Ryan and Saagar discuss Josh Shapiro cranky about AIPAC, Epstein prosecutor dined at his house, WH blows up at reporters Ukraine question, dotcom bubble 2.0 with AI.
Jeremy Scahill: https://x.com/jeremyscahill
David Dayen: https://prospect.org/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 4 (00:33):
Democrat Seth Moulton, who's running for Senate in Massachusetts, is
now saying he's refusing all eight PAC contributions and will
return what he's gotten. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro getting
pressed on the question. Let's look at how he responded.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
To it article in the New York Times about Democrats
pulling away from APEC. So clearly it's having some impact
on them politically. Of d Field like they got to
I mean, I think it's become a political issue. You've
used it as a political issue.
Speaker 6 (00:59):
You've questionederal representatives when they're on here on that. I mean,
I think if I can say this to you, you know,
not trying to offend you here, but I think it's
a little bit of a shortcut and a little bit
of a lazy question. I think the better question is
how do you really feel about Israel? How you feel
about a two state solution, how do you feel about
the war? How do you feel about you know, the
(01:20):
hostages or hungry kids or what have you. I think
I think demanding answers on those questions is more important
than Hey, what about this lobbying group or that lobbying group.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Well, what do you say to the critics who argue
that US foreign policy on Israel is often shaped not
by a national interest, well by the lobbying.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
Scrample of I think that's a fair conversation to have,
and I think it should be on any elected official
at the federal level to say, hey, I'm listening to
this group, but by the way, there's groups on other
sides too.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm listening to that group.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
But at the end of the day, we want our
federal representatives to be able to sit here in this
chair and answer the questions about why they vot voted A,
or why they voted B, or why they feel a
certain way. And I think it's just a little lazy
to say, oh, it's got to be because of that
interest group. Maybe someone actually believes those those views, or
maybe someone feels strongly about that particular way.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
And so the thing he said at the end there,
and we'll get into Molten in a second when we
get Szager's take on this.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think he said at the end there we said, Okay.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Well, you've got the lobbying group APAC on the one side,
and then you've got the lobbying groups on the other side.
That's actually false. There is not a yeah lobbying group
on the other side. The only thing that would come
remotely close might be care. The Council on American Islamic
Relations cares budget annual budgets like ten million dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
A PAC spent more than that in.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
One house race last year, double that in one house right,
So the entire national budget of the organization that they
would say is like on the other side, can't even
compete with them in a single house race.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
So it's just not true.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And so the problem I have with Shapiro's response there,
this is what curious to take on is, rather than
answering the question.
Speaker 7 (03:03):
Too often when people.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Ask this question, they're told you're not asking the right question.
You should ask other questions. It's like, no, you know what,
we're adults, like, this is the question I have, and
this is the question I want to answer to.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Dude, we will ask whatever we want to say.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's a lazy question, is because you're uncomfortable answering it
because you're pro Israel. And this is what drives me
crazy about these politicians is fundamentally, let's say Charlemagne a right,
Charlemagne is not one of us. He doesn't as far
as I know, he doesn't follow this stuff day in
and day out.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It's not his full time gig.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It's just politics, right, So for him, APAC is a
proxy for political control and Israel and he's pissed off
about the war in Gaza. That's it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's the question.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
So answer that question, which Shapiro doesn't want to answer.
Why does he not want to answer that because he
supports it, right at the end of the day, he's
one of those people who's like.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, and yahoo's real problem.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
But Israel is a place where gay people can get married, right, Like,
this is the line that's basically baked into them. Remember Also,
what was that collajap ed that Shapiro wrote about the IDF.
I don't I'd have.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
To know and to check.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It was genuinely crazy though, And it's one of those
where with Josh Shapiro, this is going to be a
political problem for him because I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It could be religious, it could be his own personal feelings,
it could just be genuine like not swimming in the
world of today's democratic base. But him knew some and
who am I? Who is my missing who messed up
on the APAC question? But I mean, these are the
two highest profile actual contenders. The fact that they can't
do oh court book, that's what the three of them.
The fact that they have never grappled with this, it's like,
(04:35):
I don't know, I'm sorry. The sheer lack of political
real talent is the ability to thread the needle on
that question.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I haven't seen a single one of them been able
to do that.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
Newsom had a similar response.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He flubbed it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
He said, I think it's interesting he Rather than answering
the question, he confronted the idea of the question.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Right, I find the question interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, I find the question interesting, which makes trying to
make some illusions or something there yea. And then Booker
also was like, you know, I don't get asked about
this a lot, and like, you know, what about uh?
And then and then he he really faced planted with
the why does anybody ask me about Nigeria.
Speaker 7 (05:12):
Or Sudan?
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And if you check his like statements over the last
five years, there's like one about Nigeria and had nothing
to do with what he's talking about, Like, oh, it's
like wait, wait a minute, you don't talk about.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
That either, So yeah, out of what also are we
funding that? That's what they always do. The Christians are
being slaughtered in Nigeria. I'm like, wow, that's horrible. How
much are we paying for that? And yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 7 (05:34):
And so Moulton.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Is trying to thread an interesting needle here because he's
saying he's still very much pro Israel, but he doesn't
like the NET and Yahoo government, and he said apax
problem is that they are too reflexively and unapologetically supportive,
specifically of the NET Yahoo government. Let's roll see two
and then get APAX response and unpack.
Speaker 8 (05:58):
This has shown that Democrats do not support what has
happened in Gaza and that they've pulled away from support
for Israel. Or is it just that you yourself have
seen the images of what's transpired in this war and
that it's reshaped the way you see the United States
relationship to Israel.
Speaker 9 (06:19):
Look, the United States relationship to Israel is incredibly important.
But I strongly disagree with the current Israeli government under
bb netan Yahoo, and I've been.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
Very outspoken about this for quite some time.
Speaker 9 (06:30):
I mean, in fact, I wrote an op ed just
after October seventh, right after those Hannus attacks, saying that
bb Net Yahoo needs to have a political plan for
the future for Palestinians and for Israelis to live peacefully
side by side.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
He still doesn't have that plan.
Speaker 9 (06:46):
So after months and months of pressuring the Israeli government,
pressuring APAC itself to not just follow the Israeli government,
I finally decided that I just cannot accept a contributions
from an organization whose mission is to support the current
government in Israel.
Speaker 10 (07:06):
Congressman, but let me just faw up on that really quickly.
How do you reconcile rejecting a PAC money but still
voting for the same policies that APAC is advocating for.
You have continuously supported sending offense at cuchers.
Speaker 7 (07:20):
I frequently disagreed with APAC.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
I know you disagree with You have been voting for wait,
slow down, slow down. I didn't finish my question.
Speaker 10 (07:30):
Then I didn't finish my question. I was saying, you
voted for sending weapons to Israel, which is something APAC
has advocated for.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
Okay, so sure there are some votes that will agree on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Very interesting, Ryan, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I mean, it's one of those where it does take
some level of political courage to say no, I won't
take a single apacked off.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Now, I'm not saying this is a response running from massachusetent.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
And he's running from Massachusetts Senate, and he's got a
couple of things on his side. Right, So he's young,
that's number one, is running against an opponent who is
much older. That being said, remember ed Marky survived a
primary challenge from one of the Kennedy claner. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:07):
First Kennedy to lose.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, the first Kennedy to lose in the state.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Of massachusetsquired to remember which one it was.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
There you go, And what I remember if I recall
again the race, which I covered extensively with Crystal, was
that he really embraced a lot of the youth vote,
the Green Deal, Sunrise movies this time around, though, this
is a very smart thing for Seth Molton to do
by I mean, it's a big headline no matter what,
and it's one of those where regardless of whether he's
threading the needle or not, the truth is is that
(08:35):
I've said this, I think we've all said this here
on the show. What you want to do is to
make your position politically politically convenient. Politicians are soulless scum.
They believe in almost almost all of them believe in nothing.
So what you want is for your position to be
the cynical choice. That's how you really win, all right,
That's how the neocons won, That's how the Israel lobbie won.
(08:57):
You think half of these people care about Israel? No, okay,
we just thought free money, easy way to get elected. Yeah,
you gotta go and kiss the wall. Sometimes it is
what it is. Now you flip that around. And that's
really how, in my opinion, you win to see change
in politics.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
And he's looking over his shoulder a little bit too,
because Aana Presley has been eyeing this. Oh I didn't
know this Senate see, and was hoping that Edmark he
would not run for reelection.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
He frankly should And I mean, come on, man, there's
plenty you go go ahead, like, enjoy your life.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yes, how old is he eighty something?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
He's like, yeah, it's too much.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Listen. I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Between Janet Mills, between him, I mean, Schumer and the
rest of these people. I just I feel like it's
like a movie scene. I'm like, do you have any shame? Like,
have you no shame?
Speaker 11 (09:41):
Sir?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Seriously?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
And because Presley came in with the squad, you know,
she's been critical of Yau in general specifically, but also
Israel more broadly, and so if she gets into the
race too, that'll that'll make it interesting. But let's throw
up APAX response here. We have it in front of us. Apax,
says Representative Moulton is abandoning his friends to grab a
headline capitulating to the extremes rather than standing on conviction.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
His statement, they should say business.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
When are people going to start saying in statements rather
than standing on business. His statement comes after years of
him repeatedly asking for our endorsement and is a clear
message to APAC members in Massachusetts and millions of pro
Israel Democrats nationwide that he rejects their support.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
And will not stand with them.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah, I mean no laws detected throughout that he definitely
has been asking for their support.
Speaker 7 (10:31):
And then to go back to.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Aman Moyal Deane's point, he's still voting for weapons for Israel,
which is still going to be a significant liability. But
I think the public would at least prefer if you're
doing that, at least you're doing it because you really
love sending weapons to a genocidal state and not because
member multiple Sick in this town has been the national
(10:56):
Security Democrats as he came to Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I mean a lot of us, lot of people, we
don't follow this stuff day in and day out. I
remember in the old days when he was like, I'm
the national Security Democrat, right, And immediately after the election
he actually came out what did he say? He said
something about because I remember this is why this is
relevant to our next element.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I need to find it.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Why don't you put the next element operating so I'll
find exactly what we said.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And he tried to organize a challenge to Pelosi around
this kind of thing, So yeah, put up the Dave
Weigel element. Next, he says Senator at market facing a
challenge from Moulton where a trans writes flag during his
note king speech, and Wygel correctly adds the context here,
which is that Moulton said after the election he didn't
want his daughter's quote getting run over on a playing
field by a male or formerly male athlete unquote.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
Saying that.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Democrats need to, you know, reorganize their position, particularly when
it comes to trans athletes and you know who plays
in which, yeah.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
I have the full quote.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Democrats spend way too much time trying to offend anyone
other other than being brutally on about the challenges many
American space.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I have two little girls.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I don't want them getting run over on a playing
field by a male or formerly male athlete. As a Democrat,
I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. To be clear,
I firmly believe there was reasonable restrictions on transi or
athletes in competitive sports. Now, obviously I'm not a Democrat
in Massachusetts, so makes sense to me. But apparently that's
a very difficult position for some Democrats to take.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It's very interesting because that's it's like an eighty twenty
issue that where where you're talking about if you talk
about post puberty. Yeah, like eighty plus maybe ninety plus
percent of people will say that people should kids should
play in the sports where they're assigned generate birth. That
this that this idea where you're gonna have a high school.
(12:42):
It was like trans and switching. Like when it comes
to a general election, they're losing that terribly. It's very
interesting that Marky thinks that in a Democratic primary he's
going to win, He's gonna win this eighty twenty issue.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
On the other side, it might be right, and he
might be right.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
There's been a lot of trans retrenchment if you ask me,
I mean, it's kind of interesting. We haven't been able
to cover it, but trans identification is at record lows already,
basically proving it's a social contagion. Sorry, yes, that's correct,
always has been. But the point actually broadly around the
transports issue and this is more of my political analysts
(13:19):
had on is. I could see how he would get
attacked for what's the language they always use, like throwing
trans people under the even though quite literally he's talking
about athletes. I could see how the activist and democratic
class would say that giving an inch in any way
to the Republicans on this issue is cowardly. Again, this
(13:40):
is not a general election point. This is a democratic primary.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And nobody will talk about this honestly though, because there
are a lot of transactivists who disagree with that and
who say it is wrong to die on this hill,
because if we die on this hill.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
Then we're all getting swept away.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
And there are plenty of trans people who are all
the eighty side of this eighty twenty issue like no,
like stop, like Leah Thomas should not be swimming against
other women, like whatever. Yeah, but I don't see a
lot of those people speaking up, Brian. They don't know
that that's that's the point. But if you talk to them,
either privately or yes, like but you're right, like well, listen,
(14:20):
I hope you win this conversation, they would find that
it is that there is not a monolithic kind of
transposition on.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
This well, it doesn't seem that way with the activist class.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Again, we'll see. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean, I'm not speaking. I'm being fairly certain that there.
