immediately plan to the hands of those who seek to tar the entire movement as violent anti Semitic extremists. At a time when you know in some ways, it seemed that the dam was starting to break in terms of both public opinion and you know, leading figures in Europe and around the world who were starting to speak out.

Let's go ahead and play that, guys.

Oh god, we can put the manifesto a piece of it up on the screen. As Ryan said, obtained by Ken Klippenstein, before I read this, I do want to read Ken's justification for why he published it, because these things can be Controversially says he's obtained the manifesto allegedly

As the document makes clear, is the case here.

And this was the close to that manifesto, which was some nine hundred words long, and it says the action would have been morally justified taken eleven years ago during Protective Edge, around the time it personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would

Yeah, it does agree legible, but's still insane. And now anybody that he's been remotely associated with is being kind of roped into this PSL Party for Socialism and Liberation as an organization that was linked to him in the early hours of this.

Killing, of this twin killing.

PSL has said that he's not a member they disavow any connection to him that he was involved with one chapter that no longer exists for a very brief time, like in twenty seventeen or something, But in a time like this, the kind of state consequences for any organization

Completely peaceful in what he's doing.

To then associate yourself with him and take it upon yourself to commit these acts of violence against civilians is also taking an action that, to me, you don't even have the right to do if you consider yourself part of a movement, like if you're either part of a movement or you're some atomistic of some neoliberal vigilante, which is a reactionary right wing approach.

That's absolutely that is absolutely accurate.

And of course immediately people are theorizing that it's a false flag, not because there's any evidence of that, there is no evidence of that, but because of how clearly damaged it is, right, how clearly damaged it is at a time when, to your point, you have this administration that is using any excuse they can to effectively criminalize dissent from the status quo in regard to Israel, when you just had this incident we're going to cover later in the show of the idea firing on diplomats from

And when our money in Gaza, did we play Maryo Bowser.

Yet, no, we didn't.

We can play that, guys, this is actually not I think the piece we have is not actually Marrio Bowser. This is represented the police department here talking about some of the details of the shooting.

We can go ahead and take a listen to that.

At approximately nine o eight pm tonight, we received multiple calls for a shooting in the area of Third Street and f Street Northwest. Offices located one adult male and one adult female unconscious and not breathing at the scene. DC Fire and Ems responded in. Despite all life saving efforts, both victims succumbed to their injuries. The preliminary investigation indicates that both victims were exiting an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum, located in the five hundred block of Third

He approached a group.

Of four people, produced a handgun and opened fire, striking both of our decedents. After the shooting, the suspect then entered the museum and was detained by event security. Once in handcuffs, the suspect identified where he discarded the weapon, and that weapon has been recovered, and he implied that he committed the offense. The suspect chanted Free, Free Palestine while in custody. The suspect has been tentatively identified as thirty year old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, Illinois.

So that was DC Police Chief Pamil Smith there with some early details, and President Trump has already weighed in, we can put this up on the screen as well. His comments that I think were posted to truth Social He says, these horrible DC killings based obviously on anti Semitism must now hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen. God bless

Right. So, even if you take the official Israeli explanation as true from start to finish, it's still quite unhinged. And if you roll, if you scroll back in the video and look look in closely. The New York Times is saying they fired warning shots, shot into the air, and all kinds of euphemisms. The guns look like they're pointed pretty closely. Now, they didn't hit anybody, but the guns does look looks like a little.

Too close for comfort for a warning shot.

And if that scene looks familiar to you, it's Janine and it is very close to where Sharen Abu Akhla was shot and killed by an IDF soldiers, only a few blocks away from there. So their official version is there was an approved route that they were allowed to take through Janine, and that towards the very end, as they were doing these interviews.

They deviated from the route.

And that required the Israelis to shoot at them to get them back onto.

Their approved route.

The organizers say they did not deviate from the route.

This was the approved route.

They were in consultation with the Israelis the entire time, and the only people there are diplomats and journalists who were interviewing the diplomats, setting aside the disagreement over whether or not they're on the route, even if they were slightly off the root right and what planet do you fire at them, and and then and then and do your statements say we regret the inconvenience.

And this the authoritarian nature of requiring that you know, under pain of gunfire, you must stay on this one specific route also was quite illustrative. And obviously people are gonna go, okay, well, if this is how they treat foreign diplomats from their some of their greatest allies from around the world, how do you think that they are treating you know, the Palestinians that that reside there, and

Yes, and you've had a Spain increasingly cutting economic and military ties with Israel. You had, as you mentioned, the UK, Canada and France all putting out a joint statement and promising concrete action if Israel it doesn't restrain its assault on gods and start letting in humanitarian a You've had net Yahou and Macrone going back and forth. You've had the free trade agreement between Israel and the EU kind of up for review as a result of these human

Yeah, And one of the things that was really significant from his comments is for the first time, he's now asserting that the implementation of Trump's ethnic cleansing plan is now one of his conditions for ending the war.

He says it's underway, that it's not a future plan, that he is using the starvation to enact to this plan. This is all happening while Trump is allegedly, like Biden, getting.

Very frustrutted behind.

The scenes, behind the scenes, very frustrated, and is continuing with his negotiations with a run. They're meeting in Rome on Friday. While Israel, we can put up ce No, no, let's let's put up STE three first, because this, this is, this is relevant to what we were just talking about. Then Yaho has lots of public support like this is. He's not going out on a limb here when he's doing this. The Starvey on Israeli Channel thirteen is does

Thirteen.

Don't know, I would be interested in the religious breakdown in the subtabs.

Right if ten to twenty percent are Palestinian citizens of Israel and they're polled there or Druis citizens of Israel.

Yes, the numbers for Jewish Is release are almost certainly even higher.

Right, those are tipped, The scales are tipped there by that so putting up C four Relevant to all this is that this is a follow up to the CNN story from two days ago. CNN reported based on American intelligence officials leaking to them that Israel was preparing to strike Iran alone without US support. The update to that is now that Israel is planning to immediately strike Iran

Strike with basically the calculation being from Bbe that Trump will be mad and will accept such a thing. In that moment of talks breaking down, I saw you and Jeremy speculating a little bit like who do you think is leaking THEEDS reports and to what, like what are they trying to accomplish?

I think originally it was the one two the CNN was Americans telling basically telling Israel, we're aware that you're doing this, and we don't approve of it.

The alternative explanation.

Is they do approve of it, but they want to publicly wash their hands of it because the alt on Iran, if it is carried out, could have horrific reverberations around the entire region, and also for American troops who are in the region.

Can it be done without our assistance?

They can drop bombs?

And this also goes back to a point that I've seen my colleague ma Hussein make that the goal is not necessarily.

Ending the nuclear the nuclear program.

The goal really is to crush Iran politically and substantially, to make it so that Iran is not an economic and political power in the region, an Iran that is no longer sanctioned and is an active and normal part of the global community, even if it does not have a nuclear program, is arguably, from Yahoo's perspective, a bigger strategic threat than a weakened Iran that does have a nuclear program or is close to getting a nuclear program.

And the last information that we've gotten out of those nuclear talks is not particularly encouraging, although you just never know that the Trump administration where they're going to end up. But you had Witcough coming out and saying insisting on zero enrichment as a clear red line. Other administration official, including Trump himself, has been more like, h we'll see. Other administration officials have said other things at other times. But that's kind of where things are right now with.

