8/2/23: Trump Reacts To Indictment, Pence Attacks Trump, DeSantis Unveils Economic Plan, Media Spins Hunter Corruption, BlackRock Investigated By House, Elon Sues Hate Speech Org, Niger Erupts After Coup, And CNN Bashes Trump Supporters

up a screen company in Europe. Like once they realized that you could put screens in the windows and just keep the bugs out. I feel like it would catch on like wildfire.

going to break all of that down. Blackrock and Morgan Stanley are under investigation by the House Select Committee on China for some pretty bizarre, well I shouldn't say bizarre, I guess it's also rather predictable, but some pretty interesting investments over there in China.

him to predict he had gotten that target letter. He's obviously been getting some communications back and forth with the Special Counsel Jacksmith's office.

not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting. They also question why Jack Smith waited quote two and a half years to bring these fake charges right in the middle of President Trump's winning campaign for twenty twenty four. Why was it announced the day after the big crooked Joe Biden scandal broke out from the halls of Congress.

The answer is election interference. The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the nineteen thirties, the former Soviet Union and other authoritarian dick to regimes. All right, let's put Ronda Santis's reaction up on the screen. He said, as president, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.

He said, well, I've seen reports, I've not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, d c. To their home districts. Goes on to say, no more excuses. I will end the weaponization of the federal government. We have reaction from Mike Pence as well. He says, Today's indictment serves as an important reminder anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president

of the United States. That's a very different reaction to Ronda Santis as you just saw there. Pence also says out more to say about the government's case after reviewing the indictment. The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but with his indictment, his candidacy means more talk of January sixth and more distractions. Tim Scott had a reaction as well that a lot of people pass around. He basically said, we have two tiers of justice in

this country. Maybe people didn't expect that from Tim Scott where given where some folks assume he falls on the kind of Republican candidate spectrum. But Ryan, what do you make of all of those reactions and give us your early reaction to the incitement the indictment itself as well.

for the king and you miss, like you're done. And so Adolf Hitler launched this beer hall putch, was it flopped, fell apart, he went to prison, they let him back out, and then his Nazi party eventually kind of retakes power. The deal is, you know, if you illegally come for power and you fall short of it, then you don't get the kind of grace of mercy from from the public or from the power structure that you tried to

take over. And so this is why I was kind of annoyed with the Alvin bra if you remember, I was annoyed with Alvin Bragg one and and the document's case. Okay, he looks pretty guilty. He is on tape saying he did all these things. But it's just, you know, it's it's it's documents like this is not a not that big a deal. It feels like they took a lot

of the punch out of this indictment. This this is the thing that that really matters, Like this, according to the indictment, is an attempt to basically overthrow the government. But I did find it interesting that they didn't include the highest charges. You know, they didn't include say, insurrection or or or another type of charge that would then

disqualify him from running for president. So in other words, he's gonna, you know, he's going to win this nomination and he'll be on the ballot even if he's convicted of everything from here, you know, through November, if you know, imagining that they can get these cases to trial fast enough because they didn't charge him with high enough offenses, uh,

you know, to to disqualify him. So in some ways there will be accountability, but not the type that's going to kind of keep you you know, from from running for office again. Finally, the DC jury point that a lot of people have been making, I think actually is a legitimate one. If I were Jack Smith, I'd be like, look, tell you what, I'm so confident in my case. You

pick the district. Go ahead, You're like, look, and you can do unprecedented things, because this is an unprecedented trial of a former president, and not just a former president, but a you know, leading presidential candidate in the next race. Go ahead, pick pick a district. What do you want, Alabama, Mississippi? Picket and we'll make our case, and we'll still convict you that I would. I don't imagine that he's going to do anything like that, but I think to develop

public confidence in it requires something something like that. What did you think of the indictment as you read through it last night?

perpetrated three criminal conspiracies. And he's referencing US Code here when he says a conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, and violation of and then he cites

the statute that the language itself there. I mean, maybe there's an argument people can make that that's really broad language that can be used by weaponized federal government, which I think it's in it's at this point. I think it is absolutely incontrovertible that the Department of Justice is being weaponized against the former president.

