Chapo Trap House - 1029 - The F-Files feat. Derek Davison & Ben McKenzie (4/20/26)

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

We have a Chapo Double Feature for you this week! First, Derek Davison returns for more coverage of the wars in Lebanon and Iran, including a Wall Street Journal article showing just how checked out Trump is from the apocalyptic destruction he’s bringing about on the world. Plus: more Ka$h Chronicles, as the FBI tries to take him down for the crimes of having too much fun and sleeping through an alarm. We’re then joined by actor Ben McKenzie (The O.C., Junebug) about his new crypto documentary Everyone Is Lying to You For Money. Our 10 year anniversary merch is ready for pre-order through April 30! Order at https://chapotraphouse.store/ Find all of Derek’s foreign policy coverage at: www.foreignexchanges.news www.americanprestigepod.com And go see Everyone Is Lying to You For Money when it’s near you!

Hello, everybody. It's Monday, April 20th. Wait, hold on a second. April 20th. I just realized that now. All right. I hope everyone's enjoying Hitler's birthday today. That's right. This is the official holiday of taking 48 Benadryl. I'm falling asleep. Actually, sorry, just like, we got, at the end of today's episode, you'll be hearing a little bonus interview I did with the actor Ben McKenzie on his very funny and entertaining new documentary about the crypto industry. called Everyone is Lying to You for Money. But for the main classic regular part of today's episode, we are, of course, joined by our good friend Derek Davison from Foreign Exchanges and American Prestige. Derek, welcome back.

Thanks, guys. I can't stay very long. I'm taking J.D. Vance's masterclass on Catholic teachings and doctrine. So I have to get back to that. But I'll give you what time I can. I'm taking his master class on negotiating. actually. Yeah, that's the one he teaches with Kushner, right?

Yeah, yeah. They co-teach that. Speaking of, speaking of JD Vance and, you know, the holiday we're celebrating today, a little digression from over the weekend, something I wanted to share. On Saturday,

this is Jermaine, too, you know, whose birthday it is, but on Saturday, Catherine and I went to see the Fort Green Orchestra perform Bruckner's 7th Symphony. And it was a lowly experience,

I highly recommend if you get a chance to see the Fort Green Orchestra that you check them out. But come to find out after the fact, the rather controversial associations with this particular piece of music. And in particular, the Adagio, the second movement, Brendan told me after the fact that the Adagio and Bruckner's 7th Symphony was what the Nazis played on the radio in Germany after Hitler had killed himself. And I've just been thinking about that over the way. I was just thinking about like the DJ who had to.

do that. It's just like, you know, this is, this is Kaiser Kaysam. We're counting down the top 40 symphonies composed by Aryan peoples. This one's going out to A.H. who's in underground in Berlin right now and he's feeling down. Here it is the adagio from Bruckner's seventh symphony going out to AH in Berlin. You know the guy? I like to picture it like it was someone who's like making a playlist and he's like, oh, my friends aren't going to believe my taste. I'm going to blow them away with it. No one expected me to put this on after Hitler killed himself. An Austrian composer who was obsessed with Wagner,

that's out there for Nazi radio. Yeah. Or it'd be funny, it'd be funny, like, they fucked up the record and they put on, like, a recording of Amos and Andy, the radio program. Yeah, I get, what else could you put on back then? Because it was either putting on Wagner or like a song by one of the 50 Jewish guys who was writing songs that were like going outside without my hat today. Let's take having a gay jig. Let's take a nice long walk together.

Yeah. Remember what Hessey found that? Yeah. The Billboard top 40 hits. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. The one that was like, I know, I know heaven is real because my. mothers from Ireland.

Yeah. That was like, that was like six, nine back then. They're like, yo, he went to New York without checking in with Irving Berlin.

Dropping some bars. Yeah. Or anyway, that was a nice, nice classical music experience this weekend. But now, now to the present,

now to the present day. And, you know, how things are going in the Trump and bunker as our world with Iran proceeds. Derek,

I guess I'd like to begin in Lebanon because like this is obviously a part of the, you know, broader sort of Labens around war that Israel is conducting right now. But like as a Friday, there was a 10-day ceasefire that was announced. Could you just like talk about the parameters of like what led to that negotiation? Like, and what are the prospects of it holding? And like, what are the parameters between Israel, Lebanon, and Iran right now? Right. So there's a few things.

I mean, to your comment about the Trump and bunker, I guess, you know, if we start hearing him Blair like memory from cats, outside of the way now, we know, things are getting bad. Didn't he post my way by Frank Sinatra over the weekend, which people are. I don't know. I didn't see that. But, you know, it's always when things are going bad, he seems to, like, go to the Andrew Lloyd Weber library. Yeah. So the Lebanon ceasefire was supposed to. have happened at the same time that the U.S. Iran sees fire happen. I mean, I'm convinced of this now.

Like Trump, you know, later insisted that, you know, there was no, like Lebanon was not part of the deal and this wasn't, you know, the Iranians, JD did this thing on the tarmac where he was like, I just think the Iranians had an honest misunderstanding about what was in, like, that's bullshit. The Pakistanis, the Iranians both say they were talking. told when the U.S. Iran ceasefire was negotiated that Lebanon would be included. And it was Netanyahu said, you know, fuck off. We're not doing that. And then suddenly Lebanon wasn't included. And I think you can, what happened at the end of the last week when the, you know, Trump basically imposed this thing, like he up and announced, you know, two days after they had a very preliminary meeting between

their respective U.S. ambassadors that, hey, there's going to be a ceasefire for 10, you know, days. I think that was Trump realizing that the Iran ceasefire wasn't going to hold up as long as the Israelis were continuing to just kind of massacre people in Lebanon on a regular basis. And so he imposed this thinking it would clear things up on the Iran front, which is what he actually cares about at this point. And it did, I think, lead into the announcement. We'll get to this, I'm sure. But the, the announcement by the Iranian foreign minister of Osarovchi that they were reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump then completely ruined with like this insane tweet storm or, you know, post on a poststorm on true social. But we can talk about that later. But really,

it doesn't seem like there was anything that went into this in terms of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. It was Trump, again, after bringing together just the ambassadors from the two countries, for very preliminary, like, what are we going to talk about when we actually get the principles into the room or get them on a phone call? What can we talk about? And then Trump spent the next day, like Wednesday, trying to arrange a phone call between Benjamin Netanyahu and Joseph Aoun, the president of Lebanon. And Aoun said, no, thank you. I'm not going to speak to him unless there is a ceasefire. And I think Trump just decided like he was going to finally pull the leash and get a ceasefire. It's not really a ceasefire. It's a ceasefire in the same way.

way that Gaza is a ceasefire, which is you cease and the Israelis keep firing. But they have to do it at a slightly lower level of intensity. So you're not getting these like, you know, we bombed 100 targets in 90 seconds, you know, barrages that they were doing, you know, a couple of weeks ago. But at the same time, they're still carrying out attacks in Lebanon. They're still killing people. They've put up another yellow line like they did in Gaza, which is this magic line that. only the Israelis know really where it is, but they're allowed to kill anybody who crosses it or approaches it even in a threatening way as they determine threatening. And it could change from day to day where it is.

We don't really know. But they've done that again. So they're killing people on that basis. They're still bulldozing houses and villages. We've seen tens of thousands by the reports I saw of people going back into southern Lebanon. despite the Israelis and the Lebanese government both saying this is not safe, you should do this, going back, because this is their home. They were displaced from these places, but a lot of them, from what I've seen, have gotten

back to what is left of their homes, and it's a pile of rubble, and they've turned around and left again because there's nothing. You know, you can't live in the rubble. So, yeah, I mean, it's not changing anything materially about, the conflict. It has put Lebanon and Iran on two different diplomatic tracks. And I know that's good from the Israeli perspective. I don't think it's good from the perspective of actually getting to, you know, ending either one of these, or ending the war on either one of these fronts. I think it actually makes it harder to do that. You mentioned, you mentioned Gaza. And obviously,

like, their invasion of southern Lebanon and like the creation of this buffer. zone and their, you know, this larger ethnic cleansing project. I mean, it bears all the harm marks of, you know, their MO in Gaza. This is something we mentioned on the show before. And I'd just like to read this from, this is from the Guardian last week. It says here, when they received the call to respond to an Israeli air strike in the city of Mayfadun in southern Lebanon, most of the paramedics held back, having previously seen colleagues killed by double tap attacks targeting rescuers. But the medics from the Islamic Health Association rushed to the the scene. By the time the other emergency workers arrived at the site, they found that the IHA medics

had indeed been caught in a second strike. They started evacuating their wounded colleagues only for their ambulances to be hit in two further attacks. One of the paramedics covered his ears and screamed, convulsing in pain, and shrapnel shattered the back window of the ambulance. The rescue mission on Wednesday afternoon had turned into a nightmare as Israel carried out three consecutive strikes on three sets of ambulances and medical workers. I mean, and like, I would say like one of key differences between southern Lebanon and Gaza is like because Lebanon is not under complete Israeli control. We know more of this because the international press is able to cover it in a way that they didn't in Gaza. And I just, I will note that like, you know, we've also like the attacks

on schools, triple tapping medical relief workers like and through three different ambulance crews. I just like, I note that because the thing that really crossed the line for the Israeli military this weekend was footage of one of their soldiers defacing a statue of Jesus Christ in one of these sort of Christian communities in southern Lebanon. And it's just like, look, I think defacing the, you know, sacred religious objects of the people you're fighting a war against speaks to the motivating ideology behind this campaign. But like, it's still just a statue, right? And like the fact that like Netanyahu has immediately announced an investigation into this and said that the IDF soldier in question, quote, cross.

the line or something in the in light of the thing that I just described them doing to three separate ambulance crews is really is really something but like Derek why why they so like because you know like any international reporting on they're like these horrific atrocities or war crimes carried out against human beings is is is no thing for them whatsoever and no one who calls them to account for it but like defacing a Christian religious icon why is that now like the bridge too far something that there's something for which needs to be considered from a moral perspective. Yeah, I mean, it sort of hits them where they live. Like, I've seen people on social media who are like big time Christian Zionist types,

look at that or, you know, respond to that image with like they've really, this is horrible. I can't believe the Israelis have done something like this. And like, or, you know, like I can't support Israel now that I've seen them, you know, this guy smash a crucifix. or whatever it was. And like, really? Like, that's the thing that, but there is a population for which, like,

that is a bridge too far. The 70,000 people in Gaza, the, you know, a few thousand that they've killed in Lebanon. That's fine. But defacing the statue of Jesus is too much. And so they have to be sensitive about that. There's also, I mean, Lebanon is also more sensitive for them in general.

