May 4, 2024 • 17 mins
Buck Sexton is joined by special guest Matt Belinski, a tech and media lawyer and host of the ‘The Prevailing Narrative’ podcast. The two delve into discussions on the UCLA protests, TikTok's future, and the challenges facing Los Angeles, such as homelessness and political leadership issues.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey guys, welcome to the Buck Brief. Matt Bolinsky with
us for the first time. He is a tech and
media lawyer based out in La host of the Prevailing
Narrative podcast Mac Good, have you on, man? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Everything and nothing?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
You know, just trying to keep up with the craziness
going on right now. But Buck, thanks so much for
having me.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, what happened at UCLA? And there's these protests on
the campuses all over the place. I'm very familiar with
the ones because you know, I used to work at
the NYPD. I'm very familiar with the Columbia ones and
NYU ones. I've been on those campuses a lot. But
at UCLA there were counter protesters, there was a fight,
things got wild.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What happened, yes, at UCLA was very unique in its
regard here and kind of strange because people think of
it as this idyllic campus in the middle of Los Angeles,
of Westwood of all places. So first, the initial protest
was the pro Pealaton Palestinian protesters blocked off the main
entrance to kind of the main campus building called Royce Hall.
This set up their usual barricades and whatnot, and then
(01:19):
a group of I guess seemingly counter protesters, or at
least it started with a GoFundMe to fund to have
a large screen blasting footage of the October seventh terrorist
attack and other kind of noise that would disrupt those protests.
And that's kind of how a bit of a counter
countermeasure to that started. Then that spiraled into a bit
of a more general counter protest with pro Israel or
(01:41):
anti protester voices participating there, and campus administration campus police
did absolutely nothing. In just jurisdictional terms here, this isn't
LAPD jurisdiction UCLA. The u See campus is the only
law enforcement at least without further authorization, allowed to conduct
any law enforcement activities. There are u See campus police,
(02:02):
So they decided to do nothing. These the encampment grew,
the counter protest grew, and students at the initial protest,
the Prodian protests, they went so far as to block
off other entrances to other buildings with barricades with gates,
and we're handing out wristbands to those that seemingly supported
their cause or that at least passed scrutiny.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Of whatever they believed were the ideas that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Would pass muster to get them into buildings, And once
again the university did nothing and sent out a message
yesterday afternoon stating that they were taking these situations on
a case by case basis. Then last night, after nightfall,
the counter protesters started to lob some items in I
believe it was fireworks, some other stink bombs, some other
(02:46):
items into the encampments. There's obviously a response retort from
those in the Propaustindian encampments, and things just spiled from
there and it went at least three and a half
to four hours before any authorities, any law enforcement at
all showed up. So it was pure chaos right in
the middle of UCLA for about four and about four
hours last night.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, I got questions. I got questions. So first of all,
I saw video look like a scene almost like out
of out of Brave Heart or something. You had like
a wall of people with the placards up, then people
rushing into them and they're like trying to charge through
the line and they're fist flying and things got things
got pretty fiery.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, it was like Braveheart, except not noble at all.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It was the protesters that the initial encampment set up
kind of makeshift umbrellas or cardboard to try to yes,
as you know, Scottish fighters of of the seemingly Middle
Ages would set up with steel, with shields and steel.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They would set up.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
With cardboard and umbrellas, and then you know, the protesters
of those who are trying to impede or or break
the the perimeter of the camp try to take the
would try to take the umbrellas. The fireworks wore a
nice touch. They certainly added some flare to the events.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And bombs those are still out there.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You can find anything these days, god knows. You know,
a little little Amazon search you'll find some stink bombs.