Regard to that.

Right, it's totally plausible that you could have atomic inspectors go in and allow for a civilian nuclear program and prevent it from getting close to breakout. In fact, if you don't do that, you actually make it easier for them to get to that can break out.

Yeah.

So again the.

Focus on.

The focus on whether or not they're going to get the bomb is again it was once again astraction, I think from the broader goal.

I think that's well said.

The other thing we wanted to bring you an update on is what's going on with Mack mud Khalil, who has been in prison for how many months at this point for quite a while, missed the birth of his newborn son to his you know, his wife is an American citizen, and we can put this up on the screen. He attempted to have a contact visit with his newborn child, who he has not been able to meet yet for you know, the crime of being participating in pro palesign

These contact visits are They're a normal thing, especially in a country that has you know, systematized mass incarceration. You go through a metal detector, you get searched, you and your baby get searched. You go into a room where oftentimes there's lots of other people.

They get searched. They come into that same room.

You meet In that room, you can hug, you can sit there specified amount of time. Everybody's watching cameras, guards, He goes back to a cell. They go back out like this is this is very basic stuff. So to deny this is clearly just malevolent and cruelty for the sake of it.

Yeah, there's no other reading of that.

At the same time, you have the new president of Columbia, Clear Shipment, speaking at their graduation ceremony, and quite a lot of students not too happy with her or what she had to say.

Let's go ahead and take listen to that.

Good morning, class of twenty twenty five. I know that many of you feel good morning, class of twenty twenty five. I know that many of you feel some amount of frustration with me, and I know you feel it with the administration. And I know we have a strong, strong tradition of free speech at this university. And I am always open to feedback, which I am getting right now. The work of your generation will be to shape these interesting times, to define the.

Values, and I know Ryan, she did also in her comments say something about mak Munkhalil and how she understands that a lot of people are regretting his absence that day. But I mean, Colombia is really case in point of the university that completely bent to whatever the Trump administration was trying to throw at it, and all it resulted in was more and more demands being made of the university versus you know, any sort of like amuseman. I know they're just going to give up and go away now.

Yeah. And Shipman as a long time, long time a television correspondent before she got into her other career, was a well, very well known figure in like the nineties, in two thousands, was Good Morning America. Was until recently, you know, married to Jay Carney, who himself was a top Washington journalist and then became a spokesman for Obama

Yeah, well, and we've seen plenty of that coming from other news outlets as well. In fact, it's not on the show. But I don't know if you saw there was some memo that went out from Bob Iger to the ladies at the View that they needed to tone down there.

That's right gl rhetoric.

So yeah, yeah, broadcast journalism is are we broadcast journalists? We're broadcasting but not really right?

Yeah, yeah, I don't know, hope or not. I don't want to be part of that club right now. We can't broadcast journalists.

Peers Morgan, Yeah, speaking of how about that?

So you know, Peers really put his YouTube show on the map with these raucous debates over Israel. I mean, he's obviously debates all kinds of stuff, but I really feel like those are the ones that brought a lot of people to that program, and Pures has mostly taken the side of Israel one hundred percent. You know, there have been times where he's objected to this or that, but broadly he's been very pro Israel. And he had Meddi Hasen on his show recently and he said to Meddi,

You and I have talked about this war in Gaza for ever since it started, this phase of the seventy five year conflict, and I have resisted going as far as you have done in your criticism of the Israeli government.

I resist no more.

I think we've reached common ground about what we view is happening and has been happening through this period of this blockade, which frankly is just starvation of the people there, including so many innocent young women and children. And I think that the incessant bombing and killing, and we don't know how many civil have been killed, but it is on a daily basis, it looks like hundreds of people

What do you make of those comments Ryan and the timing of them.

I think Pierce, because of his program, has had to follow this in an incremental way. True, and because he invites on people from all different walks away of all different factors, all different perspectives, he has been exposed to the reality of.

What's going on.

And I think anybody who's exposed to the reality of what's going on and isn't actively paid to take a certain position.

To just be propagandist, yes, can.

Only conclude that this is a unique, a new crime against humanity that's being carried out. And so.

He had to so he said it. I don't know what did you make of it?

Yeah, I mean, I just think, as I said earlier, something about the I think probably the months of starvation and the images that are coming out of these emaciated babies, and you know the risk of mass famine and mass death event.

Because of this. I mean, how you just how do you justify that?

Yeah?

You know, I mean, it's just you can't say this is oh targeted. We're going after amahas when you are intentionally starving an entire population, and then when you see these images of the rubble and then they're bombing the rubble and with gruesome results, and there they just you know, Smotrich and all the rot and I've just.

Gone mask off.

At this point, they've taken the layers of Hasbro Hasbara out and said, I know, we want to ethnically cleanse them. We are going with the Trump plan, and even this pitty bit of aid that we might let in is just to enable for the war crimes. If you're actually grappling with that, how can you say other than this is this is a horror, This is a atrocity, And how can.

You feel other than when we look.

At this a decade down the road, or however long it is down the road, people are going to have to get asked very hard questions about what did you say, what did you do? Where were you and so you know, I think there's a very belated effort to try.

To end up on the right side of history.

And I will just say for myself, I hope there's a real tracking of every journalist who enabled these crimes.

Every politician who enabled these crimes.

Every propagandist, every poster like, I think it is critical that we look back and understand who justified these atrocities and enabled these atrocities, and funded these atrocities, and provide a diplomatic cover for these atrocities. I think that's going to be absolutely essential. And so yeah, I'm listen. I don't want to like, I'm glad to hear Peers say it.

Right, if you're behind mccron, it's taken you a while.

Yeah.

I appreciated Mehdi's response, which he said where he says, look, I wish I had been wrong, right. No, I wish that because in October November of twenty twenty three, the most wild, vulgar assessment of what is isels approach was and was going to be turned out to almost underestimate what it was right. And there's no there's no there's no satisfaction in being right about that at all.

That's right. Well, if you looked into.

Better to have been wrong, and to have you know, tens of thousands of people still alive and millions of people still in their homes and a path toward peace and co existence, that's right.

Instead we have this.

We have horror and the cold comfort of yeah, I guess we were right.

Yeah.

I mean, if you listen to.

The most maximalist voices on actual brief or if you went and talked to you know, Daniel Owiss or some of these other settlers right who or you know Smoke Trich and.

A lot of that.

I mean, there were people in Israel right away who were saying what their plans were.

They've been saying that a long time, and they don't always get to get the reins of power and that.

To actually enact it.

But if you would listen to them and taken that seriously from the beginning, then you would have had a much more accurate understanding versus the spin and the oh we're dropping leaflets and oh, here's my presentation of how there's actually tunnels under this hospital, and oh, that wasn't even us that bombed the hospital. We would never bomb

Now they're saying, yeah, we're doing it, and it's good.

Yeah, and we're getting away and the world has let us do it. That's what smoocher said.

Meanwhile, public Enemy number one has become miss Rachel.

That's right.

She was the subject of this really bizarre New York.

Times New York Times article. Yeah, in a moment, she has not back down at all. And so I think we have a recent clip that we should posted a video with a double amputeam Rahaf, Let's roll that.

Let's go back to sleep, Rahaf. We're so tired.

