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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Hello, everybody, it was a major breaking news. We're changing our entire show and we're putting this up at the top. We have the breaking news that happened literally as we were recording. Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota as
her vice presidential pick for the Democratic nomination. So I'm sure that Crystal's doing some backflips at home, and I'm sure she wishes that she was here on the show with us. So Ryan, we got this breaking news. Governor Walls really surged in the last forty eight hours or so in the betting markets. There was a lot of speculation. I personally thought it was going to be Governor Josh
Shapiro just because of the electoral calculus. But Tim Walls here is a popular Minnesota governor Minnesota in the Midwest. He coined the whole weird attack on Republicans. He was the choice of organized Labor. There were also some late breaking problems, it seems, with Governor Josh Shapiro and some of the baggage that he may bring to the tickets. So what do you make of the pick right now? I know we've only had minutes of process.
It's stunning in the sense that it's something that makes me happy.
Yeah, and I'm.
Not used to that when it comes to Democratic Party politics. Tim Walls was always represented a rural district in Minnesota that became increasingly suburban over the time that he represented it. But by twenty sixteen it swung like fifteen to twenty points for Trump, and he held it rather comfortably, not totally comfortably, but comfortably for a Democrat. And he did not do so by tacking right like the classic Democratic
blue dog of old. He did it by championing kind of populist values, like his first ad for Congress was talking about how due to his military service he lost a lot of his hearing. He was able to get medical treatment that was able to restore his hearing. And one morning he woke up and he asked his wife, what is that sound, And he said, that's that's my daughter.
That's your daughter laughing wow.
And he said she'd been waking up giggling every morning, but he had not been able to hear her. And he finishes the ad by saying, like, every father should be able to hear their children child's laugh in the morning.
Everyone should have that kind of access to healthcare.
And so that's the kind of populism that pushes forward a kind of leftist agenda that people have been like crying out for. That that's arguing like, that's why Bernie Sanders was able to appeal so well to people who
are independents. And so to have somebody like Wallace who's able to win these world districts with that populist message and rather than sounding weird like a social justice warrior kind of democrat of the twenty tens, to call out Republicans as being the weird ones, to kind of center his version of populist lefty politics, and to have the entire Democratic Party kind of think that that is electorally beneficial suggests something interesting going on.
With the party.
Well, let's think then a little bit about how this was Josh Shapiro's to lose.
Can we put B two please up on the screen?
This was former Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday was on CNN. Asked about the problems with Governor Josh Shapiro, and they said, just a stem from anti Semitism. She says, I think it's probably more about policy, but the decision will be made by our candidate for potus. I think that it would be better if they weighed in more privately.
Clearly, she's throwing her weight behind Tim Walls.
Reportedly we had brought that to everybody on our show on Monday. Tim Wall's a former House colleague, helped make speaker sixth race, helped make her Speaker of the House. But I'm also just thinking a little bit about here about Look, I mean, Shapiro was probably the most obvious pick, so that in a certain sense it's his to lose. I think that the Israel stuff obviously contributed to the decision,
perhaps in terms of it might split the coalition. But let's not forget that organized labor played a role here, including here with Nancy Pelosi's pick. Right, So and her support, not only personally, you had the charter school issue, which Crystal had talked about here previously.
So give us a sense of, you.
Know, like why Kamala might have picked Tim Walls over a governor Josh Shapiro who is, let's be honest, means the literally popular governor of the must wing tipping point state. I mean, that's it. It takes some guts to pick somebody else in that.
Extremely talented politician too, like, very well liked in Pennsylvania, and there was some analysis has said that he might pick up zero point four percent of the vote liked add point four percent to Democrats totals in Pennsylvania, which is in a razor thin margin, an absolutely huge amount. Yes, the charter school thing doesn't make him a huge fan of doesn't make the teachers' unions huge fans of him.
I think I think it was more this murder suicide thing that came out towards towards the very end.
So what's going on with.
That when he was attorney general. Some it's very very complicated. People can go read it, but it's now in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just now coincidentally, brutal timing for Shapiro. But basically, there was a somebody died, a woman who and he knew the family, he knew that people involved.
His office ruled it a suicide for years, with the family saying no, no, no, like, we believe that this is a side and there are people I haven't looked at the details close enough to be an expert on this.
People say that some.
Of the wounds that she had in the back of her head after she died, so it's like, how can that possibly be a suicide? But get getting too deep into these details, is you're you're gonna, you're gonna, You're gonna go down a rabbit hole. But the point is, I don't think the Harris campaign wants to go down that rabbit hole because you know, some of the family of the suspect donated money.
It's a Shapiro and Shapiro ties them.
But then his defenders were saying, well, this is this is also anti Semitism because they all went to the same Hebrew schools. You're saying that therefore anybody who went to the school can't be governor. It's like he later accused himself he probably should have done that at the very beginning. You can tell from just talking about that
it's a giant mess. Yeah, it's a mess, nobody. And so if if you have this giant mess, likeugh, is this really what we want to spend our time talking about for the next.
I know these things sound stupid, Remember, guys, we want got ninety some days to the election. You don't waste a single day on something dumb. When we think to Minnisota was not a layup, well yes and no, but I mean, I mean Kamala was up by six, you know, very lately. And yes, I think Joe, but I think
it's right. I mean one of the endurances over all of this is that a friend of mine this weekend I was talking with him and he's like, you know, Biden dropping out really makes me think like Trump was actually going to win New Mexico, Like it wasn't some right wing fever dream. He's like, I think he might actually have won like New Mexico and Virginia Minnesota, right which he barely lost him in twenty sixteen. When we think here too, let's go first of all, so let's
think about the electoral map. I also thought some very interesting analysis, which is that my theory of the election the whole Pennsylvania two hundred and seventy plus one electoral vote may be incorrect in that Kamala, by reconsolidating the Democratic coalition, picking somebody like a Tim Wallas who gets
suburban people, I think very excited, you know. I think I think Democrats really like the idea, you know, the street talking dad, and he's one of the you know, just playing weird that's all they are.
Now.
I'll say, I'm sure we'll have many fights over weirdness and all that in the coming months, But just thinking about the electoral like who he excites, and I think there is like a if we think the swing coalition here, Kamala needs to win white men back at the same rate that's Biden won in twenty twenty.
That's really why Joe Biden won the race.
So you pick like the quintessential white dude from the Midwest high school football coach and all of that, the straight talker. He's got a couple pounds on him, I guess, which is as American as can be. And you make him, you know, like the number two on the ticket. Well, now we're not necessarily just playing the Midwest game. And just assuming that the sun Belt is gone, it could be that those same suburban white people who delivered Georgia and Arizona to Joe Biden in twenty twenty, well maybe
they're back in play. So Kamala may actually have a path to the White House where perhaps she could lose a Wisconsin, a Pennsylvania, or a Michigan. But if you pick up Georgia, you can make up enough electoral votes, you can hold down the fort in Nevada, New Hampshire, places like that, and you could still get there, you know. To two hundred and seventy I think it's two seventy nine, is something like that. So I was playing a little bit with two seventy one, and that kind of challenged
my thinking a little bit. In the contra to the Josh Shapiro case. If her internal polls show a tight race in the Midwest but a lot more fluidity in the Sun Belt, well the sun Belt then comes back into play. I had not assumed that, but it's possible that that's what her thinking was in her path to two hundred and seventy. Here where Tim Waltz get those suburban people, keep them in the coalition.
These are the they use.
People are rich, they have a lot of money, they love to vote, and they're obsessed with abortion. So excite them, turn out the vote, you know, demoralize Already Republicans kind of in a little bit of a mess. He They're not really sure what to do, and they feel like they're on their back foot. They were so excited because they thought they were the only ones who were pumped up for the race, and now they're a little bit you know, trying to figure out their strategy in running.
And I think two things on that.
One is it in the Sunbelt and in Georgia, a lot of those people are actually from like Pennsylvania and the Midwest and New England and elsewhere, like there literally are from there and so and then the second related point, there are no regions anymore.
Yes, yeah, everything is national like this, this idea that and this.
This was the this was the check that the Framers thought would keep you know, partisan intrigue at a minimum, because the different regions had such significant interests that they would butt heads with each other.
In New England versus the you.
Know, the middle South and the bottom South, It's deep South, et cetera. That's gone we're like a monoculture. You drive around this country, you go anywhere in this country, we're the same place. Whether it's Arizona, you know, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania. I mean, there's some moderate differences here. And also people are moving around constantly all the time. And if you have a person who just it seems like an authentic individual like Walls, then he's going to play.
And I think your point is exactly right.
In Georgia and in Arizona. I'm not as well as he plays in Minnesota because people know him, you know, extremely well there, but he's going to play just fine. The joke that I've seen from kind of centrist Democrats is that they've been saying, like, hey, you left wing Democrats out there who've been pushing for Tim Walls, do you know that he called the National Guard out during the George Floyd riots. Don't you want to criticize him
for that for the next three months? Like they think if people like me on the left just beat him up for being too tough on the riots in twenty twenty, then that will make him look better and tougher on crime.
