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Unknown A
Hey guys, welcome to the Friday mini show. Got a whole bunch of stuff to get through. Ryan Graham, great to see you, my friend.
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Unknown B
Nice to see you.
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Unknown A
So we are hoping that our right wing friend Emily Chishinsky is going to join us for some of the latter topics here. In particular, we're going to get into the Jeffrey Epstein, the big release of the files, which there's quite a bit of mega pushback on how all of that went down, which is quite, quite amusing. Ryan. I like that one.
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Unknown B
Yes. And so we have about 10 or 20 minutes to cram in as much leftist propaganda as we can until she comes in and checks us. And later today we're going to be posting our interview with former CFPB director Rohit Chopra. Emily couldn't join that. She had to shed a flight. She had a cash. So it was just me and Rohit. But I played for him like the Mark Zuckerberg comments on Rogan, Mark Andreessen comments, Jamie Dimon calling him an arrogant, out of touch SOB and had him respond to all those different charges. It's pretty interesting.
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Unknown A
Yeah. What were kind of the big takeaways there? Because I haven't got a chance to watch it yet either. And that was one of the clearest examples to me, and you called it out immediately, of how these oligarchs, the Andreessens of the world and Zuckerbergs of the world were trying to use a like fake culture war agenda to trick people into supporting what is just like a blatantly pro oligarch agenda. And one of the things we have to have in the show is some of the CFPB enforcements that have now been rolled back now that that agency is just completely gutted.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think it's just really interesting for people to hear precisely what the CFPB was doing that got these people upset. And for instance, when the White House basically tried to get rid of the cfpb, they put out a statement that listed like six, seven things that they objected to and included links to stories. So I went through it with, with Chopra. All right. They say you, you know, try to enforce price controls on banks. Click through the link like, what is this? And he's like, oh, that's our overdraft rule that said you can't, you know, illegally shuffle around people's payments so that they get five overdrafts rather than one.
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Unknown A
And the White House calls the price controls so dishonest.
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Unknown B
I wish every person in the country could, you know, will watch this interview.
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Unknown A
Well, maybe they will, you Never know. I'll go and pull this up. This is an element I had for later. Along with we've got a whole bunch of updates on Doge. We've got some court pushback on doj. That's really significant. But I mean, this is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was doing. They had these different enforcement actions against Capital One, against Berkshire Hathaway owned Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, against a predatory student loan company. And now all of that is just being completely dropped and going away. So. And of course, it's no mistake, you know, no accident that Elon Musk had just signed a deal with Visa. He wants to turn Twitter into one of these payment processors as well and be the quote, unquote, everything app. They would have fallen under CFPB regulatory jurisdiction. And now the CFPB basically doesn't exist anymore. So they have more of a free hand to scam people and do some of the things like what Sam Bankman Fried was rightfully, you know, convicted Johnny Prison for doing.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
And Zuckerberg went on Rogan and was like, I don't understand why this agency would come after us. We have nothing to do with any, any finance or financial institution behavior. And Rohit pointed out just five years ago they launched their own currency called Libra. Like, are we supposed to pretend that that never happened?
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Unknown A
The thing that was to me the most insulting was Zuckerberg pretending like, oh, I don't even know what this age.
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Unknown B
I don't even know the name of things.
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Unknown A
Dude, shut the fuck up. Like, stop playing dumb. And yeah, Rogan just going along with all of it was really sad to see as well, but.
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Unknown B
And hope he watches it too.
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Unknown A
Yeah, he actually just recorded a big long interview apparently with Elon, so that'll be interesting as well. Stay tuned for that. Yeah. For what comes down to that one. But let's go ahead and jump into the latest with Doge just to give a sketch of what we're going to try to get through this morning. We've got all the Doge updates, the court orders, the in terms of the cuts, going after the weather service and those sorts of things. That's a really significant one right now. We've also got all the Epstein melee from yesterday and MAGA free count over that. And related to that, I would say also the Tate brothers making their way to the US and actually some MAGA pushback over that as well. But it looks very much like the Trump administration intervened to get these alleged rapists and sex traffickers to be able to travel to the United States.
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Unknown A
So, you know, you've got a lot of sex trafficker, rapist stories here relevant to the day. And we save this for later in the show. We're hoping Emily's gonna be able to join because we want to get a perspective on the right about how all of this stuff is landing. But let me go ahead and jump in with this. So a couple of significant court orders coming down. This one in particular, the most noteworthy. So a judge has blocked the Trump administration's mass firings of federal workers. This pertains to you guys know how they just came in and said, okay, everybody who is still on probationary status, that's it, you're gone. And you know, that's mostly people who are new on the job, but also as Ryan pointed out previously, it's also people who just got promotions. So you're talking about a lot of individuals who actually were the most successful and the most significant within their organizations.
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Unknown A
One other thing I learned too, Ryan, is you know, we have all these programs for military spouses who of course are having to pick up and move around the country all the time based on where their husband or wife is being deployed. And so they would more frequently than your average employee find themselves in a probationary status because of having to pick up and move around the country and job hop more often than your average employee. So they also work tremendously. Hit hard, hard by this. Let me just read a little bit of this article.
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Unknown B
Before you do that, I have to offer one clarification. The probationary period applies to when you move from into management or if you move get a promotion or lateral movement from one agency to another or one sub agency to another sub agency. If you just go from you just get a raise from one year to the next like that, that doesn't kick you back into the probationary period. And the best interpretations of when you're probationary period in management, they can't actually fire you. They would push you back down into worker status out of out of management. But lots of people do move from agency to agency or get detailed and become backer. And so those would all be caught up. So it's not complete blanket anybody who got promoted, which is what I implied on the show.
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Unknown A
So I wanted to okay, so here is what the Washington Post is reporting. A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to recent directives that initiated the mass firing probationary workers across the government, ruling that the terminations were probably illegal. As a group of labor unions argued in court, US District Judge William Alepp ordered OPM to rescind its previous directives to more than two dozen agencies, including the Department of Defense, which I think is the largest employer of civilians across the government. So really significant here, the ruling, a temporary restraint on the government, will be revisited in the coming weeks. It's one of the biggest roadblocks so far to Trump's effort to slash the federal workforce. Here's some of the language from the judge. They say Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves. The Department of Defense, for example, has statutory authority to hire and fire.
