#508 - The Breakup Episode

Greetings and welcome back to another exciting installment of The Fifth. column podcast. This is your weekly rhetorical assault on the news cycle, the people that make it and occasionally ourselves. I'm Camille Foster. I'm delighted to be here. I'm joined by Michael Moynihan and Matt Welch. Our comrade in arms is, uh, he's died.

And it was very sad. I think he had a tragedy. It was quick. It was a quick passing. He sent us a video? He did. Yeah. Which is very weird for him. It's kind of like a selfie, but it's like, he doesn't know how to do that because he's old and wears cargo pants. Just him. mumbling leave me alone we actually need to put the audio in because those might have been his last words actually it might have been his last words it was like dark

And you can kind of make out his face. It was like the Kim Kardashian tape. I'm like, what are you completely shaven? He didn't have any more hair on his face. Like who knew that catching a case of oral chlamydia made all of your facial hair fall out and kills you. I'm going to call him White Ray J from now on. Do you remember when they had the night vision on those cameras? The green? Because it was so funny. That video.

I think, I mean, I watched it when it came out or when it was online, but I think that had green night vision, right? It kind of looked like it. It was like seal times six, but for like, you know. I don't want to say that because they have kids that listen to the show. Well, that was your first mistake, mom and dad. Actually, no, you're doing the right thing.

They need to hear this. They need to understand the world that we live in. And that's what we do. I mean, we do this for the streets so we can tell the true story of what's happening in the world. And you know what? It's important. This is June 6th. It's a pretty consequential anniversary. D-Day. Well, yeah, D-Day, kind of important, 81st anniversary, yes, yes, yes. But I'm actually referring to the fifth year anniversary of the largest single day.

of demonstrations five years ago, Michael Moynihan. Oh, wow. Yeah, this was the peak. Is this when we reckoned with everything we had done as a country? Yeah. And then we never had to talk about racism again. It was all over at that point, that moment. The streets were flooded with people all over the country. participating in these demonstrations.

Many, many more people would lie later to pollsters insisting that they participate in this event. Almost certainly did not. Like the French resistance. I was there. By the way, can we just say that... And we should just say this because, or maybe you don't, I think you maybe agree with me, but it's always this stuff about Donald Trump winning again. And it's like, well, you know, the wokeness, people got tired of it. And Donald Trump kind of ran on that. And there was the Charlemagne.

I think that it's more specifically the racial reckoning. I think it's really specific to that, that so many people that I know who are not political would tell you only after like two years, like... man that was kind of crazy when you were getting criticized not for something you did but for something you didn't do like yeah post a black square yeah who is not wearing the ribbon you know like they said about the the aids ribbon that was like that i think that

We should commemorate for our MAGA friends, and we have MAGA listeners and they get mad at us, but our MAGA friends should commemorate this as a... liberation day for them the actual liberation yeah because once the marches happened it was like all right he's coming back okay yeah well well yeah i mean that was just a couple of days before unfortunately for them. Another noteworthy

Well, no, I guess that wasn't before. That was June. You're right. And that was 2021. I don't even know what I was thinking. What were you thinking? I was thinking June and January because the two began with Jay. Jay? Yeah. Ray J.

We're off to a stellar start. I know what it is. I'm still reeling. Did we just discover that Matt is the glue that keeps his podcast together? I have brain syphilis. I'm still reeling. from yesterday's drama. Oh my God, man. The breakup that is causing so much chaos and acrimony across the country. No one believed it was possible. that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would somehow go from being the best of friends.

to the worst of enemies and maybe i should actually say the best of enemies because they really seem to be enjoying this and they were literally saying nice things about each other a week in front of a bank of cameras like four days ago well this is a week ago

days ago in the Oval Office. But even after that, they were saying nice things about each other. Yeah, this is true. There were public statements, at least on X, you know. And it's funny. Yeah, I mean, we talked about this last time we recorded. The Trump administration had been very reluctant to say anything publicly about the fact that Elon was being openly critical of the bill. And it escalated considerably since the last time we recorded with...

Elon saying explicitly, this is an abomination call your congressman tell them to stop this the last thing caroline level said and i actually i haven't seen um her today so i don't know what she might have said today but the last thing she said before actually weighing in on this was in a meaningful way, before the actual fighting began, the nuclear exchange. She said, Donald Trump knows Elon's perspective on this bill.

He's still advocating for it. And that was it. That was all she said after he'd referred to the bill as an abomination. It's a pretty weak response from white Korean Jean-Pierre. Tepid. Tepid. And it really did go from Donald Trump not saying anything when asked about this to... kind of posting a passive aggressive thing to truth social, where it's just an image of Elon's tweet saying Donald Trump is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's not a response to Donald Trump. That's not like you. It's kind of interesting, though, because, you know, Trump has never had any problem opening up on anyone who's crossed him in the most brutal way. And there's something about being the world's richest man that I think makes him pull a few punches. Because I'll tell you what, a listener to the show, a friend of mine, you know him too. He sent me a screenshot.

which I thought was real. I was on the subway last night and I was like, Oh fuck. I was like, Oh, you know, like, you know, that, that, uh, meme with the kid going by the, yeah. Yeah. That's what I felt. And it was a Donald J. Trump tweet. And it was like, it turned out not to be real, but I was so disappointed. Whoever, congratulations, whoever did this. The tweet was. That totally was a Nazi salute that Elon did by the way. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

That's why I got rid of him. I had to sack him. Months later. I tell you what, I gotta be honest with you.

Well, you know that's not real because Donald Trump is a white supremacist. That's why it can't possibly be real. But I have to say that I think I told you guys yesterday. I did an episode of my two-way show last night with Nick Gillespie.

Um, and I recorded one, pre-recorded one before that with another guest, which I'll reveal next week and it'll be next Thursday, but it's a great guest and, and I think our listeners will love it. Um, but we, and Nick and I started by talking about this and I said to him. I think it might be the greatest political troll of my lifetime. And no one is pointing this out, because if you hang around these precincts and pay attention to them...

And that's by which I mean the Epstein conspiracy theorists, like what Tucker Carlson has become. They believe everything. And they like you have a guy like Dan Bongino. and cash patel on camera on fox news saying epstein didn't kill himself you know we have all and everyone's the response is not like oh wow so they saw this stuff and it's not true it's like who got to them

Because they're that crazy, right? They're like, oh my God. They believe in narrative. And then Elon fucks with him in the most amazing way. He says, yeah, the reason the flowers aren't being released trumps in them. And they're like, wait, what? Wait, I don't know what to do right now because I believe everything kooky and crazy and conspiratorial about the Epstein stuff. And Elon Musk, who has had access to all these government files, etc.

He knows. I mean, it's obviously bullshit and he knows it's bullshit. He's just trolling. But what a brilliant one. Because I saw some people responding like, wait, is this true? But it's incredible. It's incredible. Yeah, I think that's probably, it's probably true. I'm actually, as you were talking there, I asked perplexity.

Like, what are the greatest political trolls? And what it thought I was asking initially was the troll as the person. As the person. As opposed to the event. And of course, number one was Donald Trump. Oh, yeah, yeah. Number two was Ben Franklin. Actually. Yeah. I've always thought about that. Yeah. Ben Franklin, Donald Trump cut for the same cloth. Yeah. I'm going to go fly a kite. Oh, Ben.

