Crisis Arms Dealers

many years. And what pisses me off about this is that Hunter Biden is like a lot of people in the United States that have been addicted to drugs that struggle with addiction. I mean, the opioid crisis in and of itself has millions of people in this country in a chokehold, right. You know, the pharmaceutical companies that started the crisis knowing that their drugs were addictive, but you know, Republicans allowed them to get off and not be sued for the deaths and the addiction of so many. That

is all on a side. What frustrates me is that the Democrats, when given blatant criminality, do not use their power and position as folks with the ability to create committee hearings, to draw in headlines, to bring America's attention to those that are criminals, like the Kushner's. So Jared and Ivanka right with no fucking expence, became advisors to

the president of the United States. You all know that if Hillary Clinton had been president, Chelsea would have been probably in a different country, right, nothing to do at all with her mother's administration. We also know that no other Democrat, no other person, frankly, had their children involved in their administrations whatsoever, because of the blurred lines, because of nepotism, because of a whole host of things that

don't apply to the Trumps. So following now, which I think is ill timing in and of itself, but who gives a fuck about ill timing and the way things are perceived these days, when you can apparently do whatever the fuck you want so long as you're white and rich and male, which has always been the case in America, But if your name is Trump or attached to Trump,

you can absolutely do whatever the fuck you want. So now, two years following or three years really following the end of the Trump administration, if you all remember Jared Kushner, who again no experience, couldn't get security clearance, but that was waved away by Donald Trump somehow became his Foreign Affairs advisor. Don't really know how that happened or why, but what we do know is that when Jared Kushner walked away from the Trump administration, he didn't walk away

empty handed. He received two billion dollars from Mohammed bin Salam, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. During his time as the Foreign Affairs Advisor, he told his father in law, Donald Trump to embrace Saudi Arabia as an ally right,

which should raise concerns for everyone. I mean, I don't have to remind you, and maybe I do about Jamal Koshogi, the Report Order, the writer for the Washington Post who was murdered and dismembered by MBS, and Trump didn't care, right, He's like, oh, he's not an American, he was NBS is a murderer. And that's just like one person that

we know about, right. We know that he abuses his own people all of these things and does dirt, but nonetheless, because of his deep pockets, the Trumps love that and for whatever it was that he did while he was advisor to Donald Trump. He became a very wealthy man

off of that. So now Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, has asked Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners, for details about its investors on Wednesday, including the two billion dollars it received from Saudi Arabian Government Public Investment Fund in twenty twenty one. This is according to the Huffington Post, and this is what is said by Chairman Widen quote.

Mister Kushner's limited track record as an investor, including his non existent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raised questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seating investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and

other sovereign wealth funds. This panel screens investments for the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund warned right warned against investing with Kushner given his inexperience in finance, but the full board, led by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam, overruled right. So even his own even MBS's own people said, don't invest with dude because he doesn't have a good track record. We don't really know what he's up to, and MBS said, nah,

I got it. It's fine. Right. Goes on to say, Kushner advised Trump on foreign affairs, guided his administration to embrace Saudi Arabia as an ally, which I mentioned, and remained in close contact even after NBS was implicated in the dismembering of American journalist Jamal Kushogi. This comes from

widen quote. The Saudi PIF's decision to invest two billion dollars in Infinity so soon after Kushner's departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalists and American citizen Jamal Kushogi. Folks, this

should have happened in twenty twenty one. This investigation should have been opened, not only by the Senate, right in terms of hearings, after hearings of who benefited from the Trump administration, who benefited monetarily right namely his fucking kids, And it should have been wall to wall coverage there should have been an investigation opened by the Department of Justice in twenty twenty one. None of these things happened because of politics, and this is where Democrats continue to

fucking fail all the time. Regardless of the actions that Democrats were going to take, Republicans were going to say that it's political, this is a witch hunt, this is retribution, blah blah blah blah blah. But the fact is that multiple crimes were staring the Senate and the Department of Justice in the face. When Donald Trump got on that helicopter and exited from the White House, Merrick Garland walked into the DOJ with the Muelll Report sitting on his

fucking desk. Ten ways in which that motherfucker had obstructed justice. But Merrick Garland decided to look the other way, not because it was for the best interests of the American people, but because it was about preserving an institution and the perception of some type of fucking bipartisanship. If you break the law, you should be investigated, you should be tried. And so it was politics that stood in the way of Democrats getting to work years before we would get

to this moment. Five months before fucking an election. Those cases that had been put on ice right most recently would have been moving ahead had they had the two year fucking lead that they should have. It is politics that has us in this precarious moment about to lose our democracy, that rest squarely on the shoulders of timid and tepid fucking Democrats who refuse to do their job so that they can pretend like they are somehow the adults in the room absolute bullshit. But I will keep

you abreast of where these hearings go. Coming up next my conversation with our in house doctor who is back with us, doctor Jonathan Metzel. We talk about gun ownership in the LGBTQ community and the ways in which these arms dealers pray upon fear and racism and bias. That conversation is coming up next. It's been a couple of weeks, but we are welcoming back to the show our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Jonathan, it's so good to see you and have you back.

