It Could Happen Here Weekly 242

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
every episode of the week that just happened is here
in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

(00:22):
you can make your own decisions. What's pew in my pews?
This is Robert Evans and it could happen here a
podcast about it happening here as it seems to be
more every week and when things get worse, one thing
that a lot of folks start talking about is should
I buy a gun? And obviously this is a fraught

(00:45):
question and the only responsible answers to it are very complicated.
And so to talk over some very complicated answers, we've
got James Stout and we have in the audience with
us the great Carl Casarta, Carl of en Range TV.
Thank you for coming on to be our resident firearms
expert in this podcast where we try not to be

(01:06):
deeply irresponsible.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's always a
pleasure to come back to the show, and people always
ask for more collabs, and here we are, but on
a very important topic, and yes they course. What I
have is now is when do you change the name
of the podcast too?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh no, it's happening here. We're talking with the marketing people.
It done happened here. Oh shit, it's happening again. It's
been happening here. Yeah, here, it is here now right
in this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Be here now it Yeah, we got we got to
work out each one seo's best.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
But we're on it. Called don't worry.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
Great, we're working on it, so as I think both
of you know, But maybe listeners don't. Gun sales typically
saw before elections as to ammunition purchases. People are afraid
of gun bands has been traditionally one reason why, and
the firearms industry is not afraid of hyping those up
to increase sales in election years. And no, many prices
increase inline with demand. Like if you get back to

(02:04):
November twenty twenty and look at the prices of ammunition
and guns compared to now, you'll see how much incredibly
high they That was for a number of reasons. But
considering inflation, gun prices are pretty low right now.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
You know that is kind of a recurrent thing for
the most part, is that while everything else gets more expensive,
television and firearms remain affordable.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, gun gone to the point where they are more
affordable than they've ever been. Uh huh, Yeah, they really are.
Air fifteens or I used to talk about this on
air fifteens are essentially cord wood and you can get
a fully fled good to go air fifteen now for
like four to five hundred bucks. The epistols for two
hundred and fifty bucks. Oh yeah. The prices on guns
are like through the floor. And yeah, it's interesting to

(02:48):
note that, like, if you are a gun manufacturer, a
firearms dealer, even if you don't hype elections, it would
be unintelligent of you to not prep for elections because
they're so consistently yeah, the Christmas of guns. So this
is an instance in which we didn't see that. It's
it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I think there's an element because obviously when we talk
I think to people who are not into guns and
talk about how cheap guns have gotten, they're like, well,
that's very bad. And there's definitely downsides to that, But
an upside of that is it does kind of suggest
we are not seeing the degree of panicked hoarding for
a civil war that we have seen at previous points
when gun prices were not as as cratered and AMMO

(03:26):
prices were a lot higher and am ava availability was
a lot lower. Like in some ways, that's kind of
an optimistic sign.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, or the dark side of that is the traditional
prepper air quote is so saturated in guns and ammunition, right,
but they don't need another one, right.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well, that's I think that is where a lot of
people are.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Also, like capacity really increased in twenty twenty, and I
think they've been pumping out Like it's interesting to look
at the cost of nine millimeters E and five five
six ammunition, which, if you're not familiar, are like the
most commonly used defensive ammunition compared to more niche stuff
like that hasn't gone down as much if you're trying
to get three hundred wisdom or something.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
The funny thing that, yeah, five y six and nine
milimeters both to defensively add well is just recreationally are
the most common ammunition YEA by far, and some of
the weird old stuff I like to shoot, like percussion
caps for percussion revolvers. You can't find that stuff to
save your life. That's those through the roof and expensive.
So yeah, they've literally just bunkered down cook intent there
and are making five, six, a nine millimeters because that's

(04:30):
where the demand is and will continue to be.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, I can't find you can't see it. I have
a little reloading set up here. I can't find shot
gun primers or seven powders anyway.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Now, and this is going to be a problem because
if we have another Cowboys and Aliens kind of situation,
what are we going to use? You know, what is
Harrison Ford going to use to save us? Anyway? Nobody
saw that movie. Why am I making that joke?

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Let me know.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
I've got a good stash of percussion cap.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, we're all going to be leaning heavily on Carl.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Call fural humanity.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
So I think we've gotten a little bit ahead of
our skis here. We should we should start by talking
because again, I think we've all seen a lot of
people being like, well, I guess I should get a
gun now. As in the wake of Trump's victory, and
I think the first caveat we should give everyone is like,
if you are reacting in a way that is totally
reasonable to this news, being depressed, right, if you're somebody

(05:21):
who deals with suicidal ideation, if you have been spiraling lately,
if you have been thinking about self harm, if you
are just not in a stable mental place, and especially
if you have no experience with firearms and are not
in a stable mental place, don't go rush to pick
one up now. Look for one thing, I assure you
they will be available in the future. They are not

(05:42):
going to get harder to buy.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
No, you know. It mights be of a line from
the movie We Were Soldiers, which is actually a pretty
pretty good movie speaking oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a
lot of fun, not a Gibson. It was pretty good.
And there's a scene where like the old hardened soldier
from Korea World War two, Rhea it gets the Vietnam
and he's like, he's just got a pistol, and like
everyone's around him saying don't you one to In m
sixteen he goes, don't worry, There'll be plenty of those

(06:06):
laying around if I need one, So right, kind of
that's where we're at in this country.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Don't worry.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
There'll be plenty laying around if you need one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, we are not entering a period where that's you know,
I think there are some specific worries where there may
be attempts to restrict specific groups from arming themselves. But
even so, I wouldn't say that elevates it above a threat.
If you are dealing with suicidal ideation, having a gun
is not a talisman, as our friend tactical girlfriend often
brings up, and you shouldn't treat it as one. And

(06:35):
part of what that means is that, like, you have
to model like the threat that you're facing, right and
if you are not in immediate danger, if nobody is
threatening to kill you specifically, you know, then that may
not be the safest thing for you, right and particularly,
I think the other side of it that Carl, you
are much more qualified to talk about with than me,
is that if you are going to buy a firearm,

(06:55):
if you want that to be a thing that can
actually protect you in a situation where you are in danger,
where someone is threatening your life, you have to train
with it.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
No, absolutely, I think that not to make light of
that at all with that little joke about that movie.
But the reality is we as people humans in general,
all of us are bad at threat modeling. And that's
not to say that the perceived threat that we're seeing
with the results isn't real. I think it is. But
that said, at the moment, if you're dealing with some
of those issues like you mentioned, or the living situation

(07:27):
you're in, or even the community around you isn't one
in which a firearm laying around is particularly safe, could
mean that you're actually inducing more threat and risk to
yourself than what might come in two years. So that
is something we have to think about very carefully. Can
I possess this responsibly? Do I know how to use
it responsibly? Am I in a place not only in
my living situation, but my mental state that possessing this

(07:49):
very quick and easy to use lethal device is safe
to have around? Those are questions you should ask first
before worrying about tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Right, Yeah, I mean, maybe we should address like a
couple of things that Kyle said right off the bat,
Like you said, having a.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Fire I'm lying around right.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
One thing that we should address is like, I know
I recently purchased a new gun safe, but like if
you have ex budget to buy a gun. Robert also
mentioned that without training, your liability with the gun. Right,
maybe we can break down if you have a thousand dollars,
you don't need to go out and spend a thousand
dollars on your gun. Right, perhaps it would be better

(08:26):
to save some of that money and put it towards
other things. I think it might make sense to just
break those down for people in case they're not familiar.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, I think that that might be a good place
to start. Is if you decide number one, I'm in
an emotionally stable place. I either have some specific threats
or I want to be prepared for a future where
those threats are more likely. And let's start with a
budget of one thousand dollars, right, And you know this
is one There's going to be people who can't afford
a budget of one thousand dollars, and that's very unfortunate.

(08:55):
But this is one of those things that like isn't fair, right,
Like guns cost money, everyone has disposable income. But a
thousand dollars I think is a reasonable floor for not
just acquiring a firearm, but like the things you need
to be able to start building proficiency with it. So
let's talk about that car, like, what would you do?
What would you advise someone with a grand who is

(09:15):
looking into getting into shooting and also being set up
to potentially defend themselves if they need to.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Right, So, it's such a nuanced question and answer because
there's so many variabilities there, one of which is you
have to understand the living situation you're in. Are you
living in a place that is solely your own? Do
you live with roommates? Do you do you have children
and your parents? I mean, like these things all come
into the equation about how well can you secure this
thing should you acquire it? And so that comes up

(09:44):
to do you need a full bolt into the wall safe?
Do you need something that is locked with cable underneath
the bed that still is reasonably difficult to get into
but is accessible otherwise? Do you have a situation in
which you're the only one that could access this and
therefore you're not worried about that? So the first thing
you have to think about is that I'm taking possession
of responsibility of this. It is a lethal weapon. What

(10:06):
am I going to do to make sure that that
doesn't fall into the wrong hands, Whether the are people
that live within your own structure or outside of it
should something go awry, So you have to consider that.
So right off the bat is what are the situation
I'm in and what are the things I need to
consider to make sure this doesn't leak out of my control?
Because we've seen in so many instances, especially some of
the horrible spree shootings and such, in which is not

(10:28):
the person that possessed the gun but someone around them
that took it from them and used it for them. Absolutely,
and that's because it wasn't stored well. And so that's
number one. So you're going to think about one, are
you getting a small a pithol or a long arm?
And that's a discussion that we had too, but those
two equate. And then depending on which one of those
two you're acquiring determines the kind of safe storage requirements
that also aligned with your current living situation. Of course,

(10:51):
the best thing is a safe bolted to the floor
that only you can get into. But that's not viable
for everyone, yeah right, but it's something right yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
So what comes along with that is you also, this
is going to be true at every stage of this process,
you need to know the laws of your state, and
maybe even your local area. Right Like, in Oregon, we
have very strict safe storage laws, right Like, you can
be held accountable to a higher degree in this state
if you don't secure a weapon and someone gets access
to it. Right now, Obviously, if you have a safe

(11:21):
and someone drills into your safe, you're not liable, right like,
you took the actions you could to stop them from
being able to get to your firearms. There's not an
expectation that you have a fortress of solitude or whatever,
but you have to have taken reasonable steps to lock
them away, right and you know that's going to be different.
A lot of states have absolutely no requirements whatsoever, but

(11:41):
you need to be aware of what your local legal
situation is.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that to the table because myself,
living in Arizona, we have no such rules, and so
I can essentially you can just keep them on the floor.
I could stack them in my front yard, right I'm like,
I put them out in the yar. We'll see. I
had extra rs.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
I use them to make a fence cheaper than right now,
literally cold would now.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
So the thing about that is this is again, these
things get more and more complicated over time, but we
don't want to make this conversation impenetrable. But like, the
kind of safe you acquire is important too, and this
is that's a deeper topic than we could ever do
in one video. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and just
dovetail out to a friend of mine, Devian Olaf. He
has a channel. He does a lot of video work

(12:24):
about gun safe and which ones are good or bad.
But let's just say the cheap ninety dollars thing with
the cylindrical key lock, isn't it. So you've got to
be a little better than that. So I would ask them,
let's go with costs you're buying. Let's say in air fifteen,
you're probably gonna need to spend and I'm guessing here
around two hundred and fifty dollars for a safe that's
actually worth a damn Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, it's about what I spent recently for little hangguns safe.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
So let's let's build on that. Right.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Let's say you've society, do you want a gun, and
that it is safe for you to have a gun?
I think, Yeah, the first thing you want to prioritize
is making sure that no one who who that it's
not safe gets that gun, which we've addressed, right. The
second thing that you need to prioritize is that you
could use that gun safely and like you another liability

(13:11):
every time, yeah, that you pick up and load that gun, right.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yes, And part of that is in And maybe I
will have different opinions on this, but I think we're
probably sympatico picking the right type of firearm. I see
a lot of people saying, I am worried I'm going
to get attacked, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I am.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
I've been I've gotten a death threat. You know, I'm scared,
particularly of this group of you know, Nazis or whatever.
So I'm going to buy a handgun. And I will
tell you right now. My opinion is that if you
are looking for a self defense weapon, a handgun probably
shouldn't be what you pick unless you are looking to
carry a gun.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, no, that's a good quote, right. I carry a
handgun because it's unwieldy to walk around with a fifty
BMG yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I cannot. I cannot take my ar with me in
the street, right, so I keep an eye on me.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
You know, handguns are the most difficult thing to use
skillfully under distress and duress than any other firearm. And yes,
above and beyond that, they are actually the least the
fact of it doing the job you think they're going
to do than anything else.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, they're a shocking number of people are shot way
more times than you would expect they could survive with
a handgun, right, Like that is just a reality of
the way that they work, because they're much much less
powerful than a rifle. And it's also like, I had
a friend a couple of years ago who bought a
snubnose thirty eight, thinking, well, this is simple, I can't
fuck it up. It's a good And I took her

(14:35):
out and was like, I'm going to set up a
ten foot target and we'll see how many times you
can hit it with this gun. And she could not
do it one out of five times. And then I
brought out my glock and she was able to hit
it every time.

Speaker 5 (14:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
And it's because one of those is a much easier
weapon for somebody who is complete a complete novice to
learn how to use functionally. Right, And it's not the
snubnose thirty eight in the roughest.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Of most senses. Typically the smaller the gun is, the
more a professionally you need to be to use it right.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, And like with that in mind, you're responsible for
every shot you fire right training in self defense? What
by fucking accident because you don't know how to clean
your gun or what have you. Every bullet that leaves
that barrel, it's your fault and every one of those
is potentially someone's life. So when you're thinking about buying
a gun, you want to have something where you can

(15:32):
a handle it safely and be discharging and know where
that bullet's going to go.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah. So on that note, this has been asked for
me many times, and we're talking about we're all we
are on the same page. It's like when someone asking
this question and it comes up more than you'd think.
First of all, we're getting past the issue of like
are you safe to onllness and safe storage. So now
we're at the point you are buying a gun, right,
so you have to think, oh, what's the threat? Are
we worried about three years from now and the potential
realities of a very caustic and dangerous political future. Are

(15:58):
you worried about only defense? Are you worried about your
own self protection walking down the street, because obviously you're
not going to be well, not obviously, but for the
most part, you're not going to be carrying an AR
fifteen down the street. But if you are only worried
about your castle, make a joke about castle, doctor, And
if you're only worried about your house, inside your house,
there is no reason to be picking a pistol none whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Now, I will say that there's a number of folks
in the lefty gun space who will say, so, just
get an AR fifteen. That's not always going to be
practical depending on your loss, right, Like, that is not
something that we can say everyone will be able to do, right, Yeah,
but we can say there will be a non handgun
option that will probably be a better fit for you.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, And this is where we see a lot
of people in the gun space. It's kind of weird,
like cultural shifts in the zeitgeist. What's the cool defensive
thing of the time. But there's a lot to be
said depending on what you think you're going to have
to shoot at. Hopefully never of course, but like, yeah,
an AR fifteen does things like armor piercing in terms
of kevlar and da da da da dah. But for

(17:00):
home defense, it really still is kind of hard to
go wrong with a shotgun in many instances, and that
should not be ignored. You know what else shouldn't be ignored.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
It's our obligation to pivot to advertisements about every fifteen
minutes on this show. All right, we're back, Kyle, you'd
mentioned that you think a shotgun sometimes can be more

(17:29):
effective than NOW fifteen.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Especially.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Another thing I would add, as you're in a state
like California, the laws regarding Samuel automatic centerfire rifles are
incredibly confusing. It's extremely easy to buy something on Amazon
and slap it on your gun and render it a felony.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, I would generally say, like in most situations, an AR,
if you're new to shooting, it's going to be easier
to figure out. They're very simple, easy to upgrade and modify.
But like, yeah, in California, in a state New York
is similar, it's very easy to commit a felony with
an AR fifteen and not know that you are. And
you don't want to find out that your gun is

(18:06):
a felony when you have to use it in self defense.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Right. This is an instance in which the good old
man again. I'm not trying to perm I'm not I'm
not on team shotgun here, But when it comes to
cross all state lines, I mean, sure, there's an exception somewhere,
but for the most part, a manually pump activated shotgun, yeah,
is likely to not run a foul of the law anywhere. Additionally,
there's a good chance that if you were to and

(18:30):
we have to consider all realities, there's a good chance
that should you need to use it, that when you're
in court trying to defend yourself for using this lethal weapon.
A shotgun doesn't seem to evoke the same concerns let's say,
from courts and from judges that.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
An ar might and yar.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
You know, regardless of how common they are and how
much they proliferate society, there's still those scary rifles. A
shotgun does not tend to evoke that same kind of response.
It is most likely legal almost anywhere. And the diversity
of I mean, you can use in it really bridge
of the gap from one yard to one hundred yards
or more. But a lot of people that are new

(19:06):
to guns, we'll think, well, shotgun don't need to aim.
That is incorrect shotguns need to be aimed as much
as any other long arm. They're just very effective when
they actually connect.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, it's one of those I think because I do change,
like what I am taking with me based on where
I go, and like when I'm in California, I generally
like if I'm going camping or something, I'll make sure
i have a twelve gage in the car, right, because
I'm not going to try to get whatever this month's
gun laws are, right, you know, like that's just not

(19:35):
practical to me. That said, I think because there are
a number of people who will be very frustrated us
talking about shotguns. One thing that they are right about
is there's a different type of training that's necessary with
the shotgun, and they are in some ways more complicated
to use than an ar. In part because for every shot,
well unless it's a semi automatic, like for every shot

(19:56):
you're pumping it, right, and like that is that there's
muscle memory that has to be built there. Right, it's harder,
you know, maybe a little bit slower to get up
to a level or at least you have to train
differently with it. Right. The other thing about it is
that like it loads very differently you know, a shotgun
is a completely different kind of ammunition than an ar has,

(20:16):
which all goes back to the whole like you have
to be willing to train with whatever it is you're
going to use fair enough. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
See.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Ideally, like if you're in this position of thinking, if
you can find a friend or failing that, arrange that
will allow you to try different guns. I think as
a novice you're going to pick up if you've never
shot a gun before. I probably wouldn't pick up a
twelve gage shotgun and start pueuing away because the recoil
will be quite profound and notable to you. So don't

(20:45):
start there. Start with something else.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
There's smaller shotguns a twenty gauge, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
And those are fine expectedly if you're a smaller statute person,
even a twenty eight or sixteams are hard to probably
buy defensive ammunition.

Speaker 4 (20:56):
Four.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
But I think if you can and you begin that journey,
like after the TV ball, say with Hangouns, find one
that fits your hand.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
You probably have no.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Idea what fits you and feels good if you're just
starting out. Yeah, finding someone who is local to you,
ideally who has some experience who can help you along
that process, I think, and someone who you trust, right,
Like I've been like I have to train.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
I have a concealed carry weapons permit in California.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
The last time I went to take a course, like
from the outset, I got like xenophobia, homophobia, like jokes
that I guess the guy who was instructing the course
thought that everyone was in on just like they made
me feel unwelcome and I'm a cis heep white guy. Yeah,
but I think maybe we should address that, Like, if
you're thinking getting started, what kind of instruction should you

(21:44):
look for? Where should you look for it? And like
what would you recommend maybe other sources to Kyle, Like
your YouTube channel has been a great resource for me.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
This is this is where we're in the firearms it's
owning a thing doesn't mean a community. So there's always
phrase the gun community. It's not a thing. Owning a
thing doesn't make a community. A community is a group
of people that bond together over a mutual beliefs and
hopefully care for one another. So there's no firearms community.
But that said, the broad scope of people that have
been interested in the topic for the longest duration of

(22:17):
time has been mostly seceded to a group that we
would not find ourselves aligned with or comfortable with being around.
And so this is where the community building thing is
real because the more we build communities and we're behind
in this regards in terms to alternative voices in the
firearm space, but the more we build that community not
only online but amongst one another, the more we're going
to have safer, better spaces for us to work together

(22:40):
to learn how to use these things safely and efficiently.
And that is a challenge. If you walk in sight
unseen to a place that is probably foreign to you
in firearms land, sadly at this time point in time,
is a pretty good chance it's not going to be
something you're going to be comfortable with, quite honestly, just
like you mentioned, James, like, it's going to be that
kind of stuff. There's probably going to be Trump stuff
on the wall, there's probably going you're probably going to

(23:03):
hear some jokes that are just jokes but you know
they're really not. Yeah, that's the kind of space that
that's filled with. And so when people come and say,
well who can I go to to get this training with,
I'm like, that's challenging. There's some options online. There's like
Operation Blazing Sword, there's a there's there's the Liberal Gun
Club has some training options as well. But what's better
is finding people and interconnecting with people of like mind

(23:26):
around you, if you can, and working together, and then
actually building a real community that isn't a gun community.
And that's where we're going to find solace in the
ability to get better with this stuff together. Not a
great exactly a strong answer, but if the truth. But
if you're going in, if you're going in just unhindered,
you're going to expect it to be a place that
you're probably not going to be happy with.

Speaker 6 (23:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, And I think that's a really good point. I'd
like you can we talk a little bit more about
training options, like not just because you mentioned Operation Blazing Sword,
I'd like to hear a little more about them, but
also where people could go for like reading and videos
in order to kind of find more information on how
to develop proficiency.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah. So okay, so YouTube university doesn't teach you how
to actually like effectively hit targets with something that stiffly
that you can You can't. There's no way to learn
that besides doing it. But in terms of general firearms understanding,
learning some of the history, learning about how guns work,
there are some YouTube resources out there. Tactical Girlfriend you
already mentioned, has four years of a legacy of content

(24:31):
on her site that a lot of it is focused
on beginner style content. In fact, she just posted a playlist.
She has kind of stopped making videos in general, she
mentioned that a while back, but she still has her
content online and she posted a playlist recently of all
of her how to get going videos one oh one stuff,
and that would kind of be where I'd start with. Yes, absolutely,

(24:52):
my channel in Range TV has some of that. I
tend to focus a little bit on the more esoteric
and like next level, but that's not to say it's
not there as well. So I'm not trying to sell promote,
but I would actually say her playlist is going to
be better than some of my own, although we have
stuff like that on in Range TV as well. If
you want to open up that dark boy called reddit,
the Liberal Gun Club has resources on it. If you

(25:15):
go there, they have a list of people and local resources.
You can also google the Liberal Gun Club. I'm not
even trying to say anyone doing that is necessarily identifying
as a liberal, but they have gathered lists of statewide
resources as many as they can that are providing training
in regional places. That would be a good place to start.
Operation Blating Sword is a subset of that. Blake o'l

(25:35):
I can I pronounced them that dam Blake has been
on my channel and you'll find him there in the
Liberal Gun Club listing. When I think of that, I
would say, go to YouTube. He had a tactical girlfriend.
Go to in Range TV if you want to see
maybe not one on one but next level stuff, but
a friendly space to you, and then check out the
Liberal Gun Club best I can say, because they do
have a list of resources that they're gathering across the country.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, and I think one thing that tactical girl old
friend talks about that is a because because you're right,
and I think this is an important point that like,
you have to spend time shooting, and you know that
costs money in order to get better, But there is
one thing that you can do that does not cost
ongoing money to get better with a handgun if you're
again looking to carry a gun, which is dry fire training, right,

(26:19):
which is a very useful process of building proficiency. You
can do it. I mean you could do it every
day if you want. It will help. It does not
replace needing to go shoot right, but you can find guides.
Tactical girlfriend talks about it a lot, but you can
find other guides online. And that is a way that
you can kind of stretch your AMMO budget and gain
additional proficiency.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
There are even products design specifically for that. One of
them Possule Mind and there are others like mantis X,
and you make sure your gun is safely unloaded in
your proficient with that part of it. You put these
devices in and you can actually fire a dry fire
is firing with no ammunition the gun, click out a
target on the wall, and it'll teach you things about
like did you pull to the right, did you push
to the yes? Did you dip the gone? And those
are very good products that you can use once you

(27:02):
buy them. Gets more money, but you could train professionally
in a safe place without firing live ammunition and improve
your skills quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
That's a good point, yep.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah, I would say like another organization I would plug
is armed Equality, especially for like LGBTQIA people. Friends of mine,
very nice people. Perhaps we should go back then to that,
Like Roberts mentioned dry firing, we'd meant.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Well, first, I think we need to go to ads Jas.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
You're right, Robert, we should go back to Chumba Casino.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, so dry fire at the wall and think of
Trumpet Casino, or just download an operator from neurallink that
you got for me long Yep, that's right, that's right.
Our primary sponsors a brain ship.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
All right, we're back.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
So we've had discussion about training, safe storage, and a
little bit about like what to look at firearms wise.
I want to go back to that third one because
you are marketed at so heavily when you're trying to
buy a firearm, right, and the likelihood of you getting misinformation.

Speaker 6 (28:13):
Right.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
We all know smaller statute people who have been given
yeah as snubnose thirty eight, a gun that's entirely inappropriate
for them.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Cow.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
What like if you could maybe go through like each
major category, right, if we do hanggun, shotgun, semi automatic rifle,
maybe one that is compatible with ar band states, and
one that's you know, yeah, you're in real America.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
There are some options like the ares SCR that are
basically AR fifteen's that are a lot easier to keep
in compliance in a state like California, but they are
also more than twice as expensive as like a budget
AR fifteen right like, Which is not to say it's
impossible to have a budget AR fifteen that is in
comp a lot in compliance with California law. It's just

(29:00):
I am not going to take on the responsibility of
telling you how to do that legally, because when I
lived in California, I was only about eighty percent share
that I was in compliance.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
With the law.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
If you're in California, my advice would be to go
to a shop and buy the gun complete.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yes, don't piece it together of the Internet.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
That's good, good advice.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Oh well, if you're a new gun owner, don't piece
to get anything together, because the knowledge to make something
reliable that you've put together from bits and pieces is
not a good idea. You want something that's got to
I mean literally, you want something from a quote unquote
reputable manufacturer, but as a warranty, like, let's just be that.
Don't even start with trying to put something together. Yeah yeah,
so let's just go ahead and start with pistol. So
the challenge there is like, of course, it would be

(29:40):
very nice to be able to buy like four of them,
because you can train with the twenty two and practice
with this. M Well, let's go with the constraint that
we had earlier of this thousand dollars and you're going
to buy a pistol and with it you plan to train,
get better, be proficient, but also maybe have to use
it for self defense. You really want to stick with
a nine millimeter. I mean there are smaller guns like
three eighties and such like that, but we're getting into

(30:00):
specialist guns. Yeah, what is what I'm going to say
here across the board? When I recommend something, it's going
to be the opposite of specialist. It's going to be
the most bland, boring possible thing.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
And when it comes to that, and I know that,
everyone like, but it's a nine millimeter probably a glock yep.
The Glock nineteen is a relatively reasonably sized gun. The
seventeen's a little bigger the nineteens. In this nice middle ground,
it is carriable, it's small enough to be concealed should
you have the right to do so, but it's big
enough to be viable for being reasonably accurate with with

(30:31):
not extensive amounts of training, but enough training to get good.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
And it's a bunch around the nine milimeters magazine that
just playing works. Yep, Yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
If you're on a tight bygit, I will say that
cops are always you can find trade in police clocks
pretty cheap, cops don't shoot very much.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
You can sometimes get some pretty good deals on those.

Speaker 4 (30:50):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
That's it. I'm revealing a little bit of future history
of what's going on in range. We're doing a video
in a couple of weeks. There is a strange trade
imbalance between us and never mind on the politics. Yeah,
Turkey and they are making some really high end, oh
well made gun There is a glock clone from Turkey
that I can vouch for yet. But this is the
kind of where we're at in the gun space. This

(31:11):
thing is interchangeable with all glock parts and the guns
like two hundred fifty bucks. Oh well, you can't be
We don't know. Yeah, I'm not saying go buy that,
but I'm saying we're going to do a review of it.
The point is there are glocks and glocklike things. They
can get the price down.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, right, And so you're looking at you know, if
you get a budget ar for five hundred bucks, you know,
a budget not a nine millimeter handgun. Because even if
with not counting that one, there are other budget options
that are in the three hundred ish dollar range. You
just have to look around a bit. And I should
also note buying used with a firearm is not like

(31:45):
buying used with electronics. If a gun is well maintained,
it will outlast you. Right, there are some parts that
will need replacing from time to time. Right, Your springs
and stuff are going to age faster than other things.
And like barrels, you can shoot out, but it takes
quite a bit of shooting to shoot a barrel, you know, smooth. Right,
So it's never a bad to consider like finding, like

(32:07):
you said, like a police trade in or something like that,
Like that could be a great way to save money.

Speaker 4 (32:11):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
So when it comes to the pistol, we're talking about
buying just one pretty much boil it down to a
nine millimeter yep, that is probably a polymer frame gun,
not some big heavy steel thing. A glock is the
is like the de facto, but there are others. I mean,
there's there's hks, there's rugers.