I know, I don't remember exactly who. There was somebody
in the I think it was Emma Biglin who attacked
him over this, if I recall. Right, so there's going
to be some activist pressure Molten because this was the
very days after he got election.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He got hit by it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Everybody. Yeah, but that's my question is politically in the
democratic basse Listen, I get it because a lot of
Republicans are like this too. They don't want to give
the enemy a single inch, right, They're like, no, we
fight together. We don't concede a single point of what
we got wrong or of what is unpopular. We just
continue to fight. I could see Markie making that into
(15:10):
an issue, but that this is the other thing where
issue and all of that aside. Shouldn't it just be
Pressley versus multi. I mean, dude, you're eighty years old,
like you need to leave you're going to be eighty.
Let me get his age exactly correctly, But I mean
this should be it's just completely seventy nine, right, he's
running for reelection, or at least for right now he
(15:31):
would be eighty six eighty seven when he ended is
termed why are we okay with that? I'm sorry, Like,
how are you going to beat the Kennedys and say
we don't have dynasties in this country? And then nearly
put put yourself in a position where statistically you're going
to die in office. It's so it's the height of
selfishness and all these people. Yeah, and I think Iana Pressley,
if you're watching, should just jumpeah you run and you
(15:52):
can take the trans Leah Thomas position, all right, and
then we can actually have a real debate and.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
That might push it lay out.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah maybe right, that would actually because that's when I
can't stand more than the trance thing. I would rather
it like God, like, I'm so sick of these people
who aren't hanging on the office. It's disgusting, it actually is,
and it's so disrespectful. I think to the people of Massachusetts,
it's a blue it's a hard blue state. They deserve
to actually like have a raucous, interesting primary new generation
(16:22):
actual representation in their state.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
That's who they are, right, I mean it's a.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Very productive state, a lot of history and all that,
and to have somebody who's that old, like, I'm sorry,
I know how the Senate works.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
They don't work that hard for you. They just don't.
They have a nap all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They're basically like.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You know, even for travel and everything, they just will
not have the same amount of viga in the words
of John F. Kennedy, that any younger person will. It's
just it's simple. Your time is up, dude, Like, yeah,
he's been. He has served twenty terms in the US Congress.
That's insane, and he still wants to keep going to
was he class of seventy two?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Let me find seventy six?
Speaker 7 (16:58):
Six is a newcomer.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Here's what you got.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Here's how old Ed Marky is as the US Representative
for massachus from nineteen six twenty thirteen. He entered the
year after the helicopter left the US Embassy of Saigon,
which is black and white photo. That is how old
this man is. That's how like the way that I
think about a Ken Burns documentary. He was literally watching
that on TV and served in the US Congress the
(17:25):
year after that. I'm sorry, like if you can remember that,
you gotta go turning out to Epstein. We didn't have
time to get into this, and it actually is worth
fully going through all of the new information. Let's go
ahead and put this up here on the screen. This
was from a new release by the House Oversight Committee,
which detailed a bunch of new Epstein files, as well
(17:46):
as an interview with Alex Acosta, who was the prosecutor
who ended up giving Epstein his sweetheart deal.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Julie K. Brown, huge shout out to her from the
Miami Herald.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
She's been covering this stuff from day one, and I
looked to her always for some of her information, even
more detailed knowledge of the case than I do. What
she was able to uncover is that Matthew Menschell, who
was the chief of the Criminal Division of the Miami
US Attorney Office and helped negotiate Epstein's sweetheart deal which
allowed him to be released in two thousand and nine,
is listed multiple times as having dinner and meetings with
(18:18):
Epstein after leaving the US Attorney's office. So this is
a huge bombshell because this is years after his release.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Is a purse of that one, Yeah, go ahead, just
this is for context for later. Notice on that one
eleven thirty appointment with Leon Black.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Oh yeah, oh, I'll get back to that one. Yeah,
don't worry.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Same day I'm coming back to Leon there, right, all right, Leon, Yes,
But on the same day having dinner with Matt Menchel,
the very same prosecutor who was part of the office.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
In what world is that appropriate?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You helped lock somebody away allegedly even with the sweetheart
deal for a registered sex offender, right, and then you're
having dinner with that person three years later. It's like,
do you have any you know, semblance of making sure
no conflict of interest?
Speaker 7 (19:06):
And it's a misnoxi at it?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, or even at a human level, at a human level.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
If you Ryan, would you ever know, only go into
the house of somebody who is a registered sex offender? No? Yeah, exactly,
all right, and this is my thing, like and he
knows because he prosecuted. I always think about this with
guys like George Stephanopolis and others who are like, yeah,
I had dinner with him. I go, you know, maybe
it's just me. I google everybody who asked me that dinner. Okay,
And if you're even remotely sketchy I'm like, yeah, it's
not happening. And I can tell you I've been invited
(19:31):
some sketchy stuff around here and why. Usually it has
to do with arms dealers and stuff like.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And even then I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
You know who's paying for this, right, it's one of
those where there's some blood money here on the table.
I don't want have anything to do with that, or
I'll split the bill with you if I think it's interesting.
That's the thing where apparently I'm a YouTuber and I
hold myself to that standard, and these guys are like, oh, yeah,
I prosecuted you, and even though you are a registered
sex offender, I'm just gonna go ahead and I helped
lock you away. I'm gonna go over to your house
(20:00):
for dinner.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
And it's probably not with people.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I don't know about him specifically, but it's probably not
even though or despite it's because there you go, because
he knows the details of what Epstein is into.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yes, he wants to hang out with him, because he
goes because he probably investigated, He probably had some of
his tax returns and stuff in front of him. He goes, Oh,
I need to get in on this He's like, this
is a good deal right here.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
By the way.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Speaking of that, as Ryan said, hold for Leon Black.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Leon.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I've talked about Leon from day one in the Epstein case.
It remains one of the most mystified. This is one
of the titans of Wall Street. Nine billion dollar net worth,
one hundred and fifty million dollar payment to to the
Jeffrey Epstein estate that has been revealed for quote tax advice.
Nobody knows why. He's been friends with him for decades.
Everybody he's defended his relationship with EPs He said he
had no idea put him on the board of his charities.
(20:47):
Decades long friendship. Well, Leon's emails with Jeffrey Epstein came out,
and they're pretty interesting, aren't they.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
They say. Epstein was furious.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
For years he had relied on Leon Black as his
primary source of income him on everything from taxes to
his world class art collection. By twenty sixteen, Black seemed
reluctant to keep paying him tens of millions of dollars
per year, so Epstein threw a tantrum. Epstein wrote in
an email to mister Black, quote he was another waste
of money in space, attacked mister Black's children as retarded
(21:17):
for supposedly making it that's relatable, making.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Of his state.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
The typo ridden tirade was one of brief dozens of
previously unreported emails reviewed by The New York Times in
which Epstein hectored mister Black, demanding tens of millions of
dollars beyond one hundred and fifty million he had already
been paid. The pressure campaign Ryan appeared to work mister
Black for decades, who was one of the richest and
(21:43):
most high profile figures on Wall Street. Forked tens of
millions of dollars in fees and loans, albeit less than
mister Epstein had been seeking. Of all the relationships, his
friendship with mister Black is the most important. He served
jail time for soliciting prostitution. Mister Black kept him afloat
from many years. The new emails provide the most complete
(22:03):
picture yet of their relationship. Now to be clear, you know,
for legal purposes and with mister Black. I am simply
noting how shocking it is for a titan of Wall Street,
a private equity giant, one of the most well known
billionaires in the city of New York, how completely opposite
(22:25):
it is to the way that the Apollo Group and
others would conduct business to seemingly constantly just caving to
demands for tens of millions of dollars from Jeffrey.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's all I am noting.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
You can draw your own conclusion very specifically as to
why anybody would ever act like that, who made nine
billion dollars and doesn't conduct business that way.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
In any other similar tone, similar tone, and I'm black
denies all.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, he blacks black.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Similar tone from the New York Times article that soccer
does put up they write and this is one of
those delightful sentences in the New York Times.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Echoing saga and quote.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
And for reasons that are unknown, mister Black wired hundreds
of thousands of dollars to at least three women who
were associated with mister Epstein. According to court documents and
notes taken by congressional investigators that were shared with The Times,
Representatives of mister Black did not respond to questions about
those payments to women, So, in other words, he was
representatives responded to a bunch of other questions of the
(23:25):
time sent but ignored those questions.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
So I like this phrase.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
For reasons that are unknown, mister blackwired hundreds of thousand.
Speaker 7 (23:32):
Dollars at least room. We don't know why.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Just good good friends to the good good friends.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
With these women they were, they were you know, they
needed a little help get through the weekend.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Or something happens.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It happens. You know who amongst us has not floated
our friends girlfriends, right, I mean with hundreds of thousands.
I do it every day, of course.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
Italy, And we're going to insinuate.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Something, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I'm sure my wife would be cool with it, should
be totally cool with it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So here we have.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Here's my other personal favorite from mister Black's lawyer. To
imply mister Epstein somehow I had influence over mister Black
is false and patently absurd. Okay, to imply mister Epstein,
who demanded tens of millions of dollars and received tens
of millions of dollars and called his children retarded and
also hectored and berated him, to imply he had any
influence over mister Black, is false and patently absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's from Leon Black again.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
These guys, you think you just get nine billion dollars,
You think somebody just hands it to you, No, you
get it by being a swashbuckling deal maker.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
What if I was running the Apollo.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
By the way, these guys are legends on Wall Street,
right Apollo? Does Apollo just let somebody who they're doing
a leverage buyout of demand certain terms of conditions. Is
that how you got nine billion dollars in net worth? No,
you would be a bankrupt Right, So we know he
knows how to do business and to say no, how
to say fuck you. That's literally part of being a
(24:56):
Wall Street financier. An he did event well, yeah, you
get to that ish, but the point remains something for
some unknown for reasons that remain unknown, that he continued
to hand him tens of millions of dollars. Okay, all right,
let's go to the next part here. This gets to
the interview with alex Acosta. I read the entire thing,
several hundred pages, kind of boring, to be honest, they
(25:18):
didn't do a very good job. But guys, please put
D three please up on the screen, just to show you.
The signature claim from alex Acosta is that any trial
of Jeffrey Epstein quote would have been a crapshoot. Now,
this is a central issue because remember, Alex Acosta is
a Labor secretary under Trump, he was the prosecutor who
(25:39):
did the sweetheart deal with Epstein. After he resigns as
a Labor secretary, the Office of Professional Review over the
Justice Department does an internal investigation of the Epstein non
prosecution agreement. They find that Alex Acosta in his office
acted improperly. Now, Acosta contents throughout this entire interview that
(25:59):
he did nothing wrong and they got the best possible deal.
Now remember the retroactive review by the DJ specifically says
that is not true. So they find fault with the
actions of his office. A Costa stands up for the
actions of his office, saying effectively blaming the victims, saying, oh, well,
they weren't credible enough to be able to bring them
to trial. By the way, remember that is in direct
controvers of what some of the agents and the other
(26:20):
people on the case said. So this is not one
hundred percent their view of the entire US Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It is the view of mister Acosta.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I will say, because there have been some sketchy questions
here around the claim previously that he had said he
belonged to intelligence he claims that he never said that.
He says, I never said it. So I want to
make that very clear, because that's a quote I've relied
on probably one of the most famous plays. So I
want to be clear that he now emphatically denies he said.
(26:50):
I never heard that from anybody. I didn't tell it
to Steve Bannon. I have no idea where that comes from.
