Ep. #730: Ben McKenzie, Dan Jones, David French

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It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, May 26th, and Wednesday, May 27th. Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupons. Welcome. From the HBO Late Night series, Real Time with Bill Ma. How are you guys? thank you so much thank you for coming I appreciate it. Thank you very much. You're so kind. Thank you, I um Thank you so much people.

I appreciate that. I know why you're happy that the big summit in China went fantastic. Uh no, d Trump is on his way back right now. It's Frida late Friday afternoon in Los Angeles. He's probably in the air, coming back to air to Andrews Air Force Base and uh relations with China, I can just tell they're better now. I ordered takeout today. And the the menu said, go ahead, make some substitution.

Trump he he hates China, but he loves Xi. He loves President To say this was a love fest between these two guys an understatement as he left. Uh Trump said thanked Zi Ji uh profusely for his hospitality and and G thanked Trump for making China way more popular around the world. Thank you. It's funny because our two countries have a lot of issues between them, but it seemed like in this big summit, they were mostly avoided, uh no demands, uh, except you have to try these dumplings.

That was the only one Thank you. And, you know what? China knows what Trump likes. What is he like? He likes the pomp and the parades and he likes the red carpet and there were thousands of children waving American flags and You know, and uh gee, he's clever, you know. He he he knows. He he bargained like someone who knows he holds the cards now, ever since Trump backed down on their big trade war. In fact, as a subtle dig, uh they served Orange Chicken.

And Trump, uh, he said, you know, he doesn't uh engage him like that. He just is said, well, you know what? When he said declining nation, he was talking about Biden's four years And Trump is right. Uh under Trump, gas prices uh they haven't declined. And uh inflation, that's not declining. Um Ha ha ha! But tr you know, Trump he loves this guy. He calls him a tough cookie. He loves he loves a tough cookie. He he he says he's a he says he's a great leader. I say it to everybody.

He didn't say to me Uh no, maybe I'll just Maybe he did and I didn't hear it because I was so nervous. No, Trump says with she there's no games with him. Getting a little weird, you know, at one point G told his translator, Tell Trump, don't catch feelings. Ha ha ha. It's Thank you.

So really I I'm glad our leaders of these two powerful countries and nuclear weapons aren't fighting, but it's getting a little, you know, personal. Trump said, you know what he said about G? He said if you went to Hollywood, you couldn't find in Central Casting a better guy for the At one point he said, gee, your hair smells terrific. Well, you know what? You know what people? Maybe America is in decline. You wouldn't know it. I'm sorry.

by who Trump brought with him on the trip'cause he brought some fucking heavy hitters man, some tech bros. And these guys do run shit in this world, okay? Elon Musk was there, the CEO of Apple was there. Very sweet moment when the CEO of Apple he saw all the kids and he said, get back to work.

And no, come on. America just still rules in a lot of ways. We got Elon Musk. He was there in a suit you don't see that often that shows the respect Elon Musk has for the Chinese leadership and out of respect. For the one child rule that was a pillar of Chinese society for so long, while he was in China for two days, Elon only fathered one child. Very Thank you. Another of the Tech Titans that's from America.

Who was there? Jensen Wong of Nvidia, the chipmaker. And interesting side note here, uh Trump this year has bought s and sold millions of dollars in stock in companies that do business with the government. We're just doing that out front now? Including Nvidia and Boeing. And you know who got some deals when he was in China? Nvidia and Boeing. Scott Jennings, your move. And of course.

Trump's defense here is that he uses a blind trust. Yes, that's what he gets from Republicans in Congress. Blind trust, exactly. And And I gotta say also the right wing media. I mean Sean Hannity was on the trip, they did an interview. I don't want to say Sean Hannity lobs a lot of softballs, but today he was made an honorary lesbian. 감사합니다. Thank you.

All right, one more thing. I hate to bring this up because I remember standing in this space like what was it six years ago and talking about COVID and we said, Okay, well now there's this new one, Hontavirus. I I know. We hope it's not, but you know, we keep hearing some things like today it came out, it can survive in sperm for six years. I just gotta say if you have sperm that's more than six years old See a doctor, you might be married.

Oh I kid. All right, we got a great show. Dan Jones and David French are here.

First up, he is the actor who wrote, produced, and directed the new documentary film Everyone Is Lying to You for Money. Ben Mackenzie, Ben. Thank you. All right, so Ben, everyone is lying to you for money, but really mostly about crypto. Why are you saying everyone? Because really it's crypto what we're talking about in this documentary. Right, well that's how you make the real money is with the fake stuff. Okay. Donald Trump is uh the perfect illustration of that.

Okay. Well so if anyone's expecting this to be the kind of interview about crypto where, you know, I ask you the tough questions and you know I p I don't do that in the show. I never have. I say what I think. Sometimes I agree with people, sometimes I don't.