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Unknown A
The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees. The article goes on to explain, Ryan, that even though this is a significant ruling, but not a final decision, unclear how soon this is going to result in any sort of tangible benefits for those federal government workers who have been fired. As, you know, part of this effort to axe all the probationary employees from the government. This pertains to one specific civilian employee who was part of this hearing. So, so hard to say when or how this is going to ultimately be implemented, but, you know, a significant move forward for those who are trying to fight back against the mass cuts and especially mass firings of the federal government.
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Unknown B
Yeah. And in a sense, it's a process technicality in the sense that if, if today the Department of Defense itself sends out emails to all of these people. Well, I don't even know their emails don't work anymore. But they have to find them somehow and send them a letter saying, you know, I'm writing you from the Department of Defense and you are fired. And they've also started changing the wording of how they've done these firings to try and, you know, get them closer to legal out of the gate. They were saying, you are fired because your skills and your performance don't match the needs that we currently have. And so lots of federal workers then were like, well, here's my. I just had my performance review and I got gold stars and all the flowers you could ask for. And so now they have said, you know, basically kind of a reorganization type of language, like, it's not you, it's us.
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Unknown B
We don't. It's not you, it's me. We don't need you around anymore. It's not about your performance. Now they have to do that, that new language and send it directly from, you know, if it's Noah, then Noah would have to do the firing. And so then a judge might say, okay, well, this was improper, but now it's moved, so you're still fired.
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, and I also saw as part of their arguments here, the government is changing their tune. You know, originally they were saying at all these agencies, you have to fire all of your probationary employees. And now there's. Well, it was really a recommendation. And then the agencies are taking upon themselves to fire all of these employees because that gets around. You know, what the judge said here is like, there is no statute anywhere in the history of the universe that says OPM just come in and fire all of these staff across all of these agencies. They're responsible for their own employees. They can fire whoever they want there, but you can't come in and whole of government mandate the Defense Department and everybody else to fire all of these employees. So the government is trying to get a little cute here. Oh, well, we just.
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Unknown A
This was just a, you know, a strong recommendation, but we weren't really mandating it. So we'll see if that changes anything.
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Unknown B
Yeah, it'd be like Noah trying to fire people at the Pentagon.
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Unknown A
Right?
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Unknown B
Like, no, you can't do that.
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Unknown A
You can't do that. Yeah, well. And Bernie Sanders made a point that was pretty relevant to this, and it's one that I've been making for a while now. Not as well as Bernie Sanders, of course, but not as virally, certainly as Bernie Sanders. But, you know, all of these Senate confirmed agency heads now are totally irrelevant. Like, they don't matter much at all at this point, because if some DOGE kid says, we're gonna let go of this many people and we're close your office and you're working at this program, they're the ones who have the final say. And you've been making the great point, Ryan, about, you know, at the Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued these waivers for pep bar saying, no, this money is going to continue. And Doge is basically like, no, it's not. And it's Doge that ends up having the final word here.
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Unknown A
So Bernie was making a similar point about how just completely stripped of power these agency heads are and how irrelevant. Let's go ahead and take a listen to the way he phrased this on the Senate floor today.
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Unknown C
We are not voting on who the next Secretary of Labor is, the next Secretary of Labor, the next Secretary of Education, the next Secretary of Housing, the next Secretary of the treasury is Elon Musk. And let us understand that reality and not play along with the charade does anyone here really think that any Secretary of labor, any Secretary of education, is going to make decisions by himself or herself? Just yesterday, president held a meeting with his cabinet. And who was the star of the meeting was the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State? No, it was an unelected fish, happens to be the wealthiest person on Earth. It was Elon Musk. And at that meeting, President Trump asked his cabinet, is anybody unhappy with Elon? Well, if you are, we'll throw them out of your end of code. In other words, if any cabinet official has the courage to stand up to Mr.
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Unknown C
Bus and disobey his edicts, they are gone. So, Mr. Chairman, my request to you is a simple one. Let's be honest. The American people understand it and it's time that we understood it as well. If you want to discuss policies in the Department of Labor, let's bring in the real secretary. Chairman, I respectfully request that this committee bring Elon Musk before this committee so that we can really hear what's going on with the government.
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Unknown A
What'd you make of that moment, Ryan?
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Unknown B
Yeah, I mean, fair point. If he wants to run the show, he should be the one that answers the question is accountable to the public and accountable to our elected bodies. And to the point that we were talking earlier about them trying to make it more legal. Russ votes sent out a memo yesterday, pretty to a lot of government, senior government officials that was forwarded to me. And there's one key line I can read to you here. The shows the way that they're kind of tweaking their language to try to make it legal. They say, he says, quote, pursuant to the President's direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily required functions. So what they're, what they're gonna argue is that Congress requires the EPA or Noah or whatever to do this thing and we are going to do our best to do that thing that you say you're going to do.
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Unknown B
They don't require us to do these things by statute. And so we're getting rid of them all. And just because we're getting rid of a lot of what we're statutory required to do, it doesn't mean we're not going to still do the mission. So it's really, it's sidestepping the unitary executive theory because it's saying, no, no, we're doing what you want. Don't worry. We're just doing it cheaper and Better, which is like, nobody would, nobody would argue you can't do that. So then the question would be, oh, is that what you're actually doing or you just putting this in a memo so you can share it with the judge.
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Unknown A
Well, and I think we already have an answer to that. When you look at USAID being the most clear cut example, I mean, that agency has been destroyed and it is, you know, by law an independent agency authorized by Congress through multiple successive legislative efforts. And so it is, you know, it is not legal to just destroy an agency or even just to take the key parts of it and subsume it under the State Department would require congressional legislation. So, you know, in some of these agencies, maybe technically they're complying with what Congress, you know, authorized and demanded of this agency. But we know certain examples that is definitely not the case.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think some of the genius of the moves that they're making now, evil genius maybe, is that makes us sound like all mongers where we're like, well, hold on, you know, you know, flipping over the board and reading the rules saying, oh, you can't do that. That's not, you know, it's not how you're supposed to get rid of usaid. Even while we have been very critical of lots of what USAID does. And they can, they can take the. It isn't higher ground necessarily, but it's different ground where they're like, you know, screw you. Like, people are sick of this stuff, we're getting rid of it, and you're the ones that are standing in the way of it. And it kind of flips the whole argument about the Constitution of Republican. Democrats are so used to Republicans being the ones that insist upon every, every word of the Constitution being honored faithfully.
