Chapo Trap House - 366 - The Terminal (11/12/19)

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

Chapo Trap House provides commentary on the following issues: the coup against president Evo Morales in Bolivia; a libertarian spree shooter in Chile; the entrance of diminutive billionaire Michael Bloomberg into the Democratic presidential primaries; Bill Gates and his money; whether Democratic presidential candidates should "try harder", or something; the ongoing beatz crisis of the the Eurozone.

We covered this a while ago, but there was that guy, Kim Dutrois, who wrote the legendary early-ought blog post, The Pussification of the Western Male, who died of, yeah, like of, I don't know, yeah, pork heart, cowards ass. Yeah, cowards ass, and like, yeah, just like, you know, like his gout in his feet just like moves steadily up to his brain and consumes his entire body. And then everyone was just like, we've lost one of the greats today. And then it turned out when I looked into it, he had stopped political blogging altogether and had just been posting like pictures of anime girls for like, for like probably three

or four years. Well, I mean, big loss. He went out, he went out during a high artistic period. Yeah. That is like the best part of the old internet, you know, it's kind of like, like when all the bloggers started fucking dropping dead, that was like end of tombstone. Like they're all Doc Holliday. The Wild West is done.

The crotchety blogger has fallen to every type of diabetes that he had somehow. And it's like, Glenn Reynolds is, what's his name, his wide-erp. Yeah. And he's just like, all I want is just a normal blog post. And then he's like spitting up blood going, Glenn, there is no such thing as a blog post. Oh, man, well, yeah, we're back, Virgil, I mean, I mean, he's been back for a while. He was on the most recent episode, but you know, we're just touching base with you now as you return from your sojourn in Berlin.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, it went well though. Yeah. All right. Well, you, I think so. You filed a report from Berlin.

Yeah. Yeah, man. It was, yeah. Yeah. It was weird. Okay. So, she, okay. Well, should we play?

Should we just play? Yeah. But yeah, I'm sure. I should give it a proper intro there. I'm sure you, you know, you've been, you've been seeing the news about what's going on in Europe right now. And you know, I figured I'm there, I should file a first person report. There's a lot of stuff going on in Europe right now.

Yeah. It's a lot of European stuff, you know, and hopefully this will make things clearer to our listeners. Okay. All right. Let's, this is Virgil Texas reporting from Berlin, Dateline, Berlin. This is Berlin, where the German chapter of the anti-climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion continues to paralyze the nation's capital for the sixth straight day.

Shops are closed, schools are out, all transportation is shut down, leaving this city of three and a half million at a total standstill. The crisis began on Monday when 12 Extinction Rebellion activists staged a daring bit of street theater in Kreuzberg, an interpretive dance performance of Bertolt Brecht's life of Galileo, translated into the screams of dying animals. The spectacle was soon joined by over 25,000 red-eyed clubgoers who had just spent the past 72 hours disassociating in the cold, concrete warrens of Bergheim and Tresor. Re-emerging in the harsh light of day, they found out the sensible liberal democratic

society they were familiar with, but streets populated by shirtless dissidents making discord and animal yell. Unstuck from reality, the clubbers accepted this new credo and added their voices to the cacophony. This burgeoning mob caught the attention of workers at Der Fonkie Beach Factory in the Mitter district, where 200,000 rank-and-file DJs answered the call for a general strike, cutting down all production and provoking catastrophic beach shortages throughout the Eurozone.

Desperate clubs in Milan, Amsterdam, and Lisbon have turned to counterfeit beats reportedly of Ukrainian origin. EU health officials warn that many of these ersatz beats have been cut with dangerously bad vibes, and thousands of clubgoers have been hospitalized with conditions ranging from rhythm loss to flashbacks to ego death. The beat shortage has wrecked havoc on the city's business perverts, all 600,000 of whom spontaneously walked off the job on day three of the crisis. Without Ketamine and Der Fonkie beats to mediate their subjectivity with the hollow conformity

of late capitalist society, these relatively high-income workers have come down with the terminal case of An-Wi, leaving Berlin's once-roaring paperwork factories along the Shrie, eerily silent. On day four, the unthinkable became reality, when the business perverts defaulted on their scheduled payments to Berlin's 1.1 million piss pays. The furloughing of these degenerate piss-crazy subs has sent shockwaves throughout the regional economy, and as more dominoes fall, EU finance ministers are shouting the alarm of a total Eurozone meltdown.

On Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel caught short her visit to Japan, where she was negotiating a €95 billion arms-for-hentai trade deal to address the domestic crisis. First flying to Krakow, then crossing the Polish-German border via motorcar in the opposite direction of millions of sausage-eared refugees, Merkel finally made it to Berlin late Saturday evening. There, she offered an olive branch to the 12 protesters, an invitation to join her cabinet and help write the nation's climate policy. Extinction Rebellion quickly released a terse response on their official Zanga. No thanks, we don't do politics, the word do in asterisk there.

And so the protest grinds on, as does what appears to be the total collapse of German society on every level. Germany's neighbors are scrambling to limit their exposure to the contagion. In next door France, President Macron has guaranteed payments to the nation's 60 million mistresses and jiggalos in the event of an economic collapse. Conversely, the Italian government has chosen to meet Extinction Rebellion with brute force, deploying tactical units of street harassers and Tier 1 cat-collars to every major city. That would determinate any climate protest with extreme prejudice against women and minorities.

In the Eurozone's periphery, representatives from Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have scheduled a meeting to discuss a possible bailout package for Berlin. Boris... hang on, wait, is that... yes, I'm getting word that the leader of Extinction Rebellion Deutschland, Ehrman Gech, is about to speak to the nation. Let's patch that in. My name is Boris Gech, I'm from Ireland, I'm from Germany, France, Ireland, Germany, Germany, France, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany, Germany!

Well, yeah, that was a… That was like a great… a great kind of planet money, Michael Barbara, The Daily Style Professional Podcast Report. I really appreciate that. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I... I... I think that will justify the $45,000 the show spent to send me to Berlin. I mean, it's like, you've got to spend money to lose money. This made me think. We have to find a way to trip Michael Barbara into going to Burgheim.

There are no seatbelts there. Yeah, it's very unsafe. It's the most unsafe place in the world. Sven should not be discriminating against people wearing helmets. We should, yeah, no. We should, yeah, tell him that, like, a lot of, like, Jeb Bush holdovers from flyover states moved to Germany and their political club is Burgine. And just have him walk around there and ask about the destiny of the Republican Party.

I mean, they're German, though, so they'll be like, I actually liked a lot of things that Jeb Bush has said. He'll actually get an entire, like, article out of that if he isn't, like, terrified. Well, guys, we're back for another app. I would just say this week I'd like to kick off the show with probably the most consequential story from the weekend, which it was a weekend that started out with a rare bit of good news. At least in our hemisphere, with the release of former Brazilian president Lula from prison. You'll remember back the last time we talked to Glenn Greenwald about Operation Lavo Jato, or Car Wash,

about basically just the complete stitch up and sort of legal coup that landed him in jail and put Bolsonaro in charge of one of the largest countries in the world. Lula was released from prison, but, you know, that brief high of something good happening in the world was then immediately counteracted by the actual military coup that just happened in Bolivia, where their president, Evo Morales, was asked to resign politely by the military and, you know, police after a lot of protests regarding allegations of election fraud and the end of, like, he was allowed to run for president again after the, from what I understand, the Bolivian Supreme Court ruled that the term limits were essentially,

you could do away with them, like it wasn't, yeah. Right, there were allegations that OAS had influenced that vote for the referendum on term limits, but yeah. I mean, I don't want to get too far afield if you're like, this is, we should probably talk to someone, you know, more of an expert on this, but the idea is you don't need to be an expert to understand that, like, this is 1,000% a coup by the right-wing of that country and the intelligence and state department of this country. There are so many fucking, I mean, like, let's just go through some of these reactions I've seen today. And, like, these aren't from, like, you know, Elliott Abrams types. These are from people who work in Vox, the Atlantic, New York Times.