I'm glad you brought that up, though, because I've actually seen the opposite, which is apparently the Minnesota Senate to heavily criticize Tim Walls for not for his bad handling.
That's why they want the left to criticize for being too strong saying okay, so but anyway, he apologized, he said I failed.
So well, That's what I think is interesting is now I think there will be a little bit so I've seen. The right wing reaction that I've seen right now is that Okay, let's go, let's play, you know, let's play, let's let's talk about BLM, let's talk about the bail fund with Kamma unless. I mean, that is kind of one of the that is probably one of the more potent attacks now.
In general, the issue is, guys, it was four years ago. Now.
I'd love to relitigate BLM, but it's not going to happen. I mean, most people have moved on. I think you're right.
I think I think people agree with them, agree with Republicans on this point, but also don't care and want to move past it.
It's possible.
So for example, I'll give people a taste of the right wing reaction here. I've got Charlie Kirk. He says, welcome to the race, Tim Walls, Let's make sure America knows who you are. You helped ignite the George Floyd Riot's the worst country's seen in decades. While Minneapolis burned, you stalled undeployment National Guard. You let your daughter leave the Guard's deployment plans online so that rioters would know they had to loot the city. Minneapolis is a war
zone because of you. Days after the attempted murder of Donald Trump, you called him in his supporter's fascist. You have overseen some of the most radical youth transsurgery laws in the country. You have the most radical abortion laws in the country, zero limits on immigration. You famously said you wanted to provide a ladder so that invaders could come over the wall. You oversaw the worst fraud of the COVID era, the feed our future case.
I don't know anything about that. I guess I'll have to get us up. There was some fraud with Minnesota got ripped off during COVID.
You approved five hundred million dollars in hero pay, only for forty percent of that money to go to people who were literally deceased.
In the House.
You were Pelosi's sidekick and did whatever the Democrats demanded. You know, of all everything he said so far, only BLM and the Pelosi.
Sidekick right now are like clicking for me.
The Pelosi sidekick thing is interesting just because I mean, she's not exactly the most beloved figure, and that's part of the way that they could help. They could help energize Republicans perhaps against they tries.
They ran against Pelosi for twenty years, that's true, and it never worked.
I worked in twenty ten. Let's be it worked in twenty ten, So it was a while. I don't know if that was Pelosi or that was Obama.
I think, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm just I'm sitting here just trying to grapple with the real let's think here. I'm just I'm sitting here just trying to grapple with why you turned down to Shapiro. I mean, so you brought up the murder case, you brought up the Israel stuff. I mean, but my contention was, I'm curious what you think.
I think.
Let's be honest, I think a lot of the israel people are willing to cut kamalas shit ton of slack because they're.
Like maybe we can bleer whatever. You know, who knows what this lady actually believes.
I mean, at the same time, Tim Wallas, I mean, this guy's signed like BDS legislation and he's prosed, he's pro Israel as it gets right, So what do you really think the Israel stuff was the main reason not to pick Shapiro. I understand the whole KKK thing and some of the comments, but I mean substantively, I don't think.
There's a lot of a lot of daylight here between the two people, don't. I don't think it was Israel.
I think there was some probably vibes element to it that that some of her advisers probably thought, Okay, well, if we picked Shapiro, the vibes online are going to be not good for several days, and the vibes like it's been a purely vibes campaign for two weeks. No interviews, no press commerces, no policies.
Just no, no, you can't say that there's been no policies. There's been disavowing of every policy that she's ever taken. Right, there's been unpolicies. Yeah, yeah, it's been sixteen days now. This lady's running for press.
I think part of it also maybe is that Hero is, Yes, he's a governor, he was just elected. He's a little young, and so people are looking.
At Harris how good question. I bet he's like sixty or.
Sixty years old spring chicken, you know when it comes to our current politics.
But he's but he was in the House for ten to fifteen years and then governor since twenty eighteen, whereas Shapiro is really kind of new to the scene.
And so.
You know, the knock on from political consultants and knock on a woman candidate for president is that they say that she's not ready to be a commander in chief. Like that's that's what the political consults worry about from their focus groups, is.
A woman ready to lead?
And if you think back to when, you know, twenty years ago, you would attach a general or something to them. You know, Hillary ended up going with Tim Kaine, one of the most boring picks ever. I think people regret going with Tim Kaine there. But I think that Shapiro just didn't have the kind of national garavi toass Maybe I don't know, Walls is pretty obscure figure too.
Coming back to ambition, I think that's what it has to be, because Kamala is a deeply insecure person. The only reason she's doing well right now is because she got it handed to her.
She didn't actually have to run for it.
Every time that she's ever actually been in a like a real competition, she's crumbled in an interview, in press conference or you know, not even a contentious one, but you know, on the debate stage. Famously, I think it's very possible that Josh Shapiro just coded is way too ambitious. I mean, obviously he wanted to be president, and he was going hard for the job, all the Obama impersonation.
I think it may have just it could have come down to personality where look, let's be honest too, Whilst anybody who spends their career in politics, you're a weirdo and you're also ambitious, and you also very much want to be president, but it also comes it matters the way that it comes across.
And I think with Walls, it's very possible that they just got along. Well.
You know, this is these are two people. They meshed well. She didn't think that he would try to upstage her. Really, all you could really ask for in a VP is a loyal number two. He's a good attack dog, that's what they want. They also could let him absorb some of the hits sent him out there to do interviews and all these things and protect the top of the ticket,
who is a lot more averse to media. So I see some of the wisdom, but really, like if I zoom out fifty thousand feet, this just tells me that their theory of victory, which I have to assume is based on something, is not the what I had envisioned for them. The two seventy plus one just hold down the blue wall. They really believe they can be competitive in Arizona and in Georgia, and so that this is a historic decision in that it gives us insight to
how their theory of victory actually looks. And they're map to two seventy, which is very different than Joe Biden's original too original map.
Yeah, and Shapiro didn't go on air like Tim Walls did, That's true.
He didn't go on to lot and he's he's really good on air, So yeah, that was I think a blunder on his part. If it makes me go back to the opening that they had for an actual open process for president, where you would have like a five week period where Harris would make her case on online, on cable, having rallies, Walls would make his case, Prints or Shapiro, They'd all make their case, and the kind of vibes would then end up picking you know who
they nominated in Chicago for president. And I think that's basically what happened here. The vibes were drifted towards Walls's direction. I think in an open five week situation like that, Walls could have actually won the nomination.
People were like, how ironic is that? I r l If he actually ran in an open thing, he might have won. Like, that's the craziest part here is that he is probably a far better camp. I mean, so was Josh Shapiro if he.
Would have run against Biden. No, he would Phillips crush him. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Who would have thought that the Minnesota Democrat who would triumph from this whole process was not Dean Phillips and was actually Tim Waldon And.
Last wee we've talked about this with Emily on Counterpoints. Minnesota and Iowa used to both be swing states. Minnesota s lightly becomes blue and i was slightly becomes red. I was rammed through enormous amounts of right wing legislation. Minnesota ram through enormous amounts of left wing legislation. So there might not be a governor other than say Pritzker in the entire country with with a as solid a progressive legislative record as walls from materials, so class social super stuff.
Also, the Democratic Party there called like the farm Democratic Farm Labor.
Yeah that's right. I mean that's a good name, right, that's that's the group. Yes, that's right.
We also I said, interesting analysis here. It says if the Obama folks had anything to do with this, and they probably did, a big factor would have been picking a run of me, ostensibly with limited personal horizons, who covers obvious weaknesses and will stick to a defined role, aka what Joe Biden did. And they're crayts, and I think they're really yeah, I mean, look, I think it definitely wants to be president.
But maybe he just didn't. Maybe he just came across a lot less.
Because because urban Democrats, like cosmopolitan democrats, are fooled by the aw shucks thing.
Yeah yeah, I know, you and I have been in Washington long en have to not to have met the real ashucks people when the cameras are off and.
Be like, oh man, you're just like everybody else.
But most people don't. They don't pay attention to as much as this, and I don't blame them. They should be living their lives doing something else. So I guess the thing that we can zoom out and say a couple of things. Number one, kay my big one Kama theory of victory very different and how I originally envisioned it. And that's very interesting to me because maybe they have some data points. You know, everyone's saying that this is very online. I don't know it's possible, but I think
these people really want to win. I mean, that's that's actually what I have taken away from the last couple of weeks. I'm like, oh, these people are playing to win.
They're gonna win on vibes and maybe, yeah, maybe Harris can dodge doing any interviews.
I think she can forever putting walls out totally. Hey, why do you want to hear from me? You got this?
That's what I was thinking, is you put the number two out there and you're like, what, our campaign has been the most transparent in history. And everybody's like, hey, lady, what do you believe? Do you believe anything literally at all?
Let's see if she can do an entire eight year Oh, let's not forget this right.
We don't even have a debate right now on the schedule. Trump is like, I'll be at the Fox News debate. Kamala says she'll be at the ABC debate.
Are we aven going to get a single one?
Yes?
