7-18-25 - 8am - Tavis Smiley Climate Change and Epstein Birthday Card

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, someone I grew up with posting on Facebook that
basically in pr is gone. Wait a minute, between one
and ten percent of their funding was federal and they
can't buck up and.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Just raise the funds. There are some fundraisers, fundraisers, what
are they?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
This is ridiculous. You can just raise a freaking money.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
They you know, they always have all these foundations and
you know, brought to you by the Rockefeller Foundation or
brought to you by such and such. You know, our
our gold plated sponsors. Well go find more of them.
Don't do that. You know, it's still different than us,
still different than anybody else. Do you think that? I mean,

(00:47):
I know this program is air quotes here free to you,
but it's not a free program. This is you know,
My job is to entertain, inform, make you thing, make
you laugh, cry, get you mad, make you happy, do
everything I can to track. You know what Glen Ball
used to talk about. He wanted to attract as large

(01:08):
as an audience as possible so that he could charge exorbitant
advertising rates. That's what radio is, what television is, so
you know, for that matter, that's what podcasts and many
other things have become. So nothing is free, right, nothing
is free. So again going back to yesterday when I

(01:29):
was on with Tavis Smiley, he he wanted to talk
about the reorganization of FEMA. Okay, so that you know
I talked to the producer last week. That's the topic.
You know, what is your take on what we should
do to reorganize or whatever it is that you think
that I think we ought to do with FEMA. So

(01:50):
I go in with that attitude that that's what we're
going to talk only. Oh, so we go in with
I go in with that attitude that's what I'm going
to talk about. But because Tavis is unabashedly he calls
himself unabashedly progressive, I actually end up at the very
near the beginning of the actual interview. In fact, as

(02:13):
I look on the YouTube channel where this podcast is
to where you can find it, Michael saysco here dot com. Yes,
you can listen to it there. I'm seventeen minutes into
this interview and I've barely answered any question when I
get this thrown at.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Me because these disasters that we are experiencing, even as
many on the right political right denied the science.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
So we're science deniers. So he basically calls me to
my face, you know, a science denier. These disasters are real.
Has anybody ever claimed that, other than maybe Alex Jones,
Has anybody ever claimed, oh, that's a fake disaster. No. No,

(03:04):
the floods are real, the blizzards are real, the hurricanes
are real, the tornados are real, the thunderstorms are real.
The heat is real, the cold is real. That's all real.
But somehow, now can those can right wing consorted nut jobs.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Maybe it doesn't matter so much whether they're centralized in
Washington or whether, to your point, is pushed down to
the states, because these disasters that we are experiencing, even
as many on the right political right denied the science,
these disasters are real. This recent flooding is real. These
hurricanes and tornadoes are real. Again, you were the female administrator.

(03:39):
But these these cycles are coming faster, coming more swiftly
than they ever have. Again, even if people deny the science.
So whether it's whether it's at the federal level or.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Okay, So there's this contention, and I flippantly, you know,
at some point he asks me, you know, you know,
I'm not sure what your position is. I said, well,
I believe in climate change. As I've always told my audience,
I do believe in climate change. I just questioned the
amount that is caused by anthropogenic man made change, how

(04:15):
much of it is a natural cycle. And he said, well,
what do you think the ratio is? I said, well,
I don't know ninety ten who knows what it is.
But I can tell you that they're not coming more frequently,
and they're not more intense than they have been in
the past. And as I've explained to many of you,
oftentimes we think they are because there are more people,

(04:39):
there's more building, there's more infrastructure, there's more property that
can be damaged. So, for example, the Big Thompson Flood.
When the first big Thompson flood occurred, damages were x.
But in twenty thirteen, when the flood comes down the
same area and spreads out into you know how out

(05:00):
into northern Boulder County is through Longmand and Loveland and
out into well Well, in that forty or fifty year period,
there's so much more infrastructure that exists that of course
the property damage is going to be much higher. But
setting all that aside, it is a myth that disasters
are increasing. And this whole debate surrounding that purported increase

(05:25):
in disasters because of greenhouse gas gas e missions has
become he as Tavis, Prus, has become a cornerstone of
the climate crisis narrative, and it's been going on for
decades now. But when you thoroughly examine the data it
shows globally reported natural disasters between nineteen seventy and twenty

(05:48):
twenty four, there's a more nuanced reality. And when you
really look in at closer, the claim that increasing greenhouse
gases are responsible for an uptick and natural disaster appears
to be ever more tenuous, if not outright faults. In fact,
I'm to the point where I think it's outright faults.