Donald Trump whatsoever. But it does allow people to air this one very damaging argument and serious argument that Donald Trump was exploiting his own voters, his own fans, his own supporters.

of other people. Most of them did not break into the capitol. It was already broken into and they walked in and they hung out in the Capitol for a while, and then when Trump told them to leave, they left, and they were and they were convicted by a jury of well, if they went to trial, most completed guilty of,

you know, disrupting this January sixth, you know, certification. So it seems to me like you could arguably then make it stick on the person whose idea the whole thing was that, Okay, we're going to gin up all of these fake electors. We're going to get a big crowd here, and the crowd and the fake electors are going to pressure Mike Pence to do something that all of these other lawyers are saying, they just he just simply does not have the right to do.

process by which a mob of people can pressure, you know, legally pressured the vice president to accept these fake electors Like that's not that's not i legal avenue that you're allowed to pursue. And so if so this was Trump's entire plan to then slap on top of it that you need to do it peacefully and patriotically, you know, to me, isn't enough, But maybe maybe it is to

a jury, we'll see. What what's what's your sense of you know, how much residence that argument is having now among among people on the right, and what is what is the way that you're seeing them defend this mainly.

it's the sitting president of the United States himself. So if he's not going to have a special consul investigating that, if he's if his Department of Justice isn't going to call for a special console investigating that, and you're just going to have this hit one candidate. I mean, I remember talking to Crystal about this one time, and we were basically like, yeah, like, lock them all up if they've done something wrong. But we know that we're not in a country where that happens. And so I think

that's really the emergent argument. And there's an interesting thing too. This is int Trump's statement. He talks about the timeline and how it came. Right after the testimony of Devin Archer. Greg Price had a pretty viral tweet on the right where he lays out the timeline. June seventh, FBI releases documents to Congress legend the Bidens took a ten million dollar bribe from Barrisma. June eighth, Jack Smith indicts Trump

in the mar al Lago docs case. Then he does the same with July twenty sixth and twenty seventh, and then the same with July thirty.

are very real concerns about January sixth too. If the other cases hadn't been brought, this would be a very, very different conversation, I think.

a lot of the rallying around Trump as well. I think on the Biden side, shure, yeah, like open up an investigation. I think actually Democrats would probably benefit if they had an open primary and a bunch of candidates ran instead of Biden. So I'm not sure that would actually help Republicans. If I were going to agree with Trump on something, I would point to his complaint about

it taking two and a half years. I complained that they didn't impeach him that night, you know, the night of January sixth or early in the morning on January seventh. Ilon Omar had written articles of impeachment. They weren't hard

to write. You also had a couple, you had a couple of Democrats who were on the Judiciary Committee who had written articles of impeachment, who handed them to Standy Hoyert and said, look, let's just vote on these, Like, just just write them on the bloodstained paper in this room and vote today and kick it to the Senate and have a trial while he's still president. Barring that

there wasn't a whole lot in this indictment. I don't think you tell me what you think that wasn't available to the FBI hy around say, March of twenty twenty one. Like most of this stuff is most of the indictment based on interviews and interrogations, and you know the kind of extensive research that FBI does, but lot most of it's based on public stuff, like these are things we knew, and so if you could have done this in March twenty twenty one, I think that is that really is

the time to do it. Instead, they went for an impeachment after he was out of office, that they knew wasn't going to get two thirds of the vote, and then Merrick Garland kind of just sat around for a long time and finally kicks it over to Jack Smith. So that I think that is a fair criticism. Now, I don't think Trump would agree that he should have been indicted two years ago. I think he thinks he shouldn't be indicted at all. But I think he's right that the delay is was a problem, you.

I think they're legitimate concerns about precedent that the sets for free speech when people are legitimately concerned about election results. Going forward, we'll see how the case proceeds. I mean this all like we actually have to see how it proceeds. I would just raise those questions too. I agree with you on the timing. I thought that it was interesting how little what came out of that Select Committee on January sixth ended up contributing to all of this.

that's why we have an Insurrection Act. And there was all of this, these rumors on the right at the time that Trump was going to an act, you know, or was going to implement the Insurrection Act and other national security protocols that they believed would allow him. So there were people in his inner circle that were that were genuinely contemplating invoking the Insurrection Act, bringing out which means bringing out, you know, national Guard troops to basically

violently put down protests against him. Remaining office, which that is a that is a forceful seizure of power, and you know, the end of American democracy. So I think this is really serious stuff that these that these clowns were contemplating, and the fact that they are clowns doesn't make it any less serious.

going to know who to trust anymore. So if Donald Trump, so if you've thoroughly planted the seeds of distrust and you've discredited the credibility of things that people used to trust, like the FBI.

and that's where things get even more violent. And there was a lot leading up to January sixth I think that was similar actually to that, And so the fact that we're heading into a place where it's going to get worse is a little bit chilling to think about as well.

He's got his economic ten point economic plan out. Here's how I would describe it. Tell me, uh, what you think of it. To me, it's sort of like a kind of muddled together, groping mixture of populism and kind of old school Reaganism, because it combines the kind of nod toward austerity where he's he's saying he's going to kind of cut the depths that cut the budget, He's going to go after waste, fraud and abuse, he's going

to reign in government spending. But he's also leaning in a more populous direction about kind of helping helping the family economically so that he can also help them culturally.