And Tim Wallas go debate. Hopefully we'll get a JD Vance versus Tim Wallas debate. I would enjoy seeing that, actually the guy who coined weird versus the person who allegedly is weird.
My own bias the side. I'd like to see JD clean as clock. But we'll see.
What else can we think about Josh Shapiro, It was his to lose. He based loss Mark Kelly. Yeah, what a disaster too for him. I mean, look, all these people will be loyal. This is a gamble. I do think it is a gamble. She didn't pick the quote unquote save choice. A lot of the right wing reaction is that this was a bad pick. Only time will tell. There's just no way to say immediately in the moment it could be brilliant. Honestly, it could cement that theory
of victory for where she goes. I am telling Republicans, though, do not underestimate these people, because I just think every choice that they have made in the last sixteen days, from you know, not agreeing to interviews, to disavowing everything, to running basically on nothing except I'm not Trump and I'm not Joe Biden. I hate to say that, it is it is the very viable path to.
The Poles kept saying generic Democrats beat Trump, and they went and found that's true.
And so anyway, I think also, I mean, let's not let's not whitewash this. The media is on these people's side. You know, the media doesn't even care. They don't even They're like, oh, interviews, you don't need to do that, that's fine.
Uh.
And so they're gonna make Tim Wallace the next Jesus Christ, you know, and it's Republicans they'll scream about it.
But that's not how it works, guys.
You actually have to really run something, you gotta you need to see a lot more discipline, I think too from Trump. You know, what did I just talk about here, Ryan that their theory of victory could be different. Well, maybe attacking Brian Camp in the middle of that new theory of victory maybe not such a good idea, huh, not necessarily the one I want to be running on whatever I see such a massive change joined I am seeing a report here that Tim Wallace will be at
that rally in Philadelphia. Man, that sucks to be Josh Shapiro. To have your rival anointed in your city, that's rough. I'm sure that he'll get some. He'll you have some, you know.
Also, if Kamala and Walls lose, right, Shapiro's well positioned.
Great.
So yeah, if you are Josh, now you are the number one out of.
This whole process. Yeah.
And Whitmer too. Oh, she's kind of kept a low profile recently. I guess it'll be a battle between the two of them. So anyway, that's our snap interesting analysis. I'm sure you guys will have a show tomorrow so you can break down everything and kind of tell us about maybe Tim Wallas's.
Speech, et cetera.
But let's get to the rest of the show that we were recording previously before this news broke. Terrible news out yesterday evening. Let's put this up there on the screen.
US personnel wounded in this attack against the US base in so the details are actually a very scant unfortunately, it just says at least five US personnel were injured in this attack against a military base, US officials said, as the Middle East braces for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week's killing of senior members of a militant groups by Hamas and has Bola. There were two Katusha rockets that were fired and a Lasad air base in western Iraq, according
to two Iraqi officials. Iraqi security sources said that rockets fell inside the base. It was quote unclear whether this was linked to attacks by Iran. The Iranian connected group katub has Bulah in Iraq Ryan has claimed responsibility for the attack. And the big question remains, is this the precursor to a larger movement by the Iranian regime in response to both the United States and to Israel after that assassination of the Hamas leader in the middle of Tehran.
But as of now, the region continues to boil, and this is just the first sign perhaps of what's the cop.
And it's a good sign of how inflamed the region is that you can't tell whether these types of attacks actually presage part of the cooming Iranian retaliation or are just part of the bubbling conflagration that has been kicked off since October seventh. You also had has been launched some drone attacks on the north of Israel. Again, are those just the repetitions of attacks that have been happening for weeks and months now, or does this presage something bigger.
You also don't know whether or not Iran directed this Iraqi militia to attack this US base or gave a green light to it. And one problem that Israel is walking itself into through its assassination campaign, which the US is also involved in the sense that they also assassinated cost Some Solomoni so Kausa. Solomoni was the guy that basically had a lock on all of these militias across across the region.
It became a boogeyman. Trump assassinated him.
After that, the grip that the Iranians had on all of these proxies is loosened just a little bit.
Like that's how that's how organizations work.
When you have such a kind of charismatic leader putting things he'd be you know, for decades, he'd been putting this structure together. Then you get a new guy in place, he gets assassinated.
Each time. The grip that Iran has on these proxies loosens a little bit. And maybe you'd say, well, that's a.
Good thing, because Iran is evil and they're doing dastardly things with these proxies. These proxies have their own capacity, and so cutting the leash might not actually be to the benefit of the US or or to Israel, because now we don't even know for sure, is this Iraqi militia now just fed up at Iran's inability to protect the leaders of the access of resistance.
That is a very difficult thing, is we have no ideas is directed by the regime or not. I mean, regardless, we have five guys who were injured. Don't forget we had three US service members who were killed in that base in Jordan on the Syrian border. It does, of course raise the question of why are all these people over there exactly in the American troops wire American hurt in Iraq as members in Iraq. Yeah, in twenty twenty four, more than twenty one years after the initial invasion. Yeah,
maybe somebody should be asking that question. Of course, most people just continue to go on with their lives.
Versus Syria, and for that matter, about this. Yeah, I mean Syria, that's a whole other one more than they're not getting. Where is that Afghanist? Oh right? Oh, because we're not there? Oh right, interesting, how that works? Right? Well?
You know, the U s Secretary of State, of course, is very inspiring words and language. After US service members have been confirmed to have been injured in this attack, one apparently has been very seriously injured. Let's take a listen to what Secretary of State Blincoln had to say.
A few words on the situation in the Middle East, because it is a critical moment. We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much round the clock with a very simple message. All parties must refrain from escalation. All parties must take steps to ease tensions. Escalation is not in anyone's interests.
It will only lead.
To more conflict, more violence, more insecurity. It's also critical that we break this cycle by reaching a ceasefire in Gaza that in turn will unlock possibilities for more enduring comm not only in Gaza itself, but in other areas where the conflict could spread. So for the United States, for many other countries, both in the region and beyond.
This is our focus, and what.
It comes down to really is all parties finding ways to come to an agreement, not look.
For reasons to delay or to say no.
It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead.
It is urgently must make the right choices in all the days ahead, he says. As the US continues to flood the region with US service members, let's put this up there on the screen. This was the Iranians, Iranian media taking responsibility and kind of touting this attack on US troops. Two explosions reported near Iraq's allsat Arab Base, which houses American service members. The IRGC says that Iran backed militant groups have launched the rocket attack against the
US base. So the fact that the IRGC basically taking responsibility for the attack does tell us a little bit about at the very least, you know, they want to appear connected.
President Biden reared.
His ugly head, as they some say, put this up there on the screen, came out of nowhere. He's in the dungeon in the White House to Situation Room tweeted out this photo. He says earlier, the Vice President and I were briefed in the Situation Room on developments in the Middle East. We received updates on threats posed by Iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de escalate regional tensions, and preparations to support Israel should it be attacked again.
Everybody really focus in on that one. We also discussed the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and a place of our choosing, So that is always the Biden line. Of manner and a place of our choosing doesn't mean very much, But what it does mean is that there are significant US assets in the Middle East. Here. We have actually a map. Let's put this up there. Please just realize the sheer scale of everything that we
have here. From an amphibious group, the USS Roosevelt, the US is Bulkelly. You've got the Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group over there, the USS Russell, the USS Michael Murphy, the USS Coal, the USS Laboon, all of that basically poised all around the region. Also both in a place where they can protect Israel. Should they need to to use guided missile destroyers and other US assets to shoot down
anything incoming from Iran. You've also got them on the other side, basically just hanging out right next to Iran. Should they need to also interdict anything there? On top of the continuing you know hoo they mission that happens with Yemen. So the situation is not good. You've basically got the entire you know, Middle East surrounded there by US naval assets.
You don't even want to.
Know how much this one is costing us right minute, every minute, every Yeah, I mean, this is what people don't get in terms of the sheer dollars. Like just think about that. You've got a US aircraft carrier alone. I mean, it's like a floating city. Do you know how much money costs just to make it move a single foot and now thousand feet and then feed everybody on board and resupply this thing and keep it going, you know, basically in continuum. And that's what we have
signed up for for the last ten months. I would venture say it's probably cost north of over one hundred billion dollars probably just in the last ten months. If we think about continuous operations, we know that it costs a billion dollars in a single day just to shoot down those Iranian missiles on that were launched on Tel Aviv or on Israel in retaliation for the embassy attack.
But yeah, I mean, what do you think of this?
It's asymmetric because the weapons that the Iraqi militia or Iran or Hesbalo or Hamas fire off are dirt cheap compared to what we caught.
Same with the Houthis.
Hoothis are spending you know, in the in the thousands of dollars you know for some of these rockets, and are sometimes going after drones that are worth like millions of dollars. It's the the asymmetry is completely unsustainable. Like it, we can sustain it for a very long time, but it's not indefinitely sustainable.
Now that was blinking comments.