(06:09):
The EMDAT data that is the Emergency Event's database. You
can find it online. Emergency Events Database shows a notable
rise in the number of reported disasters from the seventies
to around nineteen ninety nine. But after this point the
trend plateaus and there's been no substantial increase observed in

(06:31):
either the frequency of natural disasters all the way up
to and including last year. And that's critical, but it
cut because it contradicts the mainstream narrative that the Tavis
Smileys of the world have bought into that tie the
rise of natural disasters directly to increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

(06:52):
Since two thousand, there has been a dramatic increase in
CO two emissions, and it's been driven largely by industrial
growth in economies like China and India, and frankly, there's
been more CO two added to the atmosphere in the
past two decades than in any previous period any human history.

(07:15):
So according to the congregants in the Church of the
Climate activists, that should have led to a corresponding increase
in extreme weather events and natural disasters. But the data,
the data from the database, shows that that is not true.
You go to Our World and Data. They have a

(07:39):
graph global reported natural disasters by type between nineteen seventy,
nineteen seventy to twenty twenty four, and you go back
to nineteen seventy. It is the raw numbers over here
on the left side of the graph are one hundred
and two hundred, three hundred and four hundred. In nineteen
seventy is slightly to one hundred. It spikes up to

(08:02):
a little over two hundred and nineteen eighty two, and
then it spikes again in two thousand two, twenty three
years ago, it spikes at slightly over four hundred, and
then the trend line is downward. Now, objectively, from about

(08:25):
twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four, there's been an increase.
You know what. The increase primarily is floods. Now, you
could have the same amount of rainfall in any given
area and twenty years ago it wouldn't be considered a flood.

(08:50):
Twenty years later because you now have a Sam's Club
and a super Walmart and a Costco, and you've got
office buildings, and you've got a parking lot, you've got
twelve subdivisions. Now there's no place for the water to go,
so now you have a flood. So am I surprised
that there's an increase in the number of flood reported

(09:12):
flood events in a three or four year period. No,
because we've been growing like crazy, particularly post COVID. I
think it's incredibly important to acknowledge that this apparent increase
in natural disaster reports from the seventies seventies through nineteen
ninety eight, let's cut out the last four years, is

(09:35):
actually a reflection of improved data collection and reporting and
the website. The em website acknowledges that itself they have
a little chart that I gotta blow this up that
talks about the time period from two thousand and twenty
twenty four pre two thousand. Data is particularly subject to

(09:58):
reporting by data validation for the current years conducted at
the beginning of the subsequent year. Users are advised to
exercise caution when interpreting figures from the ongoing year. They
recognize it's an emission, and that emission is significant because
it underminds the narrative that natural disasters were increasing at
some sort of unprecedented rate before the year two thousand.

(10:22):
The rise or the increase in reported disasters is largely
attributable to better monitoring, more comprehensive data collection, improved comm systems,
rather than an actual increase in the frequency of the events. So,
in essence, all the data before two thousand was less complete,

(10:45):
and the increasing number of reported disasters during the latter
half of the twentieth century is attributed to improvements in
record keeping, not a surgent actual events. After the turn
of the Lineum millennium, when global reporting mechanism had matured,
the number of report disasters stabilized. It's you know, all

(11:07):
of our reporting systems were put in place, they matured,
they got solidified, checked, they were they were authenticated, they
were validated, and then everything stabilized. Wow huh. But I
think the most glaring contradiction in this narrative is the

(11:29):
fact is the fact, and it is a fact that
despite a significant increase in CO two emission since nineteen
ninety eight, there is no corresponding increase in natural disasters.
And that fact alone dismantles the argument that somehow CO
two is a primary driver of extreme weather events and disasters.

