1/7/25: Trudeau Resignation, Bannon Rips Elon, Zuckerberg Caves On Trump, Ski Resort Strike & MORE!

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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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an
amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal Yay?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Particularly amazing because Sager made it back. Thank God, I'm back.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
I weathered the snowstorm, I weathered the South Seas of
the Caribbean for all of you to get here, the rough,
the rough and tumble life of a cruise ship veteran.
But I've made it. I've made it. I'm tan, I'm rested,
and I'm ready and I'm back to be year. It's
exciting to be here for the New Year excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
A lot of interesting stories to talk through today and
a lot of interesting things that we've been one of
your your thoughts on the H one P fights, so
we managed to get. We got Bernie backing Maga in
the H one B fight, so you can kind of
weigh in on some of that stuff. Justin Trudeau resigning,
this has been a while in the making, so we'll
tell you, like the chain of events and what it
means is pretty interesting moment in history. I would say

(01:26):
we've got more Elon News. He's now threatening an invasion
of Britain and a bunch of European leaders sounding off
as they become increasingly nervous that he thinks he can
just like jump into their politics and sort of control
their political process in similar ways as he did here. Also,
Mark Zuckerberg going on Fox News, was this just this morning?
That does happen soccer?

Speaker 1 (01:46):
So it's actually Mark Zuckerberg didn't go on Fox News.
His chief of policy Joel Kaplan okay, but he put
out a video on Instagram. We're going to play some
of it for everyone. It's genuinely one of the most
crazy videos over.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
He sounds like Elon He's basically go and so yeah,
you guys are you guys are gonna this is an
interesting one. We also wanted to take a look at
this big labor dispute happening at Vale Ski Resort. A
bunch of wealthy people waiting in really long lines because
Vail refuses to pay their personnel two dollars an hour more.
And there's a really interesting backstory here about corporate consolidation

(02:24):
and these ski towns and the way they've been taken over.
So get into some of that as well. And we're
also taking a look at this big CNN lawsuit, lawsuit
against CNN claiming defamation. They are actually going to trial,
which is kind of unusual. Usually they settle in these
sorts of situations. But they could be facing huge, huge
dollar amounts if the jury finds against them. And it's

(02:45):
happening in Florida, which you know, they could find a
pretty tough demographic down there, given how much Florida has
shifted to the right.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, jury pool has not been kind to CNN so far.
I think what's interesting about this case will be I
think it will turn into both case about Donald or Sorry,
both about the actual specifics, but also about CNN itself
because so many of the comments from the perspective jurors
were literally about its own coverage and so could certainly

(03:14):
turn out to bite them. But yeah, I'm excited to
be back, I really am. All right, why don't we
get started with Justin Trudeau? Crystal? Yeah, oh, should we note?
By the way, we're at home because of the snowstorm,
it is the roads spartalize. Yeah, yeah, completely impassable here
in the Washington, DC area, combined with the fact that

(03:35):
DC is also now the Green Zone because of the
scary January sixth that happened yesterday, So we had like
military tanks occupying our streets as we also had twelve
inches of not twelve inches with close a bunch of snows,
So it's a mess out here. Please bear with us
before we are able to get back to the studio
hopefully on Thursday.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Hopefully Thursday. Yeah, we're pretty we're pretty snowed in down
here in the country as well well, So anyway, and
I've got kiddos that are going to wake up at
some point, animals running around, so just bear with this guy, right,
all right, let's go ahead and get to Justin Trudeau. Who,
of course prime Minister of Canada and deeply unpopular. He
has been in powerful like a decade there, so he's

(04:17):
kind of overstayed his welcome at this point, facing blowback
not only from the country at large very low approval rating,
but also blowback within his own party. So he made
this announcement official yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
So last night, over dinner, I told my kids the
decision that I'm sharing with you today. I intend to
resign as party leader as Prime minister after the party
selects its next leader through a robust nationwide competitive process.

(04:52):
Last night I asked President of the Liberal Party to
begin that process. This country deserves a real choice in
the next election, and it has become clear to me
that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot
be the best option in that election.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
So he's referencing these internal battles within his own party.
But as I said, he was deeply unpopular overall. I
can go ahead and pull up this tearsheet from the
Washington the Wall Street Journal rather that sort of breaks
down some of what was going on here, And you know,
a lot of this story is going to sound kind
of familiar to those of you who have been following
politics here or in many other European G seven nations. Effectively,

(05:36):
you know, overall, he came in kind of an Obama
style figure, really embraced cultural liberalness, and some of the
biggest hits he took were during the COVID era, when
you know, they had significant shutdowns. You'll remember the big
trucker protests and the uproar over that they took some
more draconian measures actually than we did here in the US.

(05:59):
And in addition to that, they had high levels of
inflation like many countries did around the world, and he
just came to be seen as sort of out of
step with the pain that people were feeling in the
country at large, and more interested in these cultural issues
than he was in making sure that people were really,

(06:20):
you know, okay in their day to day lives. So again,
familiar story, similar to what's going on here and other
European nations. But Sager, you noted this is what the
last G seven leader to move out since the Trump
era began, So it is kind of a significant turning
point in terms of global politics.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, I think we can put it in two separate stories.
Like one obviously is the Canadian context, and as you said,
I mean Trudeau. And that's why I think I really
noted is Trudeau is the very last leader of a
major G seven nation to step down who pre dates
Donald Trump coming down the escalator, the political earthquake. Every
single other G seven nation has experienced significant political turmoil. Germany, Japan,

(07:08):
the United States obviously, even you know, if you look
at the European Union, you know, even if you think
about it, Putin, who used to be called the G eight.
So yes, he may have been there during Obama, but
let's just say things have changed. I think in the
last several years. The point really here that we have
with Trudeau, as you said, is that he became someone
who kind of embodied the quote unquote like progressive cultural liberalism,

(07:33):
while frankly his country has been you know, destroyed from
the inside. I mean, the average home price in Canada
now is some seven hundred thousand dollars for people who
Canadian dollars, it's not that different than US dollars. People
don't seem to understand that. While yes, the United States
is a massive housing crisis and we cover it here
all the time, Canada is ten times worse. They also

(07:55):
have had significant problems with immigration. They've had major turmoil.
Remember even internally Trudeau has flipped on immigration, being like listen,
you know, we've let too many people in here. They've
had significant strains on their social welfare state. So they
have major problems, and especially going into the Trump era,

(08:18):
the Canadian economy is wholly reliant on the United States
as a trading partner and with tariffs and with a
lot of the disputes that are going to happen, specifically
around electric vehicle mandates and others of which they had
been penalized under the IRA over milk, over oil, timber,
a few other things that significantly cross the border. They

(08:41):
will have to manage their relationship with Donald Trump. You know.
The last thing is with the Canada is we shouldn't
forget that. On a foreign policy level, they've had significant
issues trying to navigate both kind of being a you know,
secondary state to the United States pursuing its own policy
with respect to NATO, Ukraine. They've had serious diplomatic crises

(09:03):
with India, which relates to their own population. So it's
a mess. You know, whoever inherits this from Trudeau is
going to have like a global they have to define
Canada's role like abroad, or define Canada's role with its
major trading partner, the United States, and internally, you know,
they have to justify and to change the relationship or

(09:27):
at least justify and reset the relationship with the social
welfare state to the Canadian to the Canadian populace, which
is significantly, you know, very frustrated right now. So it's
it's an interesting thing to happen. And I do think
it's a like a world historical event in that his passing,
it's kind of like when Angola Merkel, you know, step
down like that. That is true the true sign of

(09:49):
like where we were in one age and now we're
in a different age.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's another sign of the end of
the neoliberal era effectively, you know, global populations. This is
not just specific to the UI rejecting this previous political
framework that has really been ascendant since certainly since the eighties.
You may even trace it back. I mean, it is
ironically I'll say also of course missed the death of

(10:13):
Jimmy Carter, and it is there is something fitting about
him passing now literally on the day his funeral, literally
on the day that Trump is you know, electorally certified,
because Carter is really the first that sort of in
terms of the US terms, starts to initiate the neoliberal ara.
It sort of has one foot in both the New
Deal era and the neoliberal era. And now as Trump

(10:36):
I think closes the door definitively on that period of
political dominance at that very same time as when when
Jimmy Carter leaves this world. Now, I would say that
his advent, those pieces of the economic agenda that he
brought in, all the deregulation and his embrace of this
market driven, value free philosophy. You know, I think that's

(10:59):
been devastating ultimately to the country, certainly to the Democratic Party.
So there's something to be said about that as well.
But you know, Trudeau being leaving is another sign that
this era is done and closed. People are searching for
something different, and whether or not they've landed on it
is another question and kind of the story that we'll
be tracking over our time. I reference the internal turmoil

(11:22):
within his own party, which was kind of the final straw,
and it really did break down over in particular Trudeau's
response to Trump's potential trade war in the the threat
of significant tariffs being marshaled against Canada and Canada's Finance Minister,
Christian Freeland, who is herself a very well known figure

(11:45):
in Canadian politics, actually have a past personal history with her.
She back in the early days before I even was
like a contributor on MSNBC. She went on the Dylan
Ratagan Show, where I also was a regular guest. All
the times I've actually met her, like way back in
the day, but she's become quite a significant figure. She's
been the longtime finance minister under Trudeau. She resigned, and

(12:06):
in particular she took issue with she did not feel
he was taking seriously enough the threats from Trump on tariffs.
She did not feel that they were he was setting
the Canadian economy up to be able to weather a
potential storm coming from the United States of America. And
you know, it's easy to take for granted here the
level of fiscal flexibility that we can have being the

(12:30):
world's reserve currency, but you know, Canada doesn't benefit from
that particular dynamic, so they really needed to kind of
save for a rainy day. And she felt like he was,
you know, instead throwing out kind of political political gimmicks
is what she called it, to try to save his
own ass and rescue his approval rating, which was probably
an impossible mission at this point, so she had resigned.