The Petticoat Affair is number one. Number two, The Birther Conspiracy, 2008 to 2016. It's actually pretty good. Pizzagate 2016. Swiftboat ads. Yeah. Yeah. So veterans for truth. Yeah. Cafifi is a pretty good troll. 2017. That's, that's strong, but the petticoat affair. I mean, I, I feel, I feel bad. I'm going to acknowledge my ignorance. I don't know what that is.

Do you know what that is? The petticoat affair. I don't, do I know what the president Andrew Jackson's cabinet was rocked by a scandal involving secretary of war, John Eaton and his wife, Margaret Jackson's political opponent in Washington socialites. spread rumors and smeared Peggy Eaton as a filthy whore using gossip as a political weapon. It doesn't say the filthy whore part. It would have been better. This is the problem with these large language models. They have no real...

kind of character appetite. I don't think that they, you know, in the Jacksonian era. I think it would have been slightly different if you're like, Peggy O'Neill. Peggy Eden is a filial. She's gross. She a tramp. Those actually are things they would say.

I would say that without a problem. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, no, I'm inclined to agree, but it also has just been very, very strange. I guess there was a bit of a de-escalation yesterday. with Elon responding to one of Trump's earlier statements where he says, you know, well, we're going to take a look at all of the various contracts he's got. We're going to do something about that.

Elon immediately responds by posting that, well, I'm going to advise SpaceX that we should begin decommissioning the Dragon capsules, which, I mean, the Dragon capsules are essential. to U S national security and to NASA in general, like we're not getting anyone to the ISS without the dragon capsules. The only alternative would be. a deal with Vladimir Putin to use the Soyuz. We'll see. I mean, not out of the realm of possibility. But by the end of the day, Elon reversed himself on Twitter.

Yeah, these guys are a little temperamental and should have their phones taken away from them, to be honest. But I'm not wrong in thinking that the kind of intertwined relationship of SpaceX and NASA and just the U.S. government in general... predates this administration without a doubt yeah i mean by a lot right they just have the capability and obviously elon was not a expressly political person

you know, five years ago or something. I mean, he obviously became more and more political. But there's a couple things about this that are worth pointing out that I think have been overlooked. When Elon tweeted that he wanted to start a new political party, which is ridiculous, but not something we need. But he said something like, you know, for the 80% of us that aren't like extremists, basically.

I can't remember the phrasing of it, but that's what he's saying. Yeah. And it's like, have you seen your own Twitter feed for the past year? It's like, dude, what are you talking about? He's back. He's back is what he's saying. But it's like that. He could be at the 79%. He could be at the 79th. Yeah. He's like, I'm not in that quintile. Yeah. He's like the last one. But it's crazy that he's like, you know, for us normal people, but it is.

Also, I advised you, and I know that you did listen to it, but Steve Bannon gave an interview to Freddie Sayers over at Unheard that do a lot of really interesting work over there. This is an enormous victory for the Bannon. populist kind of left wing of the MAGA movement. Yes. They're very excited, but they've always hated Elon. Intensely. And they don't hate him. I think it's bullshit. I can't speak for them directly, but when everyone says.

You know, as Bannon says, he's an agent of influence for the CCP. It's like, well, I don't know. Like, that's not the right terminology. If he's trying to say that he has, you know, interests in China. Sure. Considering.

you know the batteries and the tesla for instance but also the chinese market you know they can kick tesla out and have neo they have a million like ev car companies oh yeah yeah they're eating lunch out there in asia yeah europe actually in europe too yeah because i mean that's a lot of the politics too i mean the europeans don't like his politics because if the guy that runs neo

has very particular, you know, social policy for the Shenzhen region. Like, no one's like, what? But it's close enough in Europe, they're like, this guy's nuts. Our partner, America. But it's a real victory for them.

And they're taking it that way, too, is that the, you know, capitalists, they pretend that they don't. It's so confusing to listen to Bannon. I thought he was saying supply-side tax cuts. when he's talking about the big, beautiful bill, which is, you know, what Elon is objecting to, that he was saying it in a negative way. But he wasn't saying it in a negative way. Because these guys, the Trump tax cuts...

And this iteration of the Trump or renewing those tax cuts, which is a bad idea, not because it's a tax cut, because I always love every tax cut. It's because there's no spending cuts at all. There's enormous growth in spending. He's like just, you know, following along with Trump where, you know, when I talked to Brandon, he was very public about this. He wanted the top tax bracket to pay like.

a thousand times more than everything now and to lower it from or raise it from like 38 percent to like 45 percent like all this stuff that He loves taxes. I mean, these guys are socialists. I mean, they're basically socialists. And it's really interesting that Elon, who I've often pointed out, is, you know, a Milton Friedman guy.

whether or not he abides by that. But the reason I told you to watch it, and I was interested what you thought about this, I told you to watch that video because there's something amazing about it that Bannon says, and it's about Doge. And in... The process of trying to kick Elon when he's kind of down, he's not really done, but just to try to get him down further. Yeah. He says something that we already knew, but nobody in the Trump universe says, which is... Yeah, yeah. Doge was...

kind of a bust, right? Yeah. It's kind of bullshit. Yeah. I mean, the specific admissions around it began with, you know, first he started with $2 trillion, then he went to $1 trillion, then we're talking about $100 odd billion. And it's like, what is really going on here? You didn't do anything. Even Trump was asking, is the savings...

remotely real but then he went on to say you know he kept mentioning that the people who were 200 years old who were on the rolls and it turns out he never found any cuts there he never made any cuts he said none materialize And what's interesting, I mean, I sent you a text almost immediately. To be clear about this, he didn't say that there was no pork and no waste. He said there was no fraud. He didn't find any fraud. And they're talking about it all the time, but there was no fraud found.

Well, he insists it's there. Elon just couldn't find it, which I don't doubt that there is a fair amount of fraud. Imagine it's not concentrated. But I mean, the entirety of the Bannon assault was everything that...

Anyone who is decidedly reasonable and certainly left of center has been saying, who's been openly critical of Doge, that these are programs that in many instances... already kind of expired um we we kind of knew that those programs those were there were issues there this was not like individual actors who'd done bad things like the one thing like and he was totally right about it he's like

There's a lot of stuff that's coming up that are appropriations that we're debating. They're not, you know, things that are being smuggled into the budget and are fraudulent. And again, as you said, there's no doubt, lots of that stuff. But... what the the claim was the trillion dollar claim and also by the way the claims that you we tend to forget because they started getting smaller and shrinking it was a claim shrinkage

And at the beginning, it was like, you know, if we just do all this, we don't even need taxes anymore. We'll be sending you rebate checks. Yeah, exactly. You're going to be getting all this money back because we're going to find everything. And they literally, according to Bannon, found...

almost nothing he does point out like you know there's the stuff that he says in the state of the union he actually kind of implicitly criticizes trump yes but in the state of the union yeah not state of the union the first which isn't the same

that doing chapter and verse on this when he probably knew that it wasn't true. But not even probably. By the time Trump... had his not state of the union and was restating things that Elon had been saying for the better part of like two weeks, perhaps at that point, um, that. Oh, 200-year-old people still on the rolls. That had been disputed openly.