(11:52):
If CO two was a primary cause of a natural disaster,
as the Church of the Climate Activists argue, you would
therefore see a corresponding increase or a dramatic surge in
disasters over the past twenty years that would coincide with
the rise in global SEAL two concentrations. But the data

(12:13):
doesn't support that hypothesis. Instead, the number reported disasters has
remained relatively stable. It's remained stable despite the record levels
of SEAL two emissions. Nobody wants to talk about that.
The Tavis Smilies of the world, the members of the
Church of the Climate Activists, don't want to deal with that. Now,

(12:37):
there are others, and I think Tavias might be in
that category, that argue that the climate crisis narrative that
they argue that while the narrative, while the total number
of disasters may not have increased, that oh, they've gotten
more severe. And he actually kind of implies that that
they've actually they've gotten more severe. But again that claim

(13:01):
lacks robust empirical data. Now, yes, the individual extreme weather
events garner huge media attention, but there's no clear consistent
trend in the data to suggest that these events are
becoming more frequent or more severe on a global scale.
If you look at the data on droughts, floods, wildfires,

(13:24):
almost every disaster, it does not show a clear increase
since nineteen ninety eight. If anything, the data suggests that
natural variability, which what is my argument, plays a far
more significant role in determining the occurrence and the intensity
of these events than anything than any sort of anthropogenic
factor like a CO two emission might account. There is

(13:47):
just this natural cycle that the world goes through, affected
more by moisture in the air, sunspots, solar activity, all
of that, And again the data from the em that
database and world and data, so all those sources should
force us to reconsider the prevailing climate crisis. Narritive this

(14:12):
whole discussion yesterday, and of course, you know you're doing
a thirty minute segment, and I don't have all the
data in front of me. I've got what I've got
and be able to retain in my head. But he
came out of a break and said something to the effect,
you know the staff that I've been checking on your
ninety ten you know, apportionment of you know, man made

(14:33):
versus just match of a natural cycle, and there's nothing
to support that. And I don't remember exactly what I said.
I said, well, maybe it's not ninety ten, but it's
certainly not the majority, and the data is clear that
there is no data. There's no data to support that.
But the bottom line is this. It's a religion for them.

(14:58):
And that's why I use the Youth Mission of the
Church of the Climate activists, because it is it is religion,
and they've got faith. They because somehow they and whether
he would ever admit it or not, or any any
other congruence in the church would admit it. What they're
really advocating is more control, more government intervention in the

(15:20):
way you live your life, in what you eat, what
you drive, the kind of house you live in, whether
you live in a fifteen minute city, where you live
in a suburban area or an urban area. They don't
want to look at that, and they don't want to
admit that. You know, when you do a closer look
at the historical disaster related deaths as some sort of

(15:43):
standard to measure it by, there's been a significant decline
in fatalities over the past century, even as the world
population contendes to increase and puts more co two into
the atmosphere. Global deaths from disasters over more than a
century shows that annual disaster death tolls in the millions

(16:04):
common in the early twenty century have given way to
much lower fatalities in the most recent decades, and that
trend holds true across all types of disasters, whether it
be a drought, a flood, at earthquake, as storm, whatever
it is. You know. A great example the nineteen twenty
eight Chinese drought. Three million lives were lost be directly

(16:27):
attributal to the drought. Well, recent droughts far fear fatalities,
so again raises serious claims about modern climate changes making
disasters deadlier. So there's this disconnect between CO two levels
and natural disaster frequency, coupled with declining disaster related deaths,

(16:49):
all which calls into questions rationale for all these expenditures
that we're doing to somehow control something that is Mother
Nature that we cannot control. And the two levels, while
they're at modern unprecedented level, they're not unprecedented in the

(17:11):
history of the world. In the history of the existence
of this planet, THEO two levels had been much greater
than the Argaday Michael. I'll often catch the NPR station
in the morning as I'm flipping through all the different
news stations seeing what I missed the day before, and
one of their taglines is fact based reporting. Hey, it's

(17:34):
based on fact. It's the story may be based on
a fact. The reporting is opinion. So you got that problem.
As I said, last night, I because tam are still
down at the indisposed location. I've you know, I've been

(17:55):
eating out every evening and so last night I go
to the Little Mexican Die and I'm sitting there and
I've got some tequila and I and I'm just what
was that noise.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
I heard this, Yeah, And I'm sitting there and I
get a notification from the Wall Street Journal and that
damn horse is alive again.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
So I naturally open it up. It's in the place.
It's on the front page if you get the print
edition of the Wall Street Journal. I don't know whether
it's in today's print edition or not, because this was
about probably six o'clock Mountain time, so I don't know
whether they got it into the computers to print for

(18:45):
delivery this morning or not. But on the electronic edition
of the Wall Street Journal, it's front and center above
the fold. Exclusive headline. Jeffrey Epstein's friend sent him bodyline
for a fiftieth birthday album. One was from Donald Trump.
Subhead the leather bound book was compiled by Dislaying Maxwell.

