Krystal and Saagar discuss Republicans meltdown over healthcare spikes, Sam Altman says to raise babies with ChatGPT, Epstein directed millions for pro-Israel foundation, Dems flip Miami.
Juan David Rojas: https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-the-gop-lost-miami/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, so we've got Republicans realize they've got a problem
with healthcare, and you know, there's two things that happen.
Number One, Democrats with their shutdown strategy did focus a
lot of attention on healthcare, and I think that made
things more politically difficult for Republicans. Number two is again
just reality, like healthcare is really expensive. People are aware
now they've gotten their notices if they're part of the
(00:52):
you know, in the Obamacare marketplace, that their premiums are
going up. There was you know, a national discourse about
who's to bladed and to mention the party in the power,
you're just going to automatically sort of like lay the
blame at their feet, which is entirely appropriate. And so
Republicans are now scrambling to try to figure out something
that they can do, but they have zero consensus amongst
(01:12):
them about what that may look like. They really are
in the wilderness when it comes to healthcare. You guys
may recall Trump a couple weeks back, and I'm going
to announce a plan. Then there was a freak out
from the Republican caucus. They didn't like what he was
going to propose. That got pulled. We haven't heard anymore
about that since then. So yesterday they had a Republican
conference meeting where they laid out some of the potential
(01:34):
options that they may put together and put to a
vote next week in the House.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
With regard to healthcare, let's put.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
See one up on the screen, and I'm just going
to read these to you. Some of them are just
downright versical, and others are pathetic. Some of them, you know,
are fine things that may have some modest impact, but
it's certainly not going to be any sort of saving grace.
We've got association health plans. That's basically where you can
sort of like get a group together and create your
(02:02):
own pool to buy healthcare plans, which is something that
already happens, by the way, but I guess the idea
here is to make that easier to happen. Choice accounts,
health savings accounts, cost sharing reductions.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I don't really know what that means.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Codify Trump administration rules to fix the Unaffordable Care Act
PBM reform, that'd be a good thing to do.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This one.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I really love innovation, okay, price transparency, which again is
something that you know, okay, fine, but that's not really
going to solve the problem, like, oh, I have transparency
around the fact that I'm getting price couged, cite neutrality,
and provider owned hospitals. So this is sort of a
grab bag of ideas, none of which has been completely
(02:41):
you know, backed by the entire Republican Conference. And one
thing you'll notice here that is not on this slide
is extending the Obamacare subsidies. So the immediate source of pain,
which is these skyrocketing Obamacare prices marketplace prices because the
subsidies expire at the end of the year that is
(03:02):
actually not on the table. And even with these sort
of like market based reforms, which again could have maybe
a small modest impact, but is not going to be
any of them a saving grace. Even with these, there
is no real consensus within the Republican caucus, so they
really are sort of a drift.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
On this one.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Let me put the next one up on the screen.
This is from Politico. They say the House gup erupts
over healthcare as leaders hunt for a plan. House Republican
leaders presented no firm planned Tuesday for advancing healthcare legislation
as anxiety rises. Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson presented attendees of
a closed door conference meeting with this list of ten
possible policies that could get votes in the coming weeks
(03:42):
or months. Some were specific, like an expansion of health
savings accounts, others were vague, like innovation. The list did
not include an extension of the expiring tax credits. The
presentation was followed by a heated discussion over the pathward
on healthcare for the party, and vulnerable members, including Representative
Jen Kiggins, stood up to warn against the political fallout
of failing to extend the expiring subsidies. Some later express
(04:04):
their dismay at how poorly they believe GOP leaders have
handled the topic. Quote, there was a general uneasiness because
nothing is coming together. Another one says we wasted so
much time. That was a conservative Republican also lamenting the
lack of a unified GOP health plan. Representative Ralph Norman
was willing to go on the record to say there
was no consensus. So that's sort of the state of
(04:26):
play from the Republicans in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
So that's the House, okay.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Mike Johnson is saying we're going to do some sort
of a vote on something next week. We'll find out
what that something is, but apparently does not include extension
of the Obamacare subsidies. In the Senate, John Thune is
planning to bring forward two separate plans. One that is
Republican led, which includes some Obamacare extension but for a
(04:51):
limited time and with some changes, et cetera. One that
is Democratic led, and with the expectation that neither one
of them is going to pass, so sort of a
show vote to pretendly, oh, we're doing something, We're having
votes on healthcare. Literally, no one is going to care
that you took a vote on something that is not
going to possibate.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It is genuinely crazy. I mean, do you remember when
Obamacare that was nine it's twenty twenty five. Actually it
was December o nine, right, that famous Christmas vote or
all that's right. So we're coming up on sixteen years
since this has been in the national conversation, and every
time we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Okay, Obamacare sucks,
(05:28):
I use, it's horrible, it's awful. Most people who are
on it don't like it very much, and they think
that it's very expensive. You're going to replace it though
with what? And they still don't have the what answer.
And in the interim six years, we have had multi
digit or sorry, multi three digit inflation in health care costs,
(05:48):
lowering of life expectancy, massive increase in obesity, huge increase
in comorbidities for people who are dying in hospitals, not
to mention the pandemic where the healthcare system and the
scientific community collapse its entire trust. Like, you cannot say
that this has been a victory over the last years,
and yet when they're in power, every single time we're
going to repeal and replace and still replace with what
(06:11):
and even this Trump proposal see three. Put that on
the screen. Honestly, he's backing this fifteen hundred dollars checks
for healthcare. Now, you know, let's put this all into perspective.
So I'm on Obamacare, all right. My healthcare went from
or went up by seventeen percent, which is a little
I think it's actually be about more than the fifteen hundred.
(06:31):
So if this word happen, this fifteen hundred dollars check,
it would cover the increase in my healthcare premium, which
would mean I would get to pay exactly what I
got to pay last. I mean, I guess that's a victory.
But for anybody else out there, I have a ten
thousand dollars deductible most people who are out there, or sorry,
fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars deductible. Most people are out
there who are on employer healthcare, they're deductibles probably in
(06:55):
the fifteen sixteen hundred range. So it wouldn't be horrible,
I guess, to cover some of their deductible, but it
would not increase or it would not cover their average
increase in premium. And this gets to costs. At the
end of the day, we have to deal with costs.
We can do that in a variety of ways. We
do price controls. I'm hugely supportive of HSA's I have
an HSA. I highly recommend people use it. But even
(07:17):
with HSA, let's say you average on you know s
and P five hundred returns. If health care inflation is
seventeen eighteen percent, you're still going to lose. And if
we don't do something about the costs and the system,
nothing can be done. But each individual part of the
cost structure is highly influential here in Washington at a
bipartisan level. So we talked about PBMs. We've been talking
(07:38):
about PBM reform for a decade. Yeah, still doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, And actually that was the build up. Remember Elon knew, Yes,
the PBM exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Elon didn't like something about it, and so that got
killed and then the PBM part.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So PBM reform we've been talking about for a decade,
it's never happened. We have talked about Democrats have even
talked about public option. Not even that ever happened. We
talked about medicare being able to negotiate with drug prices
that didn't happen. We were allowed to negotiate the ten
biggest stri and by the way, even that is dragging on.
It's been kind of a nightmare. Trump is trying to
do trump RX with direct dozempic. I'm fine with that.
(08:13):
I support that, but that's one drug that's not like
the biggest problem in the healthcare costs have gone astronomical.
Doctors who watch Breaking points always hate it when I
say it, it's empirically true. They make way too much money.
The reason why they make so much money is because
they have way too much debt. So I don't even
hate on them. You have to make three hundred k
to pay off three hundred k well in debt.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And the biggest growth in costs in the healthcare system
over I don't know how the past number of decades
administrators administrative costs and I mean, look, that is the
problem with like a private for profit healthcare system is
if you have right all of this like complicated insurance, Okay,
(08:54):
is this covered? Is that covered? Or are we going
to cover this? What's your deductible? Are you eligible all
of that? Then yeah, your hospital is going to require
all kinds of paper pushers to deal with the insurance
companies which are there on the other side with their
own mass army of paper pushes, to try to figure
out how they can deny as much coverage as possible.
(09:14):
And so that's why you have these constantly ballooning administrative costs,
because it's required to navigate the absolute morass and disaster
of our healthcare system. I did want to point out
one thing about that President Trump plan, which is you
would not actually get fifteen hundred, you would get one
thousand because only people over the age of fifty get
(09:37):
the fuck out of hundred.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You're going to burst a blood vessel in my brain.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Eighteen to forty nine year olds only get one thousand.
So I'm sorry, Sagart, you will only be get so
it will actually cover this increase in the preview.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You were going to set me on five. So the
boomers get the bailout and Gen X Actually yeah, so
the the aging gen X and boomers are the ones
who get the fifteen hundred dollars bailout. But those of
us who are just parents of young childrenyeah, fuck them right,
You're not doing anything for the I don't even have words.
(10:12):
I either agree. That makes it. Yeah, that's America, Okay,
total boomer luxury communism. Look it up. One of my
buddies just wrote a whole piece about it in the
American mind that that's what we have now in this country.
It's amazing. And look just I mean, the healthcare system
as it is, it cannot stand, and yet it does.
It's seventeen to twenty percent of GDP. That's part of
(10:33):
the reason why, you know, even replacing it and cutting
costs it would cause a recession. The number of administrators
and costs and price that is all tied up into
pharmaceutic I mean, go take a drive, man, you know,
if you go on into the outer boroughs of some
bigger cities. I was in Philadelphia recently. You drive past
drug company hospital, drug company hospital here, like, oh man,
(10:55):
I mean, it's a Titanic empire that rules this country.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No. And I see a lot of candidates who are
leaning more and more heavily into you know, medicare for all,
and it's increasingly once again on the table as a
litmus test. You see some people like Chris van Holland
who's now come on board. This is what voters are
demanding in a lot of these primaries as well.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So it's definitely.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Like healthcare politics are back, and the pain is so undeniable,
and I think everybody sees what you see this that
this is literally unsustainable, like we are going to enter
a place where people just healthy people in particular, and
younger people in particularly, just like I, it does not
make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
For me to pot said it does not have a
chance for me to payos.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
It's no chance.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And then once they exit, then guess what.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The prices go up even more because they're helping to
subsidize the you know, old typically older, sicker populations, and
that's how you end up in this desk spiral. So
these little you know, quote unquote innovation or choice accounts,
whatever that is, is not going to fix the absolute
disastrous mess.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And there are things that you know, especially when Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Is less sort of like ideologically committed to we must
have a free market solution, there are things that Republicans
could suggest that would be better that they should in
my opinion, they should get on board with a public option.
I mean that still is like market based, if that's
what you're.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Hung up on.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But I think since that has the taint of like
Joe Biden talked about it. They will never get on
board with that.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
But you know, there are.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Things you could do, in my opinion, that would be
inferior to Medicare for all, but wouldn't be short of that.
But they're just they haven't thought about it. They are
so ideologically and partisan driven that they're just hoping everybody
forgets about this conversation and moves on to something else.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Is basically their plan.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yep, that's right. Let's go on to AI. This man,
this latest one. This is some dark, dark stuff. Sam Altman,
in a recent interview, was asked about chat shept and
whether he uses it to raise his baby. Let's take a.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Listen, and do you use chat rept when raising your baby?