And I don't entirely know how to explain this. because there's a Christian population in Gaza as well, and they've destroyed churches, they've killed Christian Palestinians in Gaza. That doesn't seem to register. Including a relative of a former U.S. congressman, just an image. Right, right.

Lebanon is this special little colonial, post-colonial case for Europe, for France in particular, but that makes it a special case for the rest of Europe. And so they tread, more carefully or they have to tread a little more carefully when they're dealing with Lebanon for that reason because you've seen, you know, all, even in this, you know, the last week or two, like genuine statements of outrage. It never goes past rhetoric, of course, but genuine statements

of outrage from Europe, from the French government, from the Italian government, in ways that, like, if, if they came at all about Gaza, they came, you know, two years in and 70,000 people massacred before anybody in Europe really gave a shit. There was, I think, the Trump administration, which is, you know, also got this, you know, subset of foreign subculture of foreign policy where it tries to, you know, put the U.S. forward as protector of Christians in, you know, various parts of the world. That's what they did in Nigeria or are doing in Nigeria. I think there was a point at which they asked the Israelis to please go easy on the Christian villages. in southern Lebanon as they were sweeping through, you know,

destroying Shia villages all over the place, you know, literally, you know, creating situations where, like, you could have, you know, Christian, Christian Lebanese turning on the Shia, their Shia neighbors, or, you know, pitting those populations against each other, just really, like, heinous kinds of things. But something that I think puts the Israelis on notice that, like, there's only so much violence against Christians

that will be able to tolerate, or at least against Christian symbols, even if we don't really care so much about the people. You think it's like sort of for an American domestic political calculus to this as well, because I think, like, they have written off, like, the support of the U.S. population. I think they consider that pretty well managed. However, like, I think it's the right-wing evangelical thing that, like,

I think, like, maybe, like, they're more attuned to, because, like, I think, I feel like they can, like, they think they can, if the majority of America is like, is fed up with Israel or is more sympathetic to the Palestinians, I feel like that they can, that can be fairly well contained within our political system. But like, for whatever reason, I think, uh, people for whom Israel has like a very important Christian sort of prophetic element to their support. Like, I think they like, I don't know, I think they're much more guarded about offending those people. Yeah, I mean, foreign policy in the U.S. There's nothing that they can do that would offend them. Yeah.

Right. I mean, it's so far divorced, foreign policy so far divorced from any popular will or sentiment at this point in the U.S. system that they don't really have to care about that except maybe at election time. Like, you know, it could come back to bite them in the ass in 2028, I guess. But, but yeah, on a day-to-day basis, they're worried about people who have, you know, I was going to say Donald Trump's direct phone line, but I guess every reporter in D.C. now has his. direct phone line. But like people who can get a, get a face to face meeting or get a phone call to Trump and say like, you know, look, this is, this isn't good. You know, we don't like to see images of Jesus being defaced by Israeli soldiers. And that's what worries them because, you know, Trump will then respond to that by doing something that, you know, works against Israeli interests. Well, I think it's an interesting juxtaposition with another recent Israeli PR Snafu that happened the other week, which is when the cover of an Italian news magazine called

L'Aspresso posted that photo on the front page of their magazine that was a photo taken in the West Bank of, you know, how shall I describe it? A hills have eyes style gender of settler, military individual, sort of leering and bearing his gums in an aggressive manner at a Palestinian woman in the West Bank attempting to harvest olives from her family's orchards. Now, I mean, like, the response to that was like, oh, the picture's made up. The picture isn't made up, but it's out of context. Or that like, this guy is so ugly that like representing him in a photographic form is anti-Semitic. To show his picture.

Yeah. But like once again, it's like the context of what that picture showed, like that's not a problem for Israeli propaganda or their or their, I don't know, allies in this country. It's like, it's just that this one guy is so horrifying. It's so ugly. Like this guy was so so unpleasant to look at that it was going to turn people out. But he was like, you know, leering and menacing this poor fucking woman. And I don't know. Like I guess this goes into like the evolution of Israel, Palestine and from an American,

like from a domestic political perspective. Because it does seem that like just in the last two weeks that much of the official Democratic Party seems to have sort of like acknowledge the reality that the vast majority of their voters are like are completely at odds of them over the issue of funding Israel's military and you know just through military and foreign aid to this country that is you know committing war crimes on a pretty much daily basis what are we to make of like the new tack that I've seen adopted by people like you know like the reliable organs of like you know the shop stewards of the democratic party mainstream have all kind of adopted this take now that like, well, of course we should cut off military aid to Israel.

I mean, I'm going to just use the example of Ram Emanuel was on real time with Bill Maher on Friday. And Rahm Emanuel, like a guy who was like about as dedicated a booster of Israel and the American government as any other Democratic politician. I mean, he volunteered for the IDF. I think his dad was, you know, big, big time Israel guy. He said, no more U.S. military aid, financial assistance from the taxpayers for Israel. you're a country like all other allies of ours, Japan, South Korea, the Brits, the Germans, you're going to pay the full price. You can buy what you want, but you'll have to abide by the laws that should be it. No more U.S. taxpayer support. I was in the room when President Obama's largest

assistance was under President Obama. We did the funding for the Iron Dome, but here the days of taxpayer subsidizing Israel are over. No more financial aid. Derek and Felix, so what are we to make of this like what seems like a fairly profound shift in the rhetoric and policy commitments of the Democratic Party. But like at the same time, I hear something like this. And I think like there's all the more reason to be wary because like this seems to me way more about preparing for a midterms and a 2028 presidential election than it does with meaningfully constraining the Israeli and, you know, sort of the Israeli war machine. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, you're, they're turning a big dial on a stage that says, you know, A to Israel,

they're trying to, you know, see where they can get it, get the best audience reaction from it. It's not a meaningful change. They're just trying to find a new way to get through what is a downturn in support, especially among Democrats for Israel without meaningfully changing the relationship. I mean, Israel can certainly afford to buy its weapons from the United States. There are fewer legal headaches. And I think Benjamin Netanyahu even said this.

Like we don't need the aid. We can buy our own stuff from the U.S. or invest in our own defense capabilities. Like we don't need to continue to get this aid. The aid comes in theory with legal strings like the Leahy laws that no U.S. administration wants to enforce when it comes to Israel, but that could be enforced at some point when it comes to Israel. So I think that they feel like,

In some respects, like this would get around a political problem for the Israelis. It would free them up to just be, you know, to buy weapons without having to worry about like the strings that come with aid. And the sentiment, the public sentiment, they can sort of deflect and say, well, look, we're not just handing the Israelis $3.8 billion a year or whatever it is in military aid. we can you know you don't you guys don't need to be upset about that anymore and then maybe some of this bad feeling will go away but when push comes to shove like first of all the u.s will continue to sell arms uh to Israel no matter what uh anytime there's a conflict even if you know the u.s isn't providing uh direct aid there will be you know two carrier groups immediately sent to the region uh to provide air defense and whatever else the Israelis need like everything

about the relationship in terms of supporting and protecting Israel, oftentimes from the consequences of its own actions, will continue as before. It's just this one thing they feel like is a wedge issue that they can get away with, like they don't need it anymore. And they can, they can sort of tamp down a lot of the public sentiment by just doing away with it and come off, you know, sounding like they're making a fundamental change in the relationship. Yeah, I mean, I think you're seeing similar things with like every Democratic politician like now saying like, oh, I'm not taking any money from APEC or like, yeah, like zero money from APEC. Yeah.

Like there are dozens of other groups that are essentially cutouts for AAC that they're still taking money from. Right. Or just big money don't, individual big money donors. You know, if you start to ask about that, then you get the like, well, if you're going to check all my donors to see who's Jewish, that's anti-Semitic. And like, no, that's not what we're doing actually. But, you know, good to know that that's where we're going to draw the line.

start calling people anti-Semites. Yeah, like Miriam Adelson, like the hundreds of millions of dollars that she gave Trump just directly, like, that wasn't because she like, you know, thought he was such a good guy. I mean, I don't know. Maybe he knows. Maybe she thought it was because he's such a nice guy. And she admires him so much and wants him to be president that she was just saying, here, here's a little walking around money, Don.

Yeah, you know, a big fan, art of the deal, the apprentice, love it. You know, here's your money. I mean, this is the move that Slokkin, at least his slot can try to make. at that, you know, town hall where she got all the, like, you know, viral clips for, you know, pushing back on the questioner was, you know, he was asking about, like, are you taking donations from big money A PAC backers and people who support U.S., you know, the U.S. being enthralled to Israel's interests and turned it into, oh, are you asking me if I'm taking any money from Jewish donors? which, no, he wasn't, but that became a viral thing because she was like pushing back against

the anti-Semitism of the far left. It's, you know, a bunch of bullshit. But that's the storyline. Well, I don't know if you saw today Trump had a statement on true social, the first sentence of which was, Israel did not push me into this war. And it's like similar to Melania's public press conference from the other week. It's sort of like, you know, it's like, you know, Israel didn't push me into this war t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, as far as the war goes, and like, there is a, there's another big piece from last week, sort of from inside the Trump and bunker that would, you know, basically portrays him as like a complete puppet who like the extent of this war is being prosecuted or managed within this White House is being done largely in spite of him. And like they basically like when those two pilots went down, they had to like basically not tell him about anything that they were doing. Right. They'd like dangle a string outside the door of the situation of me get him to chase it on the hall so they could lock him out.

And like, yeah, that like that basically like he is so, I don't know, impulsive and mercurial and impatient that like any plan that they get made, that he gets made within your shot of him can be almost instantly upended by like the next thing he sees or is told. But like to that end, Derek, I guess like the other question we got to ask like every Monday on the show, straight of whomew. open or close? Buy, buy, buy. Get out there and buy, buy, buy, buy. Drive the stocks up and the oil prices down. I mean, it's going to, I keep thinking this. And like, the dullards who trade in oil and keep falling for this shit, like, I can't believe that they continue to do it. What happened on Friday was so chaotic that I started to lose track.

I felt like I was dissociating as I was reading all this stuff. Like it really did seem like for, you know, about 10 minutes there that the straight was going to be open at least for the duration of the ceasefire. And, you know, everybody was feeling good about extending the ceasefire and really, you know, focusing on negotiating a deal, whatever, whatever. And, you know, again, that lasted for like 10 minutes before the Iranians were shooting at ships that were. passing through the straight again. And I really think what happened, I mean, there's been some speculation that this was a kind of, you know, moment of chaos within the Iranian government, basically that the civilian leadership or what's left of it was, you know, responding to the ceasefire in Lebanon,

responding to, you know, some signals that they had gotten from the Trump administration and and trying to make a good faith gesture, expecting that they would get some reciprocation from the Trump administration. And they ran, they announced this in the IRGC, you know, Ahmed Vahidi, the commander of the IRGC,

who really is probably the guy who's, you know, in charge in Tehran at this point, you know, saw this and said, no, no, we're not doing that. And it was like, you know,

this chaotic thing. I think what's more likely is that they probably felt like they were at a place where if they made a gesture, the Trump administration would make another gesture and the blockade or, you know, something free up some frozen Iranian assets or something. And then Trump immediately said, you know, not only has Iran reopened this trade of hormones, they've promised to never close it again. And they're giving me everything I want on the nuclear issue. Like we're getting all the uranium and they're never going to enrich uranium ever again.