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Unknown B
So then it's like whiplash, it to be like, oh, Article 1 doesn't matter, never mind, like Article 1. It's like a big part of it. It's the first one, and it's a huge chunk of it.
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Unknown A
It's like, oh, I think if it had stayed in the realm of usaid, I think that argument probably, you know, has more traction. Although even there, you know, people are not cruel. They don't want to deny. That's why there was a backlash. And by the way, they have not restarted Ebola prevention funding. And so these things, even though, you know, this might be in Africa now, we all know from very recent experience it doesn't stay in Africa.
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Unknown B
So they have planes that can fly right here.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
So when you, when you ask people.
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Unknown A
Like, should the government be more efficient? Should we spend less on foreign aid? They're like, sure. When it's like, should we deny life saving medication to babies born with HIV living in an orphanage? It's like, no. What's wrong with you? Of course not. But again, to the point, it's obviously gotten way beyond just USAID at this point. I mean, I could go ahead and pull this up. Actually, they're planning on slashing half of the Social Security Administration. And some of the headlines that are coming out in towns, like local cities around the country really do underscore how the federal government is not just something that exists among, like hippie liberals in D.C. with Ukraine flags in their bios. You know, this is, these are headlines from Green Bay and from, you know, in Michigan and in Birmingham. Social Security, Las Vegas Social Security offices that are slated for closure as part of these cuts.
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Unknown A
We've seen the impact to the National Park Service already. Obviously this pairs too with the budget resolution that just passed through the House with every single Republican, save for one vote, voting for it, that's going to attack Medicaid. And so I think there's a very clear picture that's emerging for people. You see this, you know, the way the poll numbers have moved as well, where it's like one billionaire has taken control of the government and is running it for the benefit of him and his buddies and to slash any program that may benefit you or anything that the government does that you like or like maybe air traffic safety, that's one example that's getting slashed while a bunch of billionaires are getting tax cuts. So even though the whole monitor thing, like, I hear you there, but I think we've gone way beyond that at this point.
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Unknown B
Right. The higher level response that is like, you guys, people voted for you because they think rent is too high, interest rates are too high, egg prices are too high. And, and you're closing the Social Security office in town, which people need that the Social Security office open for obvious reasons. And they'll say, well, if we, if we close the Social Security office, then we'll save money and eventually interest rates will go down as a result of that. That's, that is the most broken, kind of slow way that you could ever try to do monetary policy by just, you know, firing a bunch of NOAA workers like that. You're not being serious about where the federal government spends money.
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Unknown A
Correct.
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Unknown B
Not Social Security staffers in Alabama or Wisconsin or Michigan. That's not moving the needle on interest.
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Unknown A
Rates, especially when you're pairing that with $4 trillion tax cuts for the rich.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown A
Like, you're not, like, clearly you're not serious about deficit reduction. And the only person who was actually serious about was Thomas Massey, who voted against the bill because he was like, close up the debt and that's.
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Unknown B
Right. Also wouldn't. Got the irs, correct.
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Unknown D
Yes.
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Unknown A
Because every dollar you spend, the irs, is returned, by the way. I mean, you know, cfpb, again, if you're talking about, like, efficiency, and that was one of the best agencies in terms of return on investment for the dollars that are invested there. So, yeah, I mean, causing pain and misery among the federal government workforce is not going to do a damn thing. If you look at the. If you fired every single federal government worker, it is like a relatively small proportion of the federal government budget. So, you know, this is clearly not about cutting debt, cutting deficit, cutting the fat. It's about consolidation of power in an ideological agenda. I mean, you are more of a history buff than I am, but, you know, it seems like there's some parallels here with, like, you know, Mao's cultural revolution and the purges of the bureaucracy, you know, in that era is kind of what it's.
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Unknown A
I would say.
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Unknown B
Yeah. Scapegoating people rather than having the courage to go after where the real money is. Like, you want to save a trillion bucks, you know, go after the F35 program or whatever. You know, maybe. I don't know if it's a trillion. It's an enormous amount of money that we spent on this jet that we don't need. We got drones. Yeah, just get rid of that. But you won't. You won't go after that because that's where your money comes from.
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Unknown A
Yeah, that's exactly right. So here's one more legal decision that came down that could be significant. A judge has ordered some Trump administration officials. At least one Doge staff would have to sit for depositions in a lawsuit over the group's access to sensitive government systems. The judge involved here called Doja's activities opaque. I believe they're limited to eight hours of, you know, deposed testimony from these staffers that are involved here. And this could be. I mean, because it has been completely opaque, we've had to rely on whistleblowers from within this very. These various agencies and some intrepid reporting from a whole range of people, both kind of your traditional media types like, just die, but also some who are more independent media, to try to figure out what they're even up to in there. And we still have. There still A lot of unanswered questions.
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Unknown A
So it could be some interesting things that come out of those depositions. So it's something to keep an eye on.
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Unknown B
Yeah. If we ever get them, you know, it's, you know, they're gonna have some wins, too. Yeah. The courts. Yeah, we'll see.
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Unknown A
Yeah, they will. They certainly will, I think, especially when they get up to the Supreme Court, given the ideological valence there. We've mentioned Noah a couple times, and this is one of the more significant cuts that's moving forward. It's also one that was significantly signaled in Project 2025. They are mass firing upwards of 1800 workers at the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including top climate scientists and weather forecasters. The firings reportedly include workers at the National Weather Service. And as I mentioned, and Ryan, you may know more about. This has been kind of an ideological project of the rust vote.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown A
And in Project 2025, first of all, they hate NOAA because they are honest about climate change. So they don't like that. And then they also, you know, right now, anyone, including there's some weather YouTubers who've gotten really big, but your local weather forecaster, anyone, can access the data and resources of the National Weather Service. And obviously that's really important because we're having increasingly extreme and increasingly regular climate catastrophes. And the right, led by Russ boat and Project 2025, et cetera, they have long wanted to effectively privatize that function so that people have to pay in order to get that kind of research. And it's stripped of anything that might indicate that, you know, the climate crisis is fueling these things. And any of the research that indicates what direction the climate crisis might take.