I do.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I mean, I feel kind of bad about it because
we have this like genius level at everything intelligence sitting
there like waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity, and
I'm like, why does my kid stop dropping his pizza
on the floor and laughing? Yeah, you know, And so
I feel like I'm not asking a good enough question,
but it is. I don't I cannot imagine having gone
(13:20):
through that, like figuring out how to raise a newborn
without chati. Clearly people did it for a long time,
no problem.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Yes, but.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, we did it for a long time. We don't
need chatgypt. Actually, in fact, I'll tell you a story
because I I've done this. You will try to try
to ask it some sort of developmental question. Routinely gets
things wrong. Ask it to calculate medicinal dosage. The math
is totally wrong. This literally happened to me.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Actually, definitely do not rely on what sort of medicine,
just just amount you should get.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, here's here's my theory. They're good at math, right
X weight? All this put it in that wrong. The
only reason I know this is I go, this isn't right. Yeah,
And so then I went I had to go to
the charts or whatever a little bit more research. What
if somebody had done that. Imagine if somebody had done that.
That's this is my one time just thinking, hey, it's
(14:10):
good at math. At the very least we could trust math.
Now imagine in trying to use it for developmental purposes
or any other this like this is dangerous now beyond
even just saying like in my example, I'm just trying
to use it for math, but imagine outsourcing like genuine
advice and you know, getting tips or something like how
(14:34):
to introduce solids? What if chatchypt realies? You can tell
I'm drawing from my own life, right, how to introduce
There's a lot of different schools of thought. Right, there's
a lot of what if it says you should do
it this way? What if it's the wrong way? The
actually there is no right or wrong way. The point
is it should be up to you and you should
go and do some research, read some books. There's a
baby weading, there's pure I mean, there's all different schools
(14:57):
of thought, right, and it's there. There's no way it
could ever capture the reality of what that is like.
And it's truly, in my opinion, it's so dystopian because
it is outsourcing like the individuality and I mean not
even just like the cool part about getting to be
a part making these decisions, but also the human part
(15:18):
of it of like asking your mother or your friends
or your family and trying to crowdsource that altogether and
then your doctor anybody to make an informed decision with
yourself instead of outsourcing you know, your decision making. And
that's what's happening at scale. And that's why I really worry.
If you're in college and you're one hundred percent use
to outsourcing everything to chat CHEAPT, then in ten years
(15:41):
from now, when you're having a baby, it will be
the most natural thing in the world to outsource that
to an AI. Yeah, and that is like again, I mean,
these are a moral If you ask chat ept whether
you should an abort and a down syndrome baby based
on costs, they'll probably tell you yes. Right, think about that.
There's no there, there's nobody who there's nothing programmed within
(16:03):
these things to really give you any morals. They you know,
every especially if you set the parameters. And then with psychosis,
the most recent chat GPT is you can decide its
personality on how right. So now it's I want a
persnickety in a laughable chat ChiPT, I want the default
chat GPT. Well, which one's gonna give you different advice
(16:23):
on a kit? I know I sound pedantic, but like
this stuff is real and when the CEO is out
here recommending its usage, then that should come with liability.
What do doctors and all of them tell you never believe
everything that you read on the internet and here, this
guy is like, oh, I use it to raise my
own bait. I mean, these are wildly powerful. They want
you to, by the way, so that they can sell
you baby products inside of the chat bill. Well, here's
(16:44):
our favorite baby formula based on way you recommend it.
Go ahead and buy it here in the chat gpt app.
I mean, can you imagine anything more dystopian? Man? And
Google already does this to a limited extent, but this
is way worse.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And yeah, the errors, that's one thing that's like an
acute like you know, you could actually that receiving advice.
That's genuinely dangerous. But to me, the most more dystopian
part is just the assault on our humanity, you know.
I mean, parenting is like such a just sort of
essential beautiful like the essence of being human, right, the
(17:17):
essence of the project of humanity. And when you say
something like I can't even imagine raising a newborn without
chat GPT, I don't know. I mean this is what
I worry about on a sort of like philosophical level
with these products in general, how much of our humanity
is being like sucked up and colonized, how much of
our mind share is being sucked up and colonized by
(17:38):
these products, where yeah, instead of going to your like,
let me call mom and see what she said, you
know when when I was a baby, Like how did
this go for her? Instead you're asking this robot and
that's you know, it's one small example, but it takes
you that much further away from like the human connections
that we already are losing thanks again to these like
tech oligarchs and their their social media the experiments. The
(18:00):
other thing about it that it made me think of
is a lot of these guys that developed Sam Altman
didn't develop a social media product, but like Mark Zuckerberg
or whatever, a lot of these guys, if you ask
them about their kids and their social media use, oh
don't they are very careful about screen time for their
own kids, even as they are developing products that are
(18:21):
designed with you know, millions and millions of dollars to
make them as addictive as possible for your kids. And
so it's interesting to me that with this because they
are such almost like religious believers, I mean truly, I
think religious is the right word to use around what
these guys think about AI and its promise and what
it's going to be they think they're inventing God in
(18:44):
a machine.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's what they think.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
They have this religious devotion to it where it has
they do incorporate it all the way into their lives,
including in you know, something as essential and something so
important as raising your baby for you know, a young age.
So I thought that was an interesting sort of revelation too,
about how he is thinking about his own products.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
One hundred percent. And I just think, you know, he's like, oh,
we have a grand super intelligence and all that. You know,
anybody who if you're trying to do this intelligence is
not really you know, there's no intelligent way, like I said, necessarily,
the only intelligence that you can use is to think
about it, be intentional, and then actually look at your
specific set of circumstances. Just my opinion. But this also
(19:29):
translates now to the Pentagon, where Pete Hegseth has now
rolled out Google's Gemini AI into the hands of every
American service member and encouraging them to use it. Let's
take a listen.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
The future of American warfare is here, and it's spelled AI.
As technologies advanced, so do our adversaries. But here at
the War Department, we are not sitting idly by. Under
the leadership of President Trump, America will lead the charge
on this technology transformation by revolutionizing the way we win.
(20:05):
And that's why today we are unleashing Genai dot Mill.
This platform puts the world's most powerful frontier AI models,
starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every
American warrior at the click of a button. AI models
on Genai can be utilized to conduct deep research, format documents,
(20:27):
and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed. Building
on the great work of Undersecretary Emil Michael and his team,
we will continue to aggressively feel the world's best technology
to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before.
And all of it is American made. The possibilities with
(20:48):
AI are endless, so you can see from there.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I mean, what is mystifying to me is why are
they're going so hard at promoting said Jenai. They have
posters all over the penicy encouraging individual soldiers and others
to use it at their routine task. I mean, I
just gave an example about how it chat rept or
failed at math room, which by the way, is its
most basic function. No, that's what you should rely If
(21:15):
you rely on computers for anything, you know, asking it
advice or any of that is absolutely stupid, even at
the current form. But you should maybe rely on it
for math. Now they're relying on it for math and
potential errors and reasoning fallacies or logical problems in the
most high stakes environment like what about weapons planning, manufacturing ammunition.
(21:38):
I can't even get chat reipt, like I said, to
calculate basic dosage instructions properly. How are they going to
use multicomplex processes by rolling it into the critical supply
chain and others to calculate, let's say, how many weapons
that they need here or there without double checking? And
then look, maybe that's even a quote good use. Do
(21:59):
we really have confidence that they have put in you know, guardrails,
even security, cybersecurity to make sure that nobody is hacking
into it? And then to what end is this, like
AI military thing even happening. I mean, look, the terminator
and all of that is science fiction, but there is
an element to this when we're becoming obsessed with autonomous
(22:20):
drones and AI and putting it together like the vast
amount of power considering how I mean, look, Israel used
it all the time. We covered a couple of segments
on this, those like autonomous drones and AI training ground, Like,
how are we going, you know, the future of warfare.
They're obsessed with marrying these two types of things. Will
that be used against us? Is that part of the plan?
(22:40):
How do you what you know, what do you have
programmed inside of that to make sure it's never going
to happen. I just don't think any of these questions
were asked at all at all. They're just like, yeah,
everybody use it, and let's just see what happens.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Completely not it's dangerous constantly.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And that's this whole administration's approach to AI is like,
let's just push as hard as we possibly can. Let's
just roll it off out off to the races. What
are the consequences? We don't really know, but we're like
hoping and praying it's going to be great and it's
going to be amazing.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And then you know, to see.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
That applied specifically at the Department of War, where you
have all these like ethical and accuracy questions, and again
the like the more removed the human being and their
natural revulsion to killing other human beings, the more removed
they are from that process, you know, the easier it
becomes to commit atrocities and barbarism. I mean, you can
(23:29):
even you know, if you think about the the initial
boat strike right where they had to do the double
chap strike. Okay, so you have the initial strike, they
see that there's the two survivors, and then over forty
minutes they watch them like struggling for their lives, and
they decide to kill them with the second strike. You know,
if you had had to be like that guy boarding
(23:49):
the ship and actually shooting them in the head with
a pistol or whatever, I don't think they would have
made the same decision. Like, if you had to be
that up close and personal with the killing, it would
have been much clearer to them, like, of course this
is wrong. These are shipwrecked individuals, Like this is the
textbook definition of what you don't what is utterly dishonorable
and atrocious to do in wartime. So the more you
(24:09):
get removed from that basic humanity, the more dystopian it becomes.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I mean, there's a reason.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Why sci fi writers reach for these utterly dystopian scenarios.
And now we are really at the precipice of them
being easily realizable, not to mention, you know, we already
have all these issues with AI and deceptive behavior and
all these sorts of things that are on account before
they think they patch it up, but they're not really sure.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We've seen we've also gotten a glimpse of what AI
unleashed on the battlefield looks like in Gaza, which has
been a test case for a lot of these things,
where they generated all of these targets, did not do
any check whether these were you know, legitimate targets, didn't
really care and just went out and mass murdered people
or were able to track people down to their homes
so that they would be able to inflict more casualties
among low level soldiers and their families. So I think
(24:57):
we've already got examples of the dystopian direction that this
is all heading, and Soccer maybe can explain this next one.
Meta is a pivot from their Their original idea was
sort of like framed in this very like altruistic way,
like we're going to create an LL and it's going
to be completely open source. This is sort of like
you know, idealistic anarchist type approach.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
To well more so the theory, but it wasn't altruistic.
They sold it that way.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. That's how they sold it, right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
So the reason they did that is because they wanted
other people to use their model, so that people would
stack and that they would own the tech a while
they continued. Now what they've decided to do, let's put
the next one please on the screen. D three is
they're explicitly pivoting away from open source, specifically into a
money making AI model. Zuckerberg quote, months into building the
(25:45):
priciest teams in technology history, is getting personally involved and
pivoting the company's focus to an AI model it can
make money off of. One new model, code named Avocado,
is expected to debut next spring. Will be launched as
a closed model, one that will be tightly controlled and
that Meta will sell access to the move, which aligns
with rivals Google and Open Ai do with their models,
(26:06):
would mark the biggest departure from the open source strategy
that Meta has now touted for years. Dramatically shifted earlier
this year after the company released Lama for an open
source model that disappointed Silicon Valley and Zuckerberg. Now, Zuckerberg
now spends much of his time and energy working closely
with new hires in a group called TBD Labs, and
it is using quote several third party models to train
(26:28):
the process for Avocado, distilling all of its rival models
down and then training off of that. So what that
means is that he's basically going in the same direction
as everybody else, as Google, as open ai, and abandoning
even the pretense of open source. We just want to
highlight this because the industry is still moving all in
a completely profit driven direction and one that abandons any like,
(26:51):
you know, original claims about how they're going to cure cancer.
