Chapo Trap House - 1011 - National BurgerReich Association feat. Pablo Torre (2/17/26)

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

1011 - National BurgerReich Association feat. Pablo Torre (2/17/26) by Chapo Trap House

Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday, February 17th, and this is your chop. I hope everyone had a great president's day, but we are back at it. And joining Felix and I today, it's Pablo Tori. The host of Pablo Tori finds out is back on the show. Pablo, welcome. Good to be back. I saw Felix at a strange, I think the least Super Bowl party that's ever existed. And now, well, it's good to see your face in the comfort zone that is your actual show. Yeah, we were, we were educating a Turkish fan about one Bob Ritchie, aka Kid Rock. I talked about it on the show, but remember how Hassan was like, who's it when he did the outfit change to go acoustic? And he went, who's this Bob Ritchie asshole? Kid Rock only did one song. It was remarkable to know where exactly Hassan's blind spots culturally are. And that one, I, I, the delight, the sheer innocence, the innocence being shattered that Bob Ritchie and. and Kid Rock are the same guy was, I'm very glad I was there for that with you.

Just don't let him know about Chris Gaines. I could see Chris Gaines being like highly respected in Turkey. Maybe the only place where they really liked that. Well, I mean, actually, when Garth Brooks became Chris Gaines, getting hair was one of the big parts of the Chris Gaines personality. Yeah, where do you think he got that? Well, yeah, there you go. Well, Pablo, we want to have you on the show because, look, NFL season over,

Super Bowl's done. We're in sort of the doldrums now. NBA All-Star break right before March Madness. Thankfully, we have been saved by the Winter Olympics, but we would like to talk to you about some of the stories you've been covering and some of the ways in which American sports and sports culture

cross over into the realms of the political and the things we usually talk about on this show. But before we get into that, Pablo, I'm wondering, have you been following the Winter Olympics at all? I just need to start there because I'm a huge Olympics fan, and I have been watching quite a bit of this winter Olympics.

And I'm wondering if you've been checking it out. I've been consuming the Olympics like it's a buffet. And so I sample it. I get a sense of, oh, yeah, they're, there. I underrated, I underestimated just the amount that people would be talking about. Ski jumpers dicks. It was a delight for me. We did an episode about how it started with just like wardrobe edits.

We're going to make your crotch area bigger to create effectively a, a penis sale. And then they, they scooped us with the hole. We're injecting stuff directly into our, into our, into our, into our penis veins. Is that just like aesthetic or does it present like an athletic advantage? No, it's like Apollo said it's a penis sale. There's a competitive edge. Yeah. Oh, so it's like a scramjet or something. Yes. Yes. The dick vein acts like as an air scoop and more compressed air goes into the urethra and the skier goes fast. That's pretty good. Exactly. Yeah, gay guys have been through that for years. You know, it's like the Winter Olympics are finally getting around to the dick technology that the gay community has been. Poppers are a big, for years. Yeah, poppers are a big PED now, it turns out as well. There's a whole, they're Bargolophon club culture in ways that really sports are just now catching up to. But to answer the question, I think, as honestly as I can, because in ski jumping, so much of the edge you have is because you have a suit.

that can serve as an edge in the physics of soaring through the sky, they will body scan you in your underwear to make sure that your suit is so precisely measured so you don't get any extra unearned fabric. And so these guys have been injecting their penises, allegedly, with this chemical, with this performance-enhancing drug that makes it bigger just for the measurement phase. so they can get a bigger suit. And therefore they reap the benefits that previously we reported on my show

required like a literal sewing machine that they edited in post. Like this one, they're like basically getting the official sanctioned bigger measurement version, the, you know, the magnum condom of ski jumping suits. And that has been very advantageous.

So it's actually like, it's sort of like the lift fan on a V-t- aircraft. Like a... That's exactly right. Something like that. That's... So they have this thing

that makes their dick bigger, but they only use it for this. That is my... That's my understanding. I think that's kind of principled. It's sort of the opposite of how weight cutting works in combat sports.

Well, there's been some great stories out of this winter Olympics. The ski jumping penis sales story is great. Sweden, catching Canada. cheating at curling or allegedly catching them cheating at curling, but using the Swedish

public television to capture a shot that is rarely captured in the curling event that seemed to show the Canadian sweeper pushing the stone after he had launched it. But there's been some great video as well, like the Japanese skier, the Japanese mogul skier who finished the race backwards. That was incredible. But just at the height of the shot, I want to shout out one thing I saw last night, which was the Norwegian slalom skier, who is favored to win that event, is a guy named Atole-Ly McGrath. And he was the favorite to get gold in the men's slalom. At the final, his final race yesterday, at the very beginning of the chorus, his ski caught

one of the, like, the poles that marked the turns. And he just crashed out. He got so upset. threw his poles into the crowd and then literally just walked into the forest, like walked off the chorus into the woods and lie and just lay down on the ground by himself. And I got to say to Adel Lai McGrath, that was one of the realest things I've ever seen. And like that that was a real sports moment that only the Olympics can can capture. I'm reminded of a one of Michael Hudson's guys who he found on Facebook would post pictures of himself lying prone in a random field

near his house, pretending that he was dead every time people were mad at him. Finally, someone else adopted this technique. It was compelling. But it is, but it is,

the whole, the Olympics of nothing else are a festival of different cultural mores around humiliation. And how you process the indignity of failure. I am,

I am, it's a rainbow coalition that I'm delighted by by every time. I'm like, man, there's the Instagram caption of the Quad God who's like, you know, basically I choked and I had these mental health issues and this is very, this is very, of course, gravely affecting. And then there's the dude walking into the forest. And I'm like, I like the forest guy. I'm very empathetic, but the forest guy, I think there's something there that Americans can learn from. Well, you know, people have put it out, but he was doing kind of the Werner Herzog penguin moment of just walking into oblivion. Like, well, you know, just off the course, off the, off the slope. just walked into the forest and just laid down. He didn't lay face down,

but he just laid like just staring up at the trees. And there's something, I don't know, there was something very existential about that that I really felt. I always, you know, one thing I like to do, every time I have like a mild social phopause, I like to sort of gauge whether I would have to kill myself if I was a Japanese guy,

if it happened to me. Because I really don't know. But it's like, you know, if you go on a business trip and you fly first class, but your friend doesn't who you're going on the business trip and he sees you, that's kill yourself, you know. Felix, that happened with you and Chris when you were flying back from Chicago. Yeah. And it was you and the Pod Save America guys in first class as Chris walked back to steerage, staring. That was, yeah, yeah. Chris had to, Chris actually, they made a special. he was not seated but prone,

kind of like the skier above the above the worst seats in the plane. He was in the overhead baggage compartment. I'd like to sublet my first class seat actually. But has there, I've never heard of a Japanese guy like, you know, doing something awesome like that in the Olympics.

