Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/27/23: Biden Joins UAW Picket Line, New Hunter Corruption Allegations, Judge Rules Trump Defrauded Banks, Iran's Influence Peddling In Washington, JPMorgan Settles Epstein Case, FTC Sues Amazon, Gov Shutdown Imminent, GOP Voter Realignment, And MORE!

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss Hunter Biden receiving $250k from a Chinese business to his father's address, Joe Biden's visit to the UAW picket line, Trump's speech at a non union auto company, judge rules Trump defrauded banks with real estate empire, new information on Iran's influence peddling in Washington, JP Morgan settles Epstein case in Virgin Islands, FTC sues Amazon for monopolistic practices, imminent government shutdown, GOP voters realignment, and Toby Green joins to discuss how Covid lockdowns impacted Africa. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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dose this morning? Did you calibrate it better than last week? He loves this joke. He's going to do this joke every week now. It was an inside joke because I had macroed a little bit. You know, sometimes you got to macro. There was an audience of one, me, for that joke last week. I'm better today. Although people enjoyed it either way. Good. Yeah. Well, you know, Ryan, it's debate day.

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there's a whole bunch of segments and we post three or four, sometimes five of them to YouTube. The rest are available at Spotify and other podcast places or with your premium sponsorship. It's the difference between hearing Ryan making a joke about me microdosing and seeing Ryan. And you really have to see it. Yeah, you do, you do. You gotta see it. It's a huge news day, actually. And this happens a lot, I feel like, you do. You do. You got to see it. So huge news day, actually. And this happens a lot, I feel like, on Tuesdays as we're prepping the show. But

yesterday was something I have never seen quite before. The stories just kept stacking up. Ryan was actually in the Capitol yesterday. And I know you're going to talk to us about shutdown dynamics later in the show. We're going to start with the UAW. We're then going to go to some big news, again, that broke at night, basically, that Donald Trump is in some serious hot water, new legal trouble based on a judge's findings about how he was valuing his own assets. We're going to talk about the big Iran story that was very buzzy in Washington yesterday. The Biden administration may be infiltrated by Iranian assets. I think Ryan might disagree and have some additional-

We'll have a fun time with that one. It'll be a good debate. We're going to talk about JP Morgan settling once again in the Jeffrey Epstein case. We're going to talk about Google and antitrust. I'm going to talk about a new poll on Republican voters and how they are seeing politics right now. And then we're talking to journalist Toby Green about how the lockdowns affected Africa. Let's deal with Hunter Biden first. Hunter Biden. This is one of those stories that stacked up yesterday. Did you see the Fox story? I did. Right. So Fox is reporting, I think we have an element here that $250,000 plus another $10,000 wire originated from a company in Beijing that has ties to kind of like the National Chinese Bank that Hunter Biden and his little firm were working for.

They wired Hunter money in 2019, and the beneficiary address on the wire was Joe Biden's home address, the big guy. 100% for the big guy. Now, the reason I'm a little underwhelmed by this story is that Hunter Biden, we know that he was living. Yes. He was a drug addict living with his parents. Yes. And so if you're going to get a $250,000 wire,

which is, it's a hilarious concept. You're a drug addict who's living with your parents. And also you have Hundreds of thousands of dollars being wired in from foreign countries Yes, as you know, most drug addicts were living with their parents too. But any man he's living with his dad at the time Or it is the most stable address. You know, he's going through a divorce Got this other relationship going on. He's got the affair with his late brother's wife, former wife, going on. And so the address that he can cite is the one in Wilmington.

That's his dad. So as another example of kind of what a rough life Hunter Biden was living, I think they've got him busted. I don't think it actually ties to Joe Biden necessarily. Am I being too soft on the big guy here? No, no, no. I don't think you're being too soft on the big guy. But it does, if you kind of zoom out to the 30,000-foot level, this is a man who was about to announce his run for president on the timeline

and is having money from a Chinese PE firm wired to his house, hundreds of thousands of dollars to the man who is about to become the leading candidate for president. He announced a couple of months later or something. Right, right, right, right. So obviously not a good look. And I think in another era, you know, 15, 10 years ago, this would have been pretty earth shattering for Joe Biden and for any sitting president. Does it tie Biden directly any more than he already has been tied directly?

We're not in the Philip bump camp, of course, where we say, no, none of this points back to Joe Biden. It can mean anything. No, I mean, I think there's pretty clear evidence that Joe Biden, because his finances, and this is, I think that one of the points of this story is it's interesting the way that their lives were intermingled because we have seen evidence their finances were intermingled. Right. And with this company in particular, I think it was BHR. BHR. We know that Biden was on, Joe Biden was on at least what one call, did coffee in Beijing with Hunter and the CEO, may have called in during a dinner as well, or was put on speaker during another meeting. So just to do pleasantries, because that's how this works. If you're Hunter Biden, you want to just prove that like, okay, yes, you know I'm a

mess, but my dad still loves me and I still talk to him. And let me prove it by putting him on speakerphone here. It's not like you're're gonna talk about business on the speakerphone with the vice president former vice president But it's just to show that connection. Yeah as a parent you could be like look you want to move back home You're troubled. You just can't extract money from foreign countries using my last name, right? You could put that rule in place my red line You got you got to change the kitty litter every day Yeah, and no money from China in exchange for selling my name. Seems like a good deal.

You could do that. It seems like a good deal. Yeah. Nice place. You get to live in Wilmington. But not only did Joe Biden apparently not do that, but he also then lied to the public about it and said he had no interaction with his son's business at all. We now know that that is not true. We know that he was very, very much engaged, whether it was intentional or otherwise, in the lobbying project. I have a hard time giving him the benefit of the doubt when he's showing up

to Cafe Milano. He's on the phone, all of those different things. So is this hard evidence that Joe Biden profited? Well, we do have some evidence that Hunter Biden was paying bills on these properties. So if you put it all together, it's just another puzzle piece that is becoming an increasingly clear picture of Joe Biden's at the very least complicity in influence peddling with a country that is, I think, fairly labeled an adversary, especially on particular levels. And he lied to the public about it too. Yeah. There was that, and we can then move on from this, but there was that great viral speech that was given. It's sort of like a Chinese Ted talk thing. If you remember this, where the guy's like, when Biden comes in, we're going to be good. We're,

yeah, because we're good with Hunter. Yeah. So they, they certainly, like there were certainly people in the Chinese elite who felt like they were getting something. The last Obama state dinner was a China state dinner, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, when they were leaving office, there was a different, there was, there was a warmer feeling towards China and, you know, people can make ideological arguments for, for why that was and how best to handle this kind of what feels like a new Cold War. But obviously, we're seriously at loggerheads with them on things like state secrets, on things like technology and all of these big questions, Taiwan. So it's an incredibly bizarre and obviously unethical arrangement. Yeah. And that's the funny thing. All of this

chatter kind of lives at the realm of just social media chit-chat. If you go back to Russia, Russiagate, and Trump, if you believed that Trump was kind of like a Russian asset living in the White House, you'd be shocked that he was so hawkish toward Russia. Right. And if you believe that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are just Chinese assets sitting in the White House, you'd be shocked at how hostile and hawkish they are towards China. So this entire conversation plays out on a level that's just different from the structural kind of geopolitical level that's actually at play. Yeah, I think that's a good point because Biden's China policy is totally, what's the best word for it? It's kind of bipolar in that it's

like polled, it's just two poles that are, it's a tug of war between people who are more dovish and people who are more hawkish, because you can see both winning out at various points in time. And that's genuinely interesting. And it's not as clear-cut a story as Joe Biden is bought and paid for by China. The story is obviously that Joe Biden was aware of an incredibly unethical arrangement. His son was profiting to the tune of millions in the way no average American could by trading on his name and influence. Meanwhile, you've had Republicans accusing Biden of being bought and paid for by the UAW. Are they wrong? Let's hope not. Let's hope not. So let's play some extraordinarily exciting scenes from a UAW picket line, the first president in

American history to walk a striking picket line. Let's roll this. You can't, you know, you got to squint a little bit to hear this, but here's Biden kind of missing the bullhorn a little bit at the picket line. First time I've ever done it as a president. Folks, look. One thing is real simple. I'm going to be very brief. The fact of the matter is that you guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. Made a lot of sacrifices. Gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble.

But now they're doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well, too. Yes, sir! Stick with it, because you deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits. Let's get it! Get back or we lost, okay?