We're on the same bench here. So let's not just pretend. Let's just tear it the new asshole it deserves. You've torn a new asshole, I've tore it a new asshole. Let's just start with this. Crypto. I didn't realize this till I saw this in your movie. Forty four percent of the money that went to the last election from corporations came from crypto sources. That's crazy since it doesn't really exist. It's play money and it's financing presidential elections.

Yes. Forty-four percent of all money in twenty twenty four came from crypto, the crypto lobby and people associated with it. And what do we expect they're going to get from this? Because getting it right now, they're getting legislation that's favorable to the industry. Favorable in what way? They already passed a bill called the Genius Act, which if you know this Congress that it's called. It's gotta be stupid. Um

The the Genius Act allows corporations to issue their own currencies in the form of cryptocurrencies. So literal corporate money. Um and look, the Republicans are gonna vote for this nonsense because of course they're slavishly devoted to dear leader. But I'm really pissed off about the Democrats.

I mean a hundred Democrats voted for this, including Hakeem Jeffries, including my Congressman Dan Goldman, which is why I'm supporting his opponent. If if a Democratic-elected leader chooses literal corporate money over the interests of his constituents, I believe they should get the fuck out of the party. It is.

It is nonsense. It's going on right now actually. They just got a bill out of committee, another bill called the Clarity Act out of committee, and the Democratic Senator who got it out of committee is Ruben Gallego. In twenty twenty four his campaign got ten million dollars from a crypto super So I'm sure Senator Gallego's support of this is his deep understanding and love of blockchain technology. Yeah. But it might also be his cozy relationship with the crypto.

Well let's go let's go back even further and try to explain why we think it's just so terrible because money, I mean money's a dirty business hour. Talk about it. I mean before crypto came along, the biggest villains were hedge fund guys. And hedge fund guys, you know, okay. I mean th they they get very rich just chasing numbers around a screen. They don't actually make anything. But here's the difference. They do finance companies.

The stock market does something. It f uh we have to f somehow finance the government, which is twenty nine trillion dollars in debt. Where does that come from? From banks, from actual money. In other words, what I'm saying is before crypto Maybe money was dirty, but it did do a service. You know, you need money. We all need money, and money is itself a commodity.

What we're saying is this is just crypto is just a Ponzi scam, but unlike even other Ponzi scams, there's nothing at the m heart of it that you can cling it to. It's just saying nothing, just pure speculation. Crypto is only good for two things, gambling and crime. And the gambling is the betting that this or that cryptocurrency is going to go up or down. And that's the crime, right? by which one of them.

One of the exactly one of many, many, many crimes. But Donald Trump, you know, most of the money that he's made in office is via crypto. And what's terrifying about this bill that they just passed through committee, that by the way, they need seven votes on the floor from the Democrats to pass. So I'm looking at, you know, Senator Warner, Senator Warnock, Senator also Brooks. I'm looking at them to hopefully do the right thing because if they don't, there's going to be hell to pay. But they are

There is no provision in this bill to stop Trump's crypto corruption. No provision. And so Senator Gallego and all these Democrats will rail against Trump's corruption on a Tuesday. But on Wednesday they vote. for a bill. that goes forward without any provision to stop that correctly So where's it gonna end? I mean I keep you we're talking about criminals. I'm a kidnapper, let's say. I kidnap you'cause this is what goes on now, and I want the r the ransom is in crypto.

And the reason why is because it's not traceable like real money. You don't have to throw a bag of money off off the off the bridge. You know, that we've seen in a million movies. No. Okay, so it only works because the kidnapper is actually getting something of value. Yes. The crypto is real. This all goes away if the ball you know, it there's a ball in the air that's just being held in the air by sheer belief. Y does that ball ever fall down?

Well what's changed since we last talked is these things called stable coins, which are cryptos that that the price doesn't go up and down. They're supposedly stable, although they fail all the time. That'll shock you. But um they're basically supposed to be pegged one to one with real currencies. So they're basically black market dollars. The the ships passing the Strait of Hamuz right now, the Iranians are getting their payment in in stable coins.

This is counterfeit money. This is money, it's saying it's a US dollar, but it's not a US dollar. And its only real purpose is criminal activity. And to give you a sense of how much criminal activity we're talking about, last year a crypto company estimated$154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via cryptocurrency.$154 billion in a single year. shocking and outrageous that our elected members of government are facilitating this.

The the largest stable coin company is a company called Tet. The broker for Tether is Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard Luttnick's for So Howard Lutnick or his kids are in charge of Tether, the two hundred billion dollar stablecoin company, and Tether is the primary instrument for criminal activity. And who was Howard Ludnick? Oh sorry. Yeah, it's like Sorry, I w I went deep. I went deep. He's if you don't set up who the bad guy is, we got no show. He looks like a kind of a C rate Gordon gecko.