(12:51):
The other backstory is that he was also reportedly unhappy
with her. He was going to remove her as Finance
minister and put her in this sort of like work
job with no official duties, so she resigned ahead of that.
But again just a sign of how unpopular he'd become,
even within his own party. I think his approval rating
overall in Cannon with something like twenty eight percent, after

(13:13):
having at one point had an approval rating well in
the high sixties. So a massive fall here, and the
Liberal Party overall set for based on the polling, set
for potentially massive, massive losses in parliament. One of the
big warning signs as there had been a special election
I believe in around in and or around Toronto that

(13:37):
you know, should have been a safe seat for Trudeau's
party and they lost, like it was narrow, but they
should have won by like twenty points and they lost,
and that was a real eye opening, like, oh shit,
like this is really bad. This is a political disaster Freeland,
for what it's worth, is also one of the people
who is mentioned as a potential successor to Trudeau. She's

(13:59):
one of the more popular figures in the party, so
she's someone to watch as well. But it's also important
to note, you know, they're going to have to go
through these party elections before Trudeau officially steps down, so
he will continue to be head of state for some
period of time while that is all being resolved.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, that's right, Yeah, people, he's not immediately stepping down.
He'll he's basically like a lame duck figure who will
be in position until they elect that new leader who
will then challenge in the next election. Now, you and
I were taking a look at some of the polling
that you mentioned, and it's just dismal for Justin Trudeau's party.
The Conservative Party looks poised to at least get some gains.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Remember they're poised to at massive gains.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, right, and those gains which will allow them to
form a government, which of course would also change I mean,
it's been a long time, you know, people don't remember
Trudeau has been a figure in Canada now for so
long that this kind of reopens a lot of political
opportunity in the country. So nonetheless, it's very import and
I think part of the reason that you and I

(15:02):
really wanted to lead with it is that it just
feels truly like a major, like a global event, in
that you know that period is over and we are
certainly like in a new period. Yes, you know, I
find interesting, I really do.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
It's interesting. Here is Donald Trump weighing in over on
truth social He says, many people in Canada love being
the fifty first state. He's been doing this whole fifty
first state bit for a while and calling Trudeau, the
governor of Canada, to in a nod to his you
know whatever trolling or whatever this is. He says the
United States can no longer suffer the massive trade deficits
and subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau

(15:38):
knew this and resign. If Canada emerged with the US,
there would be no tariffs, taxes would go way down,
and they would be totally secure from the threat of
the Russian and Chinese ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together.
What a great nation it would be. What do you
think about that? Zager?

Speaker 1 (15:52):
I'm very against this project. I am very pro buying Greenland.
I am very against annexing Canada, as you said, you know,
as we referenced earlier.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Each natural resources. Yeah, that's what I'll.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Tell you this. There's only one province of Canada that
I would take, and that is Alberta because it has
a ton of oil and not enough people, but every
other ones, and we'd be responsible for all of their
population who are used to you know, universal health care
and social welfare state and all of that. We don't
need to inherit all of that. Also, we already guarantee
their security through NATO, so you know, kind of works

(16:29):
out already for them if you were to ask me,
you know, I think I think things are good as
they are right now. Also, you know you have all
that vast territory. Oh is that a Salem sighting seance.
I've shut my door to keep the cat out. Let's
see if he allows that or if he's gonna start
beating on the glass at some point. But yeah, yeah,
in terms of this whole annexation thing, I guess it's

(16:50):
just trolling. Probably it Also, I mean on a base,
on like a literal level, there is truth to it,
Like their economy is wholly relate on us. Their security
is wholly reliant on us. They are a vassal state
and have been, you know for quite some time, sorry Canadians,
is true. You know, your first vast state of the UK,

(17:11):
now your vast state of US. That's what your long
history kindom has been. And I think Trump he's either
trolling or trying to put them in their place for
future negotiations, if I had to guess, that's probably where
it is. Remember, they do have I mean, you know,
I just put them down. They do have a lot
of leverage over US as well, through their dairy farmers,
through oil, through timber. There's a billion, hundreds of billions

(17:35):
of dollars of goods that move across that border, a lot.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Of building materials. I mean, timber is one of them,
but a lot of building materials, and obviously we have
they have a huge cost of living crisis. We obviously
have a huge cost of living crisis as well. And
then the oil in particular, I was reading that a
lot of Canadian oil comes down through Midwest refinery, so
that's really important to the economy in particular there. So yeah,
it's not like they're without their own barg ning chips,

(18:00):
but they've got plenty. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's
a couple things that I think are interesting about this,
not that I really take it all that particularly seriously,
but the interest in Canada and in Greenland are both
sort of like tastic tacit acknowledgments that climate change is real.
It is literally reshaping the globe. And that's part of
the interest, in particular in Greenland is these new shipping

(18:23):
lanes that are opening up because of so much ice
melt in the Arctic. And then the other piece is like,
I'm not interested in any new imperial projects from the US,
but if Canada, if Canada was interested in if there
are like some people that live in the fifty people
that live.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
There are there are more people in my neighborhood than
there are live in Greenland.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Okay, yeah, but anyway, there are people that live there.
But with regards to Canada, I'm not interested in new
imperial project. But you know, if they wanted to voluntarily
join the country, I'd be over to that. I'd be
open to it.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
We don't need any of their French bullshit. Okay, Keebec,
you guys can stay wherever the hell you are with whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Language my high school French.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Oh god, no, no, no, the quebec Qua. Sorry quebec Qua.
You guys have your own. It's a beautiful major.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Issue of Canada. I love Western Canada in particular, you know,
Vancouver Island, Victoria. It's it's a lovely place, lovely people.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
You are absolutely correct, it's a great place. Montreal is
a beautiful city, even though we just shout all over it.
My father got his PhD there, so everybody calmed down.
But you guys can take your poutine and you can
keep that ship up there. All right, it's disgusting. What
else any any other Canadian jokes like, no, that's it
all right. Actually, remember didn't we do a segment like
a month ago where we tried to name Canadian provinces.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
I got better with that than we do Mexico though,
that's true.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it was bad. Mexico was bad. That was bad.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
I felt bad anyway, Sorry Mexico anyway. Kind of an
end of an era with Justin Trudeau moving aside, and
you know, Conservative Party certainly set to make big gains
and we'll see, you know, we'll see what happens then
around the world next. All right, guys, we got a
bunch of Elon Musk updates. In particular, we touched on

(20:08):
this with Ryan yesterday, but I wanted to really dig
into this latest change that he's at least announced that
he's making to the algorithm. Can put this up on
the screen. This is from mister Musk himself. He says,
algorithms tweak coming soon to promote more informational and entertaining content.
We will publish the changes to add ex english. Our
goal is to maximize unregarded user seconds. Too much negativity

(20:31):
is being pushed that technically grows usertime, but not unregretted
user time. Many people noted that he is not exactly
himself following this new encouragement of positive, informative, entertaining political
content on Twitter. Here he is replying to someone f

(20:53):
you retard and then immediately posting, please post a bit
more positive, beautiful informative content on this platform. And Ryan's point,
which I think is an important one, is like, oh yeah,
now that you and your guy are coming into office,
suddenly it's like everybody calling to let's just be positive,
Like the world's actually a beautiful place and things are
going great, So we're going to use the algorithm to

(21:15):
promote good news about the new incoming Trump administration. And
you know, I mean, it's just like another example of
the way Elon clearly bought Twitter to be an ideological
weapon for himself and whatever political movements he aligned with
aligns with, So no one should be surprised when he's
just out and out announcing the way that he's shaping

(21:36):
the use of this platform in you know, directions that
he thinks will be beneficial to him and his goals.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
It's also just a bad idea because, like, let me
break it for you down, folks, good content and all
of that doesn't engage. There's a reason that it did
well because that's what the people engage with the most.
It's not because it was being amplified. People have tried
this in the past. You know, I would wait both
bristly and I've been around long enough to have seen
algorithms when they were untweaked way back in the day,

(22:05):
the before times. And actually I would say it was
even crazier and more chaotic then in terms of what
the you know, when real quote unquote free speech and
all that would rain. There was some crazy shit that
was going around on Twitter on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I don't know. I don't know that my Twitter timeline
has ever had more actual Nazis in it. With that
is amount of an engagement that they have as it
does right.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Now, that's only because they're pushing it to you. But
again that actually kind of shows what I'm saying is
that they're pushing it to you because they want to
piss you off and make sure that people are engaging
with that. I mean, I remember, you know when Isis
had free reign on the internet and all that. These
were crazy times. So this experiment has been run and
on an engagement level, it just doesn't work, I do think,

(22:49):
I mean, I guess you're right in terms of electorally,
the interesting point on it is about specifically that now
that Donald Trump is president, trying to vibe and tone
shift it towards something positive. Again, I just don't think
that it's going to work. I also would note that
this came after Elon himself found the very first time

(23:11):
that he has truly pissed off a significant portion of
the Baga political base, and since then has really been
trying to retrench and move away from and engage with
topics that get those people back on his side. That
is actually what I would say is behind all of
this is that for the very first time, Elon got