We say, man, it's about time they ever step up for us. Thank you. What I was struck by beyond just the imagery of the president out there on the picket line with the workers is that at the end there he says, let's get back what we lost, using the word we, talking about the workers. And he's talking about how in 2008 during the financial crisis, the UAW gave up extraordinary concessions in order to just not go completely bankrupt. Like bankruptcy, and not the kind of fake bankruptcy, but like real bankruptcy was like on the table. Like that was a real possibility. And they made all of these

sacrifices. And so he's saying, we need to win that back. And to have a president say, we, in relation to the rest of these workers rather than you was a unique sign of solidarity from a president to actual striking workers. What did you think of that? Theater or a real shift in the role of the presidency? I mean, it was good theater, a rare moment of good theater from the Biden presidency. Kept it short, which was good theater, a rare moment of good theater from the Biden presidency. Kept it short, which was good for him. Kept it short. So here's more from him. He said, quote, stick with it. You deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits. And he got some-

We're going to put up A2 here while you're reading that. Yeah. He got some additional headlines because a reporter shouted a question to him where he asked specifically, where the reporter asked specifically about a 40% pay raise. And Biden just responded to the question of whether workers deserved it. He said, quote, yes. This is, yeah, you can see that up on the screen as well. So whether or not, I mean, I think Biden is entirely sincere in this, I think, and that's very typical of Democrats, especially from his era when union support meant something. I mean, that is the core of the Democratic Party when he's coming, and especially where he's from, when he's coming into office and is coming into power politically. So I think he's entirely sincere in his sentiments towards unions, and I think you definitely saw that very, very clearly yesterday. It is interesting, on the other hand, that speaking

of, we were just kind of talking about this in the China segment, the sort of different polls pulling him in different directions, and this happens in every presidency. But it's been interesting, the sort of green agenda that Biden's implemented, the electric vehicle mandate that came from an executive order. Those things are intention, and those are explicitly intention according to the union. And Biden didn't address that yesterday, no big surprise there. But it is interesting to see a Democrat like Joe Biden from his era and his kind of democratic politics then be the administration to implement some of these green priorities that the unions are obviously not stoked about. Yeah. And later he stuck around to watch Sean Fain, the UAW president, speak

to that same gathering of workers. He's got another work. I don't think we have the clip here, but he's got a worker, got his arm around her, and he's talking about how we're going to beat corporate greed. The thing that beats corporate greed is a united working class. And Biden's like pumping his fist like, what, this is the Democratic Party? Yeah. Wow. Okay. And I think politicians would rather do that. Like just as human beings, like if you can be a politician and you can either kind of be corrupted by big money or you can be corrupted by thousands of workers cheering for you. You'd rather have thousands of just as a human, you'd rather have thousands of workers cheering for you. Now, it's nice to be rich and, you know,

be bought off, like be an oligarch, like all of those things are great. But I do think that there is a wind at the back of that kind of movement. If you can get it going, you have to be able. And you're seeing at the same time, yesterday it was reported, you see this, that the private equity industry is moving all its money to the Republicans this coming cycle because they're so frustrated by Gensler and other Biden regulators. And they think that Democrats are getting taken over by the Bernie you know, Berniecrats. And it's just not fair. Private equity can't get a hearing outside of Josh Gottheimer anymore. And it's like, good, polarize that. Like, good, fine. Yeah. Let's have that fight.

Well, and it's a time when Republicans are like at odds with the Chamber of Commerce. And that's a very real- Where will private equity go? So sad. It's actually, I mean, because private equity, again, I mean, we've seen different things like ESG is a huge issue of contention between Republicans and some of these really big business interests. And I don't know. I mean, there's a real question of if those big business interests that thought they had actually found a new home in the Democratic Party, it wasn't just that they thought, oh, we're souring on Republicans. It was actually they felt really comfortable with

Democrats. If they now feel uncomfortable with Democrats, and that's a wedge that drives them back to Republicans, there's a lot of incentives on the table for Republicans to be friendly with those interests again. And we'll talk about this later in the show in my block, because Republicans actually really can't afford to do that with their voters because sentiments have soured on Wall Street to another degree with Republican voters. But union sentiments, even among Republican voters, and in the poll I'm going to talk about later today, it's something like 40 percent of Republicans are favorable towards unions, let alone the broader public. This is not a time to be going after unions Yeah, and this exact fight that you're talking about is playing out within the Republican Party in tonight's trip by Trump out to a what a lot of the media is describing as a

Talk to the UAW or to or to like unionized workers or saying he's visiting the picket line None of that is true and it's interesting. Let's talk about what Trump actually is doing during the debate. He's going to be visiting a non-union plant. We have this Fox News clip. Let's roll this so we can hear directly from the non-union owner. Let's bring in Nathan Stemple, the president of automotive manufacturing company Drake Enterprises, where former President Trump will be speaking tomorrow.

Nathan, good morning to you. It's going to be a big week for you and your business because the former president is coming to speak at Drake Enterprises. Not every day you get a former president, current frontrunner, to visit. So give us the backstory here. Tell us how this visit came about and why you do want to host the former president. Well, first off, thanks for having me on. It was complete luck.

Some of our colleagues that we do business with reached out to us, said that the president was looking for a location to host this event. And, you know, we were more than willing to to do so now some of this if I'm gonna defend Trump would be The unions are democratic allies. No, yeah, and so aren't gonna give Trump any kind of photo op on the other hand the picket lines are all over The you know, they're throughout Michigan, Indiana You could like you can find picket lines everywhere. And so if he actually wanted to literally visit a picket line, he could do that.

He could get the same photo op that Biden just got. Instead, when his campaign decided to plan it, they reached out to, you know, some looks like Republican donors out in the Midwest. And they were like, oh yeah, call this guy, call Nathan. You know, his workers aren't striking. They don't have a union. And they're like, oh, you can host us? Yeah, we'll host. Yeah. It's like, well, no, this is a big, this is a strike against the big three. What are you doing going to a not striking non-union plant? Yeah. So that's where the media is, I think, blurring the lines here. So he is speaking to autoworkers. And when you say Donald Trump is going to Michigan to speak to autoworkers amid UAW strike, it gives the impression that he is speaking to striking autoworkers.

That is not the case. And there were some rumblings that this had been organized by the National Right to Work Foundation, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a group. We don't have any evidence of that, as Philip Bump would say, right? Right, as Philip Bump would say. By the Bump standards, it's unconfirmed. I did reach out to them and didn't hear back to try to confirm whether or not that's true. It's evidence. It's evidence. But like I said, I didn't hear back. Now, the right to work issue is a huge blind spot for, and I don't know if we've actually ever even hashed this out because you've covered these issues for years. I do genuinely think it is a blind spot for pro-union Democrats and pro-union leftists because a lot of the problem with right to work is actually, I think, it's blamed on companies, like misinformation for companies,

blah, blah, blah, which I think is sort of insulting to union workers. But also, if workers don't want to join a union, that also a problem with the Union and it is because unions like the UAW have had serious corruption problems there are now cultural wedges between the workers and the unions and the the candidates that they support with money that partially comes from workers like that is a real problem for a lot of people who work at in places like Detroit in places like Indiana and So the right to work issue, I think, is not as clear cut as it's made out to be by a lot of people who cover these issues really intensely, not you. But I think sometimes that just gets glossed over. And it is kind of an opening for Trump to come in here and say, a lot of you workers, not all of you workers,

but a lot of you aren't getting what you want from the unions. And so I don't think it's a clear slam dunk. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. It's not like the big dunk on Republicans that I've seen some on the left treat it as, that Trump is going to a right to work, non-union place. Actually, union workers in places like Michigan do have a lot of problems with the unions. I think the timing is a little off for him in the sense that finally, yes, the UAW wildly corrupt for decades. Until like recently. Thank you, weaponized Department of Justice came in and weaponized the UAW leadership right out of there after this, as they deserved it, like wildly corrupt.

And then for the first time ever they had direct elections and They chose Sean Fain. Here's the thing that nobody wants to talk about, you know why Sean Fain won? Hmm people are gonna not be happy about this Graduate students make up about 25% of the UAW right now. They were the biggest organizers and champions of Sean Fain. Hmm And so it's this interesting Bernie like gentrifier millennial situation that, but they very much organized with militant autoworkers and other rank and file. But without the graduate students in that union, Sean Fain doesn't win. Interesting. Yeah.

Without the. We like our kind of class history to be cleaner than that. So you can just pretend you didn't hear that if anybody doesn't like that. But if you do like that, congratulations to the graduate students. And also congratulations to the autoworkers who did work with them. You know what? These kids can really help us. There were a lot of fights on the floor where the graduate students were able to help some of these longtime autoworkers kind of work through the very complicated legalese of the bylaws and And help them maneuver within the within the cup within the convention. So it was really really cool alliance

If if people are okay with like acknowledging that grad students are not just the worst people on the planet Because without them like you're not you're not getting this fight right now. So one point on what I'd say on right to work, yes, I think it's true that unions need to keep organizing internally and need to positively win the support of their membership. They need to genuinely be appealing. At the same time, the way that right to work can sometimes be designed is like, imagine you like, let's say you're going out to eat and you've got a huge group, you've got 50 people and so you call the restaurant

ahead and you're like look if we give you $1,000 can we block off half the restaurant and then everybody can eat for $10. Totally. And then everybody and then people come in and you, people figure out, oh, actually I don't have to pay the $10. I don't have to chip in. Yeah. And I still get the cheaper food. A hundred percent. And then eventually nobody's paying the little cover to get into the side over here. And then the person who organized the dinner can't then pay the restaurant. And so the whole thing just dissolves and you don't and nobody any longer has like this half of the restaurant anymore.