And and I don't want to like completely dismiss as an intellectually incoherent brought product, because I think the Republican Party is going through a transition period, so I think there's going to be some incoherence, you know, on on the way to where they finally land on something, and so you're going to wind up with a situation like this where you have things that are kind of often in conflict with each other because you know, you Wan's

less government and more government at the same time. What was your what's your read on the Dysanta's plan for that?

on our enemies. Now this next line, imagine a Republican saying this ten years ago quote, we are no longer going to count how to Wall Street and big corporations who don't have your interests front and center. He talks about China, and then he says the American dream is

slipping away from our nation's middle class. He goes on and talks about COVID lockdowns, reckless borrowing, printing, and spending, making costs of life essential, so much so that buying a home, purchasing a car, or starting a family is cost prohibitive, and for many even affording groceries has become a matter of saving. Now this next line I thought

was the most interesting. He says the bottom half of American households have less wealth today than in nineteen eighty nine, while the top ten percent have added twenty nine trillion dollars in wealth over the same period. He also adds another good line here, Over six million prime age men are neither working nor looking for work. The labor force participation rate for this group fell from ninety eight percent

in nineteen fifty three to eighty nine percent today. Ryan that line about the bottom half of American households having less wealth than in nineteen eighty nine while the top ten percent have added is like could have been ripped from a speech somebody gave it Occupy Wall Street in twenty eleven, when all of the Republican Party was and I use this word understanding that it's sort of a joke, and for good reason, seizing on class warfare. Right Republicans

were lamenting the divisiveness. You definitely remember this better than I do. Of they were lamenting the divisiveness of quote class warfare over and over and over again to their own detriment. They then nominated private equity Baron and Mitt Romney to take on Barack Obama in twenty twelve and got Donald Trump and were shocked and surprised by the fact that after all of that they got Donald Trump.

So here's Rond DeSantis, I think absorbing some of those lessons, And now to your point, Ryan about whether the plane itself addresses that, you know, how do you address that as Republican policies. It is a lot of you know, cutting red tape, ending regulatory capture, et cetera, et cetera, which I.

rhetoric of what is it we lose, they win, like the we and the Day framing, it's that's that's kind of left wing or at least populous stuff. But it's kind of left wing populist stuff when you're when you're breaking it down to the ninety nine percent and the one percent and the we to day it is very, like you said, kind of occupy inspired. But then right, how you're going to go after corporations and Wall Street and rain them in, but you're also going to cut

regulation and red tape? Well, how are you going to do that? But you it is the regulatory power of the state that is going to do the things that you're saying you're going to do, and you're saying that you're going to weaken the regulatory power of the state. And so, like I said, I'm not I don't want to mock him because I think the right is kind of groping for something interesting here. But the way it's

structured now, it is self defeating. Now, if you're going to be totally cynical, you would say he doesn't mean any of this. It's he's just pandering to this you know, increasingly working class base that they're that they're pulling in and that in fact, what they're going to do is continue to deliver for the one percent. That would be

the cynical interpretation. I like to I like to think, I like to be more hopeful about our political prospects, even in the face of all of the evidence that you know that nobody is actually serious about doing any

of this. So uh, you know, until Desantus kind of marries you know, what he's going to do with the government to an agenda that he's that he's saying he stands behind, I don't think it should be taken seriously as a matter of policy, which is which is ironic given that you know, DeSantis is the one, you know who always talks about how he's kind of the policy want, how he's the one who's going to get things done, and then he puts out a plan that is you know,

just in complete contradiction with it's with both ends of it, and some of that.

hard to know what that means. You know, he's trying to make permanent, full immediate expensing, maintained territoriality, and for the strength and base erosion memorvers measures to ensure corporations investing in America. And you know, I think you actually can hit that three percent growth number with those targets.

says going to China? He says DeSantis will incentivize the repatriation of US capital from China through state strategic tax abatements and aligning market incentives with strategic goals to help secure our supply chains and invest in America. You can read that as either industrial policy or tax incentives and or crony capitalism, right, depending on how you want to see it.

on the Republican Party of twenty twelve. He talks like Masters did about people being able to raise a family on a single income, and so I think it's an interesting I guess combination, or it's an interesting bridge between the old Republican Party and the New Republican Party, or where people think the sort of the post Trump Republicans

think the New Republican Party needs to go. Whether their motives are pure is obviously up for debate, and whether they actually want to take the steps of implementing policies that might take a little bit away from the top and bring some to the bottom, not you know, by force of the tax code or anything like that, but of realigning economic incentives is a different question.