Speaker 7 (32:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
I like SIGs, but they're pricier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The
thing about glock is block's been around forever. It's the
standard finding, accessorizing, buying magazines, or even getting repairs done
to a block is ubiquitous across the country. If you
get a glock y, you'll be able to deal with it,
fix it, do whatever you want to it straight up.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
And what has helped me a lot in general is,
you know, I have my carry gun, I have my
my home defense firearm, and then I have I have
bought built a couple of firearms from the ground up,
and I would certainly, as you said, I would never
have started there. But because I had the extra money
doing that means that has given me so much deeper
of an understanding of what goes wrong when things do

(33:06):
go wrong with a gun and how to fix it.
I've replaced every part on my carry gun at this point,
right like, over time, and it's given me a much
deeper level of understanding off just like mechanically, how these
things function. You know, building an AR fifteen was the
same process, and I'm really I do find that valuable. Obviously,
it's throwing more money at the problem too totally.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
So the other advantage of nine milimeter, which is reasonably
cheap defeat and shoot, he reasonably cheap to practice with.
For those of you that don't know anything about guns.
He will typically practice with what's called FMJ bulkpack ammunition. Yeah,
nine milimeter one hundred and fifteen grain. It's just a
bullet that's got a copper jacket on it, and that's
your practice AMMO. And then for Carrie, should you be

(33:50):
carrying it, you'll probably want to carry something that's specifically
designed to be defensive ammunition. It'll be far more expensive
per box, But once you get to the point of yes,
I am ready safe and capable to carry this, you're
going to want to pick something gold Dots Spear gold
Dots are a haul of point ye designed to specifically
be for self defense. But make sure the gun you've
chosen works reliably with that defensive AMMO, because even though

(34:12):
it works one hundred percent with that FMJ, it may
not work with the defensive AMMI. Y'ALLMO have to play
with a little bit.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, we should also know when you are buying AMMO online,
which is not going to be legal in every state.
But most people will be able to do this. It
pays to be careful. There is a lot of stuff
that is sketchier out there, and there can be consequences.
I have had a firearm. I have had like a
handgun blow up in my hand as a result of
getting ammunition that I had not shot before. This was

(34:41):
in fact turkish. I think it was because I think
it was a hot load, but it's possible that it
was the result of a bullet be a squib and
that then jammed in the barrel and then another around
came in after it. I generally have been pretty good
at checking to make sure there's a hole in the
paper with each shot, which is something you should be
making sure of, like yeah, when you're shooting, because if

(35:03):
you get if you shoot around that like does not
have enough powder behind it, right, if you get a
bad round, it can jam in the barrel, and then
the second round can cause the barrel to burst. This
is also why we always wear eye protection. But when
looking at AMMO, if you think this looks like good
AMMO and it's cheap, look online add like reddit to
the name. See what other people say about it, right,

(35:24):
Like see if you can find anything written about that.
If other usually other people, if it's like a less
reliable manufacturer, will have said I've had a bad experience
with this ammunition. Yep, do your diligence right the first
time you're shooting a new kind of cheap target AMMO.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
That that being said, like there's a lot of names
that almost anyone that's never owned a gun before will recognize,
names like Remington, right, Winchester. Yes, these are That's not
to say that they don't make mistakes too, but like,
if you're going to go buy a Winchester bulk back
of ammunition, you are bonding at least what is generally
considered consumer level reliable AMMO.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
If you're buying it absolutely crazy, Bob's reloading shack right,
you don't know that was what because it's a lot
of the sketchy stuff isn't even a manufacturer. It's like
Ammo that you may not notice immediately it's like, oh wow,
this seems really cheap, and then it'll say in small
letters remanufactured right, which means somebody has reloaded it, reloaded AMMA,
And like you know, you can reload Ammo and have

(36:19):
it be perfectly good ammunition. But do you know who
reloaded this amo?

Speaker 8 (36:24):
Right?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
I will tell you as a person that shoots a
lot and has been doing it for decades, I personally,
even with all that, I will never fire re manufactured ammunition.
I want to deal with Crazy Bob's weird badnes Yes.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yes, yes, exactly, Crazy Bob's bad Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
It's yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
We've addressed a pistol, right, like I want to dress lunguns.
And then you mentioned a couple of things callege. You
should also address whitch up like accessories. Robert mentioned eye protection.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
So let me let me add one more piece of
the pistol.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
We'll move on. Uh.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
The thing now, the whizbang thing now is every custill
has a red dot site on it. A red dot
site is essentially an electro optical box that sits on
the top of the slide and you look through it
to aim and it projects a red dot like almost
like a laser dot if you're not familiar with it
to aim with. For the most part, I'm not saying
you shouldn't have one because they're cool, But for the
most part, a person getting into this specifically for self

(37:18):
defense does not need one of those. You don't need
to spend three hundred dollars on a red dot. The
iron sights that come on any of these guns should
be sufficient for most purposes. So don't get suckered into
I need that. Yeah, if that's something you want later,
think about it, but it's not a requirement.

Speaker 9 (37:33):
Now.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
That said, if a gun has one on it, I
don't agree with people who say, like, you can't learn
to shoot on a red dot. I think that that's
now you should. You will need to look up because
it may not be sighted, how to site it right,
because it like red dots are a thing like you
need to dial them in right, and there is a
way to do that. Again, you can find guides to

(37:54):
this online, just like you can find guides like mounting
a scope on a rifle. These are complex mechanical tasks.
A red dot less so than a scope. But you
can't just buy a gun with a red dot on
it and trust that that red dot points out where
the bullet's going to go. That's not how they work.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Absolutely. My point being is if you gave me, you said,
this person here needs to be able to hit a
target fifteen yards away, you've got one hour, right, I
would not be messing by giving them a red dot.
I would give them with something with iron sights and
just get them through the task.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
If that's what go where I'm going with that, Yeah,
I think that's perfectly reasonable. Yeah. I prefer, like, now
that I know what I'm doing, to use my red
dots and stuff. But I also pretty regularly shoot with
iron sights, in part because I like it, Like it's
it's enjoyable mechanically, and it's kind of how I learned.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, or don't get me wrong, it is better. Yeah, Yeah,
it also has another level of complexity and it's more
to go wrong, Like if you're installing that.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yourself, it's annoying and it's easy to mess up and
then you're yeah upset and yeah. Yeah, let's move on
to long guns. Like one thing that we should mention
that you might buy an AR, specifically an AR actually
and find that it comes with no sighting systems at all. Yes,
and that's a thing to build into a budget. So

(39:10):
let's talk about like what to get feel budget in
in their long gun catcherycal.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, so when we go to long guns, we talk
about rifles and shotguns. Let's stick with rifles for now
I'm assuming so in that regard, this is the thing
where like, actually I have a video on my channel
about the NFA, which is the National Firearms Act, which
is what regulates a lot of machine guns and stuff.
But this also occurs across many gun control laws. They're
frequently ablest and the things that they pust the most

(39:36):
rescriptions on are the things that are actually most capable.
And that means that means AAR fifteen's in their general
guys with a pistol grip and a red dot site
which we just mentioned for pistols and a thirty round
magazine is the thing that is going to be the
most I could get anyone. I tell you, anyone capable
of hitting at a target at fifty yards within a

(39:57):
four hour training session with a red dot sided Air
fifteen and a good magazine. It's a good ammunition. Air
fifteens are light, low recoil. They're loud because of the
five five six, but they're light, low recoil guns that
almost any one of most body structure can handle. Now
there's exceptions, of course, if you have specific physical challenges
that's another discussion. But if almost anyone tiny to large

(40:22):
can handle a basic Air fifteen, and it is the
gun that is most focused on for gun control, ironically
places like California where they take away things that make
it more functional like no testol grip or reduce your
magazine capacity because they're trying to diminish the functionality of
the gun. But the reality is the reason they're doing
that is because that is the gun that is most
functional for most people, and it is therefore the one

(40:44):
that almost anyone can handle pretty well with the smallest
amount of training.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yes, And I think there's a good point there in
if I were coaching someone who is buying an AR
that has no you know, does not have iron sights
on it at all, you are it is much easier
to learn how to sit in and use a red
dot on an AR than learning how to adjust the
site the iron sights on an AR fifteen. Right, Like,

(41:10):
not that you can't learn that that you should again,
you have to, you can watch a video on it,
but it's much more intuitive to set up a red
dot in that way.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
This is actually where I would flip flop. If you're
with the pistol, don't concern yourself too much with the
red dot. If you're going with an air fifteen, concern
yourself with the lease. Get a red dot to the opposite.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah. Yeah, unless you were like in the Marines or
something and you know how to dial in your irons right,
and even then you're gonna have a better time with
a red dot.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, yeah, totally and once and a red dot is
very intuitive. So one of the things that people are
from the with firearms, but when you bring up a
long arm, there's multiple points of contact to the person
shooting the gun. When you bring up a pistol, you
probably have two hands on it and you're pushing your
arms out almost like you're like making a triangle. When
you're using a long arm like an air fifteen, there's
a butt stock on your shoulder, your cheek is on

(41:58):
the actual comb which is the bay of the stock.
Your other hand your support hand, it's holding the gun
up on the front of it. You have a minimum
of three points of contact with a red dot. That
makes it very stable and easy to get reliable hits.
And the red dot means you can keep both eyes open,
don't need to worry about the idiosyncrasies of focusing on
a front site. Essentially, if it's zero meaning the dot

(42:18):
is regulated to where the gun hits. And you put
the dot on the thing and press the trigger without
doing something like jerking the gun, you'll hit the target.
And so that's why that matters.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Yeah, so what sort of bud each people be looking at,
and like, would you be comfortable recommending, like even brands
that they should look at.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
It all comes down the cost when it comes to
our fifteen. So you can spend as much money as
you want. The reality is I have a video on
the channel. Never mind if you like or dis like
the company. They're one of the ones that really push
the lower cost products out there. PSA it stands for
Palm Models, pal Metal State Armory. You can go there
and get your branded trump lower but at the same time,
you can get an AR fifteen for like four hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, and like in the gun space, you're not going
to find someone to buy who is spotless and selling
guns in large numbers cheaply.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, like that's not so like so so for foreigner
bucks are around there. From PSA, you can get a
traditional what's called an M four. It's essentially a sixteen
inch car beam. It won't have any sighting system on it,
so expect to throw another two hundred bucks ish onto
a reasonable red dot site on that. So for around
the six hundred dollars range, you're gonna get a gun

(43:29):
that's going to weigh seven pounds, but it's gonna have
low recoil and you're going to have something that's for
the most part, reasonably reliable. Is it the best of
the company. Is the best of the best. No, but
it's reasonably lightweight. It is well manufactured. I've done videos
about them on my channel. They've worked just fine, and
so foreigner ish for the gun of the two hundred,

(43:50):
for the sighting system, couple mags, you could get out
of the door for under seven hundred dollars with everything
probably under that, maybe under six hundred even if you're careful.
Oh but let me plug one thing. If you've got
lots and lots more money, double that. You you know what
would Staughtter do? Carbon which I designed. It'll be half
the way and super reliable from Katie Arms. But I

(44:11):
love mind doesn't bring any money to me. I'm just saying.
The point I'm making here is you can get something
good enough, and if you've got more money, there is
better out there that are lighter, more reliable guns, but
you don't need to. As my point, I'm not trying
to sell anything here.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, they are one of the few manufacturers who offer
like a California compliance solution at checkout, which is nice
for California people.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yes, yes, so that can be a really beneficial thing
to you in terms of you know, not having it
be something that you're scared about.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
California Compliant will probably mean no flash hider, no pistol grim,
and a fixed magazine at least.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
At point in time you can have you can have
the removable magazine if you don't have the flash heighted
pistol grip and the collapsing stock.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
So okay, all right, Well, if you can buy it
from them ready to go, there's I know, there's also
magazine capacity requirements in so maybe you have to buy
like a couple ten round bags or something like that.

Speaker 9 (45:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Yeah, obviously thirty round bags are better than ten round bags,
and for mostly if you live in a place like California,
do not worry too much about that. If you get
a little proficiency on that, a couple ten round bags
will do a lot.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
And to be honest, in self defense, shootings. The odds
are load that you will be firing that many rounds
right now. If you're in a self defense shooting where
you do need more bullets than that, there's really nothing
that can replace having those bullets you know available.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
But yeah, don't get reptraniacs on it, like there's no
something you can change.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
The fact that you only have a ten round magazine
does not mean that you can't become reficient.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, And I don't want anyone here to think that
I'm saying you shouldn't. You should be able to get
a six ye round bag. You're one far as I'm concerned.
Places like California have these restrictions, have them statistically speaking,
and I don't know if this data has changed. Most
self defense shootings happen within three yards, three seconds, three
shots fired.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, yep, yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
I think it's really good to remember that when you
are seeing some ube they tell you need to be
able to have thirty rounds in five five hundred yards.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I don't go downtown without my backpack and my SBR
and three hundred black at with six thirty round magazine successible.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I was in conceptive Man Scat of cities. Yeah. Yeah,
I carry an RPG and I take the little safety
camp off because I like to live that way.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, dangerously down. My clothing is made out
of debt cord. I just wear nothing but debt cord
wherever I go. We're all going down.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
At least you take some people with you. It's all
city blocks though. Yeah, self defense mataden. But let me
say one more thing about long arms. Another thing you'll
see from people that are new in the space, depending
on what they've seen or what they've consumed. This is
going to get some hate. Don't bother with aks, Yeah,
just don't. This is the United States of America, and
this country believes in the air fifteen. And what that
boiled down to is they're everywhere. They're prolific. The parts

(46:53):
are here, yeah, the repairs here, they're well manufactured. When
you stray from that course to something like an AK,
your first while, you're losing eronomics. But that's a different problem.
You're dealing with an unknown quantity of problems. You get
an air fifteen. That's what's in this country. It's what's prolific. Yeah,
if you were in if you were in somewhere war

(47:14):
torn Africa, get your AK here.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I'll say this about the war torn AK countries because
I've been in three countries where the primary arm is
an AK M right, like a kind of AK right Siria, Ukraine,
in Iraq. In all three of those countries, every soldier
who knew their stuff, who was proficient and had the option,
chosen AR platform. If they could get one hundred percent

(47:36):
of the time, they're just better fire arms.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah, that's been my experience as well. They look cool,
but but don't go Yeah, just get an air forea.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, Like, I love my ak's, but they're they're range
fut toys, right like.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
So let's talk about.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Accessorizing, which again is much easier with ais and aks. Like,
what other stuff you need to build into a budget.
If you've not show up before, you might not know
that you need a pro I pro sling, maybe ulster.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Well, we'll start with the firearms accessories, right, So with
the pistol. First of all, we talked about safe storage.
That's already off the table. With the pistol, if you
plan to carry it, you need a good reliable holster
and a good reliable gun belt.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Good lord, yes.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Depending on how you want to carry it. That'll determine
the kind of holster. If you want an outside the waistband,
which means it sits outside your belt, that's one thing.
If you're carrying it concealed, you're probably gonna want an
inside the waistband, which goes between your belt and your body.
Again under the level of training there, because when you're
drawing from that, things can go wrong. Sure, and that's
where people tend to shoot themselves. So that's what you
needed to be very cautious of. Yeah, but with a pistol,

(48:41):
typically you're going to want probably an extra magazine or two.
It may come with one, depending on what you bought.
A quality gun belt and a quality holster.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Now what about a forty four derringer and an ankle
holster on each angle? Right like that seems like the
ideal solution. Anytime you're in danger. You just got a
squat right down there, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
get real low, especially when you've.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Been pushed pushed onto your back by by the mob
and you're there in that scene and you're pulling it
out of your ankle holster.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah right, no, no, no, just just get a wire
around the trigger and attach it to your toes so
that you can squeeze your toes and fire the What.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
You need is the belt buckle revolver from North American US. Yeah,
that is great. Yeah, no, from that freaking movie, the
vampire movie Quinn Tarantino.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Oh geez, so that's still done.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
God yeah, no, before the belt, a magazine or two
extra it might come with them, and a quality holster. Now,
the obvious question is what's a quality holster And the
obvious answer is there's too many out there to be
able to offer you that answer right now. Probably something
polymer if it's going to be outside the waistband. And
this will be another one that'll get people fired up. Generally,
avoid the Surpa holsters unless you really want to have

(49:56):
a lot of training. Surple holsters are one that have
a little button on the side that the gun to
come out if you're not brained well or have the
wrong gun in it. It also allows you to accidentally shoot
yourself quite easily as well.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, best avoided. That's that's a very good point. And
also one thing I will note is there's a danger
that a lot of people aren't aware of with leather,
which is that leather holsters. Now, there are some leather
holsters that have like a trigger area reinforced with kaidex,
which is, you know, a rigid, plasticky substance. But if
it's not in time, those can start to like get

(50:26):
weaker and warn in such a way that it can
also cause it to press the trigger when you holster it. Like,
that's a thing that has happened to people. So I
generally think you want whatever you want the trigger guard
to be rigid and not something that's going to like
warp and be malleable around the trigger, right, Like the

(50:46):
whole point is that it stops the trigger from fire.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yes, this you want to avoid that. How about with
the with the long guns, like what are you going
to need to budget for those? And then other things
like for shooting Germany that you'll need if you don't
already have.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
So when it comes to the long arm, we already
said if you're going to get an Air fifteen, you're
going to want to stick some sort of red dot
site on it. The lowest cost ones that are the
unbelievably bomb proof are a Chinese company called hollow Sun. Hell, yeah,
I have a hollow Sun from twenty seventeen. That is
still works just fine. I love my hollow suns. Yea,
my hollow sun's been bounced down an asphalt road and

(51:22):
it still works fine.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
So it's the opposite of a fail sun, a hollow sun.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
So you can pick up a red dot hollow sun.
Those can go and you can get those sometimes sometimes
that low is like one hundred and fifty bucks. Yeah,
so you'll need a red dot site. A sling is nice,
not required, especially if you're going to be using within
the premises of your property. You probably don't need to
worry about that. It Also, slings can cause issues like

(51:47):
get caught on things or things in your house or
even tangle you up. So that's this training issue. So
sling is iffy an extra magazine or two. And if
you're planning on needing to use this for a defensive
purpose inside of your home or structure or at night,
it's not the worst thing in the world to throw
on a flashlight.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah, yes, especially if it's like a defensive firearm, like
it's your home defense gun or a carry gun like
a flashlight. And also if you're I think it's generally
a good idea if you're going to carry a carry
firearm with a flashlight. Have another flashlight that's not on
a gun, because one thing you should never do is

(52:25):
use your gun flashlight to look at just random shit
that you need a flashlight.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
When you come home at night in the dark. You forgot,
you forgot, you can't find which key is the right Nah,
don't do that. Don't do that.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Don't do that. That's a pretty good list of accessories.
And make sure you have a lad air and eye
protection as well.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
So that's we're gonna go all the safety side of things.
You need proper shooting glasses. That means not the glasses
that you picked up for readers at Walgreen. If they're
shooting glasses can be as cheap as nine bucks all
the way up to hundreds of bucks. You can get
them at the sporting good store. But there does not
with the kind of plastic to be able to take
shrapnel or hits from pieces of fragments that are high velocity.
They're meant for that. So ten dollars shooting glasses. Yes, yes,

(53:11):
hearing protection.

Speaker 10 (53:12):
Those can be squishy earplugs you put in your ear,
or they can be over the head mouths. Do not
ever shoot guns except in the most critical conditions or
situations without eye protection and hearing protection. Because that's the
kind of stuff where you lose an eye and every
time you fire that gun, you're losing hearing every time.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yes, yes, and like for the really because obviously most
like it hurts to shoot a firearm without hearing protection.
Like you can get away with shooting a gun without
EyePro every time, but the one time, right, which is
why I really emphasize eye protection. It's easy to convince
yourself I don't need to have it on right now, you.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Do, like, because that's the day that it does the thing.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yes, yes, guns do fuck up for lack of a
better tear and you really don't want your eye unprotected
if they do.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Yeah, it's it's a bad.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Day, absolutely, and so but you on the safety side
of eye protection and hearing protection, it can be as
cheap as ten dollars shooting glasses and a bottle of
squishy earplugs. You're going to be in there for twenty bucks.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have to be expensive. Make sure
you have it and make sure you use it.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
But you know what, before you do any of this,
you know what's a smart thing to do. Go take
a class from Stop the Bleed and learn how to
use tourniquets and medical gear. Yeah, and have that around
anyway before you ever buy a gun. Go do that, Yes,
a mess, that's the most important thing you could do
for anyone.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Yeah, Yes, And that, as you said, should be a
priority before getting the firearm. And if you have the
money to get and train a gun, you have no
excuse for not having an individual first Aid kit an
IFAC and the knowledge of how to use it.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Ye right, And I think Stop the Bleed classes are
usually free. You can look it up and Stop the
Bleed dot com or dot org, google it. Take a
class that's chasy, how to use a tournique, use how
to use a bandage. Have an IPAC, as was just mentioned,
can be a pretty simple kit. And as you said, Robert,
if you can afford a gun, you can afford that
and have that with you on the range anytime you're shooting,
because as you said, guns can fuck up. They usually don't,

(55:10):
but if they do, you're gonna want that I fact,
and that I fact, and that training might just help
your neighbor one day when they get in a car
accident or whatever.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
I regularly make the decision not to carry my gun
with me places. Right, you know, I'm gonna go out
and get drunk tonight. I don't need if I have
a fire alarm one me when I'm drunk. But you
know what I always have is the IFAC, right every
single time. You know, because number one drunk with an
I FAC, I'm no.

Speaker 4 (55:34):
I might.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
I'm probably less effective, but I'm not going to endanger anyone.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
You're just like, hey, buddy, I think you need a
PARNA kit and he's like, no, give me here. Google said,
this goes around the neck. But once again, a softable
class and an IPAC is more likely to serve you
or your community more than any gun ever will.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Yeah, and that's a great place. I would say that.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
If you are going down this pathway and you're looking
to join openly leftist gun organizations, there are several, right
John Brown, grun Club, Socialist RFE Association.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
We've had those people on a show before.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Be cautious when you're doing that, and keep an eye
on things because that could be something that might get
you into trouble in the long run. So it's something
to be aware of.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, it might be good to just put a holder
on joining a new organization until we're a few months
into this thing coming up next year. Maybe have an
idea about what kind of things might be safe and
what kind of things might be less safe.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Definitely, no, but none of that stops you from using signal,
building community and learning how to use a firearm properly.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Right at meeting people, yes, and like training with them,
you know, and taking getting training, building proficiency. Absolutely, all
of that is legal and will remain legal. Just don't
start if anyone ever talks to you about let's make
a militia to do that, it's time to leave that conversation,
right because, among other things, at this point, there's a

(56:59):
good chance it's the FBI.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Yeah, if you live in Michigan, do not. Yeah. Yeah,
this podcast brought to you by co Intel proh.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
But I mean it's a tough challenge. And so the
other thing you can do is also, once you've got
your basic proficiency up and you know that you are
safe in terms of handling things, let me throw this
out there too. It doesn't have to be any specific one,
although remember you're going into a space that may not
be politically your comfortable place. A good place to build
up skill is to go shoot matches competitions. Yeah, for

(57:35):
the most part, it's business oriented. You'll see you'll hear
some stupid comments here or there, depending on what match
you're at, But the reality is you're not there for that.
You're there to get better with your gun on a
course of fire that they put up for you. Pay
your ten bucks or twenty bucks and learn how to
shoot better in those conditions. And that's another space to
once the basic trainings out of the way, don't go
to match the b training. Use the match to help

(57:55):
increase your skill after you've gotten training. But those matches
can be a place to really help you out a lot.
And there's a lot of them around and those are
easier to find than almost anything.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Yep, practice scores where you can lick them up if
you're into that.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Kind of thing. Excellent, Thanks very much for joining uskyle.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Do you want to very briefly plug your YouTube channel
where can people find you?

Speaker 11 (58:13):
Well?

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Sure, and thank you for having me on the show.
It's always a treat. I really appreciate it. It's always
great to be able just to hang out with you
both do it more often. You can find my work
It's in Range TV. You can find my website at
Range dot tv. I'm distributed, decentralized across multiple platforms, a
predominant one being YouTube. Cover everything from civil rights history,

(58:34):
human rights to firearms to from old West flintlocks up
to the most modern machine guns across the channel. Some
of it is instructional, some of its history. And I've
got a cool video dropping tomorrow, in fact, well tomorrow
based on when we're recording this on the Opium Wars
and how Britain and China's firearms technology discrepancy caused Hong

(58:54):
Kong to be owned by Britain. That's the kind of
stuff I do on my channel, So check that out.
And if you want to find matches that are going
to be a place that is truly an inclusive space,
we do run matches called Brutality Matches. You can find
them at brutalitymatches dot org. They're not monthly, we have
run a couple of them across the country, but I
can guarantee you that's the space you will feel comfortable
because we make.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
It that way. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Yeah, thanks col.

Speaker 12 (59:28):
Last week, two major news networks CNN and CNBC partnered
with the so called prediction market Calshi, an online political
betting platform, to use Calshi's real time betting data in
TV news segments, online news content, and, as Calshi announced
on X the Everything app quote to integrate prediction markets

(59:52):
into CNN's global newsroom, with Calshi threatening quote, a new
era of media is here. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. Regular CNN viewers may have noticed this
integration has already been happening for some time. This past

(01:00:13):
election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in place of
an addition to polling data to weigh the likelihood of
candidate's winning elections. CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enton Nate
Silver Protege, who used to work for five point thirty
eight trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news
stories earlier this year. How she praised Entin by name

(01:00:36):
in their announcement of the CNN partnership.

Speaker 4 (01:00:39):
Quote.

Speaker 12 (01:00:40):
Enton is an expert at translating what data and polling
are saying on any given issue, and through this integration,
he can tap into real time prediction markets data to
better inform and fact check his reporting unquote. Here's an
example of this reporting in a CNN segment from October
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 13 (01:01:00):
If you go back six months ago, you go back
to April k Bauld when what were we looking at. Well,
we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear
shot of taking control of the US House of Representatives.
According to the Calshi prediction market odds. We saw them
in an eighty three percent chance. But those odds have
gone plummeting down. Now we're talking about just a sixty
three percent chance, while the gopiece chances up like a

(01:01:22):
rocket up like gold, up from seventeen percent to now
a thirty seven percent chance.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
So we'll look like a pretty clear.

Speaker 13 (01:01:28):
Demo likely Democratic winning the House come next year has
become much closer to toss up at this point, although
still slightly leading Democratic.

Speaker 12 (01:01:37):
Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote unquote odds are
formed for what they really are. To a viewer who
just tuned in or maybe isn't paying that much attention,
it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually
from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed on

(01:01:57):
screen the way you would see pull data or legitimate
information used in a newsroom. This short section using the
Calshi prediction market odds was then followed by three minutes
of analysis using selective mid term voting data from twenty
seventeen to twenty eighteen to support the movement in these

(01:02:19):
gambling odds. The gambling ods themselves were a load bearing
piece of information in this piece. Calshi's main competitor, another
so called prediction market called poly Market, partnered with x
the Everything app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to
integrate their prediction data into online news content. Time Magazine

(01:02:42):
and Sports Illustrated have also both launched deals with the
prediction market platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction
markets and how do they function? On poly Market and Calshi,
users can bet yes or no on the outcome of
a question relating to world events, which is called a market.

(01:03:03):
As more money is wagered on either side, the odds
of the outcome change. Currently, top questions include various predictions
for Time Person of the Year, will the US strike
Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of
the Epstein files, and who will be the next president.
Calshi has Trump's chances at six percent. Here's Polymarket CEO

(01:03:26):
Shane Copelan explaining on sixty minutes.

Speaker 11 (01:03:29):
You make money if you're right, you lose money if
you're wrong, and as a result, it creates this information
that's reallyseful for people.

Speaker 12 (01:03:36):
These companies would like you to believe that the ratio
of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome
of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for
the general public to forecast the future, whether that's through
betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner

(01:03:56):
of a sports game, which days of the week Israel
will be Gaza, or what movie will win Best Picture.
Almost fifty million dollars is currently being wagered over a
potential Russia Ukraine ceasefire in twenty twenty five. Production markets
currently have three billion dollars in weekly trading volume. I

(01:04:18):
do need to note these companies argue that hedging outcomes
of world events legally is not gambling, because that would
be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal under
the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of two thousand and six,
which suppressed the early prediction markets of the two thousands

(01:04:39):
but Kalshi is regulated as a platform for trading financial
derivatives rather than securities trading or straight up legalized gambling,
and this determines what entity they have to register with
and what regulations they're subject to. Calshi launched in twenty
twenty one with a federal license from the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission, and after a year's long battle, in October

(01:05:03):
twenty twenty four, a federal appeals court ruled in favor
of Calshi, allowing online prediction market betting on US elections,
rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the
practice was illegal gambling and their concerns that prediction market
betting could undermine election integrity. Former CFDC chairman Rostam Benham

(01:05:27):
misstatement in May of twenty twenty four, reading quote contracts
involving political events ultimately commoditize and degrade the integrity of
the uniquely American experience participating in the democratic electoral process.
Allowing these contracts would push the CFTC, a financial market regulator,
into a position far beyond its congressional mandate and expertise.

(01:05:52):
A week before his dad took office in January twenty
twenty five, Donald Trump Junior became a strategic advisor at Calshi.
Polymarket launched in twenty twenty without registering with the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission, and was fined one point four million
dollars by the CFTC in twenty twenty two for operating

(01:06:13):
as an unregulated exchange and was henceforth prohibited from allowing
bets from US based users, though the poly Market CEO
sees it a little different.

Speaker 14 (01:06:24):
It was at one point four million dollar fine and
also U was a settlement and you could not have
customers in the United States.

Speaker 11 (01:06:30):
Yeah, we had to go in jeoblock trading in the
US and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't hey,
you're banned from trading the US. It's like until you're licensed.

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
I mean it was breaking the law.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
I mean people say breaking the law. It's like which
law you know? So if anything it's.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
Incompatible, it's incompatible with the law.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Yet, with the regulatory matrix that existed.

Speaker 12 (01:06:49):
The past two years, Polymarket has found to be facilitating
illegal gambling and subsequently banned in the countries of Switzerland, France,
the UK, Poland, Upore, Belgium, Romania and Australia. Most of
these bans just require geoblocking users, which can be easily
circumvented through the use of a VPN, and since the

(01:07:12):
financial transactions on poly market are all done through cryptocurrency,
it's not clear that polymarket is taking any steps to
enforce these bans beyond geo blocking. In the midst of
facing regulatory hurdles and bands from across the globe, Polymarket
still exploded in popularity last year, attracting investment from Peter

(01:07:34):
Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds of thousands of new users,
primarily driven by betting on the US presidential election, speculation
on whether Biden would drop out of the race and
who Trump would pick as vice president, all despite the
platform technically being banned in the United States after the

(01:07:54):
first presidential debate in July twenty twenty four, around the
attempted assassination of Trump and the RNCA, Polymarket gained sixty
thousand new accounts. The year prior, polymarket averaged two thousand,
three hundred new accounts per month. August twenty twenty four
saw seventy thousand new accounts September ninety thousand, October three

(01:08:17):
hundred thousand, the month after Trump's second inauguration four hundred thousand. Currently,
polymarket has over sixty thousand daily active traders and hundreds
of thousands of monthly traders since October twenty twenty four.
To give another example of their recent growth, in April
twenty twenty three, Polymarket's monthly volume was about three million dollars.