But I'm not a big Olympics head. Are there any I missed? Because I feel like they would have like the best, you know, reactions to a loss. Well, I was the Japanese skier, the mogul skier who finished a race backwards in what was instantly basically the most memorable clip from this Olympics. And the Japanese Paris figure skating duo just won gold. And I was watching that last night. And the male partner of the half of this team, when they finished their routine, he was sobbing for like. like a good three minutes. It was very emotional because they could like, you just like the culmination

and they did a perfect routine. And it's that culmination of like years and years of your life. And in that moment, like he completely broke down and it was like a real strong men also cry. But you know, to Felix's point, though, I think that is only responsible. That is only the product of a, you know, very superficially clean ethno state. I think that's that's the product of it. You know, you have, you have a, Japan, the, I like the idea of like, at some point, one of you guys is sticking a samurai sword into your intestines, right? Like, this is pretty bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think, um, I, I normally, like, you know, issue, uh, weebishness. But there's sort of like an exchange program between like Jews and Japan because they're like, if they're webs for anything, it is Judaism. there were like when Pokemon's still big but when it was big when I was a kid my mom pointed out like 10 different Pokemon in my deck that were just like Dibbiks and golems and shit

and sometimes they would just literally be named Golem or Dibbik half the animas I've seen the lead character is named like Mori Barmitzvowitz they're really into it well Pablo

bringing up as long as you're talking about superficially clean ethno states. This gets into like the first story I want to talk about today, which is basically a crossover between the NBA, which is like, you know, one of them, I would say like out of Americans professional sports, the NBA in terms of both its fan base and its sort of public PR, it's like its front facing public diplomacy, is generally regarded as like the most socially progressive of American sports leagues and their fan bases. Well, this All-Star weekend, I'm not sure like, I'm sure they've tried to studiously avoid this,

but politics has reared its head over this recent, this past weekend, this All-Star game, involving Israel and Palestine. And there's a couple different threads to tease out here. But the one I'm going to begin with involves Kevin Durant. Because if you're talking about sports, politics, and being online, Kevin Durant is probably the most online superstar athlete of all time. Right? I mean, can you think of another athlete who,

is like posts as much as Kevin Durant? Not only is he the most. He is the guy that every time you're like, surely this will lead him to commit Sepaku. He is so, he has been brought so low by the exposure now of like these alleged

group chats in which he's shitting on his teammates actively with a bunch of people he knows online. Surely this will be the thing. And instead it's the opposite of the guy walking to the forest. Like KD's walking into the All-Star game. Checking his phone. It's just so perfect. He's on his phone. And he's just like, yeah, I'm not. He's very different ways of processing. Again, shame. But no, but we should talk about the drone stuff because the drone stuff, the hashtag drone stuff, the drone stuff was in the group chat. He was like joking about how like, yeah, if you need drones, like come to me. The drones, of course, being used to allegedly, you know, war crime Palestinians, which is.

the subtext and now hopefully the actual discussion that we can get to. Well, I mean, like, for those are not aware, like, there's been yet another Kevin Durant burner account that was like, suppose, and like this is alleged there's been nothing to conclusively link it to Kevin Durant. But if you see the screenshots from the chat, the posts are being made from the perspective of someone who is currently on the Houston Rockets and throwing all of his teammates under the bus.

And then also, it was also on the Phoenix Suns and shipping. all over Devin Booker and their coach, Frank Vogel. He referred to them as Stalin and Kim Jong-un. I mean, KD might be, KD, I mean, also referring to Russell Westbrook as like a triple-double cocaine bear. I'm like, that's pretty good. Yeah.

That's pretty good. But, but like, so Kevin Durant will, he will reply to people from his, from his, like, named account that is just like, you know, Kevin Durant, like the confirmed verified account. And obviously, like, there's been a lot of coverage of this burner account, and he's been replying to people about, like, you know, any criticism of him. But the thing that he's not replying to, and the thing that he is studiously avoiding commenting on is his investment in a company called Skydeo. And apparently he invested in this company back in 2021, and it was founded by former Google Software Engineers, Adam Brai and Abraham Backrock, who both went to MIT.

I'm just reading from a news account of it. He says, while Skydeo was initially marketed as a fun AI-powered aerial system, it became involved with Israel after Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023. Politico reported that hours after the attack, the Israeli military contacted Skydeo and requested short-range reconnaissance drones. And in less than a month, Skydeo sent more than 100 drones to the IDF. Pablo, you mentioned that Kevin Durant was joking about, like, if you need a drone, come talk to me in these alleged, like, burner account chat leaks.

But, like, I guess the question is, like, for a guy like Kevin Durant, like, how does he get involved in investing so heavily in an Israeli drone company? Does he just see, like, is this just a good investment in terms of like, oh, drones are going to be big? This looks, this seems like a good bet. Or like, like, like, how does something like this come about? And like, will this, in your opinion, will this become, an issue that the NBA or individuals like Kevin Durant will eventually have to talk about.

Yeah. So how did it happen? I was looking through the series E round he invested in, and that round raised $230 million. And I'm like, who else was investing? And it's, you know, oh, there's Magic Johnson. There's Justin Timberlake. There is the social proof of like, this seems like one of those companies that famous people get pieces of. And they're very glad because some smart friend connected to Silicon Valley in the tech industry recommended it. And so I can imagine this happening with extraordinarily little due diligence, let alone geopolitical sort of foresight. So I'll be generous on the front end.