was unclear and the witness testified. This is not me saying that the witness testified that a lot of times. Most of the time, Joe didn't even know who the people were at the dinner table.

in corrupt behavior. No, And on the contrary, Hunter Biden's business problems partner said, yeah, he was on some phone calls talking about the weather, talking about the weather, exchanging pleasantries. You know, is that in the category of you know, presidential family members that are problematic, Billy Carter, Hugh rod And maybe it's in that category, but is you sure and absolutely not a crimes Okay.

for us to judge him as voters as citizens now, and then you have Jim Himes saying they were talking about the weather. According to Devin Archer, and if we go out of order here, I'm so sorry. If we could put C four up on the screen, this is a tweet from Tom Bevin reacting to reporting that the Bidens were using burner phones, and Tom quotes need burner phones to talk about the weather because Biden told Archer to get burner phones.

finances than I think people understand. And I've done a lot of reporting on this in the past, and people should be able to look up some of my older reporting on Joe Biden, James Biden, Hunter Biden, going back, you know, to the nineties and the two thousands, and so I think we have to bear that context in mind as we're thinking through, you know, what Biden's role was here at the same time, I would say that if Biden is getting on the phone with Hunter Biden

and making pleasantries to you know, let's say, business partners at a dinner, unless Republicans can come up with something more than that, like, unless they can prove or show or you know, have some kind of evidence that that Biden was getting paid or that Biden you know, was aware of you know, who those people were, then I don't think they have what they think they have here. Now.

I do think it's fair to say that Joe Biden knows that Hunter Biden, oftentimes when he's putting them on the speakerphone, is doing it so that he can impress people. And oftentimes those people are ones who are paying him for his last name and for his access. And I think if you're a liberal kind of watch watching this right now, you should, you know, think about that, think about what is what is Biden? What does Biden think

in that moment? And he probably knows exactly what's going on. Now, this idea from Comer that therefore Joe Biden is guilty of being a foreign agent, I you know, I don't think it's been remotely proven, because you'd have to show that Biden did something. Now, Okay, yes, Biden did fire this, uh this, you get this, get this Ukra brainting prosecutor fired who was investigating Maarisa. But that was also American policy at the time, so that so you can't completely

you can't really hang your case on that. Was there anything else that Biden did when it came to Romania or China or anything else related? You know, those things remain just allegations, not even specific allegations, just kind of brow kind of smoke. There is a lot of smoke, and I do think that it was unethical and I think that Hunter Biden was exploiting his father's grief at that time. You know, it is one thing to talk

every day in this period of grief. It is another thing to put your dad on speaker phone when you're at a dinner party with your business partners like that. You don't get the kind of grief exception for that move. You know what you're doing there.

to work, exactly how influence pedaling works. He's been the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations commit Like he absolutely knows what these things are. And that's why I actually think this is a really good point, because what Republicans are very they really feel like each new revelation gets

them closer to maybe an impeachment hearing being opened. And we talked last week about Kevin McCarthy floating that if people stop cooperating, and obviously Archer ended up actually testifying, So maybe if that was subtly about Archer or about other things, that's off the table for the speaker now.

White House. Well, because there's always plausible deniability with something like this, all Hunter Biden needs is the Biden last name. Joe Biden doesn't need to actually do anything other than hit the links, go to the golf course with Hunter's clients, go to Cafe Milano, be on speakerphone, and as long as he like, he actually doesn't have to talk about business at all. I find it extremely hard to believe that never happened in any sort of broad context whatsoever.

Obama administration or the Biden administration. You know, when it came to Tony Podesta, you could look at how many meetings he had with Clinton State Department, for instance, as he was representing Yanikovich with the Paul mannifort when it came to Ukraine, like, you can look, there are things you can do to show what, you know, tangible results were. So I'm interested in where that conversation goes. But to

your point, I actually think that's that's so interesting. I don't know that they're ever going to get a smoking gun, precisely because you don't ever need a smoking gun to do influence peddling in this country.

time doing lobbying. I think it's more than twenty percent of your time doing or or you have to do something material to benefit these clients. And he'd be like, well, yeah, well guess what I was on skid row. I was not actually lobbying on behalf of these Chinese energy companies or Romania or Ukraine. I wasn't showing up for these board meetings. I was wasted. So anyway, we'll see this.