Now it's just all about making money. It's all about
enterprise making money. That's it, okay, And it comes to
the cost. Let's put the next one up on the screen.
It's about data centers. From the lever they show quote
data center boom risk blackouts. According to a new watchdog report,
data center construction should be put on hold until grid
(27:13):
operators can ensure reliability. A regional energy monitor has argued,
and that fits with what I had showed everybody in
our last show about the expected amount of data center
power compared to the amount of market are the amount
of power coming online by twenty thirty.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, and they focus in particular in what they describe
they say. The independent watchdog for the country's largest power
grid operator has issued a regulatory grenade asking the Federal
Garment to intervene amid PJM interconnections plans to power data
centers it knows it does not have the capacity for,
despite acknowledging the heightened risk of blackouts. This comes as
PGM as seen windfall profits from shouldering energy draining data
(27:52):
centers at a multi billion dollar cost to consumers. So
if you guys recall the charts that we put up
before that showed the different grid regions across the country,
the one that was under the most strain is actually
the one right here, and it's called PJMS.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
What that regional grid is called.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
It services some roughly I think thirteen different states or
parts of thirteen different states. It's like Virginia and the
mid Atlantic out to the Midwest, I think Michigan, parts
of Kentucky, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
So that's kind of the region.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And no surprise that this is the area that is
under the most strained right now, because Virginia is the
epicenter of this mass data center boom. I mean, if
you drive out towards Dulles, if you even go out
towards where I live in the rural areas, these things
are popping up everywhere, and they have not built out
the capacity to ensure that number one, I mean the
(28:42):
prices are going out. Number two, that there are not
going to be active blackouts, like we are very close
to that sort of a possibility. And of course, like
if there's going to be a choice about whether it's
ordinary consumers who are getting the power, whether it's these
giant data centers with their corporate titans of funneled millions
of dollars into the local politicians campaign coffers, guess who's
(29:04):
going to be chosen there? So we are you know,
this warning is really quite dire and extraordinary, given that
we are early in this data center buildout and already
we are straining the grid capacity that we have existing.
And of course there's nothing anything remotely approaching like a
buildout that would be sufficient to deal with all of
this exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And all right, yeah, I mean you just put it
all together. Oh final thing, we had to put this
one in Defaul, Oh yeah, that's up on.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So this is new for The Washington Post, their new
consumer audio offering, your personalized podcast AI podcast, only available
in the podcast app app. Users will be able to
shape their own briefing, select their topics, select their links,
pick their hosts, and then soon even ask questions using
our Ask the Post AI technology. So don't need the
(29:53):
don't need anybody doing it, don't need anybody doing the research.
It'll just AI all of it for you, and soon
you won't even have to listen to a show like ours.
You can just build your own. So, I mean, personally
kind of hoping it fails right out of selfish reasons.
I think it misunderstands why people listen to a podcast
in the first place. I don't think people want to
do a lot of their own work. That's kind of
what you pay editorial for, right, is to curate what
(30:15):
other people. That's kind of our offering, if you will.
But who knows, you know, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know,
but that's look, you know, I don't want it's not
just about us, because it's about humanity itself. Yeah, you know,
without without any of that, Are you really getting what
you need you know from the news.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, that's my question is like I'm hoping that people
are biased towards people. I think, so, you know what
I mean, So much of and this is like up
and you know, it's like a double edged sword, but
so much of the like podcast, YouTube space is like.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
These parasocial relationships.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
We're not just about the specific stories and content that
are chosen, but it's also about like the way I
feel about this person, whether I trust them, whether I
like them, whether I find them like entertaining to spend
some of my time with. And so I am still
hopeful that there is a bias, that people have a
bias towards other people, that they want other people to
(31:09):
be behind the art that they consume. They want to
feel like there is humanity embedded in the experiences that
they're having and the content that they are consuming. But
I don't know if that's true or not. I guess
we're going to find out.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
All right, let's get to Epstein some great new reporting
over from drop site. Let's ahead and put this up
here on the screen. This is one of the longtime
major questions of Jeffrey Epstein is how did he get
all of this money? All roads seem to trace back
to les Wexner, the victorious, secret, seclusive billionaire who is
(31:45):
very pro Israel. Now we have learned from drop site
and from many of the emails which I was able
to read, also from myself, the primary source documents is
specifically about how he ran Leslie Wexner's pro Israel philanthropy
machine much more than less Wesner and the philanthropy later
on claims. So let me explain a little bit of that. Basically,
(32:06):
what they're able to report is that after his death,
and what we learned is that the Wexner Foundation, which
is a longtime supporter of Zionist politics and including paying
aud Barack millions of dollars the former Prime Minister of
Israel to author two reports, one of which he never
even finished, was directed largely by Epstein in such a
(32:29):
way that they were asking Epstein directly or Wexner in
the foundation. We're saying directly, quote, ask Jeffrey about how
to spend the money. Remember, there's all these questions from
Epstein himself and his relationship with Wexner. Wester signed power
of attorney over him to manage his money. He gifted
the famous mansion to him. Why would somebody who is
(32:52):
ultra wealthy give such power over their own estate and
billions of dollars over to their acquaintance. This is one
of the ultimate mysteries. You can have your own theories,
I certainly do, but nothing has ever really been confirmed
on the story. I think the central part of it, though,
is that the emails reveal how central he was to
(33:12):
dispersing money from Leslie Wesner's charity many on behalf of
Zionis and the pro Israel causes, and to the point
where you can actually see that Wexner claims later on
about how what les Wexner had claimed he was just
a whiz with money, that he had nothing on me,
and that it was a very normal relationship and he
severed his ties. And he also claimed that his control
(33:36):
over the foundation wasn't nearly as total as what we
now know. And so I encourage everybody to go and
read this report because it shows you very very clearly
how much control he actually had over the foundation, dispersing
these millions to Israeli Prime Minister, and the level of
trust that Wexner still had with Epstein for many, many
years after the relationship started in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean what you gather from these emails is
that Wexner truly did just hand over his entire financial life.
It's greazy to Epstein and both in terms of his
personal money. How much was going to go to the
foundation from his personal money, and then how much what
was going to be dispersed and to whom? And so
it's everything from you know, the investments, to you know,
(34:19):
the various pro Israel charities that were going to receive
significant donations. This foundation was one of the largest and
most prolific donors to Zionist causes in the entire United States.
So they were heavyweights in this space. And it was
all Jeffrey, I should say all, but it was largely,
it appears from these emails, largely Jeffrey Epstein, who was
(34:41):
directing that funding and packing the charities to which that
to where that.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Money was going to go.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
This is completely contrary to how, of course Wexner portrayed
their relationship and completely contrary to how the Foundation portrayed
their relationship, where they said, oh, this guy, we barely
had anything to do with him, and you know, after conviction,
he was out, we were done. We had absolutely no
you know, absolutely no influence from him whatsoever. That was
all just dramatically untrue based on these emails. So this
(35:10):
is one incredibly important piece of the puzzle because the
amount of money that Epstein was getting just from this
one relationship was incredibly sizable and funded a significant part
of his lifestyle. But we also got this very important
reporting again from Bloomberg, which we've been talking about Jason Leepold.
(35:32):
He's been doing great work with these emails as well
about how his involvement with Wall Street you know, didn't
really skip a beat after his conviction. You know, they
took a look at emails of all these you know,
banker types, hedge fund hedge fund types messaging him own,
sorry about your conviction, You'll be fine, you know, Hey,
how about you want to invest in this? You want
(35:52):
to invest in that? And what you get from this
one Sager is really a sense that you know, as
long as he had money, they didn't really give a shit.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, as long as he had money to.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Invest that they could that they could play with and
be involved in making money, then they were happy to
have his his involvement and the other thing that really
comes out of this piece is just what a son
of a bitch that he was, like, yes, totally like
in these different transactions, playing both sides, lying to both sides,
pretending like, I'm going to vote on your side in
(36:22):
this particular dispute with the other one, pretending he's going
to vote on that side. Then he picks his side.
Then afterwards he sues everyone involved. I mean just absolutely,
like ruthlessly nefarious, but in a way that obviously you know,
worked for him in terms of netting him lots of cash.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Absolutely, you know, I'm glad that so we had access
to those emails, but Bloomberg was the better, you know,
outlet to do it because they could get to all
of the Wall Street connections. Yeah, and you know it's
hard to decipher. I'm not a financier, Like, I don't
fully understand all of it, but they just show you
and piece together the network of how it existed at
that time. How even as he's under investigation, they don't care.
(36:59):
They're still willing to do business with you. And remember
all of this continued even after he pled guilty and
was a registered sex offender. They continued to take his
businesses hundreds of millions. And you have very very high
level Wall Street financiers who are all embroiled in this.
You have Leon Black, you have all of these others
paying him personally one hundred, one hundred and fifty million.
(37:19):
He got a billion dollars in suspicious activity reports that
continue to flow through all of the banks and the
Treasury Department that are filed after his death, over a billion.
Again wired to whom, wired for what? Wired where? For
what purpose? There's to which country? You know, I mean,
all of this points to a vast array of and
you know, I've discussed with this with Ryan at this
(37:41):
point to say he was not at the very least
an international finance here with connections to multiple intelligence agencies.
It's just not actual, it's not Factual's that was his core.
His job was to move money around. That's what he
was the ultimate expert at. This proves it. Yeah, as
you said, he was also extremely like bitchy in his emails,
being like I'll threaten you, I'll blackmail you, you know,
(38:02):
basically kind of hinting at various problems for people if
they didn't continue to do business with him. That was
very useful to the Coat duvoir or Mongolia, the Israeli government,
potentially the US, Russia. I mean, who knows, it was everybody.
He literally was a hatchet man. And yes he also
had his peccadillos, I guess, which were enabled to look
past and part of the entire story. And that's why
(38:26):
when all of this keeps coming together, you see that
Leslie Wexner, he didn't, you know, he didn't cut ties
with Jeffrey Epstein. He kind of knew what was going on. Yeah,
as the emails that they report what was happening, he
s could always be careful.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Oh yeah, let's put you two up on the screen
because we do have that image because I think this,
I mean, this tells you everything right here. So this
is Les Wexner. You start at the bottom, rights to Epstein.