And they've given me, like, you know, the head of the Iranian military intelligence is going to, you know, gargle my balls three times a week. And like everything is going so perfectly. They've surrendered on every front. But we're not going to do anything. We're not going to unfreeze any assets. We're not going to lift the blockade until there's, you know, pen to paper on a deal. And so it was just like he pocketed not only the concession that they made, but several other

concessions that they hadn't made. And then, you know, refuse to do anything to reciprocate. And, you know, the Iranians are just like, well, okay, fuck you. We're back to where we were before all of this started. And that's where things are. But again, like, you know, if I were trading oil, not that I do that, but if I were trading oil, I would just assume that things are going to stay closed for the indefinite future. Because I don't, these ups and downs are just ridiculous to me.

It's so obviously either he's delusional, Trump is, or he's outright manipulating the market. But whatever it is, you can't hang on every word that comes out of his mouth. It's clearly not reliable. Well, I mean, if I were a retail trader, absolutely. But like, if you are one of these brokerage houses and especially one that has like, you know, any type of an inside line to Trump. someone who has been like a mega bundler of some type. This is like your ideal scenario. You know that the president or the White House or the State Department is going to say something

that has not happened, will not happen, and has no possibility of happening in the future. But that once it hits the market, you and whatever other market makers are going to respond as though it is going to happen. And then you know, exactly what it's going to do when the enthusiasm will dissipate in after hours trading. Like it is, you know, like card counting for these guys. Yeah, I mean, between, you know, even like 30 years ago, this would have been a fucking gigantic scandal. But, you know.

I mean, between the oil markets, which is more traditional and these these fucking predictive markets, which is a new thing, but just like openly a way for like, You know, we had an account that opened 15 minutes ago and posted bet $5 million that Donald Trump would do the Italian chef, mou, thing on true social. Lo and behold, he did. Wow. Who could have been placed that bet? What a lucky guess. You know, I mean, it's just so blatant with these things now.

It's ridiculous. I feel like prediction markets obviously should be illegal. The only thing you should be able to bet on is you should. bet on the outcomes of TV shows, like it's sports betting. How's the see, how's the pit, how's the pick going to end this season?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, same thing where it's like, Dr. Robbie, is he finally going to do it?

I like to imagine Davies Cotino for the Sopranos, but he's like, loses it all betting on TV. Or like, do people bet on pro wrestling? Like I imagine there's somebody out there was like betting on the outcomes of pro wrestling

matches like they're you know it's an athletic event that would be funny. Tone I thought my parlay on Dr. Mohan would come through. Get back in your fucking hole. But here

it's just like I this is just like a sort of a glimpse inside the Trump and bunker and it's just here this is they're quoting Trump right now. It says here if you look what happened with Jimmy Carter with the helicopters and the hostages. It cost them the election, Trump had said in March. What a mess. Trump decided that the military go get them immediately, particularly speaking of the two downed pilots.

But the U.S. hadn't been on the ground in Iran since the government overthrow that led to the hostage crisis. And they needed to figure out how to get into treacherous Iranian terrain and avoid Tehran's own military. AIDS kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn't be helpful. instead updating him at a meaningful moments, a senior administration official said. One airman was recovered quickly, but it wasn't until late Saturday that Trump received word that the second airman had been rescued in a high-stakes extraction. What could have turned into the lowest point in Trump's two terms wouldn't. After 2 a.m., Trump two went to bed.

Six hours later, the chest-thumping president was back with another audacious gamble to loosen Iran's grip on its most powerful point of leverage, the straight of Hormuz. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. blasted on social media Easter morning from the White House residents, adding an Islamic prayer to the post. A president who thrives on drama is bringing even a more intense version of his unorthodox maximalist approach to a new situation, fighting a war. He is veering between belligerent and conciliatory approaches and grappling behind the scenes with just how badly things could go wrong. At the same time, the president sometimes loses focus, spending time on the details of his

plans for the White House ballroom or on midterm fundraisers and telling advisors he wants to shift to other topics. I mean, it is so obviously he wants to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like he wants to talk about the, the Corinthian style columns that the ballroom will have, which are the best, the greatest. The best columns are the best columns. The best columns imaginable. But like, but he can't and everybody knows it. And everyone knows it, either because he's compromised, or because he doesn't want to seem like a loser. It's some combination of all of them. He doesn't want to commit ground troops.

But I'm thinking of this in light of Derek. Did you see the public comments were made by the head of Iran's negotiating team that were directed to the Iranian people, but also the world? And if I could summarize him, he basically said, he was basically saying, like, chill out, like, we have to negotiate because we don't want to overplay our hand. And that, like, thus far we have proven, i.e. by, shooting an F-35 down and, you know, using, like, infrared detection of U.S. aircraft rather than radar that, like, we have, you know, and the straight of hormone is that we have had a decisive strategic advantage in this war so far that we have maximized to great effect because we are fighting asymmetrically. And, like, we have not been forced to concede anything. But he, like,

did say, like, obviously America and Israel has a huge military advantage in terms of just, like, the resources, money, and firepower that they can bring. to bear on Iran and, you know, its infrastructure, its economy, its people. But like, Derek, from your perspective, I'm wondering what you made of those comments and like what you make of Iran's current, like, strategic position as regards their, both their demands and the prosecution of this war overall. Yeah, I mean, I think it was, it was interesting. I mean, the acknowledgement, it was very sober analysis. And it was, it comes from somebody of Ghalibov who's not ever been known for being one of the more pragmatic people within Iranian politics. I mean, I think he is now by default

because the Israelis have assassinated, you know, all of the other, like, you know, real pragmatists. So by default, he's kind of the, you know, the guy left there who is the most cognizant of Iran's limitations. And I think, you know, there's a message there to the supporters of the Iranian government, there may have been a little bit of a message to very subtly made to the IRGC that, you know, like let's be cognizant of our limitations here. Things have gone well, but, you know, there are there are reasons why we need to be flexible here. That, but, but it is contrasted, like it shows an awareness of strategic outcomes or that you know you fight a war to to achieve a strategic outcome and what kind of strategic outcome would be acceptable to the

Iranians in terms of like you know what did they how do they emerge from this you know at least without you know what can they give up without really sacrificing any of their major priorities as opposed to the U.S. approach to this war, which has been to just like, we're going to start bombing things and eventually something will give. And like we don't really have a goal. Like we don't have an outcome that we can explain. It changes every other day. Like one day it's nuclear. One day it's like the the fucking Navy. You know, one day it's their missiles. Like it's all, it's always different. You can't stop talking about how we destroyed their Navy. And every same, That's the one consistent thing in any state.

Their Navy was like two frigates that they built in the early 2000s. And everything else was like 40 years old. And the hundreds of speedboats that they would use to enforce the street. Right. Those are fine. The IRGC Navy, like you're not going to destroy that. They just use little go fast boats. Like you're not going to be able to meaningfully wipe those out.

But yeah, this like rust bucket ancient Navy. And at one point, like Hague Seth or one of them, maybe it was Rubio said the same thing about the Iranian Air Force. Like they fucking fly F-14s. Like what are you talking about? Like this is not a meaningful thing to, to, you know, take their air force out. They've got a few more recent planes,

but it's not like they've put a lot of, or been able even to put a lot of resources into like building up a modern air force. It's so weird to see some of these justifications. And then, but then you find out, And I can't remember who reported this, but the reporting that like basically Trump's daily briefing on the war is like a two-minute snuff film of all the stuff that we blew up the day before. And like, that's it. That's all there is to this for him is cool explosions and wow, we, you know, we bomb some stuff.

Aren't we tough? There's nothing beyond that. Like, there's nothing going on beyond that in terms of what are we actually trying to get out of this conflict. And that's how you wind up starting a war that. leaves the country you're going to war with in a stronger position. They've closed the Strait of Hormuz. They've demonstrated a capacity that had been theoretical at best before this. And now you've got to adjust to this new reality and get out of this conflict, if that's what he's trying to do, in a way that makes you look like you won when it's clear that you have

lost profoundly on a strategic level. So I just don't, I don't know. what they're they're going to cook up here to try and save face, but, but, uh, you know, it doesn't look good for negotiations at least. That's why he keeps talking about,

tomorrow is going to be power plant and bridges day. We're going to blow them all to hell. You know, we're going to wipe out a civilization. Because like those are concrete things that the U.S. military and air force absolutely can do with no problem. Blowing up, you know,

you know, oil pipelines, refineries, civilian infrastructure. hospitals, girls schools, bridges. It's all on the fucking menu. But there is, but like those are, I guess, like, military objectives in some sense. There's things that we can do and have done. But they're not like, what was the goal of this war to like blow up every bridge and fucking power plant in Iran?

No. Like, they can't even tell you what the goal of the war is. Like, best I can tell, like, as we've talked for weeks now, the goal of the war now is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which is open. before the war started. That's the best one. And also he keeps saying that we've already done regime change. Like our goal isn't regime change,

but we've done regime change because we've killed so many people that like it's essentially a new government. Right. Without any like interrogation of like, is it a new government that's more favorable to U.S. interests or like easier to negotiate with? I mean, obviously not. But, but yeah, I mean, regime change to what is. never, doesn't seem to ever be asked. I mean, I, it really is like, they, they just have never

articulated anything. And, and again, like, to go back to the question of, did, did Benjamin Netanyahu drag him into this war? I mean, I don't, I wouldn't put it that way. But I do think that this is fulfilling an Israeli aim of just decimating the region and decimating Iran. That's why that's why they cannot ever articulate. Like for the Israelis, yeah, fucking blow up all their bridges, blow up all their power plants. Like, you know,

have people living, you know, drinking pond water or like puddle water and, you know, cooking over an open flame. They don't give a shit. Like, that's,

that's fine. That's, you know, great, great news from the Israeli perspective. I don't think it, it achieves anything that the U.S. is looking to achieve.