(23:34):
really a taste of his own medicine, or not his,
of what it's like to be engaged in politics online,
which is it's a dirt. You know, it's dirty, it's
a nasty business. You took a position, you insulted a
significant portion of the people who voted for the political
party and for the candidate that you pushed, who happened
to just disagree with you on a policy. You call

(23:56):
it what did he say? There are idiots or my
mouth breathing morons or something like that.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
He's said many things about yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
For disagreeing with him on H one BE policy, and
then all of a sudden he's like, oh, well, we
just need to be positive. It's like, well, does positive
mean unlimited H one b's for the Tesla Company? I
think it might be. I think it might be.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, his ego was clearly bruised in exactly.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
And I mean they what's happened to the guy? Where's
he been? No one's seen him since he said white
people are lazy. You know, It's like Vivike where are you?
Where are you out there somewhere? It's in a while,
we haven't heard from you. Where's the truth? Vivic tell
us more about Boy Meets World and Saved by the
Bell was dying over there?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Oh did you see the clip of him literally in October.
So we're talking like that three months ago saying the
polar opposite thing about h one Be's.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
What did he say?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
He well, because his cope was like, no, I haven't
changed my position. I've always wanted to reform the program.
But there's a clip of him with Charlie Kirka at
some turning points event where he is like, no, my
belief is if a pro there's a problem with the program,
it needs to be destroyed entirely. And say, I mean,
he sounded like, you know, the simpler things that Steve
Bannon and culture have been saying about h one B's

(25:08):
and that I'm sure you would probably echo in yours
in some ways in my comments as well, he sounded
exactly like that. And now you know, three seconds later
when he's on Doge, when he's got you know, in
the Elon camp, suddenly there's a suddenly white people are
lazy and we need to have h one B labor.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
But we need to stop Corey from you know, I'll
save my commentary. I still I'm going to do a
long mile a long about this. I know Vivic. I
grew up with Vivic. These are deep seated wounds. Some
of us went one way, others went the other way.
Wanted to generate the mat.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That came out. Actually that this was a deep seated way.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, I mean, it's been sitting there for thirty years.
I mean, who the kid still cares about Boy Meets World?
What's wrong with you?

Speaker 2 (25:54):
I know? And talking about mule culture. I'm like, mule
culture doesn't exist, and it was better when it did.
Button way, like that was Actually the culture you're talking
about is superior to what we have now.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
You just know, there was a skinny math Olympia Vivike
sitting at the food court and no girls were talking
to him, and he was staring across it limited to
watching them gather, and he was like, man, you know,
I just wish that they would acknowledge my existence.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
He was, like I said, drafting this manifesto in his
head as he sat there.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
I grew up with Vivic. I think I understood, like
with the Vics of the world. I think I understand
him very deep psychological legs.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I know we're digressing. But the thing that I've been
dying to talk to you about this, the thing that
was interesting to me is like, actually didn't grow up
with the Vikes, because I grew up in this like
you know, small town or whatever. But I grew I
What I have witnessed is when I lived in Manhattan
and I got to see these like wealthy elites in
the way they raised their kids. The way they raised

(26:54):
their kids is like the model that the Vike is pushing,
which I always found to be really sort of like
soulless and horrible because it was all like from the
time the child is born, we have to get them
in the right playgroup. We have to get them or
in the right preschool, we have to get them in
the right tutoring said. They need to learn Latin, they
need to be on the violin. Fencing is the best

(27:14):
way to get into an ivy League school. So they
need to take up fencing. And it's like Jesus got like,
let these kids have a life ounside of your goals
and aspirations and molding them into the perfect like market shareholder,
value driven machine. So that was the part of it
that I was like, Oh, actually, the culture I've seen
that you're describing isn't an immigrant culture necessarily. It's this

(27:38):
elite white culture that I saw in Manhattan.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
But well, I would say elite whites barred it from us.
But the truth is is that it is. There's so
much to say. It is terrible. I mean, there are
some things you can learn from it which are good.
I would say Amy Chua, herself, the original Tiger Mother,
says she has huge regrets about the way that she
raised her kids. Interesting, yeah, which I think is important,

(28:02):
you know, for people who actually follow that model. And
by the way, let's look at the results. You know,
our kids have turned out great. You know, I think
they what are they? Oh my god, we're going in
such a candent, but I think they both went to
Harvard and they clerked for Kavanar or whatever. But they're
around my age, so it's like, well, what else have
you done? But what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (28:19):
This is my problem too, is the the worldview that
Vivek is espousing is effectively the one that was sold
underneath liberals and both by elite Republicans and Democrats. It's like,
if you're failing, it's your fault and you screwed up
or you screwed up your kids, or your culture is
defective or whatever. And Number one only values people inso

(28:41):
much as they go to Harvard and have a company
and you know, have this like very material based, you know,
market based success and ignores any other values. And part
of why this was so such an incredible moment in
the Trumpest movement is in some ways at least the
idea of trump Ism was a rejection of that was

(29:02):
saying like, no, we shouldn't just be driven by like, oh,
we can lift the GDP by a little bit, and
that's what we should do. It's like, no, there are
other values that matter, and there are other human qualities
too that matter. So that was part of what I
found so extraordinary about it. Not to mention it was
just like the sort of things that Republicans say all
the time about like black culture or Latino culture or whatever.

(29:23):
Now the gaze is turned on white people and there's
a big uproar over it. But anyway, I think it
was a very important actual moment in the you know,
as the next Trump administration is forming, and as we're
getting a picture of what these divides are going to
be and what these fights are going to be, because
you and I have been talking about how there are
these vast ideological divides between the Elon Musk view of

(29:46):
the world and at least the Trump narrative that's been
sold of the world. Now, Trump of course comes in
and wholeheartedly backs Elon and had already I mean, he'd
already affected or taken this position, so you know, it
wasn't new, but you know it is in some ways
that illustrated how that position is directly contradictory to the

(30:06):
narrative that he has sold of the world that has
made him such a political sit It.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Will also really manifest what we're tracking right now is
the Republicans are on track try and get a major
bill through Congress by April. One bill or two. They
haven't decided yet which one it is, which is going
to include immigration taxes, and I think there's a third one.
I'm oh terriffs, So it's going to include three of

(30:31):
the most contracts. Now here's a big question, what is
Donald J. Trump's White House going to push which is
going to include in that bill because the Republican Party currently,
as is constitutent in Congress, spans the gamut from we
need unlimited legal migration, including a massive expansion of H
one B to air immigration moratorium like where I am,

(30:54):
and all kinds of stuff that's in the middle. Now
it's going to be some sort of quote unquote compromise.
We have no idea what that looks like. But if
is Donald J. Trump, for example, going to side you know,
with the fortune five hundred, not just rhetorically, but be like, no,
I won't pass a bill that doesn't include uncapped H
one B country quotas. You know, these are all like
actually interesting questions.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
The other thing that Elon is doing on Twitter is
apparently introduced these sort of like I don't know, social
credit scores that indicate like if you go on Twitter,
your Twitter user, and you ask rock what is my
ex score? It will tell you and then it will
give you some indication of like, well, you know you're
doing okay, but your content is just like not that
engaging or whatever. One thing people have found is that

(31:41):
there is a mass number of people myself and yourself included,
many people have been tying it to like, if you've
posted about Israel's genocide and gospel, I.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Think that's that's the connective because I don't post about Israel, right.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
But maybe you're too closely tied to me and Ryan
or what. I don't know. But in any case, we
get a thirty eight out of one hundred, so it's
not a good score, which means that we're effectively not
really being super promoted by the algorithm. And Steve Bannon,
who's always an interesting voice on these things and has
been extremely adversarial towards Elon Musk for a while now actually,

(32:14):
and has been kind of consistent in it to his credit,
he weighed in and described these as effectively communist social
credit scores. Let me just see where. Let me pull
up this video and start a little ways in so
you can hear Bannett's comments about this.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
This is the danger of the guy, it's told, this
is the CCP, this is a social credit score.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
This is way he's gone to.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
He's got glass draw he can't take because of the
I don't know, the autism worries, and the spectrum is
clear not he's got the maturity of a loven year old.
You can tell that but he's it's obvious he can't
take criticism. One of his weaknesses is that he needs
to be loved. He needs the masses to love him.

(32:56):
You can tell me he's on the stage. He needs
that glory. For instance, I don't give a damn right
as long as the objective. That's why twelve o'clock heis
on a movie. It's the objective. Whatever happens doesn't matter.
It's the objective. It's the objective of the accounts and
nothing else. They say it when it all costs, Hey,
you have to win. You don't need anything else. He

(33:18):
must have adoration.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
You can tell that.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
It lights him up.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
So then when the platform, when his zaparas turns against him,
and particularly people that cheered him, saying, hey, we don't
we hate what you're doing to this country. We know
now that you're in you're lying to us, bald faced live.
These are not higher skill people. When they turn all
of a sudden, he has to go to what's the
Chinese credit score? This is to have a digital ghetto
and to only have raised up what praises him. That

(33:42):
that's the that's the that is like the little boy's mentality.
If I want to be the superhero. I want to
put the cape on and kind of skip around.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
So you get a sense there. But I mean, I
think he's spot on in his analysis effectively what you
were saying as well with regard to you know, the
way now he's weighing in on all these global politics
and pulling back up this grooming gang scandal from ten
years ago in the UK to try to rewin for
Curry favor with the right wing magabase that was pissed

(34:13):
off at him over h one b tweaking the algorithm,
instituting these scores. All of these things are you know,
attempt to use this tool that he purchased for his
own ends. Sometimes those ends may have, you know, things
that I agree with, they may be in line with
things that you agree with, and sometimes they won't be.
And that's why I've tried to consistently say the problem

(34:35):
here is the principle of having oligarchs with so much power,
including power within media, obviously power within government. Now he
feels like he can wait into politics in any number
of countries and try to control the outcomes around the world,
and that is something that on principle we should reject
because it's short circuits the actual functioning of democracy here.