Like you got into this investment and then at some point maybe you had reason to wonder, wait a minute, is this the same? Is this my drone company? And so when he's joking about it, it reveals that, oh, if he is in fact, aware of it and he seems to be now because it's become this meme on NBA Twitter, he doesn't seem to really give a shit. And that's where my generosity sort of immediately vaporizes, right? I think that's something that people need to understand about the NBA. And this is both its players as investors, but also its commissioner and its executives and its

owners. Like the NBA right now, as a social network, has been getting money in exactly the same way, that the administration of our country has been getting money, right? They're going to crypto, like literally, crypto.com arena is the name of Staples Center now. FTX was the name of the Miami Heat Arena. Of course, crypto is everywhere. If you look at what all these players are hawking, like they all basically have their own versions of meme coins. They're going to sports betting. Janice, Anadacompo, is now a Kalshi spokesperson and part owner.

They're going to the Middle East, and they're going to the Middle East. of these sovereign wealth funds, which is something that's just so obviously up front that the MBA is directly now looking for investment. And they're starting this NBA Europe League thing in which, oh, look, there's the PIF, the private investment fund of Saudi Arabia, also just in the room alongside everybody else. And also Israel, right? And so these are places where there's money on the table right now. And the NBA, to your point, Will, had this reputation of like, we're progressive, we're enlightened, we're, we are, we are woke, if nothing else in comparison to like the autocratic NFL. And under Adam Silver, at every turn, what you realize is that they

have no principle that could be reasonably described as leaning left. What they have is a capitalist instinct. And that instinct led them towards what felt like encouraging social protest when that was capitalistically viable and is now going in the direction of all of the most corruptible industries that the country we live in is also all over in ways that are deeply disturbing. And so this is of a piece with that to me. It's not anything new, but it is now it has a face. And the face happens to be that of Kevin Durant. Well, you know, Pablo, it's not just Kevin Durant. And a while back there was reporting done by Nate Baer that was picked up. by the Gray Zone.

And it's not just Kevin Durant, former Golden State Warrior, but Steph Curry, probably one of the faces of the NBA and current Golden State Warrior with Sequoia partners. Steph Curry is invested in

two different companies, the first of which is Zafrin Security, which is, you know, is an Israeli cybersecurity company founded by veterans of the IDF's cybersecurity unit 8200. The other one is a cloud computing, cloud security company called Upwind that is also founded by veterans of

the IDF and the Israeli intelligence forces. And both of these companies and the technologies that they utilize and sell are deeply intertwined into the architecture of Israel's military and intelligence state. Now, combining that with like Israel as a country, like their national basketball team is like, you know, it's a way they advertise themselves to the world and these relationships they have with basketball, including this year's first time All-Star, from the Portland Trailblazers, Denny, I forget his last name, but he's an Israeli citizen. Avdia, yeah. Yeah, Avdia.

But, like, basketball and the NBA is, like, is a way to kind of exercise a kind of soft power at a time when American public opinion is turning against Israel. So, like, for a guy like Steph Curry, who is the fate, one of the faces at the NBA, And not only that, but a guy who is, I think, generally regarded as, like, one of the nice guys in the league. Again, like, where, where does, like, is it his proximity to Silicon Valley and how deeply intertwined and, like, also ideologically Zionist? A lot of the founders, like, of Sequoia Capitol, like, Shane McGuire, Sean McGuire is. Or, like, where does this come from? And, like, how much is the NBA trying to stop any kind of, I don't know, examination in.

into their social justice, Bonifides, vis-a-vis the faces of the league being heavily invested in companies that are, you know, from the back of the better word, profiting of a genocide that's being committed against Palestinians. And by the way, are actively laundering their images through likable athletes and mainstream characters and mainstream television shows, first and foremost, in this case, sports, the NBA. That's not coincidental to me. The through line in all of the examples I was giving was how did these otherwise strange and suspicious industries become normalized, you go through sports. That's entirely the story of what sports washing is, and it does not need to be just on behalf of sovereign wealth funds and of

nation states. It could also be used by any number of pretty shady companies. Now, does the NBA have to respond to it? The NBA's response to anything resembling these controversies has been to ignore it. The problem, though, is that the NBA is, is, as Kevin Durant might be an avatar for, the NBA is the most online league of all of the American major professional sports. They are incredibly sensitive to Twitter. NBA Twitter is not merely this sort of like tongue-in-cheek concept. It's actually a thing that does drive conversation that gets into all of the group chats of the players. And you know the NBA League office is reading it.

But their approach has been, let's count on a compliant media that doesn't want to touch any of this stuff. The actual mainstream sports media that doesn't want to touch any of this stuff, let's count on them to not ask about it. And that's so far been a reasonably effective strategy. But it does create this effect because everyone's also online in the auditorium where people are talking about this perpetually, it seems. creates this seemingly, to me at least, unsustainable reputation in which you're trying to be the good guys, but you keep on getting into business with the characters that are very plausibly and very persuasively the bad guys. And that's where I think from a pure marketing perspective, Adam Silver has done a horrific job in terms of, I mean, I don't expect any of these guys to have politics that reflect. a care for the tonnage of human suffering that you're describing with a genocide in Palestine. But I expect them to be better at PR.

And so far, they're just hoping that no one really asks them about it in public. And so far, they've gotten away with it. But, like, in terms of, like, sports leagues or athletes weighing in on controversial political issues, there's obviously a big difference in the way the NBA reacted to the Black Lives Matter movement or even what's going on in Minnesota right now with ICE and the way they act to, the way they react to their players being heavily interested in Israeli cybersecurity and weapons manufacturers and potential fan backlash against that. I mean, I remember it was like a couple years ago.

Dwight Howard went on a podcast and he told a story about how he tweeted just the words free Palestine once, and within 10 minutes got a call from his agent and the commissioner telling him to delete it. Oh, look, I want to spell it out even more, right? The NBA, when they gauge what their response should be, is asking themselves, because the NBA, Adam Silver, works for a collection of, you know, 30 billionaires, the owners of the teams, and they're asking themselves, if we take a stand on any of the stuff as it relates to public response to what our players are doing, what exposure does that create for ourselves? And so it's really worth pointing out here that Miriam Adelson owns the Dallas Mavericks.