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Unknown B
Right. It's for them. And actually, honestly, you could call it socialism, like that the public comes together and collectively funds something that we all believe that we need, which is some forecast about what the weather's going to be like, both extreme events and regular events. And yeah, we make fun of the weatherman for getting things wrong, but the, the apps on our phone are pretty good if you think about it. You know, they tell you what it's going to be. They're nailing it pretty often, and people find it very helpful. You've got free access all the time to this pretty accurate data. And they take for granted that people, some people take for granted that that just comes from the sky. But. But it has to get filtered through a bunch of scientists who train their whole lives to figure this stuff out and then pump it out to us for free.
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Unknown B
And you're right, accuweather and these other places want to just, you know, monopolize it so they can, so they can charge you for it. But at the same time they're it'll be a much crappier service because they are getting rid of the people who know, who know how to do it right.
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Unknown A
And this is one of those things where, you know, it requires significant scale to be able to do it well and to be able to predict things effectively in, you know, every part of what is a large and fast country, et cetera. So yeah, you'll be paying more and you will be getting less. There were I wanted to show two.
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Unknown B
Different people one knock on effect. This could have insurance companies are getting freaked out at a lack of access to data.
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Unknown A
True.
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Unknown B
Which and then if insurance companies are in doubt, they're just going to raise rates like they're, you know, they're not your friend.
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Unknown A
Right.
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Unknown B
So we're going to shoot our shoot ourselves in a couple of feet this way.
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Unknown A
So I wanted to show a kind of like traditional weather person and also I think the biggest YouTube weather guy, Ryan Hall. Al Roker weighed in and said going into the severe weather and hurricane seasons cannot be good. Commerce departments, we have hundreds of no employees, many specialized skills who work at one of the world's top climate science and weather forecasting agencies, White Matters, national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for providing weather watches and warnings, monitoring, studying earth climate, as well as operating weather satellites and protecting marine life. The layoffs of probationary employees that began Thursday hit soon after cuts at the behest of Elon Musk's doge occurred at other climate and environment agencies. The big picture, NOAA's missions require staff to work around the clock to monitor dangerous weather, earthquakes that could cause tsunamis and other hazards. He goes on to note that just in the past several weeks, they've been essential.
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Unknown A
I mean, one of the stories that I've been covering is the fact that, you know, there were these horrific floods in Appalachia, across parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, historic levels of devastation. First of all, it took Trump almost two weeks to declare a state of emergency in West Virginia, which is just completely unforgivable. And you know, if it had been Biden on the other side, it would have been a total freak out from the ride hop you abandon these people, et cetera, et cetera. But, but you know, it really is a sort of coordinated attack not only on NOAA but also on fema. Trump is that he wants to Dismantle and send it to the states. It was state like West Virginia is a poor small state, is not going to have the ability to respond on their own. But in any case, I'll be pointing out there that the regularity of these events, now you say it's, you know, what was once a once in a hundred year flood seems to be happening, you know, once every five year, once every decade with increasing regularity.
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Unknown A
All because of the, you know, escalating climate crisis.
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Unknown B
Right. Federal emergency management is one of the most obvious things you would want federalized.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
If a small, if a small poor state like West Virginia do it on a cell in wood.
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Unknown A
Right. They can't. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you know, and actually it will be, not that it matters whether it's Trump voters or Democrat voters or whatever, but it will be more red states that are harder hit because states like California and New York, you know, they still need federal government help, but they will be more able to respond. They have more resources than a state like, you know, West Virginia or Mississippi and Alabama. Also Louisiana often hard hit by hurricanes as well. Yeah, that's exactly right. Tornadoes. So, you know, this is, this is one that is important for literally everyone in the country. This is the YouTuber I was mentioning, Ryan Hall. He says this is devastating news. Today's reported layoffs at NWS will impact our ability to keep Americans safe from extreme weather. These forecasters are essential frontline workers who save lives during hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.
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Unknown A
Cutting these meteorologists isn't just short sighted, it is dangerous. And I think that's, you know, that almost goes without saying or should go without saying.
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Unknown B
It's, it's very similar to cutting Ebola funding like, and they cut it. You know, the Ebola outbreak was, I think was declared January 28th or something. And to be pausing Ebola prevention funding at that moment is absurd. And you know, he claimed, oh, we kicked it back up very quickly. That appears like you said not to be true. But even if you wait, you lost three days and only three days. People understand how infectious Ebola is. Like you, you have like it's, you save so much money and so many lives by getting it right away. It costs so much more to be slow and let it spread and then try to come in and contain it.
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Unknown A
Yeah. And you know, with any one of these things it's like, well, maybe it'll be okay. You know, maybe I'll get the funding turned back on or the local health authorities will do an effective job. Of stopping the spread. Maybe it'll be fine. Maybe the cuts that they are with the air traffic controller at the faa, maybe it'll work out.
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Unknown B
You know, yesterday they missed each other.
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Unknown A
Yeah, it works out. You know, no harm, no foul. Right? It's all good. I don't know what you, Liz, are panicking about. You know, maybe the Social Security administration will be able to cut all the checks on time and with accuracy with.
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Unknown B
Half the staff, but nobody's. Nobody's case will get denied because they didn't have access to an office. But sure, right.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Or, you know, maybe there's not that many, so we don't really care all that much. Or. Yeah, and maybe, you know, they'll do a good enough job of predicting hurricanes and tornadoes and whatever, that it doesn't cause an immediate catastrophic loss of life. But that's a lot of ifs. And you're spreading them across the entire government. You know, food safety, like all of these things. Yay, Emily. Hi, everyone. Just in time, actually. One more story and then we're getting to Epstein and Tate. So you're right on schedule. But, you know, when you're talking about all of these risks and cuts compounded across the federal government, I think David Day made this point like you are taking responsibility for every catastrophe that's going to unfold.
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Unknown B
Stupid.