(34:56):
And so now that some portion of the MAGA sees that,
now they've become aware of, like suddenly they're realizing, Oh,
it turns out x isn't a free speech platform. For example,
it turns out Elon is perfectly willing to censor when
he finds the content to be to be inconvenient for him.

(35:17):
This has again long been the case, but now on
the right there's increasingly more awareness of it because it's
been trained at some of them. I mean, he's like
banned gropers and stuff like that who have been critical
of him. In this H one B visa fight, he
actually banned I can put this up on the scrange
just get your reaction to this, as well as Steve Bannon.
He actually banned this journalist who did a deep dive

(35:40):
into Adrian Dittman. For people who are not initiated, there's
been a whole theory that this character on Twitter, Adrian Dittman,
who sounds a lot like Elon and is this massive
Elon simp that this was actually Elon's old account. So
this journalist went and like actually found out, No, here
is Adrian Dittman. He is an actual human being. Here's

(36:01):
where he lives, Here's what he does, not like his
specific house, but like here's the country he lives in.
And Elon apparently banned this journalist for revealing the truth
about Adriane Ditman. And I guess the theory is quote
unquote doxing. But seemed like a perfectly legitimate journalistic enterprise.
And again it's not like, not like this journalist posted

(36:21):
Adrian's house or you know, specific like address or anything
of that nature. So anyway, it's kind of wild, especially
because you would think that he would be happy that
the truth about this was exposed. But I guess he
kind of liked the game of people thinking that Agel
was him or whatever. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Look, Elon is like a king. He's like a capricious monarch.
And so actually I think Curtis Yarvin I heard him
say this. He's like, you know, the law applies equally
to all citizens except for the king. So if you
come with the king, then the law no longer applies.
And I mean, I think that's basically accurate for those
who wanted Elon to be you know, I mean, I

(36:59):
think I've always been pretty ride on the show as
to like what Eon is exactly for the rest of
those sorry to burst your bubble. Nobody's perfect, nobody is
ever going to be you know, some great uh selfless
hero Elon's in this game, you know for and also look,
I mean in the H one B thing in particular,

(37:19):
that might be the single biggest threat, you know, if
there was a restriction to the Tesla business. Tesla right
now is not doing that well. Their stock has popped,
but they have major problems going into this year with sales,
and they've had this price cut strategy and others. Right
now the stock you know, which is a significantly put
pressure on them to deliver and to they all these

(37:41):
promotions and other things. A lot of the great you know,
original sales of the company and the hype surrounding that
on top of Elon himself is like personal image has
been starting to show in some of their sales data.
This is from literal Wall Street people that I've read
who are analyzing the stock, so H one B and
keeping labor costs and all of that down is actually
vital to Tesla the company. Also to SpaceX, by the way,

(38:06):
which are you know, miraculously to companies which heavily rely
on what engineers, and on keeping and making sure that
the talent of all of that is paid as little
as possible. Well, you know, miraculously. Of course, He's going
to use his tremendous wealth and his control of this
platform to protect what is the most vital part of
his entire network, which is the stock of Tesla. So

(38:29):
I think people should also be very clear eyed where
all of that is. There have been times where Elon,
as you know, sometimes Elon will act in such a
way which is beneficial to you know, whatever, But at
the same time, like, let's not forget where all these
people's bread is buttered. This applies to everybody, to Zuk,
to Elon, to Jeff Bezos, to Tim Cook, you know,

(38:51):
and all these other folks. I mean, what I do
at least appreciate about this is that for years, so
many of these people want wanted to claim that their
company's success and future and all of that is wholly
you know, divorced from the United States government. But what
you are obviously seeing in real time is that the

(39:13):
policy of trade, the policy of tax, the policy and
foreign policy of the United States government is the is
the actual, like major determination of a lot of these companies'
success and the opening of trade to China. I mean,
why do you think Tim Cook is given a million
dollars to Donald Trump's inauguration fund out of the goodness
of his heart? Or because China is their number one

(39:35):
market for iPhone and they're already having problems. You know,
why do you think so many of these people are
you know, Amazon, one of the companies most susceptible to
tear iff pressure is going to be Amazon because half
the ship people buy off of there is not even half,
probably more is made in China. Crap the lithium that
is in a Tesla battery, Giga Shanghai, one of the

(39:58):
largest producers of Tesla's in the world, is he located there?
All of this You know, I could go on forever.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Well, and I'm sure you took note too that in
this whole like spending fight which Elin and Viveig pasture like,
oh this is so principal, blah blah blah. One of
the things that they got pulled down of the original
bill was restrictions on high tech investment in China, which
I'm sure that was like that was the most important
part of this fight for Elon when he saw that
and was like, oh, we can't have this, so let
me throw a fit about these, you know, and try

(40:25):
to create an ideological point that conservatives can agree with
in an effort to strip the sound in the bill,
and lo and behold it stripped on the bill, and
suddenly he likes the bill and the bill passes. So yeah,
he has his own ideological and personal self interest goals
and everyone needs to keep their eye on that ball.
At the same time, you know, there's been we covered

(40:47):
yesterday with Ryan the whole like going after here Starmer
and bringing back up these grooming gangs from ten years ago,
horrific scandal. Like don't get I don't want to minimize it,
but it was a decade ago. There have been, you know,
lots of reports analyzing what happened, and actually the criticism
is that the recommendations of those reports have not been
implemented either under Cure Starmar or under the previous conservative administration.

(41:10):
But you know, it's pretty clear what's going on here
in terms of him trying to rescue his own reputation
with Megan, not to mention, you know, the the other
side of it, as he gets to meddle in other
countries politics and see how it goes for him there,
and see if he can get an administration that's more
friendly to him there as well. So the latest in
this battle, as he says this on Acts, he says,

(41:31):
America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.
Yes or no, you know, shit posting, but anyway, and
I say yes.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
You know, see and I don't know. I have a
very soft spot for the UK.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
I know you love the UK.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
I love the UK.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
So you take the UK but not Canada.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Oh, absolutely, the seed of our culture, the seat of
the Anglo, the seat of Anglo culture. You know, we
owe it to a lot of them. My own history,
my background. You know, my wife is Irish too. We've
all been colonized by the British. But then we came
to him America, you know, so there's a lot of
we have a lot of ties to the UK culturally,
but you know, in general, what I find again about

(42:09):
this is his own like capricious and frankly you know
now that he has real political power. Someone made a
good point, you know, now in what is it January seventh,
so thirteen days, Elon Musk will be a United States
official and all but name, he effectively will be like
an envoy of Donald J. Trump, whether he's appointed by
the US government or not, you know, going out and

(42:29):
interfering in the internural politics of the UK, specifically with
an ideological movement like Nigel Farage. Here calling for Nigel
Farage saying he doesn't have what it takes to be
reform leader. I mean, that is one of the most
insane statements I've ever heard. Nigel Farage is almost single
handedly responsible not only for reform, but for being the

(42:52):
og on Brexit, for calling so many of the anti
EU forces, for coalescing the criticism of the conservative and
liberal governments, and of being anti neoliberal itself. I mean,
this is like, I don't know, I can't even think
of a comp here in the Honestly, the comp would
be saying Donald J. Trump doesn't have what it takes, Like,

(43:14):
are you sterious? This is one of the most important
political figures in UK history and like to say he
doesn't have what it takes whenever he was responsible for
building this thing out of nothing, for having UKIP be
the force that it was for criticizing, you know, for
pushing Brexit then criticizing the neoliberal Brexit that eventually happened,

(43:34):
is just ridiculous. He's the only person who has any
sort of name ID credentials, you know, credentials, and frankly,
just like the credibility on all of these issues that
these voters, you know, who have been betrayed by the
Conservative Party and by the Labor Party. For Elon to

(43:55):
just you know, decide willy nilly to these people, you
know that this guy doesn't have what it takes is ridiculous.
I mean, Faraje himself came out and spoke against that.
A lot of the people who've worked for him, people
like Raheem Kassam and others, have just been like a sorry, Elon,
your moron. You know, this is a real This is
just one of those like arrogant parachuting in and deciding
that you think that you know better than others. And

(44:18):
you know, maybe it worked in America.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Such a commentrait with billionaires of like they think because
they were good at something, that they're going to be
good at everything, and especially when they start dabbling in politics.
But yeah, I mean in America, sure, it worked because
he gave a quarter of a billion dollars to Donald
Trump and guess what that's gonna buy. And Donald Trump
is an extremely transactional figure. And by the way, Elon

(44:40):
is a lot more popular, although his popular is kind
of going like this in the US at this point,
but he's way more popular in the US than he
is in the UK, so that gives him more cultural
power as well. I mean he's now a US citizen,
so that also gives him more power in terms of
the say of our politics. Is the foreign national just
popping into UK politics and trying to tell them what's
But Farage is in a position where he thinks he

(45:02):
could achieve potentially and his party could achieve real power,
so they don't want to embrace, for example, you know,
not even controversial like criminal figures like Tommy Robinson, who
that seems to be the source of the rift between
him and Elon, because Elon has also been going to
the matt defending Tommy Robinson, who's in prison for lying