And it, it also opens up because, you know, every Iranian reaction throughout this war, and they've been reactions. Like, you know, people were up in arms like, oh, how dare they attack the Gulf states? Or can you believe what the Iranians are doing? Like, everything they've done has been a measured counter to things that have been done to them so far. And if you start to go after these, like, quote-unquote, dual-use objects, like, fucking power plants

because the military uses electricity. Well, like, okay, I mean, what does that open up for the Iranians to start doing to Saudi Arabia or to Kuwait or Qatar? All of these countries that have vulnerable infrastructure and desalination plants on which they depend for water, you know, whereas the Iranians, you know, go after a desalination plant, that's not necessarily going to be fatal to their water infrastructure. But these big plants that, you know, sit in the Gulf on which these countries depend for people to be able to. survive. Like it's, it's, you know, it's strategically stupid and tactically stupid from, from, you know, to, to, to escalate in this direction. There's also the, um, other problem, which we have seen to a smaller scale with U.S. policy in, uh, Syria that if you were to fully articulate it, um, it just, there's no way to make it sound good. Uh, the,

overall Israeli policy for the entire region. And, you know, ours too, though maybe not as broader universal as Israel's, because we have our own friends there, it is just to create like maximum chaos. Ideally, a system where every single city block for everywhere that isn't part of greater Israel and eventually will become that is ruled by a separate emir,

that there are no nation states, there's no sovereignty, no borders, only one entity has the ability to defend themselves, and everyone else is in civil wars between different small emirates, of varying intensity forever. There's no way to come out and say, like, yeah, we want that. Everything that you saw in most of Syria for the last 15 years, we want that for the entire, every fucking square inch of the place. Right. But I mean, yeah, from the Israeli perspective, like, that's fine.

And this has been something that's shuffled around in D.C. And certain think tank corridors that, you know, never gets much traction. But the talk of like just dismembering Iran. So you take every community in Iran, the Arab population. the Kurdish population, the Azzari population, and just let them all go hog wild, which is something that was floated at the beginning of this war when they were talking about arming the Kurdish militias and sending them in to be the shock troops of a ground invasion. But this is something that the Israelis have pushed, and Israeli-in-line think tanks in D.C.

have pushed quietly to just kind of take Iran apart essentially and leave it as these these rump states that would all be at war probably with each other for the next 20 years to try and sort things out if you actually achieve this it's it's just a way of creating chaos and destroying the state as they have done or as they've attempted to do in Syria as they've you know they're constantly doing in Lebanon, which barely functions as a state as a result. Like, it's all part of the same approach. There's another piece in the Trump and Bunker article that I shared earlier. It says here, Trump has resisted sending American soldiers to take Karg Island, for example,

the launch point for 90% of Iran's oil exports. When he was told the mission would succeed and the territories capture would give U.S. access to the strait, he worried there would be unacceptably high American casualties, as the people said. They'll be sitting ducks, the president said. And I bring this up in light of the fact that, like, it seems like, look, they thought someone else would do it for us. Like, oh, we'll give weapons to the Kurds, the whole, or the people of Iran will rise up after the comony gets killed. Or if we do enough strikes against, you know, the negotiators or military targets, then the people of Iran will rise up and, like, they'll overthrow their own government. But, like, it seems very clear to me that, like, the only thing that would, like, could conceivably change the strategic. balance right now is some sort of massive commitment of American troops, either to take Kark Island or to like to physically secure the straight in some way through our Navy or Marines. Like it would be a massive military operation. And it seems clear to me, knock on wood, that Trump wants nothing to do with that, that no one does. I mean, and like, yeah, because they know it will be

the gasoline. It would be a blood bath. Yeah. So like what we're left with is this kind of like weekly back and forth, this kind of perpetual stalemate where like nothing really makes sense. Like nobody like you can't really suss out what the United States wants. I mean, I talked about regime change, reopening the straight. Another thing Trump has been saying recently is like no nuclear he was like, I believe for the last 50 years, Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. And we need their nuclear dust back. And the nuclear dust is my favorite thing. This is the highly enriched uranium that I guess he thinks was blown all over. the place by U.S. bombs when, you know, in the war last year, uh, in the air strikes. Like,

and so that he keeps calling it nuclear dust, uh, for some reason. Uh, again, one of these things is like in his mind palace. But it's just like nobody else, like the question is never asked of him. Like, why is Iran? He was like, because they, they, they keep talking about it. Like, if he hadn't had acted like a month ago, Iran would be like a week away from having a nuclear bomb and they would use it immediately. I mean, this is what we've heard about. Saddam and Iraq, is what we've heard about Iran for like, you know, the last 30 fucking years. But like, he did the 12-day war last summer in which he stated that we had conclusively obliterated Iran's nuclear program permanently and forever. Like, why does no one ever bring that up to him to be like,

what happened in those intervening months? Yeah. I mean, why does nobody ever bring up? Like, because they're not, they're not smart enough to articulate this in a way that makes sense. But so Trump keeps saying, like, well, they have to. that they're not going to do nuclear, you know, they're not going to get nuclear weapons. They've done that so many times over the last 10 years. Like in writing, not even just verbally. And Trump was the one to undo the JP of US. Right. I mean, Trump undid the deal under which they agreed in writing never to pursue a nuclear weapon. Now, maybe you don't believe them, okay, but to keep saying it in this, the way that they say it publicly, like, well, they've never said that they won't, they've never just said, all they need to do is promise that they don't want a nuclear weapon.

Yes, they have. They have like so multiple times. What are you talking about? It doesn't stop with nuclear weapons, though, because like as soon as you mentioned that, like, then the next thing that gets brought up is their ballistic missile program. Right. That their ballistic conventional missiles are a threat to quote, our allies in the region. And that like they cannot be allowed to have any defensive, like any military capability at all. in the future. They can't be allowed to defend themselves. I mean, this is the ultimate.

I guess like, that is really the Israeli strategic goal here. Yes. But like we can't say that because like we're supposed to be negotiating with Iran right now. And I guess like that brings us to like this current rounder negotiations. J.D. Vance has headed back to Islamabad this week. He was supposed to go today. But apparently he's still in D.C. And I'm just wondering like what you make of. Well, the Iranis haven't said that they're going to participate is is the problem. Okay. Yeah. I mean, they're, like, they're like, After everything that happened on Friday, when it seemed like things were, you know, for, you know, five minutes or so, like things were progressing in a good direction. And then Trump went apeshit on social media and the Iranians pulled back. I think they, I think they're once again confronted by the fact that you can't believe anything this man says.

You can't negotiate with him because he's looking to double cross you. like, I can't remember where I saw this, but like it's like embedded in his whole ideology, like his whole personal ethos, the art of the deal is like making, you make deals with people and then you don't follow through. Like you don't pay your contractors. You don't fucking do anything. Like you don't uphold your end of the bargain on anything. So it's, you know, clearly like if you're negotiating a major geopolitical agreement with this man,

like how do you trust anything that he says? and anything that they say that could be interpreted as a gesture or a concession is going to be pocketed and not reciprocated. Like Trump is just going to go hog wild with it and say, there you go. They're surrendering. Like they just have no, I don't think they feel like there's any basis on which to conduct an actual negotiation. And that leaves aside the fact that he's sending the three dumbest men in Washington, D.C.,

to lead the negotiating team and you can't even talk to them because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. So it's a very hard uphill slog for them. And I think, you know, they have said there was supposed to be maybe something over the weekend. Then it was supposed to be maybe Monday in Pakistan. And they have, they have repeatedly through state media communicated that like the government has not taken a decision whether to engage in another round of negotiations. which, you know, I mean, the ceasefire ends. The last day the ceasefire is Tuesday. So, you know, the shooting war could start again on Wednesday, you know, at a minimum.

If there's no agreement to at least extend things a bit. So, you know, it's really crunch time at this point. But I just don't know that the Iranians feel like there's a credible way forward. And like, as far as the Iranians go, like, has anything changed in terms of like what I saw was like, they're basically their 10 points of negotiation. Like, has anything changed with the parameters without change for them at all? Or is like, what, like, what are they negotiating? Like, what is their stance right now?

Yeah, I mean, the most promising thing that I had seen in the last couple of weeks was the, this reporting that the U.S. had come down off of like, you'll never enrich uranium again. And they were talking about a moratorium on uranium enrichment. And the U.S. was asking for 20 years in the Iranians. were saying that's way too long. We can't do that. But we'll give you five. And then maybe they were, you know, there was room to negotiate to try and meet somewhere in the middle. And I think that that was a positive, that seemed like a positive development because it was, it had bridged

what was before that a, you know, yes, we will know you won't, you know, very difficult to kind of find common ground dispute. And now you're talking about how many years are you going to hold off before you resume some level of uranium enrichment. And if that's the ground you're on, that's a negotiable thing. What I read subsequently was that they both were constrained by the 2015 deal. Like Trump wanted a 20-year moratorium because a lot of the sunsets in the 2015 deal expired after 10 years. So he wanted to say he got to, did twice as good as Obama.

Right, yeah. And the Iranians, but the Iranians feel like they need to get. it's something that has, you know, is better too. Like they want to say they negotiated a better deal. They feel like they have more leverage than they did in 2015 now because of Hormuz in particular. So they want to be able to claim victory there too. So that becomes a whole other issue.

But I don't think the main thrust of the 10 points has changed. Maybe with the fact that the ceasefire in Lebanon has sort of become decoupled. You know, I don't know where they, you know, what they're approaching. approach is going to be to that at this point. But, you know, in principle, like, they're still holding on to the idea of, you know, they want to see their assets unfrozen. They want to see an acknowledgement that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, you know, regardless of what the details might be in terms of like, we're not going to do it for X number of years, or we're only going to do it in certain quantities or under certain limitations. You know, I think they're

comfortable talking on that, those grounds. but when it comes to the principle of it, they're not, they're still not willing to give that up, despite, you know, what, what Trump said last week, which, you know,

had really no basis in reality. I just, yeah, I don't, I don't think the 10 points have, have changed so much as, you know, they're looking for ways to find, to find things that are acceptable to the U.S.