A lot of people read his comments as directed largely at Israel because Iran. The US can say what it wants to Iran, and you know, we can, we can offer carrots, we can offer sticks about what the response is going to look like, but ultimately we don't have an enormous amount of leverage over what Iran is going to do. Right, we do have over what Israel is
going to do. But if you listen to Blincoln there and you follow his body language, you would think that we had zero leverage whatsoever, that we're we're just out here after three days of not sleeping, just pleading with net Yahoo to just please, please stop doing all this stuff that you're doing. Please, it's not in anybody's interesting And he keeps saying escalation is not in anybody's interests.
That assertion has.
Just been made over the last several months without being backed up by evidence. There is increasing understanding among the global diplomatic community that nen Yahoo and a lot of elements of the Israeli government do actually believe that escalation isn't in their interests, and not for any obviously rational like here's how we're going to win a regional war against Iran, but that the trajectory that they have put themselves on due to their response to October seventh has
them headed towards international isolation and economic collapse internally, and political collapse in anarchy and chaos. As we saw over the last couple of weeks, and so therefore you need to flip the table like that's that's that's the closest that you get to a rational argument for why a regional war would actually be in the interest of Israel.
That you need to just absolutely reset everything and then sifting through the rubble and the ashes several years later, maybe people will forget what happened in the months after.
It's basically the US nine to eleven strategy, which you know they were warned repeatedly, but you know, in the moment, it makes complete rational sense for BB Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, escalate the war. You also have from the Financial Times I just read this morning that the new president of Iran says quote Iran will definitely retaliate against Israel for the killing of Hania and said a response time for crimes and insolence as the US continues to send its reinforcement.
So we are definitely on a trajectory yet, which is not good right now.
People who don't have you followed this.
This is a new president who ran on closer ties with the United States, I know, and Sontnya who's attack on Honi inside Iran was understood to be a provocation against this new Iranian government because any any any diplomacy that gets the United States and any of Israel's adversaries closer to deal makingtya who considers to be a threat. And that's why you know Apeg is one of the lead opponents of the Iran nuclear deal for instance, and pushed to have that blown up.
Yeah, it's it's very troubling.
There was also the US finds itself in knots because it really doesn't know how to respond to any idea of quote unquote Iranian self defense. So here we had a reporter that asked the US State Department, does Iran have a right to respond for self defense? Have you continually acknowledged on the Israeli side. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Did they have the light to respond? I mean, is that part of self defense?
So I just answered that question. I just answered that question in response to what it got from Simon. Right, is one thing taking steps that are productive and are conducive of the interests of their people, they're conducive to the interests of the broader region or another question, and in no way what a retalitary action by Iran anyway serve the interests of the Iranian people or the broader region.
And that's precisely why I'm asking you.
Because you mentioned the word right, so you are acknowledging that they do have the right to respond.
No, I did not acknowledge that acknowledged that question.
Okay, let me ask you if this was, let's say, happened in any of the western capitals, wouldn't they be sort of obligated to respond.
I'm not going to deal with a happenings, Okay.
All right, we'll deal with something real.
Last week, we could go yesterday Sunday and Aaron rocket hit or maybe intentional hit a small town or madorical chemps, a Syrian town, Syrian citizens and so on, and you said that Israel had a right to defend itself. I'm not you a person, but I'm saying, so, what's different? I mean, you know everybody was that all everyone was saying everyone has a right to defend itself. Why doesn't Iron have right to when the guest house, you know,
I don't want to make comparison. I don't like the guest house in London or maybe Blair House and anything. I mean, something that really touched the sovereignty of Iran.
So I take the point of your question said, it is not in any way, however, useful at all for anyone in the region for Ron to consider taking such steps because of the risk.
As I said, that this could.
Potentially get out of control, and that's the message we will continue to impress on him.
He is not acknowledging the right to self defense. Now, I think this whole right to self defense thing is annoying because like, who bestows a right to a sovereign state? Nobody, Okay, the legitimacy I think of its population. Those are the people who confer the right. The way that you check that quote unquote right is where you have to turns and you have enough weapons to make sure to try and guide their defense. So there is no such thing
as a right to self defense. There's the ability to have self defense and to try and guarantee that ability, and that I think, I mean, this is where I look at with Iran. This is a blustering nation which for decades has held itself up.
Is his check against Israel against the West.
I mean, what self respecting nation can tolerate a you know, a guest being blown up in the middle of their most secure compound and the beginning of a presidential inauguration. It's not possible, you know, as a self respecting nation
to tolerate that now. At the same time, they don't want to be suicidal, so they have to check and think about But I would caution everyone to think that just because they don't respond right now does not mean that they don't have the ability, or the fortitude and the foresight to actually set the stage where they can
cause real problems. So for example, Russia, as Serrogei Shogu, the former defense minister, is spotted in Iran, you know, immediately after this attack, it comes out that the Iranians are likely to get their hands on the S four hundred missile system. I mean this is a real issue, okay, Like this is sophisticated to technology that the Russians don't just hand out to everybody. You can ask NATO planners and others about how well that system can work when
it wants to. And that's just another both alliance between the Iranians and the Russians. It creates more problems for any future quote unquote attack by Israel or by potential conflagration with the United States and just ratchets up you know, how much worse the conflict would be when it already would be a complete and a total nightmare.
So what do you think, Yeah, what makes it hard for us to analyze it here in the United States is that we are bathed in this kind of propaganda that Iran is the most evil country on earth and run by complete mad men when and it makes it very difficult to understand this fact, which is that Iatola Kamane and also this new kind of US leaning president are both very reluctant to take major risks, right, But just saying that just clashes so kind of flagrantly with
the idea that well, I thought, this is a blood thirsty madman just once you know, Hitler like domination of the world, and the only thing holding them back is you know, Israel in the United States constraining them.
And so.
People who are watching Iran think that there might be a possibility here that well, to your point, the longer this, the longer delay we see in their response, the worse it might end up being.
But on the other hand, there's.
A possibility that they do not take a severe response, that they do something similar to what they did last time. For the geopolitical reasons that you laid out. They are now successfully positioning themselves globally as a rational actor in contrast to the unhinged, irrational Israeli actor in the region. And so if they go over the top and break international law in their response to what Israel did too Hania inside Tehran, then they upset that balance that they've
been able to strike. And they like this new kind of global perception that they're a sane, in normal country and Israel's completely out of control. So they have a lot of incentive to actually keep that going. If they can keep it going, it makes it easier than for Russia to send the kinds of weapon systems that your time, makes it easier for China to be more tightly invested
in the economy. And if the more that they are seen as a rogue state, the harder it is for Russia and China to kind of bring them into the fold.
And then the final thing that I worry the most about is here the sheer hubris of the American system and the American foreign policy elite to just think, yeah, this is no problem. You know, hundreds of billions of dollars. Cool, don't worry about it. Two front war, what a joke. Of course, we can handle that. Aaron Mante flagged this clip of President Biden speaking just I think last October and scoffing at the idea that America is not prepared for a two front war.
Let's take a listen.
Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on? In the Secretary of the United States of America, for God's sake, the most powerful nation in the history, not in the world, and the history of the world, the history of the world, we can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.
We have the capacity to do this.
We have an obligation to We are the essential nation is to the former Secretary of State, and as we don't, who does.
I believe he was trying to reach for indispensable nation? That does not age well if we think a little bit about it. That was in the hubris of the Clinton administration. And that is where his age just is so grading to anybody who has lived through two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to see the strain that the two front war of I Rock and Afghanistan put on the US military. They're at the time, we're not
even fighting like real peer competitors. The America that exists in his head is gone, and it's largely gone because of people like him with limitations.
You know already we faced you know.
Look, I've been tracking this situation and continue to track it almost daily.
In Ukraine. Well, it turns out that the Ukrainian.
The average age forty five fifty starting to get acknowledged. Oh oh, we've sent f sixteens over there, that's going to turn the tide. Nope, I just checked this morning. A strategic town in the east is literally on the
brink of falling Ukrainian manpower disaster. So just because you know, you can pour money into this thing and try and appear tough and feel cool, doesn't mean that the Russian colossus, which basically can produce weapons for one tenth the cost and has basically unlimited manpower through its vast reserves on top of a total war economy, can't quite easily overcome
that in the long run. Yes, in the short term you've cost them some damage, But I mean, if anything, we've battle tested the blood the Russian military, we help them, you know, reform its economy for total war production. Who's the loser here, it's definitely that it's it's not them.
But we certainly did the opposite of degrading the Russian military. The Russian military of twenty twenty four and twenty five is much superior to one twenty twenty two.
And it's just when we think about that, we think about here, you know, with the continued situation with Iran, the speed in wishes can get out of control is just one that we should never underestimate. Perhaps some good news just came across the wire. Russian President Putin has asked the Supreme Leader for quote a restrained response to Israel exactly.
So this really backs up Russia exactly.
Russia and China see this as a way to make the US and Israel look insane like the aggressors, and that they are that they can no longer responsibly run a hegemonic kind of global operation.
Yes, all right, well, that certainly does. We're certainly helping every step of the way.