(01:08:42):
A year later, it was thirty nine million. In November
twenty twenty four, it was two point five billion. Last month,
it was three point seven billion. In summer twenty twenty five,

(01:09:08):
cash Ptel's, FBI and a CFTC under Trump dropped investigations
into whether polymarket was illegally allowing US users to place
bets using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Junior's venture capital
firm invested in the platform, and Trump Junior himself joined

(01:09:29):
Polymarket's advisory board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Junior
joined Polymarket, the Commodity Futures Training Commission announced it was
going to allow polymarket to operate in the United States
after acquiring another company that held a US license. This
past October, Trump's own Truth Social announced it was partnering

(01:09:51):
with Crypto dot com to launch truth Predict quote, a
revolutionary prediction market backed by President tru for enhanced decision
making unquote. When Barry Weiss's sixty Minutes did a puff
piece on poly Market with its CEO last week, Anderson
Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading, poly Markets

(01:10:16):
CEO Shane Kaplan seemed to think that a little bit
of insider trading might be good actually.

Speaker 14 (01:10:23):
But predicted markets do rely on someone having some inside information.

Speaker 11 (01:10:29):
Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge
to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need
to curate them, and you need to be really clear
and stringent on where the line is drawn in like
sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time
on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this
will happen and there's a lot of benefits from it
and people will adapt.

Speaker 12 (01:10:48):
The CEO did not elaborate on what poly markets practice
of curating insider trading looks like and where their quote
unquote stringent line is drawn, because in reality it doesn't
seem this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through
these vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the

(01:11:11):
point of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their
prediction markets more accurate, so it's a net positive, and
if it fucks over some users on the other side
of a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week,
an alleged insider trader won over a million dollars for
bets on Google's twenty twenty five year in search rankings,

(01:11:33):
listing twenty two out of twenty three in the correct order.
This user has made a series of early bets related
to Google the past year, like the exact release date
of Google's Gemini three point zero, which they won one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars on. But because this polymarket
user isn't trading stock, there's no clear regulatory mechanism to

(01:11:58):
stop this behavior, and poly market can't reverse these trades
because they run through the blockchain, not that they would
even necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst and
poly Market advisor Nate Silver was also asked about insider
trading on the China Talk podcast two months ago.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Are you worried about insider trading with this.

Speaker 15 (01:12:22):
With all this political betting, I mean there's an aspect
of like, look, these are all crypto, uh, you know,
you get on these markets with crypto and like like
there were markets like which way is Suzanne Collins going
to vote? And you know the sort of the like
you know, like the tail outcomes for like a legislative

(01:12:42):
assistant in her office? Are you know you can make
ten times your salary? And like a minute, right, what's
your what's your think think on this?

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
For sure?

Speaker 16 (01:12:54):
I mean, look, I think there are a couple of
qualifications though, Like, first of all, I think people on
the inside often aren't as well as some formed as
they think, and or there are.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Some downsides having an inside view and not an outside
of you.

Speaker 16 (01:13:07):
You might drink the kool aid, so to speak, right,
you might be in a bubble.

Speaker 15 (01:13:12):
Yeah, look, I mean, I mean there are ones where
it's like you can literally I mean there's been a
lots of group chats people talking about like very very
sketchy trades, uh and one way bets that are being
made in the stock market of like what's going to
happen with a trade deal? I mean you can literally
be the person who decides right and be vetting on
the side if they're weird.

Speaker 16 (01:13:33):
If there are incentives to make money in a world
of eight million people, many of them are very competitive,
in all of whom and not all of them, most
of them access to the Internet. Right, people are gonna
find a way a way to do it.

Speaker 12 (01:13:43):
Right, let's pause here for a sec. What do you
think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to
political insider trading as like an unfortunate but somewhat inevitable
consequence of our evolving system of fire, as like.

Speaker 16 (01:14:01):
In the crypto space, we've seen like an increasing number
of like crypto kidnappings. Right, Well, I mean that's one
of the consequences if people are worth vast amounts of
wealth that isn't very secure. It's just it's just gonna
gonna happen until you up security or have better solutions
or whatever else.

Speaker 4 (01:14:17):
And so like, you know, I don't think there's.

Speaker 16 (01:14:19):
Necessarily anymore or less insider creating on like polymarket than there.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
Might be for in sports betting sides.

Speaker 16 (01:14:25):
We've seen a lot of sports betting scandals or for
regular equities. You know, I believe the literature says that
like members of Congress achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
I'd have to do. I'm sure there's some debate about that.
I have to like to double check that.

Speaker 17 (01:14:41):
Right.

Speaker 12 (01:14:41):
It's fine, bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine.

Speaker 4 (01:14:45):
Actually.

Speaker 12 (01:14:47):
So Naate goes on to say that prediction market insider
trading isn't that different from congressmen doing insider trading on
the stock market, or like rigged sports betting, but he
really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad
and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed,

(01:15:10):
and prediction markets intentionally skirt regulation. They currently have far
less legal protections for users against unfair practices, and with
crypto they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors. And
now news companies are legitimizing turning everyone's phone into a
corrupt casino for world events, whether that's Israel starving Palestine

(01:15:34):
or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish
this week. The day before CAWSHI announced their partnership agreement
with CNN and NCNBC, CBS aired a sixty minutes puff
piece on polymarket, anchored by Anderson Cooper.

Speaker 4 (01:15:50):
When we met with Copeland.

Speaker 14 (01:15:52):
Last month, more than three point six million dollars had
been wagered on whether or not Venezuela's president, Nicholas Muduro
would be out.

Speaker 18 (01:15:59):
Of power by the end of the year.

Speaker 14 (01:16:01):
Polymarket users didn't think, so they gave it only a
twenty three percent chance. And if you buy no on that,
and you're buying it at seventy eight cents and at
the end of the year he's still in power, yeah,
you get a dollar per share, so you've made a
profit of twenty two to share. I can see why
this would be I mean, I don't want to use

(01:16:22):
a term addictive, but it would be compelling.

Speaker 4 (01:16:25):
I mean maybe it is a tick fire. No, well,
certainly compelling.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
This is how I see it.

Speaker 11 (01:16:28):
If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for
you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela
and try and get an edge.

Speaker 12 (01:16:37):
Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Calshi partnered
CNN as well as CBS's Sixty Minutes, is so hesitant
to call this clearly addictive practice addictive, quote unquote compelling.
Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copelan explained the platform earlier

(01:16:58):
in this piece.

Speaker 11 (01:17:00):
It's a site where you can basically bet on current events,
some sort of question about the future, like an election,
and as a result, when a ton of people are betting,
you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how
likely each outcome is.

Speaker 14 (01:17:14):
And how accurate is it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
It's the most.

Speaker 11 (01:17:16):
Accurate thing we have as mankind right now, until someone
else creates some sort of super crystal ball.

Speaker 12 (01:17:23):
Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO quote may
be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely onto something unquote.
In explaining how polymarket users attempt to seek truth and
gain an edge, Copeland told the story of how in
twenty twenty four, an anonymous French user made over eighty

(01:17:45):
million dollars on Polymarket by betting on Trump winning the
presidential election, and to bolster his bets, he contracted you
gov to conduct private polls in swing states.

Speaker 11 (01:17:55):
People thought he'd just liked Trump, and he had actually
commissioned a ton of private polls something called neighbor polling,
which is you ask people who they think their neighbors.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Are likely to vote for.

Speaker 11 (01:18:05):
For scenarios for an election where there's a stigma to
saying you're going to vote for somebody, and people feel
some sort of social awkwardness. And what he noticed was
there was huge discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the
normal polling, and the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
He thought Trump was undervalued.

Speaker 11 (01:18:21):
If this guy was not able to make eighty million,
but rather able to make eighty thousand dollars, he would
have never gone through the hassle. But when you get
markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for
people to go above and beyond to try and find truth.

Speaker 12 (01:18:33):
What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer
scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote unquote
find truths. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this
specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the
CEO of poly Market has a personal incentive to encourage.

(01:18:55):
But Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of t truth.
Even though Donald Trump was way ahead in prediction market
odds back during the twenty twenty election, which had his
chances of winning that election far higher than what pure
polling models showed. Calshi claims that prediction markets can help

(01:19:18):
journalists quote unquote fact check, but doesn't explain how fact
can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where is the
fact in gambling? Well, we will find out after these
ads to quote from polymarket advisor Nate Silver's blog The

(01:19:49):
Silver Bulletin quote, It's basically good when people are more
exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized. But of
course I also analyze polls and build probabilistic models myself.
In that capacity, I strongly disagree with the notion that
prediction markets can serve as a good substitute for polls.

(01:20:10):
These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by the prediction
market companies themselves, including Polymarket. To be fair, one minor
pet peeve is that both reporters and readers often confuse
probabilities for poll results. Quote, as Nate goes on to explain,
if Trump is up fifty five to forty five over

(01:20:32):
Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's not saying that
Trump is expected to win by ten points. It means
that ten percent more users on the website favor Trump winning,
which is pretty close to a toss up. This confusion
is a huge problem which is bolstered in both how

(01:20:53):
prediction market companies market their platform, but also how journalists
use gambling data in news store. If you see a
social media post, an advertisement, or a random news segment
showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians in a
race without context, those betting numbers could be interpreted in
a number of ways and influenced someone's perception of an

(01:21:16):
election and maybe even their choice on who to vote for,
or even whether to vote at all. In an October speech,
Zora Mumdani reference to Calshi billboards predicting a Cuomo victory
in the Democratic primary.

Speaker 19 (01:21:31):
When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few
days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me.
And when we strolled into Times Square under a billboard
with betting odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at
nearly eighty percent, we knew that the so called experts

(01:21:52):
were set to get it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo,
it was supposed to be inevitable. When you see the
Calcy odds that have our chances of victory in the nineties,
know this. You are reading the same things that Andrew
Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June,

(01:22:17):
believing that his victory was promised. We cannot allow complacency
to infiltrate this movement.

Speaker 12 (01:22:26):
Calci excitedly shared the latter half of that clip, proclaiming
breaking zoron Mamdani references his Calci odds on stage, Calshi
is mainstream quote despite this clip demonstrating how prediction markets
often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, Discount Steve Kornaki,

(01:22:49):
former five point thirty eight analyst and now CNN's data expert,
Harry Enton shared this segment about the Tennessee District seven
special election on X the Everything app with the caption
odds are Dems will come within ten points of a win,
if not outright win.

Speaker 20 (01:23:07):
I would say, if you had to look at the
congressional map any district that Donald Trump won by twenty
two points, you would say, you know, you've got like
nearly a one hundred percent chance of winning if you're
running for Congress there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
But what are the prediction markets saying right now?

Speaker 13 (01:23:20):
You know, what are we talking about in terms of
the prediction market us look the Democrat has a fifteen
percent chance of winning in that race. Okay, a fifteen
percent chance, which ain't nothing in a district that Donald
Trump won by twenty two points. But here I think
is the key nugget on this side of the of
the ledger, and that is a GOP win by under
ten points. There's a sixty eight percent chance of that.

(01:23:40):
So there is a more than two thirds chance that
the Republican candidate, Yes, they win, but they win by
a significantly lower margin than Donald Trump. We're talking about
double digits, smaller. We're talking about a huge, huge shift
to the left. We're talking about when you add these
two together, we're talking about a more than eighty percent
chance that there is a clear double digit shift to

(01:24:03):
the left, and a fifteen percent chance the Democrat actually
wins in a district that Donald Trump won by twenty
two points. That just shows you how bad the environment
is for Republicans right now that the Democrat has any
sort of a chance in this talk to me about.

Speaker 12 (01:24:15):
With special look, he's just authoritatively rattling off complete speculation
on a Democrat victory. As big screens display percentages in
huge text with source Calshi in tiny text, the bottom
of the screen. Ordinary polling showed that this was a
close race that leaned Red by two to eight points,

(01:24:38):
and the Republican did end up winning by nine points.
To quote the broken clock Nate silver quote. Without having
polls to look at, the prediction markets would probably kind
of suck at making election forecasts. Translating polls into probabilities
is considerably more complicated when there are many correlated races

(01:25:00):
is at once, such as in the battle for the
Electoral College or control of Congress. Prediction markets had a
strong twenty twenty four in this regard. They leaned toward
Trump when our model had it at fifty to fifty.
I don't think this was because of any special modeling
insight per se, but because they incorporated some sort of

(01:25:21):
prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls. Again, so
give the markets credit for that. These sorts of soft
quote unquote intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd need
a lot of data to determine whether they add or
subtract value in the long run unquote. As Nate himself acknowledges,

(01:25:45):
someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher betting odds throughout
the entire New York mayoral race than a purely statistical
model would show. A contention I have with Nate. One
of many is though I call prediction market numbers gambling odds.
They are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't based on

(01:26:09):
objective mathematical principles like flipping a coin, the three door problem,
or even something like blackjack. These odds are created whole
cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or data informed guessing, but
still primarily through people's intuition, which is susceptible to group impulses.

(01:26:30):
Many random world events lack a reliable basis of continuous
controlled data that's needed to form a probability, like that
which is applied to legalized sports betting. This is quite
evident in the betting odds around the Last People Conclave,
which had very little relevant data to use for informed predictions.

(01:26:50):
There was no existing probability to support the election of
an American pope, a first time occurrence. With prediction markets,
people can still do research to make an informed bet,
but it's not really the case that X candidate is
mathematically expected to win an election. Eighty out of one
hundred instances, a hive mind of users have formed that

(01:27:13):
statistical division through the power of money. Eighty percent of
users are betting that a certain result is likely to occur.
So the problem isn't just that, like Nate says, people
are confusing probabilities for polls. It's that they're confusing prediction
market betting odds for mathematical probabilities. It's this difference that

(01:27:37):
allows betting on sports outcomes via Calshian polymarket, even in
states that ban typical sports betting, because you're not actually
betting on fixed odds, you're betting against other investors. And
now news companies are not just manufacturing consent and normalizing
political gambling, but are actively incur the use of these

(01:28:01):
platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity of these gambling markets.
Anderson Cooper calls it the quote unquote wisdom of crowds.
But we already have methods for learning group consensus, like polling,
which may have problems, but frankly far fewer problems than
gambling on world events. Beyond the moral qualms of betting

(01:28:25):
money on human suffering, prediction markets are susceptible to not
just personal bias, but group bias. Based on the current
ratio of odds. This in group consensus can be influenced
by short lived trending topics, and these platforms cater to
a hyper online point of view. Prediction market users provide

(01:28:46):
a very non representational sample variety pulling from a very
specific type of guy who regularly uses these platforms. To
quote from Calshe's CNN partnership announced quote Calshi has become
the definitive source for staying informed about the future and
is used by reporters, politicians, pundits, Wall Street and Main Street,

(01:29:08):
and recently called the New York City mayoral election eight
minutes after polls closed, hours before the media. It's because
of this accuracy that Calshi's data will serve as a
powerful compliment to c and n's reporting. Journalists can more
easily surface credible information to their audiences about the real
time probabilities of future cultural and political events unquote. In practice,

(01:29:32):
this reporting mixes gambling data and actually reputable or credible
polls in a confusing way, like this recent CNN segment
which cites calshi odds on whether Trump will send tariff
stimulus checks, as well as CBS you gov polling data
on if tears lower prices back to back in this

(01:29:55):
same segment, do.

Speaker 13 (01:29:57):
They think that the tariffs that these rebate checks are
at actually coming and at this point no, No, I
mean chance Trump tariff, the tariff simulus checks are sent
to Americans by August of twenty twenty six. It's a
twenty five percent chance. That's one in four. So that's
not nothing. But the American people right now are craving,

(01:30:18):
craving some relief, and at this point it doesn't look
like it is coming. Although I will not John Berman,
this twenty five percent, it is greater than this six
percent who say that tariffs decreased prices, or that five
percent back in March, which are just you never see one, two, three, four,
five percent. So look, twenty five percent ain't nothing, but
at this.

Speaker 18 (01:30:38):
Point it's low.

Speaker 20 (01:30:39):
Yeah, it's interesting the prediction markets think they only one
in four chance that will actually happen.

Speaker 12 (01:30:43):
There is this really what the future of political forecasting
is going to be?

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
Maybe?

Speaker 12 (01:30:50):
Maybe not, but there are four horsemen of this political
gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver via his gamification of election prediction
based on his time as a professional gambler sports betting,
especially since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law
banning sports betting outside of Nevada in twenty eighteen, resulting

(01:31:10):
in almost forty states subsequently legalizing some form of sports betting,
which has facilitated the cassibility of gambling to grow dramatically
across the country in the past ten years through the
spread of online sports betting apps. The third horseman is Trump,
for the Trump administration through their removal of regulatory hurdles
facing prediction markets. And finally that CNN guy Harry Enton,

(01:31:34):
a Nate Silver protege who trailblazed the use of political
gambling data in news stories the past year. These four horsemen,
Nate Silver, sports betting, Trump, and Harry Enton have created
the cultural and political conditions for political gambling to spread.
Like wildfire, which, hey, is also something you can bet on.

(01:31:56):
During the LA Fires prediction market, users could bet on
how many acres would burn. So what is the endgame
of this, this gambling apocalypse that seems to be inching
its way closer and closer to answer that? Here's a
clip from Calshi co founder and CEO Trek Manser.

Speaker 17 (01:32:16):
The long term vision is to financialize everything and create
a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We
are living in a word where like we have an
abundance of information, but there's a lot of noise, and
like we don't really understand what's real from what's not.
Our prediction markets are an anadote to that. They do
a very very good job at distilling information and surfacing
truth to people. And you're seeing the sort of massive
shift where like people are using them whenever they think

(01:32:38):
about questions about the future, you know, whenever they're debating
about anything. And I think that trajectory is going to
keep going. That's a new consumer habit that I don't
think is going to be undone.

Speaker 12 (01:32:47):
This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting,
this financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out
of any difference in opinion, creating new addictive consumer habits.
These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports
betting to everything, where everyone gets to be their own

(01:33:10):
little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino
in their pocket, getting addicted to gambling on speculation of
world suffering, and CNN is complicit in this. CNN and
others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the
people who decide when to drop bombs around the world
to win millions of dollars by betting money on the

(01:33:32):
choices they themselves are making at the expense of the
rest of the world. And these companies think this is
a good thing because the betting odds can serve as
a potential heads up that something is likely to happen.
Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are non existent,
are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more

(01:33:55):
involved in regulating online betting, and in the case of
political events, it should just be completely banned. It is
detrimental to a healthy society. It incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and
erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely,
but it should return to being time and location locked.

(01:34:15):
Go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there
is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets.
Only the federal government can, and Trump's federal government certainly
seems like it's not going to considering the President's sun

(01:34:36):
works for both of the main platforms, Kalshi and poly Market,
and while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are
now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polymarket social
media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account
because that drives traffic back to their website, where people

(01:34:57):
can bet on the news stories that Polymarket is sharing,
even if those news stories are speculative or completely made up.
On December fifth, Polymarket posted quote justin suspected J six
pipe Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was included
in Trump's pardon of those involved in January sixth unquote.

(01:35:19):
This claim subsequently spread all around the Internet, parroted by
people of a variety of political orientations. But if you
read closely, the original post says suspected J six pipe
Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was included in
Trump's pardon, Polly Market is just spreading gambling information as

(01:35:43):
if it is news content. Quote unquote projected just means
that polymarket users are betting on this, But these projected
posts are mixed in with other posts just aggregating the
day's news. So unless you are paying super close attention,
which rarely people on the Internet are, this becomes a

(01:36:03):
trojan horse of disinformation. When news companies use the term
projected on election night. Usually that indicates with pretty clear
mathematical certainty that an event is going to happen. When
polymarket uses projected in news tweets, it only indicates that
Internet gamblers are swinging around money in an effort to

(01:36:26):
create truth with once legitimate news companies not just complicit
but active participants in this process. That doesn't for us
today at it Could Happen Here, see you on the
other side.

Speaker 4 (01:36:51):
Welcome to it Could Happen Here podcast, where a bunch
of incredibly convoluted and very silly financial instruments to shore
the entire world to come to me. I am your host,
Mia Wong, and with me today is someone who does
not spend all of her time deep in the bowels
of arcane bullshit written by different Federal Reserve boards. And

(01:37:12):
that is Maldy Conger, who is the host of the
absolutely delightful I mean, okay, I guess this is a
who is really winning here? Kind of question? In terms
of things research.

Speaker 21 (01:37:26):
You spent a lot of time reading stuff written by
Federal Reserve guys. I read a lot of stuff written
by guys who want to kill the Federal Reserve guys. Yeah,
you know what, I still don't know what the Federal
Reserve is and I'm not gonna find out.

Speaker 4 (01:37:41):
You know, I don't actually think knowing what the Federal
Reserve is somehow it doesn't change anything, And I don't
think it's actually relevant to this app I mean it
kind of. It's obviously it's relevant to everything.

Speaker 21 (01:37:52):
But well, means to say is the reason I'm here
is because I don't know what the economy is, and
at this point I'm afraid to find out.

Speaker 4 (01:38:00):
And unfortunately your worst fears are happening.

Speaker 21 (01:38:02):
Oh don't worry. By the end of this, I will
not understand.

Speaker 4 (01:38:06):
I am going to attempt to explain the economy, and
by by the economy, I mean shadow banking. Yeah. Also,
before before I go into this, though, you should, you
should listen to Weird Little Guys.

Speaker 22 (01:38:18):
It is.

Speaker 4 (01:38:19):
It's it's really good. I like it. All my friends
really like it.

Speaker 21 (01:38:23):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:38:24):
Yeah, it's somehow a nice comma, kind of relaxing show
about neo Nazis.

Speaker 21 (01:38:33):
So that's very chill vibes. Yeah for a show about
guys who are trying to like blow up school bus. Yes, yep.

Speaker 4 (01:38:42):
So all right, you know I'm reading this I'm looking
over this script. Miraculously this isn't Oh wait, hold on,
I think I cut the part where people blow up
school buses. There was legitimately a segment in here that
I might put back in or someone blows up a
school bus.

Speaker 21 (01:38:56):
But what a crossover event.

Speaker 4 (01:38:59):
Oh oh boy, the Saudi is really good at that shit.
It turns out okay, okay, But let let's get back
to the topic at hand, which is what is shadow banking?
And why does it matter to all of us people
who live in the normal real world and not in
fake finance world.

Speaker 21 (01:39:17):
Does it have anything to do with shadow wolves?

Speaker 4 (01:39:20):
Unfortunately, noe?

Speaker 21 (01:39:22):
What about shadow facts?

Speaker 4 (01:39:24):
Sadly, actually, there probably is a connection between the financing
for the Lord of the Rings movies and shadow banking.
I'm just too tired to work it right now.

Speaker 21 (01:39:34):
I've dragged us off track if we haven't even gotten
on track yet. What is shadow bank?

Speaker 4 (01:39:39):
Okay? So the good news, the good news this is
this is the first it's not the last piece of
good news. We're gonna get this episode. But come the
definition used by most non academics is actually.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Not that bad.

Speaker 4 (01:39:53):
There's a pretty good It's very wishy washy because it's
a congressional report, and so it's specifically not supposed to
be taking a stance in either direction on anything because
it's it's the Congressional Review Office, and they're supposed to
be neutral, et cetera, et cetera. Allegedly, Yeah, right, you know,
and like obviously they're not, but like you know, it's
like kind of fine congressional report on the subject. And

(01:40:15):
they do the thing that almost everyone does, which is
they go back to the definition created by the Financial
Stability Board, and I'm just gonna I'm just going to
quote that because it's not that bad. Quote financial activities
facilitated by institutions other than central banks, banks or public

(01:40:36):
financial institutions.

Speaker 21 (01:40:38):
So it's banking that doesn't involve a bank.

Speaker 4 (01:40:40):
Yeah, canceled.

Speaker 21 (01:40:41):
I'm out. I'm out already.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
Yes.

Speaker 21 (01:40:44):
And they don't mean like me loaning you twenty dollars, No, no, no,
of course not. They just mean unregulated banking. Oh yeah,
which you can't legally call banking.

Speaker 4 (01:40:55):
I mean you actually can't legally call it banking. It's
just things get weird really quickly.

Speaker 21 (01:41:01):
I Mean I'm not a bank understander, but I know
at least in Virginia. You can't incorporate a business that
has the word bank in the title unless you are
legally a bank, because that's like misleading.

Speaker 4 (01:41:12):
Yeah, I don't think they can legally call themselves a bank,
but I guess you can call it banking activity.

Speaker 21 (01:41:16):
That's stupid in a matter already.

Speaker 4 (01:41:18):
Yes, Oh, you're gonna get so much more mad by
the end of this. So the base definition is it's
not that complicated, right, It's something that does banking stuff
that is legally not a bank, you know, And so
we could talk about what kinds of things is this, right,
It's like private equity firms, it's hedge funds, it's venture
capital firms.

Speaker 21 (01:41:40):
So it's like evil stuff that ruins the world for
no reason except for like ten guys make money.

Speaker 4 (01:41:45):
Yeah, but it's also you know, pension funds, it's like
insurance companies. It's sovereign wealth funds, business development companies, repot markets,
broker dealers, special investment vehicles, securitization vehicles, money market mutual funds,
assey backed commercial paper conduits.

Speaker 21 (01:41:59):
Hey thing, Bud, most of those things you just said
to me are fake and they make me upset.

Speaker 4 (01:42:05):
It's really bad.

Speaker 21 (01:42:07):
Sovereign wealth funds. Shop, that's not that's not me. I
still you know all these all these things are just
like different ways of saying like you're poor and you're
gonna die.

Speaker 4 (01:42:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:42:18):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:42:18):
The funny thing is sovereign wealth fund is like kind
of a less fake one in that it's like, hey,
this is like fake. It's the well. It's like, this
is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has pooled all of
the money it's gotten from its like horrific crimes and
put them together into one giant thing, and that's a
sovereign wealth fund.

Speaker 21 (01:42:35):
Oh, so it's good, it's what you mean.

Speaker 4 (01:42:39):
No, I am a notable. There is, by the way,
a camp of people who believe that sovereign wealth funds
are like a socialist thing and that you could use
them to do socialism.

Speaker 21 (01:42:47):
I'm gonna jump out the window.

Speaker 4 (01:42:48):
I think this is so stupid. Yeah, this is we
haven't even gotten into the nightmare stuff. So remember I
was talking about the Financial Stability Board definition in that
congressional right where it's like, okay, this is a bank
that does non banking stuff or a non bank that
does banking stuff. Sorry, oh, I.

Speaker 21 (01:43:05):
Guess we should say, I guess we forgot to say
at the top. The reason you're explaining shadow banking to
me is because we saw an article last week that
what those those not banks were putting a stop on
withdrawals from their not banks and I didn't know what
that meant.

Speaker 4 (01:43:19):
Yeah, that's amazingly this this is so convoluted. We're not
even gonna get to that this week.

Speaker 21 (01:43:25):
Right, But like that's that's why we're.

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
Explaining that's why. Right, there's like, yeah, there's like there's
like a mini bank run going on with these like
shadow banks banks. Yeah, so we're gonna get into how
that can happen and why. But but before we get there,
we need to talk about all, right, to get a
sense of the complexity of this. Right, the Congressional report
and like, the accepted terminology for this is not shadow banks, it.

Speaker 21 (01:43:48):
Is, right, that can't be their official name. That's not
their government name.

Speaker 4 (01:43:52):
No, it's it's non bank financial intermediation. Now what the
fuck is that? And this is where this episode goes
completely off the rails, because the components of what count
as intermediation are so complicated. I Am not going to
try to describe it until literally the end of this.

Speaker 21 (01:44:09):
I mean, is it like what is Venmo officially? Really?
Venmo's not a bank, but it provides like financial services.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
Actually, I by.

Speaker 21 (01:44:18):
Because it's because it's like a financial intermediary.

Speaker 4 (01:44:20):
Right, Yeah, it might technically be a non bank. I
don't know what the regulatory structure is.

Speaker 21 (01:44:26):
It's not legally about Yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (01:44:28):
Think I think that technically is.

Speaker 21 (01:44:29):
One score one for Mali.

Speaker 4 (01:44:32):
Yeah. But okay, so this is this is gonna get
really bad. Okay, So when I first started researching this episode, right,
the first thing that I click on is is the
Federal Reserves chart of how the shadow banking sector works
compared to the normal banking sector. Molly, you have seen
this because I posted it as a joke in our

(01:44:52):
group chat. This chart, I have like a very very large,
like it is like a big normal ass I monitor
that I like to do my work on. I had
to zoom in to three hundred and eighty percent just
to make out the letters that label the boxes on
this chart. If you want to read it, you have

(01:45:12):
to zoom into five hundred percent.

Speaker 21 (01:45:15):
That doesn't seem like a well made chart.

Speaker 4 (01:45:17):
No, here's the thing, it's actually really good. It's just
this complicated. I learned later from a paper by Copenhagen
Business School professor Odny Helga Daughter. We're gonna come back
to Hellga Daughter's work a lot in this episode, but
I learned from from her because she has also experienced
seeing this same chart and going what the is this

(01:45:39):
fuck ass chart? I found out that the Federal Reserve
recommends that in order to have the diagram be legible,
you're supposed to print this chart as a three foot
by four foot poster.