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Unknown A
And even in the best of circumstances, there are going to be catastrophes even when things are running at full tilt and at its most efficient. And, you know, God forbid we have another pandemic. They had to quickly scramble to rehire the people who were monitoring the bird flu spread. You know, they had to quickly rehire. The dude was like, watching over nuclear safety. How many other stories like there like that are there across government we don't.
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Unknown B
Even know about the attack on. Anyway, I've talked about this. The attack on the FAA and the air traffic controllers is the one that is probably the just politically the stupidest because you then own every plane crash after that. Even. Even if. Even if you had nothing to do with it. I was talking to an air traffic controller yesterday who said that while so far air traffic controllers themselves have not been affected, like, have not been fired, even the ones that are probationary. He said he's lost most of his support staff and contracts, the contractors that were assisting them. So before they have people helping with their scheduling, helping order equipment, that you need to like, make sure that all of your stuff continues to work and all the other kind of technical support that goes on in the background. So they got rid of all of them.
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Unknown B
And so now it's just the air traffic controllers. And so Elon Musk is like, oh, hey, look, we didn't fire the air traffic controllers, so it's not our fault if there's a plane crash. But now you have the air traffic controllers trying to fix the equipment and ordering the parts for the equipment and scheduling their own travel and, like, doing all the things they used to have help doing. So while they're doing that, what are they not doing?
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, I mean, you can think about it in the context of the show. Like, you know, if all the support staff of this show was fired, the show would suck.
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Unknown B
We didn't fire Crystal. What are you complaining about?
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Unknown A
Yeah, right. It would not be a good show. It would not go off well. It wouldn't go out on time. I don't even know how to post the show every day.
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Unknown B
It would be right here in our basements.
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Unknown D
It would be on TikTok. You guys would just move the show to TikTok.
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Unknown A
That's true.
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Unknown B
What are you even talking about? Yeah, you still get. You still get it.
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Unknown A
So, okay, this is actually a good transition to this story that I've been following closely and actually that I posted a TikTok about. Thank you, Emily, for that affiliated. And I'm over 10,000 followers now to big milestones. I can apply for the TikTok Creators Fund. Very exciting stuff, helping me with that. But in any case, it sure looks like Elon Musk is just, like, stealing this $2.4 billion contract that had been previously awarded to Verizon over at the FAA for. So he's, you know, his operatives there are taking it for Starlink. And the way all of this went down is, you know, you had that horrific crash. Elon had been putting pressure on the FAA administrator even before Trump was inaugurated. They've been going forward with these cuts at the FAA. They sent over some SpaceX engineers to look around and see what's going on and see if they can make it safer, et cetera.
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Unknown A
And those people just came in, effectively were like, oh, this $2.4 billion contract we're gonna give to Verizon. Not doing that anymore. Now we're giving it to Starling again. You know, this is illegal because there's a whole contract process that has to play out. You have to have competitive bids, which I think is something that everyone would kind of intuitively understand, that you don't want to just give out contracts to whoever is favored status, obviously, the fba. Aa. You want to make sure things are done in like the best possible way. I have no idea if Verizon is, you know, doing a fantastic job and doing an amazing job or whatever, but the fact of the richest man on the planet sending his operatives in there and just like taking this contract for himself. One more very brazen instance of the complete self dealing and corruption and conflicts of interest just inherent in all of this.
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Unknown A
Not to mention the FAA was also investigating SpaceX for a launch that went wrong where the rocket came apart, a dozen commercial flights had to be diverted and so this was a big deal. Something tells me that investigation is not going to be going forward in the same way. And there were some reporting suggests that, you know, that investigation of SpaceX and others and other investigations of Tesla were part of the motivating factor for Elon Musk to get as involved in Trump's campaign and in Doge as he ultimately has.
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Unknown D
Well, can I just say, I was just gonna say quickly, Ryan, like we don't know. This is one of the things that really bothers me and honestly it should bother Elon, obviously it doesn't, but it should because you'll never know. Like, I actually think some of his bids probably are extremely competitive. Some of his products are extremely compelling. So what he does is extremely compelling. But this actually is like the kind of thing that we're never going to know sometimes. Like this one, the reporting has been really good on it, but there are going to be contracts awarded that we don't know probably until like five years down the road that there was wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. And like it makes you less competitive when you just know you're going to get the bid. It makes your product suck more when you know that you can just rely on getting the government contract because you're the one giving the government contracts.
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Unknown D
It's actually not good for anybody. Like it's self dealing of course and like that's corrupt and gross. But in this case, there's probably a good case to be made that he really did have a more competitive, better bid. But it doesn't, that trajectory historically doesn't continue because when it gets less competitive, your product gets less good.
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Unknown A
Yeah, because there was no competitor there, there was no bid, there was just him taking the contract. And the officials at the FAA actually have refused to sign off on it under pressure. I don't know if they have yet or not. So they're having to like elevate it to the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, but they, you know, this was, this contract was years in the making with Verizon, apparently next month was when they were supposed to sign off on the final thing. And Elon tweeted something negative about this Verizon situation. And lo and behold, his doge guys are just like, yeah, we're gonna take it. Right?
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Unknown B
So. And what complicates is that a source of mine who's involved in this area said that the, the company that was losing it was called L3Harris. They're losing. They were losing the bit to Verizon. Like, they got in and started weaponizing the presence of SpaceX and Elon Musk. And, like, they helped to kind of foment this story. That's what. That's what he was saying. So it's like when you. So now you're going to have two contractors fighting over a project, and because Musk has these obvious conflicts of interest, the one who loses is going to throw Musk up. Like, actually, look, Musk is trying to come in and steal this thing because L3's goal is to just reset the entire thing and go back to status quo of them having the contract. And so that's another way, if there's any truth to that, like, that's another way that taxpayers and American citizens lose by having a guy conflicted out the wazoo right in the center of this and talking openly about how SpaceX is great, you know, because it looks so bad.
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Unknown B
Then they go, oh, you know what? Forget it. Forget Verizon, forget SpaceX. Just keep it how it is with, you know, and there's. Maybe there was reasons to move away from L3. Like, they're not that efficient and they're ripping off the government, but they then got to play the corruption to their own corrupt advantage. So it's just a giant mess of not how anybody should want a government to run.
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Unknown A
Correct.