Abigail told me the result, and we're referring here to
that quote unquote sweetheart deal. No, definitely sweetheart deal. All
I can say is I feel sorry you violated your
(38:58):
own number one rule, will always be careful. And then
Epstein replies, no excuse. So, I mean, does that tell
you that he knew.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And he you know, you can infer.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, you can infer some things, and certainly there was
no like, this is disgusting. I can't believe. I will
never be associated with you. No, none of that. Just
like I'm sorry, I feel bad for you. I guess
you weren't careful enough, you know, in the things that
you were doing.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
So exactly right. All right, we got one Dav'd Rojas
standing by to talk Miami. Let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
So has some pretty interesting election results down in Miami
where Democrats were able to flip the mayoral race, which
has a lot of interesting potential political dynamics. So I'm
the perfect person to break all of this down for us.
Speaker 7 (39:41):
One.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
David Rojas is a calumnist for Compact Magazine's got a
new piece up there about exactly this. You can put
that up on the screen. The headline is how the
GOP lost Miami and he is also the author of
the fantastic substack Social Democracy with Populist Characteristics.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Exactly our kind of guy. Great to see you.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
On, Thanks for having me back on guys.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Okay, so, how did the GOP lose Miami?
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Uh? Well, there's, you know, like any election, there's both
local and national dynamics.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
On the one hand, Oh wow, I was.
Speaker 7 (40:12):
Actually really impressed just to see Miami voters rebuke like
the city establishment, which is extraordinary, extraordinarily corrupt, reaching new
heights under the current administration of Francis Suarez primer. For
those who are familiarly, Actually, I think I think you
guys covered this back when in twenty twenty one he
like during the twenty twenty one July protests in Cuba,
(40:35):
like got on top of a car or like a
van and called for air strikes on Cuba. God, you know,
he's this like Olive arc bro tech guy.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
I once saw.
Speaker 7 (40:46):
Him at like an event in Miami and he said, oh,
even my dad doesn't understand crypto, and he's a genius.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
He went to Harvard so anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
But he really strongly embraced crypto. Yeah, and embraced my
as this like you know, I mean a Miami. Part
of why I think this is interesting nationally is because
Miami has become the symbol of like the Republican realignment
with Latinos. And also you had all of these like
Republican elites and tech guys who were setting up shop
there as well. So so you know, this part of
what makes this really noteworthy from a national perspective, totally.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Totally yeah.
Speaker 7 (41:19):
I mean the city had been growing exponentially, but in
recent years, you know, all the people that have come
to Florida and especially South Florida, a lot of people
are leaving that because the cost of living has gotten
so out of control. I mean, by some metrics, the
Miami metro area is the most unaffordable in the country. Wow,
Like average rent has like skyrocketed like eighty percent since
(41:41):
the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
So it's it's it's really grim.
Speaker 7 (41:45):
And yeah, with Suarez like just cartoonish levels of corruption.
I mean really you can barely even say that he's mayor.
He's spent most of his time abroad lobbying on behalf
of Saudi Arabia, and he's been an offense since twenty seventeen.
So after the Koshogi killing, he's done a lot of
pr for the kingdom to kind of rehability hit them.
(42:05):
And actually he's currently under consideration, reportedly as next ambassador
to Saudi Arabia or.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Perfect.
Speaker 7 (42:13):
So there's that and then the national aspect, which is that,
you know, Miami is a city which is like more
than seventy percent Latina, mostly Cuban American, but you know,
there's also South Americans and Latinos of Caribbean descent, et cetera,
Central America, even Mexicans as well. And well, yeah, Latinos are,
(42:36):
like the rest of the country, are really unhappy about
the economy. If anything, things have gotten worse under Trump.
But also Latinos are obviously more disproportionately affected by the
administration's immigration policies, which a lot of people down here,
especially it's kind of new to them, the Cuban Americans,
especially because they kind of got a pass by authorities
and especially state authorities for decades for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, wet foot drive, food and all that. They had
all of their special little carve outs there just for themselves.
Can you break down some of the map results on
F one. I'm just curious if there was any regional
stuff that you can point out to us, specifically in
the mayoral runoff election and where some bigger swings happen
(43:19):
that we should take note of. Maybe in terms of demographics.
Speaker 7 (43:22):
Yeah, that's a great question. So that western part of
the city is more Latino, especially Cuban American. That's like
Little Havana. The northern part of the city is more Haitian,
so that makes perfect sense. Miami's incredibly segregated, including the county,
so a lot of these enclaves are disproportionately one kind
of immigrant community. But even still, yeah, like I said,
(43:47):
the like seventy percent of the city is Latino. There
were these huge swings, like twenty point swings of Latinos
towards the Democrats. And another thing, the cope from Republicans
is that, oh was really low. It was like twenty
one percent, which yeah, sure is really low.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
But for a mayoral election, and especially in my mayor
election in Miami, this is is pretty good.
Speaker 7 (44:08):
Like it's about thirty percent more than like the previous
three or four elections to give an idea. Yes, Suarez
who won two times, he got like seventy percent of
the vote and turn out was like fifteen percent, so
it's still pretty significant. And again Higgins, yeah, she's the
first Democrat to win in like at least two decades,
and the first non Cuban to win. It's funny, you know,
(44:30):
she is a Democrat, and like the Cubans would call
her La gringa, you know, talk about the Republicans, but
talk about you know all the you know, the talking
points for Republicans, we're losing our country.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Well, look at that. It's the Democrat that's the same.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
It's a shame to see a white lady be elected
by Cubans.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
So you write and your piece, do you say the
White House is ongoing regime change efforts in Venezuela can
be right in part as an attempt to retain the
loyalty of these disaffected supporters. Cuclon to say it's likely
to work to an extent. Republicans should be able to
keep a critical mass of Florida Latinos and especially Cuban
Americans in the fold in the twenty twenty six midterms.
Just expand on that, especially since we just had the
(45:11):
news about this, which we covered earlier in the show.
But I'm interested in your thoughts on as well, that
we seize this massive oil tanker.
Speaker 7 (45:19):
Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. I mean, it
came the day after the election, So just for contexts,
Venezuela for decades, since Chaves came into power in nineteen
ninety nine, has sent billions in oil to Cuba. And
that's that's really largely how the regime has stayed afloat
for a long time, and there's still sending a lot
(45:40):
of oil even though.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Oil production in Venezuela has cratered.
Speaker 7 (45:44):
So that's a big talking point down here among the
Cuban Americans.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
They'll say the oil that they're sending.
Speaker 7 (45:52):
And also Mexico in recent years has been sending them
some oil, so they've wanted to crack down on that.
So I yeah, I mean more broadly, like the strikes
in the Caribbean and the regime change efforts in Venezuela.
Like people down here extremely we talked about this for before,
Neo Conservative especially, Yeah, the Cuban Americans, Nicaraguans and Venezuela
(46:17):
Cuban Americans yet voted by like around seventy percent for
Trump and Venezuelan is actually was surprised, is around like
fifty something percent.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
Democrats did better than I expected.
Speaker 7 (46:26):
Couldn't find anything on Nicaraguans, but so you know, they
believe in like this global cabal of communism, and on
a regional level globally, it's like you know, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba.
Regionally it's the troit cv terror Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (46:42):
And so their view is that like, if one of these,
especially like the biggest one, Venezuela or Cuba, go down,
then like all the like kind of reverse Domino theory,
the rest will go down with them. So in the
in his first term, a lot of Latino South Flordians
were really happy with Trump, the guideos stuff in twenty nineteen,
et cetera. And you talk to Venezuelans and Cubans now
(47:06):
and they might say, like, yeah, I mean, honestly, this
deportation stuff and immigration stuff has gone too far. But
they're really happy with the foreign policy, especially Rubio as secretary.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Of course, yeah, former senator. They're great. They're great representative.
And so you know, like you said, there's national characteristics,
there's local stuff that is all going on. Nobody's expecting
Florida to become a blue state anytime soon, but in general,
what should we look for, Like, we've got the Florida
GOP primary going on right now, fishback Byron Donald's, you've
(47:38):
still got DeSantis there at the top. Anything that you've
got your eye on for our audience.
Speaker 7 (47:44):
Yeah, So yeah, I said this in the piece, It's
hard to know and this think of an idea about
how contradictory things are down here.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
So on like the one.
Speaker 7 (47:55):
On one level, there was a lot of consternation about
the build what the attempts to build a Trump's presidential
library in Miami. And the thing is the land is
owned by Miami Dade College, so the city there's been
a lot of shady dealings about them, like trying to
like give the land away for free. And there's fears
(48:15):
that it would be one thing if it was just
the library, but there's fears that you know, they'll want
to build like a library slash hotel and casino, which
would be really grotesque. There's been a lot of local
opposition towards that. At the same time, and going back
to what we were just talking about. If you guys
are familiar with the Miami suburb of Yaleo, which is
(48:36):
like ninety percent Cuban American, they just like inaugurated a
twelve foot statue bronze statue of Trump Trump the Fighter
it's called.
Speaker 4 (48:46):
So it's there's a funny mix of things down here.
Speaker 7 (48:49):
Yeah, there is, on the one hand, like a consternation
over like the immigration policies. On the other hand, they
love the regime change stuff. I think given these results
from Higgins, it's possible. I mean, I think there's no
chance in hell that Democrats really will be that successful
(49:09):
in Florida. I mean, like Val Deming's in twenty twenty
two was about as good a candidate I think as
Democrats could have a few.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
Years ago, and they still got killed.
Speaker 7 (49:20):
Now the environment has changed a lot, So it could
be that maybe Democrats managed to make some game like
moderate gains because of the fact that maybe some neo
conservative Latinos are like, you know what, we love Trump,
but yah, maybe we don't want to support Republicans on
like domestic issues.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
We'll stay home. Hard to know, We'll have to see.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
And how extractable do you think any of this is?
Because the South Florida Latino community is fairly unique in
terms of the American context. But you know, look at
the mayoral results. It's roughly a twenty point shift in
the direction of Democrats. Kamala did win Miami, but it
was by like less than a point. It was basically
very very close. So and then Higgins is able to
(50:05):
win by what nineteen so huge shift, huge over performance
for Democrats in Miami. You know, how much can we
extrapolate that to other Latino communities and other communities in
general across the country.
Speaker 7 (50:17):
Yeah, I would say that outside of Florida, and especially
South Florida, because for instance, there are differences within the state.
Orlando is much more disproportionately Puerto Rican which tend to
swing more towards Democrats, though though they Trump did perform
pretty well with them in twenty twenty four. I would
say that elsewhere in the country, Republicans are are gonna
(50:39):
get killed with Latinos. I mean, we already saw that
in New Jersey and in Virginia, Like I mean, unless
the economy improves or they decide to start doing things
differently with immigration, and that's extremely unlikely. A lot of
Latinos here, but also especially in border states, and I
guess you could call Florida border states. Well, like they
(51:01):
were not happy with the situation under Biden. You know
a lot of people would think, oh, you know, like
there's millions of people now and jumping the line, defrauding
the asylum system.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
But that's one thing.
Speaker 7 (51:12):
Another thing is that like, uh, oh, this has gone
too far they're deporting people without process, they're reporting people
the maximum security prisons in Africa from countries they don't
belong to. There has to be a more sensible middle ground,
and I think that doesn't even just apply to Latinos,
but just Americans as a whole.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Very interesting man. Thank you as always one. We appreciate
your analysis. Good to see Bro. Thank you guys so
much for watching. We appreciate you. Friday Show tomorrow, See
you all then,
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of this show.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, so we've got Republicans realize they've got a problem
with healthcare, and you know, there's two things that happen.