See the bunny sleeping too.

It's near the moon.

Shall we wake them?

Mabel married to They're so still?

Are they in?

Make up?

Soon?

Make up?

Little Bunnies Skip, Little Bunnies skip ski skip skip Little Bunniest, Bunniest get.

This skip skip skip that stuff.

Let's hop again, hap Little bunnies half hop Hop Hop Little Bunnies half hop hop hop little bunnies half hap hap hap hop this stuff.

Yeah.

The strangest element of this New York Times piece on her and I don't even I don't I'd like to do some reporting on this, trying to figure out how this even got into the piece. Is there forwarding of complaints by what they called an advocacy group, Anti Stop Anti Semitism. It's not an anti it's not an advocacy group. It's like one unhinged.

Person troll yeah, who.

Posts mostly anonymous nonsense and accused her of effectively being funded to support Hamas, which.

That's what trolls can do.

Like the Internet is filled with URLs that you can buy and you can make claims. It's very crazy for the New York Times to then take this and then report it as something that advocacy groups are saying when it's not, like again, it's not AVAC group, it's just it's a nut, and then confront her with it and have her respond to this claim of whether or not

She's put up ten posts about a child in Gaza.

It's like, well, that's wildly disproportionate in favor of Israel, considering that they're eighteen thousand plus children who've been killed, right, and it's it's not ten to one, right, And.

It's not to mention children like Rahaf who are surviving. She's alive and thank god was well. I have of trouble talking about this. It was medically evacuated. Her brothers are still in Gaza, her father is still in Gaza.

You know.

Miss Rachel talked about this with Mehdi like she's a double amputee. I mean, like I said, thank god, she was medically evacuated. She's getting the care that she needs.

Like it's just the same.

There was another quote in that article towards the bottom that was quite wild. A person named Stacy Hackner, a teacher at a London Shader, said, quote, Miss Rachel seems to be someone who is really really good hearted, but in the context of everything that's going on, she says I care about all children, but really she's talking about

She is genuinely.

Hurt that Miss Rachel is saying I care about all children and is talking about the children of Gaza. That is, she feels that as as painful and offensive, right, And where do you go from there?

Like, your only accusation against.

Her is that she says I care about all children, but really she's talking about the children of Gaza, and that that and it's just understood that there's something wrong with that if you're talking about the children of Gaza, there's something.

Wrong with that.

That they don't count as children, that they should be kept separate. Apart that if you're talking about the children of Gaza, you don't really.

Care about it represents a view from a just startlingly dark place.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So well, let's let's go ahead and transition to this wild scene that played out in the White House yesterday when the President of South.

Africa came to visit.

South African President Ramafosa was in DC yesterday and the context here, you know, is that the US the Trump administration to shut down all refugee admissions. It's except for white farmers that they claim are facing persecution and even genocide in South Africa. So this meeting quickly turned contentious as President Trump basically ambushed him with this whole multimedia presentation of his allegations against what his government is doing

People about their human rights of viuses, so we do it from here. Yeah, we'll just do it right here when you come to visit us.

So in any case, let me show you a little bit of this, and we are going to have a guest join us in a minute to break down some of.

The claims that are made here.

And what actually that's a mean. Reality is it's means tested.

If you have a certain amount of money, then we will not care about your human rights.

Well, that actually comes up in this exchange at one point.

We'll play you that in a minute where the President of South Africa says, wil, I'm sorry, I don't have a four hundred million dollars plane for you, basically saying I guess I didn't have sufficient funds for you know, to really get on your good side here. In any case, let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of how this went down.

It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africa, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here when we have talks between us on the quiet a quiet table. It will take President Trump to listen to them. I'm not going to be repeating what I've been saying. I would say if there was Africana farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture, he would not be with me.

But you're surprised that I say we have none of quite, we have thousands of stories talking about it. Show me we have documentaries. We have news stories.

Today even in the Parliament. And they're a small minor which is allowed to exist in terms of our constitution.

But you do allow them to take land?

No, no, no, no, do allow them to take land.

Nobody can take.

Where they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them. There is nothing happens. There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately through criminal activity are not only a white, majority of them are black. And we are now farmers. The farmers are not black. I don't say that's good or bad, but the farmers are not black.

So what the President is trying to say there Ryan is we do have a really significant problem with violence, which is true. There are tens of thousands of bookers in South Africa every year, but if you look at the statistics, I mean, it's disproportionately actually the poor, which

And it doesn't mean, there is never racially charged violence, and I think people here in the United States might have a people on the right might have a better time understanding this if they contextualize it in the in the within the United States. So in South Africa, there are definitely cases where black South Africans have killed white South African farmers and have used racial language when they've

So you have to look at it holistically.

So that's what I would argue to people on the right who have been convinced by seeing some examples of of racial violence and have then gone from there to oh, this is genocide.

Yeah, why do you think Trump has become obsessed with this particular thing?

I mean, there's the obvious. There's a few things that are obvious.

Number one, Elon Musk being so probable and not just Elon, David Sachs and some others who are close with the administration are.

Also there's tons of Peter teel right.

Peter Tile also South African exactly. So I mean that seems significant because in the first administration we did not see this same focus. There's that this is a fixation with white nationalists. You know, you can see Steven Miller being really into this kind of thing. This, you know, I've seen all kinds of you know, commentary on Twitter and et cetera. The other piece is that, you know, South Africa has been one of the leading opponents of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

In fact, one of the White House.

You know, one of the things that they put out even explained that that was a piece of why they were upset with South Africa. So it's also sort of one of these like up is down left as right situations where the very country that is standing strongest against genocide in the context of you know, Israel and Gaza is now being accused of committing genocide, you know, which is you know, frankly a fairly preposterous claim.

You also see some lurid arguments on the right that this that this is what happens if DEI goes on unchecked.

Yeah, so they've roped it into their whole dee.

I mean, this is in the whole sphere of people who long for the days of Rhodesia and who want to use the breakdown of you know, the high levels of violence in South Africa also to broadly smear black people is unable to govern. I mean that's you know,

Right, and so far, there's been what dozens of white South Africans let in under this program. Yes, and it's basically open to every white South African for the most part. Yeah, and there are many many, what's the population hundreds many, hundreds of thousands of millions of white South Africans A lot so for you know, point zero zero, zero whatever percent to take.

It up is not very four point five million according.

To white South African Yeah, and fifty to sixty have taken him up on this offer. It's not it's not a very strong argument for them feeling like they're facing imminent threat of genocide.

Yes, that is a that is a good point as well.

Let me play you one more clip before we bring in our guests, where the President of South Africa, anticipating that something like this was going to unfold, brought with him first, like you know, a bunch of white guys that are in his cab, even some Gulf some of the white South African golfers. There are a number of them who are you know, very high level in PGA tour, et cetera, thinking like okay, it loves them.

Yeah, this has got to be the way to get in good with Trump.

And there's a moment here too that I referenced earlier where He's says straight to Trump's face like a sorry, I didn't have a plane to give you, indicating like maybe it'd be treated a little different if I had some more gifts than I.

Would be pony up in extreme Maybe yeah, maybe.

Maybe, just maybe.

So let's take a listen to a little bit of how that went down.