The whole thing's over. Yeah, I agree. So there's so you got to. So every individual wants to free ride. Yeah, that's why not. Takes the incentive away. If you can free ride, free ride. But then eventually the union is so weak that it just collapses and that's the goal of

These like right-to-work champions. Absolutely. Absolutely although I do again think that it's a it's also an opening and even just politically it's an opening for Trump to prey on and I say that not like I don't mean that pejoratively I mean that politically and to prey on some real weaknesses that the union has. And the union should obviously strengthen the weakness. It should actually have to deal with some of those things. And when you don't have right to work, there's less incentive for the union to work on those things because they don't have to appeal as much to workers because workers are forced to support them. So anyway, all that is to say, it shouldn't be a cope for unions to just say, well, this is business brainwashing and freeloaders. I mean, there are very legitimate problems that have broken the trust of some of the workers. And

that is, at the very least, an opening. And Republicans have not been smart enough to really capitalize on that because they didn't frankly give a damn. Like they weren't paying attention and they didn't want to touch the labor issue, period. And Donald Trump is the only Republican candidate right now that's going in on this. And that's not shocking at all, but it's shocking from a purely political, strategic standpoint that no consultants in the Beltway have picked up on this and been like, ooh, maybe we should talk to these workers because they comprise a group of our base. They delivered the election to Donald Trump in 2016 in some part. It's just absurd that the Beltway is still that dumb and bought and paid for by big business that no candidate wants to touch this. I'll be very curious to see how he frames this. I think A5 is, Trump's been, you know, so I think this suggests, right, like he's, Trump says he always had a lot of workers back. Union leaders say his first term record shows otherwise. So I think he'll probably

get up and say, like, I've always had your back. It'll be interesting to see whether he, like, bashes, if he, like, stands with workers, but bashes union leaders and Democrats. Or if he, which would be a misread of the moment, because I think that UAW members right now are very happy with Sean Fain, very happy with UAW leadership. They love the way that they're rolling out the strikes slowly so that most of the UAW members are actually getting paid right now.

Like they're causing significant pain for the companies. They're bringing these companies to the table, extracting concessions. Negotiations, from what I'm told, are going extremely well. And they're getting paid for most of them because only like 13,000 are out on strike right now. So I think if Trump goes after the leadership, I don't think it's going to actually land because they're like, no, what are you talking about? Like these guys, we elected these guys just recently and they're doing exactly what we asked them to do and they're, and they're executing it well. Yeah. And I, I mean, I guess again, like I expect that he probably will go after leadership because that's one of like in,

in recent years. Muscle memory. Right. Yeah. And your point right now about like leadership recently, a lot of Republicans just are not well acquainted with labor issues. Like they don't know what's true on the ground. They don't have the contacts. They really just like don't have their ear to the ground. They definitely don't have their finger on the pulse. I know this will come as a surprise to everyone. Who was that Republican from Indiana that I was talking to? Jim Banks. Yeah, Jim Banks. I asked him, how are people responding as a Republican

chair of the anti-woke caucus? How are Republicans responding to the coming strike? He's like, nobody in Washington that I know of is remotely even paying attention to it. Well, and so this gets us to our next element. Let's put ASICs up on the screen. This is Josh Hawley, Republican Senator, elected in 2018 and definitely someone considered to be on the quote unquote new right, visiting the picket line in Wentzville. He said these workers deserve better pay, better benefits, and a guarantee their jobs will stay in America. Marco Rubio supported the Amazon unionization drive down in Bessemer. We have seen some Republicans flirting with supporting striking workers, flirting with supporting unions. If we put a seven up on the

screen, this gets interesting too. This is Pat White. He says, shame on Josh Hawley for acting like a friend to labor just for cheap publicity. His record shows a lack of support for the labor community up until now. These are some headlines he put up on the screen. Hawley has been a vocal supporter of implementing, quote, right to work in Missouri. Missouri election proposition A, right to work vote. So, Ryan, we were just basically going over all of this.

And this one's good. Overtime pay raise blocked in Missouri and nationwide as a result of lawsuit brought by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley. That's when Obama tried to raise overtime pay for people who were misclassified as managers and Hawley sued. And I think- Or misclassified as non-managers or whatever it was. And I think Josh Hawley would say- Misclassified as managers. I had it right the first time. Sorry. We should actually try to get Josh Hawley on to talk about this. I think he would say, and you can choose to believe it or not, I think he would say, I understand why people are skeptical. I think he would say, listen, I get it. The Republican Party has a very different record on these issues. I'm sure he would say, I still support

right to work, but I understand people's skepticism. This has been a real problem for the Republican Party. But the fact of the matter is that it's changing. The Republican base is changing. He wants to convert. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's one of these weird things in politics where, again, I understand if people are questioning the sincerity, but the practical effect of it is actually powerful. It's good for the workers. The workers had Cori Bush and AOC in Missouri at a picket line, and they have Josh Hawley at a picket line. You can call them all cynical. That's great for the workers.

That's great for the workers. At the end of the day, great for the workers. All right, should we move on, Ryan, to the Trump news yesterday? Yeah, so Donald Trump getting hammered by a judge for fraud. The judge says he doesn't even need to hear evidence anymore. He said just looking at the plain paperwork, he can say that a lot of fraud was going on. You've had the Trump kids, I think we put a B1 here, you've had the Trump kids kind of freaking out about one particular part of the ruling where the judge apparently said that he guesses that Mar-a-Lago should be worth about $18 million and Trump said it was worth a billion plus. Now, I think the problem

for the valuation of Mar-a-Lago is that it has to be a club. It has to sell as a club. It can't be subdivided up into a million different McMansions My favorite part of all this is that the the Trump basically suggested According to the judge that any valuation that he put on a property including Mar-a-Lago is legitimate because He could find a buyer from Saudi Arabia who would pay that price, which I think is true, but more damning. He should be in the cell with Menendez.

If Menendez is getting a bunch of gold bars from Egypt for whatever he's giving them. Assuming Menendez ends up in a cell. Yes. Then Trump just having a blank check from the Saudis for whatever he wants to give them. I think we just forget how corrupt that is and how much it undermines our national security and our national interest to have somebody whose son-in-law for instance takes two billion dollars within days of leaving the White House if you every day know that you have a Blank check that you can just write to from the Bank of Saudi That's gonna be in your head when you're making foreign policy

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's one of the I think legitimate arguments that was made about Donald Trump and his business interests over the course of his presidency. There are all kinds of funny ones that were made, but that was always a legitimate one. And this is, so basically the news yesterday is there's this civil suit that it was Letitia James actually brought against Donald Trump. And the judge ruled in that lawsuit that Trump and the Trump organization deceived banks and insurers and other types of people. I'm reading from the Associated Press here by, quote, overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans. So one example of that is Mar-a-Lago, as you mentioned, inflating, according to the judge, its value on one financial statement by 2,300%. He also, the judge, quote, rebuked Trump for lying about the size of his Manhattan apartment.

Trump claimed his three-story Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size, valuing it at $327 million. And the judge also pointed out that they would list rent-controlled apartments as worth just as much as unrent-controlled apartments. Yeah. Unrestricted land, they would list as just as much as restricted land. Here's why, and you know me well, so you know I have just no soft spot for this particular crime because it's what Joe Giudice and Teresa Giudice went to actual prison for. These are the Real Housewives of New Jersey, Real Housewives of New Jersey star. They like pencil whipped a little bit of a mortgage just to help, like just so that

they could float like from one like rehab, gut to another and the FBI and the rest of the IRS and everybody else came at them and sent both of them to prison and deported Joe yeah for not for like a 0.001 of what the Trump family did here. So no sympathy for me. Teresa was on Celebrity Apprentice and I think has sort of hinted that she's supportive of Donald Trump. Of course she is. Demography is destiny right there. They are 100% Trump supporters, no doubt about it. But some serious penalties come for Trump. I was just going to say, right. So the consequences of this is that they actually, the judge ordered, and this is Arthur Angeron, he ordered that some of Trump's business licenses are now rescinded, which makes it very hard, at least according to the Associated Press, for them to do business in New York, which is where they have always done business. Like they're trying to take the Trump Tower from him.

From us, the people. But in all seriousness, I mean, this is, again, for all of the lawfare involved in these attacks on Trump and all of what I think are legitimate conversations about the weaponization of the Justice Department, et cetera, et cetera. Trump always had serious vulnerabilities, always had serious vulnerabilities. And that's why even when he initially ran for president, I don't know to this day that he really wanted to because he didn't think that he would make it more than maybe six months. Because anybody with this level of business or this type of business history really wouldn't want the attention of basically what did Chuck Schumer say about the Intel agencies? Like that's what's going to happen, whether it's Intel or whether it's your business, you're going to become a massive target for all of these things. And

you genuinely wouldn't want to expose yourself to that level. There probably aren't any real estate developers in New York who would want that type of scrutiny. Donald Trump is definitely not one of them. He's not among them. Also, he has no lawyers. Because for years, he has refused to pay his attorneys. And I have never seen this. In this order, the judge fined Trump's attorneys for their bad arguments. The arguments that they made, according to the judge, were so bad and so specious that he fined them $7,500. And he says in the order, I told you to stop making stupid arguments.