Creating them continued US decline and position for US in the world. Five of our service members injured, and can anybody credibly answer the question for what. No, they can't, So everyone's just gonna memory hold it and we'll continue.
To move on.
Absolutely massive news about Google being officially ruled a quote monopolist by a US federal judge landmark in the history of the US economy.
Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screens.
This ruling came out yesterday and according to the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge am At Mata said in a two hundred and seventy seven page ruling, Google had abused monopoly over the search business. He says that Google acted illegally to maintain monopoly in online search quote landmark decision that strikes at the power of tech giants in the modern Internet error and will fundamentally alter
the way that they do business. The Justice Department sued Google previously, accusing it of quote illegally cementing its dominance by paying other companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers. Google is a monopolist as active as one to maintain its monopoly. So what this means potentially.
Now.
Of course, let's be honest, like this is going to make its way through the US court system and it
will take probably a decade before any of this is resolved. Nonetheless, the ruling by the federal judge on the most significant anti trust case against probably the largest company and emblem of a quote unquote monopolist in the entire business, it does both, I mean, a significant setback for Amazon and online shopping, for Facebook and Instagram whenever it comes to social media, the ownership of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for
future acquisitions and driving company behavior. This is both a bipartisan effort that was done by the Trump administration continued by the Biden administration. And the fact is is that the ruling only sets the stage now for what some sort of future quote unquote unwinding may look like, because he did not include remedies in his decision, and there are all kinds of interesting possibilities. The idea could be that Google Search and ad Sense might have to remain its own company.
They would have to divest itself.
Perhaps YouTube, the platform they are talking about here right now. I mean, we haven't seen significant changes and actions like that in the US economy in literally decades. And it's something that a lot of anti monopoly activists, people like Matt Stoler and others, have been pushing for quite some time.
Yeah, and the case on the search side is pretty straightforward. What Google has been doing has been paying companies like Mozilla and a Apple to make its search engine the default search engine. And quite simply, the judge said that's illegal, that that is cementing your monopoly.
You can't do that.
That it has disincentivized these other companies from fostering competition, and it has allowed Google to turn into a crappy search engine.
Yeah, because they don't have any competition.
And I think anybody uses Google, which is everybody basically can attest that it's not as good as it used to be, and that be becoming a monopoly has predictably done what people predict what happened to monopolies. The quality of the product gets lousier, the amount of money that they extract from the different clients that they work with, advertisers, et cetera, just goes up and up and up, and consumers and small businesses are harmed by it.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
I mean, here I'm going to read a little bit from Matt Stoler on his big sub stack, and he just says, today's a big day for American business. Fifteen years after it was first and guest investigated search Shie, Google is finally going to be held accountable for unfairly
forwarding competition, he says. I'm going to discuss the complaint against Google, why it lost, the next steps, and what this case means for American business going forward, he says, But make no mistake, the decision is huge for Google, the web and the revival of monopolytion monopolization law against giants across the economy. It's a big deal before anti monopoly.
As he talks about, what he really discusses is that the crux of the case is that paying not only Apple, but LG, Motorola, Samsung AT and T T Mobile, Mozilla, Opera, Verizon to make sure it is the only search engine
the consumers ever saw. You also note that Google allegedly, according to the judge, destroyed evidence actually that was due for its case, and the judge noted that this was obviously going to contribute not only to his decision to the behavior of the company, but also urged you know, future judges and others to keep that into consideration the behavior of the company. I mean, what's also been interesting
is to see the competitors of Google discussed this. Rumble, for example, a video platform which we also post on and which we're parted to partner with via Locals Talked. You know, the CEO says, today's decision confirms what everybody knows. Google is a monopolist. Rumble has been making this argument for years in multiple anti strust lawsuits against Google, both
currently and ongoing. You also saw Baning celebrate this decision because bing has effectively been not even allowed to compete, you know, even if it wanted to to try and become the default search engine on other mobile platforms or with other browsers out there. And we think about the sheer scale of like the vertical integration of the Google empire, this just shows us that the idea of the whole pay for pay for play that really exists in a lot of these companies, and with social media as well.
Doing a way with that would allow a more competitive ecosystem, perhaps you know, to rise, although at this point I'm not sure you know, the damage may I'll be done.
Yeah, it might be and we might just get overcome by China and others that have actual innovation.
Like inspiring economies.
The remedy phase is what comes next, and that will then be up to either the Harris administration or the Trump administration and his stolar rights and his piece. He doesn't have confidence in either of them to pursue this as vigor as the Biden administration, because this is Jonathan Canter pursuing this from the Department of Justice, who is just massive enemy of big tech and other monopolists. And then of course he's an ally of Lena.
Khan and her.
Very strong FTC, who Kamala Harris has still to this day not said that she will stand behind in the face of billionaire pressure from Diller and from Reid Hoffman urging her to get rid of them like the billionaire class which is under the gun by the FTC, and Canter at the DOJ is at the same time giving money to the Harris administration and asking them to then roll back on their prosecutions of these of these anti trust cases. Now, so we noted there's some there is
some bipartisan nature to this. This case started under the Trump administration and it was then taken to completion by by Canter and the DOJ. The concern is that a new depart Partment of Justice had who would not be cantor if they push him out, would go to Google and say, look, it's the remedy phase here. You're going to appeal this, It's going to go on for years. Let's just let's just come to a settlement here. You
will promise to do good behavior in the future. Give us a couple hundred million dollars, a couple of billion dollars, whatever it is, and you know, well, this will all just go away, rather than breaking it up and recor and potentially creating a playing field that would allow for
innovation again. Because if you think about the amount of innovation that the tech sector had from the two thousands into like the mid twenty tens, it was exponential, and then it just flattened off as Soccerberg, Bezos, Apple and the rest of them just got complete control of everything. Every new startup that came along no longer was interested in becoming a company that was serving people. It wasn't
even interested in becoming an IPO. What they all they wanted to get their ten X was to get bought by Facebook or Google or somebody else. You just threatened to be like a successful company that's innovating, and then you would get bought off and you'd become a multimillionaire, and then you would go do that again after your lockout phase is over. That is the opposite of any
type of economic innovation. And it's not surprising that then TikTok sweeps in with a new algorithm and just takes everything over.
So there you go.
It just shows us both the holes of where everything is and also what the landmark decision means there for Google. I also wanted to give an update, you know, just on the economy. Things have actually rapidly changed since yesterday. As we said, so just in the morning, we brought everybody yesterday the news that they're the largest single day drop in the NICK since nineteen eighty seven. Let's put this up there on the screen. Is this nineteen eighty
seven all over again? They're all these questions, Well, it turns out, you know, a dropped by I think twelve percent in a single day. It also while we were all sleeping. Guess what, guys, it rose by ten percent after its worst one day drop, which led to the global route, and the yen was quote giving back some of the gains that it made on Tuesday morning. So it does look like there's a significant amount of volatility.
It also look I don't yet know where the market will close at the end of the day, but both Dow and S and P five hundred futures are up a little bit despite their three percent loss or so yesterday and the one thousand point drop in the Dow Jones. Just to say that there's a lot of whip sawing going around. People don't exactly know, you know, people don't exactly know where this market will end up and what the fundamentals were driving.
So in Japan, you know, for example.
Part of what triggered this was a lot of fear over US slowdown and then consumer spending, which if they should be real about because we have seen the bad unemployment report here in the US too. Apparently there was a lot of there were a lot of traders that were doing something with the Japanese yen in which they were borrowing low interest dollars here in the US then buying you know, high interest stuff in Japan, and you know, taking the spread as profit. The Japanese traders I believe,
were trying to drive some of that out. So there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, which is difficult kind of to wrap our heads around. But I think in general we can probably say Ryan that when we have this amount of chaos, it's just not good. It's not good for US financial markets, for the US system.
In fact, US retail brokers, let's put this up there please on the screen, actually had massive outages yesterday because so many people were trying to check their portfolios, including Charles Schwab, Vanguard Infidelity.
I mean, those are three of the largest.
You don't love consuper retail brokers, I mean at the same time, so while look, I agree they should not have gone down, they inadvertently probably saved people like billions of dollars. It's just stopping them from panic selling because it mamagined to be panic sold yesterday at the bottom, and then now today you're seeing, especially if you're like invested in some Japanese etf.
Something like oh my god, I gotta go, I gotta sell.
Themon bounced back ten percent after you were sleeping. So just let that be a lesson. You should never sell you know whatever, we should never pan excel. You should always try and think rationally about probably.
Going to get taken to the cleaners. Yeah, anytime you try to be a professional of this.
Right, Yeah, in general, like you're not a structor and even you know, the real question or the real answer is that even the day traders, as we learned with this whole Japan.
Situation, they don't even know what they are doing.
So it's all kind of a as personal likes to say, the graph of rich people sit. It's all about the line.
Like, if you're a day trader when the market is going up, then most of your trades are going to be work out well for you. Yes, if you're a day trader when the market is going down, you're going.
To lose most of your trades.
And people just get a sense of their own impos You know, I was a stockbroker like twenty years ago. Really we can talk about an actually stock series seven six. Yeah, I could call you up and.