Dependent well, white after honor refugees here do you explain to America and to whisup Burby as well from White afri Hounor's here when other refugees like at Dans thats Wayland's Asians have all had their attap of status removes.

Well, this is a group NBC that is truly fake news. They ask a lot of questions in a very pointed way. They're that questions they statements today have many friends from South Africa, but many of those friends are.

They can't go back.

I have elon is from South Africa.

I don't want to get Elon involved.

That's all I have to do. Get him into another thing, but to be from South Africa.

This is what he learned wanted. He actually came here on a different subject, sending rockets to Mars.

Okay, he likes that better.

He likes that subject better.

We have too many deaths. But it's across the board. It's not only white farmer, it's across the board. We need technological help. We need starlink at every little police station.

I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you.

I wish you did.

I would tell if.

Your country offered the United States Air Force applan, I would take it.

Okay, But coming back to this issue, which I really would like us to talk about and talk about it very calmly. We were taught by Nurse and Mandela that whenever they're our problems, people need to sit down around the table and talk about it. And this is precisely what we would also like to talk about, including of course trade matters, investment matters, so the issues that concern you as the United States, and does your own death.

So he also introduces there another piece of the puzzle of why there might be this particular upset with South Africa because Elon wants them to take up Starlink, and there's a provision that would require I think Starlink to be owned thirty percent by black South Africans through some sub subsidiary in South Africa.

I think those are the details, guys, you have to go and double check.

But in any case, he has felt aggrieved that he hasn't been able to get South Africa taken to take up Starlink, and so that gets a mention there too of you know, one of the South Africans, it's like, we really want starlink, you know, is is that going to make you happy with us? Because other countries around the world, that's been the way that they've greased the skids with this administration, and.

Starlink would legitimately be good for South Africa, right because like they've had such a hard time building up the telecommunications infrastructure that now you like, you know what, skip all that stuff. Let's just jump to the star link era, that the satellite era. But right, they also have rules around local ownership and I guess you know it's causing.

Problems apparently, yes, apparently, And then just too on the nose that the President of South Ava says, well, I'm sorry, I don't have a plane, and Trump's like, well, if you hadn't want to take.

It, yeah, come back when you have a plane.

There you go.

The word for that is, you know, bribery is one, but tribute is the other. Like for tens of thousands of years, that is how emperors have operated. You pay tribute to the emperor and you don't necessarily get anything for it. But if you don't pay your tribute, everybody knows then you're not going to get treated as well by the benevolent emperor.

No matter how many golfers you bring.

Apparently, although the golfers are tribute also in a.

Way, yeah, they are tribute to Trump's particular es A right, Let's go ahad and get to our guests who can break down some of the more specifics.

Here.

We are now joined by bulel Wal Mabasa, who is a land reform attorney in South Africa. And I was just saying that I reached out to around midnight her time last night and asked her if she could be on this morning and if she was asleep, go ahead and reach back out to us in the morning. She said on a day like today, There's no way I'm sleeping. So what has it been like in South Africa? How are South Africans kind of responding to this unbelievable scene out of the Oval Office.

So interestingly, the responses have been varied from you know, commentators, intellectuals, and academics on one end of this spectrum, praising the South African team, saying that they've maintained the moral high ground, that our President Suramaposa maintained composure and that he did not descend into the kind kind of you know, comical playing out of the you know, the the the meeting, and others you know, kind of a little bit more in the middle saying well, it was kind of you know,

And the other extreme end, which is.

Kind of this weaponization or weaponizing Nelson Mandela's call for reconciliation as if there is a trade off for not transforming the country and this kind of a begging ball syndrome reminiscent of the colonial era. You know, we are the poor African country and we need this rich superpower and with this small economy.

And we need you to rescue us, almost like a uh, you know.

Messiah, you know, to state you know, metaphorically, almost like a savior coming down. So there actually has been interesting from a political lens, but obviously, you know, not being a political commentator in any way, my focus was on the land confiscation issue and how it was addressed, and that's where yeah, and I think that's what we're going to talk about.

Yes, of course.

And I wanted to get I wanted to play some of the specific claims that were made by the President, who I said earlier prepared this whole multimedia presentation for this meeting, and and get you to address some of the specific claims that were made. This is a five guys, if we could go ahead and play that.

This is very bad.

These are These are verial sides right here, burial sides over a thousand of white farmers. And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is across and there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers. The family of white farmers, and those cars aren't driving their stuff.

There to pay respects to their family member who's killed.

Have they told you where that is, mister president? You know, I'd like to know where that is. Of course, this I've never seen.

In addition, there were news articles that were printed out about deaths. I know one of them actually had nothing to do with South Africa. It was from another African nation and you know, was completely unrelated. As you referenced before we played earlier, there were claims made about land exproporation, and I know that that is your particular specialty. So could you sort through some of these these claims that were made and help us understand what's really going on here?

Yes, so the visuals around the white process, there isn't actually that that wasn't a burial site. And you know, with the kind of US machinery, you know, with the intelligence agencies in the US being the most powerful, it boggles the mind that such an untruth could land up in the Oval Office and be presented as truth.

That was a protest.

In actual fact, those aren't burial sides, and there isn't in fact a burial site of just exclusively farm victims or victims of farm murders that exists in South Africa, and in so far as the land confiscation issue, I think what what needed to be put through in that meeting is that President Ramaposa himself was part and parcel of the negotiations that took place just before South Africa became a democracy, and he was part and parcel of

And if there's a.

Historical context that grounds what our reform policy is. We have in our constitution section twenty five that protects property rights, that says that no one may be expropriated of property unless in terms of the law of general application, So in terms of the rule of law. But in the same section it also says that we take into account the past historical in justices that have taken place in our country and therefore within that constitution it invites the state.

So that should have been the very first.

Kind of key message to say our land reform project is grounded within the rule of law.

It's part and parcel constitution.

We've got a very rich judiciary where all of this is happening every single day.

We've got a restitution program in South Africa, for.

Example, where people can lay claim to land that they've lost previously and they get either provided with the land or compensation, and this has this is probably the biggest restitution program in the world. And land transfers are happening is fully without violence. Then they are grounded within the rule of law. So I think that's probably the very key first message that South Africa could have opened up the conversation about, and that there isn't this land confiscation

So this to me feels like the crux of the issue, like everything else that's going on in the Oval Office there the fake thousand you know, white cross or the White Cross is representing a fake one thousand dead people.

All the talks about white.

Genocide, it's all a distraction because what is what they really want to talk about is this underlying central conflict around around land reform, and that is a real conflict.

That's a conflict.

Yeah, that's that's a real one.

Yeah.

So let's so how does it? How does it work?

So this is what you do?

You know, you work in this in this field.

Who who is getting expropriated and who is the land being redistributed to as part of that process? Because I really do feel like that we should just talk about it because this is what people are really actually genuinely upset about, but they don't want to come out and say it.

Yes, South Africa's land policy is granted on three notions.

That's one arm of it.

That is the restitution program that I spoke about, that it started in nineteen ninety four. Yes, it's been slow paced, but that's the land one of the land form a pillars. The second pillar is land redistribution, now land redistribution. It's also embedded in our constitution. It says the states must take legislative measures to ensure that people who need the land, who need to have access to land, are given the land. Again, the state has been slow that haven't provided enough resources

The third leg of this is the.