So that keep and then somehow became hand hand combat
at times because some people from the encampments would come out,
they'd find the counter protesters. So it was kind of
this this tet a tet, this push push and pull
between whoever would exit the encampment, who would ever get
(04:25):
caught in between or in that no man's land where
people were fighting and then would recede back into the
encampment and just you've got campus police there doing nothing
for about an hour and a half. LAPD showed up
thinking about four am and finally finally separated the two
groups of protesters.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Why was why was the law enforcement response just m
I A for hours? How can anyone justify that?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Sure, well, I think I mentioned the first jurisdictional justification
was that LAPD doesn't technically have jurisdiction until it's called
in at uc campuses. If we're looking for the explanation
that says a little bit more about the general disorder
or poor approach towards public order and public safety in
the state of California and Los Angeles, is that as
opposed to the authorities and the administration in Florida, University
(05:11):
of Florida, University of Texts that say, you know, listen,
we are going to prioritize public order and the functioning
of the campuses and the students that aren't participating in
these protests and their campus life. The UCLA and the
California authorities, I've said, we don't want anything that could
any fallout, anything that does restrict the ability of these
(05:32):
protesters to do what they're doing right now.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
We're not going to take the risk.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We're not going to take the risk that the cops
might have to use physical force to break up the encampments,
might have to drag students kicking and screaming away, as
we've seen with so many videos. And I would imagine
that because of the potential for bad publicity or bad
visuals that would reflect badly on the constituents that the
California politicians find as their constituents is probably why they
held off.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
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nine nine five gold. I are back with Matt Bolinski here. Matt,
(07:00):
you're a tech lawyer, so you know how this stuff goes.
What do you think about there trying to force this
sale of TikTok and all this stuff around TikTok? Where
are you at that?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I think it's an interesting battle between national security concerns
in the First Amendment because, as we've seen, TikTok's made
no bones about it. They've publicly stated they're going to
challenge this on First Amendment grounds. I think it presents
an interesting edge case because what the government's going to
say is we won. There have been restrictions around foreign
ownership of media for nearly one hundred years now. I
(07:32):
mean the Communications Act of nineteen thirty limited ownership of
any company that has a broadcast license, which at the
time was primarily radio soon became primarily television, to twenty
percent foreign ownership. So that's never really been challenged. However,
it hasn't really translated to the Internet. So the government's
going to say, listen, we're not banning, we're not punishing
the views specifically on TikTok, we're not punishing the content itself,
(07:54):
simply saying that this is a national security concern and
we're trying to control the ownership, which is something that
has passed constitutional muster previously. What TikTok is going to
say is that they're going to point to some comments
and some commentary from members of Congress that in kind
of justify buying the TikTok legislation, saying, hey, we're concerned
about the views being prioritized and that are popularized on TikTok,
(08:16):
and so some of the members of some of the
members of Congress, some of the government, some people passing
this legislation might have put their foot in their mouth
and making it tough tougher for the government to clear
this one.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
First amendment wise, with the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So what do you think ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I think the government's going to prevail eventually. The Supreme
Court has generally been deferential to Congress in matters of
foreign policy and national security, and I don't think it's
quite a strong enough First Amendment case because once again,
they're not banning specific points of view on TikTok. They're
simply trying to shift and say, once again, you can
express these points of view not only on TikTok, on Facebook,
(08:55):
on Instagram, on Twitter, we just needed to be under
different ownership to do so.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Do you personally like TikTok? Just curious? Like I actually
find TikTok I really interesting. I find TikTok if you want,
if you're waiting in an airport terminal, like I can't
read with people having speakerphone conversations and like sneezing on
me and stuff like you know, in the airport waiting area,
if you can put some headphones in and watch, you
can burn through two hours. It feels like in three
(09:20):
million hours you're just sitting there. I mean, I feel
like I always tell people if you're looking for a
time warp, as in a time waster for your brain,
which I only think is worthwhile. When you're in a
situation like waiting for like a you know, waiting for
a plane or a you know, something like that, man, TikTok,
it just takes over your It takes over your mind.
(09:40):
You're sitting there just like you know, you know, steak steak,
real estate, poppy steak. Really, you know, you just look
at suff You're like, this is great.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Well, it's popularity is no accident, right, and it's also
no accident that the other social media platforms are trying
to replicate it. I mean, you look at it with Instagram.
Instagram is essentially turned into a TikTok clone. It's all reels.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You don't really see content from your friends. You see
content that has been popularized. It is either comedy or
as you mentioned, cooking or these passive kind of you know,
personal interest videos of dogs up easier god knows what.
And so I can't say that I'm a big TikTok
user myself, but I'd rather not swim against the tides.