You would place a trade for me. Why wouldn't I just do that on each trade?
Oh okay, that's part of the would have gotten my expertise?
Yeah, oh of course, right, that's what you're.
Paying the tea.
That's what the fee is for. Uh.
The Trump campaign is trying to capitalize on this, calling it the caot Kamala crash.
Here's what they had to say. Here we go, look at them go down what some would call history. Don't say that.
I've never been down a thousand points ever, not even inter day.
On the now step, Bidenomics is working. It's working.
The stock markets just taking a big old nosedive this morning.
Now Jones is down about one thousand and ten points.
That is called fidnomics.
The Dow fell more than six hundred points Friday, on a weeker than expected.
Jobs are for five percent, Meta, six percent, Amazon six percent, Apple nine percent.
Downmics is working. Fears of a recession began after Friday. Disappointing July jobs are for Bidenomics is working. Rise like that is historically a sign that a recession is imminent. This isomics we're just.
Seeing right now.
The stock market is what Americas have been feeling for the last three years. It's just a manifestation of it all that is called Bidenomics. All right, Let's see if that sticks.
Ryan, I'm not sure yet if it will, especially since the stocks went ahead and reback.
Like, yeah, Trump has been saying that the you know, he deserves credit for the stock markets rise during a Biden administration, but it's actually Kamal that deserves the blame for the crash.
I like that.
I like that.
Inconsistency is a hallmark a good politician. All right, let's go ahead to the UK. There's been chaos erupting in the United Kingdom with riots over immigration, far right and immigrant protesters.
Clashing in the streets. Quite literally.
Let's go in and put some of the video our team assembled here. This is just some examples of what's been happening. I will tell everybody how this all kicked off. But in the meantime, what you're watching here is a group of protesters surround a holiday inn Express That hotel allegedly was holding a side seekers that have been coming to Great Britain. This then erupted into literal street violence with flags and others of the so called English Defense League
and protesters. You then simultaneously saw activated immigrant protesters who took the streets. There you go, you can see that in front of you. This has spread to multiple kind of working class cities all across the UK. Of where immigration and tensions between the population has been high for quite some time. And if we think about going all the way back to Brexit and the impetus for that. Yeah, here you see people literally getting beaten up in the
middle of the street. It's unclear exactly you know, who were what is happening here? Then we, of course time on and tradition looting literally happening in the middle of these riots. Lots of the so called you know, anti immigrant protesters also just making sure they stop by a grocery store and take whatever they get free. Yeah I'm not sure i'd be taking English chocolate, but hey, that's just me.
So what do you think, Ryan?
Uh?
And so you're you're also now seeing anti racist protesters, like explicitly anti race. They're basically versions of like Antifa over in England are now showing up and doing battle with the far right protesters across England.
Uh.
You know this all started when, I guess a little more than a week ago, three three girls were killed at a.
Yeah, why don't we put this up there the Financial Times is a pretty good breakdown.
Just go ahead, you can continue to Yeah.
So three girls are killed at a basically a Taylor Swift event, like it's like a yoga studio or something that was playing like Taylor Swift song or something.
Guy shows up kills three of them from well not from Rwanda. I think he was born in the UK.
So yeah, yeah, So immediately it starts disseminating on Twitter and elsewhere that this was an undocument illegally immigrant that came in and killed that was a Muslim illegal emorate that came in and killed these these three girls. Turns out as a person was born in Wales from Rwanan parents and was Christian actually, and the UK took the rare step of publishing all the information about the suspect and said, look, it's not true, this is not it didn't it didn't matter.
Side note here.
If you go back and read the histories of almost every famous riot throughout of American history, but also European history too, even the storming of the Best Deal, they all start with. Usually misinformation is not necessarily the right word, but rumors that are incorrect and spread out of control when they when they stormed the Best Deal, they expected to find like hundreds of political political prisoners who've been abused by the king and they found like six like completely insane people.
Basically, I mean, I'm oversimplifying here.
They're like, well, well, nevertheless, let's have a revolution anyway you have. But you're so you're seeing this like demand for Twitter and others to like stop spreading all this like hateful misinformation, which okay.
Let's don't spread hateful stuff.
Great, But even before social media, whether you know any whether whatever it is, like you go back and normally these riots are the result of just word of mouth and getting the correct information out there didn't matter, because what matters is whether or not you're on a tinder box.
Here, the UK is on a powder keg.
It's it's on the one hand, blowback from the British Empire like going out and you know, propping yourself up for hundreds of years, you know, based on raping and pillaging around the world and then and then taking the refus from those parts of the country and putting them in your poorest districts back in England.
That that.
Process is kind of playing itself out without British imperial power anymore.
Yeah, it's a very odd situation. And there's also an economic thing to consider. Here is a lot of Americans don't understand how poor British people actually are. British people's GDP per capita is lower than the state of Mississippi. If they were stated in the New US, they'd be the fifty first poorest state. Everybody thinks about London, it's like, well, yeah, that's where the financial and rich elite live.
You know, where the king and the queen. The rest of the country like global elite. Yeah.
If you've ever been actually spent time in real England, UK Scotland, you know, not in the major cities.
It's a very poor country. You actually see something like how can you be an empire for so long?
I can, as you know, there's nothing I love more than dunking on Europeans. That said, if we've got back to this the real like and I think there's a lot of dangers here for America. And this is part of the reason why we decided to do this story is perhaps this could be a precursor to what things
are here. When you bring in a bunch of very low educated, low skilled workers and then you also have a very stagnant economic growth on top of literal assimilation problems, then you basically set up the situation where we have right now, where you've had like immigrant enclaves and neighborhoods which don't feel British even though they may be British
citizens or UK citizens in name. And then you have the population itself which is very angry both about that lack of assimilation, the lack of cultural meshing on top of the economic problems of literally feeling as if you are in a stagnant country which is not delivered for you for quite some time. And that's where I think the powder keg comes from more than anything, is the lack of outlook of growth and of potential in the UK.
And if we think about the economic situation now going into this, these people were crushed by energy prices after the war in Ukraine. Obviously, Brexit, you know, even though I supported Brexit, Brexit turned out to be kind of a nightmare just in terms of the execution of that the economic prospects of the country. Part of the reason that they took it out on the Conservative Party is they're like, hey, you guys are just bandits for the rich.
And so they're giving the Labor Party, you know, this massive victory that it's had, but the Labor victory does not paper over the social tensions which have been brewing now in the UK for quite some time. We've seen stuff like this pop off in Ireland too. I don't think it's an accident that it happens at a time of economic stagnation and frankly like decades of mismanagement of their own immigration policy. Look, they are another country. They
can do whatever they want. I'm just saying I wouldn't personally have done it the way that they did.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the Conservative government did not actually even restrict immigration.
Yeah, that's well.
That was a huge thing with Nigel Faraj and with a lot of the UK RTIs is that they were like, why exactly should we support Conservatives? You guys are not even you know, restricting immigration, because remember their asylum situation too is very different.
I mean, yeah, we have major border.
Problems here with Venezuela and all the people coming from basically everywhere all across South America. On top of anybody can buy a plane ticket to Mexico. But you know, they also have had now what a ten year sustained asylum nightmare with the Syrian Civil War, with Afghans, the whole Germany situation in twenty fifteen and they've had major flare ups and this was a major contribution literally to Brexit, was you know, was not wanting to be party to
EU refugee policy. So I think that what this sets up is, well, a, we saw the death of the Conservative Party and that kind of liberal immigration policy. That's definitely that's over now though, and this is something funny. I think that the euro rightis have significantly overplayed their hand because they don't have free speech in England. In England, the major commentators are all calling for Tommy Robinson, who's the former head of the Defense League. He's kind of
the one. He's like the King protesters. He's not even in the country right now. But if we see how the government is responding to this. This is one of the biggest surveillance states in the world GHQ, and they have no they have no literally no First Amendment, no freedom of speech. They're all the leading European columnists are calling for his deplatforming off Twitter.
And for his prosecution. They're gonna throw them in jail.
I genuinely I don't think he should ever return to England, like he is going to prison and over there with their home office. They don't even need a pretext. They can just imprison you forever. He's alluded to it. Well, let's get to that. So we have a statement here from the Prime Minister, Caer Starmer. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
I had a Cobra meeting this morning, which was an opportunity that I took to thank the police for their work over the last few days, to express my support for the police officers who have been injured and the communities impacted by this mindless thuddery. For a number of actions that came out of the meeting. The first is we will have a standing army of specialist officers public duty officers so that we'll have enough officers to deal with this where we need them. The second is we'll
ramp up criminal justice. There have already been hundreds of arrests, some have appeared in court this morning. I've asked for early consideration of the earliest naming and identification of those involved in the process who will feel the full force of the law. And thirdly, have been absolutely clear that the criminal law applies online as well as offline, and I'm assured that that's the approach that is being taken.
So you saw a little bit of that already.
I mean, I think the English you have quite literally the labor government in a supermajority in power. Then you've one of the most oppressive governments in Europe when they want to be.