Speaker 21 (01:45:52):
Oh that makes sense, like meeting style, but like we're on.

Speaker 4 (01:45:56):
Easel, yeah right, But like again, this is this is
a diagram that he's just labeling the parts of the
system and making and making like a line that shows
how stuff moves through it.

Speaker 21 (01:46:07):
I guess I still don't know what we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:46:12):
Yeah, so this is what we're going to get into
in a second, But first we have to talk about
something even more bleak, which is that Oh yeah, by
the way, these like non banking bank things like these
like all these like venture capital firms, all these hedge funds,
all these fucking weird ghoulish banks that are not banks. Uh, yeah,
they have twice as many assets than the regular banking system.

Speaker 21 (01:46:33):
Oh that doesn't seem good.

Speaker 4 (01:46:35):
Oh, it's about to get worse. It's about to get worse.

Speaker 21 (01:46:37):
Molly, that's that's like saying I keep seventy percent of
the food in my house outside on the porch like
it goes in the fridge.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
Oh, oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. So okay.
There's a pretty good congressional report that I was talking
about earlier that has this terrifying quote quote. As of
twenty twenty three, the broad measured total financial assets and
narrow measu your assets at nbfisis is the shadow banks
reached eighty five point seven trillion dollars and twenty two

(01:47:09):
point two trillion dollars, respectively in the United States.

Speaker 21 (01:47:13):
But that's more than our GDP.

Speaker 4 (01:47:15):
That's almost three times our GDP.

Speaker 21 (01:47:18):
So that's a fake amount of money. Yes, that's not real.

Speaker 4 (01:47:21):
At all, but it kind of is. Right. These compared
to total financial assets of thirty one point one trillion
dollars at banks in the same period. So again, this
is this is almost three times our GDP in assets
that they manage or control.

Speaker 21 (01:47:37):
So where does the money live?

Speaker 4 (01:47:40):
In a whole bunch of unbelievably convoluted bullshit like combinations
of like loans and real estate and stuff like that.

Speaker 21 (01:47:50):
It's not real money. So like, okay, imagine this is
schoolhouse rock and instead of the singing bill, you're like
a dollar bill, Like where are you we are about
to explain this, where does the money live?

Speaker 4 (01:48:04):
Yeah? So okay, okay, we're we are about one huge
paragraphs away from getting to this or like one paragraph.

Speaker 21 (01:48:11):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:48:12):
So the other thing that's very important about this, and
this is something Mollie was kind of touching up at
the beginning to get the Eppen, So maybe I should
have opened with this. Yeah, these people, these are the
people who blew up the economy in two thousand and eight.

Speaker 21 (01:48:22):
Well, yeah, because they're making stuff up.

Speaker 4 (01:48:25):
Yeah, it's so, it's so bullshit, Molly, You're gonna get
so mad.

Speaker 21 (01:48:28):
If this is Calvin Ball, fuck you I win.

Speaker 4 (01:48:31):
Yeah, it literally is. It's nonsense. It's gibberish. They're doing
fucking betting markets with the entire world economy.

Speaker 21 (01:48:38):
Oh yeah, we can all do that now.

Speaker 4 (01:48:40):
Yeah, it's fun. It's like we we now have the
power to do the shit that destroyed the entire world
economy in two thousand and eight. So that the thing
about shadow banking, and the reason why it's complicated to explain,
is that it's a catch all term for like a
million types of institutions that do different things, right, the
commonality they have is that they're all not regulated by

(01:49:02):
the banking regulations.

Speaker 9 (01:49:03):
Right.

Speaker 21 (01:49:04):
It's like, we found a way to do financial crime
that's not illegal because they forgot to make this illegal.

Speaker 4 (01:49:08):
Yeah, and you know, but but the thing is it's
so embedded into the system that, like the US debt
working is dependent on the shadow banks buying it.

Speaker 21 (01:49:21):
Like I don't believe in that either, So I'm good.

Speaker 4 (01:49:23):
Oh it's so fake, Molly, I'm not even gonna attempt
to explain what an overnight repo purchases to you, because
it's the fakest thing I've ever seen, where they just
they make one trillion dollars exist overnight and then it
stops existing at the end of the night. It's incredible.

Speaker 21 (01:49:36):
I love how much of the economy is based on
guys just imagining stuff and agreeing on the thing they
imagined and then trading their imaginary tokens like this is
fucking POGs grow.

Speaker 4 (01:49:45):
Up, yep, this is this, This this is. This is, unfortunately,
what our entire world is based on. It's so fun.
Oh god, Okay, so what is actually shadow banking. I've
given you the broadest definition possible, which is, like, again,
it's the it's doing bank ship without being a bank.
But let's go back to the beginning of the term,

(01:50:06):
which is where most people tend to start or get
to eventually. This is from an IMF paper quote. The
term shadow bank was coined by economist Paul McCauley at
a two thousand and seven speech at the Annual Financial
Symposium hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in Jackson,
holl Wyoming. And basically, it's institutions that borrow money in

(01:50:29):
the short term through money markets to finance long term loans.
But they aren't banks, so they can't go through the FED.

Speaker 21 (01:50:37):
They're financing loans with other loans.

Speaker 4 (01:50:39):
Yeah, we're gonna so from a not bank.

Speaker 21 (01:50:42):
Yeah, but the big loan is from a real bank,
and then the little loan is from a fake bank.
Give me, none of the money is real.

Speaker 4 (01:50:48):
Hold on, hold on, okay, we're going to get there.
We're going to explain this in terms of burgers. It's
going to be. Okay, I believe in us perfect, perfect name.
But the other thing he describes is is and this
is from Helga quote in the speech. She describes shadow
banking as the whole alphabet soup of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles,
and structures. So what he's talking about specifically is, these

(01:51:11):
are the guys who blew up the economy. Who doesn't
e like these specifically? This is what he's talking about, right,
These are the people who took a mortgage and then
did a bunch of bullshit to it and what's called
a securitization chain. They did a bunch of bullshit to
it so you could give the loan to someone else,
so you could sell to someone else, and this blew
up the entire world economy. That's what he's talking about.
He's talking about the banks that are not banks, the

(01:51:32):
shadow banks that did all of this bullshit to turn
like someone's mortgage into a fucking thing you could bet on.

Speaker 21 (01:51:40):
So selling debt is like selling the idea of future money. Yeah,
and then sometimes that future money doesn't cout, yeah, so
it doesn't exist.

Speaker 4 (01:51:50):
So so okay, I will say you do not need
to understand this yet because we haven't. We still have
not already the actual explanation.

Speaker 21 (01:51:56):
I'm never going to.

Speaker 4 (01:51:57):
I believe in us, we can do this. It's not
that that. Okay, I'm not torturing you on purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:52:02):
I'm just no, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:52:04):
Okay, I believe in you. So I want to mention
that I'm very indebted here to the paper I mentioned
earlier from Copenhagen Business School professor Adny Helga Daughter, who
wrote of She wrote a very good simplified explanation of
this in her Review of International Political Economy article called
Banking upside Down the Implicit Politics of Shadow Banking Expertise.

(01:52:26):
But okay, as you can tell by the fact that
it's called Banking upside Down the Implicit Politics of shadow
Banking Expertise, this has been when she's simplifying it. She's
simplifying it from like economists down to like a political
scientist or an anthropologist can understand this. I am about
to attempt to simplify this down to a regular person,

(01:52:48):
can I understand this? So I'm drawing on a lot
of her stuff for the first part of this explanation,
but I am I've turned it into burgers.

Speaker 21 (01:52:57):
So I'll do my best I'm being brave.

Speaker 4 (01:53:00):
Okay. So a shadow bank, right, it's something that does banking. Ship,
that's not a bank. So what do I mean by banking?

Speaker 6 (01:53:06):
Shit?

Speaker 21 (01:53:07):
That was my next question. Yes, I think we need
to start with what is a bank?

Speaker 23 (01:53:11):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:53:11):
So first, so okay, okay, and this is this is
this is where we're starting here. What does a bank do?

Speaker 21 (01:53:17):
I put my money in it and they hold it
for me.

Speaker 4 (01:53:20):
So no, actually, and this is the interesting part.

Speaker 21 (01:53:22):
No, they do stuff with it. Oh yeah, they're holding
onto the promise of my money.

Speaker 4 (01:53:27):
Yeah, so okay, let's let's just let's just look at
this for a second. So okay, So regular people give
them money to store in the bank. This is called
a deposit. The bank takes your money and loans it
out right and uses that to make more money. This
is how it pays you interest. Right, is that it's
it's taking your money and it's loaning it out to
other to other people, it's buying things with it. That

(01:53:50):
part I understand. Yeah, And this is obviously a cartoon image.
And I know there's gonna be econ people who are
gonna be mad at me. Look you if you understand why.

Speaker 21 (01:53:58):
Are they listening to this. If you're you know what
this means, go away. This isn't for you. I'm not
humiliating myself for your entertainment, like for the.

Speaker 4 (01:54:07):
Political economy people here when I say stuff that might
that's like technically kind of fuzzy.

Speaker 21 (01:54:13):
It's for me the podcast idiot.

Speaker 4 (01:54:15):
Yeah, like you you understand this, Like I work at
the level of hamburgers here, so like we have to
do some abstractions. So okay, the important thing for our purposes, right,
is that there's two things here, right, There's like the
deposit to the money you give them, and then there's
the loans, right, and these operates on different timelines.

Speaker 2 (01:54:33):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:54:34):
You can take the deposit out at any time, least
in theory, but they can't get the money from the
loan back at any time right now. This is like
one of the critical things of what a bank is
is is this timeline thing.

Speaker 2 (01:54:49):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:54:49):
It turns your your money, which you can take out
at any time, into a different kind of thing, this loan,
which can't be taken out immediately, right, and the have
to make money. So this is called maturity transformation. This
is a very simple concept. They have made very complicated.
This is one of the core aspects of that definition

(01:55:11):
I was talking about earlier. This is one of the
four things in it. But you now understand this. It's
not that complicated. It's it's it's takes short term, make
long term, and we'll get to doing the reverse in
a second.

Speaker 21 (01:55:21):
Oh, I don't think it works the other way.

Speaker 4 (01:55:23):
Yeah, it's gonna go so badly. It's gonna so badly.

Speaker 21 (01:55:27):
I don't know about bank, but just generally speaking, like
in terms of time and like how like material reality works.
I don't think it works the other way.

Speaker 4 (01:55:35):
It's it's not great. It's not great, Molly, it's not great. Okay,
So okay. There is, however, a problem here, right, which
is what happens if everyone tries to get their short
term money back at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):
We can't.

Speaker 4 (01:55:48):
Yeah, right, because you have deposit insurance. Yeah right, because
the banks aren't holding short term cash. What they're holding
is long term loans, and those loans like you can't
pay someone alone. Well okay, actually, this entire the crux
of this episode is they think that they did do that. Yeah, yes,
and it blew up the entire world economy.

Speaker 21 (01:56:08):
But if but if I wanted forty thousand dollars out
of my If I had a checking out, it was
forty thousand dollars in it. Yeah, and they gave me
my neighbor's mortgage as a prompt. That would it worked
for me? That would have worked for no? Fuck that, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 (01:56:20):
You need you need you need, you need something that
can buy a burger, and they're not giving you that.
So okay, this is very very bad. If people try
to do this, it is called a bank run. It
is not good.

Speaker 21 (01:56:32):
It's bad.

Speaker 4 (01:56:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 21 (01:56:33):
And so this this blew up.

Speaker 4 (01:56:35):
The entire world economy so many goddamn times that eventually
we got financial regulation. Now this this regulation requires banks
to have money that is like actual cash they can
hand you like right now, on hand at all times,
and the government gets to and this is that's a
little bit simification, but like, yeah, that's.

Speaker 21 (01:56:55):
How it works, right, like, and it's insured by the government.

Speaker 4 (01:56:57):
Yeah, I think the government will give you your money back
if if the bank goes under up to like a
certain amount of dollars fed Yep, this is this this
that's that's what that means, right, the government will give
you your money back. But also there's a there's a
trade off to this. So this is a massive benefit
for the banks, right, the fact the fact that if
they go under, all of their assets will be repaid
by the government. It's a it's a massive benefit for

(01:57:19):
them because it means that putting your money in the
bank is like safe.

Speaker 21 (01:57:22):
Yeah. I love that for me, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:57:24):
It's good. Now, the cost to the banks is that
the Feds get to see their balance sheet, right, the
Feds get to see what they're doing with their fucking money,
and they get to make sure that these banks aren't
doing insane shit.

Speaker 21 (01:57:36):
Okay, that makes sense because they're insurance.

Speaker 4 (01:57:38):
Yeah, and that like they're not doing like unbelievably risky
awful ship. And also that they're actually holding enough money
to be able to pay people out right.

Speaker 21 (01:57:47):
Okay, so far, so good. I I understand bank.

Speaker 4 (01:57:50):
Yeah. Now, Shadow Banking boldly asked the question, Okay, but
what if you did all of the banking backwards, no
one had access to the books, and the governments will
only pay you back if the entire world economy looks
like it's going to die.

Speaker 21 (01:58:08):
I feel like at that point the government should just
just step back.

Speaker 4 (01:58:11):
And here's the thing, here's the thing, right, I I
I yeah, Like I'm so dowt with this, Like yeah,
I don't know. Fuck it, Like every single one of
your motherfuckers is gonna pay this off by working as
a barista for thirty years, Like fuck you. But the
government was like, nah, we want like we want capitalism
to keep working.

Speaker 21 (01:58:29):
Make every hedge fund manager work at a waffle house.

Speaker 22 (01:58:32):
Yeah, fuck them.

Speaker 4 (01:58:44):
Okay, I'm gonna say something and then I'm gonna.

Speaker 21 (01:58:46):
Make a disclaim.

Speaker 4 (01:58:48):
So the kind of shadow banks that did two thousand
and eight work in the opposite direction. They start with debt,
they take that debt, and they turn that debt into
like cash, right.

Speaker 21 (01:59:02):
Can I do that?

Speaker 11 (01:59:03):
No?

Speaker 21 (01:59:05):
Does that work for me at my hed No?

Speaker 4 (01:59:07):
So okay, And I also want to mention there's a
bunch of other kinds of shadow banks. The kind of
shadow bank that's going under right now is not really this.
The kind of shadow bank that's like exploding right now
is a kind of shadow bank that's like what if
a bank that wasn't a bank gave a completely unregulated
loan with secret terms to a corporation, And that's the

(01:59:29):
one that's going under right now, but for a long
long time, the kind of shadow bank that was really
important to the global economy. And this is still like
a massive portion of how all of the economic system
works is these ones where you're trying to take debt
and turn it into something you can trade for cash. So, okay,
you take debt, right, you start off with a mortgage. Okay,

(01:59:50):
so these mortgagees pay out over the extremely long term, right,
but you want to be able to trade this mortgage
for cash. Right, And this is a process called securitization.
Turning this mortgage into something you can sell for cash
is making it into what's called a security. So now
what happens right when his packaged this is into a

(02:00:11):
security when there's a securitization process. And then like the
regular bank, the regular bank sends the mortgage to the
shadow bank, and the shadow bank like does like stuff
and turns it into a security. And now what this
means is that instead if you who paid the mortgage
owing money to the bank, you own it to the
shadow bank or whoever the fuck the shadow bank sells

(02:00:31):
it to.

Speaker 21 (02:00:32):
Right, Okay, so the real bank is involved. The real
bank is involved.

Speaker 4 (02:00:36):
Yes, oh yes, the real bank is making so much
money off of this is this is why two thousand
and eight happened.

Speaker 21 (02:00:41):
Oh, because Wells Fargo did this with everybody's mortgage. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, okay, because I couldn't figure out because said,
this is a two thousand names, and I was like,
I thought, Wells Fargo did that, that's a real bank.
Oh the real bank was shadow banking.

Speaker 4 (02:00:52):
The real bank figured out a way to sell their mortgages.
And it's gonna get much worse as we go through this.
But that's what causes this, right, is like turning is
turning these mortgages into these like securities and like these
like collateralized debt obligations and these like special packaged bullshit
that you could sell to someone. So the way I

(02:01:13):
would describe this is it's like, do you know how
a bond works?

Speaker 21 (02:01:17):
Honestly, Mia, I do not.

Speaker 4 (02:01:20):
Okay, let's let's do this. We can we can do this, okay.
So the kind of bond that you are normally likely
to encounter is a government bond. Yeah, okay, So you
you pay the government money to buy the bond, and
what the bond says is, at a certain point in time,
you hand it back to the government and they pay
you more money.

Speaker 21 (02:01:39):
Right, it's like a promise for later.

Speaker 4 (02:01:41):
Yeah. Right, So it's it's basically a loan, but it's
alone in a form where like the government's technically like
selling it. And and then the other thing about bonds,
right is if you hand the bond to someone else,
well okay, I mean this is technically bare bonds, but
like you you can then give the bond to someone
else and now and now if they give it back

(02:02:02):
to the government, they get the money in like ten years,
they get the money.

Speaker 21 (02:02:05):
Right, right, Okay, I get that.

Speaker 4 (02:02:07):
And you can sell these things. And this is what
these people are doing with mortgages.

Speaker 21 (02:02:12):
That's not as like secured as like a government bond.
Because if I had one hundred dollars government, like, if
I have one hundred dollar bearers bond, I know for
a fact on the date on the bond, it's gonna
be worth one hundred dollars.

Speaker 4 (02:02:22):
Yeah, they're gonna pay out, right.

Speaker 21 (02:02:24):
But if it's mortgage mortgage, the government's gonna pay it.
But like the mortgage, the governy has them work. That's
not yep, that's not real. That's not money. Nope, yep,
that's like that's a that's a promise. But like my
hand it's behind my back.

Speaker 4 (02:02:37):
Yeah, it's it's a shit show. And this whole process
is the largest sort of I'm not sure if it's
actually the largest that I would need to actually get
I've never I haven't seen in death breakdown sectorially, but like.

Speaker 21 (02:02:48):
None of this is real.

Speaker 4 (02:02:49):
You could just say whatever, this this is one of
the most important kind of shadow banks because in order
to turn this mortgage into security, the moment you do that,
you do this by creating what's called a special purpose vehicle,
or someone else creates one. It's called a special purpose vehicle. Yeah,
it's it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.

Speaker 21 (02:03:07):
Gonna I'm gonna put this mortgage on a roller coaster.

Speaker 4 (02:03:10):
Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. Right, it's a special purpose vehicle.
Is it does a loopy loop. But the moment you
create one of these, that the moment you create one
of these like security mortgages, right, that's a shadow bank.
You've created a shadow bank, right.

Speaker 21 (02:03:23):
Because that's not real banking. That's shadow bank.

Speaker 4 (02:03:26):
Yep. Because because you're creating another entity that is not
a bank that's doing the banking stuff.

Speaker 21 (02:03:30):
I thought that the banking and the shadow banking were
like separate things, right, because it's shadow. It's like they're
doing non they're all in. If the bank is just
a shadow banking, I would I'm stupid, but I would
call that a crime.

Speaker 4 (02:03:45):
This is this is another thing that costs two thousand
and eight because a bunch of what was isn't a
crime because our country is run by the bourgeoisie. Molly
that that's why it's not a crime.

Speaker 21 (02:03:55):
You're just telling me this for the first time.

Speaker 4 (02:03:58):
Yeah, it's bad. So, so what happened? What happened in
two thousand and eight. One of the things that happened,
right is so all of these regulators are supposed to
be looking at the balance sheets of these companies.

Speaker 21 (02:04:07):
But they're hiding stuff off the books.

Speaker 4 (02:04:09):
Yeah, they were hiding these things in these like special
purpose vehicles, like in these like shadow banks.

Speaker 21 (02:04:14):
They didn't open the trunks on the special purpose vehicles.

Speaker 4 (02:04:17):
Yeah, so no one could see the fucking dead bodies
in the trunks of the vehicles because they weren't on
the balance sheet that like the government had access to.

Speaker 21 (02:04:23):
What's the point of the balance sheet if you don't
put the whole balance on it.

Speaker 4 (02:04:27):
I'm fucking I don't know. And this is like legitimately
when you read the accounts of like why shadow making
US exploded by the way it's exploded in two thousand
and eight, it's like way bigger exploded.

Speaker 21 (02:04:38):
Like in popularity or like exploded as in like distrubularity.

Speaker 4 (02:04:41):
There's so much there's so much more of it. There's
so much more of it because.

Speaker 21 (02:04:44):
Also, oh, because it went so well, it went so
well in two thousand and eight, and now.

Speaker 4 (02:04:48):
We're because here's the thing. After two thousand and eight,
we got like a little tiny bit of banking regulation
and the banks lost their fucking minds, and so more
and more money went into all of these unhidden shadow
making things.

Speaker 21 (02:05:01):
Okay, but so like when a toddler has a tantrum,
you don't give them a billion dollars.

Speaker 4 (02:05:05):
When the shadow banks went under, these things were not
backed by the government. The government bailed them out anyways.

Speaker 21 (02:05:10):
Yeah, they didn't have to do that, Nope. So they
really they learned their lesson. They really learned their lesson
this time.

Speaker 4 (02:05:15):
Yeah, Like they bailed out these banks and they fucking
sold you out, and like you know, like and one
of the things that I think people have forgotten was
there's this thing called robocalls during the Obama administration. Right,
part of how the financial recovery happened was that all
these banks would like go to courthouses, right, and they
would just repossess mortgages on Mass. Oh. And they had

(02:05:37):
like a robot that was like signed it. It would
just sign like a blank check sign off on all
these mortgages that were supposed to be underwater. And they
would just steal people's houses, people who were on top
of their payments, people who liked to know money. They
would just take their houses. And this happened on Mass
And this is like how the banks recovered, was they
stole everyone's houses.

Speaker 21 (02:05:56):
And that's a crime, right, It should have been a crime.

Speaker 4 (02:06:00):
It was illegal. It didn't matter though.

Speaker 21 (02:06:01):
Because everything you're describing to me as a crime.

Speaker 4 (02:06:04):
It's so nightmarish. Well, it's here the thing most of
this of them describing is not a crime. This was
actually a crime.

Speaker 21 (02:06:10):
But why is nobody in jail?

Speaker 4 (02:06:12):
Because Barack Obama went up in front of these people
and said, I am the only thing standing between you
and the guillotines. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote.

Speaker 21 (02:06:19):
And why didn't he bring the guillotine with.

Speaker 4 (02:06:21):
Him because he wants the capital assistant to continue.

Speaker 21 (02:06:23):
I mean, question, Obama, I'm just upset.

Speaker 4 (02:06:29):
It's not good. Okay, So let's let's get you another
question that you asked, which is why why would you
do this? Why would you do this.

Speaker 21 (02:06:36):
To make money?

Speaker 4 (02:06:37):
Yes, but it's actually more complicated than that. Oh okay.
So on the one hand, these assets, you know, a mortgage,
does make more money than just putting your money in
the bank. Right, that's like the basis of banking is
that they can use your money that's sitting in the
bank and getting interested, and then they make more money
by spending it elsewhere.

Speaker 21 (02:06:55):
But so they're just doing this because they hate us,
not just to make money. No, there is an actual explanation.
There's a third reason.

Speaker 4 (02:07:02):
So then why why would you ever have your money
in a bank or like buy something like safe like
government bonds you can sell really quickly, right, Why why
would you ever want that? And the reason why is
something called liquidity?

Speaker 22 (02:07:17):
Right?

Speaker 21 (02:07:17):
You want to be able to spend the money, yes,
rather than wait thirty years for it to get paid back.

Speaker 4 (02:07:21):
Yes. Liquidity is just how easy is it to turn
whatever you own into cash?

Speaker 2 (02:07:26):
Right?

Speaker 21 (02:07:26):
For real money, because most of it we're talking about
is not money. It's the idea of money.

Speaker 4 (02:07:31):
Yes, so, so liquidity is is literally it's the burger test,
right can you buy a burger with this?

Speaker 21 (02:07:37):
Can I eat this?

Speaker 2 (02:07:39):
Money?

Speaker 4 (02:07:39):
Is like the most liquid asset, right because you can?
You can? You can turn this into a burger?

Speaker 21 (02:07:43):
Right, So liquidity is the only part of this that's
actually money. Everything else is not money.

Speaker 4 (02:07:47):
Yeah, Well, liquidity is the measure of how money is it? Basically,
like how easy is it to turn this into burger?

Speaker 21 (02:07:54):
Is this a special vehicle securitization? It's not real mea.

Speaker 4 (02:07:59):
No, it's fake as shit, right, this is not that complicated,
right if you if it's like like you can you
can buy a burger with ten dollars? Yeah right, that's liquid.

Speaker 21 (02:08:08):
Actually you kind of can't these days.

Speaker 4 (02:08:10):
I know, I look, I look. I imagine a world
where you can buy a burger for ten dollars.

Speaker 21 (02:08:20):
Imagine imagine a burger.

Speaker 4 (02:08:21):
Yes, imagine a burger that's purchasable. Now, what you can't
buy a burger with is like the ten bucks that
a guy you work with owes you for buying him.

Speaker 21 (02:08:32):
A burger depends on how well you know the burger guy.

Speaker 4 (02:08:35):
Yeah, but that's that's where things get bad. Yeah, right, now,
the thing is right, right, So the ten bucks the
guy you work with, like owes, you not liquid. You
don't have the money in your hands, and if you
want to get it from him, you have to like
go ask him for the money, and maybe he has
ten bucks and maybe he doesn't, right, at which point
you can't get your ten dollars back until he has

(02:08:57):
the money.

Speaker 21 (02:08:57):
But that but then ten dollars that I'm theoretically code
is an asset though I have not a debt. Yes, okay, yes,
it's stupid.

Speaker 4 (02:09:06):
Now loans loans are not liquid assets, right, and they're
not liquid assets because you can't get the money back
like immediately.

Speaker 21 (02:09:12):
So I don't have ten dollars I can spend, but
on paper, I do have ten theoretical dollars.

Speaker 4 (02:09:17):
Yeah right, And this is also like most of what
billionaire money is, hey, correct, Like most of their money
is like in like a stock or some shit or
like it's weird fake money.

Speaker 21 (02:09:26):
Like theoretically they could access this amount of money, but
they don't have it. Yeah, it's not real.

Speaker 4 (02:09:30):
Now, Okay, there is this question, So why why would
you keep your money in fake money instead of real money.
And the answer is that it gives you more money
back because say you're an asshole, right, and you're charging
interest on your coworker for that burger loan.

Speaker 21 (02:09:45):
Right, So that ten dollars is actually worth more than
ten dollars money. So the ten dollars that I don't
have is theoretically worth Twell.

Speaker 4 (02:09:52):
You're worth more. Yeah, it's worth more than the money
that you do have.

Speaker 21 (02:09:55):
I can get cheese on the burger, yes, right.

Speaker 4 (02:10:00):
And this is this is like the fundamental thing of
the banking system, Like one of them is that I
liquid assets or like assets that you that aren't money
are worth more than money.

Speaker 21 (02:10:10):
I guess. Like when I put a small amount of
my savings into a CD, that's what I'm doing, except
normal style they're doing it weird.

Speaker 4 (02:10:18):
Yeah, basically because that's like.

Speaker 21 (02:10:21):
An I liquid asset that I'm I'm I'm trading the
ability to access that liquidity for the potential of more
money later.

Speaker 4 (02:10:27):
Wait, so when you say, do you mean like a
like a physical like a disc, like a CD.

Speaker 21 (02:10:31):
No, a CD like at the bank, Like yeah, yeah,
like the investment product, Yeah sure, yeah, yes, sorry, I
was like, no, I'm not talking about buying compact disc.

Speaker 4 (02:10:40):
I would just leave at five am this time.

Speaker 21 (02:10:43):
It's been ever heard of it.

Speaker 4 (02:10:45):
Wow, there's there's actually a really an annoying thing researching
this episode because there's like, so CDOs are like a
type of loan that will kind of get you in
a bit. But there's also a tech position called CDO.
It's like chief something.

Speaker 21 (02:10:59):
Office officer who cares.

Speaker 4 (02:11:01):
Yeah, whatever the fuck? Right, But like when you're trying
to search for stuff that's like about CDOs, right, the
other one keeps coming up. I hate it. Okay, okay,
locking in, locking in right, lock and load. Now what
if you both want into more money and also the
ability to buy a burger?

Speaker 21 (02:11:18):
I guess I would uh probably break one of Carl's fingers.
This is the guy that owes me the ten dollars, Carl.

Speaker 4 (02:11:25):
Yeah, but even then it's hard to even that's like,
this is too hard for these people.

Speaker 21 (02:11:31):
I would go to Carl's house and kick him out
of it.

Speaker 4 (02:11:34):
Well yeah, so, but the other thing is like, you
are not very rich, okay these people. If you are
really really rich, I am talking like billionaires, maybe like
high high class multimillionaires. Well you can go to a
shadow bank.

Speaker 21 (02:11:47):
Oh right, you can get a loan based on the loan.

Speaker 4 (02:11:51):
No, well you're saying. So the thing is that you
have money, right, but you want to turn your money
into more money, like you have like an actual cash,
right like you are you are, for example, a pension fund.
No I'm not. You have a shit ton of cash.
Or imagine imagine a pension fund. Right, This is okay.
This is also really hard because it used to be

(02:12:11):
easier to explain this because like we used to live
in a world where people had pension funds and had mortgages,
and now we no longer have pension funds or mortgages.

Speaker 21 (02:12:21):
I live in an apartment and I will always live
in an apartment.

Speaker 2 (02:12:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:12:24):
No, and still okay, So, like imagine imagine a pension fund,
right you you have a shit ton of money from
your members paying into the fund, but it's cash. You
need to turn that cash into more money. But also
you're a pension fund, so you constantly have to take
money back out in order to pay the people who
are retiring.

Speaker 21 (02:12:42):
To pay old right.