(45:24):
about this fifteen year old Syrian refugee and claiming that
he was part of these grooming gangs, which was found
to be inaccurate. He kept doing it and then is
ultimately thrown in prison for it. And you can debate
whether that's an over the top reaction or not.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
I mean, I definitely think it is. But it's like, look,
the whole grooming thing is just so annoying to me,
because I was telling you I wrote this is one
of the first stories I ever wrote about, was the
grooming scandal, the Roterham cover up. So much of what
has happened there. It was, by the way, a lot
of people don't know this, but one of the precipitating
things that actually influenced Brexit and was one of those

(46:00):
those issues which was a sleeper with the British working class. Yeah,
that's about immigration and about the refugee crisis, as we
also saw with serious rape allegations and cover ups for
example in Germany and Sweden and elsewhere. You can debate
that if you want to, but I'm telling you that
it was very important. The thing is with e On
is they kind of like came out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Well, it's just disgusting to pretend like you care about
an issue when you only came to it because you
think it serves your own personal ends. Like that means
you don't actually care about it, right and for you know,
Barry Weissu's now writing articles about it on her website,
like you only care about this now ten years later
because you want to use these people and their horror

(46:40):
to make a political point, and that really is actually grotesque.
It actually is disgusting to use it as a cultural
cudgel and displays that you don't actually and aren't actually
serious about the issue. The other thing that's happened here
that I wanted to quickly get to is a bunch
of European leaders now react acting. You've had Emmanuel Macron

(47:03):
wide in. Let me get rid of that. There we go.
Emmanuel Makron joins growing criticism of Elon Musk in Europe.
He's added his voice to a growing chorus of European
criticisms of Elon Musk, joined the Norwegian and British prime
ministers and a German government spokesperson on Monday, and responding
to a barrage of hostile posts by Musk, Macron said, specifically,

(47:25):
ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner
of one of the world's largest social networks would be
supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections,
including in Germany. You also had the Norwegian leader saying,
I find it worrying a man with enormous access to
social media and huge economic resources involves himself so directly

(47:48):
in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not
the way things should be between democratic allies. In Germany
they had similar comments saying like hands off our democracy
was one of the one of the comments here. So
there's a huge backlash among European leaders who of course
feel like you know, they don't want they want to

(48:10):
learn some of the lessons from what happened here and
the level of influence that Elon Musk has. The UK
is moving to potential, potentially block some of the contributions
that he could theoretically make through a corporate entity into
British politics so that they, you know, don't have the
same level of corrupting influence of money that we have
had here as well. And also the Europeans are more

(48:32):
open to the idea of we could just ban the platform,
like we could just take a harder line in terms
of allowing Twitter, you know, our citizens to have Twitter
access at all. So I think those are all things
at the on the table. Now that Elon has made
it quite clear he wants to use Twitter as a
weapon of Ryan called it like a weapon of regime

(48:53):
change in these various countries. Now, whether you'd have the
same success in these countries as he has here is
an open question. But clearly, when you're talking about the
richest man on the planet, he's going to have some influence,
He's going to have some sway, especially when he has
this very powerful social media platform.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, oh look, I don't think the UK should ban
Twitter or anything else. I don't think that. I think
the EU is way too censorious, the Germans and others
too high ended. People know of my disdain and hatred
for Europe. All of that said, they are proud people
in their own right and in general. You know, when

(49:29):
I would say this about any country us going and
trying to inter I mean just imagine if there was
like some British oligarch who came over to hear and
was trying to tell us, so I'd be like, shut
the fuck up, get out of my country. And look
the UK and Germany and others as beaten down and
ridiculous to some of their populations. Maybe from time to time.

(49:51):
They themselves are a proud people with their own long history,
and I would not personally recommend it. I would never
you know, have the gall to go to the UK
and be like Nigel Farage, you don't have what it takes,
you know, when you're a guest or something else in
another country. I think you should act that way. And
especially now for Zuckerberg, for Elon and all of these
other folks. I mean, this is part of the problem

(50:13):
that they've always had. These are not just American companies,
they're global. I mean, you know, his Meta has three
billion daily active users. The United States population is only
three hundred and thirty million. That means that the vast
majority of their user base is foreign. You have the
same thing with I think with Twitter it's still a
bit more skewed, but you know, they have a very
large percentage of the user base and others, so you know,

(50:35):
you also need to tread lightly. And this is also
probably some of the problems that they themselves have faced.
We'll see how it works out. I honestly have no idea.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and get to Mark
Zuckerberg and when he's up.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
To okay, some big News this morning, as Crystal alluded
to Mark Zuckerberg in probably the biggest vibe shift knee
bend video I've ever seen from one of these people
has released a new video dropped around seven am this morning.
We're gonna watch it all together. I'll just give the

(51:07):
top line for people who are wondering. Number one, Zuckerberg
says they are ending their content moderation and censorship policies
around quote unquote misinformation, including moving the team to Texas.
Two is all political content will no longer be censored
on the Instagram platform, meaning that previously people who needed

(51:27):
to opt in to view accounts such as Crystal and
I to engage with anything political, that gait will be
taken off, he announces as well. About what did he say,
He says that specific topics like gender and immigration will
no longer be censored, so it is just tonally. I

(51:48):
want everybody to listen to this because again, this is
like the biggest vibe shift I have ever seen. Let's
take it to get.

Speaker 6 (51:55):
Back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.
I started bilding social media to give people a voice.
I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about
the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe
this today, but a lot has happened over the last
several years. There's been widespread debate about potential harms from
online content. Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor

(52:18):
more and more. A lot of this is clearly political,
but there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism,
child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously
and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.
So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes.

(52:39):
Even if they accidentally censor just one percent of posts,
that's millions of people, and we've reached a point where
it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The
recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards
once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back
to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our

(52:59):
polllo in restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically,
here's what we're going to do. First. We're going to
get rid of fact checkers.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
All right, So replacing fact checkers with community notes. By
the way, we've talked about this before. I'm very anti community.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Notes that more pro community notes.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
I think all content should float on its own. I
do not. I'm not a fan of just like users
deciding what's true and what's not. I actually was community noted,
and it was extremely stupid. I just want people to
know it's not personal, because I've said this way before.
I also was subject, yes, but but I will note
that it was a confirmation to me in that I

(53:40):
got piled on by a bunch of Ukraine fanatics because
I had put out a post being like, hey, you know,
it's insane that Ukraine is assassinating Russian generals on the
streets of Moscow, and the community note was like, this
is a normal practice during war and it cited the
US operation to kill admiral like Yamamo and World War Two,

(54:01):
and I'd like to be like, yeah, that's the same,
except for the US was on a client state of
anyone else during World War Two, and we do weren't
reliant on i don't know, like the UK or whatever
just to apply all of our weapons when we were
doing that. So I'm just saying, you know, it has
bad context. And I'm very against the policy.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Well, I just to defend community notes, since you're shitting
on community notes. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I
do think for me, it's helpful when there's a community
note there and you can just kind of like evaluate
the note with regards to the content. And I also
do enjoy you know, some of the pylons in community
notes are funny as.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Well, so it's definitely fun, especially when people post stupid shit.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
I think it's I guess what I would say is,
I think it is superior to having some body of
so called experts who are you know, creating decisions from
on high with no ability to input or fight back
or whatever. I think that community notes are a superior
innovation for that previous model. So I think this is like,

(55:02):
I think this is an improvement in terms of the
Facebook slash meta context.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Definitely an improvement as opposed to straight up censorship, but
still not the one I would I would like to
see at all. Just let fly number two, he says
they're simplifying their content policies. Three, this was the new
approach to policy enforcer. I'm going to play a little
bit of this because this one will see it.

Speaker 6 (55:23):
Third, we're changing how we enforce our policies to reduce
the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship
on our platforms. We used to have filters that scanned
for any policy violation. Now we're going to focus those
filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations, and for
lower severity violations, we're going to rely on someone reporting

(55:45):
an issue before we take action. The problem is that the.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Filter's basically saying that the filter itself will no longer
automatically remove content. Number four. This was what I was
talking about, quote unquote bringing back civic content, as we
have explained before, and actually just personally crystalized accounts. I
have seen this. We don't really care about our Instagram followings,
but it was interesting. In the first two years of

(56:11):
us starting rising and all of that, both of us
are masked somewhere around two hundred thousand followers on Instagram.
We have not gained a net follower in over three
years because of this policy. Just to show what it means,
which basically, if you post anything political, people have to
opt in to seeing political content. So this effectively has

(56:32):
removed political content from their algorithm. Here, Zuckerberg says they
are reversing that.