Right. You came back with stupid arguments. Right. You're fined. Like it's one thing to lose emotion. It's another thing to lose emotion so badly that the judge Charges you It's like it's pretty it's like like that line where they're like we are all stupider for having read this motion

It's and as as a result you owe us seven thousand five hundred dollars And that's where I think we should go back to like again this idea that Donald Trump So he can't paint again, I know the system and I alone can fix it. Basically, he was saying that I have brazenly participated in the upper echelons of America's business and political elite for decades. I have gamed the system. Makes me smart. I'm famous for it. Yeah, it doesn't make me, like, it doesn't make me criminal. It makes me smart, something to that extent. Um, it's been out in the open with Donald Trump for a long time. He hasn't sort of hid that, uh, he's at, at best gamed the system. Um, and so I don't think this affects him with voters. I think again, like people actually know this stuff about Donald

Trump. Like it's, it's totally baked into the Trump cake, as we talk about a lot. So the question of whether or not this is a big blow to Trump politically, I think it's not a big blow to Trump politically at all. But at the same time- Pocketbook-wise, ouch. This is a very real, hard consequence for him on that level, for sure. Right, because he didn't have the types of lawyers and accountants who would say, you know what, that's not the square foot. It's not the square foot size of this apartment. And you can't say this is worth $350 million because if anybody looks,

they'll know it's not. And that's illegal. You're going to get in trouble. And if anybody would say that to him, he would A, not pay them, B, fire them. And why does this not bother Trump voters? And this is maybe the most important question. It's because on the one hand, Donald Trump was in some sense willing to say things like it doesn't make me criminal, it makes me smart. And that's, I don't know what the, I'm paraphrasing him, but he did say it makes me smart in relation to I think it was taxes. So like on the one hand, again, people know this, they expect it,

but they also see him as somebody who has kind of turned his fire on the others, the Clintons, the Bidens, who are doing the same thing. And so people are genuinely upset about corruption, petty corruption like this, in addition to like really serious major corruption, Saudi corruption. We're going to talk about potential Iran corruption, these sorts of things like genuinely do really bother Trump voters, but they see it as something that Donald Trump has sort of set his sights on. Now, I think your reporting on Jared Kushner should give people serious pause, Trump supporters, serious pause as to whether that's true, as to whether he's sincere when he says he set his sights on actually undercutting

the power of American elites on every level that Trump voters are bothered by, 100%. So that's a different conversation. But again, people have a very real reason for seeing Trump in that sense. They believe that he's somebody who profited and benefited from this system and then decided to basically destroy it. The question is whether he actually wants to undermine and destroy it. Right. And then once you're behind him, it becomes a team sport. It becomes negative polarization. And if you think Biden is like a pedophile communist who's trying to sell the country to the Chinese, then you really don't care what your opponent,

I mean, what Trump, what's wrong with Trump? Because you're like, that's your horse that you're going to ride. And that's another thing to the point earlier, I know we have to move on that you made about how I don't think any real estate developer in New York would want to invite this kind of scrutiny. That's another thing that's going to really irritate people here. And I think rightfully so. That's not to say Trump didn't do anything wrong, because I think he was obviously doing something wrong. But it then feels like witch hunt stuff once again, that Donald Trump is being singled out. Nobody else is going to be singled out, even real estate developers or similar business people who have given a bunch of money to Democrats Democrats just going after Trump because he's Trump, because it's the they're

not after me, they're after you meme that he posted when he was president. And that is, there's truth to it and it resonates because of that. So that will, I mean, I think that'll loom large in the minds of people who, when we're talking about, you know, if you ask someone, why, like, do you care about the money that goes to Jared Kushner and his relationship with MBS, et cetera, et cetera, people will say, listen, this is, it's more serious than that, would be the response. Now, I think both of us would disagree, but I get why when you look at some of this stuff, at least on paper, it does seem like just a slap in the face of the Trump voters in addition to Donald Trump. Right. But he didn't have to deport Joe Giudice.

He didn't have to deport Joe Giudice. And Giudice was deported under Trump. That's right. Deporter-in-chief. Actually, that was Obama. He could have pardoned Joe and Teresa. You are confusing your deporters-in-chief. But he did deport Joe. That's right. He had a could have pardoned Joe and Teresa. You are confusing your deporters in chief. Yes, but he did deport Joe.

That's right. He had a chance to pardon him and didn't. Well, shout out to Joe Giudice, who I believe is in the Bahamas. That's right. So, wild published in Semaphore yesterday. And actually, I saw the Free Press, which is Barry Weiss's publication, republished it just today. We can go ahead and put C1 up on the screen. This is a little bit from the Semaphore story. And I'm going to read from it here, except my notes got mixed up and I don't have it in front of me.

Ryan, do you have it in front of you? I don't have it in front of me. Ryan, do you have it in front of you? I don't, but while you look for it, I'll make the point that it's very nice to see Barry Weiss show some interest in a foreign government trying to influence Washington. If she's really wants to get on that beat, I can point to a number of other countries that are in that broad region that she might want to look at, because there's a lot going on there. Well, Ryan, of course, is alluding to Israel. The Semaphore story starts by saying, in the spring of 2014, because the story talks both about the Obama administration and the current Biden administration, the special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, is brought into the story in some ways that are probably expected, obviously.

He came under investigation. I think it's an ongoing investigation into Rob Malley's handling of classified documents. Like the Iran envoy and like the lead Iran nuclear deal guy. Yes. Right. nuclear deal guy. Yes, right. And so the Semaphore story says, in the spring of 2014, senior Iranian foreign ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran's image and positions on global security issues, particularly its nuclear program, by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the

Iran Experts Initiative. The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government Correspondence and emails reported for the first time by semaphore and Iran international the officials working under the moderate president Hassan Rouhani congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative at least three of the people and this is the big Kind of bombshell as it was perceived yesterday, at least three of the people on the foreign ministry's list were or became top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration's special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance. And so, Ryan, I think the IEE, this is a statement that's in the story, they talk about how this is, they're spinning it as kind of a mundane outreach effort to second generation Iranians in different parts of the world.

I think one of the big questions here is the funding, because it seems nebulously attributed to a European government, I think is what comes up over and over again in the story. But nobody says who that European government is. We don't quite know what people were getting paid for. There was a lot of arranging of op-eds, seemingly, people working for our government, checking in with people working in the Iranian government about decisions on whether to speak on certain panels, like Israel came into the picture on one of those questions. So, you know, do you see this? Let's actually just put the next element up on the screen for a response from Morgan Ortegas, who was a spokesperson for Mike Pompeo when he was Secretary of State. She said, it's not very often

that my jaw drops open while reading an article as it did with the semaphore piece. There's no two ways around this. Top Obama and Biden officials were a part of a foreign influence operation by the Iranian regime. Some of them are still in government holding security clearances. This comes on top of the news that Rob Malley, Biden's Iran envoy, had to leave his position over his security clearance being revoked. Bombshell, Ryan, or not? I did not think so. and there's like a lot of smoke in that in that post by Morgan or tag us there one is that is the kind of? Conflation of this comes on the top of the news like that's that's a way that people like to link things together that aren't aren't linked

My understanding is that this security clearance was a this was a fight that he was having with Basically the deep state like so people who were like cheering on Rob Malley getting his security clearance stripped if if they you know, they should they should think a little bit more carefully before they go because he was pushing harder than then a lot of people kind of in the intelligence community wanted on the on the Iran nuclear deal And this was kind of some payback, but we'll see like the semaphore reports that there might be an FBI Investigation that's ongoing like but if again just because you don't like Rob Malley doesn't necessarily mean the FBI is right Mm-hmm all these these questions the the broader

Point here, she says, they were part of a, quote, they were part of a foreign influence operation by the Iranian regime. It does seem very clear that the Iranian regime, you know, tried to set up an influence operation. Absolutely. And successfully did. Where they were, you know, they created a platform where people would, they would hold conferences, people would go to the conferences, would speak on panels, would talk to other experts. And then you would hope to like influence them. And from there, they would go disseminate their talking points. If they get them on cable, they're very lucky.

If they can get them into print Then that then that that's decent, too What what what kind of mate jumped out at me about this story is how also mundane it seems a old like the current Iranian regime Doesn't like Mali. I guess like hostile to them. It's like it's complicated like so whatever whatever whatever claims might be made Certainly aren't true anymore. There's also like every country does this. Like there's not like Iran is under sanctions and so is limited in what it can do when it lobbies. Yeah.

I mean, it's barred basically from lobbying. But Washington is just fueled by foreign money. And so to watch. Oh, that's true. Yeah. And so to see this be something that is read as jaw dropping while the Egyptian government is bribing the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, like that's an influence operation. Yeah. That's like, but that's a dictator who's on our side.

Yeah. So you're not going to see outrage. And I was kind of jokingly referring to Israel when it's talking about Barry Weiss, but not just Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Qataris, Turkey, like all of these countries run these massive influence operations. Ukraine. Ukraine. No, but really, Ukraine, Burisma. Ukraine with Podesta.

Podesta. Yeah. The European Center for Modern Ukraine. Ukraine with Podesta. Podesta. Yeah. The European Center for Modern Ukraine. Google the European Center for Modern Ukraine. It's very similar to this, actually. It's basically a front group that's created by a foreign government to do this very innocuous looking influence operation. You can say this was I would like a meeting with Menendez's office on behalf of the European Center for a Modern Ukraine which sounds different than saying on behalf of Yanukovych yeah it's much easier to say I would like a and that's just like that's why they set up this IEI thing whatever it's called yeah exactly and so they and you get a European government to co-fund it so that that gets you around the sanctions problem. Right. Probably France. If I had to guess.

Probably France. The European Center for Modern Ukraine is a good example of how this works because the way that was set up, it was a shell nonprofit based in Europe. And that way they tried to get around registering as foreign agents. And that's going to be a problem for the people that are implicated in this. And like you said, Ryan, Washington is run by foreign money. If they were actually getting money, if they were doing things, that's yeah, that is, that is a really, that will be a huge problem for them. And I'm going to read this. I alluded to this earlier, but Aryan Tabatsa by the current Pentagon official. So she works for the Pentagon right now. And at last, at least two occasions checked in with Iran's foreign ministry

before attending policy events. According to the emails, she wrote to Zalrani in Farsi on June 27, 2014, to say she'd met with Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the U.S., who expressed interest in working together and invited her to Saudi Arabia. She also said she'd been invited to attend a workshop on Iran's nuclear program at Ben Gurion University in Israel. I'm not interested in going, but then I thought maybe it would be better that I go and talk rather than an Israeli like Emily Landau, who goes and disseminates this information. I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go. So Rani replied the same day, all things considered, it seems Saudi Arabia is a good case, but the second case, Israel, is better to be avoided.