Speaker 4 (02:12:43):
Well, yeah, and this is also a thing that like,
you know, if you're just like a rich person. Sometimes
you want your A lot of times you want your
money in assets that are like you can you can
turn back into real money, but also make you a
shit ton of money.

Speaker 21 (02:12:56):
Right, They need to sort of revolve a little bit
theyd be like yeah, I don't know, like a jello
like partially liquid.

Speaker 4 (02:13:02):
Yeah, And this is this is what the shadow banks do, right,
because the thing that you can buy is one of
those mortgages they've turned into like a security. Right, you
can go buy someone else's debt, huh, but because it's
a magic security now, and these are called mortgage backed securities.
And again if you're to remember, yeah, anything of anything
about two thousand and eight, that's what blew up the

(02:13:23):
whole economy, is these mortgage back securities.

Speaker 21 (02:13:25):
Yeah, I've heard of that because it was bad, yep,
terrible idea. And so we're still doing that.

Speaker 4 (02:13:31):
Oh yeah, it's I mean if it's less specifically, the
mortgage back ones are less bad. So they started doing
it with like commercial retail loans, which is incredible, great,
so that's really fun. They're also doing with other unhidden
shit that we're gonna do like next episode. And what
these people are really buying. Aren't just these Like you're

(02:13:52):
not buying like one person's mortgage, right.

Speaker 21 (02:13:54):
Right, they're like pooled and like bundled.

Speaker 4 (02:13:56):
Yeah, yeah, they're like they bundle them all together and
then you you buy the rights to a percentage of
the pool.

Speaker 21 (02:14:03):
It's not like when you sponsor like an elephant in
Africa or something, and they send you a picture of
like a specific element, or they don't send you they
listen to a picture of the family you're arming. No,
these are the Joneses. You own their fucking house.

Speaker 4 (02:14:14):
Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's it's a shit show. No, well,
I mean eventually you might have to go figure out
who that is because you like own whatever the fuck
percentage of like the mortgages or whatever. But like, okay,
so these are these are just like someone else's debt
that you're buying, and that the people who can do
this are, you know, people who have billions of dollars.

(02:14:35):
It's not you, the listener. And by the way, if you,
the listener, have billions of dollars lying around for some reason.

Speaker 21 (02:14:40):
Can I have some please?

Speaker 4 (02:14:41):
Yes, please please give me some of them so I
can house Like literally every trans woman and like transperson
I can, I can do it, Like, please give me
your billions of dollars so I can. I can achieve
this goal. But like we're talking about you know, like
like the Pension Fund of California, we're talking about mega corporations,
insurance companies, the kinds of things. I can actually buy these,
like you know. Now, this is where we get to

(02:15:03):
one of the other problems, which is that these things
are not insured. So yeah, what do you do in
order to try to make it less risky? What do
you get if you can't pay the loan back? And
this is what's called collateral.

Speaker 21 (02:15:18):
I don't know, swift punch in the nuts.

Speaker 4 (02:15:20):
Oh no, they take your house, right, Yes, that's supposed
to be the thing. So okay, the way that like
shadow banking loans tend to work is that they they
have collateral, right, so you you give them something or
or it's either you give them something directly or it's
like if you promise to give them the thing. Yeah,
and giving it to them directly is like a repo

(02:15:43):
market thing. We're not really going to get into those
right now, but this does. That's like that's also a
kind of shadow bank. But there's a problem, right, which is,
what if the thing that you're paying, you're paying as collateral, Like,
what if your house becomes worthless? And what if? What if? Mully?

Speaker 21 (02:15:59):
And it's completely uninsured and there's no way to fix
it because I don't even have anything to give.

Speaker 4 (02:16:03):
You now, Now, Molly, what if? And this is purely hypothetical,
It could never happen in the real world, Molly. But
what if somehow, someone someone decided to use the same
house as collateral for multiple different securities.

Speaker 21 (02:16:20):
Well, that could never go wrong.

Speaker 4 (02:16:22):
What if, Mollie. They made a word for this that
is so complicated I am not going to attempt to
read it on the show. What if, Molly?

Speaker 21 (02:16:30):
What is it in German or something?

Speaker 4 (02:16:31):
No, it's like it's just like this, it's like the
it's like the length of my head. It's like hyper
hyper something bullshit. Like I refuse to say it because
it is just like a completely like financed goal bullshit
term they made up.

Speaker 21 (02:16:44):
So, but the point of the point of collateral is
that you can use it to pay off the loan
if you default on And so that literally won't work
more than once, because once I eat the burger, once
I eat the burger. It's bad. Yeah, and this is
one of the things that happened in two thousand years.
I can't promise I can't promise ten guys my burger.

Speaker 4 (02:17:05):
Now, Molly, here's the amazing thing here, right, because but
the advantage for these companies, right is like, if you're
the bank that has the mortgage, suddenly you can spin
your mortgage off into like multiple securities that you can sell.

Speaker 21 (02:17:16):
Right, It's worth ten times more. And that's great for you.

Speaker 4 (02:17:19):
Yes, and comma, comma, we we haven't even okay, I
just I just described to sister where these people are
promising the same house to moustiple people. This isn't even
the extremely unfathomably reckless and greedy shit. No it is,
oh it is, but it's not the worst of it.
Oh good, Okay, So do you remember that quote from

(02:17:50):
when I was fiving the first definition of shadow banking, right,
like I gave I gave, I gave this quote from
the guy who invented the term where he called it
quote the whole alphabet soup of leveraged up investment, conduits, vehicles,
and structures. Right, So we've kind of talked about the
conduits vehicles, and structures. Right, those are all of the
shadow banks that like make the things right. I love

(02:18:11):
the conduits, vehicles, and structures. Yeah, all the acronyms. But
what does leveraged up mean?

Speaker 2 (02:18:17):
Now?

Speaker 4 (02:18:18):
Okay? In this case, it means that a bunch of
these banks have taken out a shit ton of like risky,
high interest loans in order to buy more of these
fucking mortgages because they think they can make more money
off of it.

Speaker 21 (02:18:32):
So they took out they took out loans to buy
these unsecured securities.

Speaker 4 (02:18:39):
The regular ass banks were doing this. Yeah, they went
into debt to buy more of these shitty mortgages.

Speaker 21 (02:18:47):
So they took out loans to buy what are essentially
unsecured loans.

Speaker 4 (02:18:52):
Yep, because I thought it would make them more money.

Speaker 21 (02:18:54):
But there's no money involved. Money.

Speaker 4 (02:19:00):
It is about to get so much worse, right, So okay,
So sticking with leveraging for a second. Right, you might
have actually heard something called a leveraged buyout.

Speaker 21 (02:19:10):
I have heard those words, and then I stopped listening.

Speaker 4 (02:19:13):
Yeah, so here's the thing. Leverage buyouts are something that
actually happens in the real world that does fuck you directly,
which is a whole bunch of companies that used to
be like normalized companies like died because venture capital firms, you,
by the way, are also shadow banks. Oh did this right?
They came in Technically speaking, they did it through like
risky bond purchases, but basically they did a bunch of

(02:19:33):
high interest loans and then they go buy a company
and then they like strip it for parts, and then
they try to raise the stock price of the company. Yeah,
and the s Hriver parts, sell everything and get out right.
That's what a leverage buyout is. These people are sort
of are doing kind of a version of that, but
like they're taking on this debt in order to like
buy fucking shitty underwater mortgages because they look like they're

(02:19:56):
making so much money.

Speaker 21 (02:19:57):
They're taking on real debt to buy high pathetical debt.

Speaker 4 (02:20:01):
Oh, it's about to get so much worse.

Speaker 21 (02:20:04):
That doesn't seem like a good idea, so.

Speaker 4 (02:20:07):
Not to get so much worse. So that's what like
the leveraged part of that.

Speaker 21 (02:20:12):
I don't even know how you do that in burgers.

Speaker 4 (02:20:14):
I don't know You're you're going into debt to like
buy the promise of burgers in the future.

Speaker 21 (02:20:21):
So you can sell those future burgers. Yeah, but burgers
are real. The thing we're not talking about it really
at all.

Speaker 4 (02:20:27):
Well, the technically, technically speaking, Somewhere at the bottom of
this is mortgages. However, Comma, we're about to get into
a kind of asset where there isn't anything behind it.
This is where the really really truly unhinged shit starts.
It hasn't, which is that these companies figured out a
way to bet on whether these mortgages were going to
fail or not.

Speaker 21 (02:20:48):
That's so tight mea, I fucking love that. I love it.

Speaker 4 (02:20:52):
Yes, yes, By the way, I kinnatsize enough. How unhinged.
This is the mechanism they're using to do this. It's
called a credit default swap. Oh, I've heard that phrase.
This was supposed to be how they did insurance. Their
mechanism for doing insurance on all of these insane loans
they were doing was originally like, Okay, I'm gonna you're

(02:21:12):
I don't know, so you have a you have a bank, right,
the bank has given out a risky loan. So this
bank goes to another bank. They shouldn't do that, and
they say, hey, if this person actually pays the loan back,
I will pay you money.

Speaker 21 (02:21:23):
Okay, So the other so the other bank is like
taking a gamble here.

Speaker 4 (02:21:27):
Yeah. So so the other bank that's giving out the
loan right gets money if the loan goes under. So
in theory, they're sort of like insured against the risk.
They call it like hedging. They're like so like it's
like so theoretically it's less bad from them because now
even if the loan goes under, they still get money
back from that other bank.

Speaker 21 (02:21:44):
So the other bank is just a bookie.

Speaker 4 (02:21:46):
Yeah, and the other bank is betting that they are
going to get it. So then and if the loan
does get paid, then that bank makes money.

Speaker 21 (02:21:55):
And this is legal for everyone to do. Yep, this
is real banking or shadow bank. This is real bank.

Speaker 4 (02:22:01):
Didn't know this is techniically actually no, this is actually
both both of them do this. Technically speaking, the instrument
like like the actual like credit default swap or whatever,
is made by the shadow banks, but then they're brought
by the regular banks.

Speaker 21 (02:22:14):
I'm started to think that the bank starts the shadow
banks and then all of this is just fake and bad.

Speaker 4 (02:22:20):
Like here's the here's the thing about these systems, right,
is that like a lot of the original literature on
it was considering them separate. But it's like, no, like
the regular banks are making their own shadow banks do
these things. They're all involved in these assets. They're also
investing in the shadow banks, which is the problem we're
having right now.

Speaker 21 (02:22:35):
It's like it's the same guy. He just like turns
his chair around at his desk and he's like, now
I'm shadow bank Todd.

Speaker 4 (02:22:41):
Yeah. Well, and sometimes it's that sometimes there I legitimately
is just other entities they work with.

Speaker 21 (02:22:46):
But yeah, but there's still it's still a bank engaging.
So it's like all these are non banking practices, Yeah,
but the bank is doing it well.

Speaker 4 (02:22:52):
But here's the thing. The important part for that though,
is that like the non bank also can do this
with other non banks.

Speaker 21 (02:22:57):
Even better even Yeah. Right, Still, like I just feel
like once we're once we're talking about chadow banking, like
the real bank should not be in the room, Like
go home, Wells Fargo, you don't belong here, you're drunk.

Speaker 4 (02:23:08):
No, But like they're funding all of this, right, If
the real.

Speaker 21 (02:23:10):
Bank is involved with the shadow banking, that means like
I can't opt out of being involved in this because
they get my money.

Speaker 4 (02:23:16):
Yeah, you know what we were talking about that at
the top, that like so some of these like fank
banks had to like stop their withdrawals. Oh yeah, one
of those, by the way, was JP Morgan.

Speaker 21 (02:23:24):
But that's a real bank.

Speaker 4 (02:23:25):
Yep. They're involved in the shadow banking shit, so they
they are exposed to when they're like fucking seven hundred
million dollar loan to like a fucking actually went home.
Which one was the seven hundred million dollar I think
a seven hundred million dollar loan that went under was
the one that was to a subprime auto loan company.

Speaker 21 (02:23:42):
That's a bad investment. It's oh yeah, it's so evil.
So why am I trusting all of my money that
I have in this world? I'm letting this guy hold
on to it, who's obviously not good with fucking money.

Speaker 4 (02:23:54):
Well, because the FDIC is ensuring it.

Speaker 21 (02:23:57):
Why are you in charge of it? Why are you
in charge of having the money? You obviously don't make
great financial decisions because you invested seven hundred million dollars
in subprime auto loans.

Speaker 4 (02:24:07):
So, Mollie, this, this is the this is the point
where we need to bring debt. The first five thousand
years back into this and emphasize the extent to which
the financial class has always been deeply connected to the
of the military and why it's always been deconnected to
war financing.

Speaker 21 (02:24:21):
I'm starting to realize that this is all very bad.

Speaker 4 (02:24:25):
It's very bad. It's all very bad. And this is
this is to some extent why right Like part part
of what right wing conspiracism about the financial system is
is that like these people are like like the right wingers,
like these people are there's like a baseline level of
anti Semitism, like in the US right because it is
a is a Christian society that is just like what
fucking happens there? And these people are like, okay, we

(02:24:48):
can channel all of the anger at like, oh my god,
by fucking house got stolen by the bank because because
they were betting on the mortgage to fail.

Speaker 21 (02:24:58):
And I still understand why that seagull.

Speaker 4 (02:25:01):
Yeah. Well, all these right wing conspiracits do is they
look at that shit and they go, oh, well it
was the Jews, and it's like but no, like fuck off,
like these are all no it was the band and
the other thing. And this is actually a really important
thing that's not well understood here is that like the
actual people who run these fucking banks and the people
who work at them are all fucking white Christian dipshits.
This is like a really, really like persistent issue that

(02:25:21):
everyone fucking has, which is that, like one of one
of the great successes of anti Semitism was like creating
the image of the banker as a Jewish person. And no,
they're not the Bay Like I fucking went to school
with these people. They're all a bunch of fucking white
frat bros. They're fucking white Christian frat ros. Oh right,
you University of Chicago.

Speaker 21 (02:25:37):
You have a degree in economics in the University of Chicago.

Speaker 4 (02:25:40):
No freaking I have an anthropology degree, Thank you very much.
I took a not a fucking fake degree, like the
stupid econ bullshit.

Speaker 21 (02:25:48):
I would say, that's actually so evil to study economics.
It's Chicago. You probably met some of the most evil people.

Speaker 4 (02:25:54):
Armed fact, I was just like in a dorm with them. Okay,
so but you saw that I know all these people. Yeah,
and like it is not it is not a bunch
of Jewish people. It's it's a bunch of Christian frat bros.
Like that's like the thing that's actually going on. There's
actually a whole One day I will write behind the
Bastard's episode about leverage buyouts and about how like there
was like a Jewish guy who kind of like like

(02:26:16):
did a lot of the inventing stuff, but him breaking
into the banking thing was like a whole thing because
there was so much anti Semitism because all of the
banking sector was run by all of the fucking like
weird dipshit like CIA, like like wasp motherfuckers.

Speaker 21 (02:26:33):
I mean, the Mormons have a huge hedge fund.

Speaker 4 (02:26:35):
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 21 (02:26:37):
Yeah, so like the what I said, I read an
article about it, the hedge Fund, that the Mormons operate
like they have their like best and brightest finance bros.
Like you know, Mormons do their to your mission. If
you're really good at finance your mission, that you don't
have to go to South America and like tell people
about the Book of Mormon. You can work at the
hedge fund as your mission.

Speaker 4 (02:26:53):
It's it's a nightmare.

Speaker 21 (02:26:54):
I'm doing a hedge funds for God. Yep.

Speaker 4 (02:26:56):
That's a Satis Shatto bank by the way. Yep, it's great.
So okay, okay, coming back to this again, right, so
we're talking about like what what causes two thousand and
eight and how did these shadow banks like do this?
And the answer is that they've turned all of these
mortgages into these like fake securities they can trade, right,

(02:27:18):
they package them all together, and they find out something
really crucial, which is that if they throw a bunch
of loans that they obviously know are going to fail
together and send them to a regulatory agency. And by
the way, all of these like bonds that they're issuing
have like grades based on supposed to be like how
safe they are. And they figure out, yeah, and they
figure out that they can send a bunch of really

(02:27:38):
shitty bonds, but if they package enough shitty bonds together,
they could send them to the regulators and the regulators
would have would evaluate some of them as being good,
and then you could sell the good ones to your
pension fund because I thought it was a good bond
and it made money. Lie and then and then yes,
and yes, and then and then behind the scene, right,

(02:28:00):
all of these fucking companies, all these shadow banks, all
the regular banks, they're all doing these they're all doing
these credit default swaps, right, So they're all betting on
which ones of these are going to fail.

Speaker 21 (02:28:09):
I'm putting all of these boys in time out. I'm
gonna put them in the bottom.

Speaker 4 (02:28:13):
Of a hip so evil, and they start they start
doing these, making these like even more complicated instruments right where,
Now what they're what they're selling to you isn't just
the package of mortgages. They're also selling you the credit
default swaps with the loan. So theoretically, what's happening is
like they've created an instrument that, regardless of what happens
to the loan, you make money.

Speaker 21 (02:28:33):
That's not how anything works.

Speaker 4 (02:28:35):
No, it's bullshit.

Speaker 21 (02:28:36):
It's so obviously bullshit. I made up this fake thing
where no matter what happens, I get rich. That's cool.
I would love to do that.

Speaker 4 (02:28:44):
Yeah, and nobody was like wait, well, I mean some
a couple of people were, but like, like people didn't
just be like wait, hold on, no, obviously you can't
make an asset that makes money regardless of whether the
thing fails or not.

Speaker 21 (02:28:55):
I invented a money machine, Like that's fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (02:28:58):
And then eventually yeah, it was like no, they ran
out of fucking mortgages. You know. One of the ways
that the blame for this was deflected onto regular people
was that they blamed the banks or like they blamed
regular people for like not being able to pay the mortgages.
But the thing is, by the time you get to
the point where you're like packaging all that, you're betting
on the mortgages. Right if you're a bank, even if
you're the regular bank, you don't make money off of

(02:29:20):
like someone paying their mortgage back. You make money on
betting on the mortgages. So you're incentivized to just keep
giving out loans you know won't happen because you can
sell those loans off to some other dipshit and then
you and then you can bet on those loans that
they're going to fail and you can make money. And
that's how you make your money because you're.

Speaker 21 (02:29:37):
You're not a bank anymore. You're a bookie who's cheating. Yep,
I don't think that's good.

Speaker 4 (02:29:44):
Mia, No, this was the entire fucking financial system, and
we just let these people stay in power.

Speaker 21 (02:29:51):
And I'm just supposed to just continue living my life
like this.

Speaker 2 (02:29:55):
I don't know, like.

Speaker 4 (02:29:57):
Looking at this and then and then learning that all
of these people got fucking bailed up by the government
and none of them went to prison.

Speaker 21 (02:30:02):
And do they know they're cheating liars who are faking
and making it up? Or are they like so high
on their own supply they're like, they're like, no, bro, no,
but this is totally gonna work. It's totally gonna work.

Speaker 4 (02:30:11):
Well, here's the thing. Some of them know and some
of them don't.

Speaker 21 (02:30:15):
Because some of them believe that this is cool.

Speaker 4 (02:30:17):
Yeah, like some some of them legitimately thought that this
was just going to work forever.

Speaker 21 (02:30:21):
Like do they believe their negative money, backed by other
fake money, backed by the idea of promises of fake money?
They think that's money.

Speaker 4 (02:30:28):
Yeah, yep, Well thought was gonna work. It's not, it's not. Nope,
And it turned out to not be any fucking money,
and it blew up again, Like entire countries, countries were
buying these, they went bankrupt.

Speaker 21 (02:30:40):
So like this is less real than a board epe nft.
And that's really saying something. It's it's astonishing because at
least the at least I can look at least I
can look at the picture of the monkey. I can't
look at this.

Speaker 4 (02:30:55):
No, like it like you can't look at the bet
you're making on whether and whether monkey go down, Like it's.

Speaker 21 (02:31:00):
Like like all my apes gone.

Speaker 4 (02:31:03):
Yeah, but it's suppresiing because the entire world is just this.
Now it's a shit the banks were doing where you're
betting on whether mortgage gould to fail, but now it's
your betting on whether like what day we're going to
drop a bomb on a run?

Speaker 21 (02:31:13):
Like nothing is real and everything is gambling.

Speaker 4 (02:31:16):
Yeah. Yeah, And this is you know, what I would
call a sort of terminal crisis stage of capitalism, where like.

Speaker 21 (02:31:23):
Because everything is so divorced from any material reality, from
any good or service.

Speaker 4 (02:31:27):
Like there is a limit to which you can run
an entire economy that is purely based on gambling. Like
they're just there's a limit and we're going to hit it. Really,
so that's that's got to break, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's
going to break. It's going to break spectacularly. However, Comma,
I do have good news for you, don't I do?
I have good news? You now actually understand what non

(02:31:49):
bank financial intermediation is. No, I don't. I'm going to
walk through through it. You actually do. So I'm going
to quote the IMS definition of non bank financial intermediation
quote all entities outside the regulated banking system that perform
the core banking functions credit intermediation, that is taking money

(02:32:12):
from savers and letting it to borrowers. The four key
aspects of intermediation are maturity transformation. We know this one, right,
This is this is what the bank does.

Speaker 21 (02:32:22):
The loan gets older. Yeah, yeah, he gets paid back
over time.

Speaker 9 (02:32:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:32:26):
Well it's you you turn your short term thing into
a long term investment, or you do the opposite.

Speaker 21 (02:32:32):
Opposite, it's not good.

Speaker 4 (02:32:33):
They're both kind of a disaster, but like, yeah, yeah,
the no, the opposite is kind of how we got
into this mess.

Speaker 21 (02:32:39):
There's liquidity transformation, which we know this too. It's turning
money into a thing that's not money.

Speaker 4 (02:32:45):
Yeah, or turning not money into a thing you can
buy burger with.

Speaker 21 (02:32:49):
Okay, yeah, we got this.

Speaker 4 (02:32:52):
Leverage We also know this, which is you go into
a bunch of debt to buy something else. And then
there's credit risk transfer, which we know that one too.
It's the betting market. We're supposedly swapping the risk by
both of you two are now betting on whether this
thing is going to fail.

Speaker 21 (02:33:10):
So it sounds like even just like regular banking is
kind of just gambling now.

Speaker 4 (02:33:15):
Yep, yep, yep. Well, and it's fun too, So this
is the thing that you used to be talked about
more and isn't now. But like most of like, like
the world's corporations are also basically this now, like this
has been a thing for a while. But it's like
the auto manufacturers don't make their money off of cars.
I mean they sort of do. They make some money
of cars, or like, most of what they make their
money off of is like the forward finance company, which

(02:33:37):
is like the auto loans thing. Oh and then the
auto loans thing trades a bunch of like does all
of this other financial bullshit to make money?

Speaker 21 (02:33:45):
So, like, I don't think that's a good idea.

Speaker 4 (02:33:48):
That's that's what capitalism is.

Speaker 21 (02:33:50):
So everything, everything is fully reliant on this.

Speaker 4 (02:33:55):
Like stupid gambling bullshit.

Speaker 21 (02:33:56):
Emperor is wearing no clothes economy yep. And if anybody,
if anybody points out that none of this is connected
to a material reality, everything falls apart.

Speaker 4 (02:34:07):
Well, here's the thing. The thing that stops everything for
falling apart is that the one thing you can do
with your money is turn it into gun.

Speaker 21 (02:34:13):
Now I'm listening, and.

Speaker 4 (02:34:14):
That's what stops it falling apart, right because.

Speaker 21 (02:34:16):
Now I'm listening.

Speaker 4 (02:34:17):
And this is also a sort of graverism. But it's
like behind every bank is a man with a gun,
because the reason that this money is even sort of
real is that the bank can, like you, like the
police will come get you, right, like men with guns
will appear and coerce you to pay shit.

Speaker 21 (02:34:35):
Right, But what if what if instead of burger we
bought gun?

Speaker 4 (02:34:42):
You know, like this is what is broadly referred to
as the social revolution. It is it is broadly considered
a negative by the financial sector. It is broadly considered
a positive by everyone the fuck else. Okay, that's not true.
It's not considered it a positive by like, I guess
the people who own regular businesses. And this is like
this shit that like, you know, it kind of less
unhinged back then. But like if you go read the

(02:35:04):
people who were like doing this shit in like the
early nineteen hundreds, if you read their writing, it's all
them being like, oh yeah, no, by the way, like
a bunch of banks just like turned the entire Ottoman
Empire into like a debt peon. And now their entire
economy is just dedicated to paying off these fucking loans.
And this is like hideously fucking evil, Like they're all
complaining about the same shit.

Speaker 21 (02:35:24):
And the important lesson we learned from that, the important
lesson we learned from that was to do it more more.
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, to invent increasingly more complicated ways
of doing that.

Speaker 6 (02:35:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:35:37):
And like this, this is why the term third World
is a slur becauseuse instead of being a political movement,
because those the countries in the political movement that was
called the Third World movement, all of their economies got
fucking annihilated because they had these like loans whose interest
rate could change, and the US jacked up all the
interest rates and so suddenly their loans were like like

(02:35:58):
the amount you had to like pay on the loan
it went from like twenty percent or something to like
fifty or one hundred or some shit. And you know,
and like in these countries have never recovered, like Nigeria
has never really economically recovered from the shit that happened
to them with this. This is why a whole bunch
of Latin America is like this too, Like it was
like why there's so much sort of like writing systemic poverty,
is that there were economies were entirely transformed into machines

(02:36:22):
to like pay back these fucking debts taken out by
these dictators. This is the whole fucking economy now. And
you know there's other shadow banks that do other kind
of completely unhand shit, right And I've been focusing this
week on like specifically the kind that blew up the
economy in two thousand and eight, But there's another kind
that's like blowing up the economy right now, which is
called private credit, which is I mentioned this briefly earlier,

(02:36:43):
but private credit is when these like unregulated companies that
are not banks, give out unregulated loans with unknown terms
to other companies, and then those loans go to shit.
And there's a whole bunch of ways that can blow up,
including by the way, these companies are funding a bunch
of the AI bubble.

Speaker 21 (02:36:58):
Oh and that's a great in depth, it's great, you
know because much much like a mortgage, there's a real
physical thing like a house involved, Right, it's not just vibes.

Speaker 4 (02:37:08):
Oh yeah, oh molly, molly, they those motherfuckers. I'm gonna
talk about this a bit. I might have had just
run on for this part of it too, just because
like ED does this all the time. But like those
motherfuckers out there selling securities that are backed by fucking
graphics cards, like at least the more I can't believe
I'm fucking saying this, but like at least the mortgage

(02:37:28):
backed securities, like there was a house you could steal
to get your money back graphics cards ball.

Speaker 21 (02:37:35):
All my apes are, all my apes are gone. Like
there's other ones that like it's it's so bad, it's just.

Speaker 4 (02:37:47):
But that that's for another time because it is late
as fuck and we are out of here. Mollie. Thank you,
Thank you for sitting and enduring an hour of you
knowing what a shadow bank is.

Speaker 21 (02:37:58):
Now I almost know what a bank is. I'm still
working on the rest of it, but I think I'm
getting closer.

Speaker 4 (02:38:04):
I believe in you. I think we've made for progress today.
I don't know. Now you can kind of understand what's
going on. When this sting sector explodes again in like two.

Speaker 21 (02:38:14):
Weeks, you'll have to explain it to me again.

Speaker 4 (02:38:16):
Then I will be happy.

Speaker 9 (02:38:17):
To oh.

Speaker 24 (02:38:42):
Demo crazy words.

Speaker 1 (02:38:46):
In twenty twenty, millions of Americans took to the streets
to protest police violence. They were met with police violence
on a massive scale. Shootings, vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred
alongside these protests, often into fas of the police, and
in total, at least twenty five Americans died. We now
know that President Trump repeatedly urged General Mark Milly to

(02:39:08):
deploy US military forces to crack down violently on demonstrations.
Milly claims that Trump told him to have his soldiers
crack skulls, beat the fuck out of and just shoot protesters.
In the end, we were all lucky. Military leaders, including
General Milly, resisted calls to use their men to suppress
domestic descent. National Guard were called in to police several

(02:39:31):
major cities, but in many cases their behavior was tame
compared to the militarized police who were reliably shot and
beat protesters. For millions of Americans, twenty twenty was their
first exposure to the violence the state will do to
avoid change. And then Trump lost the election. He and
his followers tried to carry out a coupe, but failed

(02:39:52):
for now and millions of Americans who'd taken to the
streets mostly went back to their lives. Some were satisfied
just as had been done. Others were furious to have
stopped short of instituting real change, but at the end
of the day, business went on as usual. A version
of normal prevailed. In twenty twenty one, the military of Myanmar,

(02:40:13):
known as the tout Mada, overthrew the elected government in
a coup. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, most of them young,
gin z and millennial men and women, took to the streets.
Police responded with tear gas, water cannons, and eventually bullets.
The international community expressed its horror at the brutality of
the TOTMDA, but that's all they did. Over the course

(02:40:35):
of several months, the military pushed protesters mostly out of
the cities, and a protest movement against the military coup
turned into a civil war. Now those same protesters, mostly
kids who wanted nothing more than a normal life, have
become revolutionaries. With home made guns, three D printed rockets,
and stolen rifles, they battled the taut Mada. Some of

(02:40:56):
them fight in the jungles, some of them fight in
the cities, and some of them on the internet. This
is their story. We're sitting in a large suburban home
in Mysot, Thailand, a small city on the border of
Me and Mar. The boys singing and playing music around
us range in age from seventeen to twenty two. Their

(02:41:17):
existence in Thailand is a crime. If they are caught here,
they'll be forced across the border into Me and Mar,
whose government executed their friends and sold the organs for profit.
But tonight they're playing music. We're drinking beer. Later, James
Stout and I will play pool with them and get
our asses just catastrophically wrecked.