Like, these are, like, good liberals in America who are all finding a way. Like, for instance, New York Magazine. The unseemly end for Bolivian president Abel Morales. Sarah's is a cautionary tale of what happens when world leaders remain in office for too long. So yeah, it's about term limits. That's why the military literally... Yeah, it's the same thing as Michael Bloomberg. You got it. Let's see, there's also another one of my favorites, Yasha Monk or whatever the fuck that guy is. Said here, Abel Morales' resignation is not a coup.

It is one of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years. This is my favorite part. Both leftist dictators like Venezuela's Maduro and far-right populists like Hungary's Orban should be terrified by it. I can't wait for the CIA up against Orban. That's coming, right? Any day now, guys. You think Orban is terrified of what his military might do? Should he win re-election again? No, yeah. It's just any fucking day now. Any day. My other favorite, Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones says, Wow, it's a very dicey situation in Bolivia right now, but I hope democracy will prevail.

You guys saw my favorite Brazil post ever made, right? So it's like a Wall Street Journal guy, like he's a reporter for Brazil specifically. So Lula da Silva got out of, he was ordered to be released from prison the other day, and there was a great video of Lula. It was like Goku. It was a 100G training environment. It was awesome. It was like when he was flying to NAMIC. Yeah, it was so sick. Lula actually looks fucking good. But he quoted it and said, You know what? I really like Lula and Bolsonaro.

I think they're both great guys, and I think they just both want what's best for Brazil. It's like, did you smoke weed for the first time in your life? Like age 50. Like what the fuck? But Clara kind of did one of those herself. Pretty cool. This is, yeah. Clara Jeffery's thing was dicey times in Bolivia. Morales has taken several N runs around a democratic process, but let's hope it is a democratic process that succeeds him. I mean, what succeeded him is the military looting the presidential palace

and stopping his plane from leaving the country after telling him that he... And again, I want to make clear here that what's going on with this election is that Morales's party agreed that they would abide by the OAS's audit and whatever the final vote tally was. And the opposing party did not agree to that as soon as the military just stepped in. So it's pretty clear who's on the side of a democratic process in this. And just like overall, the thing to remember about Bolivia is Morales, you know, has been president for a while there, but like under his time in office,

he has actually cut poverty and have drastically reduced poverty in that country and illiteracy, but also steadily grown the economy and avoided the kind of hyperinflation that plagues other governments and countries, like for instance, Venezuela, when they try to do similar redistributive measures, right? So the fact that he's being removed from office by military coup shows you that's exactly why it is so important to these people to remove him from office is not because like, oh, he's made his country like a nightmare, like they say about what Venezuela is like, but precisely because he has been successful

in doing the kinds of, yeah, like land and wealth reforms in that country that have made it a better, like it is in every way a better place. So that is exactly what's going on in Bolivia right now. And pretty much the entire liberal consensus is that he's a dictator and this is a huge win for democracy, which should tell you, by the way, how they're going to react if America ever elects even a vaguely left-wing person president. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So it always takes something like a left-wing government being overthrown

by the fascist military to unite everyone from the alt-right to liberals to libertarian Cato Institute guys. And the other really funny part about this were like, where Clara is like, very dicey, I hope whatever follows is democratic. Like, did they not notice the fact that like the guys who like went on TV literally put, they tore in half the like indigenous peoples flag of Bolivia and put a Bible on top of it in the presidential palace and says, we are claiming this country for Christ.

It's just like, yeah, a bunch of guys wearing like, you know, skull pins and all black just show up when they're like, we are the state now. And they're like, God, I hope these guys are, I hope these guys are good. They seem nice. I hope they're nice. I hope this is better than what they're replacing, like, you know, like, so yeah, I mean, like all these people can't possibly all be that stupid. Like maybe Clara is like the most of them I think are just covering for what they truly believe in, which is like, you know,

if democracy puts in charge, compliant, market friendly, neoliberals, then we love democracy. And if it doesn't, then it's a dictatorship. And, you know, we like, for the good of, you know, freedom or whatever, you know, we have to, again, it's always a good sign when the police are celebrating. A popular protest. You know what I mean? That's like, it's a good protest that like really represents the will of the peoples when the cops are helping it to happen.

That's the absolute like platinum level tick. I saw this the one that was like, wait, so the army and police aren't the people. That's awesome. I mean, I'd like to do a show that goes more in depth about like what actually happened in this election and also Morales' actual career in that government and some of the things he's done in that country. But like suffice it to say, there is a time for nuanced analysis of, you know, political leaders you may admire that, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, like maybe they're not as good as you thought, et cetera, et cetera. Now is not one of those times. And anyone trying to tell you or like thread that needle about being like, well, I said, well, I don't support the military doing what it did. You know, we do need to have a conversation. Stop, cut them off, pay no mind. They're totally full of shit. And either they know it or just too dumb to be taken seriously.

Right. I don't want people to think that like what you put forth on Twitter is the most important thing about this. No, like no one in Bolivia really gives a fuck what you have to say, what we have to say, even what like, you know, New York Magazine editor necessarily has to say. But like Will said, this really is not the time. Like the only the only real thing to put out right now when the military is

literally marching down the fucking president is, yeah, no, this is a coup. Fuck this. And also like we should also like be very clear about this idea that this is about electoral fraud or that he's abusing like his office by running for another term or that they've stolen the vote or whatever is all totally, totally spurious. Right.

And a lot of that a lot of the thing about vote fraud relates to a quick vote, which is like not even the official vote. There was an entire thread that I wish I could link about the quick vote versus the official count. And by the way, the official count has not even been tally. Right. And again, like the OAS, the rather corrupt group that's overseeing this coup, it should be, it has to be stressed again.

Morales, his party said that they would abide by what was the actual final, not the quick vote, but the final tally of the votes and the opposition party did not agree to that because the military just said, no, we're canceling this. No, this is like pointing to the fucking New York Times elections needle to justify your coup. Yeah. Yeah.

No factual basis for any of this. Just marching, marching in the street with pictures of Nate Cohn. And also like, and the thing about the quick vote is that like it's, according to the rules, it's like if, if, if Morales's party had shown to be like, or one by more than 10% than like, then they could form a government. And by all accounts, they've done just that. Yeah. So like this idea that like, they like, oh, like the, the opposition party

like actually got more votes. So we're talking about like a difference of like 10% which they, there's a threshold that they've basically cleared by most accounts. And people who know way more about this than me said it was, it's actually like extremely statistically likely that those last counted votes would skew heavily towards Morales. And, you know, again, when, when Bolsonaro and Trump are both taking victory laps over those, if you're a liberal, like maybe like,

what does that tell you that you're sipping out of the same toilet as they are? Well, isn't that the most nuanced take? Donald Trump is a mentally ill criminal who needs to be in prison, but also he should. His State Department and his whims should dictate the governments of the world. I got it. This is another thing that is also related to South America, but is very much in the same vein.

This is a, this is a new story I saw that I knew I had to share with you guys. Moving from Bolivia to Chile, we've talked before about how that country, you know, has, you know, experienced the military dictatorship that ended not that long ago and has been, you know, since then, you know, the, the subject of austerity and like, you know, neoliberal reforms that are now causing a massive popular uprising. So in Santiago, there were millions of people in the street protesting against this, the police have reacted with a level of violence that you might expect,

given that country's history. Another group of people who you would expect also to react violently to this, George Mason University trained libertarian economics professors. Yes, also them, headlined in the Washington Post, a California economist loves neoliberalism. When Chileans started protesting it, he opened fire on them. This is, okay, I'm just going to read here from the Washington Post. John Cobin, a U.S. born economist and former member of a neoconfederate group,

is so passionate about a free market and about Chile that he has devoted the past two decades to marrying the two. But Cobin's unusual story took a violent turn this weekend when he drove through one of the many crowds that have paralyzed Chile in recent weeks as they protest income inequality and the high cost of living. The 56-year-old was arrested Sunday, police said, after he repeatedly fired a gun to a crowd in the beach-tide sound of Renasa, seriously injuring at least one person. I did not do anything wrong, Cobin said, in a video film just before his arrest.