Land tenure of black people. More than sixty percent of black people don't have securit tenure.

What that means is that they.

Don't have formal rights, property rights. They live in informal settlements. And this is what the land reform projects of South Africa is trying to correct when it comes to itspropriation. Expropriation is actually very simply color blind. Expropriation is just the tool that the state uses when it needs to use land for a public purpose or a public interest. The best example we can give about expropriation that's been

And this way, there's.

Abandoned buildings, you cannot check the owner, where the land is unsafe, there's a safety risk.

So it's only.

Within quite determined, you know, easily determinable circumstances where that could happen. But in the main, we don't have an expropriation law in South Africa that promotes expropriation as a wholesale concept. In fact, when I sat as part of the Presidential Advisory Panel, we found that the States, the Democratic state, has actually not even used the expropriation powers,

And so what we actually now find is that.

The land reform question is almost metaphorical for the need to transform South africa society. At the heart of transformation, whether we're talking about you know, labor, land, uh, you know, business and so forth, is the need to transform as society because we're still so Africa is the most unequal country in the world, skewed against the black majority. We still have the economy in the hands of majority of

And so it's kind of a machinery that you you kind.

Of watch in disbelief because it couldn't prefer that from the truth on the ground.

And lastly, I think the the other major question is that of violence that I know the President was saying that, you know, unfortunately there is a high level, high level of violence, but that violence is not disproportionately aimed at white people or white farmers. It it afflicts you know,

Crime is skewed highly.

It's something that mainly affects poorer communities where there is lack of policing, the service delivery, where it is not as you know, good as you know, more the affluent.

Parts of society.

The victims of crime, and I don't have the statistics of hand, actually are poor black people. The majority of people in prisons are black men. And so the claim that you know, there's there's this targeting of a spirit of a minority group is not born by the facts or the evidence. And I think there was also too much said around the issues of violence and crime, which distorts the experience, the lived experience of South Africans across

Uh.

We have societies that are completely mixed. We live in suburbs that are Malteri racial. My children go to school in a Malti racial school. And our societies society as a as A as A as A, as.

A, you know, living in a black woman's body.

I mean a law firm with a diverse you know, people from diverse backgrounds. We have black people now living in suburbia, so we've got I think the the conversation focused on the issues of crime, which are vealid issues, was the lost opportunity to sell the country that we know and love and we live in where we've actually and and maybe not completely, but we we are the lived example of the Rainbow nation that Nelson Mandelas spoke about.

And Trump also last question for me. Trump also in the meeting, played a clip of Julius Malema singing or chanting the rap song like kill the Boar? What's is Boar? White South African? That's a clip that Elon Musk has circulated many times. It's a prominent clip kind of on the right here in the United States. Can you talk, you just brieve about who is Mali? What does what should people understand about.

This cheerless Malemma actually.

Comes from the A and C, which is the world It was the majority reading party up until the recent elections. He was then expelled. He was formed part of the youth wing. He was expelled from the A and C. He formed his own party, the Economic Freedom Front. I think up until I could be inaccurate in terms of percentages, but his party, I think got seven percent of the vote national vote, although that's you know, it's in the minority. He does have quite a you know, his majority of

And I think the reason for that is that it was contextual.

It was around the time no one sings that song and goes and kills, you know, a white farmer, and I still have songs that I was chance that.

We grew up with. You know, some of it goes we miss you, Manela, where are you?

And in fact growing up in so it so there was a lot of that kind of mystery around where our political prisoners we're not we're going to get freedom. So there's a context to which those songs were played and there were chances, the chances, you know, the chants

Is the context changing, you know, that you said that the context made it so that people understood it not to be literal. But in the context of now so many international right wing figures talking about the tension, the racial tensions in South Africa, has that overlaid a new context that is giving a new meaning. That means that I think might start beginning to.

Depends on the lens in which you are seeing or perceiving things. If you are right wing, a person who legitimately believe that there's this genocide and there's this land confiscation.

Then it plays into the hands of that.

But if you are a South African kind of a regular citizen, despite whichever kind of you know, racial or social class that should belong to, that it's not something that will have any form of weight in terms of behavior or even conduct to flow South Africans got it interesting.

Yeah, thank you so much for helping us understand some of these different pieces. We really appreciate you taking the time below wall.

Thank you, it was great to chat to you, Sam. Thanks good bye.

Had a pretty significant market sell off yesterday and since I got my resident finance bro Ryan here.

I thought we would go through.

There was actually a pretty significant reason why there was a sell off AUSTRALI let's go and put the numbers up on the screen here from CNN, the Dell thinks eight hundred points as bond market starts to freak out over Trump's tax bill. That was the analysis from CNN. And you can put the next piece up on the screen. You can see a little bit more of what was going on here. This is from this account.

Do you know how to say this, Ryan? The Kobec letter is that how I don't know.

I only ever see it. I don't hear people talk about it.

In any case, they have this the beginning of the drop that happened at one pm, and they say, well, what actually happened was a week twenty year bond auction which sent US treasury yields soaring.

So for those of us who.

Aren't finance bros, Ryan, what effectively happened here is the government went to do treasury bond twenty year treasury bond auction. There was a very weak demand, meaning people didn't really weren't too psyched about buying the stat at this point. It required a significant increase in the yield that was offered, so the price went down, the yield goes and that, you know, fit in with the pattern of Okay, we've

Yeah, and so this comes after Moody's downgraded US debt from the top to the just underneath it tip top of ratings. And the twenty year note, which is what they were auctioning off, is actually a bit of an anomaly. The US didn't sell them for many decades. Steve Manutchen brought them back. Usually we sell the big ones of the ten years and thirty in the thirty He's like, why not bring back the twenties. Everybody loves the twenties. Bizarrely, you can get a higher yield.

For the twenty than you can for the thirty.

And that's which doesn't which doesn't make economic sense because if you're locking up your money for a longer time, you're.

Supposed to get a higher yield.

But because there are so many thirty year notes out there, they're much more liquid, so you can trade them more easily, and so as a result, you get this kind of anomalous situation where you have to you know, the US has to pay a higher yield for a shorter time period.

In other words, you should get rid of the twenty years.

Unless unless you can flood the market with them and create more liquidity, which eventually they could potentially get to. But so they had this auction and yeah, at first they're offering like a four you know, high fours on the on the interest rate, and there weren't enough people

Do you have a central banker who's ahead of Canada now?

So you never know, you never know what kind of game's gonna be playing there, And we we do know the bond market has probably been the most powerful countervailing force against Trump's economic plans of you know, of all the various factors. You know, he himself admitted he walked it back, but he himself admitted that when the what did he say, the bond market.

Started to yippy yippy, Yeah, they started.

Getting yippie, is when he pulled back from the most maximalist tariff posture that he had originally had. And so I mean, that's the broader context, is you already had. And I think the Ukraine warned the huge sanctions regime we threw at Russia. I think, you know, contributed to this as well. But you already had a world that

Had, and moodies and the interest rate moves have ripple effects throughout the entire economy because if if you're you know, let's say you have corporate debt, and that corporate debt is collateralized by some you know, you know, treasuries held by the corporation or there's some other counterpart of your interplay with the with the treasuries, now they're no longer triple a that that means that the bonds underneath them, they lose a little bit of value as well, which

I asked that bubbles, like housing as well.