(19:11):
The President says, the letter quote is a fake thing.
I'm thinking, holy s word. Got to read the story.
So I opened it up on my iPad, take a
sip at tequila, and I dive in and I go
through it, and I go through it, and I'm waiting

(19:33):
and I'm reading, and I'm waiting, and I'm wondering, Oh,
maybe it's at the end. And so I read and
I read and I get to the end and I
realize it's not there. What's it the bombshell? There is
no bombshell, but the horse is alive. Trump needs to

(19:59):
kill the horse. Now, he said in so many words
that he is going to I don't have the quote
in front of me, but he apparently has said three things. One,
I'm going to sue the Wall Street Journal. He has
a pretty good track record on that CBS what was
it sixty million dollars or something at an ABC. Come on, guys, Murdoch,

(20:27):
you need to pay attention here. So he said he's
going to sue. He says that the letter is fake.
Now he went on to or somebody on the staff
went on to point out that that's not the way
he speaks, it's not the way he writes. And he
doesn't tend to write, he doesn't draw. And I'll to
explain all that in a minute. And then the third

(20:50):
thing that he said was he has told the Attorney General,
Pam Bondy, all right, just release everything, Just release it all.
Now what does that mean? I don't know, because some
of this stuff is grand jury testimony. So that's going
to have to get a federal judge a court order

(21:11):
to release that testimony, and even once it's released, the
Department of Justice has both a legal and a moral
obligation to redact whatever they have to redact to protect
the victims. I don't want these poor victims, these underage victims,
or for any of the victims, underage or not, I
don't want any of them to have to go live
through this again. But set aside all of the dead

(21:37):
horse stuff about the politics of did Pam Bondi mishandle
the original release or not? Was there a list, is
there not a list? Is there a client list but
that he did? Or is there some other lists? Forget
all of that. Know what this story is about, stories

(21:58):
about a birthday party three years at least three years
before the first criminal charges, the ones down in Florida,
before the first criminal charges are ever brought against Epstein
and Gislaine, his paramour, his lover, his trafficker.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
You know.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Again, I raised the question if this is a nothing burger,
and if there's nothing there, why is she in jail?
What really did she do? I mean, I haven't gone
through and read the transcripts, I haven't read the verdicts.
I haven't read the plea agreements whatever, or any or
all of the above. I just know that generically, she's

(22:44):
in jail because she was engaged in human trafficking, sex trafficking,
some of which involved underage girls. Okay, well, then traffic
to whom. Uh you can't just traffic somebody and never
hand them over an you got to do something. I
think that would be one of the elements of the crime.

(23:07):
But I want you to imagine it's your fiftieth birthday
and your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your producer, somebody, somebody somewhere,
maybe from me, would want to put together, you know,
a memento. It's pretty common. So she reached out. Gislayne

(23:32):
did reached out to all of his friends. According to
The Wall Street Journal, hundreds if not thousands of people
she reached out to and said, I'm putting together a
book of birthday mementos, wishes, letters, photos, whatever it is
you want to send in for Jeffrey's fiftieth birthday. So

(23:58):
she got a collection of stuff from any number of people,
hundreds of not thousands of people, including Donald Trump. She
went so far as to go to a very famous
bookbinder in New York City, and have all of these documents, pictures, whatever.

(24:19):
The mementos were put into a thick leather bound book,
an album, if you will David Timbain for his birthday.
In the book is a type written text. Let me

(24:40):
just read you. The paragraph the letter bearing Trump's name,
which was reviewed by the journal Keep that in mind.
This letter was seen by the Wall Street Journal is
body b A w dy body. Do you know what
the word body means? Do you dealing with sexual manners?

(25:05):
Matters in a comical way, humorously indecent its body? Okay
to body, I'd say bfd. The paragraph the letter bearing
Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journalist Body, like
others in the album, it contains several lines of type

(25:29):
written text framed by the outline of a naked woman,
which appears to be appears to be hand drawn with
a heavy marker. A pair of small arts denotes the
woman's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly

(25:49):
donald below her waist, mimicking Puby care according to their interpretation,
Because let me just go ahead, I don't want to
bury the lead anymore. I get all the way through
the article and I'm thinking, okay, where's the photo. Show
me what you saw. Now, if you go online, there

(26:10):
are hilarious means stick figures with Donald's you know, very outstanding,
a unique signature. You know, he signs everything, and it's
all up and down. Yeah, stick stick figures of naked women.
It's they're They're all hilarious. And then the letter concludes,

(26:34):
Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret. Now.
In an interview with the Journal this past Tuesday night,
Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. He said, quote,
this is not me. This is a fake thing. It's
a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a
picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women.