It had been adjudicated and it was determined that these are database entries that seem to be misread. And folks didn't really understand what they were saying. And the president... And it was actually kind of shocking. I think we watched it together that the president went and gave this speech. And one of the centerpieces of the speech was him taking the time. to read the number of people who were of various ages, who were somehow still what he suggested.

was that they were somehow still getting Social Security checks. The truth of it is that they were kind of, sort of, still on the rolls. And the further truth is that that's just kind of the way that they're listed in the database. And everyone knew that at the time.

And the president was still willing to lie about it publicly. And there's so many things about that Bannon interview that I found interesting. But I think that the clearest takeaway for me is Steve Bannon is a shameless liar and a total fraud. And that is true, even if he's telling the truth. In fact, it's more true if he's telling the truth. Because he's telling the truth, and that's one thing. But you know if he was presented with something on a show, like if it's Freddie Sayers or not.

And they were in, they were getting along. He, like, Trump and Musk, he still hates Musk because he's become a leftist. He's become economically a leftist.

and despises the tech bro, despite the fact that in this interview he says, you know, we're trying to build the coalition between the populists and the tech bros, you know, who care about the singularity and care about capitalism and care about cutting taxes and such.

But yeah, I think that he would absolutely not say that. And to your point, that it would be a liar if it didn't come down to this. Something I wanted to mention, Elon went crazy today on Bannon and called him a, quote, communist retard.

well i mean he's getting close to the first one um and by the way to to he went to jail when bannon went to jail he was arrested On Guo Wang Gui's boat, otherwise known as Miles Kwok, whose apartment was, you know, an $86 million apartment, which I went to and filmed with him, and I was not impressed by it. who is this very dodgy, and Guadalupe is now in jail. And he's a very dodgy character, but he's exceptionally rich, and he was fighting the CCP. He claimed, but there was a lot of...

ideas that maybe he was working with them in ways too. And it's like, these billionaires shouldn't have any, it's like, Bannon has his own billionaires. Has his own, like, extremely powerful people. who are close and have relationships that are dodgy. And, you know, he was with him when he got arrested. So I just think that's a... When he attacks Musk in that way, I think it's deeply disingenuous. But anyway, so...

This happened today. He went on some kind of crazy rant, tweet rant against Steve Bannon. I'll pull up the other ones. But apparently Kash Patel was on Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan rightfully tried to get Kash Patel's impression of this fight. And Kash Patel very wisely, who, by the way... you know, is a total loon in the stuff that he said prior to becoming FBI director. But he's the one who's actually, in my opinion, adjusted.

like quite well in the sense that he actually feels like an FBI director. Like he answers in a sort of adult way. It's not like, where are you from CNN? No. You know, it's like, he just a little odd to see him doing media. the way he does. Showing up on Rogan is one thing, but he's kind of always out there in a way that seems a bit strange for a chief lawman. This is how low the standards are, or my standards are for these people, is that I'm impressed on the Epstein question.

He didn't say, well, we got to see. He just said no, and knew what that would do. So I guess that's why I'm moderately impressed. I'm trying to find things to be nice to people about. But Rogan said this, according to Mediaite. He said someone should take his phone away, talking about Musk, calling the Epstein accusation, quote, crazy. Quote, I mean, I understand he owns Twitter. I think it's bad for your mental health.

I think posting things public all day and arguing with people all day is bad for you. Rogan said that? Yeah, which is true. I believe it's the same thing. I mean, that's his friend, though. That's his homeboy. Yeah, but it's also true of him, too. Like, he's, you know, three-hour things every couple days. But I think that it's pretty interesting that he's saying this now.

and didn't say it like take his phone away he's saying crazy things and it's like did you unfollow him going on for eight months yes it's been that's been a thing it's kind of his brand it's just directed at trump now I mean, I think earlier this week, Rogan literally had on the guy talking about space aliens and all kinds of other reverse engineered tech.

Yeah, I suppose. That Ian Carroll moron. How tall is Cash Patel? Even in the Rogan video, it just looks so tiny. Like a munchkin. He's like sitting on fire. And the camera angle is from way up high. It makes him look like he's four feet tall. Yeah, mugsy. The Muggsy Bogues of the FBI. I'm going to see Kash Patel height. I don't know.

by the way i okay a headline internet internet can't believe cash patel is five nine yeah yeah i don't yeah that's from the times of india too um which is funny cash patel height memes viral after fox interview times of india it is manages to get high in the search results all the time. I want to know how they're gaming the system. It's kind of like a fake publication, I think. I'm sure. In the way that it's presented.

Well, you know, Indian people don't care about no news. Times of India. I mean, look, there's not very many of them. Times of Venus. Also that comes up, I don't know if this came up for you, if it's just serving me. The first thing that came up. was the headline, fan struck by concrete at Dodger Stadium says he felt, quote, discriminated against. I don't even know what that means. Congratulations. Oh, my Lord.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so that's where we are right now in the Musk thing. So, I mean, obviously, the great, big, beautiful bill. I mean, I haven't seen any. Any new indications? At least it's not clear to me what ends up happening there. You already had two prominent senators who were clearly opposed to the bill getting passed. Elon has been doing his best to rally.

people in opposition to it. The Trump administration has doubled down and is publicly and privately trying to do their best to kind of get the troops in line. It does seem to me that Elon is... Both the perfect and the worst possible person to be kind of publicly opposing the Trump agenda here.

He has some substantial credibility with a decent percentage of the MAGA faithful, and I don't think that's likely to go away just because he and Trump are having a falling out. In fact, a lot of the stuff I'm seeing suggests that that is definitely not the case, that there is... already some skepticism about this bill, and that that has probably increased since this spat has begun. Yeah, I mean, Republicans in Congress are not, there's some that are taking it public.

But there are a lot of people that are not going on news media. They're not tweeting. They're not talking to reporters. but who are very skeptical of this. So it's actually good for Trump in the way that he can now frame this, that the big, beautiful bill... is being opposed by an erratic billionaire who has a drug problem, as Steve Bannon in that interview mentioned like nine times.

You know, he doesn't trust the mainstream media, but he's like, look, that was in the New York Times. He's like, there was a good one today in the Atlantic. And I'm like, okay, I guess you do trust the mainstream media. But that is a great kind of way to focus. away from the fact that mainstream Republicans, who are not MAGA sycophants, are very worried about this bill. And for Musk, because you can say, what was Trump's response?