And you don't have to ask me.
It's funny ask the Islamic population of England what it was like in two thousand and six. They can throw your ass in prison, or it can put you under house arrest for no reason and place you under surveillance, and they can even revoke your citizenship if they want to, with no trial, as they have done on multiple occasions.
So I think they're going to have a similar situation to what we had here where they're going to use their security state apparatus architected after the War on Terror and basically turn it onto their own, you know, right wing protesters that are in the country. So police state just seems even more likely in the.
After this, and Starmer said that they were going to make sure that there was accountability for people who instigated this on social media. Right, And yes, Tommy Robinson, I think he's in Corsica vacation or something but he's been.
You know, he's being a storm.
Yeah, he's he's been sharing a lot of the stuff that no questions instigated. The question is, you know, should that be a prosecutable offense?
As you and I would say obviously obviously not in England, They're like, obviously it should be. Yeah, Yeah, they're crazy. Yeah, he's been to jail like four or five times.
All yeah, that's right, he has been in prison before. So this is one where look, I think it's going to be. At the same time, you know, there's a lot of American rightists that are kind of seizing onto this.
I just think my only WoT.
They're saying, like they're trying to justify the rioting. We live in such an amazing like doom loop.
Look, writing is bad. I think we should all just probably stick with that. The other thing that I would urge Americans is this is a very different country. It's totally different. This is a tiny Their immigrant population by and large is very different from our at least legal
immigrant population. Now, don't get me wrong, I do think it's crazy that eight to ten million people are here illegally, but they don't even have anywhere close to the same level of like generational problems and you know, establishing these like immigrant enclays and they have major clashes over Engli.
Also doesn't have the whole melting pot myth thos.
I was gonna say, yeah, I mean Margaret Thatcher very famously said like America's you know, was America's built in an idea. English Europe is built on history something to that effect.
But it's true. I mean, it.
Literally is a population and place that has all been stratified by like cultural affinity and language going back like a thousand years, very different story to you know, to assimilate into on top of stagnating economy. They don't have never anywhere clothed to the same level of GDP growth, you know that we have or the myth thos to take those two things, you're setting yourself up for a
real class here with the immigrant population. So regardless, I do think that the rights and all these others, the riots are a precursor potentially to some immigrant backlash by conservative voters who lost faith in the Conservatives, and they would go towards somebody like Nigel Faraj. But in the interim, with the labor government so solidly in power, the almost certain outcome is that all these people are just.
Gonna be throwing from a massive round up. Yeah. Ye, that seems like most likely what's gonna.
Happen if you're participating in those riots on any side, Like there's going to be cameras.
Good luck with the mass.
Actually, yeah, leeve London was one of the most survealed cities in the entire world. I'm not sure. So that's the only thing I saw a challenge. You think they'll even throw the immigrant riders in prison? Yeah, oh, that's well, we'll see. That'll be a good test as to whether you know there will be equal application.
Of the law.
A lot of the eurortersts don't think that they will. They think that they'll let them.
Go, and that they misunderstand the center. You think, so, okay, all right, I'll hold you to it. Okay.
Onto the RFK Junior story, perhaps one of the most bizarre incidents yet that we've covered here on the show. I say this with no I guess judgment electorally or whatever, only to say that the circumstances are genuinely shocking. So all of it began when RFK Junior released a video talking about how he left a dead bear cub in Central Park. The photo has been released of the bear and RFK Juniors put this up here on the screen. Came out yesterday in the New Yorker with a profile.
Here we see r K Junior. He's roughly like sixty years old now at this time, in the back of his trunk with a bear, clearly who's been wounded. We'll get to that the bear was run down. I think the bear was it hit by a car? I was just lie down.
I didn't say that. That's funny.
Who amongst us it's happened.
It happens.
RK has got his hand in the bear's mouth. This reminiscent of the previous photo that was released of him. Remember though, that I did ask about him, what was it? The Daily Beasts or somebody claimed it was a dog? He told me it was goat. So anyway, this time he's not disputing that it was a bear. Let's take a listen to his version of events of how he encountered this bear and where he ended up dumping this bear.
Let's take a listen.
In front of me.
Hit a bear and killed it, a young bear. So I pulled over and I picked up the bear. And put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear and it was very good condition, and I was just going to and put the meat my refrigerator and you can do that in the or to say you can get a bear a tag for a road killed bear. Instead of going back to my home in Leicester, I had to go right to the city because there was a dinner at Peter Luger's steakhouse. And at the end of the dinner it
went late and I realized I couldn't go home. I'd go to the airport and the bear was in my car and I didn't want to leave the bear and car.
Because there would have been bad People.
Were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea, and I said, well, I had an old bike in my car that somebody'd asked me to get rid of it. I said, let's go point the bear in the central park and we'll make it look like you got So everybody thought that's a great idea. So we went and did that, and we thought it would be a music for whoever found it or something. You know, it's going to be a bad story.
So that was him with a Roseanne bar and what to summarize. The bear was hit, he saw the bear. He then wanted to skin the bear and eat the bear, so he put it in his trunk.
Then he was he was out falconing. They were running late. I love that part.
So yeah, I know. He drove to Manhattan with the bear in his drunk. He had dinner, then he had to catch a flight. Perfect so he had to get rid of the bear out of his car, this bloody dead bear. So he decided to put it in Central Park and state That's where I don't understand the staging. Why don't you just jump the bear? Why do you have to make it look like there was a well, what did he say? A bike accident?
So he said, so this is around the time twenty fourteen, just as they're putting all the bike lanes in New York City. Okay, and if you remember from this time, a lot of bikers were getting killed by the garbage trucks and cars that weren't used to the lanes, and so there were these weekly or daily tragedies occurring. And RFK Junior's idea was this would humorously slot into these multiple tragedies by making it look like instead of a
car or truck killing a biker. That a biker had killed and run over a bear, right, okay, so how would that even happen?
That's you have.
To be pretty I don't know how many bottles of wine they had at Peter Luger, but it was the lost.
He's sober, but listen the circumstances.
Everybody else was drinking it. But apparently, but he says he was the one that had the idea.
So he said he had Okay, so he had the idea. This is accorded to him. Now here's the funniest part.
Look at the way that this set off a firestorm in New York at the time after the bear was discovered.
Take a listen to the local news.
Bear cub is discovered dead and of all places, Central Park and an apparent case of animal ruelty. CBS two's Matt Kozar has more on the bear mystery.
In a popular section of Central Park, an unusual crime.
Scene about over here.
Floren Slatkin says she was walking her dog this morning when she saw something furry underneath the bushes. Police say the three foot long black bear cub had stab and slash wounds and appears to have been dumped there. Adding to the mystery, Slackkin says, the baby bear was lying on top of this bicycle, which police confiscated as evidence.
The bicycle was under the bushes. Part of the bicycle was sticking out, and that's what we saw, and when we look closer, we could see something on the back wheel. We're just laying on the back wheel. It's horrible.
It's very bizarre to think that somebody with criminal intense would do such a thing right here in our backyard.
Is disturbing.
New York bikers are outraged.
Now.
To add even more craziness to the stories, put this up here is The person who wrote the bear story in the New York Times was JFK's granddaughter, Tatiana Schlosberg, his close relative. She wrote the headline bear found in Central Park was killed by a car. Official say, so this set off an absolute firestorm ten years ago. Nobody knew who dumped the bear, how the whole bear thing came to happen. And look, I don't really have anything electoral or anything to say. This is just the most
insane thing. And as I previously said, the craziest thing to me is that I believe every word of his explanation. And that's why it's so funny to me, is that every word I'm like, I'm like, I would never do that, but I see how you got there. And that's how the chain of events unfolds as even crazier than it initially sounded.
The other the one thing I think we can add to this too, is that it paints a portrait of RFK Junior's life at the time. Okay, so here's something so that New York Times October seventh, October seven, fourteen, which interesting coincidence, But so I just looked that up because I'm curious about RFK Junior's life. Okay, that's a Tuesday, whoa, which means he was falcon Tuesday. Well, he came out on a Tuesday, which means the day he described, Yes, was it.
A month Monday?
Monday Monday for this diletant of an environmental lawyer who was like, you know what I'm gonna do today, I'm gonna drive up to the Hudson Valley. I'm going to a falcon all day. Oh hit a bear. Oh, but then I've got a dinner, just a random dinner at Peter Luger Steakhouse on Monday evening and then we're gonna get wasted. I won't be wasted because I'm sober, and then we're gonna go dump this on. Not that any of this is okay on a Saturday, but this is Saturday behavior.
This is not this is not Monday.
This is not Monday behavior. So if this is a Monday for our k JR.
My goodness, that's I mean. If I was the scion to the cat exactly, that's what he is, That's what I'd be doing on it. I would also be doing that. He is who you think he is, and he's a balcony.
He's uh, he's hanging out with Peter Lui. He's got a flight to catch and he's dropping off. My bear is you know, he's a health nut. And as I understand, you know, bears are like gross animals. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I'm saying like they eat, they eat like trash, like rotten, garbage, killing.