He did a vlog before his arrest for fucking trying to murder protesters. It was very dangerous, very scary time for me. Thankfully, I had my gun to be able to defend myself. After speeding his pickup truck through a crowd of people, a video of the scene shows Cobin shot his gun at demonstrators five times. It's not enough for just a fucking triangle-titted cunt in a polo shirt to do this in America. He has to go to another country to do this.

Well, here's the interesting thing about this story, is that this guy has been living there for years now and has literally founded what he, like, found called Galt's Gulch. And he tries to get libertarians to move to Chile because, like, we're sick of big government and political correctness in America. And he's tried to create, like, a sort of intentional community in Chile because he views it as, like, you know, the world's best laboratory for neoliberalism, largely because of his extreme and devoted admiration for General Augusto Pinochet.

Well, it's going great, Sean. You guys are really fucking, yeah. It goes here. Even as Chilean government reshuffled its cabinet and increased taxes on the wealthy, crowds have continued to rail against decades of neoliberal economic policies, including the privatization of water, highways, and the pension system. It was those policies that first made Chile an attractive destination for staunch free-market Americans like Coven. A professor with a PhD in public policy, he moved his family to Chile in 1996,

setting up a business to help other recent arrivals from the Anglophone world and teaching courses at Andres Bello National University. In the United States, he had grown sick of political correctness, eroding family values in high taxes, and his attempts at political relevancy had proved futile. He had participated in the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group, and failed in his libertarian bid for a U.S. congressional seat in South Carolina. Days before the election, he was arrested on charges of domestic violence.

This guy is like libertarian final boss. This guy checks every box of someone who lists economics as their number one hobby and interest. This is the libertarian Azor Ahai. So, but check this out, though. In Chile, however, he emerged as a prolific conservative commentator, hosting a talk radio show called Red Hot Chile. Traveling to every major town. Traveling to every major town.

That's a violation of the NAP right there. Bro, you just violated the NAP. Bro, you're losing contract counterparties. Traveling to every major town around the country and remarrying a Chilean woman, he dubbed himself the biggest neoliberal in the entire country. Cool. In parentheses, Chilean media outlets would later describe him as a white supremacist. In 2012, he helped three other Americans found a libertarian compound in the mountains,

Galt's Gulch, named for the fictional capitalist haven in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrug. Coban quickly split and founded a competing, highly-sustainable pharmaceutical compound called Freedom Orchard. He seceded from Galt's Gulch. Yes, he did. And there's another profile of him that Mother Jones did a couple of years ago before he started shooting into crowds of people, where he just spews invective at his former partners who founded Galt's Gulch

and calls them traitors and scoundrels with the highest order. I hate it when the homies turn statist. No, he was the original founder of Galt's Gulch. He split and has founded the Freedom Orchard. Man, isn't that how just every podcast falls apart? I hate it. Don't you hate it, fellas, when your girlfriend makes you go to the Freedom Orchard every fall? So fucking boring, dude.

Bro, sure, for the mountainside compound, advertised an idyllic 400-unit paradise where liberty-loving people from all over the world could enjoy low taxes, organic produce, and freedom from intrusive and abusive government meddling. One group, however, was not welcome in his orchard, liberals from the United States. You've already messed up your country, Coben told Mother Jones in 2014, we don't need you. In countless interviews and letters to the editor, of course. That's where the best opinions are.

He also expressed particular admiration for the anti-communist policies of Augusto Pinochet, Chile's disgraced former military dictator. Coben established ties with Hermogenes Perez de Acer, a widely-read and, to his opponents, widely-reviled conservative newspaper columnist known as one of Pinochet's most prominent defenders. In an undated video circulating on social media, Coben had even spoke about eliminating the Communist plague. On Sunday, it seems as though he got close.

In a since-deleted YouTube video he sent to his followers, Coben recounted how he had been driving to a gun range when he stumbled through protesters in Renasa, a beachside resort town about 20 minutes north of Valparaiso, the country's third largest city. According to Chilean newspaper reports, about 2,000 people were protesting along a made road, partaking in a tactic where they stopped cars and asked drivers to dance with them as they show solidarity. Coben, wearing a neon yellow vest, refused.

He started speeding through the crowd instead. As Coben tells it, the mob began banging against his pickup truck when he took out his gun and loaded it. He was fending off against the possibility of assault, he said, as he began firing. I was in fear for my life, being attacked by a violent mob, he said. Video of the incident, however, showed a largely isolated vehicle moving past the crowd after Coben opened fire at a barefoot protestor through an object towards Coben who responded with more shots in the directions of the demonstrators.

One of his bullets hit someone in the thigh, reportedly landing that man in the hospital. As footage of the incident circulated around Chilean social media, Coben was identified and doxxed his address and phone numbers released on social media. His phone was ringing off the hook, he said, as police came to his home to arrest him. This is like the perfect code to this. Late Sunday, another trace emerged on social media. Coben had taken a selfie with the police officers who arrested him. So yeah, this guy was actually educated, he came out of the George Mason University.

Shocking. Yeah. And one of his mentors there was another well-known neoconfederate segregationist, eugenicist, libertarian, but I repeat myself. It's like, why do all these libertarians, neoliberals, why do they all end up like this? It's weird. Yeah, it's like, I don't know, we should just give them death value or something. I mean, it's not, I guess, necessarily the worst thing we export to the world, though it's among us.

It's one of them. It's one of them, yeah. But like individual, we should just, yeah, give them some uninhabitable part of America and tell them to do gold scolch there, like no taxes, do whatever, but like, only there. Only in a place that's 110 degrees here around. I just want to know, though, where are all the people who call themselves neoliberal, like self-identify is that? Where are they to defend this guy?

Because I've been saying it's crickets from them. He's a political prisoner, obviously, right now. He was, the protesters violated the NAP, and he's just there. He's just losing that country to support free markets. So now he's possibly going to be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of his life, just because he shot a bunch of unarmed people. So, I mean, if you have neoliberal, if you have that little globe in your display name on Twitter, I think you need to be, you know, showing out.

I figured it out, by the way, the Morales thing was mask off for it. I realized that all that little subculture of weirdos who call themselves neoliberals as a political identity, they're just like alt-right people with more boring memes. Like, instead of corapers, they just have like bar charts and shit. I mean, it's like, I mean, this is a little horseshoe theory. What's a bad lefty meme? A bad lefty meme, it's just 87 paragraphs. It's like a picture, like a stock photo image of a boss, and it's like,

I like to extract the profit from your wages. I'm bad. Kill me. I don't want Gritty to fucking crump on me. Somehow, it just takes up the entire image. That sort of neolib meme is like, there it is. No, I don't think they just do graphs. I think Brazil is right. It's not fun.

No, I mean, there needs to be the national endowment for the arts under a Sanders administration. It should bring back like, socially awkward penguin, like, success dog, all that. All the bullshit from 2009 because it's better than what we have now somehow. Well, you know, the New Deal, they gave out grants and they hired all of these writers and painters and journalists and so on to go around the country and do things like, you know, collect narratives from sharecroppers and last living slaves, things like that. And you can, you know, there can be a modern version of these New Deal programs if Sanders gets his wish and we get, you know, a guaranteed job and full employment

of some kind of like modern day meme archivist. Yeah. We'll go out into, you know, we'll go out beyond Brooklyn. A studs-turkel figure. Yeah. We'll get the memes. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, we need people to go out into the hinterlands of the country where the memes are not as advanced as they are here in Park Slope.