Did he argue the merits of this? Of course not. I mean, that's never going to happen. That's not what politics is anymore, if it ever was. Elon knew what was in the bill. He knew. He's just mad. But he said it ruins... it takes away, like, EV subsidies. That benefits him. And yet it does. But at the same time, Musk did denounce, like, EV subsidies.

like a year ago or six months ago i can't remember what it was but he was like you know it's against his own self-interest and he's rich enough that he can say it and yeah that's so they have a lot of ways of

sort of misdirecting people on the problems with this bill by making it about erratic Elon. Yeah, and it's possible Elon has changed his mind about this, but it... It's consequential that the criticism he is leveling is the very same criticism that Rand Paul and others have been leveling about this piece of legislation for a long time. And Senator Johnson, I mean, the particular...

concern here is that they're trying to do too much with this one piece of legislation. The moniker, the big, big, beautiful bill. And what he's asking for is, well, let's break it apart. Let's focus on these parts because I'm pretty sure we can get these things passed. And perhaps we don't do what is the most consequential thing, raise the debt limit and push by $3 trillion and push it out.

past the midterms because it's politically convenient for the president because he then won't have to have any fights and he can spend like a lunatic without ever having to account for it. To the extent fiscal responsibility is supposed to be the raison d'etre of this administration, as is like serious debt reduction as a result of that. Really? I mean, it's not, they don't, they don't really.

campaign at least said be they should kind of said so i mean doge was was supposed to be focused on precisely that sort of thing it's just that they are yeah sort of wonderfully incoherent yeah in in the way that they go about pursuing policy yeah And, you know, Musk has been a bit of a wild card from the outset. He has always opposed certain aspects of the president's agenda. And I suppose that was one other thing that Bannon said in that interview.

that Musk was privately reaching out to a bunch of CEOs, trying to whip them up in opposition to the tariff deal. Not the tariff deal, but the tariffs generally.

No deals have yet materialized, although apparently there's going to be a meeting with the CCP next week. But to point out yesterday, Elon Musk, in all of the kind of people freaking out about his direct... tweets insulting Donald Trump personally and saying that he's a pedophile, basically. Missed the tweet, this was yesterday, where he tweeted, and this is not about the Big Beautiful Bill. People just keep this in mind.

He tweeted the Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year, which is, if they were to go through as they are right now, is inevitable, I think. It is absolutely inevitable.

that that happened. So Elon is like being realistic here after being a total nutcase. But I think that there's a couple of things that I'm just, you know, posit here. I don't know if it's true. It's just a guess. To get in this universe, you can't, you just can't, for reasons that are completely beyond me, you can't say, I want Ukraine to win the war, for instance. Like, right?

Like, it's so bizarre that, you know, the Republican Party is like, you know, we're totally not only cool with Russia invading its neighbors, but, you know, we think the guy who was invaded is kind of a jerk. It's like, what the fuck? It's very, very strange. So Elon takes on all of these characteristics of the Trump universe, which he doesn't seem to be super exercised about. You know, he came out initially and was like, we're giving starlings to the Ukrainian military.

yeah that was in 2022 and then he slowly rolls that back as at critical moments at critical moments and is in in is a total about it and it's kind of unforgivable but he does he changes not because He's reading fat books about Ukrainian and Russian history. It's because the mood on the Republican, the sort of MAGA right was changing.

And he wanted to be a part of this world. He wanted to have an influence in this world. He spent $350 million. Is that right? Something like that. I don't know. It was a ton of money. He said yesterday, tweeted yesterday, and this is debatable. That, you know, if it wasn't for me, Donald Trump wouldn't be president. Because of how much money I spent. It is debatable. Unfalsifiable, though. Yeah, it's legitimately debatable. It certainly had some impact. He was definitely...

pushing for him hard online. I'd say that the kind of Rogan and even the general trend of tech bros getting excited about Elon. I think Elon, I mean, getting excited about Trump, Elon seemed to give them permission for that. That moment right after the assassination attempt where Elon publicly voices some support for him talking about how brave.

um trump seemed afterwards didn't he go to this being about like real leadership he was on stage at butler yeah all the leaping on stage exposing his stomach um to to everyone i mean this Yeah. I'm with Ben and he clearly has a drug problem. Well, is it a problem? No. Is it a problem? Well, it's a problem. I think like I, I, you know, you see a hilarious drug addict. Like today, there was a guy that was amazing.

I was going through a story, and he had the heroin lean on, you know, when they go down in that lean? And they kind of form like an A-frame house. But he was holding the door open. I swear to God. For you? For everybody. And he was just down in this, like the haremine, not even looking. His eyes were like rolled back and said, I don't want that guy. Like I got to find some waste in the state department. Like I still don't think that that's the guy. Right.

I mean, you don't really know, though, because Elon, he manages to get a lot of results. And if the ketamine is kind of helping to keep him level, because we don't really know. Maybe if he wasn't on the ketamine, he'd be doing way too much. Like even more could be worse. So this might be what's necessary to keep him level. It actually, it's a very good point. It could be.

It could be the thing that's saving us from total destruction because whatever he's doing, it seems to give him a very sensible idea about economics is that tariffs are bad and a $5 trillion increase in the debt is also bad.

and there's nothing big or beautiful about it you know it's big it can't be it can't be big and beautiful has to be one or the other it's also not a bad line it's true yeah it's impossible pretty good yeah it's one of one of his better lines yeah um So, I mean, beyond Musk, beyond Elon, there are other things that are happening in the world. The Ukrainians carried out a pretty astonishing...

attack on the Russians. I know you follow this even closer than I do. It looked like there were, what, five or six different locations inside of Russia? far far from the ukraine one was one was which i think did probably the most damage too uh one was about 4 000 miles away i mean that's that's far that's incredible and i mean these are these are tiny

Drones, not much different than the commercial drones that lots of people have access to and own. Obviously, kitted out in a slightly different way with the munitions, et cetera. Yeah, with like a mortar round on it. And they were using them to destroy aircraft and aircraft manufacturing facilities. And a lot of stuff that is almost certainly irreplaceable definitely had a meaningful impact on the capabilities of the Russians.

And I'm not certain if this is something they could carry out again and again. The way that they did it is kind of ingenious and calls to mind the kind of pager attack that the Israelis carried out. And I think it's kind of ingenious. It's also the sort of thing that makes one just kind of stop and think for a little bit like, huh. That's an interesting risk for a staff to contemplate as a country. There are two versions of this. I mean, in the Pager attack in Lebanon on the Hezbollah guys.

It was, you know, it had results where you saw these videos later of these guys in Iran all with their hands bandaged. It was like, they were in like a Hootie and the Blowfish concert and they all had their hands up and they're all bandaged. And it was like, Iran, you know, they brought him a holiday to Iran. It's like, congratulations. That was your consolation prize. But it's a psychological attack too, right? Yeah. It's like, this is how deep we can.

That is also true of the Ukrainian one, but it's also much more. I mean, they claim, and just to be clear,

I know what side I support in this war, and it's the people who were invaded, which is the side that you should always be on if they didn't provoke it. Invaded by their neighbor. large chunks of their territory swallowed up well you mean it's provoking they did want to join nato yeah well that's that's i mean you know they can a defensive pact to stop the russians from invading you i suppose that's a kind of provocation it's it's amazing like well she said no

So what was I supposed to do? I took it. I have Putin credit that he understood that his defenders in the West are so stupid that they wouldn't realize. that to say like i don't maybe we should be in nato and the country invading them actually proves their point they're like i don't know they shouldn't have done that but what but what i was saying about the ukrainians is that

they overstate a lot of stuff, right? That's what you do in war. And you know, sure. So they claimed that I think the total aircraft were 41. Um, and it's these like TU-95s and they're like, give me music.

enormous, expensive, like $8 billion planes. I mean, this is crazy. And now we do have some satellite imagery that shows... uh a lot of the damage you know you see the stuff that was burned out and this is stuff that their intelligence agencies are getting immediately after but the sbu which is the ukrainian um security service which was I think not as prepared in 2022, considering there were two people from the SBU that stopped me and my producer and said, why were you in Crimea?