So I understand this is what people are gravitating towards
on social media. The social media platforms are acknowledging that
(10:22):
and short form video content is what social media is
going to be for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yes, I think it's no question come back, and I
got some questions about you as in your podcast and
LA as well. But first up, you know, AI based
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Some of them have been basically propping up the stock
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(10:47):
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(11:09):
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aistock dot com paid for by Shaking Analytics. All right, Matt,
(11:33):
first up, what do you talk about on the Prevailing
Narrative podcast? That's your show? Tell me a little bit
about it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, so it's a breakdown of current events whatever happens
to be in the news cycle. But it's a bit
of the conversation around the conversation, right, because to a
certain extent, current events are shaped by in the social
media and digital media era about how people are talking
about them. Is the way an event is being interpreted?
Is it being interpreted correctly? What do the people on
one side have to say about it? Are there some
(12:00):
falsehoods from one side or the other? If people are
asserting it, as they do very often these days, that
there's an ulterior motive or some other explanation, right, So
what's going on?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You saw that?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Of course a lot with COVID is that ulterior motive
that's being you know, asserted. Is their validity to that.
People like to call that conspiracy theories. I think that's
a little patronizing of a tone, but it's a certain extent.
It's whether or not, you know, it's almost fact checking conspiracies.
But I'd say I'm a lot more receptive to a
lot of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
That a lot of the other fact checkers out there.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
So it's that And you know, interview series with people
that I think are relevant, have interesting ideas on social sciences, politics.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
What have you?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Are you an original La guy? Do you move there?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Born and raised?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
You're you always? You're the real deal? Interesting? Yeah, how
do you feel? So I'll tell you. I grew up
as a New Yorker and I had a especially in
my teenage years because you know, Beverly Hills nine O
two and zero and then before before that, uh Saved
by the Bell, And you know, you look at at
the pop culture and I feel like growing up anywhere
(13:02):
in America, Los Angeles, the nicer parts of Los Angeles
and the you know, the broader environs like American Nirvana.
And I even thought about moving to LA about a
decade ago. And now all I see is just things
moving in the wrong direction. Everything in the news, things
moving in the wrong direction. Is La salvageable or is
(13:24):
it still worth it even with all the problems, you know,
the crazy homeless situation in Santa Monica and all that, Like,
what how do you come down on this? Are you
going to be the last guy, last man standing saying
that you know, La is worth it even if you
aren't a communist? What do you think?
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, So that that's been a question on a lot
of people in my circle's mind. They're wondering, if Matt
had why haven't you moved to Miami already? So La
is always going to have a lot of appealing characteristics.
That's why it was a place that everybody always wanted
to move, as you recognize and as the me and
the people who grew up here. When we grew up,
everyone wanted to move here. It wasn't even really an
idea that's challenged. California had has recorded history three years
(14:03):
of net outflow migration twenty twenty one, two and twenty
twenty three. So do the map there. It's the first
there's ever been more people leaving than coming here. It
still has a lot of great qualities. Is actually really
interesting from a business perspective. But knowing the homeless problem,
which we had under control by twenty fourteen, the smallest
(14:24):
volume of people living on skid row in fifty years
has spiraled. It's been We've had fifty percent of the
rise in homelessness in all of America in California over
the past seven years. And even though violence has tempted
tapered off a little bit since just a crazy rise
in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, it still feels
like nobody's out there working for us. It feels like
(14:45):
the government's actually actively working against its citizens, and.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
That's turned off a lot of people. Can that be salvaged.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
It's going to be difficult the way the way that
Los Angeles has set up. It's not just a large city,
it's also a city within a county. So you don't
just have to win some city elections, you have to
win some county elections too. Everyone was very hopeful that
if Rick Crusoe was elected mayor in twenty twenty two
that he'd be able to turn the city around.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
And he lost. And even if.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
He'd won, there's only so much that he could do
because you've got fourteen city council members, some of whom
are completely crazy. You operate within a county jurisdiction that
has a board of supervisors. The board of supervisor is crazy.