So let's be clear that's what he said. Now, you know,
I've laid out my other case for why I do
think he was at the very least involved with multiple
foreign intelligence agencies. But nonetheless, alex Acosta says, there was
nothing untoward. I never had any indication he was intelligence
or whatever. Nobody told me what to do, which, by
(27:13):
the way, again that doesn't fit with some of the
past timeline. Like the previous timeline was that Washington actually
made a phone call around this from the DOJ.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
But you know, you have to get very dark and
into the weeds on this.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
I think the fundamental premise, though, is even if we
take all the intel stuff out of it and we
just keep it focused on the victims, he basically was
victim blaming throughout the entirety.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He said, yeah, they were incredible.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
They made stuff up MySpace page, they were sketchy, and
so that's why the sweetheart deal is the best that
we could possibly get. Again, that's totally disputed. So his
mindset around it does not seem conciliatory at all. He
still continues to defend his conduct Ryan, which I personally
find disgusting. Intelligence Now if anything is worse, I'm like, oh,
so he just you know, they didn't believe them. He
(27:55):
even says in there he goes, he goes, well, the
times were different. People didn't believe women at that time.
I was like, so you're blaming the culture that what
is this? It was crazy?
Speaker 7 (28:05):
And the.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
If you look through his his emails and his and
the different appointments that he had, what what you realize
is that Jeffrey Epstein knew everybody, Like he had pull
with Russian oligarchs, Russian you know, top the top Russians,
the Israelis, Europeans, Americans in both parties, like and also
(28:31):
Wall Street and like the banking world. Like he was
at the middle of all of this stuff, and he
had people who owed him and who he was willing
to rate at the top levels everywhere, and so the
idea that a minimum he didn't call in favors and
that his powerful friends and doing anything for him just
is not remotely credible. Yep like that, like even if
(28:53):
you don't think, even if you dismissed the intel part,
but also to me, the intel part is a bit
of a red herring because what we've found going through
all of these emails, he was absolutely doing work for
people that are in the orbits of this intel world.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Which only backs up everything that we've said is no
one has said he was an agent force and how
the world works, Yeah, exactly, That's what we kept trying
to explain. There are these fixers. There are these shady characters.
If you live here in DC, you're familiar with them.
They do contracts for Russia, they do contracts for Qatar,
for the UA. They're hired guns. They have nexuses, they
have foreign bank accounts, they have a special knowledge what's
(29:31):
the taken language. It's like a very specific set of
skills that they have. And so yeah, you guys released
that reported drop site about the Israel deal with Mongolia.
They're convenient actors who can just insert themselves in the process.
Epstein started out working with on shows exactly because a
literal CIA cut out like it's like, this is a
it's trying to explain this to people who deny it
(29:52):
is they are relying on willful ignorance and the definition
of terms which are fake. Like no one has ever
said he was yeah, here's his literal id Bank.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Actually didn't have massade tell Barry Weiss that he was
oh sorry, never mind, right, sorry, thank you, We apologize, and.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
We shout out to the editor in chief of CBS
News for her great, great journal.
Speaker 7 (30:15):
She settled this one.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
She settled the question question. Finally, let's put this one
up here on the screen with the appropriate caveat this
there's a new book of memoir come out from Virginia
Goffrey remember, one of the most prominent victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
She did, unfortunately take her own life recently. She'd lived
a very troubled life. She famously was pictured in that
photo with Prince Andrew and in her new memoir, which
(30:38):
was post hostmulantly released, she says she was quote beaten
raped by a well known prime minister in attack that
broke the Epstein spell. Her memoir reveals, now, Ryan, you
will be shocked to learn the New York Post said
well known prime minister and did not name the country.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Oh, New York Posts, it's journalistic scale skills failed it.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
Finally, what happened with that?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Right? Which prime minister?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Who was it? And in fact it doesn't even appear
in the lead paragraph. You have to go all the
way down past three different advertisements to say that. In past, however,
she had pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Awod Brock. Now
to be clear, mister Brock denies it. And also to
be clear, yes, VIRGINIAU. Frey was a very troubled woman
(31:22):
and she did certainly say some things in the past
which did not turn out to be true.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
Sure, so she's attracted.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Whether she has retracted, yeah, which she personally has retracted.
So all appropriate caveats and all of that said, you
should not necessarily take it to the bank. But the
one thing nobody can ever get away from is the
photo exists of her as a very young girl with
her arm around Prince Andrew. And that photo, I'm sorry,
you can't make it disappear, you just can't. And it
was enough that mister Andrew, Prince Andrew, sorry, I apologize. Yeah,
(31:51):
so Prince andrew his Royal Highness Prince has still remained
out completely of public life and had a complete melton
of it. What was his defense? He said, I don't sweat.
He's like, I'm not a sweater you remember that. I mean,
if that's all you got, brother, I don't know, man sweats. Yeah,
It's like I'm for sure. He's like, really the British
(32:13):
down sweat even in heat. Really that doesn't fit with
my experience.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
But and going to Epstein's emails with Barack because Barack
also got.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
His emails hacked, of course, yeah, you guys, really that.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And so there's there's some in there where he's like hey,
or Barack's like, I can't wait to see you on
the island.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Maybe the security won't be there this ye, I remember that.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
And there's there's another one where he's like, why don't
you know, why don't you talk to these particular women
that they're doing a business deal with. He's like, because
you really have a way with women like so like Barack,
and this is post conviction and sentenced, so Barack and
also everybody who talks about Epstein is like the thing
about him. Even Leon Black said this The thing about
(32:52):
him is that he was always surrounded by beautiful women.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
And it's in the birthday book? Are we not?
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Are we stupider signed the birthday signed the book at Barack.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Look at the cartoon where they have they have Jeffrey
Epstein twenty years It's like a cartoon cartoon drawing of
him hanging out with young girls and them all in
scantily clad bikinis giving a massage on the Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Twenty years later it was out years later.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
Sorry, something gross, ghos So, yes.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
That's your update. I don't even have words Leon Black stuff, man,
I just wish. This is the problem with these you
know in the house and all of this is get
these guys. Wexner is like ninety. He needs to testify
while his mind is still there, okay, before he can
claim dementia or something like that. Get his ass on
(33:41):
the record and you know, undersworn testimony. Same with Leon Black,
Same with I mean all of the top financiers. Because
to date all we have are the bullshit denials of
Gallaine Maxwell.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
I don't think we mentioned this yet. His fee to
Leon Black was forty million a year. He said, I
want twenty five upfront. Other times he would say I
want twenty upfront, twenty in January, twenty in July. That's
what he was getting cranky about, Like where is my
forty million dollars?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
This is a guy who has no tax licenses.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
He's not even allowed to give tax advice without saying,
I can't give tax advice. Charging forty million dollars to
give tax advice.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, and his state planning and Arsten and almost.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, it's such great taste, right, like the photo of
Bill Clinton in a fucking dress, Like, come on, what
a joke. Turning down to Ukraine, we wanted to make
sure we gave everyone an update. It's still some major
developments here. President Trump reverting back to his original position.
Ukraine has to give up some land in a peace deal.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11 (34:43):
Fridday, he said, you got a cordial meeting with President
Seletski during that During that meeting, did you tell him
he needed to seed all of the Donbass region to Russia.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
No, we never discussed it. We think that what they
should do is just stop at the lines where they are.
The battle line a battle line right now. The rest
is very tough to negotiate. If you're going to say
you take this, we take that. You know, there's so
many different permutations. So what I say is they should
stop right now at the battle lines, go home, stop
killing people, and be done.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
What do you think should happened with the Godbas region?
Speaker 12 (35:16):
Let it be cut the way it is cut up
right now. I think seventy eight percent of the land
is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way
it is right now. They can they can negotiate something
later on down the line. But I said cut and
stop at the battle I go home, stop fighting, stop
killing people.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So that's the position today.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan he said that they
could take back all of crime yet so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Nobody knows what's going on here.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Let's put this up here on the screen from a
recent you know, this, by the way, very interesting. Not
only that Zelenski and Trump met, but did anyone notice
there was no joint press conference, There was no joint meeting,
there was no statement afterwards by the president. Zelensky slunk
in and he's slunk out. And the reasons why is
from the Financial Times quote, Donald Trump urged Zelenski to
accept putinstorm or quote be destroyed by Russia. The meeting
(36:06):
descended many times quote into a shouting match, with Trump
cursing all the time. They added that the President tossed
aside maps of the frontline, insisted Zelenski surrender the dunboss
to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points that the Russian
leader had made in their call a day earlier. Now
you know, obviously that is coming straight out of Zelenski's
mouth to the Financial Times, And we don't really know
(36:27):
which way it's going to go, but it's just pretty
obvious that this is the only way this was ever
going to end. You have the military power, I mean,
the current US intelligence estimate apparently I don't know if
I believe this, but let's say it's directionally correct. Is
one hundred thousand people have been killed since January of
twenty twenty five. Do you see a single crack in
Russian society? They don't care. Now, I don't get it,
(36:48):
all right, If one hundred thousand of my guys were
killed for some bullshit like this, yeah I would riot.
I don't know. For some reason, they have a different
society over there, be it propaganda, maybe they believe in it.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Who knows.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
But the point is their economy is doing well. I
don't see a single crack in their society. Putin seems
humming along more than ever before. They can throw as
many bodies into this as we want. And Zelensky's like, oh,
we need long range missiles. That's going to make up
the manpower deficit. You guys have sixty year olds on
the front line. It's not going to happen right from
day one. So we're back to this, and yet even
(37:20):
this morning, this is what I love about covering this administration.
What do I see? Marco Rubio's call did not go
well with Saragai Lavrov, and the potential meeting with Budapest
and Budapest with Putin may not happen because Russia has
not backed off it's maximalist position. So Trump says they
need to surrender, but Russia hasn't backed off it's maximal's position.
So we're stuck right back from where we came from.
(37:41):
They can't get their hands around this. Something like Israel
Gaza needs to happen, where they're like, yeah, we just
got to have to talk to Mos, like you just
have to accept the unacceptable. And when that happens, yeah,
you can actually get something done.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And Trump also said on Putin as a Zelenski, they
hate each other and it makes it a little bit difficult.
Speaker 7 (37:59):
And then he so added, but it doesn't affect us.
Speaker 11 (38:02):
Right.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
He really thought this.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Was going to be extremely easy. You know, it wouldn't
happen if he was president, according to him. Once therefore,
once he becomes president, it's going to end that hasn't happened.
And he's just flailing at this point, as he told
as Politico says Trumps. So Trump says he's going to
(38:25):
meet again with Putin to discuss it. He's going to
go back to that. And the Budapest location is interesting,
and it flows into this funny exchange between s Vi Date,
a Post reporter and is Caroline Levitt or yes, Caroline,
I'll read the text first. So sv reaches out. Is
the president aware of the significance of Budapest? In nineteen
(38:46):
ninety four Russia promised in Budapest not to invade Ukraine
if it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited when
the Soviet Union dissolved? Does he not see why Ukraine
might object that to that site who suggested Budapest.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Thanks your mom, did.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
I mean it's funny, but it's not that funny.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yah?
Speaker 7 (39:06):
He said, I'm gonna laugh at any morey.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Yeah, he says, is this funny to you? And she said,
it's funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journalist.
You're a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including
your colleagues in the media. They just don't tell you
that to your face. Stop texting me. You're disingenuous, biased
and bs questions. As far as I know, that's not
the press cords understanding of my former colleague s sv so.
(39:30):
Then Caroline herself posted it for context. Sv of the
Hufting post is not a journalist interested in the facts.
The left wing hacked what she already said in there.
Just take a look at his feet. It reads like
an anti Trump personal diary. He is pretty anti Trump,
no doubt about that. He had Okay, let's be honest.
He is TS.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I cover the white I cover the he's pretty he's TDS.
Probably listen, I don't care, all right, He's allowed to
do whatever he want with anti Trump. Yeah, he's full blown.
I remember him in the press corps.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I got nothing. Listen, I respect the dog guys.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Anybody who wants to sit there and fire off questions
of the press secretary, that's your job, your mom jokes. Yeah,
pretty immature. Not a good look for you in my opinion.
So yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Don't know what else to say.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Why don't you could just ignore it? Nobody said that
you have to respond to the question. It is a
legitimate question. I would tell sv to his face that
the premise itself is retarded based on this whole idea
of the Budapest memory is that they deserve You.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Know why Zelenski doesn't want to do Budapest, Because no,
he doesn't want to do Budapest because Orbon is the
only person in.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
The EU who has a very different view of the
Ukraine conflict. Right, And actually, I mean a lot of
people forget this. There are ethnic Hungarians who lived in Ukraine.
I saw many of them who are Ukrainian citizens, because
when I visited Budapest, they're all living in Budapest now
and they don't want to fight in the war, which
is very instructive, isn't it. But the point just broadly
around Budapest as the location is because Trump has a
(40:51):
great relationship with Orbon and Orbon has a good relationship
with Putin, so it would be neutral Ish territory for
the two of them to meet. I do understand the
cross but also, what do they expect Putin to meet
in Berlin? Like what do you guys? Are we joking?
Speaker 12 (41:05):
Like?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Where other than Alaska, which was actually good because it
was halfway it's still on US territory. Or they could
go meet in lat of Astok or something like that.
I guess, I don't know, for somebody that doesn't want
to go to Russia. Yeah, Beijing, Well that would be
a real statement, actually, if that would be the broken ground.
Budapest seems as good as any of a place to
meet doctor.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
You know you love this time.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Uh beautiful, hey, beautiful city. I recommend everybody go. Gorgeous.
Joining us now is David dan He is the executive
editor of The American Prospect and a great friend of
the show. It's good to see you, David. Thank you
so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on. So, David,
I have been fascinated by this term of vendor finance.
I didn't realize, you know, I'm too young to actually
(41:48):
remember dot com. But luckily we have experts like you
who can go through and can write all about how
we're just living through the exact same crazy scenario. But
before we actually even get to that, we wanted to
get reaction to the Amazon Web service crash that just happened,
which highlights this architecture which runs our entire economy, our
entire digital life, and a single point of failure. Literally
(42:11):
a prospect of what it's like to live under monopoly.
Let's put this up here on the screen. You know, everybody,
especially here on the East Coast, woke up immediately. Multiple
apps are not working, huge at outage. You had banks,
you had music services, so many different things where you
had the single point of failure from a single server
here in northern.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Virginia, in our area.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And I mean just from a monopoly point of view, David,
and especially the fact that their stock went up even
after the crash, what does that tell you about this
world that we live in.
Speaker 13 (42:44):
Well, I'm painfully aware of it because we couldn't get
our newsletters out yesterday. Yeah, they've run on with a
company that was involved in the mess. Yeah, I mean
I'd go back to a different recession, which is the
Great Recession of two thousand and eight, which was characterized
by what is known as tight coupling. In other words,
(43:08):
the banks were all tied in with one another, and
so when there was a failure in the mortgage back
mortgage sorry, mortgage backed securities market, that cascaded throughout the
rest of the economy. And you know, you see similar
couplings here with respect to the cloud service with the Internet,
(43:31):
and it's a really dangerous situation obviously because it's not
just my newsletter and Netflix and things like that that
are on there, but actually really important things on the
cloud that people need to have every day, you.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Know, like healthcare technology would be the first that I
would think of, like is the kind of thing you
don't want to go down?
Speaker 7 (43:54):
Transportation as well?
Speaker 4 (43:56):
How did and then and then we'll get into the
other reporting because it very much is related. How do
you think AI and crypto and blockchain played into.
Speaker 7 (44:07):
Played into this crash?
Speaker 4 (44:09):
And you know, it was concentrated in Virginia that apparently
the dea sence uh finishes like writing here in Virginia,
which also happens, I don't know what's coincidence, also happens
to be where the CIA and a lot of the
other infrastructure around. You know, surveillance and back doors is
as well, so you've got you've got the surveillance AI
(44:32):
blockchain and then monopoly. Like, what do you think is
a driving factor here that produced this cascading collapse.
Speaker 13 (44:41):
Well, Virginia is maybe the data center. Uh, you know
head of the entire country. H there, there is a
tremendous amount of data centers there and you know it
stands to reason because there's so much compute needs. I
just think that when you layer on and layer on
onto these systems and AWS is the biggest cloud infrastructure
(45:06):
that we have in the world. And when you just
keep adding and adding and adding to it, you do
create these single points of failure. You do create the
ability for things to break down and they have bigger
consequences when that happens. You see this in airlines that
were one glitch creates thousands of delays on flights. It's
(45:31):
the same kind of dynamic.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Yeah, and one of this really gets to the heart
of what I wanted to talk to you about. Can
we go ahead and put G three up on the
screen and you write about these circular finance deals that
continue to see in the economy this prospect of vendor finance,
where basically what happens is you sign a deal with
(45:52):
the company, they give you a part of that company.
The stock goes up, which effectively erases the so called
price that you paid. Billions of so called value have
been created, but nothing has actually happened, been produced and
orban paid. It doesn't seem to make any sense, but
it's fueling the rise of all of these different companies.
And it's even more importantly we talk about single point
(46:13):
of failure. It's the only reason our stock market is
up at all. Without it, we would be in a recession.
Speaker 13 (46:20):
Yeah, something like eighty percent of the stock gains this
year are related to AI link companies and something I've
heard another stat that data center infrastructure build out is
responsible for maybe fifty percent of the gains in GDP.
So obviously we've put a big bet on AI and
(46:44):
companies like in Vidia in particular, but there are others,
these big companies that sell things. They sell in the
case of in Vidio GPUs, which are the high end
chips that run these AI data centers. They need customers,
so what they're doing is actually creating their own demand,
(47:05):
they sell or they invest in companies startup companies, whether
they are companies that make data centers like core weave,
or even companies that make AI models, because in Video
just did a huge deal with open Ai for one
hundred billion dollars. So they invest in these companies, and
(47:25):
then these companies turn around and use that money to
build data centers which need GPUs, which in video makes
so it's really circular. I've heard it called round tricking
as well, and our contributor at The Prospect, Brian McMahon
referred to it as the oroborus, the snake eating its
(47:45):
own tail.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
So help me understand how this keeps going, because I
want to try to, it's very hard for me to
get my head around this. So let's say I run
an apple orchard, right, and I make a ton of apples,
but nobody wants to buy my apples.
Speaker 7 (48:00):
So I take money that I.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
Have and I give it to my neighbor, and my
neighbor uses the money to buy my apples. So now
I have the same amount of money that I started with,
but I don't have my apples anymore. Right, Explain to
me that this doesn't just all end in tears.
Speaker 13 (48:22):
There are all these people on the sidelines that say, oh,
you have you created another uh, you know, demand for
your apples, and so we're going to give you more
money because you're obviously running a very good business where.
Speaker 7 (48:36):
You have a lot of I've buildled my mind, more
money is coming in.
Speaker 13 (48:38):
That's that's the stock market, right That's that's investors on
the sidelines saying this sounds good. In video, you're you're
creating your own demand and so uh, it's it doesn't
stop until the music stops.
Speaker 7 (48:52):
And we've seen this before.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
As as as a cigar alluded to.
Speaker 13 (48:57):
In the nineteen nineties, there was an infrastructure build out
out of you know, fiber infrastructure was needed for the web,
and Cisco was really the company at the center of it,
and they were engaging in this vendor financing for these
startups that were creating you know, fiber opts to layout
and it was all great until it turned out that
(49:20):
nobody really needed pets dot com anymore. And at that
point Cisco lost eighty percent of its value. So we
have been here before. It sounds great and it works
great until it doesn't. We don't know when that time's
going to be. If I knew that I would I
would be very rich ment. But what we know is
that it doesn't feel like it can last forever.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
So that's my last question, David.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
One way I've been kind of coping on why it
won't is the economy, in my opinion, was a lot
more real in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
You know, in two thousand, like you know, we actually
did build it up.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
We you know, it wasn't great, it was still financialized,
but it was still there was something actually happening in
the US economy. Now, this is it like if eighty
percent and eighty percent of stock gains and fifty percent
of JATA center is GDP, the system cannot afford a crash. Now,
that hasn't necessarily stopped it before. But why wouldn't they
(50:15):
just pull out all the stops, as say, actually know
the crash is not happening because our entire economic livelihood
depends on it.
Speaker 13 (50:23):
It's certainly possible that that's only that's only operative if
you believe in the day, if you believe that there's
no other force that can can thrust reality into being.
I mean, the similarities people are making a lot of
connections to nineteen ninety, the nineteen nineties and the dot
(50:43):
com build out. And by the way, you can have
a buildout of a physical good but still have it
end with a financial crash. I mean, railroads had bubbles
when they were being built out. The trans Continental Railroad
led to the Panic of eighteen seven, twenty three, and
things like this that were really terrible depressions. So technologies
(51:05):
can be useful, but the financing behind them can still
be really, really bad. And so I relate this as
much to the financial crisis as I do to the
dot com build out. And there are even some of
the same players. Ryan right might remember the name Magnetar.
They were a hedge fund that they would basically build
(51:26):
these mortgage backed securities and then bet against them.
Speaker 7 (51:30):
This is like right at the end of the bubble.
Speaker 13 (51:33):
Magnetar is the leading institutional investor in core Weave, one
of these companies that builds data centers.
Speaker 7 (51:42):
Yes, they never went away.
Speaker 13 (51:44):
And so here we are twenty years later, close to
twenty years later, and core Weave is at the heart.
This is one of these companies that they've never made
any money, but they have a lot of investment and
it's kind of wily coyote, not looking down at the
ground and seeing nothing situation. And so when I heard
(52:05):
Magnetar was involved, I got I got heart palpitations a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
And Zuckerberg, actually, I'm sure you noticed this. He brought
up the railroad example himself. You know, he said, you know,
just like in the railroad example, you know, this was
infrastructure that was needed, and there was a huge bubble
and a lot of rail lines got built that went
to nowhere because you know, the companies went bankrupt, and
(52:32):
you know, there was just money to be made in
saying that you were going to build a railroad, and
then money money would come in, you'd pay off the
politicians who would then give you the easements, and you
pay the politicians off in stock in the railroad. That
was some of those those big scandals at the time.
And then the bubble popped and as Zuckerberg said, and
a lot of companies got wiped out, but we had
(52:53):
some rail lines laid down, and then the oligarchs could
come in and buy up cheap assets, which also, as
Zuckerberg said, so what's going to happen From Zuckerberg's perspective,
there will be a bust. I don't know if it'll
be as bad as like they you know, eighteen seventy
three or the eighteen nineties, but then the oligarchs that
survive come in and buy up everything for very cheap
(53:15):
and then kind of do it all again. And you know,
it took us until the Progressive era and then the
New Deal to sort that out. I don't know if
we're on a shortened time frame or what this time around.
Speaker 13 (53:27):
Well, I mean, certainly if you think about what would
happen in the aftermath of something like this popping, and
the pop can come from any any way, whether it's
China coming up with models that turns out they don't
need a ton of infrastructure to be built to do,
(53:49):
or you know, we find out that AI has a
plateau and it's you know, cat videos, aren't you know,
God in the machine? Whatever it is, what do we
think if it happens under this administration? We were pretty
sure that there's probably going to be a bailout of
(54:10):
some sort, because you know, we're we're seeing it right
now and farming. I mean that, you know, if you
have a connection or a closeness to this administration, they're
they're going to take care of you. And so that
scenario that you just put out there where the oligarchs
(54:30):
the tech lords come in and they're kind of it's
almost that they're incubating themselves or isolating themselves from the
pain by engaging in this in these financial games, because
ultimately it's going to be retail investors and these small
companies like core Weave that can be sort of jettisoned
(54:50):
off and then the oligarchs that are throwing off their
own cash flow can come in and take over.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yeah, thank you so much for your inside David. Really
rely on the work that you guys do, and I
think that this is genuinely one of the most important
issues in the US economy. So thank you for breaking
it down. We'll see you later, Man, thank you so
much for being here.
Speaker 11 (55:10):
Ryan.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
We appreciate you very much.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
Brother, and Ryan and m movie on tomorrow with the counterpoints,
So we'll see you all then.