Thanks. And she responds, thank you for your advice. I will take action regarding Saudi Arabia and will keep you updated on the progress. There's no evidence Tabatabai went to the conference in Israel. Her books and research reports suggest she's interviewed a number of senior Israeli officials. So, Ren, I think you're right. This does absolutely resemble just about, I don't know, like many influence operations in size and in scope. The difference, of course, between Hungary or Ukraine is that this is an adversarial nuclear power, I think. And that's, you know, that is genuinely different. And I mean, obviously,

I'm sure you can find similar cases with Israel, definitely with Qatar, definitely with other countries like that. Egypt, although that seems to be a much more theatrically comedic, almost like Greek comedy type influence operation that's not directly connected to some some formal apparatus, right? Like they just went right to Menendez and saying, we're doing this respectable form of influence peddling, which is to create a shell group. Yeah. And the understanding in Washington since Sisi took power is that Yusuf Al-Oteba, who is the UAE's ambassador, has been operating also as the kind of ambassador from Egypt.

Like this very bizarre situation because the UAE funded, what was it called? I forget the Arabic word, but that mass protest against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood government that led to the military coup. UAE funded that and afterwards the UAE basically became kind of the lobbying vehicle for the Egyptians in Washington and would lobby for its ability to get weapons and aid. It did all this diplomacy. And so I think this is probably some weird freelancing because they don't have any diplomatic muscles because the UAE flexes them all. And so you've got these freelancers, Coen brother types on the side, giving gold bars to Menendez. Well, you added another element to this, which is a different layer. Ryan, tell us about the reporter who broke this story, Jay Solomon, who has a little bit of

a history with Iran himself. Yeah, so put up this next element. This is the New York Times a couple years ago reporting, Wall Street Journal fires reporter with ties to Iranian-born magnate. That is about Jay Solomon, who had always been known as, if a bit hawkish, but a well-sourced reporter for the Wall Street Journal. All of a sudden he was fired and that came just ahead of an Associated Press investigation into him, uncovering the fact that he was in talks with this Iranian-born magnate to launch a bunch of different business deals. So this is the reporter who was then hired by Semaphore in order to cover the Middle East and is now writing about this influence operation. He himself was fired for getting into a financial arrangement with his leading source, who was, and this was UAE related.

So to go back to what we were saying about the Emiratis, he was an Iranian-born magnate, but he was someone who worked very closely with the Emiratis. So the Emiratis had something of an influence operation going on this Wall Street Journal reporter who then got fired and then later got hired later by Semaphore to write about an Iranian influence operation. So that's why you have to kind of forgive me for being like, really? Like, this is a bombshell? It is to the extent, I mean, I think it's a very serious story to the extent that there are people in the Biden administration right now that seem to have cozy or, well, maybe warmer ties with the Iranians than they should, given the state of the country, the state of Iran. So I think, you know, the current ties are genuinely problematic. 2014 was a somewhat different time period.

And obviously, we could have a different conversation about the the nuclear deal I think to the extent that it reflects on current Biden administration officials That's problematic, but I totally take your point that it's a little bit rich. It's a little rich Yeah, yeah, he recently he sued over getting hacked and having his emails Exposed which then exposed this this scandal. And the case was just, I think last week or so, it was dismissed. It can't go forward. And as to the veracity of this trove of documents, some of them were reported that they scraped metadata, they did an analysis, and there's no evidence of it having been changed.

People can take that for what they will. But certainly a story that the kind of Iran. Yeah, it's kind of like if this is all they got so far, probably wasn't changed. Like, it's pretty mundane stuff. Obviously, with Ukraine at the forefront, Iran, China, all of those kind of powers now increasingly seeming to communicate with each other and agree with each other on different questions is a huge issue for the Biden administration. So this definitely isn't going anywhere and we will continue to follow it for sure. Now the actual global espionage scandal is the one we're going to talk about next. And this is the latest wrinkle. J.P. Morgan decides that it is going to settle with the Virgin Islands over its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Just scandalous beginning to end. We have J.P. Morgan getting asked about this most unfortunate connection that they had to Jeffrey Epstein. Let's play Diamond here. How are you feeling about the Epstein deposition this month? I am so sad that we had any relations with that man whatsoever. You know, we had top lawyers evaluating this. From the SEC enforcement, the DOJ, you know, and obviously had we known them, we know today, we would have done things differently.

But it's very unfortunate. And I have deep respect for these women That doesn't mean reliable for the action of an individual, but I do have deep respect for them. My heart goes out to them and He's also tan Brian that's from about four months ago. So they were asking about the deposition that month of Jamie Dimon and other executives at JPMorgan. The reason to settle. One thing he said.

That's why you settled this thing. Yeah. So one thing he said right there that was interesting. He said, obviously, if we had known then what we know today, we wouldn't have had this business arrangement with Jeffrey Epstein. But of course, that's part of the problem here is that JPMorgan did have indications. They did know. And this is one of the problem here is that JP Morgan did have indications. They did know. And this is one

of the biggest remaining questions. And it's not even a question in many cases, why people, Bill Gates included, continue to have relationships with business personal Jeffrey Epstein after he got that sweetheart plea deal down in Florida that at the very least exposed him as a predator. That's the problem. And that's not, nobody, nobody has a good answer to that question. Not Bill Gates, not JP Morgan, which is where you get the $75 million settlement. And actually it's worth noting that's the same amount that Deutsche Bank agreed to pay Epstein victims, I'm actually reading from CNBC here, to settle a third Manhattan federal court lawsuit that alleged the bank facilitated his sex trafficking when he was a customer from 2013 through 2018. So look at those years,

pretty important. Now, the CNBC report also notes the deals come months after a separate $290 million settlement by JP Morgan with victims of the now dead predators. The Virgin Islands previously obtained a $105 million settlement for Epstein's estate and another $62 million from billionaire investor Leon Black to resolve potential claims related to Epstein. Now, this money from J.P. Morgan is going to attorney's fees for the Virgin Islands and what they describe as infrastructure to help them with sex trafficking and victims and all of that. Man, for JP Morgan, $75 million, not a huge amount. For Deutsche Bank, $75 million, not a huge amount, especially when they're doing okay right now. But when you add

that to the $290 million that they had to give to the victims, that's stacked up. That's a costly error, obviously. Beyond the money, of course, is what I was alluding to. Right. But they probably still made money off of it in the end. Absolutely. And the incentives here are for these, you know, banks who work with these massively rich people to just look the other way. And it's so arcane and opaque that it's this constant cat and mouse game between regulators and the banks. And the cats are tiny. The mice are huge. It's just, and they're just hunting the dark. It says, you know, JPMorgan did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement, which will give $55 million to Virginia Island's charities and the American Territory's anti-trafficking efforts.

It says the Virginia Island said the deal, quote, includes several substantial commitments by JPMorgan Chase to identify, report, and cut off support for potential human trafficking, including establishing and implementing comprehensive policies and procedures, unquote. That's the good. That's the hard part. And also, they don't want to do it. Right.

So, yeah, they just have to constantly be exposed and pressured. Otherwise, their incentive is to just allow their clients to just move money, you know, in whatever way they feel like they can get away with. Yes. And yet it becomes the tax of doing business. It's like a fee, right? Like you're going to have to pay some settlement down the road. If it turns out that this guy you have really good indications might be a sex trafficker is sex trafficking and you're facilitating it. I think it's actually, the case itself is actually a pretty interesting test of liability and the law regarding liability and bank liability. But it's very, very clear that the relationship top executives at J.P.

Morgan had with Jeffrey Epstein was wildly inappropriate. The legality of it is obviously a different question, but they are one of many organizations and people who continue to do business with him and continue to have personal business with him beyond when it was appropriate, including, by the way, the Virgin Islands, which is another interesting layer in the story. Lee Fong has done excellent reporting on this. This is a headline from Lee in August. Fired AG leading Epstein inquiry reveals the Virgin Islands governor pressured her on pedophiles behalf. His subheading is newly filed court documents show that the Virgin Islands attorney general investigating Epstein

faced political pressure to give the pedophile a special waiver. He needed a special waiver in the Virgin Islands and he got it. And it looks as though he was, I mean, he was lavishing people in the Virgin Islands with donations and political donations, all kinds of stuff in order to get the treatment that he needed to be doing business down there. And so it's not just J.P. Morgan that was complicit. because there's more and more reporting coming out that a lot of people in the Virgin Islands seem to be compromised beyond ethical relations, beyond sort of normal ethics with Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, good point. Like it's definitely not only J.P. Morgan. And if you're even gonna sympathize with J.P. Morgan for a second,

you're gonna say, from J.P. Morgan's perspective, you're gonna say, wait a minute, this guy's hanging out with former presidents, former prime ministers, members of the royal family. Everybody's talking about how he's like an intelligence asset for maybe multiple countries. Of course, we're doing business with him. And now all of a sudden, we're not supposed to do business with friends of presidents who are intelligence assets. We're JPMorgan Chase. It's your fault for letting all of this unravel. Right. And I mean, I think that's another thing is these settlements are preventing some exposure probably of why people felt

pressured or beyond money, because places like J.P. Morgan have plenty of money. Their reason for doing business with Jeffrey Epstein might be different than Virgin Islands, people in the Virgin Islands, government officials, sort of petty bureaucrats reasons to do business with Jeffrey Epstein. And the intelligence ties are probably the biggest missing puzzle piece. And, you know, it's not entirely missing. We have some good reporting that Jeffrey Epstein was Mossad, was affiliated with Mossad. So there's plenty to that and I think there's probably some explanation, partially an explanation for why we saw so many powerful people continue to have relationships with him when they did.