And what I've been trying to do partially with my
podcast is get people in California Los Angeles to refocus
their attention on local politics because that affects your life
just so much more. People were sitting there up until
(15:33):
twenty twenty had no idea who their city council person was,
had no idea who the district attorney was, no idea
who the county supervisors were. Now some people are starting
to pay more attention to it. I think a key
election and I think personally the most interesting election in
twenty twenty four that's not national will be the district
attorney who's raised.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
In Los Angeles this year. You've got a guy named
George Gascon.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you want to talk Soros prosecutors, he is the
platonic ideal of a Soros prosecutor. Soros gave him two
and a half million dollars one of the reasons he
won in twenty twenty and he's made no bones about
it that he thinks we have too harsh of a
penal system that we need to decarce rate. That the big,
biggest problem in societies that were unfair to criminals, not
that we need to protect innocent civilians. And La and
(16:15):
even a very liberal city with that, like La. He's
got like a twenty two percent approval rating. He's very unpopular. However,
the person that made it through the primary against him
is a guy named Nathan Hawkman. I'm a big fan
of Nathan's, but he was recently a Republican. He recently
ran for California State Attorney General as a Republican, So
he's carrying a lot of baggage and it is going
(16:35):
to be a dogfight. Everyone thought that Gascon's goose was cooked,
that he had no chance of winning until a recently
Republican candidate came through in the primary against him.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So now you know, all all.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The political experts locally were saying, if there's anyone he
can defeat, it would be this guy, Nathan Hawkman, even
though Nathan's fantastic. So it's kind of going to be
a battle for the soul of LA and a little
bit of a you know, kind of survey of a
final word at least from up with deeply blue jurisdiction
on the Soros prosecutors, many of whom were swept into
power in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You know, madam, just telling you we got beaches and
beautiful women down here too, in Southpord of my friends.
You know, there there are other options. I'm just letting
you know, but I appreciate that you're a fighter for
the cause. Check out the Prevailing Narrative podcast with Matt Bolinsky.
Go check it out, and Matt want to get you
on radio soon. Man, thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
We'll love to thank you for having me
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey guys, welcome to the Buck Brief. Matt Bolinsky with
us for the first time. He is a tech and
media lawyer based out in La host of the Prevailing
Narrative podcast Mac Good, have you on, man? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Everything and nothing?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
You know, just trying to keep up with the craziness
going on right now. But Buck, thanks so much for
having me.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, what happened at UCLA? And there's these protests on
the campuses all over the place. I'm very familiar with
the ones because you know, I used to work at
the NYPD. I'm very familiar with the Columbia ones and
NYU ones. I've been on those campuses a lot. But
at UCLA there were counter protesters, there was a fight,
things got wild.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What happened, yes, at UCLA was very unique in its
regard here and kind of strange because people think of
it as this idyllic campus in the middle of Los Angeles,
of Westwood of all places. So first, the initial protest
was the pro Pealaton Palestinian protesters blocked off the main
entrance to kind of the main campus building called Royce Hall.
This set up their usual barricades and whatnot, and then
(01:19):
a group of I guess seemingly counter protesters, or at
least it started with a GoFundMe to fund to have
a large screen blasting footage of the October seventh terrorist
attack and other kind of noise that would disrupt those protests.
And that's kind of how a bit of a counter
countermeasure to that started. Then that spiraled into a bit
of a more general counter protest with pro Israel or
(01:41):
anti protester voices participating there, and campus administration campus police
did absolutely nothing. In just jurisdictional terms here, this isn't
LAPD jurisdiction UCLA. The u See campus is the only
law enforcement at least without further authorization, allowed to conduct
any law enforcement activities. There are u See campus police,
(02:02):
So they decided to do nothing. These the encampment grew,
the counter protest grew, and students at the initial protest,
the Prodian protests, they went so far as to block
off other entrances to other buildings with barricades with gates,
and we're handing out wristbands to those that seemingly supported
their cause or that at least passed scrutiny.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Of whatever they believed were the ideas that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Would pass muster to get them into buildings, And once
again the university did nothing and sent out a message
yesterday afternoon stating that they were taking these situations on
a case by case basis. Then last night, after nightfall,
the counter protesters started to lob some items in I
believe it was fireworks, some other stink bombs, some other
(02:46):
items into the encampments. There's obviously a response retort from
those in the Propaustindian encampments, and things just spiled from
there and it went at least three and a half
to four hours before any authorities, any law enforcement at
all showed up. So it was pure chaos right in
the middle of UCLA for about four and about four
hours last night.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, I got questions. I got questions. So first of all,
I saw video look like a scene almost like out
of out of Brave Heart or something. You had like
a wall of people with the placards up, then people
rushing into them and they're like trying to charge through
the line and they're fist flying and things got things
got pretty fiery.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, it was like Braveheart, except not noble at all.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It was the protesters that the initial encampment set up
kind of makeshift umbrellas or cardboard to try to yes,
as you know, Scottish fighters of of the seemingly Middle
Ages would set up with steel, with shields and steel.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
They would set up.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
With cardboard and umbrellas, and then you know, the protesters
of those who are trying to impede or or break
the the perimeter of the camp try to take the
would try to take the umbrellas. The fireworks wore a
nice touch. They certainly added some flare to the events.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
And bombs those are still out there.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
You can find anything these days, god knows. You know,
a little little Amazon search you'll find some stink bombs.