Speaker 3 (02:41:40):
We met Andy, aged twenty two and head of the
family for his Instagram page. That's not his real name,
but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first
met when I send him a DM asking if we
could buy one of his photos for our first series
on Me and Ma. He was a bit skeptical, but
I tried my best to get him to see we
just wanted to give him money and from his work.

(02:42:01):
Over the next six months or so, we weren't from
talking on the phone to messaging almost every day, to
Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand, to sitting on
the top floor of their house. It used to be
his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy and
his partner Sarah. That's also not her real name, because
she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand.

(02:42:22):
The boys we talk about are the brothers, his cousin
and friends. They live at a small building across the garden,
and in the daytime they sit under a gazeba and
play their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah,
we sat behind a bar in an unpaved alleyway. We
drank beer out of sippy cups because selling beer is
still banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the

(02:42:43):
cops don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much,
in fact, and the next day I work up with
a headache and a blurry photo of me, Robert and
Andy engaged in a post which was half hug and
half mutual support structure. We walked home and according to
my phone, at some point we took photos of a
and and hopefully unrelated incident. At some point I started bleeding.

(02:43:05):
It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the chance to
blow off some steam. Over the last year and change.
He is chronicled every stage of the coup in its aftermath,
In early videos, we see joyous protests, moments of resistance,
and splendor in the streets of cities like Miawiti. Later
we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare. Andy didn't have

(02:43:27):
what you would call an easy childhood, thanks in part
to me and Mar's long history of revolutions being crushed
by the army. People there, like people everywhere, want to
be free and determine their own futures. And so each
generation has its own uprising, and each generation has its
own massacre and very little progress to show for it.

Speaker 8 (02:43:47):
I was born in two thousand, so when I was seven,
two thousand and seven, there was a revolution. It's called
Saffron Revolution. It's it wasn't it wasn't like this, you know,
it wasn't like what happened now. But like, they were
a lot of people that were involved in it, a
lot of people that killed, a lot of people left
Miamar and came to the refugee counts in here, and

(02:44:08):
we were one of the families that came to the
refugee counts.

Speaker 1 (02:44:12):
And yeah, inta, Yeah, Andy's mother is Bumah, the dominant
ethnic group in Myanmar, due to their decades long control
of the military and government. His father is Karin, the
ethnic group once used by the British government as soldiers.
Since nineteen forty nine, the Karin have fought a war
in the mountains against the Totmada. Their name is often

(02:44:32):
anglicized to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which,
given present Internet trends, makes explaining the conflict sometimes awkward.
Andy primarily identifies as and was raised Bumah. His family
left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to
escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This
put them in an awkward position in the camps, which

(02:44:54):
were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.

Speaker 8 (02:44:58):
We weren't refugees. We were more like, how do you say,
like economic refugees. You know, we go because not because
our village has been burned down and our family has
been killed, you know. So then if we were to
go back to Yangon, we still could find a job.
We still could find you know. But then for these
current people, like this place is the only place that

(02:45:21):
they could exist at that moment, right and probably still
now too. So uh yeah, so they said that, but
that education wasn't very good. There is the life wasn't good,
you know, it wasn't It wasn't.

Speaker 25 (02:45:33):
It was very bad.

Speaker 8 (02:45:34):
Honestly, it was very bad. It was a lot of violence,
a lot of hate, a lot of understandable, you know,
like these people have gone through so much shit and
so much trauma that and nothing. No one is coming
there too, but fix that. So they had a lot
of anger, They had a lot of problems. But my
mom said, yeah, we're going back because the education he
is very bad. And if you go back to Meamar,

(02:45:56):
at least, you know, if you do like the thing
that people or do, maybe you'll get somewhere. Yeah, in
the future. Here there's no future, so she said, So
we went back and I stayed in yourmar for like
four years.

Speaker 1 (02:46:09):
Andy had never been very political. His family was more
or less neutral, tending to side with the military more
often than not out of a sense of inertia. Me
and martended to cartwheel between attempts at democracy and military dictatorship.
So when the world media celebrated their first democratic elections
in twenty five years in twenty fifteen, Andy was not
particularly excited.

Speaker 8 (02:46:31):
Yeah, So, I mean, we did realize that there was
a change in the country, right, because we grew up
in the military to take your ship. But then one
contents did you take over?

Speaker 25 (02:46:43):
Took over.

Speaker 8 (02:46:44):
There were some changes, like the phones got cheaper, the
internet got cheaper, and if you look back then you
can see big, big changes. But the thing is it
was never real democracy. And I think a lot of
people in and the western countries thought that it was
democracy when al Sansugi took over.

Speaker 1 (02:47:05):
Asong Suci came to prominence during a nineteen eighty eight
uprising against the military, which ended in bloodshed in the
streets of Yangon, and she'd been a long time democratic activist.
As Andy noted, westerners celebrated her election as the first
democratic head of state for mianmar She even won a
Nobel prize, but the agreement her party had made with
the military gave the general significant permanent control over the government.

Speaker 8 (02:47:29):
But I think most of the people in the country
knew it wasn't real democracy because you know, the military
always had twenty five percent twenty fight seats in the parliament,
right like they were always they were in charge of
electricity and all these all these big things, a weapons
army like the military itself. They are in charge of
all these things and they make it very clear.

Speaker 1 (02:47:50):
And even with a Nobel Prize on song, Suci did
not fight to stop the top Mada from pursuing their
decades long wars against the ethnic armed organizations in the Hills,
nor did she act to stop their ethnic cleansing of
the Rohinga people. In fact, she and others in her
party didn't even call them Rohinga. They called them Bengali
and insisted they were illegally residing in Myanmar, despite mountains

(02:48:13):
of evidence documenting a group by that name living in
what is now the Rakian State. I think most Americans
and Westerners in general can empathize with the feeling of
electing someone who promises change and then getting very little
of what you'd expected.

Speaker 8 (02:48:26):
I think Alsensuci used to be this hope that that
was like the opposition against the military. But I think
when she got power, she couldn't do all the things
that she promised to do or like, you know, we
looked at her before, we looked at her as something,
you know, something hope for everyone, you know, for all

(02:48:49):
the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country. But
then when she became empower, she mainly focused all these
changes for the but my people, well, you know, the
mainland people, like the military was still fucking killing people
and killing ethnic groups. Did they do something, you know,

(02:49:10):
like so then for the athnic groups, what's the difference?

Speaker 1 (02:49:13):
And so while Andy was hopeful that his country might
take a better path, he was not exactly convinced that
things were going to get better. Conflict within his family
eventually pushed him to make the decision to leave.

Speaker 8 (02:49:24):
My dad was very abusive, right, he would be the
shit out of my mouth every day like that. It
was fine, Like it was fine when we were younger.
We couldn't do anything, you know, we just kind of
watched it, right, But the older we got, the more
we involved, the more we try to stop it. But
then we were fight with him too, you know. And
so at some point it became too much, and so

(02:49:44):
I left my home I think in twenty sixteen, just
by myself, and I was like, I've been to messat,
I will go back here, you know.

Speaker 1 (02:49:53):
So Andy lived across the border on his own for
more than five years. He'd fallen in love, gotten a
home with his own and set him himself up and
the sort of odd jobs you can do without papers
or legal residency and that's where things were for him
when the top Madag carried out their coup in early
twenty twenty one.

Speaker 8 (02:50:09):
Twenty twenty one February. First, I was a messout I
was here, and yeah, in the morning, I woke up,
called me my girlfriend and as she said, the military
just did a coup in your country. You should call
your family.

Speaker 1 (02:50:23):
The military claimed voter fraud and used that as the
pretext to stay in power. It's a situation that should
be unsettlingly familiar to most of our audience. For a while,
Safe in Maysat, Andy watched it in horror as he
texted with friends and family across the border.

Speaker 8 (02:50:38):
The arrested Ansensujin, all the big leaders right at the top,
So we were kind of like, okay, is someone going
to tell us what to do? And especially for us,
we didn't have any experiences. We didn't know anything about
any of this that I'm talking about right now. I
didn't have any knowledge of that. But yeah, so after
I think six day, the military cut off the internet

(02:51:00):
for like two days, and I've lost our contact with
everyone inside, my family, my friends, And that's the night
I started playing it, like I started thinking, oh fuck,
I should go back. And I saw the protest photos
from Yangon. They looked amazing, right, and I'm like, I'm
a photographer. I should be there and you know, document that.

Speaker 3 (02:51:19):
While Andy was staring at the protest photos from the
capital of Mianmar Napo door, as well as Miawity and
the largest city, Yang Gone, wondering he should take his
camera and document yet another rising for democracy in his
home country. A young woman named a Mirror was in
the thick of those protests and Yang Gone when the
coup started. A Mirror Age, seventeen, had just finished high school.

(02:51:42):
She was looking forward to university and more pressingly, looking
forward to playing futsal with her friends. She liked to
spend a day's crafting, she says, making little things to
gift or to keep, Like every other day. When she
woke up, she spent ten minutes in medication before facing
the world on the first February Long Sam Stukey was
her hero, she says in our interview. Her boyfriend translated

(02:52:06):
for her. We'll get to their story later, but when
the coup began, they lived the world apart, but they
joined the whole generation in feeling enraged by Tatmador, trying
to rip the freedom their parents had fought for from them.
A mirror took her rage into the street. Someone gave
her a bullhorn.

Speaker 5 (02:52:23):
Because of her voice, and then she became the leader,
you know with the bullhorn.

Speaker 1 (02:52:28):
Yeah, what kind of stuff would you say to the
boat through the bullhorn?

Speaker 5 (02:52:32):
Hello, you don't want you She's saying, uh, this is
and fell and then uh uh that the erascuing that

(02:52:53):
Succi is a anfel not fair.

Speaker 3 (02:52:56):
Okay, got yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:53:01):
And then she believed that, Uh, she believed in what
Dar Sansuci said, like everything is possible, and we haven't
do anything. We haven't studied yet, and then but when
we study it and then we can finish it, so
everything is possible.

Speaker 4 (02:53:23):
So that's what she believed in.

Speaker 5 (02:53:26):
So she went on the road and then she protests.

Speaker 3 (02:53:29):
Across the city from a mirror on Coude. Miowk's girlfriend
woke him up with the news that the government they'd
voted for had been arrested. We're calling him Yauk here
because that's his name. In the revolution, everyone has one.
A mirror's his baby, because she's so young yet so fierce.
If you're wondering means monkey. These revolutionaries who have risked

(02:53:52):
life and limb for each other didn't know the legal
names of the people they call their revolution family because
it's safer that way, and we don't either. Me, I
could spend the night. Well, I'll let you hear Harry
phrase it.

Speaker 6 (02:54:03):
Actually, I was just like I was chilling with my
scare friend, you know, our jailing, and we were you know,
Netflix and chare generary Neflis and I think it's a Sunday.
I think it's Sunday Nephla and Cha, and we we
slid together.

Speaker 2 (02:54:22):
If you didn't catch that there were Netflix and chilling.

Speaker 6 (02:54:25):
You know, I was literally not wakere but any louder show.
I was so sleep but at the full am there's
a whole poe rings and I certainly wake here the
phone ring from my girlfriend, her anti call call called
cald Heart, and she said there's a cool of fish. Oh,
and she wake her and she told me there's a

(02:54:48):
cool of I didn't, you know, I don't believe it.

Speaker 2 (02:54:52):
I believe it.

Speaker 6 (02:54:53):
I didn't believe it. So other than I chat the
social media, oh ship or may I actually do this?
I'm so angry and I'm so angry, you know. I
was god to doll downstairs, and I told to my family,
difficult of everyone's angry at those times. The internet they
cut off.

Speaker 3 (02:55:13):
The next revolutionary we're going to mean is a fellow
will call doctor Wonder because that's his revolution name. When
the coups started, he was just waking up after a
twenty four hour shift at the hospital and Yangon where
he worked. Doctors were some of the earliest and most
visible dissidents in the protests. Their rarity and therefore their
relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol

(02:55:35):
of the pro democracy movement, but, as Dr Wonder made clear,
many older medical professionals, I'm not at all certain that
resistance was a right move here.

Speaker 9 (02:55:44):
At the morning I saw the news that bad news,
really really bad news for us. It was how would
I say that day? Pro You know, yeah, they broke future.

Speaker 3 (02:56:01):
Doctors were some of the earliest, most visible dissidents in
the pro democracy protests. Their rarity and relative value to
the regime made them a potent symbol of the pro
democracy movement, but as doctor Wonder made clear, many older
medical professionals were not at all certain that resistance was
a right move.

Speaker 9 (02:56:21):
On that money. We go back to our ah, our society,
our hospital. We are shen guys, you know, all professors
or conceranders. They not much interest about that. It was.
They told us, you know, whoever rules our camfe, this

(02:56:44):
is not our business. It is one of our seniors,
doctors from our society for our department pool us like that.
But we reply him, no, it should be the last time.

Speaker 3 (02:56:59):
If didn't care, he said it should be the last time,
the last time kids had to die in the streets.
They didn't want another generation to have to go through
the same thing. So they got together a proposal, a
sort of manifesto for peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and they submitted
it to their seniors.

Speaker 9 (02:57:17):
We negotiated with our you know, young resident, our society,
and we discussed about that and we plan to start
with one of our prior movement before save a disagreement.
We have got our red ribbon movement because we want

(02:57:37):
not right peacefully on the media. Okay. We started like that,
and then some of our seniors from our society, they
were from Mandally Hospital. Okay, they accept our proposal. Yes,
because our generation has already passed that difficulties before, but

(02:58:02):
not your generation shouldn't accept that.

Speaker 3 (02:58:06):
Three days before the queue, TK got off a plane
in San Francisco. He's from Me and Ma, but he
lives in the Bay Area. Now, before you ask, he
says that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good
as stuff back home.

Speaker 5 (02:58:20):
It's only three days three days before, three days before
I went back to the to the United States, and
I wish I'm staying a youngle and doing the revolution
and a participate in a everywhere that I can, but
that I couldn't do from the long distance, you know.

(02:58:41):
So that's all I can do for now.

Speaker 3 (02:58:45):
TK had just been in Me and Ma. He had
connections to many people on the ground there, his friends
with it, his family with it. When the government cut
off into the access, he remained able to get good
international reporting on the situation in his home country. Slowly
he found ways to communicate with his friends and a
growing core of the protesters taking to the streets.

Speaker 5 (02:59:08):
I was a keyboard fighter. I have no idea about
a politics. I have no idea about the military stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:59:18):
This is a single most common sentiment we've heard across
all the revolutionaries we've met. None of them considered themselves
to be very political. Prior to the coup. They started
marching in the street because a military coup was obviously bad,
but they stayed there because the violence dished out by
the state was so horrific. Save at their house in Masok.
We talked to the boys and his brothers and cousins,

(02:59:40):
all of whom were living in Napo door when the
coup kicked off. It didn't take him long to try
and join them.

Speaker 8 (02:59:45):
Then I went in. I went to Nyawiti, which is
across the border in your marside, and I was there
for a week and it was it was something else,
like I've never been to protests now, I've never been
involved in any of this thing, and I never thought
I would be, you know, like I don't know. I
always thought like I wasn't going to be a part

(03:00:06):
of it. But when I went there the first day,
I write there were two hundred thousand people on the
street protesting. And then it's like, and if this big
group of people walk in streets after street and everyone
coming out of their house and we have this symbol
like three fingers from Hangergang, I think, yeah, yeah, so
that's like our symbol for democracy now or our movement now,

(03:00:30):
and everyone come out of their house doing that and
you know, like giving us water, food, everything. It was beautiful,
like it was something else. It was something else. And
then from that day I was like hook. I was like, Okay,
this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 12 (03:00:44):
Now.

Speaker 8 (03:00:44):
I'm going to be a photographer and I'm gonna in this,
you know, and I'm gonna I'm going to take photo
of these people and their stories and I'm gonna share
it and that's.

Speaker 2 (03:00:53):
My part, that's my rule.

Speaker 3 (03:00:55):
Soon he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days,
he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt
in twenty twenty. It's a feeling you felt if you've
ever been in the thick of a crowd of people
filled with righteous anger and facing down overwhelmed police or soldiers.
It's a sensation. I can't really described you you haven't
experienced it, but I can say that there's no time

(03:01:17):
that I've ever felt more empowered than the times I've
been crushed shoulder with strangers, toe to toe with state
violence and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible. It's addictive,
and if I'm monaged It's probably why Robert and I
booked a flight to visit a stranger I've been dming
on the ground.

Speaker 8 (03:01:34):
I think after three days, I met this group of people,
young people like students trying to be lawyers and souf
and I figured out that they were the ones trying
to organize these big protests, like two hundred people, one
hundred thousand people. They were the ones that's making that happen.
So I started kind of following them, trying to get
close because I wanted to get stories from them. And

(03:01:58):
then they became they and they realize what I've been doing,
They've been watching like and so they were like very welcome,
and they took me to this hide out that they
go to and then we will have discussions and meetings
about what we should do the next day.

Speaker 25 (03:02:10):
Da da da da.

Speaker 8 (03:02:12):
But then kind of it's because it's a small town.

Speaker 2 (03:02:15):
Right.

Speaker 8 (03:02:15):
Slowly, I think police and military started realizing that we
are that group too.

Speaker 24 (03:02:30):
Oh yeah, demo crazy wondering my josh oh do.

Speaker 3 (03:02:44):
So by now you're probably wondering what that coverage dust
to do. It's a song that boys learned when we
first took to the streets, but it tells the story
of a previous revelation, one that didn't succeed.

Speaker 24 (03:03:01):
That's pretty good, guy.

Speaker 1 (03:03:02):
Yeah, can you tell us what that song's about, like,
you know what the lyrics are and stuff in English?

Speaker 18 (03:03:08):
Yeah, yeah, we can try.

Speaker 1 (03:03:10):
I heard the word democracy in there.

Speaker 18 (03:03:11):
I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 23 (03:03:12):
Yeah, it's like all the.

Speaker 3 (03:03:18):
Yeah, do people use it for the Spring Revolution as
well as Ida, Yeah.

Speaker 24 (03:03:23):
Because it's the same thing.

Speaker 8 (03:03:27):
Tell the world, and that's the.

Speaker 2 (03:03:29):
Name of the song, tell the world.

Speaker 18 (03:03:32):
It's good.

Speaker 1 (03:03:33):
Yeah, I tell the world.

Speaker 8 (03:03:36):
So basically the song is like, yeah, they sang it
in the back in the eighty eight and then it's
like we used it quite a lot when when we
were in the protest to.

Speaker 25 (03:03:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (03:03:48):
The lyris are We'll keep fighting until the end of
the world for the sake of history and revolution in
our blood and of the fallen heroes who fought for
the democracy. Oh, our dearest heroes. This is the learne
of like heroes. Yeah and yeah. It goes on and yeah,

(03:04:13):
basically saying like something like the history went wrong along
the way, but we have to fix it. Yeah, like
the country has shut its blood and how could they
commit such violence to its own people, you know. Yeah,
and yeah, like they say, like the blood on the

(03:04:33):
rows and the streets are not dried yet. And for
the sake of these people who die for the democracy,
for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we.

Speaker 18 (03:04:46):
Have to keep fighting basically.

Speaker 8 (03:04:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:04:51):
Now in their exile, they keep singing it to remember
the first day of the revolution, when the fights are
in the street, not the jungle, before they lost so
many of their comrade.

Speaker 26 (03:05:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (03:05:01):
And then there was the night protest in front of
the police station.

Speaker 2 (03:05:08):
Attends.

Speaker 8 (03:05:09):
Yeah, oh this is they're singing.

Speaker 2 (03:05:12):
The song is the same.

Speaker 8 (03:05:14):
Yeah, it got very very heated.

Speaker 3 (03:05:21):
The protest friends were just talking about occurred in reality,
but the song popped up all across the country.

Speaker 25 (03:05:26):
When you played it in Yangon, you will sing it, uh, yeah,
they and yeah though it wasn't one guitar, it was
a whole band. Well you have like protesters sitting down
and then there's a group of people who were playing
this and repeatedly there are a bunch of songs that
will play and then there's like words that we would

(03:05:49):
say and yeah, like slot.

Speaker 24 (03:05:51):
Myself, Yeah I not beam down.

Speaker 8 (03:05:57):
And you'll see from the footage how it's.

Speaker 3 (03:06:00):
Yeah, how did it make you feel singing it out.

Speaker 24 (03:06:04):
It's scary, you know.

Speaker 8 (03:06:05):
It's like the song, the song is very real. So
like at first we didn't want to play the song.
It's too dark, it's too it's too intense, right yeah,
like yeah, but it's not like the lyrics are there,

(03:06:26):
like you can see it.

Speaker 11 (03:06:27):
You know.

Speaker 8 (03:06:27):
It's like because we've been through it too, so it's
very intense. And yeah, I think the first time I
heard it, like I heard the song, I remember that
we are feeling of yeah, I still have it like
every time we're saying it now, like this is not
one of the songs that we usually sing like. It's
not a fun song.

Speaker 2 (03:06:48):
Yeah, the album lou.

Speaker 24 (03:07:09):
Bedia de Moore Crazy.

Speaker 3 (03:07:22):
On the next episode, which you'll be able to download tomorrow,
we'll talk about how the Hunter began to clamp down
on the protests. Now the protesters decided this struggle was
too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Hi everyone,

(03:07:44):
it's James here. I just wanted to note that lots
of the words in this script are Burmese or Karen
or Thai, and we've made every effort to make sure
that we pronounce them correctly, but we're sure We've obviously
made some mistakes along the way. That's not out of
a lack of respect or I have a lack of
re recording on my part, but we did want to
note that what we've made a mistake, we're very sorry

(03:08:04):
for doing.

Speaker 12 (03:08:05):
So this is it could happen here in Executive Disorder,
our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm
Garrison Davis today and joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans,
with a special sign by James Stout. This episode, we're

(03:08:26):
covering the week of July fifteenth to July twenty second.
On Monday morning, someone poured gasoline in front of an
entrance to the Federal Immigration Court in New York City
and lit the gasoline on fire. A forty three year
old Army vet was arrested outside the building that has
been charged with arson. The man brought a sign reading
ice off our streets and also allegedly launched a bundle

(03:08:48):
of fireworks and fired pellets from an air soft rifle.
Three US service members were killed this week on an
air base in Jordan as a result of Trump's war
with Ron The New York Times, Sames reported that the
Trump administration has tried to obtain phone and text records
from New York Times journalists and their families to uncover
the source of leaks regarding the security capabilities of the

(03:09:10):
new Air Force one courtesy of the Qatari government. Cash
Hotel's overseeing this investigation. This is a huge First Amendment breach.
After multiple failed election campaigns, Katie Porter has announced she
is leaving politics to become a book influencer Oh God,
and has rebranded her Instagram account to Katie Porter turns

(03:09:34):
the page.

Speaker 1 (03:09:36):
What okay? I mean bold move to be like, you
know what, the growth industry of the future is books.
I can't fault the desire there, but I just don't
think history is going to really work that way, Katie.

Speaker 12 (03:09:50):
Secretary Kennedy has announced the Trump administration is pausing more
than one billion dollars in medicaid payments to California and
Minnesota due to quote societ dected fraud and non compliance.
Play a short clip here.

Speaker 23 (03:10:05):
That includes more than eight hundred and sixty seven million
dollars for California and over two hundred million dollars for Minnesota.
If those states want that money. They need to provide
documentation that these payments are legitimate.

Speaker 12 (03:10:22):
This will seriously harm, if not kill people, huge numbers
of people. This is just a billion dollar cut to
medicaid citing quote unquote fraud.

Speaker 1 (03:10:32):
It's aimed at blue states that the administration sees as enemies.

Speaker 12 (03:10:35):
You know, let's move on to our first main story
and it'll be kind of a through line this episode.
As I briefly mentioned last week, on Thursday, July sixteenth,
Mark Rubio and the State Department held an international conference
on the Scourge of Left Wing violence and Antifa Terrorism.
This is just the latest escalation following Trump's designation of

(03:10:57):
Antifa as a quote unquote terrorist group last year and
the emboldening of law enforcements targeting of left wing groups
the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number seven. According to the
State Departments, this international conference was attended by representatives from
sixty six countries. Over sixty senior ministers were invited, but

(03:11:18):
only seventeen ministers actually were in attendance, though other quote
political leaders and experts and law enforcement officials traveled to
DC for the event, including the senior chief of the
Hellenic Police from Greece. According to a reporter from the
lahrnta newspaper, Mexico was invited to the summit, but the

(03:11:39):
president declined to attend because the conference seemed quote more
political than really related to combating criminal groups.

Speaker 1 (03:11:49):
Yeah, amazing, imagine that.

Speaker 12 (03:11:52):
And before the conference, Washington Post reported that many senior
ministers were confused as to the purpose of the event
and why they were invited to the conference, with two
European diplomats telling the Post quote, we don't have Antifa
end quote. Our law enforcement authorities have not focused on
left wing terrorism because this is not considered a high
priority threat in our countries.

Speaker 1 (03:12:12):
It doesn't really exist, yeah to us.

Speaker 12 (03:12:15):
So this international summit put on by Mark Rubio was
titled the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.

Speaker 1 (03:12:24):
Come very serious, completely leaving out the right, and also,
as we'll talk about later, blaming a lot basically the
entire modern left on Cuba because it's a mix of
Marco and everyone trying to panter to Trump. A lot
of these are grievances either rooted in the seventies or
like a four month period in twenty twenty. Yes, right,
Like that's their entire conception of the left.

Speaker 12 (03:12:46):
To open the summit, Rubio told this story of a
civilizational threat posed by leftists, Marxists, and anarchist political violence,
the violence that has laid dormant since the seventies but
has now awoken. Rubio applauded our counter terrorism strategies in
taking down quote unquote radical Islamist extremism. But while our

(03:13:08):
focus has been on Isis and jihadism, law enforcement and
the counter terrorism mapparatus has been unable or unwilling to
go after left wing violence, let's hear from Rubio.

Speaker 27 (03:13:20):
For far too long, however, our counter terrorism doctrine has
had a blind spot, a blind spot when it comes
to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the
very idea that far left terrorism could be a serious
threat is treated as a right wing fever dream, or worse,
as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It's treated this way by

(03:13:42):
many in the press, by many an academia and our universities,
and by many of.

Speaker 18 (03:13:47):
Our legacy institutions.

Speaker 27 (03:13:49):
You will, no doubt see the dogma rear its head
in the coverage of this very conference, in spite of
the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the
objective numbers and statistics.

Speaker 12 (03:14:00):
One of the main tactics employed by Rubio, Stephen Miller,
and others throughout this conference was the subtle conflation of
mass casualty incidents from the far right with instances of
property damage or, in the most extreme cases, targeted assassination
attempts against political figures attributed to the far left, which

(03:14:21):
people on the far right also do, by the way.

Speaker 1 (03:14:25):
Much more often.

Speaker 12 (03:14:25):
Yeah, Rubio said quote. A whole industry grew up in
our countries around the study of extremism. We have think
tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken
understanding among them that only one kind of political violence
was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted
by a neo Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous

(03:14:47):
act of evil, it is, But a bomb planted by
a Marxist revolutionary, well, that's just merely a tragic excess
of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or over zealous,
but it's ends were virtuous and just unquote.

Speaker 1 (03:15:03):
No one's ever said that, Mark, no one, no one
in US politics has ever said that. You can find
some maniacs have said anything about anything. But like, that's
simply not a discourse in America.

Speaker 12 (03:15:14):
CVE researchers generally would not describe Marxist bombing plots as virtuous, and.

Speaker 1 (03:15:19):
Just I've never heard a bombing plot described as virtuous.
The only act of what you could call terrorism I've
ever seen in the recent days people call virtuous is
you know what happened to that healthcare executive.

Speaker 21 (03:15:30):
Which Rubio does talk about, Yes, and that is definitely a.

Speaker 1 (03:15:34):
Lot of people cheered that on. But I can't think
of a single instance in which a bombing has ever
been cheered on. So and Marxist.

Speaker 4 (03:15:40):
Bombings, it's like, wait, when was the last time that
Marxist like actually said like, this is not a real thing.

Speaker 1 (03:15:46):
It isn't that What Rubio was talking about is a
spate of left wing affiliated bombings that occurred from nineteen
seventy one to seventy two. He talks about this in
the Cube of.

Speaker 4 (03:15:54):
Pity, and that's what he's said that hasn't happened, Like
no weather underground has been above ground for like.

Speaker 1 (03:16:01):
That's entirely what all this is based on.

Speaker 4 (03:16:03):
Yeah, yeah, and it's like it's not a thing.

Speaker 1 (03:16:05):
Now, Yeah, is what old people remember about the left
in the seventies.

Speaker 12 (03:16:09):
Yeah, you know, it's not directly referenced, but I know
the DJ did make a big hubbub about foiling a
quote unquote far left or it's kind of like an
anti imperials like maoist bombing plot in California late last year. Also,
a confidential human source who was working with law enforcement
was involved in the planning of this operation, which was

(03:16:31):
stopped by law enforcement before they could ever carry out
the attack.

Speaker 4 (03:16:35):
And that's the closest thing to like an actual like
Mark City. That is the closest recent thing. Yes, Like
that's it, like in the last like very long number
of years now.

Speaker 12 (03:16:45):
Rubio claimed that quote an extraordinary ideological prejudice was embedded
in the way we talk about political violence and extremism,
to the point that this prejudice has become the neutral
and objective baseline quote so entrenched in the mainstream conventional
wisdom that it came to be regarded as an apolitical fact.

(03:17:07):
For an example of this, Rubio mentions the protests against
the murder of George Floyd.

Speaker 27 (03:17:13):
Many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts
of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression,
so long as they served a left wing cause.

Speaker 18 (03:17:25):
It is why during.