Number One, Democrats with their shutdown strategy did focus a
lot of attention on healthcare, and I think that made
things more politically difficult for Republicans. Number two is again
just reality, like healthcare is really expensive. People are aware
now they've gotten their notices if they're part of the
(00:52):
you know, in the Obamacare marketplace, that their premiums are
going up. There was you know, a national discourse about
who's to bladed and to mention the party in the power,
you're just going to automatically sort of like lay the
blame at their feet, which is entirely appropriate. And so
Republicans are now scrambling to try to figure out something
that they can do, but they have zero consensus amongst
(01:12):
them about what that may look like. They really are
in the wilderness when it comes to healthcare. You guys
may recall Trump a couple weeks back, and I'm going
to announce a plan. Then there was a freak out
from the Republican caucus. They didn't like what he was
going to propose. That got pulled. We haven't heard anymore
about that since then. So yesterday they had a Republican
conference meeting where they laid out some of the potential
(01:34):
options that they may put together and put to a
vote next week in the House.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
With regard to healthcare, let's put.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
See one up on the screen, and I'm just going
to read these to you. Some of them are just
downright versical, and others are pathetic. Some of them, you know,
are fine things that may have some modest impact, but
it's certainly not going to be any sort of saving grace.
We've got association health plans. That's basically where you can
sort of like get a group together and create your
(02:02):
own pool to buy healthcare plans, which is something that
already happens, by the way, but I guess the idea
here is to make that easier to happen. Choice accounts,
health savings accounts, cost sharing reductions.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I don't really know what that means.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Codify Trump administration rules to fix the Unaffordable Care Act
PBM reform, that'd be a good thing to do.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
This one.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I really love innovation, okay, price transparency, which again is
something that you know, okay, fine, but that's not really
going to solve the problem, like, oh, I have transparency
around the fact that I'm getting price couged, cite neutrality,
and provider owned hospitals. So this is sort of a
grab bag of ideas, none of which has been completely
(02:41):
you know, backed by the entire Republican Conference. And one
thing you'll notice here that is not on this slide
is extending the Obamacare subsidies. So the immediate source of pain,
which is these skyrocketing Obamacare prices marketplace prices because the
subsidies expire at the end of the year that is
(03:02):
actually not on the table. And even with these sort
of like market based reforms, which again could have maybe
a small modest impact, but is not going to be
any of them a saving grace. Even with these, there
is no real consensus within the Republican caucus, so they
really are sort of a drift.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
On this one.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Let me put the next one up on the screen.
This is from Politico. They say the House gup erupts
over healthcare as leaders hunt for a plan. House Republican
leaders presented no firm planned Tuesday for advancing healthcare legislation
as anxiety rises. Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson presented attendees of
a closed door conference meeting with this list of ten
possible policies that could get votes in the coming weeks
(03:42):
or months. Some were specific, like an expansion of health
savings accounts, others were vague, like innovation. The list did
not include an extension of the expiring tax credits. The
presentation was followed by a heated discussion over the pathward
on healthcare for the party, and vulnerable members, including Representative
Jen Kiggins, stood up to warn against the political fallout
of failing to extend the expiring subsidies. Some later express
(04:04):
their dismay at how poorly they believe GOP leaders have
handled the topic. Quote, there was a general uneasiness because
nothing is coming together. Another one says we wasted so
much time. That was a conservative Republican also lamenting the
lack of a unified GOP health plan. Representative Ralph Norman
was willing to go on the record to say there
was no consensus. So that's sort of the state of
(04:26):
play from the Republicans in the Senate.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
So that's the House, okay.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Mike Johnson is saying we're going to do some sort
of a vote on something next week. We'll find out
what that something is, but apparently does not include extension
of the Obamacare subsidies. In the Senate, John Thune is
planning to bring forward two separate plans. One that is
Republican led, which includes some Obamacare extension but for a
(04:51):
limited time and with some changes, et cetera. One that
is Democratic led, and with the expectation that neither one
of them is going to pass, so sort of a
show vote to pretendly, oh, we're doing something, We're having
votes on healthcare. Literally, no one is going to care
that you took a vote on something that is not
going to possibate.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It is genuinely crazy. I mean, do you remember when
Obamacare that was nine it's twenty twenty five. Actually it
was December o nine, right, that famous Christmas vote or
all that's right. So we're coming up on sixteen years
since this has been in the national conversation, and every
time we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Okay, Obamacare sucks,
(05:28):
I use, it's horrible, it's awful. Most people who are
on it don't like it very much, and they think
that it's very expensive. You're going to replace it though
with what? And they still don't have the what answer.
And in the interim six years, we have had multi
digit or sorry, multi three digit inflation in health care costs,
(05:48):
lowering of life expectancy, massive increase in obesity, huge increase
in comorbidities for people who are dying in hospitals, not
to mention the pandemic where the healthcare system and the
scientific community collapse its entire trust. Like, you cannot say
that this has been a victory over the last years,
and yet when they're in power, every single time we're
going to repeal and replace and still replace with what
(06:11):
and even this Trump proposal see three. Put that on
the screen. Honestly, he's backing this fifteen hundred dollars checks
for healthcare. Now, you know, let's put this all into perspective.
So I'm on Obamacare, all right. My healthcare went from
or went up by seventeen percent, which is a little
I think it's actually be about more than the fifteen hundred.
(06:31):
So if this word happen, this fifteen hundred dollars check,
it would cover the increase in my healthcare premium, which
would mean I would get to pay exactly what I
got to pay last. I mean, I guess that's a victory.
But for anybody else out there, I have a ten
thousand dollars deductible most people who are out there, or sorry,
fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars deductible. Most people are out
there who are on employer healthcare, they're deductibles probably in
(06:55):
the fifteen sixteen hundred range. So it wouldn't be horrible,
I guess, to cover some of their deductible, but it
would not increase or it would not cover their average
increase in premium. And this gets to costs. At the
end of the day, we have to deal with costs.
We can do that in a variety of ways. We
do price controls. I'm hugely supportive of HSA's I have
an HSA. I highly recommend people use it. But even
(07:17):
with HSA, let's say you average on you know s
and P five hundred returns. If health care inflation is
seventeen eighteen percent, you're still going to lose. And if
we don't do something about the costs and the system,
nothing can be done. But each individual part of the
cost structure is highly influential here in Washington at a
bipartisan level. So we talked about PBMs. We've been talking
(07:38):
about PBM reform for a decade. Yeah, still doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, And actually that was the build up. Remember Elon knew, Yes,
the PBM exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Elon didn't like something about it, and so that got
killed and then the PBM part.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So PBM reform we've been talking about for a decade,
it's never happened. We have talked about Democrats have even
talked about public option. Not even that ever happened. We
talked about medicare being able to negotiate with drug prices
that didn't happen. We were allowed to negotiate the ten
biggest stri and by the way, even that is dragging on.
It's been kind of a nightmare. Trump is trying to
do trump RX with direct dozempic. I'm fine with that.
(08:13):
I support that, but that's one drug that's not like
the biggest problem in the healthcare costs have gone astronomical.
Doctors who watch Breaking points always hate it when I
say it, it's empirically true. They make way too much money.
The reason why they make so much money is because
they have way too much debt. So I don't even
hate on them. You have to make three hundred k
to pay off three hundred k well in debt.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And the biggest growth in costs in the healthcare system
over I don't know how the past number of decades
administrators administrative costs and I mean, look, that is the
problem with like a private for profit healthcare system is
if you have right all of this like complicated insurance, Okay,
(08:54):
is this covered? Is that covered? Or are we going
to cover this? What's your deductible? Are you eligible all
of that? Then yeah, your hospital is going to require
all kinds of paper pushers to deal with the insurance
companies which are there on the other side with their
own mass army of paper pushes, to try to figure
out how they can deny as much coverage as possible.
(09:14):
And so that's why you have these constantly ballooning administrative costs,
because it's required to navigate the absolute morass and disaster
of our healthcare system. I did want to point out
one thing about that President Trump plan, which is you
would not actually get fifteen hundred, you would get one
thousand because only people over the age of fifty get
(09:37):
the fuck out of hundred.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You're going to burst a blood vessel in my brain.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Eighteen to forty nine year olds only get one thousand.
So I'm sorry, Sagart, you will only be get so
it will actually cover this increase in the preview.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You were going to set me on five. So the
boomers get the bailout and Gen X Actually yeah, so
the the aging gen X and boomers are the ones
who get the fifteen hundred dollars bailout. But those of
us who are just parents of young childrenyeah, fuck them right,
You're not doing anything for the I don't even have words.
(10:12):
I either agree. That makes it. Yeah, that's America, Okay,
total boomer luxury communism. Look it up. One of my
buddies just wrote a whole piece about it in the
American mind that that's what we have now in this country.
It's amazing. And look just I mean, the healthcare system
as it is, it cannot stand, and yet it does.
It's seventeen to twenty percent of GDP. That's part of
(10:33):
the reason why, you know, even replacing it and cutting
costs it would cause a recession. The number of administrators
and costs and price that is all tied up into
pharmaceutic I mean, go take a drive, man, you know,
if you go on into the outer boroughs of some
bigger cities. I was in Philadelphia recently. You drive past
drug company hospital, drug company hospital here, like, oh man,
(10:55):
I mean, it's a Titanic empire that rules this country.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No. And I see a lot of candidates who are
leaning more and more heavily into you know, medicare for all,
and it's increasingly once again on the table as a
litmus test. You see some people like Chris van Holland
who's now come on board. This is what voters are
demanding in a lot of these primaries as well.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So it's definitely.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Like healthcare politics are back, and the pain is so undeniable,
and I think everybody sees what you see this that
this is literally unsustainable, like we are going to enter
a place where people just healthy people in particular, and
younger people in particularly, just like I, it does not
make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
For me to pot said it does not have a
chance for me to payos.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
It's no chance.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And then once they exit, then guess what.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The prices go up even more because they're helping to
subsidize the you know, old typically older, sicker populations, and
that's how you end up in this desk spiral. So
these little you know, quote unquote innovation or choice accounts,
whatever that is, is not going to fix the absolute
disastrous mess.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And there are things that you know, especially when Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Is less sort of like ideologically committed to we must
have a free market solution, there are things that Republicans
could suggest that would be better that they should in
my opinion, they should get on board with a public option.
I mean that still is like market based, if that's
what you're.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Hung up on.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But I think since that has the taint of like
Joe Biden talked about it. They will never get on
board with that.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
But you know, there are.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Things you could do, in my opinion, that would be
inferior to Medicare for all, but wouldn't be short of that.
But they're just they haven't thought about it. They are
so ideologically and partisan driven that they're just hoping everybody
forgets about this conversation and moves on to something else.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Is basically their plan.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yep, that's right. Let's go on to AI. This man,
this latest one. This is some dark, dark stuff. Sam Altman,
in a recent interview, was asked about chat shept and
whether he uses it to raise his baby. Let's take a.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Listen, and do you use chat rept when raising your baby?