Yes. Yeah. Like it's just sort of like one of the craziest things that the NBA let happen. And the fact that Kyrie Irving is also on that team is endlessly amusing to me from a pure just like, dear God, like, what the fuck are those, what are those group chats like? But the fact that the number one all-time Zionist when it comes to manipulating America's foreign policy in Miriam and Sheldon, the late Sheldon Adelson, their family owns the Mavs, like to say a single thing about what the state of Israel is doing would be enormously

problematic for one of your bosses and a stance that you as a league decide. to take and welcoming them in to own one of the teams, which, by the way, he's my favorite part about that, because I covered the acquisition of the Mabs by the Adelson's at the time. And they made it so that the way they threaded the needle, because they knew, because they're not also totally stupid. They know how radioactive the Adelsoons are as a political force. They're like, if not for Israel, then just for their support for Donald Trump alone. That's a very risky in terms of public opinion in the NBA fan base. Exactly, exactly right. Like, where does it cross that, okay, the foreign policy stuff, that's all like hazy and whatever.

But the domestic stuff with Trump, like, that's a horrible, unpopular look. And so what they did was they made the governor of the team, the person who owns on the piece of paper and runs the team, not the Aedleson, not Miriam, but Patrick Dumont, her, like, dumpy son-in-law, you know, like he, they put it under his name. It's like, when you buy an apartment, you know, it's like, no, no, no. This isn't under my dad's name. It's under my name. It's me. I'm the one. It's like, but you didn't pay for it.

It's like, no, no, no, but it's mine. Like that's what they did to thread the needle to make sure that they could get it through to minimize public reaction. And it's crazy the more I think about it. Well, speaking of Kyrie Irving, who, you know, is in plays for the Dallas Mavericks. You know, he weighed in it all-star weekend as well by making a big, a $25,000 donation to a Gaza relief charity. but also at court side, he's injured at the moment, wore a shirt that said press on it, which was an acknowledgement of and tribute to the hundreds of journalists killed by Israel

over the course of the last couple of years. So, yeah, we should make for interesting inter-management player politics going on at the Dallas Mavericks. And now, Pablo, everyone, when it comes to the NBA and the NBA draft, everyone gets conspiracy-brained. But I can't help. I'm wondering if you have a take. I can't help but think about the Dallas Mavericks, Miriam Adelson's purchase of that team

in the context of them trading Luca Donchich and then getting Cooper Flag in this most recent draft. What do NBA people think about that? Or do you have any thoughts or similar thoughts or, I don't know, inclinations like I do? I'll tell you that I remember I was at an event and I spoke to two NBA owners. This was the day after the NBA lottery. And those two owners were both like, this was obviously fixed. And I'm like, okay, so I'm not saying that it was fixed for the Mavs. I am simply saying that it's not just you will and people on the internet perhaps who are saying this seems fixed to me and I believe it to be so.

I'm saying literally two NBA owners did not trust the hand of Adam Silver to remain out of the proceedings in terms of rigging the NBA draft lottery. So all of which indicates, again, I'm not doing this as a matter of like I'm solving this mystery, but I'm very comfortable in saying that when it comes to the NBA's problem with its own credibility, like what are you guys doing? Who are you servicing and why? It's at all levels these days. I would say the bloom has come off the Adam Silver Rose in ways that are pretty astonishing. And I don't even think he's really catching heat yet for the stuff that we're talking about. He's catching heat for like, man, the season's too long and the tanking stuff is a problem and all that. But there are bigger issues that he is covering up and covering for that I would say demand to be included into any appraisal of like, what does this guy stand for?

And how is he simultaneously selling a product that is supposed to feel like it's, the side of, you know, good to an international community that is also asking, so why are your players funding drone wars? And by the way, not to keep on going on about this, but I did a story on Pablo Torre finds out about the Memphis Grizzlies owner, Robert Perra. That story is, Memphis Grizzly owner literally building drones for Russia. I know Israel's our ally, morality aside here. But yeah, Pablo, please tell that story. And especially in light of the fact that his star player is repeatedly in trouble for doing, just showing legally purchased guns in the state of fucking Tennessee, which you think like, shit, everyone has a gun in Tennessee. He's just flashing it on

Instagram and like that became, that was seriously was an image problem for the NBA. And they came down hard on John Morant. But please, expand more on what the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies is up to. Yeah. So John Morant was the, you know, the young star of the Grizzlies who was the face of the NBA's weapons problem because he had these guns and was like celebrating by making gun motions and like rocket launcher motions and grenade motions as he got further fined and suspended. And that was by the way, a familiar issue for the NBA, right? Like players with gun, black dudes with guns, well, we can run a playbook there. We know how to handle this. And so they did. But what was unreported until this story we did with Hunterbrook media was that the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies is,

a guy named Robert Perra. And Robert Perra makes a product. He founded a company called Ubiquity. And ubiquity creates all these things like incredible Wi-Fi routers and radio antenna. And his whole premise with the company, he was a former Apple engineer, was we're going to democratize the internet through the world. And so you can drop these Wi-Fi routers effectively, these satellite dishes, these radio antenna, in forests, in far-flung areas. And basically it approximates what you might think Starlink could only provide, high-speed internet. internet, but anywhere. And it turns out that previously, Robert Perra and Ubiquity, Robert Perra becomes the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. He is the youngest owner in the NBA when he buys it. He is now one of the five richest owners in American sports, by the way, because ubiquity has

blown up as a stock. It's been doing fantastic because the products actually do work, it turns out. But he had gotten in trouble already with the government because he was accused of violating sanctions that have been placed on Iran and somehow his products, his Wi-Fi routers and so forth were winding up over there. And then this episode that we did was about how the drone war in Ukraine that is being used by the Russian army in many documented ways. And by documented, I mean like literally thank you letters we produced in the episode in Russian from like people at the front line in Russia, thanking these third-party distributors for ubiquity products for enabling modern war. These are the products that enable in these forests, in these far-flung

areas, they enable the network that powers the drones that Russia has been using to murder innocent civilians and Ukrainians. And we published this whole thing, and it's deeper than even just my TLDR summary, but it's bad. And they had every reason to be able to know it was happening, to stop it from happening. It's tacitly happening with effectively, we report, with the permission of the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. And we publish this thing and it blows up for several days and it goes viral. Again, the internet takes hold of it, which I'm very gratified for. But to give you the update since we published it, Robert Para, the Memphis Grizzlies, the NBA, Adam Silver, anybody involved with the league, they've collectively said exactly zero words about it.