No, people, yeah, people in West Virginia are still probably using rage comics. Oh, yeah. But we need to preserve, we need to preserve, like, our artistic heritage, I think. So, yeah, that's a bit of the news from South America just to start out the show. Pretty much. You're not having fun yet? Yeah. It sucks.

It feels bad. It's just terrible. It feels really fucking bad. And I think, like, it just needs to be stressed that, like, Morales was such a threat because his government has been so successful, not just in reducing poverty, but also, like, growing the economy of Bolivia in a way that, like, the Wall Street Journal would tell you, like, you have to do. But, like, yeah, but, like, but also did, like, highly, you know, like, did measures of,

like, that really did do real redistribution of wealth and power. And, again, like, I just, I don't get who all these people are who are just, like, you know, why do lefties always have to make it about the CIA? And it's just, like, well, when a fucking, you know, military is overthrowing a popular socialist government in Latin America, what do you think is going on? These people act like the OAS is some kind of neutral think tank. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like a neighborhood association. And, I mean, yeah, like, and it's like, oh, if you want to be real specific about it, it's like, oh, why don't you just call it a coup by the right-wing, right-wing, like, oligarchical, land-owning class of Bolivia? And it's just like, okay, fine, who do you think's backing them up? And do you think they could have got away with it if they didn't have, like, you know, the go-ahead from, let's say, larger concerns? I'm not saying that you will have any obligation to know things.

You certainly don't. And, frankly, I kind of suspect that knowledge just brings misery. But that being said, if your instinct is to side with the police and the military, you're just, you know, you're just mask off revealing who you truly are. Right. And, you know, especially to, like, just the average guy, you really don't have to have, like, you really don't have to pretend, like, you know, you have a nuance take on what you may think has been, like, election fraud or anything like that.

You really don't. Who cares? Just be against it. It's fine. No one's looking for you. Like, maybe if you post about it, you'll get a reply from someone named, like, Joanna and then 38 numbers. And it's a fucking stock image of, like, you know, a fucking woman with a headband.

But that's it. That's fine. You can deal with that. With all the tricks and tips we've given you on replying to people on Twitter by now, you should be able to deal with that. It's fine. Well, shall we transition now to domestic front where I would say that the news on, in the political sphere of this country over the past week can be summed up simply by saying,

billionaires, billionaires, billionaires. We got to love them, folks. They're becoming more popular than ever. Where do you want to begin? Michael Bloomberg or Bill Gates? Michael Bloomberg. Michael Bloomberg. Okay.

I always want to start with him. He's a diminutive manlet. No, no, no, no. He's like, can we do this without bigotry? Like, Michael Bloomberg, say what you will about his politics. Like, him as a person, what he's done with his life. Just his psychopathic need to hoard money. He will be Obama for short men.

Short men need a role model. We've had short presidents before. Yeah, but like when everyone was short. Before the invention of like photography or like TV. Yeah. Like, you know, like Ulysses S. Grant was four foot five, but nobody knew that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He like, yeah.

He wore lifts. Don't write in. I know photographs exist in this civil war. But you had to stand still for every hour. All the photographs of him, he's sitting down. That's the drill. That's how you get elected president in that time. You're the only guy smart enough to realize, if I sit down, I'll think I'm tall.

Well, you know, William Henry Harrison died just like, you know, within three months of his inauguration. It was because he got an infection while getting the chad surgery. All right. So as I understand it, Bloomberg has now filed papers to get on the, what in Alabama? Or like he's, okay. Alabama had the earliest filing deadline. Right. So as technically, unless something has changed in the past 24 hours, he's still making up his mind.

Yeah. But he's holding the option open to, to run. Now the thing about Bloomberg is the fascinating thing about this is that he seems to be, and I don't know whether or not to believe this, but according to the people around him, like there's that Howard Wilson guy who's another one of these Clinton remora fish. Yeah. Who has now signed on to be like Bloomberg's guy. He's been a fixture in New York municipal politics for a while now.

Yeah. So like apparently like they're saying that he would, if he would run, he would run in the Democratic primary and not in the general in which he would actually be kind of a spoiler candidate. Yeah. But the fascinating thing about that is I know he like an apparently Bloomberg has, was encouraged to run by Jeff Bezos an even more, an even bigger billionaire. And they're like, you know, Mike, we need you to take up the mantle. Like, you know, you, we need, we need you to get out there because, you know, you're such a popular well liked guy. Like he's, he's the most likable face of billionaires in America.

Mike, give them that old Bloomberg charm. Everyone knows. Oh, by the way, Bloomberg was mayor of New York for how many terms? Three. The military didn't intervene then. That's true. Yeah. But yeah.

So like the fascinating thing is like, okay, so if he ran the general election, like the conventional wisdom would be like he would be the type of spoiler candidate that would sort of ensure Trump getting a second term, right? Probably would probably hurt the Democrats. It would probably hurt the day, right? But running in a Democratic primary. I mean, tell me if you disagree, like it's very hard for me to see how him running in the Democratic primary at this late in the game would do anything other than take votes away from Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and like it would redound only to the benefit of Sanders and Warren. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. The thing is, you know, a poll recently came out, the fastest poll that came out show that if Bloomberg ran, he'd get like 4% of the vote. That's where he'd start out as, you know, kind of similar numbers as Tom Steyer, the other billionaire who's already in the race. Jesus Christ. And the thing is, you know, the people, the presumably affluent primary voters who would vote for Bloomberg knowing nothing else, not when he's not even running, hasn't even made up his mind yet, like none of them would vote for Sanders. Like, this is just continuing to fracture the anybody but Sanders field, which obviously benefits Sanders then. Yeah, no, I mean, I would enjoy seeing it.

If he's just doing the primary, like go for it. I want to see like Mayor Pete flustered because it'll be like Pete with Biden where he feels like he has to respect him, but they're occupying the same lane. Yeah, yeah. And you know, Bloomberg with a late entry with all this money behind him, he's worth, what, $24 billion? Yeah. What is doing what? The terminals. We don't need the terminals anymore.

That's like a thing from the 80s. I use it every day. I use it. I wake up, I put in, I put in an option to buy Swiss Franks. I'm losing approximately $175,000 a month because I don't know anything else and I'm just doing trades that I read about in Bonfire or the Vanities. But it's about investment, it's about EBITDA, it's about markets, it's about, you know, you put the pull option where the put is and you, you know, the only thing that comes out, you fudge the numbers, pure profit, bing, bing, boom. You 100%, yeah, you got your interest rates, boom, you fucking hit that currency swap, bam, you're doing arbitrage, boom. You're doing like currency trading, but you're only trading like Deutsche Marks and Franks.

Can I have some of the Siamese kingmarks? Do I send death threats through the Bloomberg terminal? Yes, I figured out a way. So he cuts himself a big check and he goes negative and he attacks, you know, the people whose votes that he needs, specifically Biden, Biden, Buttigieg right now and, you know, some Warren voters. Yeah, but like, it's just, and the other thing, if I understand correctly about Bloomberg's strategy, is that they're not even going to contest any of the early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. Yeah, I read that, yeah. And he's like, only he's going to put everything on the Super Tuesday and he's like, we're going to run the table and that's where we're going to make our split, which is insane. Oh, absolutely.

It's absolutely insane because like, as we've talked about, like, most of the voters don't even decide who they're going to vote for in like two weeks in. And if you just see all of the media coverage of like the early parts of the primary, it's just like you're just already getting in the vote late. Like nobody's thinking about you. So the thing is, that has never worked. People have done that before. It's never where Rudy Giuliani, another mayor of New York City, literally did that in 2008 and he ate shit. It's the political equivalent of like, okay, I'm just going to do an all nighter before midterms. And, but, you know, he has the money to stick around for a long time, especially if Buttigieg and Biden faltered, which is good again, because again, that fractures anybody but Bernie Field.