Speaker 6 (56:37):
Policy back civic content. For a while, the community asked
to see less politics because it was making people stressed,
so we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like
we're in a new era now and we're starting to
get feedback that people want to see this content again.
So we're going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram,
and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive. Fifth,

(57:01):
we're going to move our trust and safety and content
moderation teams out of California, and our US based content
review is going to be based in Texas. As we
work to promote free expression. I think that will help
us build trust to do this work in places where
there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally,
we're going to work with President Trump to push back

(57:23):
on governments around the world. They're going after American companies
and pushing to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
All right, So there we go. You know, I didn't
even play all of the amazing parts where he goes
after the quote unquote Legacy Media, which I should note
that he partnered with and listened to for, you know,
basically the entirety of the Trump era. Look, you can
read this in a variety of ways. I would read
it in two. One is, this is a company that

(57:53):
rightfully should be scared of government policy and the anti
trust lawsuits. It is under active litigation right now from
the United States government over you know, Department of Justice
antitrust violations. So that's one. Two is obviously they also
were on the different side of the literal popular vote
of this selection. You know, one of the things that

(58:15):
he notes in there is that the legacy media has
constantly been pushing this narrative that you have, this narrative
that you know, misinformation is a threat to democracy that
he has said. He's like, clearly, you know, we are
out of step, he says, quote with the mainstream discourse
on even cites issues like gender and immigration, two of

(58:39):
obviously the most hot button issues. So it is both
like a retrenchment of a quote unquote like woke content moderation.
But I think obviously it fits also with his you know,
the company itself metas a multi one hundred billion dollars
or whatever market cap. I don't even know what it
is right now. This is a company tremendously vulnerable to

(59:01):
Department of Justice policy, and he wants to get on
the good side of Donald Trump. Remember he's donating as
well one million dollars through the Donald Trump Inaugural Fund.
So there's a confluence of personal interests of cultural interest.
And I mean, for me, it's just crazy. This is
a man who I watched in real time go from

(59:24):
giving a speech defending the ability of Holocaust deniers, which
I agree with, by the way, as unpopular as that
may sound, to be able to post on a Facebook platform.
He then reverses that policy some years later, giving into
this you know, legacy media stuff. Then five years later
decides to give this Georgetown speech where he's like, actually,

(59:44):
we stand for free expression and that's why you should ban TikTok.
And now it's you know, it's just the constant moving
around shows both the influence of corporate Uh, these corporations
are under both from their shareholders, from the media and others,
but also just it can be so capricious. Yeah, because
just why And you know, if they had just stuck

(01:00:04):
with the first principles from the very beginning, they would
have been better off.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
But I truly believe that's the thing is they don't
have principles. They're like, don't get confused to think that
they have principles. They're trying to ride whatever political wave
is ascended at the moment. And so, you know, in
the early days of social media and then algorithmic social media,
there was all this promise of democracy in the Arab
Spring and this idea under like the Obama era. You know,

(01:00:28):
Obama was very close with all of these tech titans
and they were kind of an integral part of the
democratic coalition at that point. All of this sense of
the coalition of the ascendant and how this like liberal
democratic order was just going to grow and you know,
justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron and Barack Obama, like this
was the model for the world for the future. And

(01:00:51):
then in the Trump era, you know, in twenty sixteen,
the sense from Zuckerberg and I think some of these
other tech titans is that Tump is kind of this
was kind of an aberration, right, this is a weird
moment in time. He doesn't win the popular vote. Hillary
Clinton is a uniquely flawed candidate who runs a uniquely
bad campaign, and so the bet is effectively on the resistance,

(01:01:14):
and you know, there's all this concern about misinformation and
Russia and foreign interference and all of these sorts of things.
And you know, and also the Trumpest movement did take
a lot of energy and have a lot of sort
of like you know, far right internet culture embedded into
that initial Trump campaign. So there's a fear about that,

(01:01:37):
and that's how they place their chips in that era.
You know, that kind of continues through the Biden era
and now with Trump winning and you have the rise
of the right in many countries around the country and
the really the fall of the neoliberals in all kinds
of countries around the world, the bet is being placed
very differently. You layer on top of that, like this

(01:01:58):
was not just to bend the name that to Trump,
it was also been the Knew video to Elon, which
is you know, adopting the community notes, moving to Texas,
adopting some of elon sort of framing and language. So
he's recognizing these two power centers in American politics, both
of whom can cause real problems for him personally, real

(01:02:21):
problems for his company's bottom line, and he's doing what
he can to get on the right side of both
of them, and Donald Trump being the uniquely brazenly transactional
person that he is, Like, if you're out there flattering
him and say I'm gonna work with you in your
noble mission to embrace free expression, which of course is bullshit.

(01:02:42):
Trump is like wants to, you know, make people it
easier for to suit people for libel and defamation. He
wants to ban flag burning. I mean, he wants to
deport anyone who says something he doesn't like about the
country of the foreign country of Israel, et cetera, et cetera.
But he knows that if he flatters Trump and frames

(01:03:02):
him in positive terms, that that's going to be better
for him, and that that may well short circuit some
of the cases against him and certainly will help to
undercut any additional enforcement action against him. So yeah, I
see this in align with Tim Cook and Sam Altman.
Altman is the one, the other one who's the sort
of prime example of doing the need ben not just
to Trump but also to Elon, with whom he has

(01:03:24):
like personal grievance but has gone out of his way
to be like, Oh, I think Elon's going to do
a great job at doje. I know he would never
use like personal animis or petty grudges against people. Of
course he wouldn't do that. So this is kind of
the story of this moment in time and of the
way these corporate titans are reading the global political mood

(01:03:45):
and certainly the American domestic political mood.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Yeah, it's it is genuinely amusing. I also think there's
been a personal evolution with Mark Zuckerberg ever since he
got into martial arts. For example, here we have Mark
has announced that Dana White will be joining the board
of Meta. He says, I am excited to kick off
the year when some exciting news we've been working on

(01:04:11):
for a while, Dana White and a few others are
joining Meta's board of directors. We have massive opportunities. He
is the president CEO of UFC, built into one of
the most popular, fastest growing, most popular sports enterprises in
the world, and an entrepreneur Trump. Yes, that's right. He's
also friends with Donald Trump. So two birds with just
one stone. I think they're with Zuck. You know what

(01:04:34):
I was fascinated by is, like you said, it is
clear to me that Bezos and Zuck I think I
mean jealous may be too. I think jealous is the
correct word with Bezos. I don't know if that's the
correct word with Duck. But these guys are online and
they're you know, they're annoyed that Emon is soaking up
the role that Zuckerberg, for example, once held under the

(01:04:54):
Barack Obama administration, the pinnacle of American leadership, of innovation,
of you know, the next step for American GDP. And
so Zuck is watching all of this happen. He also
has the Hydra, which he frankly created, you know, by
bending the knee to Cheryl Sandberg and all these other

(01:05:14):
idiots who he hired for the content moderation. I mean,
do you remember how ridiculous things got Crystal where they
had the independent Facebook board like the Supreme Court.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, like there were some sovereign nation that was going
to pass judgment on all of us. But well, you're
right to those names in particular. So all of these
tech oligarchs that we're talking about, I think all of them,
maybe not yeah, all of them, maybe not Bezos, And
to be frank we don't really totally know, but they're
all engaged in arms raies right now over AI and

(01:05:48):
the amount of money and corporate focus on AI really
dwarfs pretty much anything else, and that is going to
be there are going to be critical decisions made with
regard to govern contracts and with regard to potential regulation,
which company gets a leg up, which company doesn't, Which

(01:06:08):
company is favored in this giant global arms race to
achieve the you know, the best age AI, and too
you know the arms race ultimately to achieve artificial general
intelligence AGI. That's the subtext of all of this as well,
and so a lot of this jockeying and positioning and
trying to curry favor is also about trying to obtain

(01:06:31):
favored status visa VI. That race which is going to
be incredibly consequential for all of our lives and is
really kind of happening behind the scenes and is the
context for a lot of these fights, including the H
one B fight, by the way, is like a side
event to the main event, which is this battle over
the development of AI, which requires massive both electricity resources

(01:06:53):
and what they call compute like computer analytical resources. Altman
is at odds with Microsoftware now his partner, because of
the amount of commute compute that he wants and the
amount of corporate resources that that is required. So in
any case, that's the other sort of underlying piece of
business piece of this that you know, we all need

(01:07:15):
to keep our eyes on because it could end up
being in the quite near term, extraordinarily impactful on human life,
on the labor markets, on our country, on geopolitics, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Very true, interesting, nonetheless, vibe shifts, indeed, vibe shifts galore.
I'm excited to see what the next one will be.
I can't even think of what a comp would be
to watch somebody just flip like this. It's just so astounding.
And again, you know, as you said, they don't have principles,
But it would have been better off if you just
hadn't done any of this crap in the first place,

(01:07:47):
because you frankly wouldn't look ridiculous, you know, whenever you
reverse it overnight. So there you go. All right, let's
go to the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
So, guys, really interesting story that has been developed over
the winter holiday season. So a bunch of wealthy ski
holiday patrons have been complaining about massively long lines at
ski lifts and diminished resources at Vale in Park City, Utah.
And this is all because of a strike a walkout

(01:08:18):
by ski patrollers who are saying, hey, guys, these areas
are extremely expensive to live in. We're asking for a
couple of dollars wage increase so that we might have
a prayer of being able to afford a life here.
Here's an image of some of the workers here. They say,
ask me about this pick line wage twenty one dollars,
asking twenty three dollars, burger twenty five dollars plus. Ye,

(01:08:42):
just speaking to the unbelievable cost of living that you
know in order to live in these ski towns that
you're ultimately subjected to that certainly goes for housing prices
even to a greater extent. Can show you some of
the images that are coming out because they're pretty interesting
that people who are going to these resorts are sharing.