Now that you you're looking you're looking at the equity market, You're like, hmm, this seems way overvalued. I think this is going to crash because you know, Trump's still still headed for the cliff, just at a slightly like he was going at the cliff one hundred and forty five percent. Right now he's going at the cliff at thirty percent,

Put up this b three guys a week economic outlook.

Jamie Diamond and others keep saying, guys, like, things are not good. Things are not as good as the market is saying they are right now. Like the market, you know, freaked out in April and crashed and then it climbed mostly all the way back and then you know, now maybe it's on its way back down. But you've got Diamond and a whole bunch of others saying things are bad in the United States, like we're headed in a not great direction. What is what on earth is propping

I think early this morning they passed this, the big beautiful bill that provides lots of money for the police.

Takes they put up before for this, Yeah, lots of tax cuts for.

The rich, and you know, at the expense of Medicaid and SNAP and other programs to benefit middle class and working class and lower income people. And this is Jason Furman, who's was a White House economists under Obama. But he says, I'm sure, I'm not sure I've ever seen such a

But you know, it's a wild chart.

It doesn't come in and it doesn't come anywhere close enough to like balance out because the tax cuts that are being flooded for the wealthy, the extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act effectively is a four trillion dollar expenditure.

Yeah.

So they're making some custom Medicaid and to Snap in particular that are going to be really bad for millions of Americans, but it still doesn't even come close to making up for the large s that is being showered on the wealthiest among us.

Yeah, it looks like a giant heist of money from poor and working class people to rich people. And you wouldn't think ideologically that Wall Street would be opposed to that, Right, they're not, but they're like, WHOA, I don't know, I don't think we can handle this like this this is a bit much.

Yeah.

Well it's also I mean, it's the final failure and humiliation for DOGE, which again I've never thought was actually about cost cutting or efficiency, but that was what they claimed, and they did not actually save any money. They probably cost the government money, especially with the cuts the IRS, which means that you can't.

Go after rich tax sheets.

So there were no deficit. There was no deficit reduction that was achieved there. I mean, what the Wall streeterers would like is for them to take more of an acts to the you know, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, etc.

It's what they would really like to see.

But you know, I'm not one to be a big leg deficit hawk and like wring my hands about the debt. You know, I think for a long time those concerns have been really overblown. However, we may be entering a new era in global economics and in US economics where the reason we've been able to spend so much without really much care or concern is because we've been the global reserve currency and because we have benefit from what is described as the exorbitant privilege of being the center

And so far we still are because you know, the world doesn't really trust anybody else, right, but you are seeing, you know, moves towards people trading in their own currency, which which then you know, right now we have this like you're in this glorious position where you know, if two countries are trading with each other, rather than trading in their own currency, they move it through a dollar.

The dollar system. They don't, they don't have to do that.

You know, there's there's all sorts of kind of value in the liquidity and the efficiency of our capital markets that that keep that keeps us there.

But as but as as that.

Erodes, yeah, then then then we become like other countries. I have to like pay for things, right and it wouldn't you know, people say like, oh, it's just you look at the budget numbers. It's just absolutely impossible. We can't, we can't do it. I mean it's true, you can't.

Yeah, hey a look at the Pentagon. But instead in

Yeah.

Also the billions of dollars that people spend around the country, around the world coming to this country, buying real estate and through tourism and going to universities here. Yeah, it's also a significant can you know, prop up of our of the dollar economy. If we lose that, then we're in huge trouble. Yeah, because we don't make enough stuff to We don't have any other ideas, like that's that's our thing.

People want to live here.

It's a nice place to live and we're very welcoming up until recently two foreigners.

Yeah, no, that's right, that's right. On the other hand, let's put this up on the screen. There were some decent jobless numbers that came in. Jobless claims dropped a bit last week. This was a little bit below the initial estimates of the previous week's unrevised tally of two hundred twenty nine thousand, so they dropped it two hundred twenty seven thousand. So you know, you don't see it like a huge spike in jobless claims or anything like that showing up yet. And then on the other handless

Because of these tariffs.

Now, of course, say we'd love to raise prices for any number of reasons, and plenty of retailers will take advantage of the terrorist to prices even beyond what they have to. But also when you're talking about a thirty percent tariff on China, that is going to require some price hikes in order to you know, continue to run a profitable business.

This was interesting to me. Ryan leave us up on the screen.

Target on Wednesday cut it's full year sales outlook, as executives said, weaker discretionary spending, consumer uncertainty about tariffs, and backlash to the company's rollback of key diversity equity inclusion efforts hurt its business. So they went away from woke and went broke apparently.

Yes, I mean the backlash against that was massive and a lot of people that were boycotting Target as a result of.

This Wow and It's showing up.

So they got on both sides.

They got the boycott for the wokeness and then they got the boycott for the anti wokeness.

Yeah.

Interesting, So one indication there of things that maybe to come. Let's go and move on to the latest news with regard to deportations, we have new ice tactics. Practically every day we can put these images up on the screen. They're now camping out outside of asylum hearings. This is

Go ahead and read you this.

This says after a deportation flight with eight migrants left Texas reportedly intended for South Sudan this week, of federal judge on Wednesday rule the Trump administration had.

Violated a previous order.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts said it at hearing the administration had failed to adhere to an injunction he issued in March that prevented people from being sent to countries other than their own without opportunities to raise fears of persecution or torture. And South Sudan not in a good state right now. United State Department warning for Americans to avoid South Sudan. I think our diplomats

Yeah, this is what contempt is for. There is an order in place, and they clearly had contempt for it. Their argument is that these are terrible, uh, you know, murderers and other criminals. You know, if if you can't, why can't they figure out a way to do this legally? If it's true, if you've got a murderer here who's here illegally, you can you can figure out a way

We need better laws on the books. Nobody is going to object to that.

It would not be any sort of a First of all, murders should serve their sentence before they, you know, are released into whatever country you're talking about. But second of all, there's literally not a single politician who would object to a murder who's here illegal, illegally getting deported somewhere. And it would not be a difficult process to play out. But it's you asked the question, why don't they do this the lawful way? I mean that is part of the.

Point, right. They want to test the bounds. They want to outright defy the.

Constitution and these judicial orders that have been issued and see how far they can go and see what they can get away with. I mean, that is a that is a key part of their strategy here. The other thing that's in this budget that just passed is a huge increase in funding for Ice. That makes it, i think, the largest funded federal law enforcement agency in history. So you know those are you're getting the police state, you're getting the you know, the military expansion, and you're getting

Able to accomplish.

They're trying to secure the resources to be able to do that, but in the meantime, they want these displays of lawlessness and cruelty to substitute for that, and then to encourage people to self deport. That's effectively what substituting for you know, actually falling process or god forbid, going through Congress and actually you know, passing laws that help you accomplish the outcomes that you want, which, as we've discussed before, I think Democrats would have absolutely gone along

Don't know what numbers we're going to have available, but it's you know, it's probably going to work to some degree. You know, I think you know, within immorant communities. They have successfully struck staple fear. Yes, they're definitely afraid and some and some are going back. At the same time they're they are trying to arrest and detain people as there as they're leaving, which is counterproductive to the whole idea.

I hadn't seen those cases, which is.