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Unknown B
Yeah. Also illegal. Like a DOJ source pointing out to me yesterday that there are criminal conflict of interest statutes. Like, if you. If you take action as a government employee and any government employee, including a special government like Musk, for the benefit of your own personal financial interests, there are actually criminal statutes involved. Obviously, nobody in DOJ is gonna prosecute that now, but it's not as if it just goes away immediately.
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Unknown A
Right. And maybe Musk doesn't have to worry because he can get a pardon from the government from Trump. But, you know, is every underling who's executing his orders, are they all gonna get a pardon? Are they all gonna, you know, are they gonna get thrown under the bus at some point? Oh, I had Nothing to do with it. It was, you know, big balls. He was really running.
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Unknown D
Well, the thing is, the thing is, like, maybe there were people in the White House who didn't know that Anita Dunn, for example, had interests in TikTok or whatever she had her many interests in. But with Elon Musk, he doesn't actually need to give anybody direct orders because everybody knows elon Musk favors SpaceX, Starlink favors Tesla.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown D
Like, you don't have to have Elon Musk being like, go screw with Rivian. You know, it's like people kind of know where he's coming from.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Which is also, by the way, something that has happened. They did go and screw with some Rivian thing that was happening in Georgia. So. All right, so let's go ahead and move on to the much anticipated Epstein portion that we want to get Emily in on in particular, because this has been become quite a, quite a drama over on the MAGA side of things. So they've been teasing, oh, we're going to release Epstein files, etc. Now I've been skeptical because Trump was buddies with Epstein for a long time and shows up in the Amstein flight logs, whatever. So I was like, I don't think y'all are gonna get what you really want. Not to mention a bunch of Epstein stuff has already been made public in the past. So we hold this big photo op. You can see, you know, a bunch of these, like right wing influencers here.
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Unknown A
What that's. Is that D.C. drano in the.
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Unknown D
That is. That's D.C. drano. Lives of TikTok. Mike Cernovich and Liz Wheeler, by the way. But Cernovich retired for you tab. In the flesh. For you in the flesh.
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Unknown A
So they've got these binders, it says the Epstein files, phase one. They're so excited. They're doing their, you know, their photo op outside of the White House. They start going live and flipping through the binder to see what they find. And lo and behold, not a whole hell of a lot.
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Unknown B
So.
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Unknown A
So let me actually pull up this video of flipping through the binder because it was pretty funny. A lot of redactions and a lot of just things that already were publicly available. So you can see here the scrolling through. Yeah. Of the redactions. And apparently someone was saying this is something that Gawker had previously published, but actually with fewer.
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Unknown B
Like it didn't have the redaction in 2015.
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Unknown A
So this is information that's been available for a decade and just the way of doing it too, like Inviting the most online people in the entire world, these right wing influencers, to do their little photo op. It didn't land well with a lot of people, Emily.
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Unknown D
It didn't land well with people on the right. It didn't land well with other conservative influencers, let alone like genuine conservative journalists who were furious that they had been reporting out these stories with some degree of like seriousness for a long time. And then there was, you know, there's all kinds of speculation about whether this was intentionally a photo op or whether it was just the people waiting for Keir Starmer. But you can see some of them are literally posing with the binders. So turning it into like an influencer circus was really offensive to some people on the right. It was just absolutely furious. And I mean this is, I share obviously your skepticism on this, Crystal. Maybe we'll get a little bit more information on some of this. But I think what's going on, and this is how it unfolded yesterday. They say that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel were being undermined by the Southern District of New York which was supposed to hand over new Epstein records and at the last minute did not.
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Unknown D
They were supposed to give Pam Bondi and Cash Patel more information that was going to be released and they didn't do it. So what's interesting about this culp is that they didn't present it to the influencers this way. If they knew, right? If the DOJ knew that this is what was happening, that they didn't have like really any bombshells, they didn't have any good information, whatever. That is not how they presented to the public. They presented it like we are doing a public service. Thank you so much. You know, Pam Bondi, we saw some of them saying for releasing this, making sure we're on top of this. It was a cover your ass story. I'm sure there's truth to the fact that the FBI doesn't want to give all of these records, but it's a cover your ass story. To say after the fact, after this lands like a lead balloon because you take a story that's really serious to MAGA and you can hate MAGA people as much as you want, but there's genuine concern about Epstein in MAGA world.
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Unknown D
And that might sound silly given the Trump and Epstein friendship, but that is real. People are genuinely, they care about the Epstein stuff like Sound of Freedom. The story about child trafficking was huge in MAGA world and in the sort of on the right more broadly, it's a serious issue. So after it lands Like a lead balloon. Then we start seeing this cope from the DOJ saying that it's being thwarted by the Southern District of New York and all of this. My broad theory is that all of this is to lay the groundwork and conditioned the people in their camp to not expect much.
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Unknown B
Right.
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Unknown D
Like this is not. They're not. They'll be able to continue blaming the deep state, essentially.
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Unknown A
Well, Trump had always, you know, he'd get asked about this periodically. First of all, he got asked about what, you know, when Glenn Maxwell was on trial or whatever. Like, I wish you well. He's gotten asked multiple times about releasing the Epstein files. And he always remembers, you know, yes, JFK, yes, RFK. Like, yes, UFOs. Epstein. Well, there might be some personal details there. We'll have to be careful. Change the subject.
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Unknown D
Yeah. His famous interview with Rachel Campos Duffy on Fox News where he did that.
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Unknown A
Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. And to your point about the influencers and the way that they approach this, they apparently all were on like coordinated talking points here. Here's DC Drain out. Today I met with President Trump, bbjd, Vance, Pan, Bondi, Cash Patel and Oval Office. They handed me a binder copy of the Epstein files. This is the most transparent administration in American history. The best part, this is just the start. Agbine confirmed there are thousands more Epstein file documents being secretly held. Blah, blah, blah. And then, oh, look at this. Today I met with blah, blah. They hand me a binder copy. The most transparent administration in American history. The best part, this is just the start. It's like, okay, you couldn't even come up with your own, like, lame tweet language to be willing useful idiots in this photo stunt. That's. That's pretty embarrassing, Ryan.