But what's the answer to people who say, well the dollar isn't real either? Because the dollar isn't real either. Oh yeah, exactly. The crypto guys, they're like, Gotcha. Well what is the answer? Uh all money's made up. Right. Money's a social construct, right? So what are we doing? Government and religion. Well, the difference is that that our money, the real dollar, is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.

But it's also where does that full faith and credit come from? From our work. Right. from the three hundred million Americans who worked their asses off and have contributed over two hundred and fifty years. And now these crypto guys are saying, Oh no, we can just privatize it, pretend it's a dollar, and basically as they integrate it into our financial system, what's gonna happen is when crypto crashes again.

It'll it could take down the entire financial system. But when it And we'll end up bailing these fuckers out again. Yeah. I mean and then you said it's it could be as little as twenty individuals who are really profiting from this. And everybody else I mean, millions of people have lost their shirt. Yeah. When they Yeah. It's an insider trading scam. Absolut I mean the insiders always win and the general public always loses on it. This is just that on steroids.

Yeah, exactly. I mean to give you an example, uh Trump coin, right, his meme coin, down ninety-six percent. Right. They had all the coins. His followers buy them. They dump on the followers. Now, some of them got something out of it. He hosted a dinner for the top investors. So the top investors got to have dinner with the president of the United States. Well, I have to tell you that stake is on point. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm not gonna lie. It is it's probably the best steak I ever had, but um but every time I hear that it's it's crashing. It never does, because that's when other people go, perfect time, buy low. Now you can get it cheap. So I don't see it ever going away, do you?

I don't see it ever going away and I'm not saying we should outlaw it. I'm saying the speculative cryptocurrencies, all the currencies where the the price can go up and down. You know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Trump coin, Melania coin, uh cumrocket, my my favorite. All of those should be regulated like security.

This new law that they're about to pass will regulate them like commodities. And the reason that crypto wants this is that it's the smaller, weaker regulatory agency, the CFDC, rather than the FCC. I know this may sound like a sort of an erudite point, but it's very important. The crypto industry has always wanted the CFTC to be in control. Sam Bankman-Fried wanted the CFTC to be in control before he's arrested for running a large fraud.

This is regulatory capture. They are deciding what laws, they're they're writing the laws themselves. How do how do these laws come into being? The lobbyists sit with the senators and their staffs and write these laws. It is it's just completely Outrageous. All right, man. Don't lose your anger. All right. We need to go. All right. Thank you very much. Unless we are panels. Thank you, bro. I appreciate it. All right.

Hey hi guys, okay. He is a New York Times columnist, visiting professor at Lipscomb University and co-host of the podcast Advisory Opinions, David French. Back with us. It's been so long. And he's a historian and podcaster's forthcoming book is called Castles of Fortified History of the World from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. I'll be the first one to read it, Dan Jones. Okay. I gotta say uh this China summit I feel I was a little disappointed. Uh I I always

look forward to big summits like this'cause they're consequential. This didn't look that consequential. You oh you agree with that? Okay. I mean maybe it was, I don't know, maybe things will come out of it. But to me it looked it reminded me of seventies, eighties sitcoms where they traveled the show to Hawaii, you know, for a week. And it's like it's not really different. The Brady Bunch is in Hawaii and

Fonzi is waterskiing but he's still got the leather jacket on. It's it's kind of the same bullshit but in a different locale. I am I wrong? W y in terms of of policy decisions, in terms of big things that came out of it, there's not very much that came out of it, but in terms of its framing as a historical moment.

I think that's what when we look back on it will be very interesting. And you heard all of this from the Chinese side, that this actually is a moment when uh China is emerging as a superpower, when when in Xi's view of the world, this is the East on the rise. relative to the West led by America on the decline. We've been hearing that for a long time. Well and and and she makes the case.

In twenty twenty five there was a a Chinese think tank produced a report which was called Thank Trump, which uh made the case for the decline of the American Empire as a as a response to Trumpian policies, dumping on your allies. Hollowing out the economy, uh creating a a perception that the West is in decline. So so that may not necessarily be backed up by the fact of the crash. Our economy is not exactly hollowed out. Right.

Right. Our economy is the envy of the world and has been for a while. Now not less right now, less in this moment with the Strait of Four Moose closed. But here's the thing, here's why I think there's such cognitive dissonance that you feel.

Reagan and Gorbachev when they're meeting, he's meeting Reagan's meeting with a peer and a rival. When Nixon and Brezhnev are meeting, they're meeting a peer and a rival. What we're watching here is Trump meeting a peer and a pal. And that is something that is very unusual, especially out of an autocratic, totalitarian country. And the way to think about Trump is to think of it not as an he's not in isolation.