You know, I think the Republicans have their work cut out for them if they're going to, you know, find the evidence is going to land this, but it is. It is unseemly just like Hunter Biden should not have had one of his first jobs be at BNA, the bank that Biden represented, in the credit card company that Biden represented, Delary shouldn't have become a lobbyist for MBNA. You know, he shouldn't have done all of the things

that he's done throughout throughout his career. And Joe Biden could have told him, if you want to do this, you're a grown man, but you cannot use my name and I'm not going to help you along the way because I ethically I find this to be repugnant. Joe Biden did not do that.

Biden was doing business with. And yet we learned today that over twenty times, in fact, Joe Biden, while he was vice president, spoke with people who were sending the Biden family members these suspicious wires that the banks nor anyone else in America know the purpose of the wires.

says pose a national security risk to the US. Now is that just bloated neo conservative language from the committee.

is Morgan Stanley, not Blackrock. Everything that I just listed out, We can then move to the Blackrock slide that we have prepared here that Philip tweeted out of the screenshots. So when it comes to Blackrock also Aviation Industry Corporation Morgan Stanley there as well. They are making aircraft for the PLA that includes, as the Committee says, the fifth generation J twenty fighter jet, and a munitions company, a Chinese munitions company that produces artillery shells for the People's

Liberation Army. Now, whatever you think of the United States policy towards China or China's policy towards the United.

and Blackrock are denying that they've done anything wrong. Ryan, what do you make of I keep referring to them as the receipts like we're at a real housewives reunion, But what do you make of the evidence the committees presented.

Agenda item that was backed heavily by Republicans. We are we produce, you know, most of our consumer goods over there. Uh they you know, they purchase enormous amounts of our of our debt. But then but then we then we want to uh then then and we do draw some lines around you know what US companies can invest in

and not invest in. But now the House Repulicans want to take it even further and say, well, okay, this isn't specifically outlawed, but if you look, you know it is a company that has connections to producing you know, ammunition which you know legitimately could be used against Americans in Taiwan at some point, which and I say, it feels schizophantical. I was like, all right, well, look, if

that's our policy, then then ban it. If or if we're really worried about Chinese shells, you know, landing on the heads of American soldiers, better thing to do would be to make sure that that never happens, that the Chinese never fire shells on American soldiers, because I don't I don't think the American soldier is going to be that much more upset if he gets killed by a black Rock funded munition or a munition that was you know, funded by you know, some other fungible resources to China

put toward its munitions factor. I think primarily the soldier would just prefer not to have been killed in the war. And so I think everything needs to revolve around the question of how do we avoid a completely unnecessary war like it's it's talked about in Washington and nowadays almost as if this this is destined to happen, that nobody has any choice, that we're headed towards this conflict. But this would be a war of choice, like there are

other options that are available. And so then the question is does this type of stuff make or more likely, or make or less likely? Is it does this set us up to be, you know, to have more independence from China, or does it put us on a collision course for war? And I don't know exactly the answer to that, but I think it. I think that there is something incoherent about the way we're approaching it here.

What would you have them? Do you think if if House Republicans could write write the law and kind of force Biden's hand to sign it.

a hostile foreign nation. And then you get into a lot of different questions about different countries and where there are competing interests. By the way, you can look at the way that people who talk a big game about

China look at Saudi Arabia for instance. Uh, And there's a really serious, I think question of how you decouple, How do you how do you deal with a country that is implicated in sort of intentional, coordinated government human rights abuses on your average citizen, let alone in Chinjong for instance, how do you how do you deal with that while also not you know, decoupling in a way that that starts a war. Obviously, Taiwan and Chips a

huge question on the table. Obviously Blackrock is going to look at the fact that Intel is here in d C right now pouring millions of dollars into a lobbying effort to allow them to continue to have big business in China. That obviously will boost the Chinese government, the spying apparatus, et cetera, et cetera. And Blackrock is saying, we are trying to raise money for American pension funds. What's what makes us so different from Intel? What makes

us so different from Walmart or wherever else? If we're we're all sort of boosting the Chinese economy, which is fundamentally dependent on the American economy. They need us, and that's why this trade war has been so bitter. And if we fully decouple from China, and there's an argument that there's sort of there's a desperation that leads to a potential invasion of Taiwan, which is obviously, as our government has said, our redline that you know, involves a

hot conflict. I mean, this is it is an absolute mess, and basically it's the result of elite mismanagement over the course of decades that we're in the situation now, and nobody should have any confidence whatsoever that that's going to get better to prevent a hot conflict where actual lives are on the line, because they're the ones that have

screwed this up for decades. And now we're in a position where it's like, okay, so we're just going to you know, posture about the evils of the CCP and the PLA, and a lot of us can agree on those things, but you know, what does that look like? Like you are we going to then take on Intel? Are we going to take on other companies?