(01:09:03):
Here you can see long line just to image here.
You can see this video too of people waiting in line.
I guess that's for like the ski lift, just having
to stand around. This person says, the longest lines ever,
no excuse, operational managerial fail. During the busiest week of
the year, twenty thousand dollars vacation with two to three

(01:09:24):
hour lines for lifts at least discount those who bought
lift ticke as wall strake was occurring. Or you could
just pay your workers a little better, how about that,
and get them back and get them back on the job,
because this is insane. I've just got one more video
for you so you can get a sense of the
scale of the disruption. Here. This is a video you
can see of the massive lines waiting again for the

(01:09:49):
ski lift. So let me give you some of the
backstory on what's going on here, according to the Ski
Patrollers Union. Here is some local news coverage. Veil Resorts
sense in Colorado ski patrollers to break the strike as
Park City strike continues. The Park City, Utah Professional Ski
Patrol Association went on strike December twenty seventh at Veil Resorts,

(01:10:12):
Inc's largest US ski area, vuying for higher wages. A
walkout of ski patrollers during the busy holiday period in
Park City has yielded long lift lines, limited terrain, and
swelling crowds as the strike stretches into its second week.
They say that they are looking for higher wages starting
at twenty three dollars an hour and better benefits. They
also express frustration about the prolonged negotiation processing and a

(01:10:34):
social media post. They are ready to get back to
work as soon as Veil Resorts offers a fair contract.
So Saga a pretty fascinating labor dispute here, And some
of the background story on this is also really important
because even though this is you know, very specific context
of specific like recreational sport activity, you know, some of

(01:10:55):
the broader themes here are really important. Twenty three dollars
an hour may sound like, oh, that's a pretty good wage,
or the twenty one dollars an hour that they earn
right now, you might think like, oh, that sounds pretty decent,
But when you factor in the cost of living in
these towns, like there's just no way to make it.
And these giant companies have bought up a bunch of

(01:11:16):
these different ski resorts in all kinds of towns across
the country, and they've sort of pushed out to the
extent that, you know, the certain of these ski towns
had a local economy and local vitality begin with, they've
like pushed out the locals. A lot of out of
towners coming in buying up the property, making it insanely expensive,
and then crowding out even things like you know, local

(01:11:39):
restaurant owners and local business owners, so that the only
game in town in terms of a workforce are these
relatively low paid, hourly jobs where you don't have a
prayer of hoping to be able to like live and
eat and exist in the town where your job actually
is located.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
This may sound like a boohoo problem, but you know,
it wasn't that long ago that Park City, Utah. Yes,
it has always been a bastion of the ultra wealthy,
but it didn't always cost twenty thousand dollars to go
into ski in Park City, Utah. In fact, I know
several people who are skiers who grew up in more
of a middle class background. It used to be that

(01:12:16):
you would be able to, you know, put the family
in a hotel room six or whatever. You could buy
the ski passes for a little bit less, and yes
it'd be a bit of a pain, but you could
make it work and it'd be one of those things
that we would be equivalent to taking the family to Disneyland,
for example. So this was a sport that no, it
has never been accessible to people who are you know,

(01:12:36):
lower middle class, but I would say middle class upper
middle class historically has been something that is there. It
has since moved to the bastions of the ultra wealthy
and of people who are making over five hundred thousand dollars.
We're about to show everybody a video which actually shows
explicitly how that's been the strategy. Now to what you
just pointed out, this is obvious. I love Park City, Utah.

(01:12:57):
I don't even skate. It's one of the most beautiful
places I've ever been, such a gorgeous town. As you
just said, the local businesses and all that are exactly
what make it nice and good. I can also attest
that the twenty five dollars burger is in fact reality. Yeah,
but what it demonstrates is the same problem here of
you both make the cost of anything fun and nice

(01:13:18):
in America. You just make it outrageously expensive, and then
you also treat the workers as shitty as humanly possible
to roll up as much profit as you possibly can.
This is a story of everything, and that's why I
noted it that we used to be a middle class thing.
I think Disney is another perfect example of this, where
you have the cost of these Disney trips now costing
tens of thousands of dollars in some cases if you

(01:13:41):
have a large family, something that people have been doing
in the past. I think Vegas is another one. You know,
if we had the era in the old days, the
Christmas family vacation and all that, a sixty dollars hotel room,
that's all gone. And so really what we have is like,
if you want to go on vacation in the Continental America,
you are just competing with you know, like a price war.

(01:14:01):
And then the people themselves who are actually working and
staffing and delivering this product are making absolutely nothing. You know,
it's not just me saying this. There're so many people,
even rich people, who are like, are they seriously destroying
this entire experience just to not pay these people two
dollars more per hour. They're like, I can't even believe this. Yeah,

(01:14:22):
and that it just demonstrates their greed, you know, that
they that they're willing to hold the line on an
extremely extremely like it is not out of left field,
it's not too much of an ass. It barely even
keeps place with inflation.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
They probably even what they're asking for twenty three dollars
an hour. I don't know how you live in these
towns because the rent and everything is so incredibly expensive.
Let me goad and pull up this video, and I
really recommend you guys watch all of this from Wendover
Productions is quite excellent. That title here is how corporate
consolidation is killing ski towns. But I just want to
play a little bit of a portion of it that

(01:15:00):
focuses on the cost of living and how impossible it
is for workers in towns like Park City, Utah, where
this labor dispute is occurring.

Speaker 7 (01:15:09):
What's left is the financial impossibility of minimum wage work
in the Veil Valley.

Speaker 5 (01:15:16):
There are no easy answers to where a Veil employee
might start their day. The conglomerates new minimum wage is
twenty dollars an hour, a near fortune compared to minimum
wage at most entry level jobs in America. The most
entry level jobs aren't located here, and a narrow mountain
valley you bounded by two often impassable sections of highway,
posting some of the highest living costs in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Currently, the cheapest publicly.

Speaker 7 (01:15:40):
Listed apartment for rent within Veil City limits is going
for twenty five hundred dollars a month, assuming forty hours
per week of work, which might come if the slopes
are busy and the snow is abundant. A given lift
operator might make thirty two hundred dollars a month. Therefore,
after tax, they might make ever so slightly more than
what it costs to keep an apartment in the town

(01:16:01):
in which they work. But of course, in a small
town environment like this, and considering the competitiveness of housing,
most rentals never make.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
It to be on the classifieds.

Speaker 7 (01:16:11):
There one can find deals like this one and fifty
dollars a month room in an apartment in Edwards, a
twenty minute drive away, assuming one pay is for the
four hundred and twenty.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
Five dollars a year Veil employee parking pass.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Think about that. So not only do you have to commute,
but now you have to pay for a parking pass.
And Veil Resorts is one of the companies that so
they own this park city resort. They they're one of
the large players in this space. So a lot of
what is said in this video applies kind of across
the board to all these ski towns, ski resort towns

(01:16:43):
into the workers that are there. I mean, you've just
turned these places, first of all, any local character that
exists gone, Locals cannot afford to live there, housing stock
bought up by people who are you know, wealthy millionaires
from all over the country, if not all over the world,
who are there like twice a year. So town is
effectively vacant when it's not peak season. Locals pushed down,

(01:17:06):
and workers treated as basically like indentured servants who you know,
can't afford to live in the town and are even
being gouged in terms of having to pay this like
four hundred dollars monthly parking pass, which is totally completely insane.
So yeah, it demonstrates the fact that they won't give
them their freakin two dollars an hour raise because they're afraid.

(01:17:27):
What they would say is they're afraid that next holiday
season they're going to realize this was a successful tactic
to go out during peak season, and they're going to
do it again and again. And I would just say, like, okay, well,
you know, you probably could afford to pay them well
enough so that they'd be happy and they're not feeling
like they have to like split your throat every holiday
season because this is their peak season as well.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
I don't ski, but as I understand it, a single
ski ticket is three hundred dollars per person, right, so
I'm pretty sure they could cover costs. Yeah, people were
pointing out it is actually cheaper to fly to Switzerland
and to ski in the Alps, especially if you stay
on the French side. Apparently then it is to go
and ski in park City Utah. Wow, what the hell

(01:18:10):
are we doing here? That's crazy, you know, and just
demonstrates again that the way that these private equity companies
and others have rolled all the stuff up, milked as
much as possible, is that they are making it impossible
to have a good time in this country unless you
are stupendously.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
They've just turned the whole They're turning the whole world.
Like the most beautiful some of the most naturally beautiful
places in the country, they just turn it into a
completely inaccessible playground to the rich. And you know, great
for that, I guess, except when they have to deal
with a long lift line because the workers don't feel
like being indentured servants for the day. But yeah, in

(01:18:48):
terms of an attainable vacation spot, in terms of a
sustainable workforce that's actually able to live, in terms of
having any sort of local culture, Like everything just disnified
playground for the rich. That's what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
It is, and it is an ongoing trend. I hope
it's reverse. I don't think it will be for sure. Yeah,
like I said, with Disney, with Vegas, with so many
of these other places, I don't know, where do you
go on a chief vacation these days? Like your backyard camping?
That's that's that's yeah. My one hope is that private
equity please don't go after the national parks because that's
the last place that we all currently have. So I'm

(01:19:24):
sure they'll find a way. Yeah, sure they will find so.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
True. I mean, this is the you know, this is
the fallout from massive Gilded age level inequality. These are
businesses they see the people who have money are at
the very top, and so they cater to them because
they're the ones that have twenty thousand dollars to spend
on a vacation, and so they would rather their business
bottom line dictates that they would rather create this ultra

(01:19:48):
luxury experience than to try to cater to a vast
middle class which doesn't really exist anymore. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
All right, let's talk about DNN. There is a pretty
major defamation lawsuit going on right now that actually is
going to trial in the state of Florida, and haven't
seen a lot of coverage on it, and considering how
CNN could face a absolutely massive judgment and liability from
this jury trial, it is certainly worth covering as it

(01:20:20):
may be the biggest story in the space since the
Fox News smartmatic settlement that will all recall, So let's
put this up there on the screen. A Florida jury
will decide if CNN defamed a security contractor so the
details everybody stick with me. Goes back to twenty twenty
one from the US Afghan withdrawal. So basically, in November