He's a fear spheres of influence guy. And he looks at the world essentially there's three dudes that matter. Putin, she, and him, right? And they divide up the spoil. And so t China has its area, Russia has its area, and you wonder why we've been so aggressive towards Canada, towards Mexico, we've been so aggressive towards Cuba and Venezuela. That's our playground. And so that is the way he views the world. And I think he actually walks into a China summit envying Xi because.

He wants to be like Vladimir Putin. He wants to be like Xi, to have that autonomy, to have that freedom of action that this pesky little separation of powers and federalism and and Supreme Court denies. Yeah, I I I gotta say, I know what you're talking about because gee, no maybe he's just inscrutable. But he does have a look on his face like uh this guy thinks I like him a lot, like that means anything to me.

And I actually do like him because he is making my life easy because like for example, uh my country, China, is leading in in wind. And this guy, for no apparent reason, has a huge heart on about wind. So we'll take that one. And you know, to the point about are we in decline, it's like so interesting because There's a whole list of things you could say that are super pro for America and super con, and the same for China.

Like SuperPro, we're free, but we're also stupid. But our best people are not stupid. We're still a ball and fun place to be. So we got Elon Musk here. And we got, you know, the tech bros and we got lots of people who are still kicking ass in the world. So I don't know. You know, what I know is like this is in the playoffs of World Dominion, this is the finals. Okay, a lot of countries get in the playoffs. Russia, the EU, but this is the finals. China and America. Who's going to win?

Speaking of decline, I mean look at it like this. Decline with under Trump is a choice. I mean, this is a country that can still do great things. We just had the Artemis mission. We're about to have this you know, starship launch, that's a remarkable thing that is accomplished by Americans in America. We can do great things. But what Trump does is it's almost like imagine you're playing the ninety eight Chicago Bulls and Phil Jackson decides to sit Michael Jordan.

Well that's decline as a choice, right? We are choosing to be weaker. That's what we're choosing. That's not the same thing as a decline. Well I think the pattern with the president is that he thinks he can get whatever we want by throwing our weight around. I mean you saw that with Iran, which I thought was a necessary thing to at least try. We're at a different stage now.

And you're seeing it with China and the trade war that he started. And, you know, he didn't win that trade war. The tariffs he there's a lot about what we can do to you and very little thought put into, oh, and then what are you gonna do to us? Because China didn't back down and neither did Iran.

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that when the president walks into a room, he represents the West in general, the free world. And and that seems to be shrinking under Trump. I mean h historically we're we're starting to see the US in yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod, yn ystod. And and you look at Trump and see more like a kind of deranged Roman Emperor, a Nero or a Caligula.

Amen. But the empire is contracted down to this. Yeah, I guess so. I mean it seem uh to m uh the thing that disappointed me most about the whole thing is that uh to m m from my way of thinking The biggest issue with China and Russia, even with China and and the United States, even bigger than the Tariffs, even bigger than Iran, those things will get settled and AI.

I mean, every time we warn about AI and you find very few people who don't think that there is a huge danger there, that it could be literally an extinction level event. Uh they say, yeah, but the other argument is w we're in a race with China. So, okay, China gets it that this could be an extinction level event.

We get it, at least a lot of us do. We have to come to some sort of agreement with them so that we're not in this arms race. Here's what Trump said on the way back. We talked about possibly working together for guardrail. That's as good as it got. Right. He said, AI is fantastic. So many things can happen in terms of health, medicine and operations. True, and I'm counting on a lot of them. It's also got some drawbacks. Yes. Like we could all die.

So that to me was the big disappointment is that we didn't move on the one really important thing that we have to move on, which is getting some sort of deal with the Chinese about AI before we race each other to death. Think of it as Nuclear Arms Race two point oh. Just a different version of an extinction level technology that requires serious people who know things to actually sit in a room and to think think about this. At the height of the Cold War.

When the the United States and the Soviet Union were sometimes inches from armed conflict, from open conflict, they were still able to get in a room and make serious agreements to limit the growth of their nuclear arsenals and ultimately to reduce the growth to reduce the arsenals entirely.

We've got a guy right now who walks in and his version of a deal is just that somebody maybe possibly says something positive and then he announces a deal, or he just makes it up entirely. I feel like it's the Baghdad Bob administration. Do you do you remember Baghdad Bob in two thousand and three? The Americans are nowhere near while you hear the gunfire. Everything is fine. There's an American tank right across the street.

This is Trump. He is constantly promoting deals that don't exist, victories that never happened. The Iran war is a tremendous example of this. He was hyping the results and hyping the results and the reality is turning out to be really, really grim. I've never encountered this in my entire life where you look, administrations have lied in the past. This administration lies at industrial scale. The point. Thank you. I didn't know.

At the height of the Iran war, I didn't know if the Trump administration was more honest or if the Islamic Republic was being more honest. That is a sad, sad statement about America. And if people don't know why our hair is on fire about this with the AI issue, one of the tech people who I don't think was on the trip is Dario Amoti. He's from Anthropic. They're kind of known now as the AI group with it a with a conscience.