because somebody else at Vice had shot a piece in Crimea. And I was like, I've never been to Crimea. I was like, yeah, you guys are maybe a little nervous and trigger happy. It was a couple of weeks after the war started, but they've developed into one of the more impressive intelligence.

organizations and if if the americans you know under this new regime are not supplying intelligence to them because you know you're not allowed to fight back this has been one of the most amazing things and you can and i challenge listeners to go out and find this There are so many people on Twitter like, I cannot believe they're doing this escalation. It's like, I can't believe that you're that dumb. It's morally repulsive to say that they have to...

insist on being beaten up all the time without reacting because it might affect conditions for a ceasefire. It's like there has not been a ceasefire. The Russians have rejected countless ceasefires. They are blowing people up all the time. They're attacking. By the way, not, no, there's no civilian who died in this, in this attack. Not in front of them. The Russians haven't even claimed that. No civilians die in this massive, hugely successful attack.

that did billions of dollars of damage. I mean, the Ukrainians said that there was a $7 billion damage, I think that's too much, to the Russian bomber fleet. That's like crazy. And no one dies. And then the response from some of these idiots in the hating Ukraine universe is like, they shouldn't have done this.

Why are they doing this? Why are they provoking or poking the bear, the bear that is still killing their civilians and their people in their military every fucking day to respond to it is, oh, why are they escalating this war? It's like, you know, look, we did the same thing. You know, the Biden administration was like, okay, here's some weapons, but you can't fire them into Russia. Why? They invaded us. We're trying to get them out.

And one of the bits of leverage we have is if we can hit their cities the way they hit our cities. You know, I mean, that expansion of the war, quote unquote, is what is called defense. It's a defensive position.

is that you know we're defending ourselves in one of the ways of defending this idea that it's proportional only there's not that doesn't go out the window even in just war theory they like okay so they're they're trying to take you um kiev they're blowing up hospitals hitting like even recently i mean today there was an entire family uh the i think a grandfather a mother and young daughter killed in a russian strike

Because we have to take our vengeance. Why are you not coming out and saying, dear people, I could read some of the tweets, by the way, and saying like, okay, Russia, don't respond to this. You've been bombing them.

And they're trying to take a hit at your bomber fleet. Don't kill babies right now. How about you don't do that? It's astonishing that that is happening again in the same period where Donald Trump and... and putin had a call this week yeah again yeah a lot of fruitless pointless yeah yeah well i mean look i putin understands the the great delusion of maga

is that Donald Trump is such a great deal maker and Vladimir Putin is like, I'm so impressed by this guy. He is, he could, it's the craziest thing in the world. Like, no, he's not impressed by this guy. And as a matter of fact, All of his behavior since January 20th has been to maximize the kind of military gains that he can get while Donald Trump is handcuffed. Guess who has, quote unquote, no cards? It's the fucking America. I mean, the administration.

It's like, okay, we'll start. Unwilling to play any cards. They're not playing any cards. I mean, because they could, because they could certainly try to do some of the things that have already been done, which again, haven't brought an end to the conflict, but could perhaps be useful. The sanctions.

Certainly, they haven't put anything else back on. They've tried to move in the direction of making things easier for the Russians in order to, I suppose, bring them to the table. But to bring them to the table, to what end? So that they can play games with you when you hold a, there's a summit being hosted and Putin informs you the day before that he's not coming. He's sending some other people in his stead to meet with Zelensky.

Because he has zero interest in making peace before getting absolutely everything that he can. It's a tough situation. I mean, at a minimum, though, Moynihan, the reluctance on the part of the Trump administration...

And even the Europeans who have put restrictions on how the various aid that they're deploying to Ukraine can be used. All of it is... in service of trying to prevent the conflict from becoming a much wider war and drawing them into the conflict in some way, shape, or form because of the concern that this could become. a massive global conflict with nuclear implications. Yeah, I mean, they're also acting like they want the Ukrainians to lose, right? I mean, like...

There was a pause in February. Who's the day there? The Trump administration. The U.S. administration. Yeah. I mean, there was the pause in February, which was the shot across the bow, right? And then they resume. And then after... in march when they have the the mineral deal the mineral deal like it's all total cockamamie nonsense they suspend military aid after the meeting

between Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office. Because he didn't say thank you. And it's not like, okay, so geopolitically... in like a Kissingerian way. What's the best? He's like, no, I'm mad at him because he was a jerk. He was a jerk and he got in a fight with J.D. Vance. So suspension of military aid.

And it's like, wait, I don't even know where we are with that. And because, I mean, it seems like, you know, we're where weapons support is back on. The pause happened in March, but it doesn't matter. Because what does matter is that the Russians are watching us go back and forth fucking with the Ukrainians, not demanding anything of them. And how do you know that that's true?

They keep coming to the table and making no deal and offering no concessions. They're just like, we can hold out. We can hold out till we get what we want. And what they want is enormous parts of Ukraine, including... provinces that—parts of provinces and entire provinces that aren't sort of quote-unquote traditionally Russian-speaking, you know, that sort of Donetsk, Luhansk area that you, you know, goes back to 2014. But yeah, I mean, this—

threat of a nuclear war is, you know, we're on the precipice of World War III. It's so annoying to have heard that since 2022, only coming from people who don't want the Ukrainians to fight back. who have a very obvious bias against the Ukrainians. Mysteriously, they're the ones who are always saying, you know what? World War III and a nuclear strike is about to happen. So you just got to let Russia win. You got to just give them what they want.

I mean, and yeah, but in fairness, the sense is that there's not much that one can do if the Russians are committed to doing the bad thing and that there have to be limitations on what the United States is willing to do.

in support of the Ukrainians for that reason, because of that. It's not a completely unreasonable concern, it seems to me, but it's also the case, and this is what I was hinting at when I first mentioned this, the drone... attack by Ukraine was interesting and revealing. And it happens at the same time that the United States has recently had a peace deal with the Houthis.

who similarly had been causing the United States military severe headaches because of their use of Iranian drone technology, which is a little bit more sophisticated than what you might be seeing. But a similar situation is happening with Hamas. who has managed to get their hands on some drone tech that they've been deploying in the field. And it's just so interesting to see this continuing evolution of armed conflict. The fact that small...

scrappy, rather ill-equipped military forces. Ukraine being, of all the ones previously mentioned, the best equipped of all of those. Leveraging these drone technologies to be able to just like... almost instantly, not quite level the playing field, but make themselves a great deal more dangerous to a much larger and better positioned and better equipped adversary.

And it's just interesting how the terrain is changing. It makes me think about the Golden Dome and the stuff that the Chinese might be able to do in the event that we were involved in some sort of military conflict. I mean, they used, the Ukrainians used trucks. with these big containers on the back the russian i mean how many chinese container ships are coming to the united states every single day yeah how how much difficulty would there be for them to try to carry out

an attack like that, leveraging some sort of container ship situation. And what does that do to a golden dome that you'd like to spend? like 5% of GDP off to try to build, which may or may not work, but would be totally ineffectual against an attack like that. It's just, I don't know that there's anything there for us to kind of discuss at length, except for the fact that it's really interesting.