But I guess you know this is you know, that would be my ideal world, but that's not the one that we're in.

Digital Hate. So the CCdh of orchestrating quote a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform by publishing research reports claiming that the social media service failed

to take action against hateful posts. Now in the filing, the Twitter lawyers, the ex Court lawyers alleged that the CCdh carried out quote a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected ex court data needed by the CCdh so that I could cherry pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the

platform is overwhelmed with harmful content. This is actually fascinating because one of the biggest problems social media companies have right now, and in fact why you see over and over again in the Twitter files and the Facebook files that Jim Jordan has started sharing and people like Matt Taibi and Michael Schallenberger have been covering excellently, what you start to see is that these companies are so terrified, maybe not under Elon Musk, but they're so terrified of

pressure from the media. In many cases, which is odd that the media is acting is like the censors, the defenders of free speech in the First Amendment are the ones that are pressuring these companies and also from the government to crack down on hate speech. And fundamentally, it's a question of how we define hate speech.

true of racism and homophobia. When you're calling people who just disagree with Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem racist, you know, whether they're white, black, Hispanic, if you're if you're calling that racist, I think that's a crazy definition of racism. In the same way that I think we agree some of these definitions of anti semitism are crazy and harmful to the cause of actually identifying and stamping out the scourge of anti Semitism.

your advertiser advertisements to appear on. And here's how we can make those promises. Elon Musk either you know, fired the teams that were capable of doing that, or just decided not to do that, because the message he himself was delivering publicly was the opposite. He was yelling at these advertisers saying that you know, they ought to be standing up for free speech. And if they if they

pulled their money. If you remember the very beginning, he's he threatened them that he was going to stick his army of people on them and like boycott, boycott them and kind of a proto bud light thing. He never managed to kind of pull any of any of that off. And so the whole I mean, it almost seems like too easy of a shot to dunk on him for

the hypocrisy around the free speech here. He's a free speech app absolutist who's suing a nonprofit yeah, for speech saying that it's speech you know, was insulting to them and harm them. But yeah, like that, I have zero sympathy for him because he he has all of the Twitter data. Like if Unilever is concerned, you know, if if he wants to meet Unilever's concerns about the platform, he's capable of pitching them, just just like any other

social media platform is. But he doesn't want to. He thinks, rightly or wrongly, but he thinks that Unilever's concerns are flawed and get in the way of his, uh you know, the way that he wants to run his platform and the people that he wants to allow, uh, you know, on onto his platform. And so to me, you can't have it both ways, Like you don't. You don't get to decide for Unilever where where they want to, where

they want to advertise. I do agree with you that I've I've always found it a little bit corrupt when digital media companies are doing this kind of crusading reporting about who's advertising on Facebook or Twitter or Like and and calling all these advertisers and it really feels like pressuring them to stop advertising with them. And I call it corrupt because they are direct competitors, like digital media

wants those advertisers. So if they can get these huge accounts to you know, respond to my request for comment about why you know you're advertising with Facebook or with Twitter despite the fact that you know X person said X terrible thing on Twitter. You don't respond by you know, twelve tomorrow or I'm going to write a story that you're still advertising with them, and so then you know

they pull out. Now they still have this advertising budget lo and behold, they run that advertising budget with the with the companies, with the digital media companies that that drove drove them away. And so I have never thought that there's a directive coming from the sales team like please do this, but the economic and financial incentives are such that it's it's always kind of made that feel pretty icky.

like that. It reminds me actually of the story about the Southern Poverty Law Center we talked about not that long ago, where they had to admit in court filings. You know, they like to act as though their designations, which I think smear Christians Conservatives in ways that are you know, some of those groups that they identify absolutely deserve to be on their hate map, their hate list, whatever it is. Some do not, And they had to admit in court filings they're being sued by one of

those groups. They had to admit that they were subjective and you know, not that their opinion basically. And that's when we when we're you know, throwing around words like racist, homophobic, anti semitic, it's always been a matter of opinion. We haven't always agreed on what the definition of those terms are. And I think that's an important thing to recognize. There was a time when you know, there's just abject and

discussing denial of to call racism actual racism. And so I mean, yes, I think that stuff is all important, but I also think the weaponization of those terms is important, and advertisers are are not going to catch on to that because they don't want to risk advertising on a space like Twitter where people are going to send them messages and easily be able to tweet and be like, why is your advertisement showing up next to this tweet? So some of the I'm looking at I should correct myself.