We requested comment, there was no comment, no one else has asked about this. And so it just sits there waiting, perhaps, to be revived in another scandal. But there are multiple drone war stories happening right now in Adam Silver's NBA. I mean, I just, in terms of John Morant, like, I understand why having like a star of the league doing shit on Instagram, like flashing a gun and like seemingly to, you know, having a very, I would say probably too light an attitude when it comes to pistols and firearms is a bad, is a bad look for the league. And there are like, you know, behavior clauses and contracts. But the thing is John Moran's never killed anyone. He's never been accused of like anything like close to that. this guy, Perra and his company is like, as you said, getting thank you letters for how good his technology is and allowing, you know, forget any country, but like a country that is technically an enemy or adversary of the United States to kill people in Ukraine.

Yeah. Look, the thing about the MBA, which is why all of these places go to it to launder the image that they don't want Americans to really fully see. The reason the NBA is so attractive is because it presents as a place, as an organization, as a corporation that is deeply rigorous and principled. And so if you are in business with the MBA, they vetted you in some way, right? They vetted and background checked and diligence. And if they're going to co-sign you, it means that you are family-friendly and a safe product for mainstream consumption.

And in every example I've ever reported about the modern NBA, there is almost no diligence about who they're getting into business with. That involves the Aedleston family, I would argue. That involves what Robert Pera has become. That involves all sorts of sponsors. You know, the clip first thing I've been doing, aspiration, this fraudulent company, no one seems to have done any due diligence on it. You go through the list of like the, dude, there are these jersey patches now in the NBA, right?

Like, because Adam Silver's big innovation was we can turn. turn the uniform of our players into these NASCAR suits and therefore grab more money on the table. And the range, okay, this is one of my favorite things is it's just, the range of it goes from the Sacramento King's organization. Their jersey patch sponsor is a personal injury attorney. I think the Oklahoma City Thunder, it's like a gas station chain. And then the New York Knicks, Emirates Airlines. Yes, it's Abu Dhabi, right? And then the Clippers, what, replace the Aspiration Jersey patch, this fraudulent Democrat-led environmental firm that was a total bankrupt fraud. Well, replace them. Visit Rwanda is literally on the jersey of the clippers.

And so it's just like in a zillion different ways, it doesn't seem like we're really background checking with any rigor, any of the business partners that are coming in. And by the way, that extends to Kalshi and Polly Market and all the gambling operators. Like, it's across. the board. Absolutely. And like Pablo, that's what I wanted to bring up next in terms of, I mean, like, they seem to like be operating on the assumption that their fan base doesn't care and that they can pretty much just clam up and weather any controversy. And I think like so far, they've pretty much been proven correct in that. I want to talk about Kalshi though. And obviously, like it's become sort of commonplace that like every sports league now is, has advertising by

sports books, encourages sports betting, any TV show that analyzes a sport or comments on it, will give you like gambling picks for whatever game they're talking about that night. But Kalsi is a new one. And like, I bring this up because Yana Satata Tukumpo is now announced himself right after the trade line, announced himself as a shareholder in Kalshi. First of number one, Pablo, how is Kalsi in these sort of futures predictions markets? in what sense is that different than like a traditional sports book or sports get betting? And then also, what do you make of the fact that there were options to, you know, I don't know, invest in or trade on on Kalshi regarding whether Janus would stay a Milwaukee buck or not?

Yeah. I mean, I'll think the second one first, which is that you could technically thread the needle of Janus put no money down on this and he's only a part owner and he was not himself created. this market. I think that the problem with that threading of the needle is that no one publicly has any reason to believe it, right? Like you don't have the credibility to assure people that, no, no, no, no, no, this looks bad, but we're on top of it, right? That's the through line in this whole thing, is that like the loss of confidence in whatever anti-corruption practices you'd assume a sports league to take, they just don't seem to be doing it. And so it'll take us now to the first question you asked, which is like, so what's different about this really? I mean, on one hand, it's a platform prediction markets that are still like 90% sports betting. So on some level,

the way to understand it, it's just like it's another way to do sports betting that because this administration, Trump administration has empowered the CFTC to quote unquote regulate prediction markets, it basically means that the states don't regulate it. The federal government regulates it. And the federal government is... And their attitude is we won't regulate this. I mean, truly, it's the most pro-crypto, pro-prediction market administration. You can imagine. And that's just the words of the guy who's running it, the chairman of it now, who just was tweeting about this, posting a video of it earlier today. So they are so in favor of

opening up the floodgates of the prediction market economy, while also simultaneously, by the A fun side note is that Barron just reported several days ago that the famed Chicago office of the CFTC, which was where they would really do their enforcement on the futures market and derivatives and all this stuff, that office now has zero enforcement attorneys left. So they were turned over and cleared out and the former employees are saying that it was because they were actually like true believers in the premise of like, you know, the CFTC and what they should be regulating or not. not regulating, and they've been cleared out. So that's the era, uh, governmentally that has opened up all of this. And people are mostly currently doing it to a 90% rate at last check to do sports betting. But then you're like, okay, so mechanically, like what is this really? And it is a way to turn everybody into Jonte Porter. And, and, and, and, and, and I, I say that, I say that literally and figuratively. I say that because you can get all of the micro bets and prop bets. They figured out

ways to do that. That'll allow you to bet on unders for obscure players that raise the question of like, why am I betting on this if I don't have inside information? Right. And Jonte Porter being an NBA player who, you know, he got done in for, he was a guy who took himself out of a game with like an eye injury after bets had been placed on like how many points he would score in that game. And then he guaranteed it would be capped at a certain level by removing himself from the game. Am I getting that right? Yeah, he was banned for life by the NBA because he, on a group chat, again, arranged that he would manipulate his own performance by underperforming and therefore allow the people he told he was going to do this to profit by betting on this on the legal gambling markets.