And a bit nerve wracking to watch all of this evolve. I think there's one thing that just makes things far more complicated. Yeah. And particularly for our listeners, because we have a lot of military listeners who always chime in with much smarter things that, you know, this is what I do tactical. as my job. We always get stuff like that. But, you know, this is the conflict that you have when you have far superior firepower as the American military does.

uh and but you're a moral army and you're not going to just why don't just like if you're like just nuke the place you're also saying that when there's that danger from russia that it's an immoral army to nuke a country that you invaded as your neighbor who has done nothing but try to defend itself. And, you know, oh, so if they respond, we'll nuke them. That is so insane that the reason it's difficult for us to win in Iraq is not because we don't have, we can't beat them on the battlefield.

That's not why. Because all you have to do is just fucking flatten the place, right? And then say, all right, well, maybe just put up a Trump hotel or something. And what was it? Which has been suggested. Which has been suggested, right? What was it that? caused all this chaos in Russia. They were $200 drones. They were basically off-the-shelf drones with technology in them, and there's a lot of smart people in Ukraine. It's a very sophisticated country with a sophisticated, educated...

young population. Not so much the case in, like, Syria, for instance. So what do you do? You just take these things off the shelf. That's not new. Because what was it that pushed America to the brink in Iraq? Roadside bombs. IEDs. Very, very crudely made. Things that, you know, we have individual weapons that cost $500,000, a million dollars, $10 million, you know, any rocket that you're going to send here and there. God knows what all these things cost.

But, you know, a couple of bucks and the will to blow up American soldiers brought America to another good example is Vietnam. I mean, we don't know how many people the Vietnamese lost. because it's still a communist dictatorship. But it's over a million, you know? I mean, it depends on where you started, too, because it was a civil war, also. And from Dien Bien Phu in, I guess that was 54 against the French, to 75.

probably well over a million. I know it's over a million. The Americans lost far too many. One man was far too many for that misbegotten war. But we lost 56,000, 57,000. The Vietnamese lost a million. And we lost the war, right? I mean, that's, it's also the same thing as someone coming into your country the way Russians have into Ukraine that gets your backup and you're like, I'm fighting for my homeland and I'm...

and I'm serious about this, and I mean this, versus some kid from Murmansk who's been handed a rifle and says, sorry, you're not going to college, you're going to the meat grinder. What are they fighting for? They're like, this is fucking insane. Which is exactly how you had it.

with American soldiers in Vietnam and the anti-war movement. So it's like there's these overlapping things of technology that makes wars much more— I mean, so much easier to fight when you're the rich country that makes all the cool stuff. And also so much easier to fight now as the underdog who can take an off the shelf $200 drone. and put a fucking mortar round on it and blow up a eight billion dollar plan i mean it's like insane or many hundreds of million dollar plans together yeah

I do love when my casual reading intersects with the conversations we're having about geopolitics. I've been reading William James recently, this book of lectures about pragmatism. And there's this bit where he quotes from Chesterton at length. And it is this quote about the importance of knowing a man's philosophy.

And this being more important than knowing plenty of other things about him. Like the landlord wants to know that he makes enough money, but more important than that might be his actual philosophy. And the other specific example is the general, who...

It's important and useful to know the number of troops that the opposing army has. It's probably more important, actually, to know their philosophy, their willingness. If they are... all willing, if every single one of their pilots is prepared to be a kamikaze pilot.

That actually is pretty damn consequential. And if you don't know that when you're getting ready to begin fighting them, you're going to have a rude awakening very, very soon. And it's a similar sort of thing in all of these conflicts. With the Houthis, with Hamas. with the Russians in Ukraine, philosophy is about as important and perhaps the most consequential aspect of the conflicts in every single one of those instances. And that's probably true on the Israeli side as well.

with respect to their particular constellation of concerns and the enmity that has been built up because of the kind of cycles of recurring violence. And one, it doesn't take much to understand. the unwillingness to back down even when it seems like have we beaten them to a pulp sure are they finished yet no no so no that's that's the philosophy is all that matters here how much money

Did the Americans, the British, the Germans, to a lesser extent the Japanese, during the Second World War, put into what is, I guess, known as black propaganda, right? of trying to bring it back to race yeah yeah it was super fly i will send you the cartoon the soviet cartoon um like a 10 minute cartoon that i found uh i don't think it's on youtube where it's just about how america how racist america is and it's like a cartoon of a guy being racist to like black people

And like, I won't stay in this hotel. There's black people here. And it's like, this is America. It's incredible. It's like hauling people off to the gulag. And it's like, look at these races. That's how they got Paul Roberson. Yeah. We saw that. It's like, come on now. But no, I mean, the propaganda was always an important tool when it came to dropping leaflets or doing radio broadcasts with Lord HaHa out of Nazi Germany. And this is the same thing. The version of doing that.

When, you know, people who listen to this podcast know how often I've talked about the we love death more than you love life stuff, which makes an enemy very difficult to battle because they don't care about giving up. I mean, you have a bunch of people like, I want to save my life, and this is a fruitless cause. I'm going to drop my weapons. But if you think you'll go to paradise, if you fight it to the very last drop of blood.

then you're dealing with a very different enemy, right? And I pointed out a long time ago, after October 7th, the lack of bomb shelters in Gaza. They didn't exist. Well, there's one on every corner in Israel. There's one on every corner in, like, major towns and cities in Ukraine. And it was just like, well, they're sacrificing people. And why are they doing that? Why are they not giving hostages back?

Why are they slow to make deals with Israel? Because they're excited about drawing this out. The Israelis have killed their leadership. They've killed almost the entire leadership of Hezbollah militarily. What do you do now? Well, you start seeing that Greta Thunberg is on her boat towards Gaza, right? And you start seeing that Piers Morgan, who is sympathetic to the Israelis, is now absolutely not. The biggest podcast...

In America, Joe Rogan, very hostile to Israel, gets Douglas Murray on, but honor refuse can be debated, which was not the case when Douglas Murray came on in the past. So if you're looking at this in your, you know, in the leadership of Hamas. you're like, man, this is working. And well, but, but, but a lot of people are dying. It's like, no, no, that's why it's working. We are, they're turning and we're turning people and it's a huge success.

So that kind of propaganda, along with the cheap drones and the cheap roadside bombs and IUDs, is, with a certain enemy, an incredible tool in their tool shed. And it's sickening and disgusting. And it's amazing how shallow people are when they don't, not only don't talk about it, but I don't think they even realize what is happening. I don't think they even, I mean, if you, there's this woman named Don French.

He was a British comedian. She was in a show called Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders with Jennifer Saunders. And she's very famous in England. And she had this post today about Israel in which she was like, wah, wah.

Israel, October 7th. Now you're killing all the children and all that stuff. And it was like she was talking about somebody getting a parking ticket. It was like, you know, the greatest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. And it... created a backlash actually against her and people were like kind of outraged by like she's a pretty well-known public figure in just this the moral math from these people is

a huge success for bad guys. Bad guys love this stuff when, you know, I, I, I, I guarantee you there was one night when Putin rolled over in the bed and looked at his you know, hot like 19 year old dancer girlfriend and was like, I cannot believe all these people in America that are like defending me. This is nuts. I didn't expect this, you know?