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 4 (00:33):
Democrat Seth Moulton, who's running for Senate in Massachusetts, is
now saying he's refusing all eight PAC contributions and will
return what he's gotten. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro getting
pressed on the question. Let's look at how he responded.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
To it article in the New York Times about Democrats
pulling away from APEC. So clearly it's having some impact
on them politically. Of d Field like they got to
I mean, I think it's become a political issue. You've
used it as a political issue.
Speaker 6 (00:59):
You've questionederal representatives when they're on here on that. I mean,
I think if I can say this to you, you know,
not trying to offend you here, but I think it's
a little bit of a shortcut and a little bit
of a lazy question. I think the better question is
how do you really feel about Israel? How you feel
about a two state solution, how do you feel about
the war? How do you feel about you know, the
(01:20):
hostages or hungry kids or what have you. I think
I think demanding answers on those questions is more important
than Hey, what about this lobbying group or that lobbying group.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Well, what do you say to the critics who argue
that US foreign policy on Israel is often shaped not
by a national interest, well by the lobbying.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
Scrample of I think that's a fair conversation to have,
and I think it should be on any elected official
at the federal level to say, hey, I'm listening to
this group, but by the way, there's groups on other
sides too.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm listening to that group.
Speaker 6 (01:52):
But at the end of the day, we want our
federal representatives to be able to sit here in this
chair and answer the questions about why they vot voted A,
or why they voted B, or why they feel a
certain way. And I think it's just a little lazy
to say, oh, it's got to be because of that
interest group. Maybe someone actually believes those those views, or
maybe someone feels strongly about that particular way.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
And so the thing he said at the end there,
and we'll get into Molten in a second when we
get Szager's take on this.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think he said at the end there we said, Okay.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Well, you've got the lobbying group APAC on the one side,
and then you've got the lobbying groups on the other side.
That's actually false. There is not a yeah lobbying group
on the other side. The only thing that would come
remotely close might be care. The Council on American Islamic
Relations cares budget annual budgets like ten million dollars.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
A PAC spent more than that in.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
One house race last year, double that in one house right,
So the entire national budget of the organization that they
would say is like on the other side, can't even
compete with them in a single house race.
Speaker 7 (02:54):
So it's just not true.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And so the problem I have with Shapiro's response there,
this is what curious to take on is, rather than
answering the question.
Speaker 7 (03:03):
Too often when people.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Ask this question, they're told you're not asking the right question.
You should ask other questions. It's like, no, you know what,
we're adults, like, this is the question I have, and
this is the question I want to answer to.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Dude, we will ask whatever we want to say.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
It's a lazy question, is because you're uncomfortable answering it
because you're pro Israel. And this is what drives me
crazy about these politicians is fundamentally, let's say Charlemagne a right,
Charlemagne is not one of us. He doesn't as far
as I know, he doesn't follow this stuff day in
and day out.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It's not his full time gig.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It's just politics, right, So for him, APAC is a
proxy for political control and Israel and he's pissed off
about the war in Gaza. That's it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's the question.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
So answer that question, which Shapiro doesn't want to answer.
Why does he not want to answer that because he
supports it, right at the end of the day, he's
one of those people who's like.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, and yahoo's real problem.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
But Israel is a place where gay people can get married, right, Like,
this is the line that's basically baked into them. Remember Also,
what was that collajap ed that Shapiro wrote about the IDF.
I don't I'd have.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
To know and to check.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It was genuinely crazy though, And it's one of those
where with Josh Shapiro, this is going to be a
political problem for him because I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It could be religious, it could be his own personal feelings,
it could just be genuine like not swimming in the
world of today's democratic base. But him knew some and
who am I? Who is my missing who messed up
on the APAC question? But I mean, these are the
two highest profile actual contenders. The fact that they can't
do oh court book, that's what the three of them.
The fact that they have never grappled with this, it's like,
(04:35):
I don't know, I'm sorry. The sheer lack of political
real talent is the ability to thread the needle on
that question.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I haven't seen a single one of them been able
to do that.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
Newsom had a similar response.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He flubbed it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
He said, I think it's interesting he Rather than answering
the question, he confronted the idea of the question.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Right, I find the question interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Yeah, I find the question interesting, which makes trying to
make some illusions or something there yea. And then Booker
also was like, you know, I don't get asked about
this a lot, and like, you know, what about uh?
And then and then he he really faced planted with
the why does anybody ask me about Nigeria.
Speaker 7 (05:12):
Or Sudan?
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And if you check his like statements over the last
five years, there's like one about Nigeria and had nothing
to do with what he's talking about, Like, oh, it's
like wait, wait a minute, you don't talk about.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
That either, So yeah, out of what also are we
funding that? That's what they always do. The Christians are
being slaughtered in Nigeria. I'm like, wow, that's horrible. How
much are we paying for that? And yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 7 (05:34):
And so Moulton.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Is trying to thread an interesting needle here because he's
saying he's still very much pro Israel, but he doesn't
like the NET and Yahoo government, and he said apax
problem is that they are too reflexively and unapologetically supportive,
specifically of the NET Yahoo government. Let's roll see two
and then get APAX response and unpack.
Speaker 8 (05:58):
This has shown that Democrats do not support what has
happened in Gaza and that they've pulled away from support
for Israel. Or is it just that you yourself have
seen the images of what's transpired in this war and
that it's reshaped the way you see the United States
relationship to Israel.
Speaker 9 (06:19):
Look, the United States relationship to Israel is incredibly important.
But I strongly disagree with the current Israeli government under
bb netan Yahoo, and I've been.
Speaker 7 (06:27):
Very outspoken about this for quite some time.
Speaker 9 (06:30):
I mean, in fact, I wrote an op ed just
after October seventh, right after those Hannus attacks, saying that
bb Net Yahoo needs to have a political plan for
the future for Palestinians and for Israelis to live peacefully
side by side.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
He still doesn't have that plan.
Speaker 9 (06:46):
So after months and months of pressuring the Israeli government,
pressuring APAC itself to not just follow the Israeli government,
I finally decided that I just cannot accept a contributions
from an organization whose mission is to support the current
government in Israel.
Speaker 10 (07:06):
Congressman, but let me just faw up on that really quickly.
How do you reconcile rejecting a PAC money but still
voting for the same policies that APAC is advocating for.
You have continuously supported sending offense at cuchers.
Speaker 7 (07:20):
I frequently disagreed with APAC.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
I know you disagree with You have been voting for wait,
slow down, slow down. I didn't finish my question.
Speaker 10 (07:30):
Then I didn't finish my question. I was saying, you
voted for sending weapons to Israel, which is something APAC
has advocated for.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
Okay, so sure there are some votes that will agree on.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Very interesting, Ryan, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I mean, it's one of those where it does take
some level of political courage to say no, I won't
take a single apacked off.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Now, I'm not saying this is a response running from massachusetent.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
And he's running from Massachusetts Senate, and he's got a
couple of things on his side. Right, So he's young,
that's number one, is running against an opponent who is
much older. That being said, remember ed Marky survived a
primary challenge from one of the Kennedy claner. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:07):
First Kennedy to lose.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, the first Kennedy to lose in the state.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Of massachusetsquired to remember which one it was.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
There you go, And what I remember if I recall
again the race, which I covered extensively with Crystal, was
that he really embraced a lot of the youth vote,
the Green Deal, Sunrise movies this time around, though, this
is a very smart thing for Seth Molton to do
by I mean, it's a big headline no matter what,
and it's one of those where regardless of whether he's
threading the needle or not, the truth is is that
(08:35):
I've said this, I think we've all said this here
on the show. What you want to do is to
make your position politically politically convenient. Politicians are soulless scum.
They believe in almost almost all of them believe in nothing.
So what you want is for your position to be
the cynical choice. That's how you really win, all right,
That's how the neocons won, That's how the Israel lobbie won.
(08:57):
You think half of these people care about Israel? No, okay,
we just thought free money, easy way to get elected. Yeah,
you gotta go and kiss the wall. Sometimes it is
what it is. Now you flip that around. And that's
really how, in my opinion, you win to see change
in politics.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
And he's looking over his shoulder a little bit too,
because Aana Presley has been eyeing this. Oh I didn't
know this Senate see, and was hoping that Edmark he
would not run for reelection.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
He frankly should And I mean, come on, man, there's
plenty you go go ahead, like, enjoy your life.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yes, how old is he eighty something?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
He's like, yeah, it's too much.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Listen. I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Between Janet Mills, between him, I mean, Schumer and the
rest of these people. I just I feel like it's
like a movie scene. I'm like, do you have any shame? Like,
have you no shame?
Speaker 11 (09:41):
Sir?
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Seriously?
Speaker 4 (09:42):
And because Presley came in with the squad, you know,
she's been critical of Yau in general specifically, but also
Israel more broadly, and so if she gets into the
race too, that'll that'll make it interesting. But let's throw
up APAX response here. We have it in front of us. Apax,
says Representative Moulton is abandoning his friends to grab a
headline capitulating to the extremes rather than standing on conviction.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
His statement, they should say business.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
When are people going to start saying in statements rather
than standing on business. His statement comes after years of
him repeatedly asking for our endorsement and is a clear
message to APAC members in Massachusetts and millions of pro
Israel Democrats nationwide that he rejects their support.
Speaker 7 (10:24):
And will not stand with them.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
Yeah, I mean no laws detected throughout that he definitely
has been asking for their support.
Speaker 7 (10:31):
And then to go back to.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Aman Moyal Deane's point, he's still voting for weapons for Israel,
which is still going to be a significant liability. But
I think the public would at least prefer if you're
doing that, at least you're doing it because you really
love sending weapons to a genocidal state and not because
member multiple Sick in this town has been the national
(10:56):
Security Democrats as he came to Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I mean a lot of us, lot of people, we
don't follow this stuff day in and day out. I
remember in the old days when he was like, I'm
the national Security Democrat, right, And immediately after the election
he actually came out what did he say? He said
something about because I remember this is why this is
relevant to our next element.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I need to find it.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Why don't you put the next element operating so I'll
find exactly what we said.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And he tried to organize a challenge to Pelosi around
this kind of thing, So yeah, put up the Dave
Weigel element. Next, he says Senator at market facing a
challenge from Moulton where a trans writes flag during his
note king speech, and Wygel correctly adds the context here,
which is that Moulton said after the election he didn't
want his daughter's quote getting run over on a playing
field by a male or formerly male athlete unquote.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
Saying that.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Democrats need to, you know, reorganize their position, particularly when
it comes to trans athletes and you know who plays
in which, yeah.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
I have the full quote.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Democrats spend way too much time trying to offend anyone
other other than being brutally on about the challenges many
American space.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I have two little girls.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I don't want them getting run over on a playing
field by a male or formerly male athlete. As a Democrat,
I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. To be clear,
I firmly believe there was reasonable restrictions on transi or
athletes in competitive sports. Now, obviously I'm not a Democrat
in Massachusetts, so makes sense to me. But apparently that's
a very difficult position for some Democrats to take.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It's very interesting because that's it's like an eighty twenty
issue that where where you're talking about if you talk
about post puberty. Yeah, like eighty plus maybe ninety plus
percent of people will say that people should kids should
play in the sports where they're assigned generate birth. That
this that this idea where you're gonna have a high school.
(12:42):
It was like trans and switching. Like when it comes
to a general election, they're losing that terribly. It's very
interesting that Marky thinks that in a Democratic primary he's
going to win, He's gonna win this eighty twenty issue.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
On the other side, it might be right, and he
might be right.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
There's been a lot of trans retrenchment if you ask me,
I mean, it's kind of interesting. We haven't been able
to cover it, but trans identification is at record lows already,
basically proving it's a social contagion. Sorry, yes, that's correct,
always has been. But the point actually broadly around the
transports issue and this is more of my political analysts
(13:19):
had on is. I could see how he would get
attacked for what's the language they always use, like throwing
trans people under the even though quite literally he's talking
about athletes. I could see how the activist and democratic
class would say that giving an inch in any way
to the Republicans on this issue is cowardly. Again, this
(13:40):
is not a general election point. This is a democratic primary.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And nobody will talk about this honestly though, because there
are a lot of transactivists who disagree with that and
who say it is wrong to die on this hill,
because if we die on this hill.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
Then we're all getting swept away.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
And there are plenty of trans people who are all
the eighty side of this eighty twenty issue like no,
like stop, like Leah Thomas should not be swimming against
other women, like whatever. Yeah, but I don't see a
lot of those people speaking up, Brian. They don't know
that that's that's the point. But if you talk to them,
either privately or yes, like but you're right, like well, listen,
(14:20):
I hope you win this conversation, they would find that
it is that there is not a monolithic kind of
transposition on.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
This well, it doesn't seem that way with the activist class.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Again, we'll see. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean, I'm not speaking. I'm being fairly certain that there.