(26:55):
It's not my language, it's not my words. Okay, let's
go to the actual words. It isn't clear how the
letter with Trump's signature was prepared. That's completely I have
no idea, and neither does a Wall Street Journal. But
inside the outline of whoever drew a naked woman was
a type written note styled as an imaginary conversation between

(27:19):
Trump and Epstein, written in the third person. Here's what
it says. Just bear with me, quote voiceover nome. This
is typewritten quote voiceover colon, there must be more to
life than having everything close quote Donald, Yes there is,

(27:39):
but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey, nor
will I since I also know what it is. Donald.
We have certain things in common, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Yes, we do,
come to think of it, Donald Enigmas never age. Have
you noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it

(28:01):
was clear to me the last time I saw you, Donald,
A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may
every day be another wonderful secret. That's it, Hu's it.

(28:22):
This has also written several years before Donald pushed Jeffrey
Epstein aside and said I want nothing to do with you.
You're a creep. This is at least two, if not three,
years before the first indictment for the first charge. I scrolled.
There's a picture of Donald Trump outside the Oval office.

(28:43):
It's just a standard White House photo. I keep scrolling.
There's a photo or a short video of Trump in
a cabinet meeting with Rubio to his right and Pam
Bondy to his right. This is the video where he said,
I can't believe we're still talking about Jeffrey Epstein, and
then there's a picture of those influencers with their binders

(29:05):
holding up that standard photo. I keep scrolling and I
get to the end written by these two reporters, and
not a single photo of the document upon which the
entire story is based. Oh it does say in today's version.

(29:25):
Disappeared into July eighteenth, today's print edition, as Trump's body
letter to Epstein was in fiftieth birthday album. So far,
there are more than two thousand comments. The horse is
still dead. The Wall Street Journal is trying to resuscitate it.

(29:50):
The Wall Street Journal has utterly failed to do so.
And the Wall Street Journal says, what take a break
on time? The Wall Street droll says, you failed to
take a break on time? Come on, Silver, get Michael's
about to talk about it again. What I find absolutely

(30:14):
most amazing about this story is the reaction to this
audience to the story. I'm tired of the story myself,
but I do feel an obligation to keep bringing you
the latest developments in it because it is there's so
many aspects to it. I think that the age mishandled

(30:38):
the release of the initial documents, she oversold it, and
so that caused you know, some of the magabase to
get upset. You've got some Trump supporters who are pissed
off that, you know, Okay, well, if there's nothing there,
let's just release the documents. Then you've got the question
is there a list? Is or not a list? You
got Alan Dershowitz out there saying, you know, because he

(31:00):
was he was involved in a lawsuit over it, and
he was accused of being a participant in underage sex.
So he went full bore and sued and now he's
under a gag order and he's a he reached the settlement,
and you know, he can't say anything about it except
to say, I've seen a list, not the list. I've
seen a list, and I tend to understand why they

(31:22):
don't want to release the list. Can we all agree
that Trump's name is probably on a list whatever that means,
you see, we don't even really know what that means.
But as long as it's questioned, as long as it's
not released, then people can make anything they want to

(31:45):
out of the story. And that's going to hurt Trump
and that's going to drag into the midterms. So whether
you are sick of the story or not sick, of
the story. This has political ramifications, even if it turns
out to be a nothing burger, like Trump says, if
it's nothing more than this stupid Wall Street Journal story

(32:08):
which I'm reading, and I come away feeling like I
just a you know, a bag of air pop popcorn
there was. It was not nutritious, It wasn't filling, it
wasn't satisfying.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
It.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
It was like, really, Wall Street Journal, you looked at
the book, you had access to the book, and you
didn't take a picture so I could see the picture
and judge for myself what you know, because just reading
it's one thing. You want. Picture's worth a thousand words.
I want to see it. And now you have deliberately,

(32:46):
in my opinion, stirred the pop. You have deliberately resuscitated
the horse. And Trump is now right.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
I know, he's bounced all over the place, but it
ought to be. If you have to go to the
Southern District of New York or wherever the hell of
the trial was, and you've got to get the grand
jury documents released, then do it. Do it, and let's
kill the I'll pull the trigger, I'll inject the juice

(33:17):
because I don't want this messing up the midterms.