Did Putin ever get divorced from his wife? Yeah. He did, formerly. Yeah, she looked like Khrushchev. She was a bit... If you're going to be Putin, you got to change in that busted wife. Do you think that he would have invaded Ukraine if his wife wasn't so busted? You're probably right. I don't think so. It's true. Yeah, it's true. It was now when he's got that young ballerina, supposedly. I think he's given peace a chance if it was just her. I don't know, man. I don't know. It's just a theory.

There was one other thing I definitely wanted to talk to you about a little bit. I don't know if you had a chance to read it, although I suspect you've seen it a few times at this point. But it was maybe a week ago, maybe a little longer, that the New York Times ran this.

rather big story about Palantir and the fact that they'd been awarded all of these contracts since the Trump administration took power. But the particular concern was that Trump had... the administration anyways, published an executive order that made it clear that there was this aspiration to further centralize data collection and to integrate.

all of the different streams of data that they're having so that they can have, you know, greater visibility and better protect the American people, et cetera, et cetera. Tell people also what, I mean, if they don't, I think most of our people know what. Palantir is. Oh, Palantir. Yeah. Palantir is a massive tech company. The particular expertise is helping governments organize and analyze massive amounts of data.

And they've got this system foundry that has been utilized by the United States federal government and various other governments for a very long time. They're particularly active in the kind of national security space, at least have a reputation for that. Peter Thiel was a founder. Joe Lonsdale was one of the founders there. The people who are considered the Trumpy tech. Yeah. So these are people on the kind of inside, so to speak. Joe and Peter.

I mean, Alex Harp, the current CEO, is a very, very brash vocal guy. Very brash. Interesting guy, by the way. But also is traditionally giving a ton of money to Democrats, not someone who is necessarily just a... some kind of dyed in the wool Republican or anything like that. But, you know, it's, it's a, it's a company that has for a very long time.

attracted the ire of many civil libertarians. And I would say that in general, without pointing any particularly nasty sentiments in the direction of Palantir, It's understandable why civil libertarians would be concerned about this. The data centralization is a huge deal in general. And we live in an era of computers and network technology and AI and large language models. The capacity for governments to collect.

tons of information about their citizens to analyze it and to use it in nefarious ways is massive. And concern about that is going to be growing. All of that makes it completely legitimate for the New York Times to take a close look at what's happening with Palantir, who has gained a lot more with respect to the number of contracts awarded since the Trump administration took power. That said...

The piece, it seemed to me, was, and not even so much just the piece, but particularly the response to the piece, the outrage provoked by it seems to be exceedingly speculative. And for the most part, the story is written from this perspective that Palantir is this uniquely evil, awful character, and they're doing so many nefarious things, and they might help the Trump administration.

further centralized data collection and do all sorts of really bad, nefarious things with respect to analysis of this data and leveraging it to do bad things. And one of the major concerns recently has been... The degree to which Palantir might be supporting the efforts to identify people who are in the country illegally so that they can be deported. That sort of thing. But it seems to me that...

The real question is not like how terrible is Palantir? It's whether or not we have sufficient safeguards in place to actually protect civil liberties and privacy in a world where this is inevitably going to happen and it's going to happen more and more and more. And what I found so frustrating thinking about this story and reviewing it recently, because I saw yesterday, I guess it was on Thursday, Karp was on CNBC giving an interview.

And he had a pretty searing response to this, where he was heaping scorn on the New York Times in particular for their coverage and for calling, singling out. Palantir in the way they did and saying expressly, you know, in this particular political moment, when you kind of identify us in that way and paint a target on our back, like that's dangerous. And it seems to me that that is not an illegitimate.

thing to say, especially when the best resourced, most powerful news gathering operation, not in the world, but in the history of mankind. doesn't really do a careful job of outlining not only that this is a broad problem that could encompass any number of different companies beyond Palantir, but that there is a real problem here.

that requires serious, determined scrutiny, and not just about Palantir, but about the entire ecosystem. There's nothing in the article about the universe of things that we might do from a reform standpoint to just better... to better protect ourselves in a world where this is the way things are going to be, whomever the next administration is. And Palantir had a bunch of these contracts before Trump got into office, as you already alluded to, Moynihan.

And the reason why they are so successful and the reason why their stock is so valuable seems to have a lot to do with the fact that they are just really, really good at this stuff. So perhaps there's some concern about how much of the kind of federal government.

has their business with Palantir, and maybe there's some unique risk associated with that, but there are also provisions in law already to adjudicate some of that, but maybe we need to do more along those lines. Yeah, but nobody cares about that, right? I mean, the reason anybody knows...

about Palantir, which is you know, a big company, but it has a lot of government contracts. And there's a lot of companies that are big that have government contracts and do stuff that if on its very face is like, oh, that's kind of creepy. You know, that sort of thing. This is an entirely...

um, political thing. And it's, it's this horrible thing that politics that has just totally taken over everyone's lives in the sense that someone could knock on my window and say, you should get rid of this car because Elon Musk was in. the Oval Office saying something that that person didn't like that day. I mean, it's looking at the corporate world and looking at who should win and who should lose entirely through the prism of politics.

And it's Teal, it's, you know, Carr, Palmer, Lucky, these guys that are the ones that set off alarm bells in people's heads and say, oh, that's the neo-reactionary Silicon Valley right. And part of that, I think, is that, you know, people think that it shouldn't, people complain about it, think it should not be. We were comfortable in the corporate world where we could, you know, turn up the heat and pressure people.

to make a donation to the NAACP. You know, Jesse Jackson and Rainbow Push would show up and you had to do the thing. And then all of a sudden the politics has kind of changed and there's kind of a liberation where people are like, you know what, there's going to be people that own companies that have different views.

It's not going to be this sort of bland blob of everyone has the same approved views. That's, I think, why Palantir is going to get a cover story in the New York Times. I'm not saying that that's not a worthy... subjects and a company to cover considering their influence and how much taxpayer money goes to them. But I would like to see that on a lot of companies. But I think the motivation of this stuff is like, it's always going to be, does that company pollute more?

Why do you care? Oh, it's because it's owned by Koch Industries. I want to see how much they're polluting because then they're going to go and they're going to try to change legislation. Everyone politicizes everything. And it's like the business journalism is, and again, I mean, you can defend it.

and I'm playing devil's advocate to myself, you can defend it also because some of these people have become political actors. Well, this is, sure. Particularly Elon Musk, right? And Alex Karp, who's been out there being very... forthright about his opinion. So, you know, you can treat them that way. And publicly supportive of Elon as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But I think it's like, do you remember the Netscape guy? Do you remember this?

Or was it the Firefox Foundation? It's Firefox. Yeah, I was thinking, Mark? Yeah. The Firefox guy. You know, gave birth to Firefox. Firefox Foundation guy who was like, gave $6 to the anti-gay marriage. Um, like they had, like, we have to fire you. And it's like, because of a totally unrelated view that you have to the product that we produce. And that was like, that's how it was supposed to be.