I know, I don't remember exactly who. There was somebody
in the I think it was Emma Biglin who attacked
him over this, if I recall. Right, so there's going
to be some activist pressure Molten because this was the
very days after he got election.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He got hit by it.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Everybody. Yeah, but that's my question is politically in the
democratic basse Listen, I get it because a lot of
Republicans are like this too. They don't want to give
the enemy a single inch, right, They're like, no, we
fight together. We don't concede a single point of what
we got wrong or of what is unpopular. We just
continue to fight. I could see Markie making that into
(15:10):
an issue, but that this is the other thing where
issue and all of that aside. Shouldn't it just be
Pressley versus multi. I mean, dude, you're eighty years old,
like you need to leave you're going to be eighty.
Let me get his age exactly correctly, But I mean
this should be it's just completely seventy nine, right, he's
running for reelection, or at least for right now he
(15:31):
would be eighty six eighty seven when he ended is
termed why are we okay with that? I'm sorry, Like,
how are you going to beat the Kennedys and say
we don't have dynasties in this country? And then nearly
put put yourself in a position where statistically you're going
to die in office. It's so it's the height of
selfishness and all these people. Yeah, and I think Iana Pressley,
if you're watching, should just jumpeah you run and you
(15:52):
can take the trans Leah Thomas position, all right, and
then we can actually have a real debate and.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
That might push it lay out.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah maybe right, that would actually because that's when I
can't stand more than the trance thing. I would rather
it like God, like, I'm so sick of these people
who aren't hanging on the office. It's disgusting, it actually is,
and it's so disrespectful. I think to the people of Massachusetts,
it's a blue it's a hard blue state. They deserve
to actually like have a raucous, interesting primary new generation
(16:22):
actual representation in their state.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
That's who they are, right, I mean it's a.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Very productive state, a lot of history and all that,
and to have somebody who's that old, like, I'm sorry,
I know how the Senate works.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
They don't work that hard for you. They just don't.
They have a nap all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
They don't.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
They're basically like.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
You know, even for travel and everything, they just will
not have the same amount of viga in the words
of John F. Kennedy, that any younger person will. It's
just it's simple. Your time is up, dude, Like, yeah,
he's been. He has served twenty terms in the US Congress.
That's insane, and he still wants to keep going to
was he class of seventy two?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Let me find seventy six?
Speaker 7 (16:58):
Six is a newcomer.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Here's what you got.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Here's how old Ed Marky is as the US Representative
for massachus from nineteen six twenty thirteen. He entered the
year after the helicopter left the US Embassy of Saigon,
which is black and white photo. That is how old
this man is. That's how like the way that I
think about a Ken Burns documentary. He was literally watching
that on TV and served in the US Congress the
(17:25):
year after that. I'm sorry, like if you can remember that,
you gotta go turning out to Epstein. We didn't have
time to get into this, and it actually is worth
fully going through all of the new information. Let's go
ahead and put this up here on the screen. This
was from a new release by the House Oversight Committee,
which detailed a bunch of new Epstein files, as well
(17:46):
as an interview with Alex Acosta, who was the prosecutor
who ended up giving Epstein his sweetheart deal.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Julie K. Brown, huge shout out to her from the
Miami Herald.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
She's been covering this stuff from day one, and I
looked to her always for some of her information, even
more detailed knowledge of the case than I do. What
she was able to uncover is that Matthew Menschell, who
was the chief of the Criminal Division of the Miami
US Attorney Office and helped negotiate Epstein's sweetheart deal which
allowed him to be released in two thousand and nine,
is listed multiple times as having dinner and meetings with
(18:18):
Epstein after leaving the US Attorney's office. So this is
a huge bombshell because this is years after his release.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Is a purse of that one, Yeah, go ahead, just
this is for context for later. Notice on that one
eleven thirty appointment with Leon Black.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Oh yeah, oh, I'll get back to that one. Yeah,
don't worry.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Same day I'm coming back to Leon there, right, all right, Leon, Yes,
But on the same day having dinner with Matt Menchel,
the very same prosecutor who was part of the office.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
In what world is that appropriate?
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You helped lock somebody away allegedly even with the sweetheart
deal for a registered sex offender, right, and then you're
having dinner with that person three years later. It's like,
do you have any you know, semblance of making sure
no conflict of interest?
Speaker 7 (19:06):
And it's a misnoxi at it?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, or even at a human level, at a human level.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
If you Ryan, would you ever know, only go into
the house of somebody who is a registered sex offender? No? Yeah, exactly,
all right, and this is my thing, like and he
knows because he prosecuted. I always think about this with
guys like George Stephanopolis and others who are like, yeah,
I had dinner with him. I go, you know, maybe
it's just me. I google everybody who asked me that dinner. Okay,
And if you're even remotely sketchy I'm like, yeah, it's
not happening. And I can tell you I've been invited
(19:31):
some sketchy stuff around here and why. Usually it has
to do with arms dealers and stuff like.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
And even then I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
You know who's paying for this, right, it's one of
those where there's some blood money here on the table.
I don't want have anything to do with that, or
I'll split the bill with you if I think it's interesting.
That's the thing where apparently I'm a YouTuber and I
hold myself to that standard, and these guys are like, oh, yeah,
I prosecuted you, and even though you are a registered
sex offender, I'm just gonna go ahead and I helped
lock you away. I'm gonna go over to your house
(20:00):
for dinner.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
And it's probably not with people.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I don't know about him specifically, but it's probably not
even though or despite it's because there you go, because
he knows the details of what Epstein is into.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yes, he wants to hang out with him, because he
goes because he probably investigated, He probably had some of
his tax returns and stuff in front of him. He goes, Oh,
I need to get in on this He's like, this
is a good deal right here.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
By the way.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Speaking of that, as Ryan said, hold for Leon Black.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Leon.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I've talked about Leon from day one in the Epstein case.
It remains one of the most mystified. This is one
of the titans of Wall Street. Nine billion dollar net worth,
one hundred and fifty million dollar payment to to the
Jeffrey Epstein estate that has been revealed for quote tax advice.
Nobody knows why. He's been friends with him for decades.
Everybody he's defended his relationship with EPs He said he
had no idea put him on the board of his charities.
(20:47):
Decades long friendship. Well, Leon's emails with Jeffrey Epstein came out,
and they're pretty interesting, aren't they.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
They say. Epstein was furious.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
For years he had relied on Leon Black as his
primary source of income him on everything from taxes to
his world class art collection. By twenty sixteen, Black seemed
reluctant to keep paying him tens of millions of dollars
per year, so Epstein threw a tantrum. Epstein wrote in
an email to mister Black, quote he was another waste
of money in space, attacked mister Black's children as retarded
(21:17):
for supposedly making it that's relatable, making.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Of his state.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
The typo ridden tirade was one of brief dozens of
previously unreported emails reviewed by The New York Times in
which Epstein hectored mister Black, demanding tens of millions of
dollars beyond one hundred and fifty million he had already
been paid. The pressure campaign Ryan appeared to work mister
Black for decades, who was one of the richest and
(21:43):
most high profile figures on Wall Street. Forked tens of
millions of dollars in fees and loans, albeit less than
mister Epstein had been seeking. Of all the relationships, his
friendship with mister Black is the most important. He served
jail time for soliciting prostitution. Mister Black kept him afloat
from many years. The new emails provide the most complete
(22:03):
picture yet of their relationship. Now to be clear, you know,
for legal purposes and with mister Black. I am simply
noting how shocking it is for a titan of Wall Street,
a private equity giant, one of the most well known
billionaires in the city of New York, how completely opposite
(22:25):
it is to the way that the Apollo Group and
others would conduct business to seemingly constantly just caving to
demands for tens of millions of dollars from Jeffrey.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
That's all I am noting.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
You can draw your own conclusion very specifically as to
why anybody would ever act like that, who made nine
billion dollars and doesn't conduct business that way.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
In any other similar tone, similar tone, and I'm black
denies all.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, he blacks black.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Similar tone from the New York Times article that soccer
does put up they write and this is one of
those delightful sentences in the New York Times.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
Echoing saga and quote.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
And for reasons that are unknown, mister Black wired hundreds
of thousands of dollars to at least three women who
were associated with mister Epstein. According to court documents and
notes taken by congressional investigators that were shared with The Times,
Representatives of mister Black did not respond to questions about
those payments to women, So, in other words, he was
representatives responded to a bunch of other questions of the
(23:25):
time sent but ignored those questions.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
So I like this phrase.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
For reasons that are unknown, mister blackwired hundreds of thousand.
Speaker 7 (23:32):
Dollars at least room. We don't know why.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Just good good friends to the good good friends.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
With these women they were, they were you know, they
needed a little help get through the weekend.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Or something happens.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
It happens. You know who amongst us has not floated
our friends girlfriends, right, I mean with hundreds of thousands.
I do it every day, of course.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
Italy, And we're going to insinuate.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Something, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
I'm sure my wife would be cool with it, should
be totally cool with it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So here we have.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Here's my other personal favorite from mister Black's lawyer. To
imply mister Epstein somehow I had influence over mister Black
is false and patently absurd. Okay, to imply mister Epstein,
who demanded tens of millions of dollars and received tens
of millions of dollars and called his children retarded and
also hectored and berated him, to imply he had any
influence over mister Black, is false and patently absurd.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's from Leon Black again.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
These guys, you think you just get nine billion dollars,
You think somebody just hands it to you, No, you
get it by being a swashbuckling deal maker.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
What if I was running the Apollo.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
By the way, these guys are legends on Wall Street,
right Apollo? Does Apollo just let somebody who they're doing
a leverage buyout of demand certain terms of conditions. Is
that how you got nine billion dollars in net worth? No,
you would be a bankrupt Right, So we know he
knows how to do business and to say no, how
to say fuck you. That's literally part of being a
(24:56):
Wall Street financier. An he did event well, yeah, you
get to that ish, but the point remains something for
some unknown for reasons that remain unknown, that he continued
to hand him tens of millions of dollars. Okay, all right,
let's go to the next part here. This gets to
the interview with alex Acosta. I read the entire thing,
several hundred pages, kind of boring, to be honest, they
(25:18):
didn't do a very good job. But guys, please put
D three please up on the screen, just to show you.
The signature claim from alex Acosta is that any trial
of Jeffrey Epstein quote would have been a crapshoot. Now,
this is a central issue because remember, Alex Acosta is
a Labor secretary under Trump, he was the prosecutor who
(25:39):
did the sweetheart deal with Epstein. After he resigns as
a Labor secretary, the Office of Professional Review over the
Justice Department does an internal investigation of the Epstein non
prosecution agreement. They find that Alex Acosta in his office
acted improperly. Now, Acosta contents throughout this entire interview that
(25:59):
he did nothing wrong and they got the best possible deal.
Now remember the retroactive review by the DJ specifically says
that is not true. So they find fault with the
actions of his office. A Costa stands up for the
actions of his office, saying effectively blaming the victims, saying, oh, well,
they weren't credible enough to be able to bring them
to trial. By the way, remember that is in direct
controvers of what some of the agents and the other
(26:20):
people on the case said. So this is not one
hundred percent their view of the entire US Attorney's office.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It is the view of mister Acosta.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I will say, because there have been some sketchy questions
here around the claim previously that he had said he
belonged to intelligence he claims that he never said that.
He says, I never said it. So I want to
make that very clear, because that's a quote I've relied
on probably one of the most famous plays. So I
want to be clear that he now emphatically denies he said.
(26:50):
I never heard that from anybody. I didn't tell it
to Steve Bannon. I have no idea where that comes from.