And so it's, it's a version that Pete Rose never dreamed of, how deeply specific you could be in terms of your own participation in gambling. And so the idea that everyone can be Jonte Porter, what does that mean? It means that certainly on a prediction market, you could have a zillion of these guys because on a prediction market you bet on anything, including, of course, sports. But then you get to the larger, I would say, eating away at our social fabric part, which is that you can literally bet on anything. And so when Caroline Levitt, you know, the White House press secretary is suspiciously,

ending a press conference, 30 seconds short of the predicted line that her press conference was supposed to take, you know, the question emerges, did she just Jonte Porter this? Did she stop short to make sure that people who put money on the line on this bet, profited? And when you have, again, like Donald Trump Jr. on the board of both polymarket and Kalshi, you know, both companies, It's just like there is no reason to assume that insiders are not praying on your lack of information. And I should be up front about this. I had no insider information on this whatsoever. But I did bet $10,000 on Calci that Felix would make a reference to fighter jets within the first 10 minutes of this episode.

And let's just say drinks are on me, boys. I just had a feeling that I wasn't going to know enough about non-combat sports and that I would stop contributing about 20 minutes into the episode but I am also taking myself out with a prostate injury to eliminate any doubt and I don't have a bet on that Paul let me say this is turning us all into John Tate Porter I remember the last time you were on the show we talked about how one of the reasons sports is worth billions and why there's so much money involved in it

is because it is one of the last bastions of American monoculture, of a kind of a shared experience. And I guess I'm wondering on a more philosophical level how the sort of micro focus of sports books, predictive prediction markets that encourage people to invest in these very discrete events that may or may not happen in a larger sort of narrative of like will this team win or lose, you know, who's going to win the championship? Who are your favorite players? I'm just wondering, like, do you have an idea of what, like, how this will, like, my impression is that this will shift sports away from something that is a cultural experience that is collectively enjoyed and shared in the moment, you know, like, that's the fun of it, is that

it's reality. No one knows what's going to happen and everyone experiences it at the same time. is something that is more like, I don't know, like you said now, like, where everyone needs to fit themselves into this economy, we're like, we are all gaming out ways to like, I don't know, get an edge on like some discrete individual event happening. Yes, yes. I think about this all of the time. And by the way, at All Star Weekend, I was in LA for it, Adam Silver is talking about how there's a revolution coming in broadcasts because AI will personalize every single experience you have as a consumer of the MBA. And it speaks it directly to what he is missing here, which is that there is money on

the table to grab, but the cost you're paying is in the ruination of the communal collective idea of what sports are, in which everybody shares in something familiar and meaningful. And the thing that I think everybody is realizing, even if they don't have yet the words to articulate it yet, is that the reason sports became. monocultural and so popular. And the most valuable product left in this deeply fragmented media economy is because people really bought in to the notion of a fair competition that was guarded and cared about integrity. And I don't want to sound like a cliched, like coach, you know, preaching, you know,

to his players about how important like, you know, it is to play fair and all that stuff. But we've gone so far in the other direction of forgetting that the impetus for people to treat these things like cultural heirlooms is because they think that it's so important. And that importance is premised on the ability to trust that the thing you're watching is worth emotionally investing in because you have a fair shot to win a title because you think that the game in front of you is happening between people who are on the level who are not secretly trying to scam you because they have a zillion different conflicts of interest now. That premise has been taken so for granted and has been so forgotten by the people who run sports now

because the only prime directive left in the era in which every team is a multi-billion dollar asset owned by, it seems, a tech billionaire is growth. How do we keep this thing green arrow going up? And the way to do it is to take the more money available on the table. Go to all the places that I mentioned. Go to AI. Go to sovereign wealth funds. Go to deeply corrupt nation states. Go to the gambling markets. Go to crypto. Do all the things we see happening in politics. Because there is real money there for you. But what you are losing, what you are selling off, is that actual fundamental integrity that assures people that this is worth caring about. And this is something that you can speak the language of with those around you because you're experiencing and caring about this along shared lines.

And I think that from a big picture philosophical perspective is going to be the question will is if everything I'm saying has some resonance, have we reached and are we already beyond peak sports? Right. Like, because sports has had a hell of a run, man. I mean, like, you could, you could ask the same thing about like film and literature or like, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, I was thinking about this in light of yesterday, over the weekend and yesterday, we got one of those sort of death trifectos that really, I don't know, like, seems to have a synchronicity that speaks to like an end of a certain kind of American culture between Robert Duval, Frederick Wiseman, and today Jesse Jackson. And it seems like, I don't know, like, just culturally, like, it does seem we've reached a terminus on a lot of these things that we've taken for granted that make up the fabric of American life and politics. And what's left is, like I said, like, make as much money as you can now before AI renders you a slave for the rest of your life. Yes. Yes, yes. And like, I think we're still, I don't know, we haven't fully looked face to face with. what the reality of that is going to look like in terms of like what it does to everything in

American culture. The trifecta of death that reminded me also that we're losing recipes to quote the philosopher Michael Urban. We're losing recipes. We're losing the things, the touch points that we used to share. The way it comes back to sports also is that, like I just find myself weirdly becoming the guy who reminds people why the cliches about sports matter. You know, like I want to be sort of like, I've always enjoyed being like more postmodern about like what really matters here and being, you know, sort of, you know, even condescending towards like the whole idea of the rules, really, really care about the rules. But when in sports, people really demonstrate that they are just here for the financial

of this and the product is truly secondary. It just, it's turning me into like a Ronald Reagan sports conservative, where I'm just like, no, you have to understand why these rules matter. He used to be the shining city on a hill. Yes, we need a shot. Look, man, the NBA still has this potential. And by, I mean that not just in terms of like virtue, but also in terms of culture. Like the idea of 2026 being this totally bankrupt cultural moment in which what's cool is being decided algorithmically by all of these characters that we can all agree are not incentivized to be interesting or anything resembling subversive, but rather like just playing to create the maximum scale available, which is how you win.

the game. I just think that sports at its best is the place where you look up and you realize that's cool. I don't think it's cool that Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are purveyors of IDF drone technology. I don't think it's cool that what Adam Silver thinks is cool is reprinting the press releases of every Silicon Valley company that has money to spend right now. The NBA used to be subversive. The NBA used to be a place where there was this strange multiracial experiment based on this beautiful performance of a sport that also was intertwined with, we'll bring it up again, rituals around humiliation. What's it like to win and lose when you get to press a camera into someone's pores? right? That's the MBA. It's like it's so deeply personal. It's so deeply human. That's the product. You get to see people sweat like it's a theatrical performance that you're watching live that you can never script. That's what's amazing about it. And you just see that these fascinating aspects of the sport are being just like ground down because there is money to be had and no one is really guarding what makes it actually special.