He refused to do the government's bidding at some point. This was a big issue a couple of months ago, because he said he's not going to give the government his technology. unless they agreed to not cross two red lines. One was mass domestic surveillance. and the other was fully autonomous weapons. In other words, no one in the kill chain. This is what we're worried about. When there's no one in the kill chain, when it's just the machines talking to the machines,

Yeah, they could make that decision, but not how they're programmed. Like, oh these people were misgendering, they all have to die. But but here's the problem when you view AI purely as a a profit opportunity. And and that seems to have been the purpose on on the China visit is well we're gonna take Nvidia because we want to make a deal that involves X number of billions that I can announce it on Air Force One or not.

And that strips away from the AI question everything that that you're talking about and you're talking about, which is that this is way more than just a a a fuel for the economy. This is an extinction level, existential level issue that requires grown-up leadership.

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That's Chinese territory. It always has been. I know you guys talk two side of your mouths about it. You don't really say you're gonna come to Taiwan's defense, but you s you don't say you don't. Uh if you wanna see me mad give more weapons to Taiwan or come to the defense of Taiwan. So the place that gives us the chips that power the stuff that would allow us to fight Taiwan, to fight China, come from the place that China wants to take over. What's gonna happen with that?

I mean, look, that's core national security interest right there, these chips being made in Taiwan. What have we done? We have delayed a$15 billion arms package to Taiwan. I thought we were in the middle of this pivot to Asia, that one of the reasons why we're moving people out of Europe, which by the way, we just torpedoed, blindsided the polls.

By removing a brigade of American troops without really notifying them in advance. That's a diplomatic crisis right now. So here you have Taiwan. We are supposed to pivot to China to be stronger towards China. Well, we delay fifteen billion dollars to Taiwan. Uh Trump's statements regarding Taiwan are weaker than President Biden's statements regarding Taiwan.

At right now, if I'm if I'm China, I would think there is a very good chance that Donald Trump would not lift a finger to defend Taiwan. And the main deterrent against China right now is the revolution and warfare. that I don't think they could survive a drone a drone swarm uh attacking across the Straits of Taiwan that the across the Straits. So it's it's a terrible situation. Yeah. And we're a little weapons depleted because we use so many of them in the Iranian situation?

And we're also a little reason depleted because once you s once you start to reduce Taiwan to uh a matter of of semiconductors and chips and take away the the big reasons for defending Taiwan also used to include we defend democracies around the world. Rydyn ni'n defnyddio'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â japan.

through Taiwan to the Philippines and and these all mattered and these were part of America's virtue in the world. And once once all that starts to be jettisoned and allies matter less, and it comes down to just a matter of chips. If God forbid, if we have to go to war over over Taiwan, how do you make that case? I mean, as Trump came back today, he said, Oh, I'm not interested in a war nine and a half thousand miles away. Oh really? That's how far Taiwan is? How far is Iran? Uh seven thousand.

Two thousand seven is good, but not nine and a half, yet. Okay. Well, uh there are other news stories I want to get to. One is very important. Uh it is the cruise ship industry, which there's been a lot of news about, all good.

Uh no. Uh there was this Hunter virus that broke out on this cruise ship and uh before that there was the Narovirus and before that I want to get this right so I don't get sued by my former employee Disney. Twenty-seven cruise ship workers, including some from the Disney cruise line, were deported after having engaged with child pornography.

Okay. So I never been a fan of the cruise ships, but uh they know where they are now with the public as far as their image goes. So they're kind of embracing it. You gotta lean into it. Would you like to see some of the posters that the uh Carnival Cruises Yeah. Uh the QR cruise line. We're pretty sure chlorine kills all the bad stuff. Thank you. Uh, the Viking River Cruise, no questions asked when your spouse goes missing. Thank you.

Uh Holland America, our service is number one. Our floors are flooded with number two. Disney, bring the kids and share touching moments. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Resorts World. What if Florida could float? Uh Region seven C's, what you call being quarantined, we call extending your stay. Uh Disney eat kids free. Wait, we mean kids eat free. Thank you. Uh, Royal Caribbean vomiting gives you abs. Well, that's... Princess cruises, at least you're not in the strait of hormones. Okay. So Thank you.

Let us uh let us give the public the information here. The the the risk says Dr. David Fritter, the incident manager at the C D C Uh the risk to general population remains low. Now, two things here. One, that's exactly what they said about COVID. And two, I don't know who Dr. David Fitter is. He's at the C D C. I don't know if he's One of RFK's you know, RFK says you can ward it off by blowing a dead raccoon. So I I Alright. I don't know who

I don't know who Dr. David Fitter is. Maybe he's an old school guy who we can trust. I I d I don't know anymore. And that's part of the problem is that on both sides of the equation The public does not have any trust anymore, or some trust, but not as they used to, in the C D C and in what the government is telling you about pandemic. Well what do we do about that? You and I could nerd out about the Justinian plague and the bubonic plague, because I love to talk medieval plagues. I do too.