(01:20:41):
of twenty twenty one, DNN ran a five minute long
lawsuit a segment about private contractors who were charging large
sums of money to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee the country.
This was the direct quote from Jake Tapper. Dnn's Alexander
Marquett has discovered Afghans trying to get out of the
country face a black market full of promises, demands of

(01:21:01):
exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success. The
only security contractor mentioned is this man, Navy veteran Zachary Young,
whose operation had actually been paid by several large companies
including Audible, Bloomberg, etc. At one point in the segment,
his face was shown on screen above the graphic referencing

(01:21:24):
black markets and exorbitant fees. So that is the core
of Young's defamation lawsuit. The reason why, in particular that
he's able to quote unquote at least allege damages is
because his business suffered significant monetary damage as a result
of this CNN report. Now we should note that actually

(01:21:47):
DNN did issue a correction about four months later. Jake
Tapper or Jake Tapper and CNN read an on air
correction to the story and actual some of the emails
that have now been released show that inside of CNN
there was concern that this did not meet editorial standard. Nonetheless,

(01:22:09):
STNN still alleges that it is not liable for defamation,
as they issued a correction some four months later. However,
it was enough to reach the standard for a judge
to allow us to go through. Now we should say
that that is extraordinary already, because it is extremely rare
for a news organization to be able to even to

(01:22:30):
not have the case thrown out. In terms of scrutiny,
the judge, Florida Circuit Judge William Henry ruled that Young's
activities were legal, preventing the network from suggesting to jurors
that he has been engaging in illicted activity. That's really
important because if the jury determines the term black market

(01:22:51):
refers to illegal activity, DNN would be found to have
quote knowingly published false information as network journalists agn knowledge
they're reporting. Did not find evidence that Young had committed
a crime. So, you know, on the merits crystal, they
are facing some serious issues and sociologically, when we think

(01:23:11):
about the jury pool and all of that, they could
be they could have a real problem on their hands
with this case.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
Yeah, potentially. I mean the other thing is what comes
out in this case as well is going to be
It already is very unflattering because some of the emails
from producers behind the scenes acknowledge that the segment is
kind of sloppy, kind of sensationalist. They also acknowledge like
they think this guy who's now suing them as like

(01:23:40):
a shitty person, and they have this sort of like
personal animus against them that also against him, not that
they knew him personally, but they thought he was sort
of like sketchy and sleazy, and so that could have
animated some of the editorial direction of the segment as well.
And so their star anchor, Jake Tapper is involved, He's

(01:24:01):
having to be deposed, what is going to come out
in discovery, what's going to come out in the trial,
even if they ultimately prevail here, just getting that little
window into the behind the scenes of how CNN actually
operates and actually puts together these stories could in and
of itself be at the least embarrassing to them, who

(01:24:21):
like to hold themselves out as this like gold standard
of journalism. Clearly in this particular instance, they certainly fell
short of that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Oh, there's no question about it. With the emails in particular.
And I wanted to know too that really where I
think Stann is screwed is on that legal standard about look,
we all know black market means illegal. Can we all
be honest, like that's so obvious? Yeah, Ben So on
the standard itself that they narrowly have to rule it's bad.
But what's really important to me is how these jurors,

(01:24:53):
these potential jurors. How we're revealing here, how you really
can see where the actual editor of as to CNN
over years is now going to screw them with the
jury pull So, for example, the first perspective juror, when
asked if they could be fair, says, I dislike the media,
especially CNN. Another says I'm not a fan of CNN,

(01:25:14):
but about a dozens in between said they had no issue.
Another potential juror said he believes media outlets think they
can say anything about anyone and pretend to be the
victim when called out, and another said he could be impartial,
but added nothing negative against CNN. I just don't see
the way things that they do, you know. Another, my
personal favorite, says, it's killing me sitting here. I'm hyperactive

(01:25:37):
and I smoke, plus I have to pee. Who is
I think all of them.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Relatable, very relatable. It would be the jury of the peers.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Yeah, that's your jury of peers, folks. What I do
think is interesting here is all the jurors were picked.
Apparently CNN's legal team picked off by asking prospective jurors
if they'd ever served in the military. That was one
of the ways that they were trying to screen people.
They also said, how many of you believe CNN creates
fake news? Six perspective jurors to raise their hands. Most though,

(01:26:08):
do insist they can be impartial. When jurors are amazing.
I know you served on a jury. You're much more
of a believer, I think in jury trial than I am,
just in terms of your ability to.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
Get people take it very seriously.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
I know, Crystal, But how can a person with a
straight face say I believe CNN creates fake news, but
I can be impartial? Like, come on, all right, look,
I'm fine. I want to I want CNN to be
screwed personally.

Speaker 2 (01:26:33):
But I don't know. I think Fox News creates fake news,
and I think CNN creates fake news. I agree, be
impartial on this, yeah, but if somebody evaluate the facts
of this particular case and decide whether in this particular instance, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
You're right, you know, yeah, that's a fair point. I
mean again, on the legal standard, I think they're screwed.
I just don't see a single way that they could
get around it. Because they literally put his face over
the words black market. Yeah, they destroy his business.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
That is one of the things that like when you're
first learning on air requirements journalists. Requirements they teach you
is like you cannot picture someone while you're saying something
if that thing that you're saying is not about that
person and is not accurate. So it is pretty basic.
On the other hand, I just know that it's well

(01:27:21):
CNN is going to have the best lawyer's money can buy,
and the standard for defamation is quite high, so I
wouldn't bet against them prevailing in the case. I think
it's possible that they do that. They can, you know,
prove enough like just incompetence versus some sort of intent
here to be able to slide. I think that's entirely possible.

(01:27:43):
But and you know, the amounts will be significant, but
they'll be fine. This is a you know, gigantic company
and conglominary et cetera. I think probably more important is
just what is learned in the context of this trial,
whether it's embarrassing to the company itself, embarrassing to Jake Tapper,
embarrassing to his team, etc. Nobody wants that peak behind
the curtain. It's going to be messy seeing how this

(01:28:06):
sausage is made.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
That's the amazing part. Is one of the hardest things
that you have to do is prove damaging, and so
he has to prove that they wanted to harm his reputation.
But when they have emails saying that they think he's
a shitty person and that they acknowledge that the story
is quote a mess flowed full of holes, incomplete eighty

(01:28:28):
percent emotion, twenty percent observed. Fact, we're getting to the
place where, you know, it's on a knife's edge as
to whether you can even argue any of this. And yeah,
you just said, I mean, if Jake Tapper and his
team are found liable here, that will be a massive
blow to them. It also will you know, to show
everybody else and others, including us in our business. I

(01:28:51):
just don't understand how this ever got to air, because
you know, you and I both know the standard for
saying somebody is doing something illegal or even sketchy is
so high. Also, this guy not a public figure. That's
another one which is very important. You know. Look, we
can talk about Elon, Mark Zuckerberg, all these other people,

(01:29:12):
all of them fall under the public figure standard. This
is just some random dude who's involved in business or whatever,
private military contractor to name him. The Newsworthy standard of
that has to be very high, and you have to
have dead to rights, you know, evidence that this is
going on. I mean, I think clearly what happened is

(01:29:32):
the reporter didn't like him, and the editorial team also
found it. I guess gross that people were charging to
get people out of Afghanistan and they were like, screw him,
We're going to go after him. But that is the
exact reason you're supposed to have editorial standards to make
sure something like this never happened. So pretty extraordinary. Nonetheless,
the jury did eventually get picked and they're going to trial,

(01:29:54):
so it could be like Fox where they just settle
before that. You know, if I've seen NS legal team
looking at this, you may you know, you might need
to pay, Like you might need to pay big time
to make this go away because Florida jury, I need
to go and check how exactly it works with the
damages and everything. But if I recall the Gawker case
also was out of Florida, and if we'll remember, that

(01:30:16):
case basically shut down the entire website forever. I'm not
saying that's going to happen to CNN, but you know,
nobody wants to pay half a billion, three quarters of
a billion dollars out all because your reporters did a
stupid job. But they may decide that that is the
that that's the best course of action, just to try
and not set a standard. But that's why it's risky

(01:30:37):
when you go to trial, a jury trial like this,
Absolutely anything could happen.

Speaker 3 (01:30:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
Well, the last thing on note is reportedly part of
why ABC Slash Disney decided to settle with Trump on
that you know, he was suing them for defamation. George
Stephanopolis was involved, specifically over the way he characterized the
Egene Carol civil suit lawsuit, saying that he was found

(01:31:06):
liable for rape instead of saying liable for sexual assault.
Part of the reason they settled is because they were
worried about a Florida jury.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
And so you know, here you've got the Florida jury
and Florida, given how favorable they are to Donald Trump
and how much they've shifted right and how much antipathy
I'm sure there is towards CNN and the state that
may create a bit of an uphill battle for them.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see them ultimately be like,
you know, we really don't want to go through this.
How much money do you need to make this go away?

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
Yeah? I think you're absolutely right. Okay, guys, thank you
so much for watching. It was great to be back.
Hopefully going to be back in studio on we'll be
back in studio on Thursday, if the snow and the
road conditions allow. I can just tell you, I'm still looking.
I'm looking outside. There's going to be six seven inches
of snow on the streets. So it's bad. It's bad
out here. Washington, DC needs to wake up and learn

(01:31:55):
how to actually deal with this. But we'll do our
best to get there in the studio. And it's great
to be back, Crystal.

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
It's great to have you back. It's not the same
without you here. Sager, and there were all kinds of
things I wanted to hear what you have to say
about them, So I'm glad to have you hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
It hurt to be quiet, but that was the Those
were the orders that I got, and I did comply.
So there we go. All right, We'll see you guys later.

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