Dude, Amy is just going to pick him up and whip him across the table. And it's also funny to imagine like he could just cut a check for a hundred million dollars of anti Pete Buttigieg. Oh my God. And that would rock. That would be such a delight for everyone. I will happily work. I will happily work on his anti Pete campaign. Guys, we've, I think we got a backer for our Pete Buttigieg anti male circumcision pickup truck.

We did it. We did it. You know, like the big sign truck, like that guy was his. Mr. Weeks. Mr. Weeks. That guy owns. About how Bernie hates Bernie so much. He just started writing, you know, Hitler did some good things.

That guy owns. So we had an idea to do a similar, a similar sign truck, but just, just stating, I mean, it's probably, I don't think the audience knows, but we had this a long conversation about the, the sign truck. Well, we all discovered this, this lunatic from online named Mr. Weeks, who's like friends with near attack. He said, even though he said like an absolute moron, he bought a truck. He rented, you know, I can't describe it any other way. It's a crazy people truck. It's a truck where like, it's a sign printed on a big truck, but like every line is in a different font.

It's like, it looks like a geo cities. Yeah. And we, what we discovered is there's actually, that's a company that will for like a week, they'll like, they'll do all the job. You just give them the image or maybe you just give them the text and say, give me the crazy person package. And they just, you know, plaster on a truck and they drive it around wherever you want. And I was just thinking, so this company just solely caters to insane people. Like you call them and you say, hi, I'm a lunatic. And I want a truck with a, can I get a bunch of like dead fetuses?

Give me some like papyrus font, comic sans, like a URL that's seven words long, you know, stuff like that. And it's, it's so, it's such a great crazy person thing because like, if you really want to get a cause out there, it's easy to like, bot things on Twitter and like abuse, like ad algorithms. If you pay enough money, you can get something like circulating on Facebook. But it's like, that's such like an old guy way of thinking like, think about it when people are in traffic. They're going to see, they're going to see my, they're going to see my thing about how, you know, the Turkish have been wiretapping me. How many people are in Manhattan every day, like 50 million? Yeah.

And they're all going to see this truck. Yeah. They're going to, they're going to see this thing. And then like, my wife has to let me have my son on the weekend. Well, the funny thing about that is that I remember when he did it, Mr. Weeks was like, yeah, like, we, you know, we parked the truck in front of like New York's biggest TV and radio station. Stephen Colbert is going to walk by and say, I got to put you on TV. And it wasn't covered about, you know, his TV or radio station, but he did promise that he was like, but that's not all. Like the crazy person truck will be coming to like your small town and community in the weeks and months to come. He's not even going to find me to take the truck to New Hampshire.

I was, that was like an ice cream truck for me. I was just sitting outside my apartment building waiting for it to come. So wait, like, was our idea that we wanted to have a Pete Buttigieg crazy person truck. Yes. That purported to be from the Buttigieg campaign where it was like, Buttigieg, I will end the Holocaust of male circumcision. I think, yeah, the Friends of Pete. The thing was Buttigieg. Okay, so right now, who appeals to cranks in the race?

It's Tulsi. Tulsi is like the candidate for people who are like, there needs to be a president who addresses YouTube demonetization. But like, if we get some of those people on the Pete, like if we cause like a Pete civil war, most of Pete supporters, they're like, they were born wearing like Patagonia three quarter flee zip ups. They're all McKinsey people. They're just all who you'd expect them to be. Also the Patagonia vests over a tucked in college shirt. The vest is like, that's like Marine Dress Blues.

That's where it's like a burial of a wonk. But if we get like, if we get people in there who like show up to Pete shit and they're like, all right, I'm here. I'm here to end like the peniles, the Holocaust. Like it will just, it will throw the camp into a ray. See, the problem with it is that company that, you know, does the vans, I feel like if you call them and you're kind of laughing about it, they'll be like, hey, you're not a real crazy person. Yeah. You're pulling my like, yeah, I don't want your money.

Fuck off. You know, in order to apply to get one of the crazy person truck, they're like, please provide press clippings of all your letters to the editor going back 10 years. Oh man. Like, I feel like, all right, I feel like I have probably the most familiarity with like crazy. I feel like if I just do some Dan Quinn syntax when we contact them, we'll be okay. Use the Dan Quinn soundboard. Oh yeah. I need that thing.

I need to, that's, I mean, it's part of my Bloomberg terminal. I'll use that to order my trades, the Dan Quinn soundboard. I actually don't know what a burn terminal is. I'm picturing a speaking spell from Wall Street people with just a dollar sign. You press it at like an ATM. It just shits out money. I like the idea of it having like, yeah, it's like a, it's like a Kong toy with peanut butter in it. The traders get to lick the peanut butter out when they make a good trade.

Yeah. I made $50 billion doing this. All right. How about this though? I mean, I guess the fascinating thing about Bloomberg is this idea that Jeff Bezos was like, Mike, we need you in the race. It looks like Warren and Sanders have a real go at it and they could slightly raise our taxes.

Again, we'll still be billionaires. Isn't the idea that there are all these billionaires out there who have so much money they're going to waste it all on a vanity presidential campaign. But the idea that that money would just be taken from them in taxation is just like they can't bear it. Doesn't that prove that they need to have this money taken away from them? Well, I mean, the argument, the argument that we've seen this past week is like, no, they know how to give away their money.

Okay. It's weird that they, it's weird that all these guys need their own individual foundations. Really, really strange shit. Well, okay. That was the article. Okay. So Bill Gates was also interviewed and, you know, he said something to the effect of like, you know, nobody pays more in taxes than I do.

Like I've paid $10 billion in taxes. I'd even pay $20 billion in taxes. But when I start to think about paying $100 billion in taxes, then I have to start doing math to add up what I have left over, which in his case would be $9 billion, which is like the fact that he's even willing to admit that he has $100 billion is insane. And then people just started saying like, yeah, exactly. He's spent his money way better than the government ever could. He's giving it all away.

He's the world's best philanthropist. As people have pointed out, ever since he's committed to giving away all his money, he's doubled in his net worth. So what does that tell you about what these people really regard? Ryan Grimm pointed that out. Yeah. Yeah. Giving away money, what it actually is to them, which is like a way of dodging taxes.

And like, or I'd be like, how does that, I've given away all my money and I've ended up with twice as much as I had when I start. How does like, how does that work? Yeah. Right. Like he's ostensibly retired. Yeah. He doesn't, he doesn't draw salary anymore yet.

He's still making money. It's funny how that works. And also the hilarious thing about Bill Gates. I think it was other people like, you know, are you telling me that the government knows how to spend his money better than he does and all the charitable work that he's done, the places that he's vetted. That was Liz Mayer said that when it's like, he was giving that money to Epstein. Yeah.

And even like this, one of the specific things with Epstein, I think there should be a general rule. If you gave money to the MIT media lab, no, you, you, everyone has a better idea what to do with your money than you do. But just the, the idea that, yeah, Tom Snyder is already in the race and Jeff Bezos is like, Mike, we need you. Just like, just having, just having that much money, I'm sure. I mean, obviously.

We need your famous charisma. Yeah. That anyone is, is, is like really wants, not even to run for president, but to see him on the news or hear his opinion about anything. So one person who does, of course, is Brett Stevens. So I'm going to read from the New York Times here and feel free to stop me if you just, and you just can't take any more of it because I'm going to, you know, this is quite torturous, but I, I wanted to give you a little, a little, a little, a little taste of what some of the,

the, the five people who are huge fans of Mike Bloomberg. What's the headline of this piece? Run Mike, run. Hmm. Which is what I would be saying to Mike if I trapped him on my private estate after I told him he had an hour head start. That's funny. The opposite is so much more likely to happen.