within that framework. I mean, very like, week after week, like, we, you know, we opened the show on Monday, like, to try to, like, figure out what's going on or, like, is there an end in sight for this? And I guess, like, I just, like, I don't see any change in the, and anything happening anytime soon. Like, I think, like, we're, like, particularly the United States and, like, the current leadership of this country is totally stuck in this ridiculous and, like, absurd stalemate that, like,

is of their own making. Because, like, they're not going to commit troops to, like, decisively change, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or occupy the country, or, like, really actually, like, take that big a bite of the apple. But at the same time, like, they're not going to go negotiate in good faith on anything. And despite, like, you know, being denied any kind of strategic victory, Israel will continue to just give the full Gaza treatment to southern Lebanon. And in addition, like, ramp up tensions against, you know, Syria and Turkey and, like, other countries, as, you know, sort of a consolation prize for, like, not getting the United States to fully, fully go all out for Iran. But like, I guess if this ridiculous stalemate just continues, like,

who is in a better position to just wait it out, Iran or the United States and Israel? I mean, it's not going to be good for anybody. Like, the Iranians are, like, this naval blockade is a serious thing for the Iranians. I mean, it's a really potentially economically debilessing stating step that the U.S. has taken. And it's a question of how much more pain are they capable of absorbing. It's not a question of like can they, will they or won't they suffer any pain because of this. It's a question of how much pain they can absorb because of it versus, you know, how much pain can the U.S. withstand. Like if it continues in this like broken ceasefire blockade type of thing and the full full on shooting war doesn't resume in which case the you know the calculus

changes um but you know then it becomes a question of how much can can trump stand in terms of gasoline prices and you know economic downturns and all the things that are going to go along with that um i i my like what i've come to feel about this is like it's not even a question of willingness. I don't think the Trump administration is capable of negotiating an actual peace agreement. And that's not just true of Iran. I don't think that their approach to negotiations, which is to get to a big, splashy signing ceremony without any details. They don't have any technical people. They don't want to do the hard work of negotiating the details of a real agreement. and they have the three stuages that they send around to negotiate these things who

don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. They're just not capable of putting in the effort and making the complicated negotiations and decisions that need to be made to finalize a real peace deal. So the best that you can hope for is that they, you know, this is where we're, you know, this is where I was last week. Like the best you could hope for is they come to some like generalized statement of principles and they agree to extend the ceasefire, let's say for six months while they negotiate the statement of principles and then six months from now, they extend it again for another six months because they haven't really negotiated anything. But the statement of principles is still there.

And you just stretch that out for the rest of the Trump presidency. I just, there's no competence on that side of things, even if they wanted to get to a deal to actually do it. So I feel like the best you can hope for is a lengthy ceasefire and just kind of riding it out. But even that seems impossible at this point after the last few days. I mean, yeah, I guess that is the best thing to hope for. I mean, I guess the way I look at it is that obviously Iran has so much more to lose in the United States because this is an existential war for them. is about their survival as a country. It's about their sovereignty.

But like the American public military or government, our ability to withstand pain or even minor inconvenience is just so much lower than theirs. So like I was like that's the imbalance here. I mean, that's part of it. I mean, it's existential for them. So they will withstand, you know, a lot of pain.

It's meaningless for the United States. So we're not going to be willing to, you know, even get our hair must. a little bit. It's the same problem that the U.S. encounters all over the world. I mean, it's the reason why the Taliban still back in charge in Afghanistan

because it just meant a whole lot more to them that it did to the U.S. And so when push came to shove, the U.S. was able to walk away. And it's the same, I think, you know, same dynamic here. The question is whether the U.S. will, you know, hit its point where it just says,

you know, we don't need this. This is too much. Well, best case, if some sort of six-month ceasefire is agreed. Any ceasefire that is agreed to even in theory at this point, let alone a six-month one, I'll put my marker down right now. Should that inconceivably happen,

get ready for a couple new mouth-dropping Epstein docks to be hit the media and the press. Lani has been given a few more press conferences. There you go. is even a good to it, even a half-hearted one. I mean, the really dismal thing. buy one get one freeze deal like the really grim thing here is that if if he concludes this conflict with iran on terms that somewhere in the back of uh donald trump's head he realizes is

you know humiliating unhumiliating terms uh cuba's next on the list oh yeah he's going to go after cuba yeah yeah that that's a situation where i don't think uh you know the the the ability to exist is anywhere near as robust. And it's just going to be really, really awful. Well, rather than ending on that, sure, you know, how about a little pallet cleanser? And how about we just turn to the domestic political sphere and domestic law enforcement, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation? I would like to share now, the Atlantic has a piece out, a new profile of Cash Patel,

which he has just this morning announced that he will be suing the Atlantic over. But let's just look in on how the FBI is doing. Let's look at the FBI under Jay Edgar hoovering up drugs through his nose, Cash Patel. It begins on Friday, April 10th, as FBI director Cash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend. He struggled to log on to an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked. out and he panicked frantically, calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described

his behavior as a freak out. Patel oversees an agency that employs roughly 38,000 people, including many who are trained to investigate and verify information that can be presented under oath in a court of law. News of his emotional outbursts ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials, and in some corners of the building expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the Bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI. It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error and it was quickly resolved. It was all ultimately bullshit, one FBI official told me. Now, I got to express some sympathy for

cash here because like how many times have I tried to log back into like a website or a streaming service in which like I changed my password because I forgot it months ago. The last time I logged in. And then I'm still trying to use the old password. And then I try to change my password, but I can't change it to the password that I already used. So I have to say, just a strong password. And look, it could happen to anyone is what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, when you use the FBI jet to go see your girlfriend and you kind of, it'll use this track of jet. Like, you know, you're drunk on the plane. You go to the concert. You know, things happen. It's just, uh, people need to be, have more grace, I think, for the lived experiences of

our public servants. Absolutely. I know we mentioned this on the show like, I don't know what two months ago now. Nancy Guthrie is still missing, right? Like, what the fuck is going? That is. Well, how we have we looked at the possibility that like the family just lost her?

And like this whole thing, they're like embarrassed like the guy who was supposed to keep an eye on her was like, oh, I don't know. Someone took her. Here's a hostage. thing. And it just, it got out of hand. It's a national story.

I mean, I'm, I'm willing to entertain that possibility. I don't, did they even have any idea, like, who took her? I mean, it,

it just feels like that, that whole thing disappeared from, there was like, ring camera footage. And that's Savannah got three, but like they don't, they don't have any, like,

I mean, there's no ransom. Like, there's nothing going like, there's nothing here to, like, follow up up. It's very strange. It's a bizarre story. And like one of a number of very high profile cases that this FBI has not exactly covered themselves in glory. Right. Going on here,

it says the IT lockout episode is emblematic of Patel's tumultuous tenure as director of the FBI. He is erratic, suspicious of others and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence. According to more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel's conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives. It goes on. They said that problems with his conduct go well beyond what has previously known and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. His behavior is often alarmed officials at the FBI and Department of Justice, even as he won support from the White House for his eager participation in

Trump's effort to turn federal law enforcement against the president's perceived political enemies. Isn't conspicuous inebriation way better than like hiding it? Because that's what you do when you're talking about it. He's drinking out a water bottle all the time. People's like, oh, can I get a sip with that water? No. Yeah. Yeah. Look, if you water down gin, you can't

smell it on your breath. This is a classic Alki trick. So yeah, no, Felix, you're right. It's better that he's because like, yeah, he's not trying to hide it. He's chugging beers in the locker room with the USA hockey team. him, you know, he's getting fucked up. He's loving it. Yeah, it's not like he, yeah, it's not like he's putting like liquor in like the upper tank of a toilet.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Everyone knows how many he had. And it's like you can disagree with that. You could say it's like not healthy to have that many. But like that's not like yet problem drinker status. Not everyone who shows up to their job drunk has a problem. Everyone's got a different tolerance level.

I don't know very few people. Yeah. That's the other thing. He's small. You know how easy it is for him to like get drunk? This is here, um, several officials told me that Patel's drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication in many cases at the private club Neds in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. You're supposed to get drunk at Neds. Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a good place to get drunk, frankly. like if you're going to get drunk. Yeah.

Not at Neds. Well, I also, he is also known to drink to excess at the poodle room in Las Vegas. Okay. I mean, what the fuck else are you're going to do in the poodle room in Vegas? None of these are at the office. None of these are like, oh, he, you know, he was talking to Savannah Guthrie's mom's kidnapper. He had a lampshade on his head.

He had a lampshed on his head and he like pointed the lip of the bottle to the camera on FaceTime and was like, yo, if you were. were here, I'd be like, you want some of this? He didn't do that, or I don't think he did. It's just like, he is also known to drink to excess at the poodle room in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his, okay, parts of his weekends, right? And I know the use of the FBI jet has been a problem, but like,

this is a job where you work in D.C. What if this is like a sting? Like, what if something's going on at the poodle room in Las Vegas? And he's like doing an undercover operation. Like, you know, I mean, remember in. An undercover operation as the head of the FBI. Yeah. Well, yeah, we were flying the plane around the golf course to keep an eye on Joe Pesci,

like, you know, something like that. It's having that's, I think it's brilliant to have the director of the FBI doing an undercover operation because like they would go like, are you, aren't you cash hotel? And you'd be like, no, I just look like him. Do you know how stupid it would be? to send the director of the FBI. The whole thing could be a sting. Like, you know, somebody goes up to him at the, the, what is it, the pink room or something?

What the, the pool, the pony room or whatever, the pool room. And they're like, aren't you cash Patel? And he's like, yeah, but I'm only here because I'm an alcoholic. And it's all part of his cover. Oh, it's all like, it's an undercover operation featuring the director of the FBI. But like, he's not really undercover. He just wants to create a situation where someone will say, uh, like who is that guy and he can say the name's cash cash Patel and then like his eyes go

cross side like Jerry Lewis and he goes live and pretty lady yeah like he forgets his name and like give some similar name cash Patel my name's Dan Bongjana cash Patel a second time one of the most story directors ever of the FBI was notorious for doing his own kind of black bag undercover operations where he dressed up as a really sexy lady. That's right. But, you know, Felix, you bring up Jane Grohoover, you know, like, you know. No, I was talking about Louis Free. But like, I think this is, I think he's coming in.

Cashy's coming in and like he's shaking up the bureaucratic institutional sort of culture of the FBI, which is known for being like square jaw g men, you know, like more. And fucking like Irish keyotelers and Mormon drunks is I think I'm mad described it at one point. But like it's a very very staid conservative office culture at the FBI. Like if you wear like a tie with like a wild pattern, you'll probably get like, you know, like sectioned or something. But like I like this is an FBI director. He's still like he's like, look, nine to five, he's director of the FBI. But on weekends, he's like, I'm going out to Vegas.

I'm going to spend part of my weekend in Las Vegas getting fucked off. Me time is important. I mean, you got to take some time away from the office. Here is the, I'm going to the iguana lounge or whatever, whatever bullshit thing he's going to. Here is the best part of the story, though.

It says here early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights. Six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel's schedule told me. Well, just like, look, he's the director. Like, you fucking, yeah, make the schedule fit him, you know?

What are you going to do? I mean, first of all, is this briefing? Could it be an email? Yeah, good point. Then what are you fucking bothering him with anyway? And also, isn't that editorializing to say that like, oh, he missed it because because of his alcohol field nights?