instance of violence against a particular community, there seems to be an opening that gun manufacturers that the NRA see to go after a new audience and kind of I don't know, I guess capitalize on their fear.

else to buy guns during the pandemic. The risk of guns suicide is really high in queer communities, and so this question of suicide, which is an issue anyway, particularly for trans communities, when you're in a place where it's easier to get guns, you're just basically giving people the easiest means of the most effective I hate that word, means of suicide. So it's kind of like all the

regular is shoes, but they're just amplified. And so that's kind of what if you're in a place where it's easier to get guns, Like we used to think only white men did mass shootings, but then it turned out white men had access to the guns, and that was part of I mean, there are other reasons too, obviously that I write about. But when you have marginalized the risk communities and easy access to firearms, they then see similar or sometimes worse trends than you do in regular culture.

that as we've seen over the last several years. I mean I just saw a map the other day that said, what like forty three states have anti trans policies on the books, and that number just continues to rise. That the more targeted you feel, the more likely you feel that who is supposed to quote unquote protect you doesn't,

And so there's this need to protect yourself. Can you speak to like the way that again, the fear mongering, the targeting is kind of this cyclical, you know, feeding the monster of feeling like you are so isolated and alone that you must then you know, arm up.

how gun markets are constructed. And so in What We've Become my book, as you know, I talk about how after the George Floyd murder there was a really conscious effort to sell guns to black and Latino Americans using the tagline that the police are not going to protect you, and so you should arm up or the police could

kill you, or they're not going to come. So they kind of use this, and then when Black Americans started buying more guns, which they did after the Floyd murder, then they had all these pictures of black people at Black Lives Matter protests with guns, and then that would be used to market guns to white people, saying, hey, the black people have guns, you the white people need gun.

So you know who acts like this, They're called arm stealers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so part of what we see is that this is arm stealing. That's usually that's a war, right, But here we see it in the in the society. And I think I told you this once off record, but I'll save here that after October seventh, I was getting a ton of social media stuff. I mean, Jews and everybody else were really scared and really a tribalizing moment. It was a polarizing crisis, and my Instagram was full

of gun ads and I'm like, what the hell? But then I realized, like, oh, like you know, I said somewhere I'm Jewish, and like all these Jews went out and bought guns and then whatever. So crisis is an opportunity, and especially when people are marginalized. And I guess you know, the question is does owning a gun bring you equality?

pr on the other side? Right? That disrupts this idea that things are so bad you can't trust police, you can't trust quote unquote public servants to protect you, so you must protect yourself. Like how do folks go about disrupting that? To break that cycle?

the issue is it's not just about the shootings. For me, the shootings are like microcosms of these much bigger issues, which is like the feeling that you need to be armed against your neighbor. And so part of what I talk about in the book is that we just because the mass shootings, I mean, I'm sorry, open carry it doesn't register data that links to death or injury. It's not amenable to most guns safety regulations, right because it's not injuries or death, which is what we're trying to prevent.

But I think that the it's the it's like the end of civic space if everybody's armed and just waiting for somebody to do a bad thing. And so what I talk about is rebuilding civic space and ways that make people feel safe. That's not even really about regulating guns, it's more like street lights and green space and jobs programs.

And so for me, I'm like a structuralist, right that in a way, if we if this is an issue of public safety, people feeling safe, you know, invest in the subways, which is why I'm sorry, like congestion pricing didn't happen and stuff like that. But like all these things, and if you don't invest in them, like the subway feels a lot less safe because the lights are flickering and it's.

the gun industry. It's actually the long game that got the NRA in power in the first place, which is that they paid attention to the judiciary and so for them, they had people who no matter what the headline issue was of the day, they were going to vote for politicians who going to put judges in place, who were

going to do their agenda. And so for me, it's also that we the right, really had a long game, and right now the left needs a long game also, which ends with doing something about the Supreme Court and all these other courts.