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Unknown B
And at first I was thinking, I don't blame the White House for this because the White House's job is propaganda and the propagandist's job is to make it look not like propaganda. You gotta, like, take the material and you rephrase it. But I do blame the White House because they wrote it in this, like, cutesy. The best part. The best is yet to come or whatever. Which for the propaganda, just, the best is yet to come in Greece. She was right. So it just begs the propaganda to just copy and paste it. And so they did. And so. And they get caught more on, well.
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Unknown D
The White House blames the doj. Yeah. Basically, this has been an absolute, like, I just like from what I care on a tear.
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Unknown A
Let her cook.
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Unknown D
Well, so the House Judiciary Committee tweeted a Rick Roll about the Epstein files yesterday, seeming like a literal Rick Roll, seeming to be blaming or like making a joke about the deep state thwarting the release efforts. And people were furious, saying, this is not funny. Like, there's nothing to be joking about here. And so all of this has been. This is probably the earliest, like, real infighting that I have. Like, there's always small infighting. But what this did inside the administration, that you have so many different fingers pointing in so many different directions, and people are furious because it destroyed certain relationships with influencers that are now really furious. It's been an absolute dumpster fire of 24 hours just because of the stunt. And so this is a very early, like, when books are written. This blow up, I think will be a really consequential, like, moment in the second administration just because of what it did to different relationships.
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Unknown A
That is interesting.
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Unknown B
You know, the guy was killed on Trump's watch. Like, Trump's not giving you this information. Like, yeah, just saved. Let me just save you the suspense.
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Unknown A
Good point. And this is Laura, Louis Marie, reference to all the social media influencers who are at the White House. How come you are running cover for pedophiles? Every single one of you has chosen to not share the files with the public while you're protecting pedophiles. How come you haven't posted the screenshots of the documents? The reason is because there wasn't eventually, you know, they did share, like I showed you that video of the flipping through. The reason they weren't sharing them because there wasn't much really there. But certainly they got, you know, used for this propaganda effort. And she continued to go after them, as many other people did as well. I mean, listen, I can't help but notice, of course, the buck never stops with Trump, Right? Yeah. It's the deep state. It's Pam Bonnie's fault. It's Cash Patel's fault. It's fdny. It's.
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Unknown A
This is that it's never Donald Trump, who Jeffrey Epstein claims was his best buddy for 10 years, who was president. Who was president when. Yeah. When he died.
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Unknown B
When he died.
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Unknown D
I think all this document dump promises that, you know, we're. I think if, if some of these documents are dumped, it'll be wonderful and it's great that he's making the promises. But I think a lot of this is conditioning people to have their expectations lowered in a way that's helpful for the Trump administration. I actually reached out to the CIA over the last week asking about Section 3 of the JFK release EO, which like Jefferson Morley and other people have said could allow the CIA director to just keep some records sealed. You know, like there are ways, like there are loopholes actually that could be potentially exploited. And the CIA gave me a complete non answer about how they're like cooperating and blah, blah, blah to some very specific questions. So I think what we're going to see is some stuff is going to come out, but it's definitely not going to be like a substantial.
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Unknown D
It'll be substantial, I shouldn't say non substantial, but it won't be everything and it probably won't even be that close to everything. And I think that there's a recognition of that and people are trying to sort of lay the groundwork.
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Unknown B
So one other point on Epstein, and let me share something here. This is a tweet of mine from years ago that still gets shared every now and then, asking for the list and all that stuff is fine. But here is the thing that people really should want to know about. So this is July 8, 2019. I just dug this up. So according to the FBI, they found CDs in Jeffrey Epstein's safe that were labeled, quote, young, a name plus name. So they found all of these CDs with the name of a young person and presumably the name of somebody that Epstein cared enough to write their name on the cd. They took, you can read this file here. They took these out with them. This is, this is what we need. Who, whose names are in between these brackets?
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Unknown A
Well, and one, one other thing that we need too is, I mean, there are a lot of indications that he was basically working for Israeli intelligence. Like, oh yeah, which is another reason to be skeptical that this administration would.
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Unknown B
Be maybe also us. Like, yeah.
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Unknown A
In releasing that sort of information, you know, so you think, you really think that the guy that Mary Madison gave $100 million to is interested in like completely exposing what was going on here? I'm going to be pretty doubtful, pretty doubtful on that particular front. And then, you know, this also ties in with the story about Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are accused of rape and sex trafficking. Very Epstein. They have their own, their own alleged flavor to it, but you know, Epstein esque type behavior. And it looks like the Trump administration intervened to get them released and allowed to travel from Romania. They traveled to the US Rick Grinnell was reportedly, you know, directly involved here, by the way. The White House denies this. Trump says, I don't even know what you're talking about. I'll let you make your own decisions about what happened here.
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Unknown A
Apparently, you know, Andrew had claimed that he was in touch with Barron. Barron is supposedly a fan and baron also involved in, you know, some of the like manosphere outreach reportedly of the Trump campaign going on on the Broadway podcast. And Emily, there was, you know, significant amount of pushback from the right on this as well. Again, not directly against Trump. But you know, this kind of this ties in with some like the backlash over the Ashley Sinclair Elon Musk relationship and a lot of you know, more sort of like traditional family conservative type conservatives saying like, what the hell are we embracing here? Like what is going on?
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Unknown D
Yeah. Here. Let me share this post. This is once again Laura Loomer, but Candace Owens and others are on this too. And after news broke this morning that the Trump admin held the tape brothers leave Romania come back to us. Today, Governor Ron DeSantis said they're not welcome in Florida. The tape brothers are US Citizens. Good thing Ron isn't president. And Candace Owens has also been out saying, you know, the charges against them, like if I think she criticized Megyn Kelly and said something like if the charges against them are not, if you look at the charges, they're actually like all cooked up, blah, blah, blah. They're not that serious. And Megyn Kelly, Josh Hawley and others have been like. And Ron DeSantis is a good example. Ron DeSantis actually leaning into this. To me, after the Byron Donalds dust up between Byron Donalds potentially getting into the governor's race with Trump's endorsement, when Casey DeSantis wants to get into the governor's race, like looks to me like he is using the Tate brothers actually has an interesting wedge issue.