He could have been tired for any other reason. Like, are you his doctor or sleep scientist for that matter? And like, no, do you bring up sleep science? Like, I think it's been proven that like, even if you got a full night sleep, the human mind is not really even working at maximum potential until about 11 a.m. Or at least two cups of that mud, you know? So like, there's probably some door to the FBI. He's like, mm, like a morning briefing on 9 a.m.

It's like, fuck that. 1130. We'll do, we'll do, we'll do a late lunch. You know, and then by 9 o'clock will be at the fucking hockey game. Like, Nancy, who? Yeah. All these people who are like, where Savannah Guthrie's mom? I like guarantee you none of them were into her before this whole thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I like, yeah. They, I mean, they had no idea where she was before she got kidnapped. And now they're like, oh, where's this woman? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, okay. Okay. Okay. You're, you're, your, your, Savannah Guthrie's mom poster. it looks really new. It looks like you've got in the last few weeks. So I do not have to listen to you. Here is by far the best part of this piece.

Some of Patel's colleagues at the FBI worry that his personal behavior has become a threat to public safety. And FBI director is expected. Oh, wait, no, no. Sorry, I jumped at too far. On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail

had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for, quote, breaching equipment normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings

was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors according to multiple people familiar with the request. That is alpha level player baller shit. Getting so fun. up that the next day the FBI has to get a SWAT team to get into your fucking

seriously like getting swatted but it's just like your wake up call yeah they're putting new ready or not charges on like the wall of the adjacent hotel room we're setting a venue yeah he's just like you know bro last night was a movie it sounds to me like the real problem is like the FBI is filled with drama queens like let him sleep it off. I don't know. It's filled with those types of like Gene Simmons people who are like, oh,

I'm, I'm 53 and I've never had a drink or drug in my life. Yeah. And again, we don't know. Like, what if he just, what if he just,

he's one of those guys who gets this sort of melatonin hangover? We don't know. We frankly don't know. You remember when there was that shooting at Brown University? and they were just like announced that they have a suspect and it was just like completely the wrong guy. Yeah, okay. Well, you've never like, you've never been like watching TV

and been like, oh, is that is that John Slattery and it's a different guy? Okay, here's another good part. Days before the United States launched its war with Iran, Patel fired members of a counter 10 television squad that was devoted in part to Iran. The director said in testimony before Congress that the agents had been let go

because of their work investigating Trump's handling of classified documents had placed them in violation of the Bureau's ethics roles. But multiple officials told me that they were concerned that the firings had been rushed and would leave the U.S. shorthanded at a crucial moment. Once again, okay, this is the FBI counterintelligence unit

dedicated to Iran. Well, good fucking job that they've done so far. Now we're at war with Iran. So you're going to tell, oh, we need these guys in there? You know, something's got to give. Yeah. I love this part Patel has publicly

proclaimed that the FBI needs to demonstrate that it is quote fierce like yeah a lot of people think the F stands for federal but it actually stands for fierce I mean like this is like

teenage girls say about like each other like I don't know says an official that is what Jay Edgar Hoover wanted to say The FBI needs to demonstrate that it is fierce. And officials I spoke with said that he is fixated on that image in private as well.

He recently expressed frustration with the look of FBI merchandise complaining that it isn't intimidating enough. Officials have grown accustomed to such behavior and they have learned to roll their eyes at it. But they said that the absurdity masks real concerns about what Patel's leadership has been for an institution that the country relies on for national security and the safety of its citizens. Part of me is glad he's wasting his time on bullshit because it's less dangerous for the rule of law for the American Republic, what official told me. But it also means we don't have a real functioning FBI director. Okay.

The detail about the FBI, like using a SWAT team to breach his hotel room because he wouldn't wake up after his alarm went off 20 times and everyone's calling him. But the detail that he's concerned that the FBI's merchandise isn't in intimidating enough? Do you think he feels like he's in a manhood competition with Pete Hagseth over at the Department of War and like they're going to start like trying to one up each other. But like instead of doing AI videos of him bench pressing like 5,000 pounds, it's going to be like an AI video of him on a stair master or something like look at how many steps I climb.

Cash seems like a fun or drunk than Pete Hedgeseth. I'll say that. Oh my God. Oh yeah. for sure. Heckstaff is like the most annoying, weepy, like aggressive drug, like the guy where it's like, this is the year

that I start raising my kids. I fucking love my kids so much, man. Like he's saying this like Ashfactor, he's like going to like his eighth divorce. Hasn't seen him in months. You know, basically an order of protection. I just love my fucking kids so much. Cash is like, I never get. Cash is like, I mean,

just getting blackout drunk and taking the jet to go hang out with the U.S. hockey team. Yeah, yeah. He's like, it's like doing bumps in the fucking team USA locker room, fucking like doing keg stands. He's at the fucking, he's at Ned's in the poodle room. He's taking the fucking FBI jet to WrestleMania. But like, I just like on the issue of FBI merch not being intimidating enough, like what does he want like them to be rocking like affliction t-shirts with like skulls on it and shit? Because like I thought the whole point of like the kind of faceless bureaucracy of federal law enforcement is when you see like,

a dozen very boring looking guys approaching you wearing those windbreakers that are just navy blue and has the big yellow FBI letters on the back of it. That's pretty fucking intimidating for me because it's like the intimidation comes to the fact that like they don't need to like tattoos or fucking skulls. They're the law enforcement arm of the federal government. They can do anything to you. I think that the official merchandise for the FBI, it should be like all gore photos. It should be like It should be like Like creepy supreme style t-shirts

So like a photo of the fucking David Koresh compound is just printed on it Yeah exactly exactly Thomas Crooks' head blown off Like yeah No You know this is a shocking time we live in Oh

Well One more thing I know Trump is a teetotaler And apparently in the Atlantic article It talks about how Trump was very upset By the video of cash chugging beers in Milan with the team USA hockey. For a guy who's disgusted by alcoholics

and whose own brother succumbed to his addiction to alcohol, Trump does surround himself with like a lot of drug addicts and drunks. Yeah. It is, it reminds me of, Strauss and Red Dead Redemption too, how he's a money lender. But he's always lending money to people who like live in a hole they dug into the ground

and subsist on like selling animal people. helps to other losers. It's like, why are all these loans so bad? Like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's probably bad luck. Yeah.

I just gave a loan to a guy who's like, like suffering from tuberculosis. He's like bleeding from his mouth. Like, can you pay me back next week? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, exact same thing. He's just like, oh my God, you can't like it's people are always letting me down and like

fucking off on their work. I don't know why. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, everything for him is about who's kissing my ass the best. And so, you know, you get a weepy drunk guy who's constantly telling Donald Trump he's the greatest, greatest personal life. That picture of you is Jesus, sir, that was spot on. I think you are Jesus Christ reincarnated. Like, you know, that's the guy who gets the job.

Do you think that's it that it's like people who are also, like, drunks are usually like pretty emotionally needy and are going to fight each other for his validation. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Maybe. I just think like Pete Heggseth is the kind of drunk who, you know, will not a good high hang.

We'll get on stage at a strip club and attempt to dance with the strippers. Like embarrassing fucking like amateur level shit, crying, weeping, doing sex crimes. Cash is like, he's posted up in the VIP and the baddies. he's just like they come to him. He's just like, let him in. Let him in behind the velvet rope. You know, he's like, you're at Ned's. You're in Pudel Town now, honey.

Let's do a bum. Cash is one of those guys where it's like, he comes out with you. He disappears for 45 minutes and he comes back with like a bunch of the adults that he met at Kinseniera. He's stumbled in. He's always like adding like unexpected new people to your party. He's,

making it more fun. He's very gregarious. You may know where your night is going to begin with cash. You never know what's going to end. It's going to end in a ride in a government helicopter with Becky Lynch of the WWA. Yeah. But with Pete, it's like two hours in. It's like, okay, I'm going to show you exactly what you, what I mean about like how my wife always brings this shit up.

I'm going to FaceTime her. I need you guys to stay in the background and watch this argument between me and her. Yeah. Well, really like he brings his baggage everywhere, whereas Cash is like he's always expanding the party. Could you imagine like being on Molly with Cash Patel, like how fun that would be?

Think about what his eyes would look like. Oh, bro. That'd be really scary. It would look like a fucking like a like a slot machine. It would be awesome. Yeah. He's rolling over. So, I mean, once again, I think this is like the institutional conservative, boring culture of the FBI.

They're all turning on them and giving these anonymous quotes about what a dangerous alcoholic he is. Because, like, they don't know how to have fun. They've never had fun. It's like they're trying to put them on double secret probation right now. And it's like the boys of Cash Patel's Delta House, it's like they're here to have a good time. And if some crimes get solved in the process and Americans are made safe, and protected from evil doers, then shit,

that's just all part of the party. I'm all right. Don't know about it. Why you got to give me a fat. What can't you just let me be? That's right, Cash. We still fuck with you. If Trump fires you,

oh, fucking on God's son. Like, it's over for him. It's over for him. He's the greatest FBI director of all time. And like, if Trump succumbs to this kind of fucking,

this gutter sniping and fucking gossip from, from people who aren't in the club who are outside hating and giving anonymous coats to the Atlantic, then he's fucking finished. Cash Patel,

he's the greatest FBI director of all time. Yeah, easily, easily. We stand with cash. We stand with cash. And like, you know, and speaking of our merchandise, I once again,

I apologize to everyone who ordered the 10th anniversary shirts and the 10th anniversary helium. There has been some shipping problems. So check back next week. We'll see if the straight is open or not. But if you bought helium or T-shirts from us that were printed in Iran, I should say.

I mean, look, union is important to us, but, you know, like the blanks come from Iran. The printing happens in Iran. It's going to be a few extra weeks, and especially also if you ordered helium from the Chapo-Traphouse. So, but pre-order is still available. But like, whether you get them depends on, you know, if this war shakes out over the next year or two, several months. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, it's a hard time for businesses out there.

You know, everybody's scrambling. Yep. Yeah. Well, that does it for the main part of the show, but stay tuned for a little bonus interview I did with the actor, Ben McKenzie. You may remember from such TV shows as the O.C. And Gotham.

It was a fun conversation I had on, like I said, a movie and documentary about his that I very much enjoyed called Everyone is Lying to You for Money. But that does it for us on the main episode. I want to thank once again, Derek Davison, Everyone please subscribe to foreign exchanges and American Prestige. Yes, and check out our new series, Mark's Prestige. It's a mini-series.

You can buy it or get it with a subscription, but we're very happy to do that with Andrew Hartman, historian. Excellent. All right, everybody. Very nice. Till next time, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for coming.