Right. I know. But let's let's save that for the end of the discussion and talk about the one. Is what do you think? Are you nervous? Do you think this is something to worry about? Is it repe uh repeat of covet or is it A big thing. I I'm not nervous based on the available information, but here's what I am a little bit nervous about is that we'll go into this other another cycle where public health officials just won't level with us. They won't do things like say, we don't know.

And instead what they'll say say is the words that they feel necessary to manipulate us into a particular decision set. Just say what you know. And if you don't know something, say we don't know. And I think looking back on COVID, and I know nobody likes to look back on COVID.

That's one of the original sins is I feel like we were in many ways manipulated. Do this and it will achieve this outcome when really what they were doing is they were guessing. This is our best guess with an unknown and new disease, and they were far more authoritative Than the evidence allowed them to be. And that's a reason why a lot of people don't trust anyone. And they said a lot of things that did not turn out to be true and they squelched a lot of opinions that turned out to be true.

I mean I do like to look back on COVID because I do think I was kinda right about it. You know, I never wanted that particular vaccine for that particular disease, which I thought my own um own immune system could handle and I bet it could. Um but I said a million times. Another one that could come along, I would fight you for the vaccine. I said that over and over. This is that one.'Cause this Hunter one, it's harder to get, but I got to tell ya, if you do get it, don't buy any green bananas.

Yeah. Uh so this one I want to be first online, but you cried wolf with the other one, with the mask and the distancing and the pretending that natural immunity didn't count anymore. All of this bullshit. It goes into it. Yeah.

Of I mean of course it does. And and without going all the way back to Justinian, there there was a probable Hunter virus in the sixteenth, seventeenth century called the sweating sickness, which had a thirty to fifty percent lethality rate and killed you in two days. Gimme the green banana, give me the raccoon if you have to. Like I will Thank you. Bye. Yeah, they're right. I mean...

The level of public trust that was eroded by overstringent lockdowns, by forcing people to take a vaccine, whether they needed it or not, whether they wanted it or not, will come back. Let's hope this is not the the next pandemic. But if there's a another pandemic any time soon, it will come back. And then the the blame can only be levelled at the uh the officials and the the the the governments that that made such crazy policy in COVID in the first place.

You know what's also so annoying is that we didn't learn anything about what causes this to begin with with the other. Excuse me, Peter board member, but it's because we treat animals the wrong way. All these things arise from animals. This thing, I think, started because people were sightseeing on a landfill, right? Oh, who wouldn't want to do that? Who doesn't want to go and stand knee deep in shit to watch a seagull eat a corn chip off a used condom? What a great way to spend your cruise.

So these idiots get it. But it's it's factory farming. It's keeping animals in a state that makes them sick and then we get sick from them. Bird flu, uh SARS, all the everyth all these things come by swine flu. It all comes from animals. And we never learned that lesson and we haven't done a thing about it. Not a thing about factory farm.

I mean th there was a time, you know, these these plagues that came from rats back in the day where there wasn't really a choice. The the way of life meant that you lived amongst vermin and and rodents and that was that was everybody sort of doing their best. But now we have the knowledge of that.

And we have the ability to say, hey, you know what? The the way that the food chain is set up is predisposed to create conditions that may lead to pandemics. Or the way that we're testing uh we're testing um gain of function. in viruses. This is dangerous to public health. I mean everybody knows this and still we keep doing. And you know what my celebrity fake name is when I check into a well I guess I blew it now.

Well I'll get a new one, but when I check into a hotel you know you have to use a fake name, Eusebius Pest is That's a big hole. yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r It sounds really cool.

Wow. Well, I mean on the issue of like are we in decline, this is kind of another way which I think China thinks we're in decline and which the it's one point on that scorecard that w we don't even have the trust

of our own people. I know China thinks that we're in decline partly because we don't like each other. There was a study that came out recently um this is of All twenty-five countries in the world they surveyed were the only ones where the people in the country think the other people in the country are shit. Every you know what the study I'm talking about?

know all about this study and some of the other countries where people liked each other more than America, they were actually involved in some civil strike. So like they're shooting each other and liking each other more than we do. Yeah. This is this is I'm so glad we're talking about this because if you want to know what is ailing our politics, this is a big, big part of it. Not long ago there was a study called the Belonging Index that was done to do to ask Americans, do they feel accepted?