Speaker 27 (03:17:26):
Those George Floyd so called George Floyd Riots in the
summer of twenty twenty, as criminals and extremists burned and
looted their way through American America's great cities and nearly
brought the country to its knees, city governments all across
the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these
acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for

(03:17:50):
the now infamous image. Maybe you all recall this of
a news anchor from a very prominent agency, a news
anchor standing in the neighborhood consumed in flames. Meanwhile, the
cryon on the bottom red that the protests were mostly peaceful.

Speaker 1 (03:18:06):
Can even say cairon right, My god.

Speaker 27 (03:18:08):
This was something worse than a double standard. Left Wing
violence was not just excused, It was treated as sacricinct,
a protected class unto itself.

Speaker 12 (03:18:20):
A protected class unto itself, protecting their ability to light
trash on in the middle of a street.

Speaker 1 (03:18:27):
That's what happened. There weren't thousands of arrests and prosecutions.

Speaker 12 (03:18:30):
That is the Other thing is that the Trump administration
did that a little bit, but this was at the
end of twenty twenty. The Biden administration did tons and
tons of like federal arrests, yes, with people involved in
these protests, people who are still in jail. Meanwhile, the
January six people are out of jail and have had pardons.
Rubio referenced instances of political violence in Europe from recent time,

(03:18:56):
like a firebomb attack on the home of a Greek
politician that killed that politician's mother earlier this month. Rubio
did not mention that four suspects have already been arrested
and that this fire bombing was the first time in
over a decade that someone was killed in an attack
targeting a politician in Greece. Rubio also referenced a five
day blackout in Berlin last winter caused by a power

(03:19:18):
line sabotage. People claiming to be responsible for the attack
associate to themselves with a far left eco extremist group Leslie.
Rubio mentioned that in February of this year, quote a
French twenty three year old succumbed to traumatic brain injuries
beaten to death on the streets of Leone by a
group of far left militant thugs. This twenty three year

(03:19:38):
old was a neo fascist qute unquote activist, that's what
he's referred to in local news coverage, who died two
days after being brutalized in a large street brawl during
a far right protest outside of a university event featuring
a Palestinian lawmaker. Eleven anti fascists were arrested for this.

Speaker 2 (03:19:55):
Rubio tried to.

Speaker 12 (03:19:56):
Connect the current emerging threat of far left political terrorism
to historical Marxist struggles in the twentieth century and particularly
the nineteen seventies. Rubio name dropped to urban grilla groups
in Central South America, FARC, the National Liberation Army, the
Shining Path, Maoist guerrillas in Peru, as well as European
groups like Italy's Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction in Germany,

(03:20:21):
Marxist extreamists in Greece and in the US, the Weather Underground,
the Black Liberation Army, and the Symbonese Liberation Army.

Speaker 27 (03:20:28):
And today we face a new wave of this old
evil here in the United States. The share of left
wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not
seen in decades. In Germany, far left violence has jumped
by more than forty percent in just the last year alone.
In Greece, more than eighty percent of radical violence is

(03:20:50):
now driven by far left and anarchist actors.

Speaker 18 (03:20:53):
These these are not abstract statistics.

Speaker 27 (03:20:56):
Americans have seen what those numbers mean, and all out
of assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes,
a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students
as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like where
is your God now? A healthcare executive executed in cold

(03:21:20):
blood in the streets, multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president,
and the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation.

Speaker 12 (03:21:31):
So there's a lot there. Anarchist violence certainly isn't new
in Greece. No, and again in the American context, this
little speech by Rubio conflates mass casualty events with property
damage and isolated targeted violence. He references vague quote unquote
all out assaults on immigration officers as in big protests

(03:21:52):
in Minneapolis. He references a one sniper attack by a
suicidal man who was not very political and leaned libertarian
in Texas, here references a transgender shooter who also was
not politically motivated in the traditional sense and initially planned
to shoot up an LGBTQ music venue. The United Healthcare
CEO assassination is arguably the closest thing here to like

(03:22:16):
left wing motivated violence.

Speaker 1 (03:22:17):
It's definitely politically motivated, even.

Speaker 12 (03:22:19):
That suspect wasn't particularly like left wing politically, no belief
in some political ideology was not the driving force behind
that assassination. It wasn't ideologically motivated, but rather materially motivated
based on interactions with our inhumane healthcare system. Trying to
understand every public act of violence, whether that's a shooting

(03:22:41):
or an assassination, just as existing in between this left
right binary is a very limited way to actually try
to understand public acts of violence, because not all shootings
have an obvious ideological driver. Public acts of violence can
be downs dream of someone's personal experiences and material conditions.

(03:23:03):
As for the Trump assassinations, two have been from people
who were largely moderate liberals, not leftists, and the first
attempt assassination did not appear to have what we would
originally consider to be a political motive. Again, from someone
with a conservative background who was closer to what we
would describe as having like a school shooter mentality. I'll
talk about this a little bit later, but I think

(03:23:24):
it's really important to understand that just because the target
is a political figure does not mean it is political violence.
The attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan is a key example
of this, and investigations into the first Trump assassination found
that the shooter, Thomas Crooks, searched online for a variety

(03:23:45):
of events to commit a shooting at. In the month
prior to the shooting, he did more than sixty ounite
searches related to Biden Trump and information about the upcoming
DNC and RNC conventions. Trump's campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania
just happened to take place in the right place at
the right time, And for someone who's just trying to
do a high profile shooting, it might not even matter

(03:24:09):
what the outcome of that attempted shooting is. These public
acts of violence usually have a suicidal component, a driver
self annihilation, while simultaneously gaining some final sense of meaning
or purpose by crudely emblazoning yourself in history through a
violent act. This kind of public suicidal violence can be

(03:24:31):
a sort of final attempt of communing with the world.
The AP summarized report published last year by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies that found that left wing
terrorist attacks as of July of last year had surpassed
those from the far right for the first time in
more than thirty years, But a closer look at that
data showed that the uptick reflects a very low starting

(03:24:55):
level and a concurrent drop on the far right. Quote,
there was an average of zero point six left wing
incidents annually from nineteen ninety four through two thousand, compared
with an average of twenty point six on the right.

Speaker 4 (03:25:08):
The report shows from.

Speaker 12 (03:25:10):
Twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four, they were an average
of four per year on the left and twenty two
point seven per year on the right. Those numbers have
dropped dramatically on the right as of early July twenty
twenty five, with only one incident. Meanwhile, there had been
five from the left. So yes, left wing attacks in
twenty twenty five did outpace what that report as of

(03:25:33):
July categorized as right wing attacks, but that was because
there was a big drop off in right wing attacks
once Trump came into office and a very small increase
in attacks attributed to the left. And that is the
sort of statistics that Rubio is using to make this push.

Speaker 4 (03:25:50):
Yeah, and you know, like it's worth noting. It's like, okay,
so why have there been less of these sort of
like right wing political terrorism events And it's like, well,
because ICE is just doing them instead.

Speaker 1 (03:25:59):
Yeah, the states doing the violence for them.

Speaker 4 (03:26:01):
Yeah. Like it's the same reason that you can look
at the period in which sort of like jailhouse lynching
suddenly like collapses, and the reason they collapse is that,
you know, the US government starts executing those people, and
you know, this is like a very explicit deal that's
made between the state and you know, the specific kind
of lynch mob is like we'll just carry out death
like penalty sentences against these people if you stop storming

(03:26:22):
prisons and lynching them in there. So you know, that's
like what's happening here, right, is like you have people
with mass shooter profiles. Who are you know, ICE officers
shooting like immigrants in the streets.

Speaker 3 (03:26:32):
Now.

Speaker 12 (03:26:33):
Yeah, One thing that was really common throughout Rubio's whole
speech and some of the follow up remarks by like
Miller and Bessett is like a big thing that was
undergirding their rhetoric was this assumption that if the target
of violence is viewed as a right wing then the
attacker must be left wing, and any attack that goes
against what they would consider like a right wing symbol,

(03:26:54):
whether that's Ice, whether that's the President, whatever, then whoever
is attacking that symbol must be from the left wing
or have some left wing motivation, And that's the way
that they're trying to frame a lot of this. One
of the old categories of violent extremism is called anti
government violent extremism, which is a very broad category which
can encompass some people who have explicit ideological drivers, but

(03:27:16):
also can include people who are doing public suicidal violence,
who will target the government or political figures as an
expression of their own political and societal alienation. Someone who
does this kind of public suicidal violence can often lack
a recognizably coherent political philosophy that can be easily grafted

(03:27:37):
on to our Democrat Republican binary, with there sometimes being
a mix of political beliefs across the left right spectrum.
But now that Trump is in office, any attack against
the federal government can be used by the Trump administration
as an example of left wing terrorism attacking a right
wing government. Take, for instance, the sniper attack in Texas

(03:27:59):
targeting and ice fisacility and vehicles. Although actually shooting multiple immigrants,
this shooter was described by his friends as being largely
a political but leaned libertarian. This shooting also had a
suicidal aspect in that he did kill himself after the shooting.
With Trump in charge of the federal government, nihilistic and

(03:28:22):
self destructive attacks against American society may take a form
which can be characterized as left wing violence. Another example
of this is the plot against the UFC Freedom two
fifty event, where self described Christian patriots who saw themselves
as aspiring revolutionaries tried to start the Second American Revolutionary

(03:28:44):
War by targeting high level politicians and public figures at
the UFC White House event. These people are not on
what I would consider the left wing, but in the
conservative coverage of this attack, this was framed as an
anti capitalist attack targeting Trump's cabinet. Towards the end of
Rubio's speech, he started talking about this like international strategy

(03:29:07):
that they want to develop to handle this emerging threat quote.
This is an international conference because we are facing an
international transnational threat. These are not distinct and isolated cells.
They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our borders.
They do not believe, in fact in the nation state itself.
They coordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train, and they

(03:29:28):
act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies,
sharing the same mission. And I'll play one more clip
from Rubio here.

Speaker 27 (03:29:36):
ANTIFAM militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and
to the Americas to participate in each other's attacks, to
funnel propaganda and training materials and target information through shared
encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safehouses and finance,
and sustain their operations through transnational funds. And they work

(03:29:59):
alongside lost all foreign states that share their mission, like
a Rocks Iranian proxy networks, who are increasing increasingly intimately
tied to leftist militant groups around the world. The Cuban
regimes sprawling intelligence and ideological network help to build the
far left in our country and in our hemisphere, and

(03:30:19):
it remains inextricably linked to the far left groups and
movements across and beyond the West. Today's far left terrorists
can raise money in one country, they can host their
communications in a second country.

Speaker 18 (03:30:33):
They can receive training in a third country.

Speaker 27 (03:30:36):
They can recruit militants in a fourth country and then
together strike a target in a fifth country.

Speaker 1 (03:30:43):
A thing that we've never seen happen. This is complete
section that's never ever happened. This is not once. Where
are they training, Marco? This is like a Tom Clancy
novel that's he does think they're training in Cuba. Actually
I shouldn't ask that.

Speaker 4 (03:30:56):
Yeah, the only thing that functions like this is the
central intelligence agents.

Speaker 1 (03:31:00):
Yeah, but nothing else works like this. That's not entirely true,
like the global far right does to a degree work
that's true, right, Like, yeah, there's an element now. Now
I wouldn't even describe it that way because that's more
elaborate than I've ever seen the global far right do, honestly.
But yeah, they're versions of that do occur where people
are like traveling to one country for armed training or whatever.

Speaker 2 (03:31:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:31:18):
Yeah, I guess you could look back at the old
like world anti communist networks exactly like League networks, where
they would do that, but like.

Speaker 12 (03:31:24):
This, I mean, I wonder if they would consider stuff
like traveling to like Rojava, right a leftist traveling to Rojava,
or traveling to like you know, see like Zapatista's right.
If that's kind of what he's thinking of, or if
he's even thinking about it in like a real literal way.

Speaker 1 (03:31:37):
I can tell you specifically what he's thinking about in this.
I mean he's thinking about two things. He's trying to
directly draw a comparison for political purposes to the influencers
who went out of to Cuba recently. But the thing
that he is actually thinking about is the way a
chunk of the global far left worked in like the
sixties and seventies. Kadafi trained the IRA right Like there
were a lot of like web not all of them,
but like there was people did travel from left wing

(03:31:59):
groups to other places and then carried out attacks in
other countries. That was a thing that occurred during what
is often called the Golden Age of terrorism. This is
a lot of this is just more Marco not leaving
the seventies behind. Like even though again it's fifty years
since that kind of shit's been going on almost and
Kadafi's dead, like the IRA isn't exactly active anymore either.

Speaker 12 (03:32:23):
We'll return to talk more about far left transnational terrorism
after this at break.

Speaker 4 (03:32:42):
We are back.

Speaker 12 (03:32:43):
There's one last part about this antifa far left terrorism
summit that happened at the State Department that I want
to hone in on, and that is the remarks made
by Stephen Miller. So brace yourself for a short clip
of Miller here.

Speaker 28 (03:32:58):
President Trump issued it directive. In our parlance, it's called
a National Security Presidential Memorandum or NSPN NSPM seven to
be exact. That directs, for the first time in American history,
all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work
together to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these

(03:33:25):
political terrorists that are operating in our country. There's no
point at which the left wing terrorist is satisfied with
his gains and ceases progressing inevitably left to run its course,
it always becomes a gulag. It always becomes the mass
imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms,

(03:33:48):
inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering. In order to establish complete
and total control control through psychological and physical and actual terror.

Speaker 12 (03:34:02):
We must disrupt, identify, defund dbank, arrest and prosecute these
political terrorists, or else they will turn the country into
a goolage and conduct the mass imprisonment of political enemies
and establish total psychological control.

Speaker 4 (03:34:17):
It's just that we must do the genocide before they
do the genocide against us thing.

Speaker 12 (03:34:21):
And that is a lot of how Miller and the
Ambassador for the Counter Terrorist and Bureau talk about this,
So like, we need to stop this before it gets bigger.
We know it seems kind of small right now, but
by the time that everyone realizes this is a huge threat,
then it's already too late.

Speaker 4 (03:34:35):
Then we've already lost.

Speaker 12 (03:34:36):
We have to end this thing right now as it
still is like an infant, like we cannot let this
thing grow up. That is very much how he talks
about it. And he is really frustrated about the way
that attempts by the rep administration to do this have
been curtailed or I've not been able to really be
followed through on to the extent that he wants. And
she has a specific thing that's been happening that he's

(03:34:57):
really upset about. And that's a little term some people
in the audience might be familiar with called jury nullification.

Speaker 28 (03:35:04):
There's a real threat that those who are not themselves terrorists,
but who support left wing violence will create the conditions
that allow that violence to go on without any meaningful inhibition.
So to be specific, we've seen some of our nation's

(03:35:25):
cities in America, like Washington, d C. In New York City.
Something is gain as an American term, but it's known
as jury nullification. This is when a person is obviously
guilty of a crime, but the jury, because they're ideologically
sympathetical sympathetic to the perpetrator, will not sentence them to
the crime which have obviously committed. We've seen in the
United States again and again individuals who are part of

(03:35:49):
lefting organizations who've committed the saults against ice officers or
federal law enforcement, who have been brought to court where
clear evidence has been presented against them, that the jury
has refused to convict for purely political reasons. When you've
reached that point, it demonstrates how deeply the cancer has
begun to infest your society.

Speaker 12 (03:36:09):
According to a new report in Just Security, quote, nearly
half the cases nationwide brought against protesters and immigrants for
assault against a law enforcement officer or dismissed by judges,
with drawn by prosecutors, or resulted in jury acquittals, and
at least eighteen publicly reported instances grand juries have refused
to indict, at least sixteen grand jury subpoenas have been

(03:36:30):
blocked or withdrawn, and judges have dismissed or prosecutors have
dropped at least seventy nine cases relating to ice protests
or federal law enforcement surgis across DC, Chicago, Minnesota, and
Los Angeles. In a period of two months, the US
Attorney's Office in DC dropped more cases than it had
in the previous ten years combined, unquote. And that also
shows the scale in which they're bringing these cases against protesters.

(03:36:53):
This is something that Miller is really upset about. This
is something that is severely prohibiting the administration's ability to
go after quote unquote left wing terrorism, what they view
as left wing terrorism, and he's really frustrated about this.
Here's one last quote from him.

Speaker 4 (03:37:08):
Quote.

Speaker 12 (03:37:08):
One of the hallmarks of left wing violence and terrorism
is it's completely protectual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties
in an effort to shield its own violence. This is
the tactic that the left always uses to try to
protect itself from facing criminal punishment. It is essential that
we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that
these appeals must fall on deaf ears. We must say

(03:37:30):
the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of
justice against these enemies of civilization. Unquote, and Miller and
Rubio went on pretty lengthy rants about how the threat
of left wing violence really is this civilizational threat against
what is beautiful and what is good and what is natural.
It's a quote from Miller against this like ugly hatred

(03:37:52):
that fuels the left, this sort of like you know,
like resentment for like failing at life, and now they
want to attack those of us who like succeed, those
of us who like build very fascistic like stuff. At
the end of both their.

Speaker 1 (03:38:04):
Speeches, very and also very Bin Shapiro stuff. To be honest,
the whole builders and takers thing. I mean, he didn't
start that, but it is interesting to see there's so
many old throwbacks to this because you can tell these
these are guys who get started in writing politics before
the current era, because they keep hearkening back to stuff
that's just like not as big a part of like
the modern vernacular, which is always interesting to me, like

(03:38:26):
how stuck a lot of these guys are in the past.

Speaker 12 (03:38:30):
At a post conference press conference for Foreign Press, the
Coordinator and ambassad at Large for the Bureau kinter Terrorism
reiterated that the us kinter Terrism strategy is still focusing
on three main types of threat groups Narco terrorists, Islamic
corgiatis terrorists, and far left terrorists, and that they need
to quote identify terror actors and plots before they happen.

(03:38:53):
He calls far left terrorism a resurgent threat with a
clear upward trend and that they are quote committed to
addressing it before it metastasizes that they want to halt
this scourge before it grows into something larger, more unified,
and more deadly. The Ambassador outlined three concrete outcomes from
this conference. The first was on designations and accountability, and

(03:39:15):
like Rubio, he promised that additional foreign terrorist organizations and
specially designated global terrorist designations for quote unquote far left
groups are under active review and are going to be
incoming soon, following the four designations of europe based groups
last year. So there's going to be more left wing
or Antifa related groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations. UH

(03:39:38):
Secretary Besent talked about how legitimate nonprofit and charitable structures
are being quote exploited as a mechanism to conceal the
movement of illicit funds to support political terrorism, and the
ambassador talked about how international partners are discussing prospects quote
allowing their own legal frameworks to ensure that these networks
cannot simply relocate across borders. As a part of these

(03:40:01):
terrorist designations, the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
will take steps to dismantle the funding which sustains these groups,
and the state departments also offering payments it up to
ten million dollars for information disrupting far left terrorist financing.
The second outcome of the conference was on operational coordination,
like deepening information sharing between partner agencies and coordinating on

(03:40:22):
travel restrictions and strengthening the protection of critical infrastructure like
transportation and energy systems. It was also announced that Germany
would host the next quote unquote counter Terrorism Workshop. The
last concrete outcome of this event was new visa restrictions
quote targeting members of far left terrorists and aligned groups.

(03:40:44):
For more on that, Let's throw to our colleague James
Stout Hi one.

Speaker 3 (03:40:50):
It's James coming at you with the second attempt to
record this. Find myself traveling every Wednesday at the moment,
so apologies for missing out on According to everyone else,
will be back next week a promise, and we will
return to our usual shared conversation. But I did want
to check in with everyone this week because I want
to talk about a couple of things. Last week, for

(03:41:10):
the first time in its history, the United States government
attempted to remove someone through the use of the Alien
Terrorist Removal Court. This is something that was first published
by Shamus Hues at Court Works, and I want to
give credit Bok credits you Shame of Spenser on godly
amount of time looking at PACER and other court documents
have found this, so.

Speaker 2 (03:41:28):
Background Ond's court right.

Speaker 3 (03:41:29):
It's established in nineteen ninety six by the Anti Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act. That law allows the Attorney
General to designate some of the terrorists and use this
process if Title two removal will be a threat to
national security. Now the hearings in the ATRC, I will
say they fly extremely close to the sun with regards
to constitutional rights and the concept of a fair trial.

Speaker 2 (03:41:53):
There are lots of.

Speaker 3 (03:41:55):
Provisions in this law for classified evidence, for restrictions on
the things that the deffect and can obtained by discovery.
The law also says, quote, an alien subject to removal
under this Title shall not be entitled to suppress evidence
that the alien alleges was unlawfully obtained. That's great stuff.
It's just worth noting nineteen ninety six is before the
start of the Global War on Terror, and it therefore

(03:42:18):
pre dates the existence of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
At the United States had a base at Guantanamo Bay,
but the large scale extra judicial torturing of people, what
they called enhanced interrogation at Guantanamobe, had not begun in
nineteen ninety six.

Speaker 25 (03:42:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:42:33):
I'm not saying that they were not doing extra judicial
things in nineteen ninety six. I'm just saying that the
GITMO as we understand it today, for those of us
who have grown up with it as a political reality
for most a adult lives, didn't exist in that sense.

Speaker 25 (03:42:45):
Then.

Speaker 2 (03:42:46):
I'm not saying that they were not people detained there.
They probably were.

Speaker 3 (03:42:49):
I'm not saying they did not do extra judicial things
in pursuit of quote, unquite aity terrorism.

Speaker 2 (03:42:53):
I believe they did.

Speaker 3 (03:42:54):
Boseberg mentioned this court Judge Boseburg remember him from the
El Salwardore Sicott cases, when he told the government that
there was a procedure for someone accused of terrorism because
the government basically said, oh, well, these people are terrorists.

Speaker 2 (03:43:08):
Look at that.

Speaker 3 (03:43:09):
We put them on a plane, send them to a
death camp in ensemble or essentially right a prison that
very few people leave. Eventually, most of these people did
leave in this case, but it was very unusual for
someone to leave that camp. And what he said was
quote so if there's a national security concern with having
these hearings, whether via Habeis or otherwise, you can always
go to the ATRC, which will be a first but

(03:43:30):
that's what it's there for.

Speaker 21 (03:43:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:43:32):
So at the time he's pointing to it, saying, if
you can't put the evidence for these people's the need
to remove these people out in public.

Speaker 2 (03:43:39):
That's why we have the ATRC. When't use that.

Speaker 3 (03:43:41):
Trump administration said we can use that, that does.

Speaker 2 (03:43:44):
Not mean we have to use that, And that was
their argument, right.

Speaker 3 (03:43:48):
The court is of not just people engage in terrorism.
It's also their families. It's also people accused of things
like soliciting others to engage in actus terrorism or raising funds.
It also is that once a person they've submitted an
application for removal through this court, they can detain a person.
The court has this crazy website. It looks like it
was very hastily created. It's not a usual website for

(03:44:11):
a court at all. Usually court websites that they were
made in the late nineteen nineties. They are very difficult
to navigate and they have a huge amount of data
that it's hard to find. That's why a lot of
us like to use court Listener or some other website
rather than going directly to the court pages, which can
be very hard to navigate. This page lists of judges,
where each of the judges comes from a different US circuit,

(03:44:33):
and it has the two documents that the court has
made available so far. One is pretty much all blanked out.
The other one is a court order in which Court
Chief Judge asserts, quote, the government could benefit from an
opportunity for more thoughtful consideration, So they've made an application
to remove someone by this court. And that is a
response of the court at this time right. Obviously, this

(03:44:54):
is very concerning right. Immigration court, to begin with, I
think is getting closer and closer to being something that
is sort of openly flouting the Constitution and people's rights.
There immigration judges are not judges in the sense that
you understand judges to be, even though some of them
have worked hard to give people due process and many

(03:45:15):
of them are now being removed wanted demise because of them.
But if we look at this in addition to the
United States adding groups in Mexico and Europe to the
FTO list Foreign Terrorist Organizations for those who aren't familiar,
it's especially concerning right. And it's especially concerning when we
look another announcement this week which explicitly cited NSPM seven,

(03:45:36):
which we've spoken about lengths on this show, limiting visas
for people it calls anti fascist and far left terrorist groups.
The announcement began going to quote from extensively here, right,
far left terrorists and aligned groups do sophisticated organized networks
to perpetrate violence as a political tool, seeking to implement
an extreme political vision through intimidation and coordinated campaigns of terror.

(03:45:59):
It is a strategy that explicitly aims to undermine the
political foundations of free and self governing societies, utilizing bombings, assassinations,
and other forms of terrorism to silence speech, limit political opposition,
change policy outcomes, and sabotage political processes. This announcement also
said that it's quote targets members of far left terrorists
and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts

(03:46:20):
of terrorism, supported violent criminal activity, participated in economic sabotage,
financial recruited or provide logistical support for violent or criminal actions,
cremated by far left terrorists and other aligning groups, and
or facilitated the convergence of far left terrorists and other
aligned networks for the purposes of violent action. Some of
these are pretty broad right economic sabotage normally altso Ludicris

(03:46:41):
suggests that like that could include bds. But I think
given where we are, it's not crazy to think that, right,
some of these facilitating the conversions. Right, is that like
holding a big summit, is like the logistical support for
violent criminal actions? Does that mean bail funds all of
these things ash bail? I guess it's less of a

(03:47:01):
thing outside the US. Does that mean people who have
done jail support, right? That kind of thing. This is
super concerning. The State Department explicitly cites Section two twelve,
Subsection A, Part three, Subsection C of the Immigration and
Nationality Act, which deals with the inadmissibility of aliens. This
section begins quote, an alien whose entry or proposed activities
in the United States Secretary of State has reasonable ground

(03:47:24):
to believe have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for
the United States is inadmissible.

Speaker 1 (03:47:31):
So that's a very very broad category.

Speaker 4 (03:47:34):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:47:34):
Notably, it is not sub section B, which deals specifically
with terrorism or which terrorists are admissible. This is a
different one which deals with this very broad power given
to the Secretary of State to decide whose admission would
be bad for the United States foreign policy consequences they've
used just before. Right, this is a favorite of this administration.
But again, right, this is an example of a law

(03:47:56):
which gives massive leeway to in this case part of
the executive branch, Secretary of State, and it is therefore
he's using that leeway right to do this. I think
that we should be especially concerned when we combine this
with some of the other things that we're seeing. Right,
we are seeing social media surveys of applicants right, people

(03:48:19):
have to submit their whole social media before they apply.
We are seeing phone searches at the border more and
more frequently, right, famously the JD Vance meme, but it's
not uncommon to see these phone searches at the border now.
We have also seen this week the elimination of duration
of status for a number of visas, F ones being
probably the most numerous, F one being a student visa right.

(03:48:40):
Also some foreign journalists visas. Other visa types as well
included there, but I want to focus on the F
one because I think that will be the one that
impacts the most people. So generally, with a F one visa,
once you maintained status are once you are still in school,
you could keep your student visa right now, These include
like a time limit on the duration of the visa.

(03:49:00):
For some people, this will be a serious issue if
you are entering, For example, to speaking from experience here,
if you are entering a program in the United States
in the humanities, and you are entering with a bachelor's
degree right, not a master's degree.

Speaker 2 (03:49:15):
You will then have to.

Speaker 3 (03:49:18):
Advance to candidacy right, complete the requirements for your master's degree,
and demonstrate competency in two languages.

Speaker 2 (03:49:24):
Let's assume you are not someone who is multilingual. That
could take a while.

Speaker 3 (03:49:27):
Right Like, depending on how strict the testing is at
the particular university you go to, then you will have
to research, then you will have to write, then you
will have to do a dissertation. These time limits on
the F one and visa are less than the nominal
time to degree at some institutions, and that means that
it's going to be very hard for graduate students, especially
to come to the United States to do those degrees.

(03:49:50):
That combined with this denial of visa's thing is going
to have an impact on the way campuses look in
the United States, and it's going to have a broader impact.

Speaker 2 (03:50:00):
And that, of course it is. But this is a
thing that I have direct experience with. Right.

Speaker 3 (03:50:04):
F one student visas are numerous. I've taught dozens, if
not hundreds of F one students. I came on a
student visa when I did my PhD. And like, one
of the reasons that people come here, and this is
something that I've heard from so many people, is that, like,
this country has a Bill of rights, and the very
first amendment to the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, and

(03:50:26):
that isn't the case everywhere. That is a thing that
is good, but it is more and more and more
under attack, especially for foreign students.

Speaker 25 (03:50:36):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:50:37):
We've seen this right from the very beginning of a
Trump administration, and I believe that this will be part
of that same attack. Right, when we look at all
these things together, these are the clearest signposts we have
seen yet to the new McCarthyism.

Speaker 2 (03:50:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:50:51):
We can talk about what Rubio said about Cuba, we
can talk about this Antifa summit, which I will talk
about soon in more depth, but it is not hard
to draw a line, for instance, the prosecution and the
persecution outside the legal system of Lincoln Brigadiers, right, people
who volunteered to fight fascism in Spain, to what is
happening today. And it is sad but not shocking to

(03:51:14):
see yet another shameful aspect of this country's history resurfacing
and becoming policy again. So I guess I'll just finish
up by saying, if this has impacted you, if you
are someone who's recently had a visa refused, if you
are somebody who was trying to get in an if
one visa and it's now finding shit. I don't think
I can do my degree in that much time.

Speaker 2 (03:51:33):
What do I do here? I always want to.

Speaker 3 (03:51:35):
Tell stories about people, not just about government announcements. So
you can hit us up cool Zone tips at proton
dot me if you'd like to talk about that. Thanks,
and I'll be back with everybody next week.

Speaker 12 (03:51:48):
We will discuss tariffs and even more far left terrorism
after this ad break.