But this is, again, the cost of doing business if you're JP Morgan might just be a fat legal settlement down the road. And to your point, Ryan, I'd love to know if they still came out on top, because I think there's a good chance when Epstein was moving as much money as he was that they did. All right. Well, there's big news yesterday from the FTC and Amazon. Things are getting heated, Ryan. Tell us what happened. Yeah, it's a dark brand and rises again. So not only was he on the picket line, his neon eyes were blasting Amazon from the FTC. Put up this one right here. So Lena Kahn joined with 17 attorneys general from around the country to file a landmark suit against Amazon. Matt Stoller will be here later this week to kind

of unpack precisely what's going on here, what we can expect. Whether you want it or not, Stoller's coming in. He's going to explain it to you. He's going to explain it to you. You're going to love it. He's going to mansplain it to you. But basically what they're accusing him of is abusing their marketplace power. There's a number of details that they get into around the way that they say, you know, so you're on Amazon, you've got that like little, you know, buy now, add to cart thing underneath the product. What Amazon would do is they would kind of crawl the rest of the internet and find, if you're a third party seller and you're selling on Amazon for $18.99, but you're selling on some other site for $17.99, let's say your own site, because you want to bring people there, you want to keep the data, you want to build a business, they would see that and boom, they take that buy button away.

And that just annihilates your sales. And so what that did is it sent a signal to all of these third-party sellers that Amazon gets to set the price like whatever your Amazon price is if you go a penny below that anywhere else They're going to nuke your business and that's just one example of the way that they do that But there there are a ton of others where you know, they will see a Which products of theirs are selling us are selling well, which third-party products, and then they'll quickly kind of make a crappy generic version of it, or even if there already is a generic version,

and then they'll undersell the third-party seller. There are rules around, you know, in grocery stores, for instance, that a grocery store, let's say it's Acme and they've got Acme cereal, they cannot kind of privilege their own product on the shelves against competitors' products. Like the idea is like the store is a platform. You're welcome to sell your own products in that store, but you can't take your competitors' stuff and put it at the back of the shelf. Right. Because because that's just as a society Rules that we have put into place because we we want fair competition What this is trying to do is apply that to Amazon's marketplace

Yeah, yeah, well in Amazon's argument is one that a lot of like anti Antitrust people will it's like the very familiar one that basically Amazon is being published for, punished for being too successful and for being too efficient, right? That this is something consumers want and it benefits consumers. And again, like this is such a,

they make that, it's intentionally helpful for them because it's one of those things that makes it almost impossible to disprove because we don't have the experiment of what would happen if Amazon wasn't engaging in these types of practices. That's the entire point is that they are blocking competition. And if we could see competition, like it's actually not a fair playing field because we can't see how they're interacting with competition, which is, by the way, what's at stake in the Google antitrust suit as well in that Google has been intentionally blocking fair access to competitive playing field.

Right, Google search. Yeah, right. It's three weeks into the Google search trial right now. And I think that's a place where people can just understand, like go to Google search. It's like, it's worse than it was before mm-hmm and that you know that it's not the trajectory that we want We want things to be better over time not worse It's kind of amazing to think that so Lena Kahn was a Yale Law student six years ago when she published her landmark Yale Law Review piece

about Amazon the am called the Paradox or something like that, about how the current interpretation of antitrust laws was making it so that what Amazon was doing was considered by antitrust regulators to be okay, yet they were monopolizing everything, which is a clear paradox. Like you don't have antitrust laws if what Amazon does is considered to be within those laws. And now here she is as the head of the FTC suing Amazon six years later. Kind of an amazing run. It is amazing. And by the way, she has support from people like Josh Hawley, who we talked about earlier in the show, where people are skeptical of whether Josh Hawley is just doing it for show when he's going and supporting union members.

And we talked earlier about how even if he is doing it for show, the substance actually is there. And it might not translate into more substance down the line, but whether he wants it to or not, it's helpful to the workers. It is helpful to have people like Josh Hawley supporting, and in some cases, other Republican senators supporting these antitrust investigations and suits because- He's been a huge supporter of hers. Yeah, absolutely. And again, this is somebody who comes out of Warren world. Lena Kahn, Elizabeth Warren is partially why she ran for president in 2020. She became enemy number one of basically the conservative movement and the business community, which were way more hand in glove than they used to be.

If you went to CPAC just 10 years ago, all these events were sponsored by Google and Facebook. And they were the best parties there to the extent that that's an honor. They were like lavishing some of these pro-business groups. And that was just a, that was, it wasn't so much that they bought support as at the time that's sort of sincere pro-business, anti-government or limited government, conservative ideology was hand in glove with them on these business issues, not necessarily the cultural issues as Republicans came to find out down the road. But it is kind of remarkable to see Lena Khanahn and the position that she's in coming from Warren world, coming from, you see this crop up, like Ted Cruz has attacked Lena Kahn for being, you know, basically

even Republicans that support her on certain things don't agree with everything she does, which by the way is fine. But she gets attacked as like a radical, like a Bernie radical. And which is interesting because there are some Republicans who would say, yeah, we need radical Bernieism in the antitrust space because these tech companies are, it's very similar to what we saw with like rail hundreds of years ago, which is that it's a new technology and we don't have the sort of infrastructure, muscle memory and legal precedent about these technologies. So when Amazon can put these buy buttons, add to cart buttons next to other people's products, like that's just an interesting new dilemma that we don't have precedent for. We don't have exact apples to apples for.

And it's not a coincidence that she flows out of Warren world rather than Bernie world because Warren, you know, is a former Republican who talks about how she loves markets. And it's, it's the way, it's a way to blend her kind of progressivism with, with that kind of love of well-regulated markets. Whereas kind of traditional socialist types are fine with big, big is good for them because that's a bigger company to be organized. Nationalized. Nationalized and regulated. As John Kenneth Galbraith would talk about, there's a kind of fine line between something that is firmly,

solidly regulated and controlled by the state and something that's outright nationalized. In some ways, you're just talking at the margins at that point. Yeah, and that's where I think we sort of depart because it's very difficult, and there's very little precedent, I think, for not having a symbiotic sort of cronyist relationship at that point. But to the point of people from war and world, like in your camp, the end goal isn't cronyism and that symbiotic relationship. It is nationalizing things like Twitter.

Yeah, for the Bernie left. But yeah, for the Warren left, they're like just it's fundamentally kind of conservative impulse. So it makes sense that there's this alliance there. Yeah, absolutely. Ryan, you were on Capitol Hill yesterday. You were following literally the drama and all the dynamics. What have you got for us on this shutdown that is definitely coming up? So we're headed for a government shutdown on Saturday, even though a majority of Republicans in the Senate on Tuesday voted to move forward on a bipartisan spending bill

to keep it open. That's because a group of House Republicans is refusing to let anything come to the floor that can pass into law, basically guaranteeing a shutdown. In doing so, they're following the orders of former President Donald Trump, even though it's clear Republicans will get blamed for it and take a political hit. The only person who could benefit actually, besides Joe Biden from this, is Donald Trump, who is facing multiple federal indictments that he's been working hard to delay past the election. The federal courts can stay open for about two weeks thanks to the fees they collect, but after that, they'd have to shut down, gumming everything up

and throwing the court calendar into chaos. Now, Republicans spent Tuesday evening jawing at each other. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, one of the Republican firebrands leading the shutdown charge, to his credit, had the night's best joke. Let me hand the mic to him. We are devaluing American money so rapidly that in America today, you can't even bribe Democrat senators with cash alone. You need to bring gold bars to get the job done just so that the bribes hold value. All right, that was pretty good. He also lashed out at Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Twitter, calling him, quote, pathetic for a paid advocacy campaign Gates said had attempted to pay Republican influencers to trash talk Gates

and his shutdown effort. McCarthy issued a cease and desist order to a consulting firm, which appears to be, or is accused of being at least democratic. Emily knows more about this than me, and we'll sort this one out in a minute maybe. But the Gates McCarthy drama continued. Now here's McCarthy getting asked about him. Matt Gates made another threat to your speakership on the House floor today. Are you worried at all that he'll bring up a CR? I mean, what do you make of the threats he's made him for quite a while? Have you seen Matt and what he said about me when we first started this? Look, people have got to get over personal differences. I'm focused on America. I think that's where America's looking right now as well. He never voted for me to start out with. I'm focused on America. I think that's where America's looking right now as well.