I do.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I mean, I feel kind of bad about it because
we have this like genius level at everything intelligence sitting
there like waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity, and
I'm like, why does my kid stop dropping his pizza
on the floor and laughing? Yeah, you know, And so
I feel like I'm not asking a good enough question,
but it is. I don't I cannot imagine having gone
(13:20):
through that, like figuring out how to raise a newborn
without chati. Clearly people did it for a long time,
no problem.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Yes, but.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, we did it for a long time. We don't
need chatgypt. Actually, in fact, I'll tell you a story
because I I've done this. You will try to try
to ask it some sort of developmental question. Routinely gets
things wrong. Ask it to calculate medicinal dosage. The math
is totally wrong. This literally happened to me.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Actually, definitely do not rely on what sort of medicine,
just just amount you should get.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, here's here's my theory. They're good at math, right
X weight? All this put it in that wrong. The
only reason I know this is I go, this isn't right. Yeah,
And so then I went I had to go to
the charts or whatever a little bit more research. What
if somebody had done that. Imagine if somebody had done that.
That's this is my one time just thinking, hey, it's
(14:10):
good at math. At the very least we could trust math.
Now imagine in trying to use it for developmental purposes
or any other this like this is dangerous now beyond
even just saying like in my example, I'm just trying
to use it for math, but imagine outsourcing like genuine
advice and you know, getting tips or something like how
(14:34):
to introduce solids? What if chatchypt realies? You can tell
I'm drawing from my own life, right, how to introduce
There's a lot of different schools of thought. Right, there's
a lot of what if it says you should do
it this way? What if it's the wrong way? The
actually there is no right or wrong way. The point
is it should be up to you and you should
go and do some research, read some books. There's a
baby weading, there's pure I mean, there's all different schools
(14:57):
of thought, right, and it's there. There's no way it
could ever capture the reality of what that is like.
And it's truly, in my opinion, it's so dystopian because
it is outsourcing like the individuality and I mean not
even just like the cool part about getting to be
a part making these decisions, but also the human part
(15:18):
of it of like asking your mother or your friends
or your family and trying to crowdsource that altogether and
then your doctor anybody to make an informed decision with
yourself instead of outsourcing you know, your decision making. And
that's what's happening at scale. And that's why I really worry.
If you're in college and you're one hundred percent use
to outsourcing everything to chat CHEAPT, then in ten years
(15:41):
from now, when you're having a baby, it will be
the most natural thing in the world to outsource that
to an AI. Yeah, and that is like again, I mean,
these are a moral If you ask chat ept whether
you should an abort and a down syndrome baby based
on costs, they'll probably tell you yes. Right, think about that.
There's no there, there's nobody who there's nothing programmed within
(16:03):
these things to really give you any morals. They you know,
every especially if you set the parameters. And then with psychosis,
the most recent chat GPT is you can decide its
personality on how right. So now it's I want a
persnickety in a laughable chat ChiPT, I want the default
chat GPT. Well, which one's gonna give you different advice
(16:23):
on a kit? I know I sound pedantic, but like
this stuff is real and when the CEO is out
here recommending its usage, then that should come with liability.
What do doctors and all of them tell you never believe
everything that you read on the internet and here, this
guy is like, oh, I use it to raise my
own bait. I mean, these are wildly powerful. They want
you to, by the way, so that they can sell
you baby products inside of the chat bill. Well, here's
(16:44):
our favorite baby formula based on way you recommend it.
Go ahead and buy it here in the chat gpt app.
I mean, can you imagine anything more dystopian? Man? And
Google already does this to a limited extent, but this
is way worse.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
And yeah, the errors, that's one thing that's like an
acute like you know, you could actually that receiving advice.
That's genuinely dangerous. But to me, the most more dystopian
part is just the assault on our humanity, you know.
I mean, parenting is like such a just sort of
essential beautiful like the essence of being human, right, the
(17:17):
essence of the project of humanity. And when you say
something like I can't even imagine raising a newborn without
chat GPT, I don't know. I mean this is what
I worry about on a sort of like philosophical level
with these products in general, how much of our humanity
is being like sucked up and colonized, how much of
our mind share is being sucked up and colonized by
(17:38):
these products, where yeah, instead of going to your like,
let me call mom and see what she said, you
know when when I was a baby, Like how did
this go for her? Instead you're asking this robot and
that's you know, it's one small example, but it takes
you that much further away from like the human connections
that we already are losing thanks again to these like
tech oligarchs and their their social media the experiments. The
(18:00):
other thing about it that it made me think of
is a lot of these guys that developed Sam Altman
didn't develop a social media product, but like Mark Zuckerberg
or whatever, a lot of these guys, if you ask
them about their kids and their social media use, oh
don't they are very careful about screen time for their
own kids, even as they are developing products that are
(18:21):
designed with you know, millions and millions of dollars to
make them as addictive as possible for your kids. And
so it's interesting to me that with this because they
are such almost like religious believers, I mean truly, I
think religious is the right word to use around what
these guys think about AI and its promise and what
it's going to be they think they're inventing God in
(18:44):
a machine.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's what they think.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
They have this religious devotion to it where it has
they do incorporate it all the way into their lives,
including in you know, something as essential and something so
important as raising your baby for you know, a young age.
So I thought that was an interesting sort of revelation too,
about how he is thinking about his own products.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
One hundred percent. And I just think, you know, he's like, oh,
we have a grand super intelligence and all that. You know,
anybody who if you're trying to do this intelligence is
not really you know, there's no intelligent way, like I said, necessarily,
the only intelligence that you can use is to think
about it, be intentional, and then actually look at your
specific set of circumstances. Just my opinion. But this also
(19:29):
translates now to the Pentagon, where Pete Hegseth has now
rolled out Google's Gemini AI into the hands of every
American service member and encouraging them to use it. Let's
take a listen.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
The future of American warfare is here, and it's spelled AI.
As technologies advanced, so do our adversaries. But here at
the War Department, we are not sitting idly by. Under
the leadership of President Trump, America will lead the charge
on this technology transformation by revolutionizing the way we win.
(20:05):
And that's why today we are unleashing Genai dot Mill.
This platform puts the world's most powerful frontier AI models,
starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every
American warrior at the click of a button. AI models
on Genai can be utilized to conduct deep research, format documents,
(20:27):
and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed. Building
on the great work of Undersecretary Emil Michael and his team,
we will continue to aggressively feel the world's best technology
to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before.
And all of it is American made. The possibilities with
(20:48):
AI are endless, so you can see from there.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I mean, what is mystifying to me is why are
they're going so hard at promoting said Jenai. They have
posters all over the penicy encouraging individual soldiers and others
to use it at their routine task. I mean, I
just gave an example about how it chat rept or
failed at math room, which by the way, is its
most basic function. No, that's what you should rely If
(21:15):
you rely on computers for anything, you know, asking it
advice or any of that is absolutely stupid, even at
the current form. But you should maybe rely on it
for math. Now they're relying on it for math and
potential errors and reasoning fallacies or logical problems in the
most high stakes environment like what about weapons planning, manufacturing ammunition.
(21:38):
I can't even get chat reipt, like I said, to
calculate basic dosage instructions properly. How are they going to
use multicomplex processes by rolling it into the critical supply
chain and others to calculate, let's say, how many weapons
that they need here or there without double checking? And
then look, maybe that's even a quote good use. Do
(21:59):
we really have confidence that they have put in you know, guardrails,
even security, cybersecurity to make sure that nobody is hacking
into it? And then to what end is this, like
AI military thing even happening. I mean, look, the terminator
and all of that is science fiction, but there is
an element to this when we're becoming obsessed with autonomous
(22:20):
drones and AI and putting it together like the vast
amount of power considering how I mean, look, Israel used
it all the time. We covered a couple of segments
on this, those like autonomous drones and AI training ground, Like,
how are we going, you know, the future of warfare.
They're obsessed with marrying these two types of things. Will
that be used against us? Is that part of the plan?
(22:40):
How do you what you know, what do you have
programmed inside of that to make sure it's never going
to happen. I just don't think any of these questions
were asked at all at all. They're just like, yeah,
everybody use it, and let's just see what happens.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Completely not it's dangerous constantly.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
And that's this whole administration's approach to AI is like,
let's just push as hard as we possibly can. Let's
just roll it off out off to the races. What
are the consequences? We don't really know, but we're like
hoping and praying it's going to be great and it's
going to be amazing.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
And then you know, to see.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
That applied specifically at the Department of War, where you
have all these like ethical and accuracy questions, and again
the like the more removed the human being and their
natural revulsion to killing other human beings, the more removed
they are from that process, you know, the easier it
becomes to commit atrocities and barbarism. I mean, you can
(23:29):
even you know, if you think about the the initial
boat strike right where they had to do the double
chap strike. Okay, so you have the initial strike, they
see that there's the two survivors, and then over forty
minutes they watch them like struggling for their lives, and
they decide to kill them with the second strike. You know,
if you had had to be like that guy boarding
(23:49):
the ship and actually shooting them in the head with
a pistol or whatever, I don't think they would have
made the same decision. Like, if you had to be
that up close and personal with the killing, it would
have been much clearer to them, like, of course this
is wrong. These are shipwrecked individuals, Like this is the
textbook definition of what you don't what is utterly dishonorable
and atrocious to do in wartime. So the more you
(24:09):
get removed from that basic humanity, the more dystopian it becomes.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I mean, there's a reason.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Why sci fi writers reach for these utterly dystopian scenarios.
And now we are really at the precipice of them
being easily realizable, not to mention, you know, we already
have all these issues with AI and deceptive behavior and
all these sorts of things that are on account before
they think they patch it up, but they're not really sure.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We've seen we've also gotten a glimpse of what AI
unleashed on the battlefield looks like in Gaza, which has
been a test case for a lot of these things,
where they generated all of these targets, did not do
any check whether these were you know, legitimate targets, didn't
really care and just went out and mass murdered people
or were able to track people down to their homes
so that they would be able to inflict more casualties
among low level soldiers and their families. So I think
(24:57):
we've already got examples of the dystopian direction that this
is all heading, and Soccer maybe can explain this next one.
Meta is a pivot from their Their original idea was
sort of like framed in this very like altruistic way,
like we're going to create an LL and it's going
to be completely open source. This is sort of like
you know, idealistic anarchist type approach.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
To well more so the theory, but it wasn't altruistic.
They sold it that way.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. That's how they sold it, right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
So the reason they did that is because they wanted
other people to use their model, so that people would
stack and that they would own the tech a while
they continued. Now what they've decided to do, let's put
the next one please on the screen. D three is
they're explicitly pivoting away from open source, specifically into a
money making AI model. Zuckerberg quote, months into building the
(25:45):
priciest teams in technology history, is getting personally involved and
pivoting the company's focus to an AI model it can
make money off of. One new model, code named Avocado,
is expected to debut next spring. Will be launched as
a closed model, one that will be tightly controlled and
that Meta will sell access to the move, which aligns
with rivals Google and Open Ai do with their models,
(26:06):
would mark the biggest departure from the open source strategy
that Meta has now touted for years. Dramatically shifted earlier
this year after the company released Lama for an open
source model that disappointed Silicon Valley and Zuckerberg. Now, Zuckerberg
now spends much of his time and energy working closely
with new hires in a group called TBD Labs, and
it is using quote several third party models to train
(26:28):
the process for Avocado, distilling all of its rival models
down and then training off of that. So what that
means is that he's basically going in the same direction
as everybody else, as Google, as open ai, and abandoning
even the pretense of open source. We just want to
highlight this because the industry is still moving all in
a completely profit driven direction and one that abandons any like,
(26:51):
you know, original claims about how they're going to cure cancer.