So that keep and then somehow became hand hand combat
at times because some people from the encampments would come out,
they'd find the counter protesters. So it was kind of
this this tet a tet, this push push and pull
between whoever would exit the encampment, who would ever get
(04:25):
caught in between or in that no man's land where
people were fighting and then would recede back into the
encampment and just you've got campus police there doing nothing
for about an hour and a half. LAPD showed up
thinking about four am and finally finally separated the two
groups of protesters.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Why was why was the law enforcement response just m
I A for hours? How can anyone justify that?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Sure, well, I think I mentioned the first jurisdictional justification
was that LAPD doesn't technically have jurisdiction until it's called
in at uc campuses. If we're looking for the explanation
that says a little bit more about the general disorder
or poor approach towards public order and public safety in
the state of California and Los Angeles, is that as
opposed to the authorities and the administration in Florida, University
(05:11):
of Florida, University of Texts that say, you know, listen,
we are going to prioritize public order and the functioning
of the campuses and the students that aren't participating in
these protests and their campus life. The UCLA and the
California authorities, I've said, we don't want anything that could
any fallout, anything that does restrict the ability of these
(05:32):
protesters to do what they're doing right now.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
We're not going to take the risk.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
We're not going to take the risk that the cops
might have to use physical force to break up the encampments,
might have to drag students kicking and screaming away, as
we've seen with so many videos. And I would imagine
that because of the potential for bad publicity or bad
visuals that would reflect badly on the constituents that the
California politicians find as their constituents is probably why they
held off.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We'll get into some more of this in just a second,
but first from our sponsor, Oxford Gold Group, there are
some people out there still in the fence about having
some gold and silver on hand, and that just doesn't
make sense to me. I've got gold and silver on hand.
I think it is part of a smart plan for
the future. I mean, look at the reasons you should
have it on hand. Tangible currency, a bug out plan
(06:16):
if things get really crazy, portfolio diversification, hedging against inflation,
and historically it's a store of value. Gold increases in
value over time. Now, if you're paying attention to global
events and the debt, thirty four trillion dollars, probably thinking
good time to get some gold and silver on hand.
Nobody can predict the future, but we can prepare for it,
(06:36):
and that starts now. Call the Oxford Gold Group of
the real pros. It's who I get my gold and
silver from. You may qualify up to ten for up
to ten thousand dollars in free precious metals. Call eight
three three nine nine five gold. That's eight three three
nine nine five g o l D eight three three
nine nine five gold. I are back with Matt Bolinski here. Matt,
(07:00):
you're a tech lawyer, so you know how this stuff goes.