New York. And I will tell you that the quote unquote safest communities right that I have ever lived in, and that I grew up in on Long Island, I never saw police, like unless they were stopping literally at

the bagel store to get breakfast. I never saw pla And this idea that creating environment, yes, like picking up food like that was like there was no I had no relationship because I and I will say this, I lived in a majority white community growing up, and so there was sidewalks and parks and you know, golf courses and like and the like, and so the cops were

like not there. In the safest communities that I've ever walked around in, whether they're in Brooklyn, on Long Island, in Washington, d c. Or in other places, they are largely more affluent, white areas where safety is a given,

and it's not because it's flooded with cops. And so I never understand then the other side, which is that I'm in a neighborhood that is underserved, that doesn't have basic things like grocery stores and banks and what have you, and they're like, Oh, this neighborhood is so unsafe, We'll flood it with cops. And I'm just like, how does that work? Because you see that what does what does the community that doesn't need that doesn't require over policing have.

It has parks, it has sidewalks, it has grocery stores, it has community centers, it has like things that connect and build a community. So I'm just curious that, like when when you see the differences, right, like you live in Brooklyn too, you navigate and go around into the cities, Like why when we're talking about how to create safe communities, does that not translate between racialized communities for our representatives and whomever.

start doing that, those neighborhoods become incredibly economically viable. It's actually like it's great economic policy. And then you have more taxpayers, more people paying into the system, more people paying into public transportation. That's also true, Like there's the McKenzie and Black Economic Forum that talks about how companies that have the most diversity are the most prosperous and all these kind of things. And so they're just as

zillion examples. And I don't know's the history of the color line, right, But it's not just that. It's also anxiety, fear, fear that like that bad stuff's kind of spill over into your neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera.

providers and new supermarket chains. It's good to think about guns safety in a way that actually is economically viable. I mean, smart guns, technology that only recognizes the hand of the shooter, et cetera. And so I just think that, I mean, it's hard to think of a term other than dying of whiteness for this because it's it's not you know, but that's kind of where we're at. But I mean, look at this congestion pricing thing, right, I mean, it wasn't popular.

for somebody else. And the thing is, it's not just about race. It is about I mean, it is about race a lot, but it's not just about race. I mean, I'm from Kansas City. They just had this big referendum about should we extend to one cent tax on sales to pay for the football stadium for the Kansas City Chiefs whoever re loves and everybody rallied and said we're not spend any money when they are all these billionaires.

And now the Chiefs are almost certainly going to move out of Missouri and so done again, people would probably be like, oh, man, we should have vote voted for that. But when it's like, oh, people are being asked to pay for infrastructure, there's an assumption that the money is somewhere else or someone's gaming the system. It just it

feels like it feels like a weird you know. The book I'm writing now is about Amazon not coming to New York and that whole thing, and like it's like we kind of rally around rejecting or divesting or dismantling things, but it's harder to think about, like, Okay, then how are we going to build them? So I know this is along answer, but it seems like it follows through a lot of these stories.

the world. And I think that again, there's a lot of the veil lifting from Americans in terms of the lie of American exceptionalism, because in nowhere, shape or form do people from other countries come here who are not from developing countries and look at our infrastructure and think to themselves, oh, look at Americas, so ahead of the fucking curve, like it absolutely is not. But what you have in these other countries is very much a sense of pride, connectivity and community in look at what we

are building and doing together. And I think that the rugged individualism that lie that has built a man Erica right that everyone is an island onto themselves, has gone to a disservice to our being able to actually compete in this area.

this crazy tribalism and everything else that's happening. I mean, you know, and it's led to a lot of innovation. I mean, we invented the slurpee at seven eleven and I.

and the responsibility of community. I mean, we can look at COVID, right, we had the absolute wrong, maniacal, egomaniac, you know, fascist president at a time when Americans needed to come together more than ever right to support one another and to be and let me just say, outside of the diabolical nature of the Trump administration, there were a lot of stories of people coming together and people doing what was necessary in their buildings, in their community

to help one another during that really horrible time. But with a lack of leadership from the top about the responsibility of building community. I honestly, you know, maybe I'm crazy, but outside of Obama, I really can't think of another president that really was about what really was community minded. And as a reminder, Obama was a community organizer, and so I don't like maybe efty, but I don't really think so, because again that was like largely racist.

come together. But I hope it doesn't take that right now because the common enemy is speaking our very own language right now.