Now it's just all about making money. It's all about
enterprise making money. That's it, okay, And it comes to
the cost. Let's put the next one up on the screen.
It's about data centers. From the lever they show quote
data center boom risk blackouts. According to a new watchdog report,
data center construction should be put on hold until grid
(27:13):
operators can ensure reliability. A regional energy monitor has argued,
and that fits with what I had showed everybody in
our last show about the expected amount of data center
power compared to the amount of market are the amount
of power coming online by twenty thirty.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, and they focus in particular in what they describe
they say. The independent watchdog for the country's largest power
grid operator has issued a regulatory grenade asking the Federal
Garment to intervene amid PJM interconnections plans to power data
centers it knows it does not have the capacity for,
despite acknowledging the heightened risk of blackouts. This comes as
PGM as seen windfall profits from shouldering energy draining data
(27:52):
centers at a multi billion dollar cost to consumers. So
if you guys recall the charts that we put up
before that showed the different grid regions across the country,
the one that was under the most strain is actually
the one right here, and it's called PJMS.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
What that regional grid is called.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
It services some roughly I think thirteen different states or
parts of thirteen different states. It's like Virginia and the
mid Atlantic out to the Midwest, I think Michigan, parts
of Kentucky, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
So that's kind of the region.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
And no surprise that this is the area that is
under the most strained right now, because Virginia is the
epicenter of this mass data center boom. I mean, if
you drive out towards Dulles, if you even go out
towards where I live in the rural areas, these things
are popping up everywhere, and they have not built out
the capacity to ensure that number one, I mean the
(28:42):
prices are going out. Number two, that there are not
going to be active blackouts, like we are very close
to that sort of a possibility. And of course, like
if there's going to be a choice about whether it's
ordinary consumers who are getting the power, whether it's these
giant data centers with their corporate titans of funneled millions
of dollars into the local politicians campaign coffers, guess who's
(29:04):
going to be chosen there? So we are you know,
this warning is really quite dire and extraordinary, given that
we are early in this data center buildout and already
we are straining the grid capacity that we have existing.
And of course there's nothing anything remotely approaching like a
buildout that would be sufficient to deal with all of
this exactly.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
And all right, yeah, I mean you just put it
all together. Oh final thing, we had to put this
one in Defaul, Oh yeah, that's up on.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
So this is new for The Washington Post, their new
consumer audio offering, your personalized podcast AI podcast, only available
in the podcast app app. Users will be able to
shape their own briefing, select their topics, select their links,
pick their hosts, and then soon even ask questions using
our Ask the Post AI technology. So don't need the
(29:53):
don't need anybody doing it, don't need anybody doing the research.
It'll just AI all of it for you, and soon
you won't even have to listen to a show like ours.
You can just build your own. So, I mean, personally
kind of hoping it fails right out of selfish reasons.
I think it misunderstands why people listen to a podcast
in the first place. I don't think people want to
do a lot of their own work. That's kind of
what you pay editorial for, right, is to curate what
(30:15):
other people. That's kind of our offering, if you will.
But who knows, you know, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know,
but that's look, you know, I don't want it's not
just about us, because it's about humanity itself. Yeah, you know,
without without any of that, Are you really getting what
you need you know from the news.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, that's my question is like I'm hoping that people
are biased towards people. I think, so, you know what
I mean, So much of and this is like up
and you know, it's like a double edged sword, but
so much of the like podcast, YouTube space is like.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
These parasocial relationships.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
We're not just about the specific stories and content that
are chosen, but it's also about like the way I
feel about this person, whether I trust them, whether I
like them, whether I find them like entertaining to spend
some of my time with. And so I am still
hopeful that there is a bias, that people have a
bias towards other people, that they want other people to
(31:09):
be behind the art that they consume. They want to
feel like there is humanity embedded in the experiences that
they're having and the content that they are consuming. But
I don't know if that's true or not. I guess
we're going to find out.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
All right, let's get to Epstein some great new reporting
over from drop site. Let's ahead and put this up
here on the screen. This is one of the longtime
major questions of Jeffrey Epstein is how did he get
all of this money? All roads seem to trace back
to les Wexner, the victorious, secret, seclusive billionaire who is
(31:45):
very pro Israel. Now we have learned from drop site
and from many of the emails which I was able
to read, also from myself, the primary source documents is
specifically about how he ran Leslie Wexner's pro Israel philanthropy
machine much more than less Wesner and the philanthropy later
on claims. So let me explain a little bit of that. Basically,
(32:06):
what they're able to report is that after his death,
and what we learned is that the Wexner Foundation, which
is a longtime supporter of Zionist politics and including paying
aud Barack millions of dollars the former Prime Minister of
Israel to author two reports, one of which he never
even finished, was directed largely by Epstein in such a
(32:29):
way that they were asking Epstein directly or Wexner in
the foundation. We're saying directly, quote, ask Jeffrey about how
to spend the money. Remember, there's all these questions from
Epstein himself and his relationship with Wexner. Wester signed power
of attorney over him to manage his money. He gifted
the famous mansion to him. Why would somebody who is
(32:52):
ultra wealthy give such power over their own estate and
billions of dollars over to their acquaintance. This is one
of the ultimate mysteries. You can have your own theories,
I certainly do, but nothing has ever really been confirmed
on the story. I think the central part of it, though,
is that the emails reveal how central he was to
(33:12):
dispersing money from Leslie Wesner's charity many on behalf of
Zionis and the pro Israel causes, and to the point
where you can actually see that Wexner claims later on
about how what les Wexner had claimed he was just
a whiz with money, that he had nothing on me,
and that it was a very normal relationship and he
severed his ties. And he also claimed that his control
(33:36):
over the foundation wasn't nearly as total as what we
now know. And so I encourage everybody to go and
read this report because it shows you very very clearly
how much control he actually had over the foundation, dispersing
these millions to Israeli Prime Minister, and the level of
trust that Wexner still had with Epstein for many, many
years after the relationship started in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, I mean what you gather from these emails is
that Wexner truly did just hand over his entire financial life.
It's greazy to Epstein and both in terms of his
personal money. How much was going to go to the
foundation from his personal money, and then how much what
was going to be dispersed and to whom? And so
it's everything from you know, the investments, to you know,
(34:19):
the various pro Israel charities that were going to receive
significant donations. This foundation was one of the largest and
most prolific donors to Zionist causes in the entire United States.
So they were heavyweights in this space. And it was
all Jeffrey, I should say all, but it was largely,
it appears from these emails, largely Jeffrey Epstein, who was
(34:41):
directing that funding and packing the charities to which that
to where that.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Money was going to go.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
This is completely contrary to how, of course Wexner portrayed
their relationship and completely contrary to how the Foundation portrayed
their relationship, where they said, oh, this guy, we barely
had anything to do with him, and you know, after conviction,
he was out, we were done. We had absolutely no
you know, absolutely no influence from him whatsoever. That was
all just dramatically untrue based on these emails. So this
(35:10):
is one incredibly important piece of the puzzle because the
amount of money that Epstein was getting just from this
one relationship was incredibly sizable and funded a significant part
of his lifestyle. But we also got this very important
reporting again from Bloomberg, which we've been talking about Jason Leepold.
(35:32):
He's been doing great work with these emails as well
about how his involvement with Wall Street you know, didn't
really skip a beat after his conviction. You know, they
took a look at emails of all these you know,
banker types, hedge fund hedge fund types messaging him own,
sorry about your conviction, You'll be fine, you know, Hey,
how about you want to invest in this? You want
(35:52):
to invest in that? And what you get from this
one Sager is really a sense that you know, as
long as he had money, they didn't really give a shit.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, as long as he had money to.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Invest that they could that they could play with and
be involved in making money, then they were happy to
have his his involvement and the other thing that really
comes out of this piece is just what a son
of a bitch that he was, like, yes, totally like
in these different transactions, playing both sides, lying to both sides,
pretending like, I'm going to vote on your side in
(36:22):
this particular dispute with the other one, pretending he's going
to vote on that side. Then he picks his side.
Then afterwards he sues everyone involved. I mean just absolutely,
like ruthlessly nefarious, but in a way that obviously you know,
worked for him in terms of netting him lots of cash.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Absolutely, you know, I'm glad that so we had access
to those emails, but Bloomberg was the better, you know,
outlet to do it because they could get to all
of the Wall Street connections. Yeah, and you know it's
hard to decipher. I'm not a financier, Like, I don't
fully understand all of it, but they just show you
and piece together the network of how it existed at
that time. How even as he's under investigation, they don't care.
(36:59):
They're still willing to do business with you. And remember
all of this continued even after he pled guilty and
was a registered sex offender. They continued to take his
businesses hundreds of millions. And you have very very high
level Wall Street financiers who are all embroiled in this.
You have Leon Black, you have all of these others
paying him personally one hundred, one hundred and fifty million.
(37:19):
He got a billion dollars in suspicious activity reports that
continue to flow through all of the banks and the
Treasury Department that are filed after his death, over a billion.
Again wired to whom, wired for what? Wired where? For
what purpose? There's to which country? You know, I mean,
all of this points to a vast array of and
you know, I've discussed with this with Ryan at this
(37:41):
point to say he was not at the very least
an international finance here with connections to multiple intelligence agencies.
It's just not actual, it's not Factual's that was his core.
His job was to move money around. That's what he
was the ultimate expert at. This proves it. Yeah, as
you said, he was also extremely like bitchy in his emails,
being like I'll threaten you, I'll blackmail you, you know,
(38:02):
basically kind of hinting at various problems for people if
they didn't continue to do business with him. That was
very useful to the Coat duvoir or Mongolia, the Israeli government,
potentially the US, Russia. I mean, who knows, it was everybody.
He literally was a hatchet man. And yes he also
had his peccadillos, I guess, which were enabled to look
past and part of the entire story. And that's why
(38:26):
when all of this keeps coming together, you see that
Leslie Wexner, he didn't, you know, he didn't cut ties
with Jeffrey Epstein. He kind of knew what was going on. Yeah,
as the emails that they report what was happening, he
s could always be careful.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Oh yeah, let's put you two up on the screen
because we do have that image because I think this,
I mean, this tells you everything right here. So this
is Les Wexner. You start at the bottom, rights to Epstein.
Abigail told me the result, and we're referring here to
that quote unquote sweetheart deal. No, definitely sweetheart deal. All
I can say is I feel sorry you violated your
(38:58):
own number one rule, will always be careful. And then
Epstein replies, no excuse. So, I mean, does that tell
you that he knew.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
What was going on?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
And he you know, you can infer.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, you can infer some things, and certainly there was
no like, this is disgusting. I can't believe. I will
never be associated with you. No, none of that. Just
like I'm sorry, I feel bad for you. I guess
you weren't careful enough, you know, in the things that
you were doing.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
So exactly right. All right, we got one Dav'd Rojas
standing by to talk Miami. Let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
So has some pretty interesting election results down in Miami
where Democrats were able to flip the mayoral race, which
has a lot of interesting potential political dynamics. So I'm
the perfect person to break all of this down for us.