I think some of this stuff actually is public. I think the research here a lot of it actually is public. And some of this is a stretch. Some of it is absolutely hate speech, and it's absolutely like just incitement. As an advertiser, you would never ever want your content showing up next to this is one of the tweets quote Hitler was right with a montage of Hitler attached to the words you can understand why, yeah, you Andi Lever wouldn't want to be next to that tweet, you know,

advertising for their soap. So it's both a problem for Elon Musk and a problem for these groups.

French troops inside France. It's not just the French. If you can put up R two here, the US has a military presence in Nager as well, and reporting here from Cena that US troops are being restricted to the American base as as as things get tense in the country. Part of the politics that are unfolding here are related,

to believe it or not, the Wagner Group. The Wagner Group has been heavily active in Russia and has been able to kind of fill a vacuum that's been created by a lot of anti French hostility that stems not just you know, from a colonial hangover, but more more recently related to kind of the French and you know, incumbent government's inability to put down the islam extremist militant movements.

Put up R three here. This is this has been in Nager and other other surrounding country is a huge kind of boon for for the Wagner Group and for and for Russia. Uh and you as you see another great game playing out between the United States, France, Russia, China to try to get to get a sense of kind of where where we're talking about and what's going on. I assume not everybody knows exactly where, you know, where we're talking about, and if you what, what's what's key here?

And we're going to get I'm gonna get into this in a minute. Is the country just to the northeast of of Nigeria, that is that is Libya and the crisis in Libya that was fueled by the by the French and supported by the United States and the US. We think about it as just a US kind of run operation against Katafi, really kind of French run with US support, and that is how it's viewed in Central Africa. And so the US is you know, has did it

self no favor supporting that. The French are the ones that have kind of taken a lot of the hostility to back up. If you guys, if you remember the you know, the kind of Islamist organization, terrorist organization Boko Haram, which was famous for kidnapping hundreds of girls. They under pressure ended up allying with the Islamic State and creating kind of a new insurgent movement that operates throughout Central Africa and Burkina Faso, Mali and Najer and the result

has been enormous instability. So in twenty twenty you had a coup in Mali and so that and then again another coup in Mali in twenty twenty one, so the military hunta is in charge over there. January twenty twenty two, you had a military coup in Burkina Fasso, so the military junta is in charge over there. That kind of left Nagerer a little bit isolated. Nazer had its first kind of peaceful quote unquote peaceful transfer of power in

twenty twenty one when President Mohammad Bazoom took over. I say peaceful in quotes because there were a lot of allegations of irregularities and there was like a ten day shut off of the internet, and you know, a kind of brutal crackdown, and so to say that it was a perfectly peaceful transfer of power wouldn't be fair, but it was. It was a peaceful transfer of power compared to some of the civil wars in the region in

the past. So in Najer recently you had a movement that's called M sixty two, which which people can look up and it's it's fascinating kind of combination of civil society groups, you know, the trade trade unions and others who were frustrated economically as well as frustrated at the lack of success in the war against the new Boko, the new bulk of ram Uh. And so uh, you've you did not have the M sixty two movement kind of lead this coup, but you have seen them, uh

supporting the coup leaders. And also you've had a lot of people in the streets celebrating the kind of uh the French ship uh, you know, the kind of anti French sentiment, and and also then elevating Russia, saying that they would prefer to align themselves with Russia, which you know, ought to be a huge wake up call that if you have uh, you know people in the streets, you know that are that are massing in numbers higher you know, anybody can bring a few people out on the streets

and put a camera in their face, but if they're massing in high enough numbers that they're staying out there for several days and waiving Russian flags, like you you have a problem, and so there's there are now real concerns that we're going to have a war in Central Africa. You have a country Chad is being encouraged to start sending troops into Nager to reinstall the president who's detained.

There's this organization over there called the Economic Community of West African States, which is fifteen countries, and several of those are the ones that are now now of coup governments. The ones that do not have coup governments or are still aligned with the West are threatening Nager that they're going to send troops in and reinstall the president if they don't do that, but to go back to Libya

for instance, Where did this all come from? In twenty ten, the United States and France decided that it was in our interests to go in and take out Kadafi and insert ourselves and help produce a civil war. That produced one of the most kind of famous hot mic moments from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We roll R five here.

to a clean energy economy. So emily it hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention here in the United States. Certainly in and France it has. Macrone has said that it's absolutely untrue that he's going to send troops in because the coup government, in order to kind of buttress its own kind of strength with the public, is warning

the French are coming. The French are coming, because you know, if you can elevate your the boogeyman of Macrone sending in troops, then they're hoping people will rally around them. He has said absolutely not or not, they're not going in there. But Nager is the kind of leading source of uranium for for France and Frances is a heavier, heavy nuclear industry, economy. So you know, it's it's unclear where this is going, but it looks like it's not going.