Yeah. You know, I legit, I, I had not even thought about Brett Stevens since the bed bug thing. That's like that, that is, we always say this about opinion columnists. They suck. They can't do anything. They're just like the lowest of humanity, the least abled humans. But I will say this, a normal, like mentally healthy, regular person, if they had done something identical to what Stevens had done in the bed bug affair, they would have killed

themselves. That's like the only, the only thing you can do, like, you just like, you find a tweet with three favorites making fun of you and you cause a national incident and the, like the dumb ass president scores one on you. Like just everyone's like, you try to get this guy fired. Like literally everyone is just shitting on you. Not only that, but Brett Stevens whole thing was like, he would never say that to my face. Let's have a real dialogue and the college, the professor, the college he worked at invited

Stevens to have a talk with the professor and Stevens was like, absolutely, let's do it. And then, and then he backed out instantly like a week before the event when it turned out that they would let like students in the public or anyone see what would happen. Yeah. I thought we were going to have a talk like in the bathroom together. I saw that Brett Stevens article. I didn't even click on it.

I just thought, man, you've never had a good one. Like not even like, not even a fun one, like even like the other conservative columnists like John Cass will come out with just like fun crazy ones. Like if the if the Starbucks cashier doesn't say Merry Christmas, I go in the bathroom and paint the walls. Yeah. Yeah. Like even like Ross Ross like when even when Ross sucks, it's like fun.

Yeah. It's like, oh, you're at least trying or Drair or even like David Brooks. Like you can you can David Brooks that never has fun, but like at least he like gives you a hint of his inner life, which is deeply fraught and miserable. Yeah. I feel his pain, whereas like with Brett, there's like, there's just no affect whatsoever. There's zero human quality is absolutely just nothing like I don't like his life doesn't seem interesting.

None of his internal thoughts seem interesting. I feel like if there was like a cerebral type thing and I could just read everything he's ever done in his life, I would turn it off like 10% of the way through just because he's so fucking dull. There's not he has no qualities. Can I give a minor post bed bug update to Brett Stevens, which is that a friend of mine, this only makes Brett Stevens whole thing more baffling, but also makes sense in a weird way.

A friend of mine sent me a photo from he was at like a conference center in San Francisco just sent me a photo for a conference on neurosurgery featured speaker at General Scientific Session three from exactly 11. This says it on the side 11.41 a.m. to 12.10 p.m. 29 minutes Brett Stevens speaking at the conference of age of reason in neurosurgery will renew it emphasis on rational thought and evidence based reason as the cornerstones of neurosurgery. Why are you booking Brett Stevens at a conference about neurosurgery? Well there's a lot of like these sort of like postmodern neurosurgeons who are just

running around in people's brains with like because it's about what makes them feel good or they're like, you know, they've read too much Foucault and they're just like, you know, the hypothalamus is a jail. That's prison. You need to like for yourself of it. They're giving people lobotomies left and right who don't need them. So like we just he wants back like an evidence sort of like classical classically liberal brain surgery is what he's advocating for.

Also like the brainstem was invented in Israel. So like, you know, if you're for BDS. If you want to boycott Israel, like, okay, fine. Enjoy your body's autonomic nervous system because, you know, you're going to have to quit that. All right. So I'm just going to give you a taste of Brett Stevens. Run Mike.

Run. A taste of pure flower thrown into my mouth. Run Mike. Run. A Bloomberg Trump contest. You know what this is? You know what this is? Writing a column that's like a very serious, I'm excited for Mike Bloomberg.

He should run. That's just, that's like, imagine if the troll face were perfectly smooth. Like, I've got you or have you been triggered? You've just you've just entered the rap scallions layer. Damn, Brett. So the subhead for this is a Bloomberg Trump contest would one be would be one between a maker and a faker. And this is like this is this is the best thing about the people who were right for

Bloomberg is they really think like, oh man, the one person Trump does not want to see in a general election is a guy who's a real billionaire. And like that, like to the American people that that contrast would be so profound when they realized that like, wait a second, Trump is just a, he's just an ill mannered fraud. Whereas, wait, wait, Michael Bloomberg is worth 10 times as much money as Trump. And he doesn't have to lie about his wealth. That's a guy what made the terminals wait, wait, wait, wait, you're telling me that's the same Bloomberg from Bloomberg News, my favorite TV station.

Sorry, listen to this. Mike Bloomberg should run for president for two reasons that ought to be dispositive. First, he would be a very good president, potentially a great one. Second, he stands a much better chance of beating Donald Trump than anyone in the current Democratic field. Wrong. That is absolutely so insane. John Delaney has a better chance.

If Bloomberg ran into general election against Trump, it would be like a McGovern situation. I would be shocked if he won one state and it would probably be like Virginia or shamefully New York. Yeah. He would be absolutely slaughtered. He would be annihilated. And this idea, like he's a real billionaire. Jacob Baccarac made this point this week and it's like, it's the only like, okay, oh,

maybe Trump isn't actually a billionaire, whatever, he plays one on TV, which is for the vast majority of Americans, all they need to know. Given the choice between a fake billionaire like Donald Trump, who essentially gives people permission to be as crude, evil, and nasty as he is, like that is the deal Trump makes with like the American psyche. Is that like in his own behavior, he grants people permission to be as vile as he is and sort of live out in publicly their worst instincts that they feel like up here to four, like they had to choke on or like, you know, like a hold back in some, in public or sort of

in polite society, whereas Bloomberg is the real billionaire who just won't even let you drink soda or have a blast six, like he doesn't give you permission to do anything other than grovel before him, eat healthy and, you know, just a work hard, whereas Trump is just like, at least he lets you eat, like he's going to, he's going to fuck you over. He's obviously a fraud, hates you, but at least he gives you permission to be an asshole, which is what I really think many people truly want out of this life. At least he takes you out to a nice dinner. I mean, he's going to leave before the check comes, but you're still eating the dinner.

Yeah. Bloomberg, I mean, the only reason to actually support Bloomberg is because you want to escape from LA to become real. That's it. I really think if Bloomberg were the nominee, he won't be, but if he were, it would actually irreparably split the Democratic Party because a solid quarter of the party would at least hesitate before voting for him. And I think at least 10, 15% would just say, no, it's a bridge too far.

No, yeah. The main question is whether Democrats are inclined to allow the former New York City mayor to save them from themselves until last week, the conventional wisdom was that they weren't so inclined. Then came the New York Times upshot Sienna College poll showing Trump competitive with or ahead of Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the six battleground states that will likely decide the 2020 election. If Trump is this strong now in the midst of his impeachment woes and all the general distaste

for him, where is he going to be in 11 months in a contest against opponents with nicknames like Sleepy Joe, Crazy Bernie, or Uber left Elizabeth Warren. This guy has no feel whatsoever for anything. So like what is so Mike, but it's impossible to come up with a big name for him. He could never come up with it. He could never call him little Mike, tiny Mike, small Mike, the small beat, the small bean was very nasty to me today. I want to put you in my pocket.

Ah, you're so tiny. But like Sleepy Joe, Crazy Bernie, but then he's just like, oh, Brett, you need to finish strong with the third one here. Comedy rule of threes, Uber left Elizabeth Warren. That phrase would never come out of Trump's mouth. There's already a Warren nickname. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. But the case for a Bloomberg candidacy is stronger and infinitely simpler in a field divided between politically feeble centrists, unelectable progressives, and one talented but awfully young small city mayor, he can win. How so? Because his money raising instantly neutralizes the Trump campaign's formidable fundraising advantage. How?

What do you do? He can spend money on a campaign. No shit. I mean, he could cut himself a check for $50 billion. Fine. But he's not going to. Did Trump do that? No.

Trump actually bought the presidency for a song. Because he also neutralizes Trump's strongest reelection argument, which is that whether you love me or hate me, you've got to vote for me. The rights charge sheet against today's Democrats is that they hate capitalism, hate Israel, hate the cops, think of America as a land of inequity, and never met attacks or regulation they didn't love. Yeah. So fuck them.