Speaker 1 (03:52:07):
We're back. So earlier this week, the US State Department
put out a one hundred page report this would be
on Monday, about Cuba's history of trying to overthrow or
manipulate US politics via left wing activists and quote unquote
left wing militants going back to the sixties. When they
say going back to the sixties, basically what I mean

(03:52:28):
is pretty much exclusively the sixties and seventies. Is almost
everything in this document that relates to the US directly
in any way. The document, which is basically this is
just to give you a little bit of background. This
is all Rubio, right, not just what Gerre has been
talking about, but particularly trying to drum up fear and
panic around Cuba and justify an invasion or regime change

(03:52:49):
in Cuba. That's been his whole fucking life goal for
a very long time. There's a pretty good Guardian article
from last year with the title Marco Rubio Niar's goal
of toppling Cuba's government, and I want to read a
brief quote from that. The campaign against Cuba's government is
the culmination of a personal pursuit spanning decades. In a
video released on Cuban Independence Day this week, Rubio said
in Spanish that a US embargo was not the reason

(03:53:11):
for the country's privations, telling Cubans that currently the only
thing standing in the way of a better future are
those who control your country. All roads have been leading
to Cuba for Rubio. Set a person who has known
Rubio since his time as a local politician in South Florida.
He has wanted this for a long time, and now
he finally has the authority to reach that goal. Now.
Trump has made a couple of comments that make people

(03:53:32):
believe he is in the process of planning to try
and force the government of Cuba out one way or another.
Last Thursday, he told reporters other presidents have looked at
this for fifty sixty years, doing something about Cuba, and
it looks like I'll be the one that does it,
so I would be happy to do it. Now hard
to say is that actually means anything. Trump says a
lot of stuff that doesn't come true, but there's been
real world reasons to believe that he seriously intends to

(03:53:55):
do this. I mean, first off, what happened in Venezuela, right,
where we used our special operations forces to take out
and extradite a legally elect it well, to extrite the
president of a sovereign country. Right. This is something that
like you've had like a lot of planners and depending
on talking about for years, is like, well, we could
use these guys to just deal with problems at the top, right.

(03:54:17):
And for Rubio, there's a lot of speculation that Venezuela
was kind of a proof of concept for him, right,
that we could in fact use a very small footprint
force get the current ruling regime out of there, or
enough of them that they're not willing to fight back anymore.
And that might be something that the US military is
capable of doing. I don't have a great sense as

(03:54:37):
to Cuba's defensive capacity or how functional they would be
at doing this, or how much support the regime would
enjoy in the event that the US try this, or
how much that support would matter. It kind of depends
on the weapons systems they use at the moment. We
know that the US Nimics and its strike Group have
recently been brought into the South Caribbean c as part
of an ongoing military build up, and there have been

(03:54:57):
some other signs that the regime is planning to act.
Axios recently published an article that cited administration estimates that
Cuba now has some three hundred military drones quote, and
was considering using them to attack a US base at
Guantanamo Bay, US ships or even targets in Florida, Miami.
Your days are numbered now, folks. I'm going to walk

(03:55:19):
you through some stuff. First off, we don't actually have
hard evidence that they bought any of these drums. There
was some earlier reporting, and I'm sure they have been
talking with Iran, and I know that they have ongoing
defense agreements with Russia, and I wouldn't be shocked if
they had bought like three hundred of these, like Shihed
style cheaper suicide drones. Here's the thing. The night before
we recorded this, Ukraine launched a major attack on Moscow

(03:55:40):
using four hundred drones. If Cuba does have three hundred
Iranian drones, that is roughly enough to carry out an
offensive against US forces for two to three seconds, perhaps
a little more, maybe more like fifteen to twenty, you know,
But it's not an invasion force. It's not really a
defensive force. And we also don't know that they even
have them, right, it wouldn't be weird if they did.

(03:56:01):
But this isn't any reason to believe there's any kind
of a threat coming from Cuba. The fact that they're
trying to really hype up three hundred drones. It's twenty
twenty six. You can run through that in an afternoon.

Speaker 11 (03:56:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:56:12):
And also, like I just want to be very clear,
Cuba is not planning to launch strikes in the United States.

Speaker 1 (03:56:17):
Come on, Like, you look at the last sixty years
of history, right. We had one big dust up with
them over the fucking Bay of Pigs, And obviously the
Cuban government funded and sent soldiers and doctors and other
stuff into a variety of countries, and that led to
conflicts in places like Africa with the US. But there's
never been any direct aggression from Cuba towards the United States. No,

(03:56:38):
we're not in danger from them. One of the most
ridiculous things you could do today is watch the celebrated
Aaron Sorkin movie A Few Good Men, which is entirely
about how well, you know, you don't understand how difficult
it is protecting America from Cuba.

Speaker 2 (03:56:51):
You know, we really we got to be extra.

Speaker 1 (03:56:53):
Crazy to keep the Cubans off the walls of the
United States. Like, it's fucking nonsense, And it's Marco is
number one. Marco comes from a Cuban American background. His
whole family hates the Castro government. He has wanted and
seen himself as ordained to destroy the communist government in
Cuba for his entire life. That doesn't mean that there's
any kind of realistic threat here, or any real reason

(03:57:16):
to feel like any kind of actual danger. And you
can see that in the report itself. Right, there's even
some bits here where they almost admit it. Right, I'm
going to read one segment. The Cuban campaign against America
is unique. It is a regular and covert Even at
the peak of its military power, Havana never possessed the
capacity to defeat the United States at a conventional armed conflict. Instead,
the Cuban's perfected a new model for a long war

(03:57:37):
of attrition organized around espionage, infiltration, sabotage, proxy networks, and
a revolutionary infrastructure designed to turn America against itself.

Speaker 18 (03:57:45):
Did Cuba do that?

Speaker 1 (03:57:47):
Did Cuba turn America against itself? And also, if they've
perfected a war of attrition, why are they out of gas?
And like, the United States is the healthiest economy in
the world. I mean, it's because we stole a bunch
of shit, But there's no evidence that Cuban has done
some sort of horrible damage to the US, and in fact,
all of the damage says otherwise that we've continued to
fuck over the Cubans for goddamn no reason for decades.

(03:58:08):
It's incredibly frustrating. And again, the more you read this,
the more you realize unless he's talking about like shit
that because he does periodically talk about like fucking South
America and some of the different like Cuban like state
involvement there. But when he's talking about acts that can
be traced to Cuba that involve violence in the US
at all, it's just shit from the sixties and seventies, right,
which is like back when Cuba's economy was functional, and

(03:58:30):
they're the backing of the USSR. And also like none
of it ever came close to doing serious damage to
the United States as like a national like as a nation. Right,
none of that was never in the fucking cards. You know,
it's very frustrating to have to even take any of
this serious, but you do because they are going to
try to blame and try to punish and imprison people
based on this fucking fantasy.

Speaker 2 (03:58:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (03:58:52):
And one of the things you've seen a lot of quotes,
like when Marco came up to talk and give a
speech about this report, he accused Iron and cues Uba
of funding both Antifa and the DSA. Right, Like, come on,
and he'll make these comments in his speeches. The actual
report isn't even willing to go that far, because when
you get to the meat of the report, Marcito doesn't
even have the guts to call the DSA a Cuban

(03:59:13):
op quote. The DSA was not founded as a Cuban
intelligence or influence front. It was born in nineteen eighty
two as a fusion of socialist organizations and movements for
both the Old Left and New Left. Factions, and you know,
like they're right that people in the DSA are very
angry about what the US is doing into Cuba because
they're out of fuel and starving and being continually harmed
by our completely pointless boycotts and trade fucking wars. Like,

(03:59:38):
there's not much more than that for most people to it.
There's some weirdos out there, But.

Speaker 12 (03:59:42):
It is really interesting how carefully the report talks about DSA,
because like DSA's mentioned a lot, DSA is mentioned very frequently.

Speaker 1 (03:59:51):
But there's no direct connection.

Speaker 12 (03:59:52):
DSA's mentioned twenty four times in a one hundred page document,
but they're very careful to be like DSA's could be
sympathetic to the human government, but DSA is not a
result of Cuban influence necessarily, No.

Speaker 1 (04:00:06):
And I think the argument they are making is that
you had a split between the old left and the
new Left, and the Cuban government founded a bunch of
new left factions, and because the DSA is a fusion
of old Left and new left factions, that means that
they're partly a result of Cuban operation. Sure, that's what
they're trying to argue, right, It's build some sort of

(04:00:28):
historical justification to if they go after DSA people or
activists who have gone to Cuba to delivery miditarian ade,
that build some sort of framework to criminalize people who
are sympathetic to people living in Cuba. Yeah, I think
that's precisely what's happening. And one thing that's kind of
telling is even among news sources that are like sympathetic

(04:00:51):
to the right and to the administration, no one's pretending
that this paper isn't just Marco like pushing out his
own personal vendettas. Like I found a Washington Examiner article
summarized the report as Marco Rubio accusing the Cuban government.
Here's an exact quote from the Washington Examiner. Secretary of
State Marco Rubio accused the Cuban government of running one
of the most sophisticated infiltrations of US politics, in part

(04:01:13):
using the Democratic Socialists of America. So even with a
lot of these articles, they're like, yeah, this is just
Rubio fucking spouting off right, like this is mostly oh Marco,
And among some of like the crazy like anti communist
sites I've been reading, they're still like, well, there's nothing
new in this. They didn't because they are reading like, well,
nothing passed like the seventies involves the US directly.

Speaker 12 (04:01:32):
Which is going to say there's not real danger here, right,
there was no huge danger. One of the main activists
that Code Pink, which was this organization that that co
organized some of those ad trips to Cuba, is under
federal investigation right now. And this indicates that despite how
much of this is just Rubio having fun with his
little pet project, this does show where the targets of

(04:01:53):
the administration are. Oh yeah, and that can be the
DSA and people doing humanitarian aid trips.

Speaker 1 (04:02:00):
And it's specifically because of that humanitarian aid trip, right,
like that gave Rubio a really good like you know,
honestly wasn't anything. I think just pissed him off because
he hates the Cuban government more than anything, and the
idea that anyone would want to like bring aid to
the people in Cuba is like infuriating to him. Now again,
we know that Trump is in the process of planning
to try and force the government of Cuba out one

(04:02:21):
way or another. That doesn't mean he actually will, right
he hasn't committed fully to that yet. But given what
happened in Venezuela, and given what's going on in Iran,
I think it would be foolish to say I don't
think he's going to try, right, Like, I think that's
not the smart if I'm making a bet. I certainly
hope he doesn't. I hope they get scared. I hope
shit with Iran is bad enough that they chicken out.
But I think it would be foolish to assume they're

(04:02:41):
not going to try and unseat the government of Cuba. Right, Yeah,
I don't think that's the rational way to look at this,
right And whether this is all bluster or not, you know,
is going to be seen. But as I said, the
US Nimits and Strike Group have moved into the South Caribbean,
and there's a lot of talk about, like, oh, we
think the Cubans are planning an attack on Gwando. Last Thursday,

(04:03:02):
Marco Ruby repeated his claim that Havana has weapons they
acquired from quote Russia and China, and that they host
Russian and in Chinese intelligence in country, which is also
interesting that he's so stuck in the Cold War he
has to keep bringing Russia into it. Now. There's a
big debate as to like how can it It is Trump
actually to unseating the Cuban government, And that's always hard
to tell because when he does talk about it, it

(04:03:23):
sounds like, oh, he wants that feather in his cap.
But you also get the feeling this is a thing
where whoever he talks to last as in a lot
of cases, going to heavily set his agenda. And Senator
Chris Murphy, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said
something like that quote. I do think that as Trump
gets older and he spends his day sleeping and worrying
only about his ballroom, he's increasingly susceptible to dangerous people
around him with dangerous agendas. And there is a crowd

(04:03:45):
of Cuba hawks who have always wanted us to invade,
and who think they might be able to take advantage
of it increasingly checked out old man, and I just
think we have to be prepared for that. And honestly,
I think Chris pretty much like that. Yeah, it's more
or less right, Chris. I think that's that's basically the accurate.

Speaker 4 (04:03:59):
Is sanest man in the room? Yeah, that sounds right
to me.

Speaker 12 (04:04:07):
Let's turn to the midterm elections before we close in Florida,
the Groper candidate for Governor, James Fishback, who I did
an episode about a few months ago, is not going
to win that election, but he is pulling double digits,
which is bad. And worse, he is dominating youth polls.

(04:04:29):
He has fifty one percent in youth polls. That's ages
eighteen to thirty four. Really really dark look at a
future of the Republican Party. Fishback is like barely even
like a crypto fascist. He's barely even hiding it. I
mean he plays with dog whistles but also just openly
says a bunch of anti Semitic stuff and very racist attacks,

(04:04:50):
all with a sort of wink wink, nudge nudge in
that classic Groper charisma style. But there's another aspect of
the Fishback race to briefly mention, is that there's been
a lot of AI ads targeted against Fishback, where it
has like AI generated video deep fake style of Fishback

(04:05:12):
with like the Squad and Russia and Putin and Alan
Omar and Rashida Taalob foreign generals Muslim leaders in the
Middle East with her jobs. Basically, he's like welcoming all
of these people into his home and they cut up
an anti Israel Cake and that's the ad. It looks

(04:05:33):
I mean like someone like me can tell it's AI
A boomer might not be able to. And this is
something that Thomas Massey, since losing his race, has said
that he believes, through talking with with voters, specifically older voters,
that many boomers and older voters believed the ai ads
against MASSI that Massey was in like a threuple with

(04:05:56):
like AOC and someone else Elanomar. I think that he
actually got called. So There's office got calls to asking
if this was true. So these sorts of aiads are
a real problem, obviously, the fact that these are against Fishback.
I'm not being synthetic to Fishback here, but this is
a more general societal problem. Moving on to another governor's

(04:06:18):
race in Wisconsin, Democratic socialist Francesca Hong is ahead in
the polls, but many people are still undecided. In a
Wedgewood poll from mid July, Francesco Hong is up thirty
eight percent, Mendela Barnes is thirty percent, and David Crowley
is nine percent, though undecided or supporting another candidate is

(04:06:40):
pulling up twenty three percent in that poll, so there
could still be upwards of like twenty percent of people
who are undecided. There's been some other polls in the
past few days that show Francesca Hong about fifteen percent
above everyone else, so that is a good sign for her.
I know there's been some organizers from New York and
across the country going into with Conson right now to

(04:07:00):
help with his last leg of the campaign. This is
a very important race looking at what the future of
the viability of democratic socialism is going to be in
swing states. This past week, David Crowley re entered the race,
which may split the moderate vote, which could help Hong

(04:07:20):
win the primary. It's another thing to keep an eye
on here. In Maine, Troy Jackson is said to be
the Democratic cent nominee after organizers and volunteers secured the
vast majority of delegates for the nominee replacement convention. I've
mentioned Jackson a few times on the show because he
ran for governor with the endorsement of DSA and Bernie Sanders,

(04:07:42):
who was the only person to receive the endorsement of
DSA Platner did not. Jackson's a former state lawmaker, a
five generation lagger, very pro labor, like the most like
legitimate working class, pro labor candidate. He's pulling a little
bit ahead of Collins right now, like about three percent,
but this is going to be a very close race.

Speaker 1 (04:08:02):
This is going to be very tough.

Speaker 12 (04:08:04):
Another really close race right now is the Democratic send
primary in Michigan with corporate and APAC backed Hailey Stevens
going up against left wing populist Abdul l said. There
has been a ton of outside spending the past few weeks,
with multiple attack ads smearing L said as quote unquote sexist,

(04:08:25):
and these are all just for him, like criticizing female politicians,
like criticizing Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, like not attacking
them for being women, but doing very sometimes actually very
soft criticism of like their ability to improve the world
as political actors. But the playbook that Stevens and that

(04:08:46):
larger campaign has been using has been trying to smear
L sayid as a quote unquote sexist podcast bro. This
is the sort of last last light of defense. This
style of liberalism has had, this going back to this
sort of identity reductionism. When they are faced with the
vast actual economic and policy differences between two candidates, the
only thing they can do is Oh, but Hailey Stevens,

(04:09:07):
I am a woman, and this man must hate women.
APAC is helping with this. They've already spent at least
fifteen million dollars, with other corporate packs helping Stevens with
another twelve million. As of July first, there's already been
over forty six million in ads spending, seventy four percent
of which supports Stevens, and there's a lot of money

(04:09:29):
going in since that July first date as well. One
of the pro Stevens ads has manufactured a fake Obama
endorsement using old clips of Obama talking about Hailey Stevens
because she worked with him like fifteen years ago. Now,
Obama has declined to comment on this sort of manufactured
fake endorsement, which is effectively just letting them do that.

(04:09:51):
If he's not going to say no, I haven't actually
endorsed in this race, then basically he's allowing them to
lie about him endorsing Stevens in this race. Meanwhile, laid
is on the news almost every week getting grilled about
why he doesn't support Israel enough, and Israel has been
a very important part of this race. This is in Michigan,
Michigan was a big part of the Uncommitted movement, and

(04:10:14):
Stephens is a ridiculously pro Israel candidate who has voted
to send tens of billions of dollars in unrestricted aid
to Israel, has stopped the Lebanon War Powers Resolution, has
banned the State Department from citing Go's the Health Ministry
death tolls, and Stevens also sees Israel in her dreams.

Speaker 21 (04:10:36):
And in the United States Congress. I will continue to
fight for the people of Israel. I will continue to
fight for Israel's existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams.
I see Israel's future.

Speaker 12 (04:10:54):
Meanwhile, Lsaid wants to abolish ice, fight for medicare for all,
and cut off all aid to Israel. He's certainly running
a downstream of Zoron Mamdani's style campaign with his videos.
He has declined to explicitly call himself a Democratic Socialist,
but there's a lot of similarities in his platform to

(04:11:14):
some other DSA candidates like Zoron, though Elsay is not
endorsed by DSA, but he is running with backing of
the UAW and the Working Families Party. Speaking of elections,
let's close out by talking about election security because on
Thursday night, President Trump delivered what was promised to be
a very important address to the nation on election security.

(04:11:38):
The speech started out as a basically mini version of
his last State of the Union before he announced the
release of heavily redacted CIA documents on how China tried
to influence our past elections, intelligence reports on possible vulnerabilities
in our election infrastructure, and finally claiming that two hundred
and fifty thousand non citizens are registered to vote, with

(04:12:02):
no further details or evidence of that number. Basically, this
whole speech was a big ploy to try to pass
this Safe Act to restrict mail in voting and disenfranchised
voters with heightened ID requirements.

Speaker 4 (04:12:16):
Trump also talked about.

Speaker 12 (04:12:17):
How China had stolen election data. What actually happened was
China downloaded publicly available voter data in twenty twenty two
that the Trump Aadmin now claims could be used by
foreign countries to fraudulently vote in our elections. And of
course China was looking at possible influence operations as many

(04:12:41):
foreign countries do. Russia has done foreign influence operations that's
not changing vote tallies or hacking into voting machines that's
doing disinformation campaigns, which, as we've seen with Tenet Media,
Russia has certainly been involved in recently. And according to
some of these documents, China was looking into if they

(04:13:03):
wanted to run influence operations for the twenty twenty election,
and they actually declined to. After Trump's address, reporters questioned
John Solomon, a former right wing journalist who Trump brought
onto his election task force to investigate possible voter fraud,
and Solomon clarified that there's no evidence that any foreign
power tampered with US voting machines or manipulated the vote count.

Speaker 4 (04:13:28):
Do you acknowledge that there were no votes changed in twenty.

Speaker 26 (04:13:31):
Twenty I've all I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows, right.
I only know the Intelligence Committee has zero evidence that's
someone's flipped. That a foreign power flip they vote in
twenty twenty, twenty two or.

Speaker 1 (04:13:40):
Twenty four, and you have no you're able to work
after all the documents, you're.

Speaker 20 (04:13:44):
Able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting
machines in the United States.

Speaker 5 (04:13:48):
No, the.

Speaker 26 (04:13:50):
Intelligence is very clear they did it on their own machines.
Why is important that they did it on their machines.
Their machine protocols are the same as America. Why not
because for a long.

Speaker 4 (04:13:58):
Time they did it.

Speaker 1 (04:14:00):
Election was in fact the results as we of the
American vi researching.

Speaker 2 (04:14:06):
So let me let me have this is the first one.

Speaker 4 (04:14:07):
There's no intelligence.

Speaker 2 (04:14:10):
There's no intelligence at the election. Trumps.

Speaker 12 (04:14:17):
On Friday, the day following Trump's address, DHS Secretary Mullen
announced that regardless of if the Save Act passes, he
will institute mandatory changes to election security, including scrubbing states
voter rules.

Speaker 29 (04:14:35):
We are going to make our second our our security
enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want to grant
and they want to be reimbursed to work or to
run federal elections, they're going to have to implement security issues,

(04:14:56):
just security issues. We're not trying to get into anything else,
but we're saying the machines had to be secured, and
that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed.

Speaker 12 (04:15:07):
If this actually happens, this could possibly lead to many
people thinking they are registered to vote who are actually
not come election day and then be unable to vote.
This is a voter disenfranchisement tactic. Second time alone later
directly contradicted what John Solomon said the night before, saying
that quote, we know for sure that foreign adversaries have

(04:15:30):
vital pieces of our voting machines, and the quote unquote
key to the back end of these machines.

Speaker 29 (04:15:37):
We know that they can change voter registration and your vote.
We know it's possible. There's not a question. It's not
even for debate.

Speaker 12 (04:15:48):
Finally, on Wednesday, the House advanced a bill to stop
insider trading, except Republicans added Save Act style measures into
this bill to pass new voter ID requirements to please Trump.
And part of why they put those Save AX style
measures into this bill is so that they could attack

(04:16:08):
Democrats in upcoming elections for voting against a bill to
stop insider trading. Literally seconds after this bill was voted
on the White House, rapid response accounts started posting, quote, disgraceful.
One hundred and ninety eight Democrats just voted against banning
members of Congress from trading stocks while they're in office.
They're corrupt, as you can see, very transparent ploy to

(04:16:32):
manufacture a vote to be used in elections to attack
Democrats for being corrupt. This quote unquote insider Trading Bill
will now go to the Senate with those Save Act
style voter id measures included.

Speaker 1 (04:16:47):
All right, thank you for that, gare. And last, but
certainly not least, we've got one more edition of the
Tariff Song, and then talking about tariffs after it.

Speaker 4 (04:16:58):
All right, let's talk tariffs. So long ago, in a
galaxy far far away, which is to say, really truly
not that long ago, we did an episode on the
hideously illegal terrorists Trump imposed under the quote unquote authority
of Section one twenty two of the Trade Act of
nineteen seventy four. These are the ones that are based

(04:17:20):
on this completely manufactured crisis about the US facing a
balance of payments crisis, a thing that cannot happen and
is not happening now. These tariffs, which is just a
general ten percent tariffnal goods, are set to expire on
Friday July twenty fourth, quite possibly the day you're listening
to this. So on Monday, July twentieth, Trump took the

(04:17:43):
most dramatic terrorf action he has taken since the Supreme
Court found he was illegally using the International Emergency Economic
Powers Act to apply TERRAFS in February by the time
you are listening to this, presumably he is going to
have unleashed a wrath. You know, I was originally a raft,
but wrath actually works too. Of new tariffs, but as

(04:18:04):
off to time of recording, the one that has been
revealed specifically is that he is imposing a fifty percent
tariff on goods imported from Canada or some goods imported
from Canada. Now I'm going to get into what that
tariff is actually going to do in a second. But
the important thing here is not the specific tariff itself,
but the legal authority Trump is using to invoke it.

(04:18:26):
He is invoking section three thirty eight of the so
called smoot Holly TERRRIF Act. If the name vaguely rings
a bell, it's probably because smoot Holly is best known
for exacerbating the Great Depression, to the extent that it
is in basically every every history textbook of the United
States so you will read in high school, will have

(04:18:46):
this in it. This Act smoot Holly is the final
frontier for terriff authority. It is the tariff big red button.
It is a power that has never been invoked before,
even by its creative and I genuinely don't know if
it even still exists. This is the tariff rubicon, and
Trump has just crossed it. Now, before we get into

(04:19:10):
this more, let's talk for a second about Trump's nominal
fifty percent teriff on Canada, which is actually much less
of a big deal than it looks. The tariffs are
supposed to take effect on August nineteenth and has about
a million carveouts for you know, different kinds of Canadian goods, including,
for example, things like energy products, which is a huge

(04:19:32):
amount of what we import from Canada. So this is
only going to apply to about five point two percent
of Canadian trade with the US. I mean, obviously that
is still kind of a big deal for that five
percent of trade. But you know, there's a good chance
that these tariffs aren't going to go into effect at all,
and that this is sort of a piece of trade
leverage for negotiations with Canada. These, you know, even if

(04:19:53):
they did go into effect, aren't going to be the
biggest deal. I'm also going to briefly mention that we
finally got the long awaited pharmaceutical import tariff. And when
I say long awaited, I have literally been waiting for
these tariffs to be announced since the beginning of the administration,
to the point where I literally stopped covering the announcements
that they were coming because they just never did. Apparently

(04:20:15):
they are also kind of a joke. They impose a
one hundred percent tariff on pharmaceutical imports, which would be
a massive deal, except it starts in twenty twenty eight,
it eventually rises at the two hundred percent, and like, Okay, yeah, sure, Donald,
whatever you say, that's not happening. None of the specifics
of the tariffs matter at all, or matter much at all.
What is significantly more important is Trump invoking three thirty

(04:20:38):
eight of Smoot Holly. Now, the reason he's doing this
is pretty clear. All of the other avenues he has
to impose teriffs legally actually have restrictions attached to them.
Section one twenty two tariffs, as we've mentioned, are only
supposed to be when there's a balance of payments crisis,
and you can only impose a flat rate, and once

(04:20:58):
he imposes them, they have to be reviewed by Congress,
and that's just not happening. So those are expiring on Friday.
We've talked about the Section three oh one tariffs a
few weeks ago. Those are the ones that nominally are
about forced labor. But those also have limits and can
only be imposed after a long and slow process of
trade investigations. Now, obviously the way that that Trump has

(04:21:19):
used both of them is illegal, but even trying to
use them illegally, they have definite limits. Section three thirty
eight of Smooth Holly has basically no limits, and the
one limit that's relevant for our purposes is a fifty
percent maximum teriff rate. Otherwise, it lets the president impose
tariffs on whatever country he wants for the extremely nepulous

(04:21:39):
reasoning of that country having placed quote the commerce of
the United States at a disadvantage compared to the commerce
of any foreign country. Trump, can you say any country
is doing this for any reason? We are back to
Calvinball nonsense. This nominal legal authority allows Trump to do
whatever he wants trade wise, up to a fifty percent tariff. Now, again,

(04:22:02):
it is widely expected that by the time you're reading this,
we're already going to have seen more tariffs. I'm expecting
something akin to a smaller scale version of liberation tariffs.
By the time you're listening, you will know more. Now,
the reason I'm talking about section three thirty eight of
Smooth Holly. And the reason I've described it as like
the big red button of tariffs, like it's the tariff rubicon,

(04:22:24):
is because not only has it never been used before, right,
you know, the Section one twenty two has also never
been used before, but this one, specifically section three thirty eight,
there is a real question as to whether it's even
still in effect now. The argument you will most commonly
see is that section three thirty eight has never formally

(04:22:44):
been repealed and therefore is still on the books. This
is a law that was passed in nineteen thirty. The
com administration is making the argument that because it has
never formally been repealed, it is still on the books. However,
the problem is that there exists a thing called superseding
statute or a quote implied repeal. This is the argument

(04:23:05):
that I've seen that this law is not still on
the books. I've seen various versions of it. The one
that is kind of spreading around now, for better or
for worse, kind of for worse to some extent, is
from Philip Zellico, who is a Hoover Institute guy and
a history professor who's writing in Reason magazine so, like,
you know, these are not the people I would normally

(04:23:25):
turn to in terms of getting legal analysis on everything.
But I actually think there's a kind of a decent
argument that they might be right. And their argument is that, okay,
because of the way that you know, laws can supersede
other laws. Right, if you write a second law that
is about the same thing as the first law, and

(04:23:45):
it covers explicitly the same thing, it can repeal the
first law. It's sketchy, the courts don't like it functioning
like that, but it does technically work like that. And
you know, zelico Are argues that a whole train of statutes,
ranging from the Trade Expansion Act of nineteen sixteen to
our old friend section three oh one, if the Trade

(04:24:07):
Act of nineteen seventy four cover exactly the same things
and therefore have repealed the statute. I think that's actually plausible.
And this is, you know, part of the reason why
no one has ever actually tried to use this stuff,
because there have been subsequent legislation to describe these exact
powers and describe what you can do with them. So

(04:24:27):
whether it even still exists is extremely dubious. Now, this
is probably not going to survive a challenge in court.
But until the legal challenge actually winds its way through
the courts, Trump is going to be free to do
as Calvin ball nonsense, and we're back to, you know,
twenty five era. Trump just declaring a tariff is happening

(04:24:49):
in a country every morning now. On a broader level, right,
what's happening here is that the way the Supreme Court
has been doing shadow docket decisions have allowed Trump to
simply keep breaking the law and seizing more illegal power
and then using it until this bereme court gets around
and taking that power away. Now, obviously this is not
true of everything he's been trying to do with triffs.

(04:25:11):
In particular, he's been extremely successful in simply applying the
tariffs and then keeping them into effect until the legal
challenges go through the courts. That looks like what's going
to happen here, which is going to give him probably
another I mean, it's going to give him but at
least half a year probably of the ability to just
do whatever bullshit tariff policy he wants, which means another

(04:25:31):
year of completely unhinged economic instability for the entire global economy.
It means another year of all you know of supply
lines being degraded, of prices increasing, and of all of
us getting absolutely screwed. Okay, put a transgoll on your couch.

Speaker 1 (04:25:53):
We reported the news.

Speaker 18 (04:25:55):
We reported the news.

Speaker 1 (04:26:00):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 7 (04:26:06):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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