Wow. This is a big house. This is Will. You know Will? Chapeotrap. Draft House. I am Will Menacher and I'll be interviewing Ben McKenzie, the director

and star of everyone is lying to you for money. Let's one more round of applause for Ben in his movie, everyone. And a quick applause. Chabotrap House 10th anniversary. 10 years since 2016, they've been making fun of how stupid everything is

and I really feel a lot of thematic resonance here with the movie. 10 years, no ads. still no video audio audio only one of the realest podcasts of all time that's right baby uh all right ben to to get into the movie uh first of all i really enjoyed it but i want to begin with what i thought was like some of the some of the most charming and interesting parts of the movie were your own tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of your own celebrity and how that colors like every interaction you have in the movie whether it's the talking heads you interview on tv the customs agents in el salvador the guy on the london

everyone knows you and likes you because of this beloved TV character you portrayed. But outside the sort of disarming sort of sense of of humor that that brings to the movie, how do you see this idea of how celebrity connects to these larger themes in the film about trust,

how trust is created through storytelling, and how that trust is a key element of fraud. Wow, that is a great, wow, you're a professional. That is a great question. I think I can approach that from a number of different angles. The angle I immediately go to, because I'm an econ dork, is that money is trust, right?

Like money is this fiction that we made up, a social construct, like government or religion. And it relies on social consensus. All currencies are effectively collective hallucinations. And we just agree that they have value because they work in the best of cases, in the case of the US dollar, quite frankly. So it's interesting that trust is such a big part

of our monetary. system is also a big part of obviously a con man, right? Like they're they're getting you to trust them in order to to steal your money. Being on television was such a, it was like my superpower. It was like I could talk to anybody. I could talk to Alex Wyshenski or Sam Bickman-Fried. I could, you know, I could end up testifying. And it's because, I mean, I guess the testifying, I had done some work, but like it really was like oh wow we like you because you were Ryan out with the O.C.

And it also was great because in terms of the trust they I think implicitly had some you know perception of me that they the fraudsters that they underestimated me I think

I don't think that they expected me to ask them you know some more pressing questions so it's really good to be underestimated. I think I like where you're hanging out at South by Southwest with the Celsius guys and they're like, well, you're like, what is Celsius?

And they're like, Celsius does everything the opposite of what a bank does. And you're just sort of like, keep rolling, keep rolling here. I'm like, how do you make money? It's like, I can't answer that question. I'm like, oh my God. But like, more of this idea of like celebrity and trust

and how that relates to currency, I think of the sort of the fake out opening of the movie where you're like, it's like Mesopotamia. And then I hear like the twangs of someone. like vaguely Middle Eastern sounding music and like you're sort of like looking profoundly at these ancient ruins

and I was like oh no Ben you're doing a cringe this is so cliche and then you're like oh no this is just outside of Austin this is just Texas here yeah but what I liked about that is that like you announced in the very opening of the movie this kind of fake out like isn't that like all the celebrity advertising for crypto

isn't that like that in a microcosm where you're like oh here's a guy I like on TV and I relate to that and you immediately you buy into it Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I really enjoyed, that was an idea, the opening was an idea of my editor, Drew Blatman, who is fantastic. And it was kind of loosely based on like, how can we really do a misdirect, like a real hard misdirect? If the movie's about lying, how can we like lie off the top? Incidentally, when I'm sitting in the audience, like the most nervous I have ever been in my life is that first minute.

because I can, I watch the audience and I can see people just go like, oh, fuck. We're in for the BBC. I was like, oh, God, I have to talk to a guy. Yeah, exactly. Wait, had you agreed before you saw the movie? Yes. Oh, fuck. Yeah, that would have been bad.

But on a more substantive creative note, you know, obviously the movie's about lying. And so we wanted to sort of, you know, fuck with the audience with you guys, collective audience, not you guys particularly, although you did get fucked with. I wanted to be very playful in the form, and I was sort of inspired by, do you know this really weird Orson Welles movie F for fake? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, of course you know. That's like the one of the greatest.

It's this insane movie. I don't even necessarily recommend it, but it's really crazy. And he's just like sort of constantly tricking the audience to the point where it's hard to follow at times. But this is later Orson Wells. He's quite large and drinks a lot. but but there's this like playfulness with that that I think sort of fits the age a little bit you know what I mean like yeah I you know just respect to Mesopotamia briefly I was I was thinking about currency and like as long as there has been currency what do we associate with a face right yeah you know like Alexander the great his face he was like one of the first people that like a significant population could be like I know that guy he's great that's a kind of celebrity And like for money, that face represents trust. And I guess like I, like, how did you, like,

and then in the modern world, we need like our version of Alexander the Great or, you know, Ben Franklin or Alexander Hamilton, you know, the Shacks of the world, Matt Damon. But like, how do you see your role as kind of like a counterface to use celebrity to be sort of a public citizen rather than a shill for cryptocurrency? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And or, I mean, in terms of faces, Donald Trump, right? Yeah.

You like literally trying to get his face on the, on the, coin. It's going to happen soon, folks. Yeah. Yeah. Just get ready. Yeah, totally. In terms of like, yeah, my role, I mean, this has just been so much fun. It's so much fun. Not the most lucrative thing in the world. Writing books and making documentary films that you self-finance gulp. But, you know, I had a little fucking money from TV,

and I've blown it pretty much on this movie, so hopefully it goes well. And my wife's doing a TV show, so it will be all right. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Nice. Fuck you money or what was that? Anyway, it's been super fun and really freeing. Obviously, I'm privileged to be in a position to do that. But, you know, one of the interesting things about like, so I read all these books on fraud and one of the observations, the guy, Dan Davis that I talked to on the London Park Bench who wrote a great book on fraud called Lying for Money. One of the things he talks about in the book is that how do frauds keep happening if like we've seen? seen, you can't keep doing the same fraud because eventually the regulators get hip to it and

like people just kind of know the con and they can, they can assess it. And so all new sort of, all the ingenuity of a con is like trying to do basically the same shit, but in a different way, right? Never tell the same lie twice. Right. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, crypto's like such a perfect illustration of it where you just sort of, like, make up all this nonsensical, sensical language, like currencies that aren't currencies, stable, decentralized means centralized like all that nonsense um but in order to to dan davis makes this point like in order to actually like counteract that you need someone someone else to come from outside the system to see it clearly because otherwise you're just like you know the accountants are like oh

mooks wooks wine to me like it doesn't it it needs a different perspective and i felt like wow that was really um maybe that's me you know maybe that's sort of like what i'm doing and required a Ryan Outwood from the O.C. To do this thing. But like, I was fascinated by the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the conversation about fraud. And there's sort of like a sleight of hand, because it's like, if you rob someone with a gun,

you know you're stealing from them. But if you rob someone with a lie, then you can tell yourself that you've in fact, not stolen from them and that they've given you the money and in fact that you're helping them. But like, it takes sort of like, it's a dance between like the mark and the fraudster, but I think like an important part of your movie

is you talk about how people want to believe this because they want, you know, the freedom that comes with money that will like allow them to, you know, do what they want to do, spend time with their kids or just do nothing. But like it's responding to also like the reality of how badly screwed up our financial system is as well.

So like how does, how do these people prey on the like understandable skepticism people have about government? Right. And then like their own very, very real financial needs, like to sort of liberate themselves from the nine to five of the grind. Yeah, totally. I mean, probably the most heartbreaking moment for me really was what you see in the movie where I'm just talking that dude from Texas and like he's just trying to make a little

money to spend time with his daughter and then he feels like he's failed her and like, I'm a father of three. I'm like, he's crying. I'm just like, oh, Jesus Christ, how do we create this? Sorry for all the swearing. How do we like end up here? What was I going to say about, how do they pray? I think they pray in a lot of different ways. The psychology is interesting. So one of the ways of fraudster will pick your pocket is by pointing to somebody else, and we hate that guy, right?

And everyone goes, yeah, we hate that guy. And they can kind of like, they form an emotional bond with you. And so I think they use the financial system and all of its myriad failures, which I agree with, or which I have many thoughts on, I guess. We all have our bone to pick with the financial system. It's funny. I feel like crypto story is basically like, it's just. parts. It's like, do you hate the current system? Everybody raises their hand. Or do you have a bone

to pick with it? And then second thing is Bitcoin fixes this. It's literally become the meme. Yeah. Bitcoin fixes this. And so it's a super simple story. And because we all pretty much agree on the premise that our system does suck or has deeply flawed, let's say, as all social constructs are, as all things that people make are. Crypto saying in a sort of vague, techno-babbily way, we can fix all that is just sort of appealing from jump. And then I think they're, of course, obviously taking advantage of people who don't have a lot or don't have a, don't believe they have a shot at real wealth at like, you know, like the wealth that they see on social media and the wealth they see. Like, we fetishize wealth so much in this country. It is so disgusting to me.

It's like, and it's particularly for young guys, it's like they're just getting these. I see people nodding. Like they're just being told over and over again. Like if you don't have the Lambo or the, you know, the girlfriend with the fake breasts, you're like, you're not a real man. You're not a successful person. And guys internalize that. And this industry preys on young guys. It preys on them.

42% of men 18 to 29 have bought used cryptocurrency, almost half. And guys, young guys, are always, have always been gamblers. I was a young guy once. I used to like to gamble. But the reason is in part because our prefrontal cortex is slow to develop. Literally, like we just don't have, we don't make the right decisions often. That's why guys drink more, smoke more, young guys drink and drive more, die earlier on average. And so, you know, they're exploiting that, right?

And they're kind of basically, like the Matt Damon out, like Fortune favors the brave. I mean, it's basically, don't be a pussy by crypto. Well, yeah, I mean, one other thing you talk about is this sort of, this realization of this sort of cult-like feeling to bitcoinsers. And I think an example of that would be this idea that through a new technology or a new thing, that you've gained access to some secret truth about the world that you need to evangelize. But with, like, that comes simultaneously with this kind of threat that, like, if you don't invest now, you're going to get left behind.

And you mentioned young man and gambling, and I'm wondering if you see, like, those similar psychological patterns, both in the behavior and also the way the marketing of something like like something new like AI or something very old like gambling that's now been largely legalized everywhere totally yeah there's a thing called the grift shift which was like the guys that were grifting in that was the original name of my show at the podcast it also could be just like a guy working a grift and like having to go to the clocking in and out you know talking out of the con man factory that's what it's like working for a crypto company um sorry not all crypto companies or grifts

Um, uh, yeah. Sorry, where was I going to go with that? I totally lost my journey. I just like, I don't know like about you, but like I personally like I feel like a similar, this weird like hard sell about things like AI where they're just like, it's just everywhere and you're like, oh, well, obviously this ex this assumption that it's like changed the world that everyone's using it. Well, totally.