Which is a real problem with the private detention facility, right, because they profit the profit, right, and now they're going to have this massive budget which is going to meet you create a lot more profit. And there's no there isn't any money in somebody just buying a ticket and going home, right, Like the money is in hiring people to go catch them, lock them up and then guard them indefinitely.

Right.

That's very dark, but very good point.

Let's put D two up on the screen because this really gets the heart too of what's going on here. So there was a memorandum that came out from the administration, from the intel community that said like, basically, okay, we're not being invaded by trend To Aragua and specifically debunking the alleged connection between the Venezuelan government and this gang. And this is a problem for this administration because that is the pretext for which which they used to invoke

So let me read you a little bit from this article.

They say, new emails document how he top eight to Tulci Gabbert, the Director of National Intelligence, ordered analysts to edit an assessment with the hope of insulating President Trump and gathered from being attacked for the administration's claim that Venezuela's government controls a criminal gang.

Quote.

We need to do some rewriting and more analytic work so this document is not used against the DNI, that's Tulsi or Potus, Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Miss Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April third, using shorthand for Miss Gabard's

And also if their argument is there is an ongoing invasion, the invasion's over.

So that's a problem too.

Yeah, Emily has made that point that she she wanted to ask administration about. Okay, well you've you know, the border crossings are genuinely significantly down. So is are we being invaded or are we not being invaded? In the problem solved because you.

Can't have guess you could argue we've been invaded and you have to find all the invaders.

I guess that's what they would say. Yeah.

But the other problem they have with this invasion rhetoric is that so much of it was done legally within the properly within the immigration system. What's his name, Andre, the makeup dude, you know, Yeah, he like made a TVP want toppointment, had an asylum case open, yep, was here, like was here legally. That's not how an invasion unfolds. Invasions you just crash.

You're not going through.

Castle wall one.

App Yeah, we're waiting for your appointment at the border, and.

You can put up this next this next alment D three. He was not alone, you know, more than fifty at least of the Venezuelans who are who were sent to El Salvador, according to this investigation and analysis by Cato, right wing libertarian institute, we're.

Here legally so and even beyond that, in this analysis, he was actually only able to ascertain the legal status of ninety of the individuals.

And out of that ninety fifty of them right came here legally.

So actually a clear majority of the numbers that he was able to ascertain any information about came here legally. So you know, it's not a scientific sample, et cetera.

But if you expectin that out to fifty, how many do they send, Yeah.

Roughly q fifty a ton, Yeah, roughly two fifty.

So if you extrapolate that out, you know, it's very easy to believe that actually a majority of the people who were sent to a foreign dungeon potentially for life, came here legally and committed We already know they a majority committed no crimes.

And as Ben Franklin would say, even if it was just one, it's wrong, that's right, and that's.

Why you have to do process.

So what did he say, I'd rather one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison, and that and that's the founding spirit of our Bill of rights and our entire kind of rule of law system. Yeah, that that it is better to protect the innocent.

Yeah.

I think the view from the you know, the extremists in the administration and you know, which is quite prevalent in Republican influencers, is that the Biden immigrants policy was illegitimate. So even if you came here, you know, as a venezuela and got temporary protected status doesn't count. You're still in their view, you're still illegal because they didn't they

Right.

So and so Rick Grennell, special Envoyd to Trump in the State Department, returned yesterday from Venezuela with a with an American who had been held there for a significant amount of time. Grannell had has been this is this is not the first American that Grenell has gotten out of detention in Venezuela and maybe some other countries as well.

Uh.

He's also been in active negotiations with the with the government there that I guess we technically don't recognize, but clearly, clearly we do. He did an interview yesterday on his on his way back with Steve Bannon saying that the US is not out trying to enact regime change all over the world. Then this was in the context of the Maduro government in Venezuela, not.

All over the world, just in South Africa, just.

Just in South Africa. And so, uh, we put this next element of monsuscoop from the Miami Herald. This is D four usked secretly negotiating deal to let Venezuela sell more oil if it takes more deportees. And this is actually where diplomacy does play a role in our migration policy. Like let's let's imagine that that you know that this is phrased in oil terms, because that's how we understand our diplomacy. No, China and Russia have been making overtures

I'm sort of this though, because Venezuela has accepted deportation flights. But perhaps it was on more of like an ad hoc basis, because this is one of the key things that was key details of the you know, the Venezuelan's being shipped to El Salvador instead. Apparently, prior to that flight to El Salvador, Venezuela had said yes, we'll take you know, deportees from the US, and there have been subsequently flights that have left and brought deportees to Venezuela.

He's looking for the Yeah. It's like, okay, well you could do it with them, you.

Know, why not.

I'm a former al Qaeda guy.

Surely I'm not not that bad, right he literally nobody who could be as bad as the al Kaya guy, I mean, the former Alkada guy. Like I think, if we can get along strong pass it's a very good point.

If you can get along with him, you can get along with Maduro.

I interviewed the Venezuela Foreign minister maybe like a year ago, and he brought up, and he mentioned deportations as a place to where there could be room for negotiations if in a world where there was normalized relations. But yet they certainly will take some and certainly if they're political opponents, Ben.

Azuell is happy to take them.

Yes, they said that you and then beat them up and put them in there in jails, right, the US position.

According to this, other analysts said they argue Maduro can become a pro American dictator.

So, I mean it would not he would not be the first American, you know, pro American dictator.

Yeah, sure to fit them mold. So anyway, interesting, We'll see what develops there. But I mean, it would make sense that they're using those deportation flights as leverage to try to roll back some of those sections and you know, secure oil sales on a more permanent basis. Yeah, all right, let's get to this AI. This is pretty interesting. We try to follow this closely. Put this up on the screen. We've got a new collab between open ai and Joni Ive, who is the designer of the iPhone, in a six

But I don't really know anyway, they say in a joint interview.

Mister Ive and mister Allman declined to say what such devices could look like, how they might work, but they said they hope to share details next year. Mister Ive fifty eight fram the ambitions as galactic, with the aim of creating amazing products that elevate humanity. We've been waiting for the next big thing for twenty years, mister Altman added. We want to bring people something beyond the legacy products

If the two men.

Succeed, and it's a very big if they could spur what is known as ambient computing, rather than typing and taking photographs on smartphones, future devices like pendants or glasses that use AI could process the world in real time, fielding questions and analyzing images and sounds in seamless ways. They put on this like funny hype video, like relatively lengthy hype video for this partnership. We pulled a couple

I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer.

Sam is a rare visionary. He shoulders incredible responsibility, but his curiosity, his humility remain utterly inspiring.

Johnny is the deepest thinker of anyone I've ever met. What that leads him to be able to come up with is unmatched.

I was just thinking, what a privilege it is to really connect with somebody new and it's it hasn't happened in a long time. And the reason I think that it happened is we had both a very strong shared vision. We maybe didn't know exactly where we were going to go, but like the direction of the like the force vector, felt clear. And then this like deeply shared sense of values about what technology should be when technology has been really good, when it's gone wrong.

I mean that that was in a way one of the basis I think for one of the reasons Sam and I clipped was despite our wonderfully different journeys to this point, our motivations and values are completely the same. In my experience, if you're trying to have a sense of where you are going to end up, you shouldn't look at the technology. You should look at the people who are making the decisions, and you should look at what drives, motivates and look at values.

So Johnny and Sam really feeling.