Speaker 7 (39:41):
One.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
David Rojas is a calumnist for Compact Magazine's got a
new piece up there about exactly this. You can put
that up on the screen. The headline is how the
GOP lost Miami and he is also the author of
the fantastic substack Social Democracy with Populist Characteristics.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Exactly our kind of guy. Great to see you.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
On, Thanks for having me back on guys.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Okay, so, how did the GOP lose Miami?
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Uh? Well, there's, you know, like any election, there's both
local and national dynamics.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
On the one hand, Oh wow, I was.
Speaker 7 (40:12):
Actually really impressed just to see Miami voters rebuke like
the city establishment, which is extraordinary, extraordinarily corrupt, reaching new
heights under the current administration of Francis Suarez primer. For
those who are familiarly, Actually, I think I think you
guys covered this back when in twenty twenty one he
like during the twenty twenty one July protests in Cuba,
(40:35):
like got on top of a car or like a
van and called for air strikes on Cuba. God, you know,
he's this like Olive arc bro tech guy.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
I once saw.
Speaker 7 (40:46):
Him at like an event in Miami and he said, oh,
even my dad doesn't understand crypto, and he's a genius.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
He went to Harvard so anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
But he really strongly embraced crypto. Yeah, and embraced my
as this like you know, I mean a Miami. Part
of why I think this is interesting nationally is because
Miami has become the symbol of like the Republican realignment
with Latinos. And also you had all of these like
Republican elites and tech guys who were setting up shop
there as well. So so you know, this part of
what makes this really noteworthy from a national perspective, totally.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Totally yeah.
Speaker 7 (41:19):
I mean the city had been growing exponentially, but in
recent years, you know, all the people that have come
to Florida and especially South Florida, a lot of people
are leaving that because the cost of living has gotten
so out of control. I mean, by some metrics, the
Miami metro area is the most unaffordable in the country. Wow,
Like average rent has like skyrocketed like eighty percent since
(41:41):
the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
So it's it's it's really grim.
Speaker 7 (41:45):
And yeah, with Suarez like just cartoonish levels of corruption.
I mean really you can barely even say that he's mayor.
He's spent most of his time abroad lobbying on behalf
of Saudi Arabia, and he's been an offense since twenty seventeen.
So after the Koshogi killing, he's done a lot of
pr for the kingdom to kind of rehability hit them.
(42:05):
And actually he's currently under consideration, reportedly as next ambassador
to Saudi Arabia or.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Perfect.
Speaker 7 (42:13):
So there's that and then the national aspect, which is that,
you know, Miami is a city which is like more
than seventy percent Latina, mostly Cuban American, but you know,
there's also South Americans and Latinos of Caribbean descent, et cetera,
Central America, even Mexicans as well. And well, yeah, Latinos are,
(42:36):
like the rest of the country, are really unhappy about
the economy. If anything, things have gotten worse under Trump.
But also Latinos are obviously more disproportionately affected by the
administration's immigration policies, which a lot of people down here,
especially it's kind of new to them, the Cuban Americans,
especially because they kind of got a pass by authorities
and especially state authorities for decades for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, wet foot drive, food and all that. They had
all of their special little carve outs there just for themselves.
Can you break down some of the map results on
F one. I'm just curious if there was any regional
stuff that you can point out to us, specifically in
the mayoral runoff election and where some bigger swings happen
(43:19):
that we should take note of. Maybe in terms of demographics.
Speaker 7 (43:22):
Yeah, that's a great question. So that western part of
the city is more Latino, especially Cuban American. That's like
Little Havana. The northern part of the city is more Haitian,
so that makes perfect sense. Miami's incredibly segregated, including the county,
so a lot of these enclaves are disproportionately one kind
of immigrant community. But even still, yeah, like I said,
(43:47):
the like seventy percent of the city is Latino. There
were these huge swings, like twenty point swings of Latinos
towards the Democrats. And another thing, the cope from Republicans
is that, oh was really low. It was like twenty
one percent, which yeah, sure is really low.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
But for a mayoral election, and especially in my mayor
election in Miami, this is is pretty good.
Speaker 7 (44:08):
Like it's about thirty percent more than like the previous
three or four elections to give an idea. Yes, Suarez
who won two times, he got like seventy percent of
the vote and turn out was like fifteen percent, so
it's still pretty significant. And again Higgins, yeah, she's the
first Democrat to win in like at least two decades,
and the first non Cuban to win. It's funny, you know,
(44:30):
she is a Democrat, and like the Cubans would call
her La gringa, you know, talk about the Republicans, but
talk about you know all the you know, the talking
points for Republicans, we're losing our country.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
Well, look at that. It's the Democrat that's the same.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
It's a shame to see a white lady be elected
by Cubans.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
So you write and your piece, do you say the
White House is ongoing regime change efforts in Venezuela can
be right in part as an attempt to retain the
loyalty of these disaffected supporters. Cuclon to say it's likely
to work to an extent. Republicans should be able to
keep a critical mass of Florida Latinos and especially Cuban
Americans in the fold in the twenty twenty six midterms.
Just expand on that, especially since we just had the
(45:11):
news about this, which we covered earlier in the show.
But I'm interested in your thoughts on as well, that
we seize this massive oil tanker.
Speaker 7 (45:19):
Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. I mean, it
came the day after the election, So just for contexts,
Venezuela for decades, since Chaves came into power in nineteen
ninety nine, has sent billions in oil to Cuba. And
that's that's really largely how the regime has stayed afloat
for a long time, and there's still sending a lot
(45:40):
of oil even though.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Oil production in Venezuela has cratered.
Speaker 7 (45:44):
So that's a big talking point down here among the
Cuban Americans.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
They'll say the oil that they're sending.
Speaker 7 (45:52):
And also Mexico in recent years has been sending them
some oil, so they've wanted to crack down on that.
So I yeah, I mean more broadly, like the strikes
in the Caribbean and the regime change efforts in Venezuela.
Like people down here extremely we talked about this for before,
Neo Conservative especially, Yeah, the Cuban Americans, Nicaraguans and Venezuela
(46:17):
Cuban Americans yet voted by like around seventy percent for
Trump and Venezuelan is actually was surprised, is around like
fifty something percent.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
Democrats did better than I expected.
Speaker 7 (46:26):
Couldn't find anything on Nicaraguans, but so you know, they
believe in like this global cabal of communism, and on
a regional level globally, it's like you know, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba.
Regionally it's the troit cv terror Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Uh.
Speaker 7 (46:42):
And so their view is that like, if one of these,
especially like the biggest one, Venezuela or Cuba, go down,
then like all the like kind of reverse Domino theory,
the rest will go down with them. So in the
in his first term, a lot of Latino South Flordians
were really happy with Trump, the guideos stuff in twenty nineteen,
et cetera. And you talk to Venezuelans and Cubans now
(47:06):
and they might say, like, yeah, I mean, honestly, this
deportation stuff and immigration stuff has gone too far. But
they're really happy with the foreign policy, especially Rubio as secretary.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Of course, yeah, former senator. They're great. They're great representative.
And so you know, like you said, there's national characteristics,
there's local stuff that is all going on. Nobody's expecting
Florida to become a blue state anytime soon, but in general,
what should we look for, Like, we've got the Florida
GOP primary going on right now, fishback Byron Donald's, you've
(47:38):
still got DeSantis there at the top. Anything that you've
got your eye on for our audience.
Speaker 7 (47:44):
Yeah, So yeah, I said this in the piece, It's
hard to know and this think of an idea about
how contradictory things are down here.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
So on like the one.
Speaker 7 (47:55):
On one level, there was a lot of consternation about
the build what the attempts to build a Trump's presidential
library in Miami. And the thing is the land is
owned by Miami Dade College, so the city there's been
a lot of shady dealings about them, like trying to
like give the land away for free. And there's fears
(48:15):
that it would be one thing if it was just
the library, but there's fears that you know, they'll want
to build like a library slash hotel and casino, which
would be really grotesque. There's been a lot of local
opposition towards that. At the same time, and going back
to what we were just talking about. If you guys
are familiar with the Miami suburb of Yaleo, which is
(48:36):
like ninety percent Cuban American, they just like inaugurated a
twelve foot statue bronze statue of Trump Trump the Fighter
it's called.
Speaker 4 (48:46):
So it's there's a funny mix of things down here.
Speaker 7 (48:49):
Yeah, there is, on the one hand, like a consternation
over like the immigration policies. On the other hand, they
love the regime change stuff. I think given these results
from Higgins, it's possible. I mean, I think there's no
chance in hell that Democrats really will be that successful
(49:09):
in Florida. I mean, like Val Deming's in twenty twenty
two was about as good a candidate I think as
Democrats could have a few.
Speaker 4 (49:18):
Years ago, and they still got killed.
Speaker 7 (49:20):
Now the environment has changed a lot, So it could
be that maybe Democrats managed to make some game like
moderate gains because of the fact that maybe some neo
conservative Latinos are like, you know what, we love Trump,
but yah, maybe we don't want to support Republicans on
like domestic issues.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
We'll stay home. Hard to know, We'll have to see.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
And how extractable do you think any of this is?
Because the South Florida Latino community is fairly unique in
terms of the American context. But you know, look at
the mayoral results. It's roughly a twenty point shift in
the direction of Democrats. Kamala did win Miami, but it
was by like less than a point. It was basically
very very close. So and then Higgins is able to
(50:05):
win by what nineteen so huge shift, huge over performance
for Democrats in Miami. You know, how much can we
extrapolate that to other Latino communities and other communities in
general across the country.
Speaker 7 (50:17):
Yeah, I would say that outside of Florida, and especially
South Florida, because for instance, there are differences within the state.
Orlando is much more disproportionately Puerto Rican which tend to
swing more towards Democrats, though though they Trump did perform
pretty well with them in twenty twenty four. I would
say that elsewhere in the country, Republicans are are gonna
(50:39):
get killed with Latinos. I mean, we already saw that
in New Jersey and in Virginia, Like I mean, unless
the economy improves or they decide to start doing things
differently with immigration, and that's extremely unlikely. A lot of
Latinos here, but also especially in border states, and I
guess you could call Florida border states. Well, like they
(51:01):
were not happy with the situation under Biden. You know
a lot of people would think, oh, you know, like
there's millions of people now and jumping the line, defrauding
the asylum system.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
But that's one thing.
Speaker 7 (51:12):
Another thing is that like, uh, oh, this has gone
too far they're deporting people without process, they're reporting people
the maximum security prisons in Africa from countries they don't
belong to. There has to be a more sensible middle ground,
and I think that doesn't even just apply to Latinos,
but just Americans as a whole.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Very interesting man. Thank you as always one. We appreciate
your analysis. Good to see Bro. Thank you guys so
much for watching. We appreciate you. Friday Show tomorrow, See
you all then,
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.