What do you think about there trying to force this
sale of TikTok and all this stuff around TikTok? Where
are you at that?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I think it's an interesting battle between national security concerns
in the First Amendment because, as we've seen, TikTok's made
no bones about it. They've publicly stated they're going to
challenge this on First Amendment grounds. I think it presents
an interesting edge case because what the government's going to
say is we won. There have been restrictions around foreign
ownership of media for nearly one hundred years now. I
(07:32):
mean the Communications Act of nineteen thirty limited ownership of
any company that has a broadcast license, which at the
time was primarily radio soon became primarily television, to twenty
percent foreign ownership. So that's never really been challenged. However,
it hasn't really translated to the Internet. So the government's
going to say, listen, we're not banning, we're not punishing
the views specifically on TikTok, we're not punishing the content itself,
(07:54):
simply saying that this is a national security concern and
we're trying to control the ownership, which is something that
has passed constitutional muster previously. What TikTok is going to
say is that they're going to point to some comments
and some commentary from members of Congress that in kind
of justify buying the TikTok legislation, saying, hey, we're concerned
about the views being prioritized and that are popularized on TikTok,
(08:16):
and so some of the members of some of the
members of Congress, some of the government, some people passing
this legislation might have put their foot in their mouth
and making it tough tougher for the government to clear
this one.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
First amendment wise, with the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So what do you think ends up happening.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
I think the government's going to prevail eventually. The Supreme
Court has generally been deferential to Congress in matters of
foreign policy and national security, and I don't think it's
quite a strong enough First Amendment case because once again,
they're not banning specific points of view on TikTok. They're
simply trying to shift and say, once again, you can
express these points of view not only on TikTok, on Facebook,
(08:55):
on Instagram, on Twitter, we just needed to be under
different ownership to do so.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Do you personally like TikTok? Just curious? Like I actually
find TikTok I really interesting. I find TikTok if you want,
if you're waiting in an airport terminal, like I can't
read with people having speakerphone conversations and like sneezing on
me and stuff like you know, in the airport waiting area,
if you can put some headphones in and watch, you
can burn through two hours. It feels like in three
(09:20):
million hours you're just sitting there. I mean, I feel
like I always tell people if you're looking for a
time warp, as in a time waster for your brain,
which I only think is worthwhile. When you're in a
situation like waiting for like a you know, waiting for
a plane or a you know, something like that, man, TikTok,
it just takes over your It takes over your mind.
(09:40):
You're sitting there just like you know, you know, steak steak,
real estate, poppy steak. Really, you know, you just look
at suff You're like, this is great.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Well, it's popularity is no accident, right, and it's also
no accident that the other social media platforms are trying
to replicate it. I mean, you look at it with Instagram.
Instagram is essentially turned into a TikTok clone. It's all reels.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You don't really see content from your friends. You see
content that has been popularized. It is either comedy or
as you mentioned, cooking or these passive kind of you know,
personal interest videos of dogs up easier god knows what.
And so I can't say that I'm a big TikTok
user myself, but I'd rather not swim against the tides.
So I understand this is what people are gravitating towards
on social media. The social media platforms are acknowledging that
(10:22):
and short form video content is what social media is
going to be for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yes, I think it's no question come back, and I
got some questions about you as in your podcast and
LA as well. But first up, you know, AI based
companies have had huge moves in the last year or so.
Some of them have been basically propping up the stock
market if you look at how much attention, focus investment
they've gotten from Wall Street, and there are people that
(10:47):
are watching this very closely because they're still big moves
to be made. That's where Mark Chakin comes in. Mark
work on Wall Street for fifty years before becoming a
writer and editor, focusing on picking the best stocks in
specific sectors like technology and artificial intelligence. He has predicted
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and Mark says some Americans are going to miss out
(11:09):
on a critical turning point in the AI frenzy. He
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twenty twenty four aistock dot com. That's twenty twenty four
aistock dot com paid for by Shaking Analytics. All right, Matt,
(11:33):
first up, what do you talk about on the Prevailing
Narrative podcast? That's your show? Tell me a little bit
about it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, so it's a breakdown of current events whatever happens
to be in the news cycle. But it's a bit
of the conversation around the conversation, right, because to a
certain extent, current events are shaped by in the social
media and digital media era about how people are talking
about them. Is the way an event is being interpreted?
Is it being interpreted correctly? What do the people on
one side have to say about it? Are there some
(12:00):
falsehoods from one side or the other? If people are
asserting it, as they do very often these days, that
there's an ulterior motive or some other explanation, right, So
what's going on?
Speaker 3 (12:10):
You saw that?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Of course a lot with COVID is that ulterior motive
that's being you know, asserted. Is their validity to that.
People like to call that conspiracy theories. I think that's
a little patronizing of a tone, but it's a certain extent.
It's whether or not, you know, it's almost fact checking conspiracies.
But I'd say I'm a lot more receptive to a
lot of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
That a lot of the other fact checkers out there.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
So it's that And you know, interview series with people
that I think are relevant, have interesting ideas on social sciences, politics.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
What have you?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Are you an original La guy? Do you move there?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Born and raised?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
You're you always? You're the real deal? Interesting? Yeah, how
do you feel? So I'll tell you. I grew up
as a New Yorker and I had a especially in
my teenage years because you know, Beverly Hills nine O
two and zero and then before before that, uh Saved
by the Bell, And you know, you look at at
the pop culture and I feel like growing up anywhere
(13:02):
in America, Los Angeles, the nicer parts of Los Angeles
and the you know, the broader environs like American Nirvana.