So let's be clear that's what he said. Now, you know,
I've laid out my other case for why I do
think he was at the very least involved with multiple
foreign intelligence agencies. But nonetheless, alex Acosta says, there was
nothing untoward. I never had any indication he was intelligence
or whatever. Nobody told me what to do, which, by
(27:13):
the way, again that doesn't fit with some of the
past timeline. Like the previous timeline was that Washington actually
made a phone call around this from the DOJ.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
But you know, you have to get very dark and
into the weeds on this.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
I think the fundamental premise, though, is even if we
take all the intel stuff out of it and we
just keep it focused on the victims, he basically was
victim blaming throughout the entirety.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He said, yeah, they were incredible.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
They made stuff up MySpace page, they were sketchy, and
so that's why the sweetheart deal is the best that
we could possibly get. Again, that's totally disputed. So his
mindset around it does not seem conciliatory at all. He
still continues to defend his conduct Ryan, which I personally
find disgusting. Intelligence Now if anything is worse, I'm like, oh,
so he just you know, they didn't believe them. He
(27:55):
even says in there he goes, he goes, well, the
times were different. People didn't believe women at that time.
I was like, so you're blaming the culture that what
is this? It was crazy?
Speaker 7 (28:05):
And the.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
If you look through his his emails and his and
the different appointments that he had, what what you realize
is that Jeffrey Epstein knew everybody, Like he had pull
with Russian oligarchs, Russian you know, top the top Russians,
the Israelis, Europeans, Americans in both parties, like and also
(28:31):
Wall Street and like the banking world. Like he was
at the middle of all of this stuff, and he
had people who owed him and who he was willing
to rate at the top levels everywhere, and so the
idea that a minimum he didn't call in favors and
that his powerful friends and doing anything for him just
is not remotely credible. Yep like that, like even if
(28:53):
you don't think, even if you dismissed the intel part,
but also to me, the intel part is a bit
of a red herring because what we've found going through
all of these emails, he was absolutely doing work for
people that are in the orbits of this intel world.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Which only backs up everything that we've said is no
one has said he was an agent force and how
the world works, Yeah, exactly, That's what we kept trying
to explain. There are these fixers. There are these shady characters.
If you live here in DC, you're familiar with them.
They do contracts for Russia, they do contracts for Qatar,
for the UA. They're hired guns. They have nexuses, they
have foreign bank accounts, they have a special knowledge what's
(29:31):
the taken language. It's like a very specific set of
skills that they have. And so yeah, you guys released
that reported drop site about the Israel deal with Mongolia.
They're convenient actors who can just insert themselves in the process.
Epstein started out working with on shows exactly because a
literal CIA cut out like it's like, this is a
it's trying to explain this to people who deny it
(29:52):
is they are relying on willful ignorance and the definition
of terms which are fake. Like no one has ever
said he was yeah, here's his literal id Bank.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Actually didn't have massade tell Barry Weiss that he was
oh sorry, never mind, right, sorry, thank you, We apologize, and.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
We shout out to the editor in chief of CBS
News for her great, great journal.
Speaker 7 (30:15):
She settled this one.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
She settled the question question. Finally, let's put this one
up here on the screen with the appropriate caveat this
there's a new book of memoir come out from Virginia
Goffrey remember, one of the most prominent victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
She did, unfortunately take her own life recently. She'd lived
a very troubled life. She famously was pictured in that
photo with Prince Andrew and in her new memoir, which
(30:38):
was post hostmulantly released, she says she was quote beaten
raped by a well known prime minister in attack that
broke the Epstein spell. Her memoir reveals, now, Ryan, you
will be shocked to learn the New York Post said
well known prime minister and did not name the country.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Oh, New York Posts, it's journalistic scale skills failed it.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
Finally, what happened with that?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Right? Which prime minister?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Who was it? And in fact it doesn't even appear
in the lead paragraph. You have to go all the
way down past three different advertisements to say that. In past, however,
she had pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Awod Brock. Now
to be clear, mister Brock denies it. And also to
be clear, yes, VIRGINIAU. Frey was a very troubled woman
(31:22):
and she did certainly say some things in the past
which did not turn out to be true.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
Sure, so she's attracted.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Whether she has retracted, yeah, which she personally has retracted.
So all appropriate caveats and all of that said, you
should not necessarily take it to the bank. But the
one thing nobody can ever get away from is the
photo exists of her as a very young girl with
her arm around Prince Andrew. And that photo, I'm sorry,
you can't make it disappear, you just can't. And it
was enough that mister Andrew, Prince Andrew, sorry, I apologize. Yeah,
(31:51):
so Prince andrew his Royal Highness Prince has still remained
out completely of public life and had a complete melton
of it. What was his defense? He said, I don't sweat.
He's like, I'm not a sweater you remember that. I mean,
if that's all you got, brother, I don't know, man sweats. Yeah,
It's like I'm for sure. He's like, really the British
(32:13):
down sweat even in heat. Really that doesn't fit with
my experience.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
But and going to Epstein's emails with Barack because Barack
also got.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
His emails hacked, of course, yeah, you guys, really that.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And so there's there's some in there where he's like hey,
or Barack's like, I can't wait to see you on
the island.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Maybe the security won't be there this ye, I remember that.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
And there's there's another one where he's like, why don't
you know, why don't you talk to these particular women
that they're doing a business deal with. He's like, because
you really have a way with women like so like Barack,
and this is post conviction and sentenced, so Barack and
also everybody who talks about Epstein is like the thing
about him. Even Leon Black said this The thing about
(32:52):
him is that he was always surrounded by beautiful women.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
And it's in the birthday book? Are we not?
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Are we stupider signed the birthday signed the book at Barack.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Look at the cartoon where they have they have Jeffrey
Epstein twenty years It's like a cartoon cartoon drawing of
him hanging out with young girls and them all in
scantily clad bikinis giving a massage on the Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Twenty years later it was out years later.
Speaker 7 (33:17):
Sorry, something gross, ghos So, yes.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
That's your update. I don't even have words Leon Black stuff, man,
I just wish. This is the problem with these you
know in the house and all of this is get
these guys. Wexner is like ninety. He needs to testify
while his mind is still there, okay, before he can
claim dementia or something like that. Get his ass on
(33:41):
the record and you know, undersworn testimony. Same with Leon Black,
Same with I mean all of the top financiers. Because
to date all we have are the bullshit denials of
Gallaine Maxwell.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
I don't think we mentioned this yet. His fee to
Leon Black was forty million a year. He said, I
want twenty five upfront. Other times he would say I
want twenty upfront, twenty in January, twenty in July. That's
what he was getting cranky about, Like where is my
forty million dollars?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
This is a guy who has no tax licenses.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
He's not even allowed to give tax advice without saying,
I can't give tax advice. Charging forty million dollars to
give tax advice.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, and his state planning and Arsten and almost.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, it's such great taste, right, like the photo of
Bill Clinton in a fucking dress, Like, come on, what
a joke. Turning down to Ukraine, we wanted to make
sure we gave everyone an update. It's still some major
developments here. President Trump reverting back to his original position.
Ukraine has to give up some land in a peace deal.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11 (34:43):
Fridday, he said, you got a cordial meeting with President
Seletski during that During that meeting, did you tell him
he needed to seed all of the Donbass region to Russia.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
No, we never discussed it. We think that what they
should do is just stop at the lines where they are.
The battle line a battle line right now. The rest
is very tough to negotiate. If you're going to say
you take this, we take that. You know, there's so
many different permutations. So what I say is they should
stop right now at the battle lines, go home, stop
killing people, and be done.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
What do you think should happened with the Godbas region?
Speaker 12 (35:16):
Let it be cut the way it is cut up
right now. I think seventy eight percent of the land
is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way
it is right now. They can they can negotiate something
later on down the line. But I said cut and
stop at the battle I go home, stop fighting, stop
killing people.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So that's the position today.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan he said that they
could take back all of crime yet so I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Nobody knows what's going on here.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Let's put this up here on the screen from a
recent you know, this, by the way, very interesting. Not
only that Zelenski and Trump met, but did anyone notice
there was no joint press conference, There was no joint meeting,
there was no statement afterwards by the president. Zelensky slunk
in and he's slunk out. And the reasons why is
from the Financial Times quote, Donald Trump urged Zelenski to
accept putinstorm or quote be destroyed by Russia. The meeting
(36:06):
descended many times quote into a shouting match, with Trump
cursing all the time. They added that the President tossed
aside maps of the frontline, insisted Zelenski surrender the dunboss
to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points that the Russian
leader had made in their call a day earlier. Now
you know, obviously that is coming straight out of Zelenski's
mouth to the Financial Times, And we don't really know
(36:27):
which way it's going to go, but it's just pretty
obvious that this is the only way this was ever
going to end. You have the military power, I mean,
the current US intelligence estimate apparently I don't know if
I believe this, but let's say it's directionally correct. Is
one hundred thousand people have been killed since January of
twenty twenty five. Do you see a single crack in
Russian society? They don't care. Now, I don't get it,
(36:48):
all right, If one hundred thousand of my guys were
killed for some bullshit like this, yeah I would riot.
I don't know. For some reason, they have a different
society over there, be it propaganda, maybe they believe in it.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Who knows.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
But the point is their economy is doing well. I
don't see a single crack in their society. Putin seems
humming along more than ever before. They can throw as
many bodies into this as we want. And Zelensky's like, oh,
we need long range missiles. That's going to make up
the manpower deficit. You guys have sixty year olds on
the front line. It's not going to happen right from
day one. So we're back to this, and yet even
(37:20):
this morning, this is what I love about covering this administration.
What do I see? Marco Rubio's call did not go
well with Saragai Lavrov, and the potential meeting with Budapest
and Budapest with Putin may not happen because Russia has
not backed off it's maximalist position. So Trump says they
need to surrender, but Russia hasn't backed off it's maximal's position.
So we're stuck right back from where we came from.
(37:41):
They can't get their hands around this. Something like Israel
Gaza needs to happen, where they're like, yeah, we just
got to have to talk to Mos, like you just
have to accept the unacceptable. And when that happens, yeah,
you can actually get something done.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And Trump also said on Putin as a Zelenski, they
hate each other and it makes it a little bit difficult.
Speaker 7 (37:59):
And then he so added, but it doesn't affect us.
Speaker 11 (38:02):
Right.
Speaker 7 (38:04):
He really thought this.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Was going to be extremely easy. You know, it wouldn't
happen if he was president, according to him. Once therefore,
once he becomes president, it's going to end that hasn't happened.
And he's just flailing at this point, as he told
as Politico says Trumps. So Trump says he's going to
(38:25):
meet again with Putin to discuss it. He's going to
go back to that. And the Budapest location is interesting,
and it flows into this funny exchange between s Vi Date,
a Post reporter and is Caroline Levitt or yes, Caroline,
I'll read the text first. So sv reaches out. Is
the president aware of the significance of Budapest? In nineteen
(38:46):
ninety four Russia promised in Budapest not to invade Ukraine
if it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited when
the Soviet Union dissolved? Does he not see why Ukraine
might object that to that site who suggested Budapest.
Speaker 7 (38:58):
Thanks your mom, did.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
I mean it's funny, but it's not that funny.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yah?
Speaker 7 (39:06):
He said, I'm gonna laugh at any morey.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Yeah, he says, is this funny to you? And she said,
it's funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journalist.
You're a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including
your colleagues in the media. They just don't tell you
that to your face. Stop texting me. You're disingenuous, biased
and bs questions. As far as I know, that's not
the press cords understanding of my former colleague s sv so.
(39:30):
Then Caroline herself posted it for context. Sv of the
Hufting post is not a journalist interested in the facts.
The left wing hacked what she already said in there.
Just take a look at his feet. It reads like
an anti Trump personal diary. He is pretty anti Trump,
no doubt about that. He had Okay, let's be honest.
He is TS.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I cover the white I cover the he's pretty he's TDS.
Probably listen, I don't care, all right, He's allowed to
do whatever he want with anti Trump. Yeah, he's full blown.
I remember him in the press corps.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I got nothing. Listen, I respect the dog guys.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Anybody who wants to sit there and fire off questions
of the press secretary, that's your job, your mom jokes. Yeah,
pretty immature. Not a good look for you in my opinion.
So yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Don't know what else to say.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Why don't you could just ignore it? Nobody said that
you have to respond to the question. It is a
legitimate question. I would tell sv to his face that
the premise itself is retarded based on this whole idea
of the Budapest memory is that they deserve You.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
Know why Zelenski doesn't want to do Budapest, Because no,
he doesn't want to do Budapest because Orbon is the
only person in.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
The EU who has a very different view of the
Ukraine conflict. Right, And actually, I mean a lot of
people forget this. There are ethnic Hungarians who lived in Ukraine.
I saw many of them who are Ukrainian citizens, because
when I visited Budapest, they're all living in Budapest now
and they don't want to fight in the war, which
is very instructive, isn't it. But the point just broadly
around Budapest as the location is because Trump has a
(40:51):
great relationship with Orbon and Orbon has a good relationship
with Putin, so it would be neutral Ish territory for
the two of them to meet. I do understand the
cross but also, what do they expect Putin to meet
in Berlin? Like what do you guys? Are we joking?
Speaker 12 (41:05):
Like?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Where other than Alaska, which was actually good because it
was halfway it's still on US territory. Or they could
go meet in lat of Astok or something like that.
I guess, I don't know, for somebody that doesn't want
to go to Russia. Yeah, Beijing, Well that would be
a real statement, actually, if that would be the broken ground.
Budapest seems as good as any of a place to
meet doctor.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
You know you love this time.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Uh beautiful, hey, beautiful city. I recommend everybody go. Gorgeous.
Joining us now is David dan He is the executive
editor of The American Prospect and a great friend of
the show. It's good to see you, David. Thank you
so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on. So, David,
I have been fascinated by this term of vendor finance.
I didn't realize, you know, I'm too young to actually
(41:48):
remember dot com. But luckily we have experts like you
who can go through and can write all about how
we're just living through the exact same crazy scenario. But
before we actually even get to that, we wanted to
get reaction to the Amazon Web service crash that just happened,
which highlights this architecture which runs our entire economy, our
entire digital life, and a single point of failure. Literally
(42:11):
a prospect of what it's like to live under monopoly.
Let's put this up here on the screen. You know, everybody,
especially here on the East Coast, woke up immediately. Multiple
apps are not working, huge at outage. You had banks,
you had music services, so many different things where you
had the single point of failure from a single server
here in northern.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Virginia, in our area.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
And I mean just from a monopoly point of view, David,
and especially the fact that their stock went up even
after the crash, what does that tell you about this
world that we live in.
Speaker 13 (42:44):
Well, I'm painfully aware of it because we couldn't get
our newsletters out yesterday. Yeah, they've run on with a
company that was involved in the mess. Yeah, I mean
I'd go back to a different recession, which is the
Great Recession of two thousand and eight, which was characterized
by what is known as tight coupling. In other words,
(43:08):
the banks were all tied in with one another, and
so when there was a failure in the mortgage back
mortgage sorry, mortgage backed securities market, that cascaded throughout the
rest of the economy. And you know, you see similar
couplings here with respect to the cloud service with the Internet,
(43:31):
and it's a really dangerous situation obviously because it's not
just my newsletter and Netflix and things like that that
are on there, but actually really important things on the
cloud that people need to have every day, you.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Know, like healthcare technology would be the first that I
would think of, like is the kind of thing you
don't want to go down?
Speaker 7 (43:54):
Transportation as well?
Speaker 4 (43:56):
How did and then and then we'll get into the
other reporting because it very much is related. How do
you think AI and crypto and blockchain played into.
Speaker 7 (44:07):
Played into this crash?
Speaker 4 (44:09):
And you know, it was concentrated in Virginia that apparently
the dea sence uh finishes like writing here in Virginia,
which also happens, I don't know what's coincidence, also happens
to be where the CIA and a lot of the
other infrastructure around. You know, surveillance and back doors is
as well, so you've got you've got the surveillance AI
(44:32):
blockchain and then monopoly. Like, what do you think is
a driving factor here that produced this cascading collapse.
Speaker 13 (44:41):
Well, Virginia is maybe the data center. Uh, you know
head of the entire country. H there, there is a
tremendous amount of data centers there and you know it
stands to reason because there's so much compute needs. I
just think that when you layer on and layer on
onto these systems and AWS is the biggest cloud infrastructure
(45:06):
that we have in the world. And when you just
keep adding and adding and adding to it, you do
create these single points of failure. You do create the
ability for things to break down and they have bigger
consequences when that happens. You see this in airlines that
were one glitch creates thousands of delays on flights. It's
(45:31):
the same kind of dynamic.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Yeah, and one of this really gets to the heart
of what I wanted to talk to you about. Can
we go ahead and put G three up on the
screen and you write about these circular finance deals that
continue to see in the economy this prospect of vendor finance,
where basically what happens is you sign a deal with
(45:52):
the company, they give you a part of that company.
The stock goes up, which effectively erases the so called
price that you paid. Billions of so called value have
been created, but nothing has actually happened, been produced and
orban paid. It doesn't seem to make any sense, but
it's fueling the rise of all of these different companies.
And it's even more importantly we talk about single point
(46:13):
of failure. It's the only reason our stock market is
up at all. Without it, we would be in a recession.
Speaker 13 (46:20):
Yeah, something like eighty percent of the stock gains this
year are related to AI link companies and something I've
heard another stat that data center infrastructure build out is
responsible for maybe fifty percent of the gains in GDP.
So obviously we've put a big bet on AI and
(46:44):
companies like in Vidia in particular, but there are others,
these big companies that sell things. They sell in the
case of in Vidio GPUs, which are the high end
chips that run these AI data centers. They need customers,
so what they're doing is actually creating their own demand,
(47:05):
they sell or they invest in companies startup companies, whether
they are companies that make data centers like core weave,
or even companies that make AI models, because in Video
just did a huge deal with open Ai for one
hundred billion dollars. So they invest in these companies, and
(47:25):
then these companies turn around and use that money to
build data centers which need GPUs, which in video makes
so it's really circular. I've heard it called round tricking
as well, and our contributor at The Prospect, Brian McMahon
referred to it as the oroborus, the snake eating its
(47:45):
own tail.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
So help me understand how this keeps going, because I
want to try to, it's very hard for me to
get my head around this. So let's say I run
an apple orchard, right, and I make a ton of apples,
but nobody wants to buy my apples.
Speaker 7 (48:00):
So I take money that I.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
Have and I give it to my neighbor, and my
neighbor uses the money to buy my apples. So now
I have the same amount of money that I started with,
but I don't have my apples anymore. Right, Explain to
me that this doesn't just all end in tears.
Speaker 13 (48:22):
There are all these people on the sidelines that say, oh,
you have you created another uh, you know, demand for
your apples, and so we're going to give you more
money because you're obviously running a very good business where.
Speaker 7 (48:36):
You have a lot of I've buildled my mind, more
money is coming in.
Speaker 13 (48:38):
That's that's the stock market, right That's that's investors on
the sidelines saying this sounds good. In video, you're you're
creating your own demand and so uh, it's it doesn't
stop until the music stops.
Speaker 7 (48:52):
And we've seen this before.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
As as as a cigar alluded to.
Speaker 13 (48:57):
In the nineteen nineties, there was an infrastructure build out
out of you know, fiber infrastructure was needed for the web,
and Cisco was really the company at the center of it,
and they were engaging in this vendor financing for these
startups that were creating you know, fiber opts to layout
and it was all great until it turned out that
(49:20):
nobody really needed pets dot com anymore. And at that
point Cisco lost eighty percent of its value. So we
have been here before. It sounds great and it works
great until it doesn't. We don't know when that time's
going to be. If I knew that I would I
would be very rich ment. But what we know is
that it doesn't feel like it can last forever.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
So that's my last question, David.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
One way I've been kind of coping on why it
won't is the economy, in my opinion, was a lot
more real in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
You know, in two thousand, like you know, we actually
did build it up.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
We you know, it wasn't great, it was still financialized,
but it was still there was something actually happening in
the US economy. Now, this is it like if eighty
percent and eighty percent of stock gains and fifty percent
of JATA center is GDP, the system cannot afford a crash. Now,
that hasn't necessarily stopped it before. But why wouldn't they
(50:15):
just pull out all the stops, as say, actually know
the crash is not happening because our entire economic livelihood
depends on it.
Speaker 13 (50:23):
It's certainly possible that that's only that's only operative if
you believe in the day, if you believe that there's
no other force that can can thrust reality into being.
I mean, the similarities people are making a lot of
connections to nineteen ninety, the nineteen nineties and the dot
(50:43):
com build out. And by the way, you can have
a buildout of a physical good but still have it
end with a financial crash. I mean, railroads had bubbles
when they were being built out. The trans Continental Railroad
led to the Panic of eighteen seven, twenty three, and
things like this that were really terrible depressions. So technologies
(51:05):
can be useful, but the financing behind them can still
be really, really bad. And so I relate this as
much to the financial crisis as I do to the
dot com build out. And there are even some of
the same players. Ryan right might remember the name Magnetar.
They were a hedge fund that they would basically build
(51:26):
these mortgage backed securities and then bet against them.
Speaker 7 (51:30):
This is like right at the end of the bubble.
Speaker 13 (51:33):
Magnetar is the leading institutional investor in core Weave, one
of these companies that builds data centers.
Speaker 7 (51:42):
Yes, they never went away.
Speaker 13 (51:44):
And so here we are twenty years later, close to
twenty years later, and core Weave is at the heart.
This is one of these companies that they've never made
any money, but they have a lot of investment and
it's kind of wily coyote, not looking down at the
ground and seeing nothing situation. And so when I heard
(52:05):
Magnetar was involved, I got I got heart palpitations a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
And Zuckerberg, actually, I'm sure you noticed this. He brought
up the railroad example himself. You know, he said, you know,
just like in the railroad example, you know, this was
infrastructure that was needed, and there was a huge bubble
and a lot of rail lines got built that went
to nowhere because you know, the companies went bankrupt, and
(52:32):
you know, there was just money to be made in
saying that you were going to build a railroad, and
then money money would come in, you'd pay off the
politicians who would then give you the easements, and you
pay the politicians off in stock in the railroad. That
was some of those those big scandals at the time.
And then the bubble popped and as Zuckerberg said, and
a lot of companies got wiped out, but we had
(52:53):
some rail lines laid down, and then the oligarchs could
come in and buy up cheap assets, which also, as
Zuckerberg said, so what's going to happen From Zuckerberg's perspective,
there will be a bust. I don't know if it'll
be as bad as like they you know, eighteen seventy
three or the eighteen nineties, but then the oligarchs that
survive come in and buy up everything for very cheap
(53:15):
and then kind of do it all again. And you know,
it took us until the Progressive era and then the
New Deal to sort that out. I don't know if
we're on a shortened time frame or what this time around.
Speaker 13 (53:27):
Well, I mean, certainly if you think about what would
happen in the aftermath of something like this popping, and
the pop can come from any any way, whether it's
China coming up with models that turns out they don't
need a ton of infrastructure to be built to do,
(53:49):
or you know, we find out that AI has a
plateau and it's you know, cat videos, aren't you know,
God in the machine? Whatever it is, what do we
think if it happens under this administration? We were pretty
sure that there's probably going to be a bailout of
(54:10):
some sort, because you know, we're we're seeing it right
now and farming. I mean that, you know, if you
have a connection or a closeness to this administration, they're
they're going to take care of you. And so that
scenario that you just put out there where the oligarchs
(54:30):
the tech lords come in and they're kind of it's
almost that they're incubating themselves or isolating themselves from the
pain by engaging in this in these financial games, because
ultimately it's going to be retail investors and these small
companies like core Weave that can be sort of jettisoned
(54:50):
off and then the oligarchs that are throwing off their
own cash flow can come in and take over.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yeah, thank you so much for your inside David. Really
rely on the work that you guys do, and I
think that this is genuinely one of the most important
issues in the US economy. So thank you for breaking
it down. We'll see you later, Man, thank you so
much for being here.
Speaker 11 (55:10):
Ryan.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
We appreciate you very much.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
Brother, and Ryan and m movie on tomorrow with the counterpoints,
So we'll see you all then.
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