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Unknown D
Understanding to the point you just made, Crystal, that this could be to the extent that there's something that could be a crack in the Trump MAGA foundation that like actually exploiting like something like this, like trafficking documents, not getting released, like Ron DeSantis could see that as like his lane to outmaneuver Trump. I don't think it'll work. But you can sort of see where they are maybe leaning into some of these issues now. I don't think Josh Hawley is going to lean into it. But he condemned the decision. Yeah, that's on the screen right now.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Here's what he said. He said, I would hope our government wasn't involved in any way. My view is the charges against him are very serious. I don't think concern should be glorifying the sky at all. I certainly don't think we should use any influence in our government, try to get him out of what seems to be extremely serious charge in Romania. So I'd hope that we weren't involved in any way. I mean, I. Listen, I'm not an expert on this case. From what I've seen of Andrew Tate's own words, there's quite a lot of, you know, fire, weather, smoke. But even if you think the charges are unfair and it's, you know, which Hunter, whatever, like just the things that he has himself acknowledged and admitted to, doesn't seem like the type of stuff that a traditional conservative would want to embrace, celebrate, you know, have the.
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Unknown A
The President's administration go out on a limb to exert diplomatic pressure to try to free these guys. Like, that's. That is. If you went back to the pre Trump era and you told me that any of this was happening, I would think it was absolutely preposterously insane.
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Unknown B
Yeah, yeah, it was. You know, there's a video, there's videos of him, like, beating women with stick. Like that's, that's out there over the years. Yeah. There's all sorts of. Even though he hasn't been convicted. Yeah. To your point, it's not. These are not the kind of values that we were told the party represented.
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Unknown A
Yeah. He ran an mlm, like scam university to separate vulnerable young men from their cash, teaching them how to run businesses.
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Unknown B
Like Candace Owens. Has she ever heard a MeToo allegation?
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Unknown A
She's been like this one, I believe. Yeah.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown D
Well, I mean, and I think also it's sort of laughable their claim to only care about the case because it represents like a weaponization of government. I think it's also very obviously a pretense. Like that's what they're claiming Josh Hawley is concerned about. Right. Like, these charges are just a pretense because they really don't like Andrew Tate. He's super anti establishment, wants to bring down the world order, whatever. But that I think it's a pretense, really, with the people like Laura Loomer, who actually are using the allegedly weaponized charges in order to really express solidarity with Andrew Tate overall, not just on the like charges. They see him as extraordinarily popular and his popularity with young men is really real. And I think it's real for reasons we could get into that have to do with the failure of, you know, the sort of cultural establishment and all that.
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Unknown D
But. But I think they, they realize these are coattails that they can ride to more popularity and there's this kind of convenient excuse or this convenient pretense about weaponized charges. So I don't think they're being. I think they're being cynical obviously as well on that front.
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Unknown A
Shapiro says America does not need more self proclaimed pimps and terror supporters with outstanding criminal allegations of sex trafficking and a history of pornographic distribution. Plus a grift university that suckers young men out of thousands of dollars. Echoing some of what I was saying about his like MLM scam that he ran on all of these young men, I guess I sort of felt like his popularity like waned a bit. He's still like at the height of his power. I don't know.
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Unknown D
I don't get the high. I feel like he was really before this. I mean, I think this did actually genuinely hurt his reputation a bit. To the extent that that's possible. I don't think he's at the height of his power. I think that's probably true.
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Unknown A
Yeah. Which is. I mean, that's also probably part of why you see a DeSantis and Josh Hawley and whoever feeling like they have the political bandwidth to say these types of things about him and be as explicit as they've been.
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Unknown D
Yeah, I mean, I think there was. He's always like, had. I remember when I was at the Federalist, we would have a lot of debates, like just internally about Andrew Tate. And it was mostly like the younger conservatives who would say he's not a great guy, but he, this is not just a Federalist, but like he's interesting and he's saying things other people won't and kind of older conservatives are like, who cares? Like he's, it doesn't matter. Like he's awful. He's clearly awful. There's no reason for people to be listening to just because he's entertaining and says things that other people won't. You can do that without also being an awful person. And so there's always been this. He's actually created an interesting divide, but it hasn't been fully teased out yet because he was kind of off in Romania doing his thing. So maybe this pushes me, this forces the issue more.
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Unknown A
Ryan, last thing to you. The other thing that both the Epstein and the Tate stories underscore is just how insanely online this administration is. Like some of you, I mean, for my job, for our jobs, we have to be insanely online. Right. The amount of Twitter time I spend in a day is grotesque and not help. These are. Some of these people were. I have never even heard of these. I'm like, how are you more online than I am? How is that possible? Right? And yet, yeah, they're pulling these random influencers out of wherever they're coming from and inviting them to the White House. I'm just like, holy shit, this is crazy. And I think, you know, partly they feel like that approach of being super online paid off, off for them in the election. But I also think there is a real danger here because, you know, if they're more online than I am, they're certainly more online and out of touch with, like, just normie Americans than they should be.
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Unknown D
It's like Elizabeth Horn saying Latinx at the first 2020 debate. It's just the reverse of it.
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Unknown B
And it feels like they're almost taunting Democrats. They're like, how? What's the most ridiculously unpopular thing we can do and still stay in power? They're like the Harlem Globetrotters playing, and they think of the Democrats as the Washington Generals. Like, they can be the most flamboyantly, like, absurd stuff on the court and still win against the Washington General slash Democrats. Like, yeah, we're just going to bring the sex trafficker and his brother in. How do you like that? We're not going to look. We're going to actively, like, do it and be like, embrace it.
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Unknown A
Yeah, be like, yeah, we did that. We did that. Actually, the Epstein thing, I was thinking, like, Brian, if you and I had planned it as a way to, like, subvert the Trump administration, we could have done a better job.
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Unknown B
And there's still going to be the.
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Unknown A
Washington General blowing up their media ecosystem and whatever. And, yes, they are still. The Washington Generals are still, like, you know, putting up Alyssa Slotkin. All right, guys, well, on that note, we'll leave it there for today. Ryan, Emily, thank you, guys, as always. Guys, make sure you check out Ryan's interview with Rohit Chopra. Really, I mean, very newsy and very significant conversation. Help people to understand what was actually going on at the CFPB and why this agency was significant. And I guess, theoretically, still could be sometime in the future, but certainly not now. Have a great weekend, and we will see you guys back here next week.