We have a quorum. For this week's minnesot we have Adam Davidson joining us.
Great to be with you guys.
So this week two Russians were arrested planning to sabotage and attack a US military base in Bavaria. So this is like a real conspiracy. These guys were going to attack and probably kill Americans. And I want to talk about the conspiracy theory for a minute. That why Putin's pacoderms, the Putin wing of the Republican Party, why they think the Russians are still so great Russian television today, said
Marjorie Taylor Green. They called her a beauty. If al Qaeda was caught planning explosive attacks or attacks on a US military base, people would be all upset. And I don't think there'd be anybody in the Republican Party that would think that. It's like, hey, that's great, So what is it, Adam and John.
I'm actually going to push back on the kind of thing because look at the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia is
a complex country. There's a lot going on, but there's zero question that the highly financed of Wahabism around the world is a major cause of al Qaeda and all of the modern terrorist offshoots, and we have lots and lots and lots of super elite people bending over backwards to become friends with Saudi Arabia, even knowing that the reason, whether it's some big golfer or some political figure, that the reason they're making ungodly amounts of money is precisely
the al Qaeda attacks. There's no reason why someone would accept hundreds of millions of dollars to start a golf tour if it was not because this is dirty money. You are being complicit. So I'm not making the stronger argument that Mohammed Bin Salomon NBS, the leader of Saudi Arabia, is an active supporter of al Qaeda, but he is an active supporter of a whole bunch of systems that are definitely wildly outside of US interest, and it's just accepted.
I have so many friends in Hollywood, as an example, who have been approached for insanely lucrative jobs Jewish friends, by the way, a lot of Jewish friends insanely lucrative jobs to help Saudi Arabia enter Hollywood. There's similar things going on with architecture, with engineering, with on and on and on, and not one of those people I know said a blanket, no friggin way, I'm not interested. So I think that the human brain is a wonderful machine
for justifying things. You know, as Sinclair Lewis said, when someone has paid a lot of money for something, it is very hard for them to see anything.
Wrong with that's just greed.
But it's more than greed. I would say it is an understanding of how the human brain works. That we think of rationality and explanation as a precondition for action, But as I understand it, it actually seems to be a post condition. You know, we do what we do for sex and resources and power, and then our brain comes up with a reason why that was exactly the
right thing to do. And so I think that Marjorie Taylor Green and others are part of a very pre out human lineage of doing horrible, horrible things for money or power or resources and then justifying it as the most obvious moral thing to do.
Well, Jerry, if the Germans caught two people working for the Russians, how many do you think, really you're doing it? Because if the Germans can pack too, that means there's probably a lot more because the Germans aren't the best at this. I have to say, no, they're not. No that we somebody probably tipped them off.
I don't know. I'm just saying yeah. I think there's lots.
To Adam's point, though there's also a long history of a poker's just in general politics. You see just in the last few days Mody and India, as he's running for election again, is saying horrific anti Muslim things and spreading anti Muslim hate in India. But we're not going to say anything about that or criticize him because we now would like India to be a bulwark against China.
Again. The Russian faction of the Republican Party, I don't think they're doing it for money, are they.
First of all, there is a lot of money being poured around, so that is just true. Something like half of Russian wealth has left Russia. We're talking about trillions of dollars. And when I was running Planet Money, this was a thing we would try and convey that it's hard for people to take in the relative size of money. Trillions is real money, that's actually real money. It is real money that can shift the fabric of a political
economic system. So when you have trillions of dollars pouring in to the West and you have an ability to access that money in all sorts of ways, you know, Goldman Sachs has been caught. Bank of America has been caught. It just to see has been caught all sorts of ways, legally or illegally. Because the law isn't moral, it necessarily the morality of it finding ways to help both the Russian state at Russian oligarchs, the Russian mob, and John are those three distinct groups?
Or no, not necessarily.
Yeah. One way to get rich is to create products and services that meet a need of some group and sell it at a competitive price and compete with others in a marketplace to create real value. Another way is to cozy up to dictators and get money and the machinery for getting that money into pockets. There's so many ways to be invited. To be a guest lecturer at this for forty thousand dollars. There are lots of people where I don't see how you explain it other than yes,
they're actually getting rich. Some of them might be stupid enough to not realize that they can't also get rich.
Let me give you the non money piece of this too, because I think there is a conspiracy here, and you're right, I agree money plays a part of it, but it's very easy, for example, when Jerry's talking about the extreme right to say, oh, they're getting paid off by the Russians. I've never seen any evidence that that's the case. I think they have a political reason to do it, but
I do think it's a conspiracy. And the conspiracy is this is when there was a lot of public pressure on Donald Trump when he was running for election in twenty sixteen, claiming that the Russians were supporting him, and the Russians were involved in the DNC hack, and the Russians were doing all sorts of things to spread this to help the Trump campaign. His answer was a conspiracy. He said, no, that's not true. It turns out it was the Ukrainians that were interfering in the American election.
If you remember, he said there was a server at the DNC that was owned by Ukrainian company, and therefore it wasn't the Russians at all, and it was the Ukrainians. And he's continued that for period of time. I mean, he said, for example, I even wrote it down quote, Ukraine tried to take me down, and so political followers of him have just followed in line. And since that time there's been efforts to work against Ukraine, to call
Ukraine corrupt, to cut back their funding. It took months and months just to get Speaker Johnson to be able to pass a very simple bill that passed in an overwhelming way to support the Ukrainians who've been invaded by the Russians. So I think the conspiracy in that sense is Trump decided he had to take pressure off himself for the Russian stuff. He said it was Ukraine, and therefore all these political people had to say the same if they wanted Trump's backing.
Said folks out there thinking, ah, okay, these are three guys who don't like Republicans. I don't think that's true at all. I think if you're looking at Republican members of Congress are saying that Russian propaganda has infected parts of the Republican party. Right, people like Mitch McConnell are saying that Trump personally is responsible for holding up aid to the Ukraine, which has resulted in the death of a lot of Ukrainian soldiers for no reason whatsoever other than American politics.
So this is something that's been on my mind for a few years now, as you can tell, because I'm getting all worked up that if you talk to like the most boring economic analysts, this isn't even complicated. It's like, Yes, money has a bunch of uses, and one of the uses is to co opt people in ways that I think we can call a conspiracy, and it's very good at it.
Well, there's actually a lot of national security people who run over to Saudi Arabian places. It's hard to turn down money if you haven't had much money in the past.
So John, we're not going to broadcast from Riad or Moscow next week.
Depends on the price.
But here's how it's going to happen. One of us is going to call the others and say, listen, guys, I know this is ridiculous. I know what you're thinking, but listen, there's a real reformer. This guy is the real data and he really sees us.
The VLED has turned over a new leaf.
I mean, there is a taboo that's been broken. It would have been harder in twenty fourteen, two thousand and seven, it's much easier now. Our dear friend Jan, the former Russian government money launderer, talks about they just were studying and studying and studying how do we get money into the American system.
So today's Many episode was great. We didn't get to talk about Tucker Carlson on the Joe Rogan Show. We can do that at another time. Apparently, Tucker on the Joe Rogan Show said that the theory of evolution has now been proven false because of these supernatural beings in the ocean.
Of course, the Joe Rogan Show will always give us lots of conspiracy grist for the mill.
But our next episode will be with Denver Ringleman. Denver was an investigator with the January sixth Committee and has a lot to say about January sixth and is surrounding that. So join us then,