Yeah. I mean, I will say that they're not, they're not in, in, in, in, in conflict. Like, like AI to me, a lot of people have. after I did the crypto thing or what I was doing, it was like, you gotta do AI, AI next. And I never really did, right? I mean, I like sort of have as much understanding as probably you do.

And, but my takeaway is, like, both things can be true. Like, AI can be, so the story of crypto is not a story of technology because blockchain is old. It is 35 years old. It doesn't work very well. And the evidence of that is that try to name a company that's not in the cryptocurrency business that uses blockchain.

Like in 2021 and 2022, blockchain was going to change everything. Yeah. You know, do you remember this? Of course. I think I got a pitch for a pet insurance on the blockchain or something like that. I mean, it was just crazy. Now they don't talk about blockchain. Now they call it digital assets, which is a wonderfully vague phrase.

Really kudos to the marketing team. So, but AI is a thing, right? I mean, I don't love it, but not to say, to be mild about it. But like, it is changing. things already. How much it will change things. I don't know. How it will go. I don't know. I'm a little scared. Did you read the New Yorker piece on Sam Altman? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So there's this quote in there from an unnamed Microsoft exec who's like, who's obviously had dealings with this company. And he says something to the effect of there's a pretty reasonable chance that this guy is the next Bernie

Madoff or Sam Beggman Fried. And I was like, oh, fuck. Well, now that you brought up like, Sam Bingman-Fried, he's like, you know, one of the stars of this movie. I'm gonna give a, have you had any contact with him recently. I wrote him in jail. He did not write back. Well, I mean, I see he's like,

I see his posts. I mean, obviously, I think he's getting messages out to people to, like, author it for him. Right. But I got two things about Sam Beggen-Feed. The first one is like, how do you see, like, the guy you talked to you about fraud

talks about how, like, psychologically it's a very distinct crime because of the people who do it, rationalize it to themselves. How do you see San Bernard and this kind of effective altruism philosophy that he was like him and a lot of people in Silicon Valley are espousing like isn't that just like the perfect rationalization for stealing? Yes, that's exactly right. Because you're like, oh, I'm not like stealing. I'm actually just trying to get as much money as possible to help as many people as possible at an unspecified future date.

Exactly. You know about effective altruism. It's like make money, two things. Make money as much money as you can so you can give it away effectively. efficiently. And first of all, it's incredibly arrogant to be like, I can give it away. Because I'm rich. I know better than everybody else. And so, but it's also, yeah, it's a rationalization justification for, and it's really funny that Silicon Valley loves effective altruists because guess which part they're good at. The giving away or the getting the money. Yeah, yeah, right?

Guess which parts they're effective. And Sam is interesting. Yeah, one of the things I do find fascinating is is the mentality of fraudsters. Because I couldn't understand for the longest time, like, why did he agree to sit with me? You know, like, Jacob Silverman wrote the book with me. We weren't exactly hiding the ball. Like, our Twitter bios read,

writing a book about crypto and fraud. Right? And he still sat down with me. And I was like, why is he? I mean, I know he's not that smart, but like he's not that stupid either. But it was more, I think, that he, fraudsters are.

the ultimate method actors. Like they really have to believe that they are. Sam still says, no, it's all wrong. I'm innocent. We were solvent. We just didn't have the money at the time.

Which begs the question. Does he understand the word solvents? But they really believe it because I think it's probably too painful to acknowledge the reality that they're stealing, right? Yeah. And I mean, that's galling to imagine,

in light of like the victims, like the people of the Celsius thing, where like the one guy you said like, it's just more than losing the money, it's the shame I feel about getting, about getting roped, you know, about getting conned. And that pisses me off. Yeah. Really infuriates me as a man because I know what they're doing.

Like men, we have a hard time. I have a hard time admitting when I'm wrong. We carry around this thing. And if you're of a certain generation in particular, hopefully we're raising our kids differently. You're sort of implicitly talk. Like don't talk about your. feelings don't talk about when you lose you know and thank you and and so they're

using that to silence them like the one of the biggest tricks of crypto is this thing called is basically you're responsible for your own decisions D Y O R to your your own research and the way I've come to understand that sounds good right like everyone's responsible for their stuff sure in the abstract of course but like if when you get conned it's your fault that's like such a genius evil thing to do to make the guy turn it back on himself that like it wasn't somebody else doing it I fucked up yeah I find that despicable but also very smart well this is a listen to this is an easy segue

the next thing I want to talk about is Ben like obviously like we all seen the movie now but like the movie is one of the last images of the movie is Donald Trump saying enjoy your bitcoin folks everybody loves the I mean, the sequel is right there for you because I'm sure you've been following, like, the second Donald Trump term in office is like the crypto presidency. And like, I was wondering, like, do you, how do you imagine Sam Bankman Fried feels about the several other very high profile crypto fraudsters who have been straight up pardoned by Donald Trump?

Yeah. Did he just like give too much money to Democrats or something? Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, I remember when like he was like in trouble, like he immediately like, was like, I should become a Republican now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. clip and like suck up to Trump.

Yeah. So he wrote a, he wrote a, his diary leak during the trial and one of the things he wrote down a list because, you know, he is that guy who writes lists of everything. And it was basically like, what happens if I get caught? And one of the points he made, bullet points was, um, turn Republican go on Tucker Carson. He then went on Tucker Carson from jail to like, so, you know, it gives me a little, people ask are you sympathetic to him? And I'm like, I'm not really.

You know what I mean? at the end of the day, that's pretty cold and calculating, however you want to describe it. But like, okay, but in Trump now, like, there's what the World Liberty Financial is a crypto exchange that's like controlled by his sons. Yeah. There is the Trump meme coin that, like, he probably made like hundreds of millions of dollars off of, but it's estimated that the Trump family holdings has expanded by like five to seven billion dollars just since he was inaugurated and its holdings all in crypto.

Yeah, it's crypto. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the amount of drift and graft is really incredible. And I think that's actually a really good illustration of the point that I was making earlier about the cost of private money. So if money is not issued from a government, then where does it come from? Comes to corporations or individuals. And that's very dangerous because the ability to manipulate is sort of off the charts, right? Especially for the most powerful man in the world.

And so, you know, the fact that he can just like issue these currencies, lines of code on a blockchain and, you know, a sheik in the U.A. can invest $500 million and his stable invest $500 billion in a stable coin and at the same time coincidentally got Navidia chips and also got a pardon for CZ this convicted money launderer who was founded an exchange called Binance which also helped Donald Trump set up his stable coin company I mean it is just like griff after grift whether it's the pardons or just like him being given directly cryptocurrency by like by these exchanges. Yeah.

Like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of it. The thing that's amazing to me is like in the movie you talk about the power of a story and how like people need to believe in a story to like have trust in something either for good or or a crime or for corrupt reasons.

With this it's like there isn't even the barest pretense that this is anything other than just outright corruption. So like have we as a society like evolve past the need to be told the story to be stolen from anymore? Oh, we just sort of accept. Yeah, we just kind of accept it.

I mean, I do think that's the down, one of the really darkest downsides of this whole thing is that if he's actually effective in turning us against each other so that we don't trust each other, which is already a kind of a tenuous thing, right? I mean, I think, you know, the internet and social media and all that stuff is not always great for our ability to actually communicate in real life and to form actual communities, real communities as opposed to like the fake crypto communities. and that I think is one of the most dangerous things right it's like he's kind of um by being so flagrantly corrupt and awful and also cruel he might make us all go you know and like what can

I do and maybe I shouldn't trust my fellow citizen you know like he's he's so narcissistic and arrogant and he is so only cares about himself to such a degree that he just sort of makes everyone else, because he's been so successful at it, question like, is it me? Am I, like, am I naive to believe that we are better than this? Am I naive to think that we can do this together? Because I remember feeling that at certain points in my life. And maybe, but now you're going, maybe I, maybe it was all wrong.

You know, maybe it was all a lie. Anyway, I don't think that. I don't believe that all is lost. It is a bad time. There's a lot of bad stuff happening. But maybe the tides are turning back. I mean, you know, he's not that popular. He's now apparently the Antichrist to Evangelicals,

which is sort of an interesting. Well, to me as well. Well, I mean, what I mean is like the sequel is here. Everyone is still lying to you about money. Oh, definitely. The fraud continues. Yes. And, you know, like, obviously the OC is the television program

that hangs over the proceedings of this movie. You got to get on that Southland, Jim Gordon, Gotham, Tip, and just, you know, get on that real crime fighter or shit for the next movie. I definitely do, definitely. I'm into it. I'm into it. We don't know myself. I have just the last comment I want to make. I don't know about how the audience felt, but for me, like the biggest pop in this movie, like the biggest laugh for the movie was from this movie was the scene with you and Gerald Butler. Yeah. What's his secret? Like how do he makes it? How do you get so rich off crypto? Yeah, yeah. He's great. He's awesome. I owe Jerry a lot.

So my wife's shooting that movie, and it's London, and he hears about what I'm doing. And I kind of like sheepishly, I'm like, yeah. He's like, I can't do his accent. He's like, you know, I hear what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crypto. He's like, I made a lot of money. And I was like, I don't, yeah, I don't understand it.

We, I was like, can I please get him to say this on camera? Like, will he like, please do me a solid? And so like for weeks, I sort of like would just show up at the set to just like hang out. And then I finally worked it was way to like, yeah, he's agreed to do it verbally because obviously we couldn't pay him and um I think that got a money the 10 million dollar cameo for the tiger viner and um and he's into it and and then and so there's no script and so we have like five minutes between setups and um and we are actually on the set that isn't a fake set that's a real set and uh he's like okay what do what do we do and i'm like it's extras you're jerry butler i'm rick at your face and he's like got it and he crushed it he crushed it like one take right maybe two like flipped angles

once the whole thing took five minutes and i really want gerard butler to be in a comedy now like i really really i want to do a buddy comedy with him actually that's actually what i want to do den of thieves three yeah what's that den of thieves three are you fan of the den of thieves actually be a good name for this movie yeah yeah totally totally also a great book there's a great book called den of thieves about I think we are getting the hook here. My apology is it. But can we have another round of applause for Ben McKenzie in his film? Everyone is lying to you for money.

Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for coming. Before you leave, my only ask is that if you like the movie, please tell someone about it. Word of mouth is the only marketing we can afford, quite literally. Well, that and me, like, annoying you on Instagram. So apologies, there's going to be a lot more videos. But, like, yeah, if you like it,

tell someone, I obviously post on social, sure, but like, it really, like, so basically the way it works is for a truly indie movie like this, like, it's about the first weekends per theater average, and if that's high enough, then other theaters look at it and book it. And so my goal is to beat the Melania per screen air. And guys, with your help, we can get there. All right, thank you for coming. Thank you, everybody. you know