Rotish or gross.
Yeah, but don't have to cook the ship out of it like to anyway. So I can't really see how it would be all that appetizing. Because he called he was like it was a beautiful bear and all that. I don't look at that and be like, oh, what a beautiful.
Well he said it was a baby bear, so maybe maybe, yeah, he was less.
Less riddled with trick and nosis. But yeah, I'm not I'm not eating bear that literal road.
His actual road can That's the difference between Larry Larry David is never eating roadkill.
But otherwise this is like dark Larry David behavior.
It's like the whole thing and winding up on the news and the fact that he's married to Cheryl Hines.
It's just what kind of world are we blessed to live in? It's a little bit too perfect.
New reporting in Semaphore this week, and we can put this element up on the screen from media reporter.
Max Tanney headline.
Journals still can't confirm January story about un Agency for Palestinians and SOSAGA. If you remember, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both simultaneously roughly reported two facts on The New York Times reported that Israel had said that twelve people affiliated with UNRA employees had participated
in some way in the October seventh attacks. The Wall Street Journal that quickly followed with an explosive story that said that according to intelligence sources, ten percent of UNRA employees had some affiliation and they were very loose in their definition of affiliation with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic yeah Jahad.
In the wake of that.
The United States immediately suspended all aid going to the primary aid organization supplying doing relief efforts in Gaza, ultimately leading to a congressional ban on US funding as well as to other countries around the world, also suspending funding for UNRA, which no doubt led to a significant number of deaths in Gaza, but also escalated the amount of suffering,
probably exponentially between January and where we are now. And so what Semaphore did is they checked in on this reporting that the Wall Street Journal had done on this ten percent figure. And just I'll read this quote from a private email that was sent by Elena Charney, the
chief news editor that an email obtained by Semaphore. She wrote, quote, the fact that the Israeli claims haven't been backed up by solid evidence doesn't mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back, or that there is a correctable error here. So, in other words, the Wall Street Journal, according to Semaphore's reporting, worked extremely hard to try to back up what it had already reported. It
talked to intelligence sources in the US and Israel. It did its own it did its own forensic efforts to try to verify what they had already reported was the case, and they were unable to do so. And they basically concluded they can't stand up this reporting. But they say, we're standing by it because all we said was that Israel made this claim. Now, if you go back and read the Wall Street Journal report on first reference, all they say is intelligence sources.
Wall Street Journal is an American newspaper.
That strong implication there is that you have American intelligence sources that are making this claim. They reference intelligence sources like fourteen or fifteen times in that article. Only one time do they say, oh, yeah, by the way, are Israeli intelligent sources that were that we're relying on here. And so yesterday I asked a State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, about these revelations from Semaphore.
We can roll this clip.
I'm not sure if you saw there's a report in Semaphore that the Wall Street Journal tried valiantly to try to confirm its reporting on the unreal allegations made by Israel. Talk to American intelligence sources, is rarely intelligences. We're completely unable to substantiate them. Does the State partner have anything new about those UNRA allegations? And in the future, will
the State Department consider allegations coming from Israel differently? Give and that these have not yet been backed up, but such drastic medical So I did see that report.
I think it is a good time to remind everyone that the action that we took was not in response to information that the Government of Israel brought to us. It was in response to UNRA coming to us and UNRE saying that they had received these allegations from the Government of Israel and they found them credible, And so that was what made us. That was what led us to make the decision that we made. It wasn't getting
anything from the Government of Israel. Is when under itself said they found the allegations credible, that we thought it was an appropriate step to take to pause the funding.
Yeah, So he also we went back and forth a little bit longer.
We also alluded to he also alluded to a statement by the United Nations, which.
We can put up here. Put up this Reuter's element here.
Basically, what the Unit Nations is saying is that they that they investigated Israeli claims that nineteen because eventually they sent more They sent seven more staff names to UNREST saying that they had participated.
They investigated it and.
Found that nine likely or very likely participated in these attacks. Now UNRA has also said, well, so, first of all, UNRA never said that the ten percent claimed that ten percent of their staff were hamas was credible. What happened is that Israel shared this dossier of about twelve UNRA employees saying that they had various levels of evidence that they had participated in October seventh, and NRA immediately passed
that on to the State Department. There's no evidence that they said, look we believe all of this, or just saying like this is what these rallies have given us here, like we don't want to cover it up for you, were just going to share what Israelis have given you, and the US used that the fact that UNRA passed it on to them to then cut all the funding.
They said that for seven of the nineteen or for many of the nineteen they were unable to find any evidence that has happened, but for nine, and they said it's likely that they actually did participate. Now ONRA has about thirty five thousand employees.
It's the biggest employer in.
Gaza, uh teachers, janitors, custodians like and on and on. So it actually would be kind of shocking that only nine, you know, were somehow involved in the arm resistance there, Like you would you would kind of you would you think in a society like let's say in the United States, like if there's an arm if there's the National Guard is going you know, a certain percentage of your teachers are in the National Guard.
Like this's just kind of how it works.
So it did, and and and the allegations against some of these nine were that there were civilians but once once the fence was busted, like they went across, did some like looting or some otherwise participated in the like the ransacking of southern Israel, which in some areas went on for several days, like it was complete and total chaos. So, you know, did that happen? Yes, The unres says it's
highly likely that a handful of them did. But the rajor claim was that ten percent number, because that is much more systemic and goes to a central rot If that is true, we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it's true, and it just gets repeated, and for US media to stand by it because they say, well Israel,
Israel says it's true. Try to flip it around. Remember when there was a bombing of the hospital and Hamas said, and there may be some mistranslation going on, but Hamas five hundred casualties, which then got translated to five hundred deaths from an Israeli rocket attack. And then there was speculator, wait, maybe this was a p IJ rocket that actually landed arrantly here. Since then there's been counter speculation that, well, actually,
maybe it was an iron dome rocket. The New York Times issued a public apology for its headline that said Hamas claims five hundred dead, but Hamas did claim, Well, they mistranslated it. But let's pretend hot Hamas did claim that. So in just the same way that Israel is claiming X. So the American media uses the fact that Israel is claiming X to stand by their reporting. But when Hamas claims X and then that's called in a question.
There's a public mayor cultus.
So which is it? Like, what's the standard here? And obviously the standard is the bias is extreme towards Israel.
Here and you also challenged the State Department spokesperson again incity.
Yeah, this is an interesting one.
The IDF announced that it had assassinated the economy minister. And according to international law, and we can discuss this, you actually can't go around just assassinating civilian ministers or like the CEOs of like let's say, Raytheon.
Maybe you should be able to It's an interesting question. Let's let's let's roll roll this clip from this day Spartan briefing.
Yesterday, the IDF also announced that they assassinated the Gaza Minister of the Economy.
I'm curious if does the State Department consider somebody like that to be a combatant.
So I do know, I didn't see that announcement. I don't know who the person was.
I don't know if he had an active role in you know, Hamas' military wing or not.
So I would to be able to answer that question. I'd have to know more about.
This specific said his they said his They said he counts because he had a roll over the economy, and the economy has a rollover manufacturing, and within manufacturing there are weapons that are manufactured.
Again, I would have I'd have to look at it more detailed before I could give you any kind of detailed assessment.
So at least in his response there he's he actually is assuming that he needs to have ties to the military wing in order to be combat Did you notice that in a response.
Yeah, which Israel does not believe.
Well, I mean, as you and I were talking a little bit before, there is an interesting question as to whether that should be a legitimate target. I actually kind of do think so, I'm not justifying the strike. I'm just like, yeah, well, in a total war, you go to war in the totality of the society. That's actually
what a war looks like. Now, though, if we zoom out a little bit, what I think you're getting at is that the US defense is always like, well, that's complying with international law, and it's like, well, obviously that is outside the scope of what a real total war
would look like. I just think broadly, the media example of what you gave and the falling apart of so many of these stories in American newsrooms, has really diminished a lot of their credibility, from the October seventh rape story that they've never retracted to the Wall Street Journal story which had massive holes in it at the time.
At every instance, a lot of these organizations they bet their reputation by, you know, basically believing their sources and then are refusing to issue retractions, which is just massively intrumental to their long term reputation on any future conflict.
For what it looks like, and it's wild because Israel is.
Not going to be mad at the Wall Street Journal. They got what they want. They got what they wanted, they got what they needed.
And the Israeli comment was very clear at the time that they were trying to get UNRAS shut down and diminished and destroyed, and this was a method of doing that. It worked, you know, so they're satisfied if the Wall Street Journal at this point put an update. We can't verify any of this, like it wouldn't it wouldn't like it wouldn't be like all of a sudden, Congress would then reauthorize funding for UNRA like you won.
Yeah, you got what you wanted congratulations. All right, well, thank you Ryan for breaking that down. It was super interesting.
Just another good media example of what all of this is going to look like. And as we continue to parse all of those events, think, I'm glad you were here, my friend. It was fast show, we got the VP pick. That's a big show that people are going to remember for breaking points. We will see you all later.
Would keep