Each other there, they really are, you know, you were saying, Sam, really sounds like Ezrare at the beginning, Like what really does actually?

Yeah, really through me that it fits.

With the abundance agenda. It does?

It absolutely does.

I mean I just can't get over all been taking this nonprofit and turn It's one of the things I agree with Elon Musk on taking this nonprofit and turn trying to turn it into a for profit and then he's going to use the billions and like rise up in market cap that to then by the guy that helped make the iPhone. I'm sure everybody who else who participated in making the iPhone was like, this guy didn't do it.

It's just like a brand, like you created this brand image around I don't know anything. That's why I thought, And it's actually Johnny because I really like I've never heard but apparently he's a big deal.

But yeah, and it also feels dystopian, like we all understand the way that so if if you didn't drive before ways and Google maps, like you don't know that you actually can get around places knowing.

Where to go.

Your brain that were devoted to like actually to get places.

And so if you take that and you apply it, you put glasses on and you look this way, and it says tree like your brain is going to stop working.

It's going to.

Shut down, and it's going to it would be like it's it's like when you don't walk for a couple of weeks because your bed ridden, your legs stop working.

I have thought that same thing with the exact the exact like GPS, because when I first started driving, there was map quests and those sorts of things, but you had to print out direction.

And then if you screwed up, you had to actually.

Like get out a map and like figure it out, or like go to the gas station, be like, where the hell am I what do I do? And then your brain actually does this thing of learning where you're going and how to get there.

I'm going to go to a gas station just for fun and ask somebody how to get somewhere.

They'll like nine one.

I've actually had people on the street like Taurus asked me how to get a place.

I'm like, you're gonna get it.

Way better to have much better success with this anyway. Yeah, it is terrifying to think about. And already I think with even the level of AI we've gotten to, there is a lot of risk of especially writing ability atrophying. There's all these you know, stories about college kids just like rampantly cheating, which you know, you could solve that particular problem force people to write stuff while they're in

Don't really understand, and which nobody asked for and.

Which nobody asked for. That's exactly right.

And we're such a broken society now that it doesn't even feel possible to have like a serious adult conversation about the deployment of this technology, the development of this technology, how it should be used, how it should be constrained,

At least, let's take a listen to a little bit more of that.

You can talk to people who use our latest model and say this is like genius level in every field, and you just have to put in the work to pull it all together. But if you have a hard problem, you can have this like team of geniuses in all of their different disciplines, and they report, I'm two or three times more productive as a scientist than I was before.

I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us better selves.

Can make us our better selves. That's the that's the pitch.

And look, I mean, there are certain aspects that I'm sure will be beneficial, you know, and they like to sell the possible benefits of like medical breakthroughs, et cetera.

But just focus on that, guys, Yeah, just let's let's just do those pieces.

Show us you can make some medical breakthroughs, then come back and make us our better selves.

Yeah, and be like, and we're going to eliminate all of the necessity of human lapor. By the way, and some of this is already happening. Let's put this up on the screen from Klarna, which is isn't Clarna the thing where like when you go to pay for something online, it's like you can pay an installments. It's like the sort of like consumer loan. So they've been having some

And if you talk to the leaders.

Of the AI revolution to a person, they will all tell you that the goal is to eliminate as much human labor as possible. And look, maybe in a world where you have like a large universal basic income or some sort of you know, ability to function as an economic political society, and imagine that there might be some solution for this type of mass disruption larger than the Industrial Revolution in a shorter.

Period of time.

That's what they're at least promising to deliver, then maybe you could, you know, imagine a non dystopian version of this. But as things sit today in US society, where we can't even do things like you know, give parents paid over time, it's hard to imagine this working out in a way that is beneficial for the masses, especially since it's controlled by these few highlight concentrated, you know, tech giants.

And this one itself is particularly symbolic because it's a company that is basically a payday lender, you know, trying to you know, grease the wheels of consumption commerce for people who aren't getting paid enough to be able to make ends meet.

So there's this company.

They'll come in and give you a little the little loan and the terms are great unless you don't pay it, and then the terms are terrible. And so the argument from AI is, we can do this high tech payday lending with fewer employees, right, so we're not.

Even getting lead like the job creation of the payday lender, you know, it's just like concentrating all of the wealth extraction in the hands of it just a few people, just a few people.

We're going to make sure that that happens like.

Oh good, okay, great, thanks, that's that's nice.

That makes me feel better.

You know, we mentioned the abundance guys earlier. Derek has been doing some work on suggesting that some of this AI job replacement among white color employees may already be happening.

That they're increasing indications.

I mean, one of the things they point to is the number of college graduates you're going straight to law school.

Now, that's also kind of a recession indicator, so it could be that good.

Also, guys, be careful, Like AI can write legal briefs well, and that's the thing.

And you know, you can imagine if you're a big law firm, instead of hiring I don't know, twenty of the new associates, you hire five and you give.

Them chat GPT, and a lot of law briefs are a.

Lot of like grunt legal work is very sort of copy and paste, and especially the corporate filings are just basically like proforming. You sub in this company's name instead of that company's name, and their evaluation instead of their valuation whatever.

What they're finding though, is that these AI models are just fabricating a bunch of stuff. Yeah, like they're writing these legal briefs and citing cases that don't exist, completely misreading cases that do exist, applying law that, making up laws that don't actually exist, and putting them in And you can tell that men designed all of this because it's done with complete authority.

Yeah, yeah, I can tell.

You all about that case.

Well, the thing is completely wrong.

It really messes with you too, because it'll be like, you know, twenty citations and nineteen of them are spot off, and then one buried in there is just totally made up, is completely fabricated.

And so the thing that college graduates are hired for at these white collar jobs is producing memos for the boss, like organizing, doing research.

Be an Excel spreadsheet, spreadsheets now, and that's.

How you learn what the company does.

Learn you know how to work in a company, and then rise through the ranks and then become one of the people telling the college graduates what to do. If those jobs all get cut out, how does that twenty two year old then become the thirty two year old who's in the mid job and become the forty five year old higher up. Yeah, you're breaking the whole You're breaking the entire thing.

Yeah, I have a daughter who you know, is going to be going to college, and she's seventeen, she has one more year of high school, and she I think she knows what she wants to do. But if I were to give sort of like broad advice about what would be the right careers to go into, that would

Well, luckily the textile mails are coming back, so they work, there are they are?

They?

Nobody here knows how to sew though, so that's a problem.

Well and certainly, and yeah, well that that was the other thing when Lutnik was talking about like the millions army of millions to screw in little little screws. If you listen to the whole quote, he actually says, no, that will actually be robots that will be doing.

That, and what he yeah, he's like, this is out of context. What you'll actually be doing is you'll be working.

On the robots, right, right, But that will take your kids.

And your grandkids will also be able to work on the robots, right. Not the most inspiring vision of the future.

And why wouldn't you have other robots working on the robots.

I guess the robots are going to break eventually, and the other robots can't figure it out.

Maybe there's some role for the human being in there. All right, guys, thank you so much for hanging with us today. Ryan and Emily are going to do the Friday Show tomorrow. I'm sure there will be many things for them to discuss, and we are actually going to take Memorial Day off enjoy a long weekend. Let our crew and everybody enjoy a long weekend. So we'll see you back here next week.