It just from like an outside perspective, I remember like 10, 11, 12 years ago, I would see like the most screenshoted guy, no matter if you followed popular sports or not. The most made fun of it screenshot a guy was Darren Roval. Like that was regardless, like I didn't follow football or basketball or any of that shit. But like I always saw this like dumb asshole. every day people are making fun of him for like a new thing where he's like um you you know this is the most monetizable non playoff game of the year and people are like what a fucking asshole and now not only is everyone Darren Roval not just in sports but like in all avenues of life like that is the that is the main mode of existence that is the best way to be as a person

in this culture, in this economy, but we're also now, through LLMs, we decided that, like, turning the entire human population into different Darren Rovals, it's not enough. We need to create, like,

simulated ones. We need to have a network of robotic Darren Rovals who just, like, quote, tweet each other all the time. There is a lot to the premise of, like, by the way, Darren, like, one of his legends,

is that he once got in a Twitter fight in which he proclaimed that he owns the largest collection, I believe, of Martin Luther King Jr. memorabilia. Which I wish I could have made up because it's so perfect, but it is very real. Yes, the commodification, the actual commodification of everything. How are you?

who what like who's even like that's such a good claim to make because who else in the world is going to be like no actually I have the bigger collection hold on here's the defect your headline uh darren revels says he's not racist because he has black friends at MLK junior memorabilia um case closed oh here you go on this day especially i have one of the largest this is MLK day of course quote, I, one of the largest Martin Luther King Jr. Collections in the world. No, he didn't really say this. Does he have, why, does he have the rare rookie card with the hologram on it? He has a PSA 10 MLK.

Damn. Like, the only other guys who are going to have like as much MLK stuff, it would be like Jesse Jackson, like people that were like part of the Civil Rights Movement. And none of them would be like, no, I actually, my collection is like more valuable. You just have a lot of shit. Moving on from, I mean, we've talked about, you know, the ways in which, like, money is changing sports. But also, I'd be verrous if I didn't bring up at the end of the show in which the ways culture war is affecting sports. And, like, you know, and ideals of competition and fairness, I think are being used right now to foment a kind of a culture war for the benefit of right-wing politicians.

And particularly as it relates to the inclusion of trans athletes in competition, or specifically trans women in women's sports. And you've covered, you did a long story about Riley Gaines and the University of Kentucky swim team. There's a lot to go in there. But like, one of the things that I appreciated about your reporting on this is you talk about the ways in which there are sort of two conversations happening at once. And the first one is being rapidly eclipsed by the second one. And the first one being a kind of like in a vacuum, what could be a reasonable conversation to be had about what constitutes an unfair athletic advantage. for a trans person to be competing in the sport of their preferred gender identification. The second one, the culture war issue that's now being stoked by figures like Riley Gaines,

is the idea that, like, it's not just unfair, but trans women competing in women's sports is a predatory danger to the women in these sports, which is like a much different, and I think like a much nastier and like more evil way to support this, or to to address. this issue. And, you know, we've seen multiple news stories about how the American people just aren't on the side of trans people in women's sports. It's like an issue that Democrats are constantly being sort of cajoled that they have to moderate on. But I'm just wondering as someone who's covered this, like, where do you see of the contours of like the debate about what is fair competition and what, like, is it possible to have that debate in a context in which

trans people are being so rigorously dehumanized and made out to be like, you know, dangerous, violent predators by a political movement looking to capitalize off of that. I mean, I think it's the greatest, uh, moral panic that exists in American politics. When you look at the actual numbers of how many trans athletes exist and how many of them are even any good versus how much political oxygen this gets and why it is, in fact, framed often as an 80, 20 issue that the Republican Party wins, 80% of the time. And they win it because it's very intuitive to the first part of your conversation to infer if you went through male puberty, you have physical advantages that are distinct

and superior to an athlete who did not go through male puberty. And there is a really good scientific debate there around whether testosterone suppression and hormone regulation can ever undo the extent of those advantages, right? I think there's a really good and hard conversation that people on the left need to come to peace with where you admit there are some advantages that are going to persist, and then we have to make decisions around inclusion and what do we really value. And that's a fair conversation. It's also very sports specific as well in terms of like what the athletic competition is.

Absolutely. And the common sense of little case about like going through the male. version of puberty is like, well, yeah, like these hormones are very powerful and they affect your body in profound ways. But if you've transitioned, like you are also doing it the opposite way. So there's a common sensical case to be made for that if you transition through hormones, that like whatever athletic advantage would be there is in some way negated, maybe not entirely, but like that is the competition, like that is the conversation that's sort of like where the contours about competition and fairness are taking place.

Yeah. But it's not really a, like, as a culture war issue, it's not really about competition or fairness. It's about demonizing a small and vulnerable group of people and using sports as a way to do that. Yeah. I mean, the episode I did to be very clear was not at all about the rules and the regime of rules that you could argue your way towards. And by the way, rules have exist around participation and inclusion for years. it's not some unregulated Wild West.

Like the NCAA has had rules around this for years and years now. And to your point about like the various ways in which there are different performance advantages, I've seen trans athlete exclusion policies be proposed for billiards. And it's like, why the fuck do you care? I saw one for like chess, which is like, what? What does that work? So there is like a science question. And yes, like it all, it's really hard to have a disciplined discussion about what should the rules be on a sport by sport basis.