Against Bloomberg. Fuck them. They're assholes. They're wrong. You don't need them. Against Bloomberg, it all falls flat. Yeah. Yeah.

They've never characterized anyone as a raving far left lunatic, despite there being no evidence. They didn't do it to John Kerry. They didn't do it to fucking Hillary, who is pretty much everything Bloomberg is, save a couple of things. They wouldn't just lie. They wouldn't just say communist mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's been mayor of New York City.

Yeah. Like that's always, and by the way, Brett's so fucking, Brett is like, you ever see, like we were talking about this before we started recording, like those epic threads people do where it's like they're just arguing against a straw man. It's always like, well, like even a conservative wouldn't argue something this like sort of tawdry and stupid. They would go for something else. But like Brett is, Brett is just like a fucking straw man.

He's a training AI for like tedious liberalism, like this shit fucking sucks. Just give this to like a, give this come to a 58 year old man who's like, me and my grandson are going to meme on Robert De Niro for being a cock. They should give this calm to the guy who shot those people and chill. Yeah. Like that's a more accurate representation. This shit. This shit.

Like he's like, I, like when Brett's team is like, oh, I might offend some lefties. I'm offended. But like only on the virtue of like how shit is like how little he's trying, just real quick. Or maybe he's trying as hard as he can and his little fucking walnut brain. This is all he can accomplish. If Matt were here, he would correctly point out that the position of New York City mayor, despite being probably one of the biggest executive offices you can hold in the country.

Like if you're in your mayor of New York City, like as an executive position, you have more power, authority, budget, everything than like most of the states, like most of the governor. Second hardest job in America. Yeah. And in America, but like it is a, it is the kiss of death for any national political office. It's never happened. It's despite a couple of like truly pathetic attempts like John Lindsay or whatever.

And now we're most recently to Blasio. Matt was, by the way, he was wrong on one that because his contention was a New York city mayor has never reached higher office being governor, senator, president, vice president. And we met like some guy at a bar who said, wait, what about, I don't even remember the name. It was like some guy from the late 19th century. I'm not going to fact check Matt on the show when you don't even have the, no, I'm just telling you because that's like the thing that Matt loves to say.

That's like a piece of trivia. I mean, I think he's correct. The only, the only, the closest thing is that Teddy Roosevelt was chief of New York City's police department and then he became president, but whatever. Just this is, this is Brett's, where he says all this, oh, and because Bloomberg is what Trump only pretends to be a bona fide billionaire and proven entrepreneur. Donald Trump would never pretend to be five seven. In 2012, the Romney campaign tried to create a contest between makers and takers.

A Bloomberg Trump contest would be one between a maker and a faker. No, what? It would be a contest between a bully and the person he's beating up. Okay. You realize, you know, a big reason why Romney lost, and I really do think, and you know, I don't know. It's like, it's like a novelty to think about, but I really do think it was possible for another Republican to beat Obama, though Obama ran a really good campaign just because one

is Romney fucked up a lot and two, because nobody knew what Romney did. Like they just saw this like weird rich man and nobody had a clue how he made his money and he didn't even bother to explain it. He just gave up on it and just said, no, I'm just really good in the business at the business factory. Well, because any attempt to explain what Bain Capital actually does would be, you know, on its face, so reprehensible, it's just hollowing out once viable American corporations and then just like gutting them from the inside.

Also, Romney was the villain. Also Romney was so out of touch, he thought, oh, well, people like me because I make money. Like, right? That's not a problem. And all of his advisors like, yeah, you got it, governor. No, but like with Bloomberg, it's the same thing. Bloomberg is like, you said worth $50 billion was more than I thought, honestly. And can he, could he ever explain why to your average person?

Can he explain why he is worth 50 billion? Like, you know what, give me, I'll give you an hour. Just explain it to me. And Bloomberg, I can't believe, like I'm saying this sentence, about one 1,000th as charismatic or likable as Mitt Romney. Yeah. Like completely. Oh, yeah.

Mitt Romney is like, yeah, he fucking sucks and that campaign sucked. But like, he's like, he's a telegenic guy who like loves his wife. He's not just this like sniveling grimacing little fuck who's like, I don't want you to have soda. Like, yeah. Like, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney would actually like have a better chance against Donald Trump, I would say. And he goes here, all this should terrify the Trump campaign.

Yes, Bloomberg has some weaknesses as a candidate, some weaknesses, which are, these include his age, 77, a less than charismatic speaking style, and a reputation as a scold who wants to take away your supersize fizzy drink. There you go. Okay. His Trumpian reluctance to release his full tax returns and the fact that he's a technocratic master of the universe in an era of populist demagoguery, none of these should be a deal breaker.

No, they're all deal breakers. Yeah. None of these should be deal breakers for any persuadable voter. Okay. No, they are. He's covered his bases there. Yeah, there you go. All these things aren't a problem.

So what are you going to do? Lecture people to say you should actually like this shit. Trump could win the general on the soda issue alone. Yes. Literally. Literally. Yeah. Fucking Reagan Mondale numbers.

Just the soda election. That's how this country deserves to end just the soda election. It should just be like American history, 1776 to 2020, the soda riots. Yeah. Last paragraph here, it says, but if Trump arises, like that's like a deep lore thing that's mentioned in a really bad sci-fi movie. I remember you. I was spiting alongside you during the soda riots.

Last graph here, he just says, but if trouncing Donald Trump is essential to the preservation of liberal democracy, then it won't do to cross fingers and hope he stumbles. A Bloomberg candidacy would be a gift to Democrats, the country, and the world, sneer at your own peril. I love that he couldn't just end. It would be a gift to the Democrats, the country, and the world. The last sentence is just already anticipating how many people are going to shit all over him and be like, you do this at your own peril.

It's just like, have you been offended? Yeah. I love it. Yeah. He's like, you can make fun of me and call me a quote, a bitchmouth lizard, but you can say I have bitchmouth, but you're only, it's a mirror you're pointing at yourself. Awful. Can we have like another, like, preview?

I have one more actual reading series. Okay, well, I do want to go on to the Bill Gates thing. Okay, well, let's talk about Gates for a second then. Because Gates is worth $109- Oh, my Bloomberg is a real billionaire. Gates is a multi-billionaire. No, Gates is worth $109 billion. And again, how has he made that money from, I don't know, squatting on the intellectual

property created by other people? That's the thing. It's funny. So it's two issues, really. They're intricately linked, but I think at the sake of this discussion, we can kind of separate them. One is, did he earn that money? Does he have a right?

Did he rightfully make that money? And the second is, should he be in control of that money? And the answer is no to both of those questions. Right. But I mean, those are the two main points that people, especially young people, defend Bill Gates, and they say, you know, one is, oh, he does so much good with his money. So therefore, he should be able to continue to dictate how to use $100 billion. And the other is, oh, well, you know, he did so much innovation in technology.

So he has it. And I realize, wait a minute, none of you actually know how he made his money in the first place. None of you have any idea. None of you watched the TNT made for TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley. So how did Bill Gates make his money? I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the movie. OK, OK.

Right. So yeah, we don't know. All right, all right. He invented Xbox. No, here's what he did. Here's what his innovation was. It wasn't a technological innovation. It was a market innovation, which was bundling that you could buy an operating system and

it would use proprietary software from Microsoft. And he had bought the proprietary software that became the Microsoft Office suite from other smaller computer firms. And that led to the antitrust case in the 1990s, where he straight up muscled Netscape, which was like the biggest web browser in the early Internet, straight up muscled them out of the market by packaging Windows 95 with Internet Explorer. And by the time the case was resolved, Microsoft lost the case. They lost the case and then it ended, they on appeal, they ended up with the settlement,

where they had to promise that they would separate the operating system business with the software business and that their operating system would be a neutral platform to allow competitors. By that time, Netscape had gone bankrupt and Internet Explorer was the only Internet browser. And it wasn't until... Into this day. This is the only good Internet browser. I use it on my...