He never voted for me to start out with. I don't assume he's changing his position. He said a lot of things and we waited through. The one thing I will always tell you is I'm never going to give up on America and that's where my focus is going to be. If somebody has a personal difference with me, that's fine. They have the right to say it. They have the right to do it. Do whatever they can. Does that distract in this process though when he keeps hammering you on this? Is that a problem? I mean, he comes out every day with a little more pushing the envelope. Does it look like it bothers me? Well, that's why I'm asking you. No, if it doesn't. But is that, is that distracting from this whole issue to fund the government? No, but it seems to do something

for you. Now, I don't think people quite have a grasp of how thoroughly absurd the Freedom Caucus position is on a government shutdown. And it's not even the entire Freedom Caucus. Now, I know it sounds like I'm speaking from a partisan perspective here or saying that I disagree with their approach, but what I'm trying to say is that what they're doing isn't wrong. It's just completely insane. So to put it simply, Republicans previously agreed to a very specific deal to fund the government. They have not made any serious demands or proposed any way forward that would keep the government open, yet they are still pushing for a shutdown. They can't even pass a bill through their own chamber that would fund the government. They're not even proposing big changes to federal spending because they already took that off the table during Biden's State of the Union. Some Republicans want Medicare

and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority. Let me give you, anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I'll give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the proposal. That means Congress doesn't vote. I'm glad to see you. I tell you, I enjoy conversion. So with Medicare and Social Security off the table, that's left Republicans nibbling at the edges. Now, perhaps it seems like too long ago, but this whole thing was already worked out in May. Biden and McCarthy, as you'll recall, sat down to craft a deal to avert a default and a global financial

crisis. The deal was straightforward and it was announced publicly. The debt ceiling would be lifted until January 2025, so a lame duck Congress coincidentally can lift it again. Discretionary and military spending for the next fiscal year would be capped at $1.59 trillion, $886 billion for the war-making folks and $704 billion for the rest. So all of this has already been hashed out. As Hank Williams Jr. would put it, it's all over but the crying. Now, the holdouts are calling for budget numbers several hundred billion dollars below what was already agreed on, which is fine. That's their right. But it doesn't mean anybody should listen to them. So today, McCarthy suggested

he needs another meeting with Biden, which the White House quickly rejected, noting they already cut a deal and his problem is with Matt Gaetz and that crew, not with the White House. Now, AOC suggested McCarthy be told to, quote, pound sand, which is actually one of my favorite cliches out there. Meanwhile, these votes are a trap for Republicans because they'll never be good enough for the most ardent conservatives, and they'll include draconian cuts and extreme social policy that will then be used against moderate Republicans running in Biden districts. Here's how the Washington Post framed the latest proposed cuts, quote, cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33% as soaring rents drive a national affordability

crisis, forcing more than 1 million women and children onto the wait list of a nutritional assistance program for poor mothers with young children, reducing federal spending on home heating assistance for low-income families by more than 70% with energy prices high heading into the winter months, unquote. That's not just terrible for people, it's terrible politics. Now, once that theater is over, the only option will be a normal, clean, bipartisan CR. The Senate voted 77 to 19 to move forward on a CR yesterday evening to keep the government open another 47 days. But they also added some $6 billion for Ukraine and another six billion dollars for disaster relief and House

Republican holdouts want nothing to do with that Ukraine money. Now, here's where McCarthy faces a choice. He can prevent the Senate bill, which has the support of Mitch McConnell and a host of Republicans, from coming to the floor. His right-wing rebels have said that if he passes it with Democratic votes, they'll depose him and they might, but A, they don't have an alternative who could get 218 votes, and B, Democrats could vote to save him, which would be C, absolutely hilarious. So what result are we going to get here? The Ukraine spending... Emily, what's your point today? Well, a new poll was just released today by American Compass.

That is a conservative organization working on sort of new right realignment issues. You may be familiar with it because we've had the head of American Compass, Oren Kass, on the show on breaking points and on counterpoints several times because Oren has a really interesting perspective. He was actually recently profiled by New York Magazine as, quote, the nerd trying to turn the GOP populist. And he has drawn some attention because a lot of the policy prescriptions that come out of American Compass are wildly against, opposed to Republican orthodoxy on things like unions, on things like private equity, financialization, Wall Street, etc., etc. And these poll results, I think, are worth the Republicans here in Washington taking a look at

and then weighing against what some of their benefactors over on Wall Street, although, you know, that relationship is strained in many cases. If you talk to people both on Wall Street and in Republican politics because of cultural issues. This is worth paying attention to. There's a Republican primary happening right now. There's a debate happening tonight. We'll see how well these priorities are captured both by the candidates and by the moderators. So on tariffs and on Wall Street, you have Republican voters. This is a poll just of Republican voters. It was taken between August 11th and 17th. The sample is a thousand people, a thousand Republican voters. It was done by YouGov.

This is Republicans who voted in the 2022 election. They were overwhelmingly in favor of tariffs and had a very, very negative opinion of Wall Street. Now, the way the questions were written, and you can go take a look at the poll yourself, the way the questions are written, I'm not going to read through all of them here. I think it was maybe nudging people in that direction, but you can look at other polls. I mean, Republican voters right now have, I think it finds like 40% support for unions. You can see that in polls throughout the country. There is increasing support for unions nationwide,

not just among Republican voters, but favorability among Republican voters is increasing. And part of that is because you have union voters who may have only pulled the lever for Democrats in the past, now interested in Republicans, maybe because, as we talked about earlier in the show, they were unhappy with the UAW. They have been unhappy with leadership, or maybe because of cultural issues. I think in many cases, that's exactly what it is. But nevertheless, those are the facts. And you have Donald Trump going tonight to talk to auto workers, non-union auto workers at a non-union plant, as we talked earlier in the show, trying to actually drive this

wedge because the unions themselves have looked at the Biden administration's green agenda policies and said, wait a minute, this isn't actually in line with our agenda. We're giving you lots of money. We're giving you lots of support. Let's talk about this. So there's this explosion of priorities in the labor space right now. And things are, you know, it's sort of the house of cards has been knocked over and we're seeing where everything is going to land. And Republicans would be wise to pay attention to where their own voters seem to want them to land. Now, let's look at other things. We can put figure one up on the screen. This is really, really interesting.

They asked about top issues for Republican voters. So the question was, which do you think are the most important challenges facing America? Please select at least two and up to five. So if you're looking at the screen, not listening, I'm going to break this down for listeners right here. What's going to jump out at you is that 69% of respondents picked transgender activism. Now, again, they're picking at least two and potentially up to five. So this means they picked it in a basket of at least two to five. So among other things, but that was the top one that was selected by the most people. So 69%. Then it goes down to woke corporations, 62%. Critical race

theory, 52%. Illegal immigration, 60%. So that's likely within the margin of error. So 60% with woke corporations and illegal immigration. Family fertility down at 13%, higher education all the way down at 8%. Globalization, 50%. Worker power, 11%. Financialization, 9%. And then what American Compass categorized as old right priorities, regulation, tax rates, and free trade. Regulation is at 28%, tax rates are at 18%, and free trade is at 10%. So those are very generic and broad categories, right? But even using the kind of friendly term to free traders by actually just calling it free trade, it's only down at 10% of people saying that's among their priorities.

That is a different question than whether people support free trade, of course. Whether it's a priority and whether you support it are totally different questions. And I think that's one of the biggest questions that Republicans are facing right now. It's not only, you know, are you out there talking about right to work? Or are you out there talking about the fact that people in these labor unions are underpaid. Those are right. Which one are you emphasizing? You may believe that in right to work, but you may also believe that the workers are underpaid. And you should probably emphasize right now, like Josh Hawley did when he went to the picket line, that people deserve higher pay. So that's the question of priorities is what's on

the table here is what's on the table for national Republicans. And I think this poll is actually genuinely a very interesting glimpse into that. And as American Compass puts it, unsurprisingly, the cultural issues most often selected are therefore also those on which voters want to see politicians focus most time and attention. They asked respondents to rank where they want people. They gave them a hypothetical 100 points for politicians and asked them where they would want politicians to spend most of their time and sort of allocate those 100 points to these different issues. Overall, voters allocated, according to Compass, 44% of their points to the cultural challenges, 23% to consensus challenges, 19% to new right challenges, and 14% to old right challenges. What's interesting there is also that these cultural challenges are kind of new right challenges as well, because the RNC back

in 2012 basically said, well, let's put cultural priorities, immigration, all of that stuff on the back burner in order to win new voters. So I think actually you could even fairly classify those cultural challenges as new right challenges. And I'd also just like to emphasize that a huge problem in the Republican Party is not classifying cultural challenges as financial challenges. So when people are saying, for instance, that transgender activism is one of their top priorities, the way Republicans don't think of that, and you could argue that's because of the donor class, you could argue that's because it's the disproportionate influence of what some people see as the old moral majority wing of the conservative movement. But what I think Republicans are wrong not to emphasize is that when people are worried about

that, a lot of times that's because it is a financial worry for them. It's a financial issue because they disagree with what their public schools are teaching, which in some cases are actually very, very extreme. And that means they have to go spend time looking for a private school that is expensive. It means that their tax money that they're paying to the public school is not going to their kids' tuition. It's being spent in ways they don't think is benefiting the community. And so that lens is not just like we see these things as sort of mutually exclusive, right? Like it's either economic or cultural when, in fact, so often the cultural issues are economic issues. And when people look at that chart, maybe we can pop it up on the screen again.

This is figure one. And you see that eye-popping number of 69% of people specifically pointing to transgender activism as the, quote, most important challenge facing America, one of the most important challenges facing America. And you also see the same thing with woke corporations, critical race theory. I would posit that a lot of that is because it creates financial hurdles for people just to live by their own values and values they see as basically consensus values. People shouldn't be, the men and women, the locker rooms, the locker room issue is difficult. They want to be able to shop at Target without having issues with it. They want to be able to buy their Bud Light without feeling insulted by the company. And again, those issues may seem small ball to people here in Washington. They may seem like cultural red meat, but I think it also has something serious to do with people's pocketbooks

too. Ryan, what did you make of the poll? And what do you make of that question of how a lot of people in Washington, D.C. see the economy and the culture as sort of mutually exclusive realms that are not, you know, in any ways have that middle Venn diagram part. Yeah, the transgender number at the top. All right, so as we were prepping the show last night, news broke that House Republicans alleging Anthony Fauci secretly went to CIA headquarters to, quote, influence the COVID-19 origins investigation. We are going to talk now with Toby Green. He's a professor of African history at King's College London. His latest book, co-authored

with Thomas Fossey, is The COVID Consensus. He has been covering this as it relates to Africa, the African continent. Let's put up on the screen a persuasion article that Toby authored recently, which is so fascinating. Just a really, really, really good read. I highly recommend giving it a look. Toby, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks very much, Emily. Thanks. And Ryan, thanks. Good to be here. Yeah. And so you've written about the African content on this. You've written about Niger and recent news about the coup there. I want to start with the Persuasion article because I feel like you encapsulate a broad sort of critique of the West as it has affected seriously, had serious consequences for the African continent throughout the Western response to COVID-19.