In their communities, in their jobs, in their families, et cetera. And the answer was an overwhelming majority of Americans don't feel like they belong in this country. And they feel like they've been rejected. They don't or there other people don't. They lack a sense of belonging, of acceptance. When I say not that they need to leave, but in other words that they don't feel accepted in their own communities, in their own workplaces.

And the people who lack that sense of belonging, what are some characteristics they share? Well they're less committed to democracy, for example. They have less openness to being around people from different backgrounds. If you want to heal a lot of what's going on.

wrong with this country, actually be kind to other human beings to make them feel like they have a place here, and they're gonna be less drawn to extremism, believe it or not. I'm gonna sound like a kindergarten teacher right now, Bill. I'm gonna say, you wanna know how to help heal our country? Make a friend. But specifically, try to make friends in the communities that don't feel like they belong in this country. And you're gonna go a long way to Thank you.

That sounds like it's all s happening on one side. It's happening on the other side too. Yes. There are everyone. There are people in ICE who make people who are in this country, who have every right to be in this country not feel like they should be a good thing. Absolutely. And there's also people on the left who won't invite their own relative to Thanksgiving. So it's not a one way thing.

It's a bipartisan issue and it's also connected to the lack of friendship, especially amongst men and m working class men. A shocking percentage of men right now have no friends at all. Right. No close friends at all. And those people are more drawn to extremism. They're both on right and left. Why I do all male shows. You know, th this is also a story about cell phones, right? This is also a technological story.

that runs throughout social media has be is now manifesting in the way that people react with each other. They silo themselves through staring at a screen like this. It's easier to do this than to talk to the people around you. It's this is driving you towards polarity of thought, towards insularity of community, and you end up not talking to real people and never having your your views on other people challenged. And this deep feeling of isolation.

A lot of it's springing from this and this is like a this is a civilizational revolution. And the economy, because I read the American Enterprise Institute just told us that 25 percent of young people, only 25 percent, talk to their neighbors. I think this is a lot having to do with the income inequality. Either you're

Upper middle class, which we reported recently, way better than they used to do. Three times the upper middle class than there was in nineteen eighty. That's a lot of fairly rich people. But they live in McMansions. They have and walls and, you know, lots of room. So you don't have to talk to those neighbors.

I sure don't talk to mine. I mean I would, but we just don't see each other. Okay. And then If you're poor, you're on top of each other and one man's ceiling is another man's floor and you you fucking hate these people because because you smell their farts and you hear their fights and you know.

You know, one thing that that's I'm so glad you brought up the economy as well, because there's a statistic that I think is very alarming. Top ten percent of Americans in income now account for majority of all consumer spending. So what that means is the entire economy is warping for the most wealthy 10 percent. These are just companies acting in their rational economic interest.

And so what it creates, to use like an airline boarding group analogy, is like a group one economy when most of us sort of have group nine incomes, and that doesn't work for people. It just doesn't. All right, thank you guys. This was a real pleasure. Time for new rules, everyone.

Okay, uh new rule before Amazon sells me a hyper-realistic$99 cement log, they have to tell me what makes it better than a log? I guess because it's cement, it's a little more durable than a piece of wood, but if it's only better because it's more indestructible, why do I need the three-year protection plan? Neural Gen Z can't seriously believe it's a scary microaggression when a boomer puts punctuation at the end of a tech.

Kids, have you read the news? In the last few years, Republicans seem determined to completely ban abortion everywhere. But the period you're worried about is at the end of a sentence? Uh New Rule, since people from around the globe are about to descend on Los Angeles for the World Cup, we have to change our motto from we are Los Angeles to Los Angeles. It wasn't always like this.

No, just just a little something to prepare our foreign friends when they get here and think, aikarumba, this looked different on Baywatch. Now that your religious questions can be answered by an AI rabbi, an AI imam, and an AI priest. Threatening the jobs of clergy members worldwide, we have to ask the question, now who's going to do horrible things to children? I'm kidding. We still have the music industry.

Uh, Literal, next time a president dozes off at a public event, someone has to draw a dick on his forehead. Do I have to explain how America works? We don't do siestas here. You can either grab a cup of coffee and get back to work or we will replace you with younger Latino workers.

And finally, new rules, since yesterday was Israel's birthday, having become a nation on May 14th, 78 years ago, everyone must either wish her a happy birthday or admit they're anti-Semitic. Now it's everyone's right in a free country to be anti Semitic, but Enough with hiding behind Israel or Zionism or Netanyahu. If you think as so many do now, that when it comes to human rights, Israel is the monster country of all time, you either don't read or

Or you don't care about your own hypocrisy. Because there are so many worse places. But that's where we are these days. No Jews, no news. Ha ha. But China, Russia, the Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, North Korea, all way worse. And that's how you know it's anti-Semitism. It's the inconsistent. People talk about Jews these days like something out of Stormfront.