There was no editorials, as far as I can remember. And the New York Times saying, hey, this is a dangerous president. It's like, we don't care about politics and companies until it becomes Elon Musk and until it becomes...

you know i mean jeff bezos saying we should have uh free minds free markets editorial pages everyone's like what the fuck it's the i'm moving to canada camelli this is crazy like okay so when the owners like the the korean guy who owns the la times and everyone's freaks out because they

pulled an editorial or they didn't write on this or whatever and they're like i cannot believe this guy and his views it's like do you think that all the other people that own newspapers don't have views right it's the wildest you've only noticed it because You liked the equilibrium, which wasn't an equilibrium. You like the status quo of before that we kind of control the culture. And the second that is upset.

that equilibrium is upset, we're going to start doing investigations into these companies and to like, this is who's getting your taxpayer money. It's like, motherfucker. There's been so many people and so many dodgy people getting taxpayer money for a very long time. I'm totally okay if you do a story on Palantir. And I'm happy that you've come to this point where, like, let's do some of this government spending.

And AI and data and information, and those are all very worthy conversations. I just think they're way too often politically motivated. I mean, unique scrutiny of the Trump administration does make sense. Like they have demonstrated a willingness to use government as a cudgel against their political enemies.

more so than any administration in recent history. And I mean, to not only do it, but to do it in a kind of proud, bold, and assertive way, at least with prior administrations. And the Biden administration... They did this in more subtle ways. And when the president was being prosecuted in various state venues, they kind of sort of kept out of it, but not really in certain instances.

Certainly the Justice Department and the way that it went after people with respect to January 6th. I mean, were there some political dimensions to that? In some instances, yeah, hard to suggest there wasn't. But this particular piece just kind of... didn't really sit well with me. I mean, again, it's worthwhile to be concerned about this. Palantir using these tools in a context where the government is going to be able to project power abroad and do profiling is one thing.

To the extent they're doing it domestically, does that begin to look like domestic surveillance? It could. But the question becomes like, what are we actually going to do about it? And is Palantir really the sole problem here? And the bottom line is it's just not a Palantir problem. It has everything to do. with governance. And it has everything to do with whether or not oversight is being properly done, whether or not we have the capabilities to do it properly.

And I think that that becomes the place where we actually need to focus our attention. And it would just be much better if...

major publications like this who are doing this sort of work were more interested in solutions than scapegoating. A quick thing that I want to add, you said, you know, it's... It's just worse. I can't remember what you're referring to specifically. It's worse under the Trump administration. They're more brazen. There's just an exchange that I saw from America's worst senator.

uh and that's josh holly from oh god yeah he's certainly the most annoying he's awful and he's like he's as a smug like gotcha yes yes so he did this with a law professor who happens to be Chris Hayes' wife. Is that right? Oh, good for you, Chris Hayes. And he shows this graph that the district courts have issued 64 injunctions against Trump.

and it's like wildly and he's like you don't think that's a little bit anomalous and her response to her credit which is quite funny she said a very plausible explanation senator you have to consider is that he's engaged in much more lawless activity than others. You must concede that is a possibility. She cooked him. His politics are not my politics in any way. I'm sure his wives aren't either, but I thought that was funny because Josh Hawley, who is the...

I'm going to start calling these like the farmer labor candidates. Like that used to be a party in Minnesota, like Minnesota, Wisconsin, the farmer labor. It was like. They're just basically, you know, back to the land Marxist parties from the 20s and 30s. Yes. And that's what Hawley is at this point. Yes. He's just a leftist on economic issues. I mean, 100%. I think one of the other ones that I'd shared with you guys in our text thread was him berating someone from one of the airlines.

about like their baggage fees. Oh my God, that was amazing. And the fact that the baggage fees are variable depending on who it is. Yeah, yeah, dummy. I'm Mosaic 3. I shouldn't have to pay for my bags the same way those other clowns do. And I get free upgrades. That's how this works. Are you stupid? Have you never flown on a plane? Josh Hawley's got you, though. If you ever get downgraded.

You have to pay for a bag, which by the way, I'm so happy the business of the government that airlines baggage fees, definitely an important thing for him to be paying attention to, but it was so amazing. When he didn't understand the different roots, different classes of silver, gold, platinum, whatever.

I don't understand. Are you saying some Americans are better than others? They're insufficiently good. They don't deserve a platinum status. Well, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Sorry, Josh Hawley. I mean, Republicans used to be okay with this. Well, you can get it to the country club. It's a meritocracy, dummy. Yeah, but it's like, no, this is a working class party now. They want airline equity. That's what Josh Hawley wants. Airline equity.

That's like the modern version of the Republican Party. The working class is the only thing we care about. And you know, the working class are really caring about baggage fees. And so therefore everything is through this dumb working class prism. And it's like, I don't know if working class people are like, you know, Senator Holly, could you go up and fight? Because my bag was overweight.

And so don't forget to pay a $15 fee. And he's like, what? Was it because you were white? What is happening here? Wait till he fucking downloads Uber. but it's not it's not all 15 dollars to one time variable yeah oh yeah oh my god yeah we're fucked we're fucked yeah

Well, we should probably wrap soon. I got to get out of here. And hopefully we got to check on Matt and he's not actually dead. Everybody don't worry. Not yet. No, it's coming. It's coming. It's creeping up on him, but no one is more sickly. I don't know anybody. to slow it down. It was down quite that bad that frequently. Yeah, and I'll tell you what's mysterious about it. Yeah. He, when we asked what it was, he was very vague.

And I responded like, okay, Freddie Mercury. That's a personal question. You don't ask personal questions like that. All of a sudden, he's Brock Hudson. He's like, I'm fine. I'm going to give you a press conference. What did we not know about Matt? you know yeah so i don't know i don't know what's uh happening with matt welch but um but uh yeah i think we'll um i don't think i know we'll record our members only this weekend probably on sunday drop on monday

I'm flying all day. Oh, that's why you're coming back. Well, maybe Matt can. You're flying. Matt's dead. Let's see if he rallies. I'm flying early for me on the West Coast. I think I've got an 8 a.m. flight. No, maybe. I mean, maybe it's Monday, Tuesday for travel. More logistics on the podcast because you love it. You love the best part. My favorite part of the episode is when you guys plan things.

That's amazing. I feel like I'm right with you when you're planning things. Because you are. No, but Camille is going to be here for the whole month on the East Coast. I will be on the East Coast for the month. Listeners, because we'll be doing all this stuff in person. Higher fidelity. Higher fidelity. And we tend to have guests when we're in person, too. We like to have them on.

come down to the studio. It's nicer to have them in the room. Yeah. Because they understand the vibe a little bit better. I think sometimes when we get them on remote, if they haven't been on before, it becomes a kind of a round robin affair. Yeah. Taking turns, asking questions. And instead, we want to ply you with drinks. and get you loose so you tell us all your secrets. Yeah, it's just like people at a table at a bar. You're just like yelling at each other and drinking. Yeah, yeah.

Tell us the truth. You sleeping around on your way. Come on now. Come on now, Rand Paul. Tell us what's going on. I'm kidding. Rand is faithful. He's faithful. And he's a G. I like him. He's a G. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much, Moynihan. I'm glad you're not sick and dying. We'll hopefully see you soon. Keep away from that. The rest of you. See you on Monday. Sunday. Bye. We know of new methods of attack.