While the public is completely unaware, for instance, that the NCAA, its president, Charlie Baker, estimated in front of Congress that there are less than 10 trans athletes that the NCAA is aware of at the levels that we're talking about regulating, less than 10. That's 0.02%, right? So that's the boogeyman. And so to even go down the road, it requires a numeracy that people just don't have. But then it comes to the politics of it. And what you were just saying, Will, about like how they turned Riley Gaines into this profoundly effective victim is fascinating. Because Riley Gaines, when she started off and her claim to fame was, of course, tying for fifth with Leah Thomas in the NCAA. swimming

championships. You know, her whole thing was when she was interviewed at the beginning, she acknowledged that there are rules in place and she disagrees

with the NCAA's rules, but she doesn't blame Leah. She doesn't blame the swimmer in question, the trans swimmer in question because she's just playing by the rules. But over time,

as she gets fed into the right-wing interview machine, and she talks to the Daily Wire, and she talks to Tucker Carlson on Fox, news, she ducks to Clay Travis and outkick the coverage. You see them training her rhetoric, radicalizing her rhetoric to where she is not merely blaming the rules. She is now accusing Leah Thomas of being a predator on par with any number of villains that have starred in sexual

abuse scandals throughout sports, including in one famous debate she had. And we should get to that part. which is that there are problems, real problems when it comes to victimizing women in women's sports. And those problems, almost entirely, statistically speaking, are being committed by male coaches. The men who are actually in the locker rooms with them. The men who are actually around with a power dynamic that is completely imbalanced. The people who actually wield leverage over young impressionable athletes who only want to play the games that they love, right? And so the story of Riley Gaines, in brief, is she gets paid a lot of money to turn her rhetoric from, I was not merely an unfair and unjust victim of the athletic rules regime of the NCAA.

I was a victim in a more criminal sense because I had to undress next to this predator who was ogling me because that's what, of course, a biological male would do. And the entire time, and this is my long way of getting to what we reported, the entire time, there was a kind of. conversation happening among Riley Gaines's own teammates at the University of Kentucky in which they were grappling with the fact that Riley Gaines his best friend. That's what she called Lars Jurgensen, her head

coach, her best friend in her autobiography. This person who is very close to himself had allegedly raped multiple of her teammates. And this was something that Riley Gaines literally never

said words aloud about. She tweeted about it once in this entire arc of protect women's sports, protect our girls. She never talked about that issue while she was turning these non-criminal athletes, the trans athletes, into the predators that her actual coach was this entire time. And so when you talk to her teammates, they will say, and I'll paraphrase here, why the fuck would I give a shit about Riley Gaines' crusade against trans athletes? when our coach is raping our teammates. Like, that's the on-the-nose hypocrisy of the most visible member of this anti-trans Republican MAGA movement

is Riley Gaines, who is that specific person. And, like, the way in which this has been fomented, like you said, into a total hysteria, like a total moral panic and culture war cudgel, is very transparently like coming on the heels of the fact that they have given up a gay marriage or get inclusion of gay people in public life in America. I mean, it still rankles them, but they need a sexual minority, a visible sexual minority that they can do the same thing that they've been doing to gay people for like decades prior to this.

And like, and this is a, they've been very, very successful in doing that. And I think an interesting thing you brought up is the way if you listen to Riley Gaines's interviews as she goes and gets more and more money, you know, in this position to like, you know, becoming like a turning points USA kind of spokesperson for women's sports, you know, an issue that the conservative movement has cared about for a long time. But like, you can see that the host interviewing her, giving her the rhetoric that like she, she like slowly adopts for herself, right? Oh my God. Yeah. It's very, it's very obvious. And by the way, Betsy DeVos, one of the Orlando Magic owners is one of the people also funding Riley Gaines's political

transformation as they create the Riley Gaines Leadership Institute, which is a real thing. There are like 1099 forms that we looked up to validate that she's getting hundreds of thousands of dollars to escalate her rhetoric. It's not only dishonest. It feels evil. Because look, your point about like, okay, we can't really do this to gay people anymore, but a trans person, absolutely. look at how politicians on the Republican side of the aisle are campaigning.

I was just watching Michelle, speaking of sports and politics, I was watching Michelle Tofoya, former NBC NFL announcer, announced that she's running for Senate now in Minnesota as, you know, this former sports reporter. And one of the things she mentions in her debut campaign ad is she's going to stop trans athletes. They just know that it polls well. What they don't care about is that a population of people who are already at last check attempting suicide at a rate at almost one in three because that's how miserable it is to be a trans person, even before all the stuff that you're visiting upon them as a political party. That's how much it sucks already. They're realizing that, no, we can just keep on curb stomping, innocent people who just want to play sports.

And often, by the way, and this is, I think, a really key insight because I've reported on this stuff too. often these trans athletes, because they're human beings, fucking suck at sports. Like most of us, right? A universal human experience, practically, is not being good enough sports to win. Statistically speaking, they're going to be bad. I remember I interviewed, I went and visited in Ohio,

the state of Ohio when they were doing their anti-trans bills, I visited the one varsity athlete, high school player, who was being affected, banned by this proposed. legislation. And her name is Ember Zelch. She was a softball player. She was a third string backup catcher who would never hit a home run. And she was horrible at softball. And her mom knew it. Everyone knew it. Like it was a joke. But she was the boogeyman that promoted, that excuse me, provoked, apparently, this whole legislation. I mean, the problem that these state houses have is that they propose these bills to ban these athletes. And not only can they not find really good

athletes, they can't find trans athletes at all because either they've been scared away from participating in the first place or because they're just not enough of them. And so you have all of these, you know, law and order solutions that these politicians are campaigning on. But there is no actual problem outside of these anecdotal famous examples now, in which case Riley Gaines ends up being the one where we turn the camera to and we're like, oh, wait a minute. Even here, even here, you're masking what the real crime and punishment should be. Pablo, we've got to leave it there for today. I really want to thank you for your time and joining us today. Everybody, the show is Pablo Tori finds out. Please look into it. He's really, I mean,

he's he's owning the sports journalism world right now with the shit you're putting out, Pablo. So really, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us today and just a little bit of housekeeping at the end of our show today. I would just like to let everyone know that there are mere dozens of tickets left for our 10th anniversary show at April 3rd at the Palace Theater in Los Angeles. Seriously, just a few dozen tickets are left for the show. Get yours now. And as always, please follow us on Instagram at Chopo Trap House Real and subscribe to us on Patreon at patreon.com slash chopotrap House to get every episode of the show. Until next time, everybody. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. you got take your very best shot

and made the best team win the time is now the name of the game is action they're on the floor and they're ready to score