And I even thought about moving to LA about a
decade ago. And now all I see is just things
moving in the wrong direction. Everything in the news, things
moving in the wrong direction. Is La salvageable or is
(13:24):
it still worth it even with all the problems, you know,
the crazy homeless situation in Santa Monica and all that, Like,
what how do you come down on this? Are you
going to be the last guy, last man standing saying
that you know, La is worth it even if you
aren't a communist? What do you think?
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, So that that's been a question on a lot
of people in my circle's mind. They're wondering, if Matt
had why haven't you moved to Miami already? So La
is always going to have a lot of appealing characteristics.
That's why it was a place that everybody always wanted
to move, as you recognize and as the me and
the people who grew up here. When we grew up,
everyone wanted to move here. It wasn't even really an
idea that's challenged. California had has recorded history three years
(14:03):
of net outflow migration twenty twenty one, two and twenty
twenty three. So do the map there. It's the first
there's ever been more people leaving than coming here. It
still has a lot of great qualities. Is actually really
interesting from a business perspective. But knowing the homeless problem,
which we had under control by twenty fourteen, the smallest
(14:24):
volume of people living on skid row in fifty years
has spiraled. It's been We've had fifty percent of the
rise in homelessness in all of America in California over
the past seven years. And even though violence has tempted
tapered off a little bit since just a crazy rise
in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, it still feels
like nobody's out there working for us. It feels like
(14:45):
the government's actually actively working against its citizens, and.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
That's turned off a lot of people. Can that be salvaged.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
It's going to be difficult the way the way that
Los Angeles has set up. It's not just a large city,
it's also a city within a county. So you don't
just have to win some city elections, you have to
win some county elections too. Everyone was very hopeful that
if Rick Crusoe was elected mayor in twenty twenty two
that he'd be able to turn the city around.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
And he lost. And even if.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
He'd won, there's only so much that he could do
because you've got fourteen city council members, some of whom
are completely crazy. You operate within a county jurisdiction that
has a board of supervisors. The board of supervisor is crazy.
And what I've been trying to do partially with my
podcast is get people in California Los Angeles to refocus
their attention on local politics because that affects your life
just so much more. People were sitting there up until
(15:33):
twenty twenty had no idea who their city council person was,
had no idea who the district attorney was, no idea
who the county supervisors were. Now some people are starting
to pay more attention to it. I think a key
election and I think personally the most interesting election in
twenty twenty four that's not national will be the district
attorney who's raised.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
In Los Angeles this year. You've got a guy named
George Gascon.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
If you want to talk Soros prosecutors, he is the
platonic ideal of a Soros prosecutor. Soros gave him two
and a half million dollars one of the reasons he
won in twenty twenty and he's made no bones about
it that he thinks we have too harsh of a
penal system that we need to decarce rate. That the big,
biggest problem in societies that were unfair to criminals, not
that we need to protect innocent civilians. And La and
(16:15):
even a very liberal city with that, like La. He's
got like a twenty two percent approval rating. He's very unpopular. However,
the person that made it through the primary against him
is a guy named Nathan Hawkman. I'm a big fan
of Nathan's, but he was recently a Republican. He recently
ran for California State Attorney General as a Republican, So
he's carrying a lot of baggage and it is going
(16:35):
to be a dogfight. Everyone thought that Gascon's goose was cooked,
that he had no chance of winning until a recently
Republican candidate came through in the primary against him.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So now you know, all all.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The political experts locally were saying, if there's anyone he
can defeat, it would be this guy, Nathan Hawkman, even
though Nathan's fantastic. So it's kind of going to be
a battle for the soul of LA and a little
bit of a you know, kind of survey of a
final word at least from up with deeply blue jurisdiction
on the Soros prosecutors, many of whom were swept into
power in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
You know, madam, just telling you we got beaches and
beautiful women down here too, in Southpord of my friends.
You know, there there are other options. I'm just letting
you know, but I appreciate that you're a fighter for
the cause. Check out the Prevailing Narrative podcast with Matt Bolinsky.
Go check it out, and Matt want to get you
on radio soon. Man, thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
We'll love to thank you for having me
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