It looks like it's not going in a very peaceful place.

Who are these people who aren't part maybe necessarily of like that Trump core what we call the Fifth Avenue Republicans who you know, he famously says I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and those people will support me. But the people on top of that who are looking at everything that's going on that happened on January sixth, and they're saying, Okay, I'll throw my support behind Donald Trump.

They feel ignored, forgotten, even betrayed. And there's a level of anger there that brought them to Donald Trump because he represented and offered to be their voice and to speak for them. And what has happened is that group has actually grown over time.

is the intermediary between Dana Bash and those voters. Right, So you are going to talk about American politics every single day and ask, with befuddlement to a Beltway polster, what explains something that if you went to a bar in Iowa you could find out with much more context and texture in five minutes than if you've sat in CNN's air conditioned studio and talked with your intermediary between the people in you, Frank Lunz, like a multi millionaire

Beltway inside Polster, Dana Bash shouldn't have to ask Frank Lunz this question with confusion, and in fact, the idea, the notion that she's confused by it in and of itself is just I don't know. I want to use

the word frustrating, but it's beyond frustrating. I mean, it's pathetic, it's sad, and it's a huge story of what's wrong in American media right now, because that same question was being asked repeatedly in twenty fifteen, not even just twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen, after Donald Trump said what he said about John McCain, after Donald Trump said what he said Russia. If you're out there, let's see those emails. After Donald Trump said you know if I were president Hillary Clinton, you'd.

an evangelical Christian. He's the man who famously at Liberty University referred to quote two Corinthians instead of the Second Corinthians. He is not a man he says the Bible is his favorite book. I think that's a Trump quote once, but I'm not confident that he reads it all that often. And I don't think a lot of Christians have been Christian Conservatives, Evangelical conservatives, white evangelical white evangelicals have been

persuaded otherwise. And again, the answer to this question is perfectly obvious, and it's one that Dana Bash should actually be asking Democratic polsters. Why do Republicans who are not as she refers to those fifth avenue. Republican voters, the people who stick with him time and time and again, why do they go with Donald Trump? Because their alternative for years has been Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

percent in that poll. It's about a quarter of the Democratic electorate right now openly supporting another candidate other than the sitting president of the United States.

media has shielded the Democrats from criticism. It's because the media has in fact allowed Joe Biden to do things that take those swing Republican voters and put them in Trump's camp. They just have allowed that, facilitated it in so many different ways, shielded Democrats from reasonable criticism, to the point where, Yeah, a whole lot of people are pulling the lever for Donald Trump when their alternative is Joe Biden. It's just so so obvious. Plus it's equally obvious.

I mean this is Sacer and Crystal talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I think it's worth repeating. The New York Times actually does They did a poll with Sienna that came out, as Crystal and Sager discussed, they were able to break with the Republican electorate into three groups the magabase, So that would be Danna Basher's Fifth Avenue Republicans. Donald Trump famously said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and people still vote for me.

Persuadable voters, and then voters who are not open to Trump. So of the Republican electorate. You have thirty seven percent magabase, thirty seven percent persuadable, and twenty five percent not open to Trump. So that thirty seven percent of persuadable voters

is really who Dana bash is talking about. And if we look at that thirty seven percent of persuadable voters, they are they less of them earn one hundred thousand dollars a year or more, and less of them have a college degree than people who are not open to Trump. And that continues, as Frank Luntz highlighted rightfully in that segment, that continues to decline the more supportive you are of Donald Trump. And the one that really stood out for me is this is their view on the issue of

whether America is in danger of failing. Eighty percent of the Magabase says yes, America is in danger of failing. Sixty one percent of persuadable voters say America is in danger of failing, twenty five I'm sorry thirty seven percent of that trunk that are not open to Donald Trump. Only thirty seven percent of them say America is in

danger of failing. And so, why then would people continue to support Donald Trump in the last six or so months after, as Dana Bash says, this information, You know, did they not watch Liz Cheney's Select Committee hearings.

CNN newsroom. That's pretty clear. Again, if she had just taken the time instead of asking Frank Lentz, maybe went into Trump Country or the suburbs where people are those parents in Dearborn, miss Evangelicals and Muslims are coming together and talking about books like Gender Queer being in libraries for really young people, and then seeing the teachers union that is allied very closely with the Biden administration, defended by the Biden administration defend books like that the alternative

and this is a real problem.

This has been happening since Donald Trump proved to be one of the most bizarre people who has ever run for office in the history of American politics, since twenty fifteen. Since twenty fifteen, and they still have not been able to sort of wrap their heads around this phenomenon.