Except it's not Stormfront. It's an editor from The American Prospect, which is a venerable liberal publication that launched the careers of journalists like Ezra Klein. And yet no one blinks when one of their editors says, Israel is a brainwashed psychopathic death cult that might need to be nuked to save the human race. Aha. People say the left and the right can't agree on anything these days. Well, there is this one thing they agree on.

Right winger Tucker Carlson has Nick Fuentes and Holocaust deniers on his podcast and wonders along with them who really was the bad guy in World War II. And the New York Times has on their podcast, super leftist Hassan Piker, who they call a progressive mind, and who says Zionists should be treated the same as Nazis, which I assume means hung at Nuremberg.

That's what progressive is now? I guess so. The kids are sure into it. They went nuts last year at Coachella for kneecap. That's the name of an Irish rap group, as if Ireland hasn't suffered enough. Yeah. Their stage set is a sign that says fuck Israel. And then they send a beach ball around the crowd. Because again Israel is the only country in the world doing anything better.

I see why the Meathead Manosphere and the Code Pink people are on the same page, because they both went to high school in America and they don't know anything. Yeah. So we really could someday soon have the tiki torch Jews will not replace us crowd and the queers for Palestine people working together to elect the next hit.

There's a North Carolina teenager who's been charged with plotting to drive through a synagogue to fulfill her life goal of killing as many Jews as possible. Because a kid's gotta have a dream. I'm just asking why in the world would this be the dream of some kid in North Carolina? Why is it the dream of Dan Belzarian?

who's running as a Republican to win a House seat in Florida. Who's Dan Bilzarian? Well, he's a professional douchebag who's Attracted 30 million followers by doing this all day and post. Yes, he'll fit in fine with the current Congress. And Dan is fairly typical of the guys in the manosphere when he says the only real battle in the world today that I see worth fighting is fucking, you know, exterminating Israel.

I mean I would sign up tomorrow to go fucking put boots on the ground and go fucking kill Israelis. Why? Why is this asshole's life about two things? Getting more Viagra and exterminating the Jews? Israel was founded on the idea that anti-Semitism made a Jewish state unnecessary unnecessary because Jews would never be safe without one. Can you honestly listen to this rhetoric?

And not see why that turned out to be true? If you don't have the right-wingers on your side and you don't have the progressives, what do you have? What's more progressive than college, where professors now say things that would make Kanye win? Asman Umgarji calls Zionists bloodthirsty animals. Who is he? The leader of ISIS? No, he's a professor right here in California at UC Irvine.

And Candace Owens agrees with his assessment of Jews as animals because she says wherever they go, they bring their filth with them. Another professor, Hamid Debashi, says of Israel's, they have a vulgarity of character that is bone deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture. These are the kind of statements Goebbels would have read and said. I mean where are the Jewish space lasers when you need'em?

Now there are absolutely horrible things said about Muslims too. That should also be, of course, roundly condemned, like Republican Congressman Randy Fine saying If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one. That's awful. But it's not the same as they need to be new.

And let's exterminate them. This is why Jewish people here and in Europe Now say they sometimes hide their identity, afraid that the Star of David will get them attacked, as has happened in almost too many places to mention later. Leave your Star of David at home. But the Kafaya? You can wear that anywhere. You can wear it to Fiddler on the Roof and you'll get applause. Jew hatred isn't just acceptable now, it's cool. Celebrities love it and make it trendy. It's the new Shake of Vera t-shirt.

The Islamophobia is just as bad argument? It's simply a false equivalency. Can you name a Jewish professor who talks about Muslims the way they get talked about? No. Anti Jewish crimes and Hate crimes and Now outpace anti Muslim hate crimes nine to one. It's not a contest, and I'm certainly not saying do more of the other. I'm just saying these are the numbers, the facts, the reality. There is a frothing anxiousness. for the literal extermination of this one group. And Democrats, where are you?

If any other minority group was being talked about this way, you'd break out the Kenta cloth and have 10 benefit concerts. But because you see that so many of your brainwashed by TikTok constituents now have an unfavorable view of Israel. You indulge them when you should be correcting them.

You don't tell your woke idiots Israel isn't a colonizer or an apartheid state or committing genocide, and that if you brats had to spend a week anywhere in the Middle East other than Israel, you would understand what liberalism is not. All the people likely running for president now on the democratic side want it known

They don't take money from APAC, the Israeli lobby, a stanch which gives permission to actual anti Semites to say, see, we're right about Israel. That's a dirty money from a dirty country. Oh please, you take money from crypto and factory farmers and big tech from Diddy and Weinstein and Epstein, but APAC is too far? Let me just say this to all who ask me: why are you harder on the Democrats than you used to be? Until you fix this whole issue? Stop asking me.

Thank you very much. That's our show. We're off next week. And back on the 29th, I want to thank David French, Dan Jones, and Ben McKenzie. Plot random drops every Monday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Log on to HBO.