Could you tell us just a little bit about what you're reporting in the Persuasion article and how these things have affected Africa? Yeah, thanks very much for the question, Emily. Well, I mean, in the Persuasion article, I'm documenting what has happened effectively in terms of the pandemic response on the African continent. And we need to go back a little bit, back to the Ebola epidemic, which many of your listeners and viewers will know about, 2014, 2015. At that time, short lockdowns were trialled in Freetown in Sierra Leone and in Monrovia in Liberia. And at the time, Médecins Sans Frontières,

Doctors Without Borders, really warned against this, said it would be a bad idea. Subsequent academic research confirmed that it had been counterproductive. So already prior to COVID-19, the medical, the World Medical Establishment, you know, was aware of the fact that in a situation on the African continent where as the international labor organizations had 85% of workers depend on informal, on the informal market,

lockdowns can simply don't work, in fact. And in fact, I had a friend in Nigeria, a colleague in Nigeria who later told me, you know, this is a policy which could work in our context for three days. And so what the article does is document the history of how it was already known that this was a policy which didn't work in the context of the informal labor market. Already by March 2020, scientists were saying, well, actually, you know, Africa has a much lower median age. It was, in fact, under 20, recognized by the UN in 2019, and already suggesting that COVID might have a different outcome,

questioning whether or not these were therefore appropriate policies and how social distancing could possibly work in a context where, you know, in informal settlements, people live in very overcrowded conditions. And yet, the WHO recommended in its February 25th, 2020 report that every country where new cases were found should follow non-pharmaceutical interventions, should follow policies of restriction, isolation, quarantine, and never really pushed back on the fact that when this was pushed out across the African continent, this was going to have catastrophic consequences. So the article summarizes all of that and looks at the long-term consequences, which is what people talk about as almost a decade of

austerity to come on the continent, which is going to be catastrophic for future health outcomes. And before we unpack some of those consequences, I just want to linger on the WHO here. So how does it work in practice? So the WHO says, all right, you got cases, here's the protocol you ought to follow. WHO says a lot of things. Why did it end up getting implemented? And what was the kind of discipline mechanism that led to it? Or were there interests within those particular countries that wanted to see lockdowns implemented. By the way, and this is WHO leadership, the first African leadership, Dr. Tedros, is Ethiopian at the time of both Ebola and the COVID pandemic.

Now, he wasn't a leader at the time of Ebola, but yes, he certainly was in the COVID-19 pandemic. Yeah, I mean, this is a very complicated question. It's a really good question, Ryan, so thank you for that. There are lots of complicated factors at play here. You know, on the one hand, I interviewed people already, colleagues in Ghana, for example, and at the time, I was talking to a lot of people daily on the continent. You know, I've spent a lot of my last 20 years in and out of many different countries on the continent, and people did, you know, to start with, you know, worry about what the consequences might be.

So I think there was an initial buy-in that, you know, this was a serious virus, and that's one of the factors that has to be played. But on the point of view of, you know, why then, when it became clear pretty soon that the consequences were catastrophic, I mean, the UNDP on March the 31st, 2020, issued a report saying that half of the jobs on the African continent could be lost. I mean, the UNDP on March the 31st, 2020, issued a report saying that half of the jobs on the African continent could be lost. I mean, half of the

jobs. I mean, it's quite incredible that at that point, senior figures in global health and also in global, you know, in global leadership didn't step back and think, oh, hang on, is this really a sensible policy to pursue? But so when that happened, when it became clear that the consequences were what they might be, at the same time, you know, having interviewed a number of people around the continent, you know, there was a lot of pressure from WHO, but not only from WHO, WHO subsidiaries. So, for example, there's a WHO subsidiary in West Africa, you know, and a lot of core health funding is tied to global health programmes from the WHO and other partners. So it's actually quite hard for ministers of health to turn around and say,

well, you know, you're recommending that we should do that, but we're going to turn around and not do that. In fact, in an article which I co-authored quite recently with a senior public administrator from The Gambia, he described how how in fact, you know, there were weekly demands from embassies, Western embassies and partners like the World Bank, the IMF, for situation reports. They were getting phone calls saying, well, we hear people aren't social distancing, we hear there's not enough mask compliance. And he

described that, and this colleague of mine, not enough mask compliance. And he described that, and this colleague of mine, Hassan Mousise, later described that in a subsequent interview. So we know that there was lots of informal, you could describe that as informal pressure. But you know, when you think about all of the pressures that were there, and the way in which global governance works and finance works, it's pretty hard for ministries to turn around and say we're not doing that, particularly since also, of course, they have a major partner, economic trade partner in Africa is China. And of course, this was also a policy which took shape, first of all, in China. That actually reminds me of

some of the reporting that Ryan and others have done on Ebola and the Ebola outbreak. And thank you, but Tedros was definitely not the head of the WHO during the Ebola outbreak, but he had some oversight of their response to the Ebola outbreak. And it's all of these strings, these Western strings attached to what happens in Africa that create an incentive system that seems just like it's very difficult for governments and for people to break through. And it becomes a laboratory basically for the West. And I wanted to ask Toby how this sort of, what the economic outlook and like what sort of concretely can we look at in different African countries right now and say this is downstream of a sort of foolish Western COVID response. You wrote in the New Statesman, we can put this as the third element up. This is about the coup in Niger. You've covered this. You've written about this. Can you walk us through a little

bit of what it looks like on the ground in some of these countries right now? Yeah, I mean, I've recently been in The Gambia in Senegal. And, you know, I mean, just to give a sense of it, you know, and this might sound strange to an American audience, but, you know, I didn't meet a single person. I literally, not a single person, you know, including senior government,

you know, MPs, senior administrators who did not think that the entire COVID response not only had been a catastrophe, you know, also, I I mean I don't want to use the word fraud but you know they literally did not know hardly anybody who had you know fallen ill from COVID they and you know they were taught that people were claiming that they had gone to hospital with malaria symptoms they were diagnosed with COVID I mean this is so whether or not this is true what's interesting I think is how it this is now being perceived. It's now being perceived, definitely,

as, you know, a real neo-colonial imposition, which had a catastrophic impact. So I'll give you an example. I've got a very old friend who I've known for 30 years in Senegal. Prior to COVID, he had a business on a motor, he had his own motorbike, he would go down to the coast, he would buy fish, he would bring it, you know, a couple of hours inland, and he would sell it at market. And that business was destroyed, collapsed in 2020 because people weren't able to travel. And then what happened was people had to spend any money that they had in order to be able to get food to eat. And still now, when I met him a month or so ago, he said he can't start up that business again because people literally have not got any money to buy anything other than the basic sack of rice, oil.

And of course, the other factor there is inflation. You know, obviously, the whole world has been experiencing inflation, but it has been very severe in Africa. And in fact, some of the interviews I've done, which we discussed in the COVID consensus with people say, you know, this started in 2021, because what happened, I mean, and I wrote about this with Hassoun Sissé in the article a couple of months ago. What happened was that, for example, in the Gambia, effectively almost a whole harvest was lost. The transport shutdown came at a time when people would go and take seeds from the capital city to villages. They couldn't do that. Then those who did manage to plant, because of social distancing protocols,

didn't have enough people in the fields to harvest. I was told of one colleague in Angola that, you know, people simply weren't allowed to go to the fields, and so they lost a harvest. I was told from a colleague in Angola that, you know, people simply weren't allowed to go to the fields, and so they lost a harvest. Similar stories from Ghana, and that caused effectively a huge increase in prices already by 2021. So you have all those factors coming together, and people are angry. And, you know, and that's what I wrote about in the article in Niger, you know, that what has happened is, you know, not only, I think, as I mentioned in the persuasion article, you know, prior to 2020, people were talking about Africa rising, you know, not only, I think as I mentioned in the Persuasion article, you know, prior to 2020, people were talking about Africa rising. You know, this was in many ways

a really hopeful and optimistic time for the continent. The economy had boomed throughout the 2010s. Now the same journals are talking about, you know, a decade of austerity. And the evidence is quite clear that this started in 2021. You know, and it's linked to what happened in 2020.

And it's so sad. Toby, thanks so much for joining us and for sharing your reporting here. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Emily. Of course. Toby's book is called The COVID Consensus. He just mentioned it, so you can check that out. That does it for us today on CounterPoints. We so appreciate everybody tuning into the show. Make sure to like, subscribe. If you're a premium member, you get the whole show early to your inbox, full video, no commercial breaks. We appreciate it. And we will be here tomorrow morning with

Chris Lensager with a kind of debate coverage special and maybe a little Trump speech to non-union workers special as well. Yeah, we'll have it all for you tomorrow morning. We'll be back. So you don't have to wait another week to get your macro dose of Ryan Grimm. See you guys tomorrow. We'll be right back. celebrating and listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now.

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