So they... I use it on my Bloomberg terminal. So they lost, but they still won. And they essentially cornered the market in operating systems, because you can imagine... I mean, there were things like Linux with an open source operating system that has a compatible with each other, but those never really took off. And the Windows OS, and when Apple fell apart, the Windows OS is what cornered the market. And so every peripheral was going to have to be built around Microsoft.

But to the second issue of, did he earn that money? This isn't... Well, he didn't sit there and write the fucking source code for MS-DOS. But even if he did, I would say, let's say... Even if he did, I would say that nobody ever has earned a billion dollars, because when you're talking about that much money, it's like, you inherit it, you do insider trading, or you're just... You can't earn that much money without the work of thousands of other people.

But for ratio-algorithm fantasy, even if you come from nothing, you can work really hard, and maybe you have a really good idea, and you're rewarded by the economy for having a good idea. And in practical terms, that is just not what happens, and that's not what happens with Bill Gates. He didn't invent computers, he didn't invent operating systems, he was just a cutthroat in the market. But again, if you're talking about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or any of these people, a thing

that's bothered me for a long time is, especially among young people and shit, who all just talk about them like they're geniuses, and to the extent to which they are, they're only real geniuses in marketing and business shit, which I don't regard to be worthwhile human endeavors. No, not at all. Right. It could be the leading cultural cancer in the last 30 years, in fact. If we're going to say that financialization set a horrible course for the economy and

just the lives of everyone, you can say the same thing about what marketing and the marketization of the culture has done for the last, the exact same time period. Well, he made a shitload of money, so fuck you. He wins, he did it. Well, I mean, to be fair, the only young people who make those posts are people who are doing drop shipping fraud. So the second argument that people make is, he gave billions of dollars to charity, made devote himself to his charitable, international charitable foundation.

And I saw one famous post that said, well, you know, in the Holocaust, 6 million people died. Oh God. That was good. That was what it was. Gates has saved 6 million lives. He's repaired the Holocaust. Or he's, it was, he canceled out the Holocaust, zeroed it out on the balance sheet.

No, I mean, yeah, that is like, that is business genius mindset. Felix, congratulations, my friend. Yeah, yeah, we did it, guys. We did it. Yo, I'm in the club. I'm just, damn, I just killed the Holocaust. That was the bet. I think his exact wording, and this is like, this is the difference between like, someone

like Brett Stevens and like an actual, like tier one dumb piece of shit. This is the guy, the exact phrase this guy used was, he's basically canceled out the Holocaust. Like, that's an amazing turn of phrase. He could have, he could have done one better and said, like, he's canceled out all of IBM's work in the Holocaust. That, yeah, that was actually what the antitrust case was about. It kind of was.

IBM was involved. But the basic point to make here is, okay, why should one man get to decide how to use a hundred billion dollars, which is an immense amount of productive capital, and why should that not be under democratic control? How about just like, I mean, like again, one billion dollars is so much money that like, I think most people don't even really understand the difference between a billionaire and a millionaire, because like, a lot of people are like, well, our minds cannot process that information.

They're like, you know, Bernie says there doesn't want billionaires to exist, like you're talking about yourself, buddy. It's like, what is it going to do, write a thousand other books? Like the difference in being like having a million dollars and having a billion dollars is like astronomical. And the idea that like what Bill Gates said is like, hmm, you know, I start doing math and if you tax like the rate of a hundred billion dollars, what would I have left over? And as I said earlier this week, the answer is more money than you could ever spend, use,

need, or like it just, there's no way that you, your children, their children, or like generations of your family could ever not be wealthy. That's what that much money means. There's nothing you could do that would stop you from being wealthy. No, he didn't do a hundred billion dollars worth of labor, nor did he contribute a hundred billion dollars worth of innovations of technological innovations, which even if he had, like, again, if he hadn't done it, some other guy would have. Right.

All right. Well, I know we're going, I know we're going long, but I have one last thing for us to do and let's be honest. I mean, there was some fat. I do also have one other piece, which is it's something in the back of my mind. And I saw somebody else actually pointed this out that there's something about the Michael Bloomberg thing and then the dust up about Gates that it's just a little fishy to me. And the fact that when Gates said that about the wealth tax, he wasn't talking about Bernie's

wealth tax, which is far, far more punitive to him, which would take far more than Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, which is more of a haircut. But he singled out Elizabeth Warren and the video cycle became Warren is a threat to the billionaires. He's a threat. She is a threat to Mike Bloomberg. She is a threat to Bill Gates, to that whole class of people, which, well, not as much as Bernie is.

No, I think you're totally right about that. And I think there's a lot of K-fabe going on here. And that's really the only threat about Bloomberg entering the race. If it really is, I'm just going to be the heel and I'll go on the debates and I'll just make it a big point to be this, this, this anti-Warren. Yeah, to be this sick, simpering, like, nasally asshole who, like, just, I'm just going to play Mr. Burns on fucking television so I can be the heel to Liz Warren's face. No, I think there's a good amount of that.

It's very much a, you know, don't throw me in the briar patch, sort of wealth tax thing. But then you saw, you know, you got to see the two candidates' responses to Bill Gates and Warren's was one of those trickly, annoying fucking political tweets. Now that's why don't we meet for a beer, Bill? Yeah. And Bernie's was billionaire should not exist. Right. Well, there you go.

Pretty easy. Pretty straight fucking forward. I got one last thing here. We're going long here, but this is connected to what we were talking about earlier. This is courtesy of another New York Times shithead, David Leonhart, titled Wake Up Democrats. You won't beat Trump by taking unpopular positions. And I want to read this here. David Leonhart.

Because just see if you can discern any actual content in this besides the idea that the popular Democratic positions are, in fact, unpopular. Oh, wait, wait. David Leonhart is a New York Times guy. Yeah, he is. This is part of his newsletter. So maybe this is a wake up call that Democrats need. My old colleagues at the upshot published a poll yesterday that rightly terrified a lot

of Democrats. The poll showed Trump with a good chance to win reelection given his standing in swing states like Wisconsin. But it's one fucking poll, and then there's a multitude of other polls that show Bernie winning Pennsylvania by 10 points or Michigan by 15 points. It's one fucking poll. So shut the fuck up. Well, they found the one poll that they've said is to be like, uh-oh, like the alarm

of the Democrats. You've gone too far this time. So the whole point of this piece is that Democrats should be scared, and they need to be doing unspecified things to win over the unspecified voter. So if you get, if you're going to judge on the polls that show Warren winning Michigan by eight points or Bernie winning Michigan by 15 points, are you going to make the same fucking argument? Yeah.

Because those polls exist. This was the sentence by Nate Cohn that stood out to me. Nearly two thirds of the Trump voters who said they voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 say they'll back the president in hypothetical matchups against Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren. Democrats won in 2018 by running a smartly populist campaign focused on reducing health care costs and helping ordinary families. The candidates avoided supporting progressive policy dreams that are obviously unpopular

like mandatory Medicare and border decriminalization. I mean, again, fact check on the idea that Medicare for all is obviously broadly unpopular. A lot of candidates also did run on Medicare for all. The 2020 presidential candidates are making a grave mistake by ignoring the lessons of 2018. I'm not saying they should run to the Mythical Center and support widespread deregulation or corporate tax cuts, which are also unpopular. They can still support all kinds of ambitious progressive ideas, a wealth tax, universal

Medicare buy-in, and more without running a fowl of popular opinion. They can even decide that there are a couple of issues on which they are going to fly in the face of public opinion. But if they're going to do that, they also need to signal in other ways that they care about winning the votes of people who don't consider themselves very liberal. Okay, so his, by the way, so his thesis, or really his starting point is people who voted for Trump in 2016 say they're going to vote for Trump in 2020. That's it.

That's the whole fucking point. And that's why we have to rearrange all of the fucking policy preferences in the primary around that fucking banal fact. Democrats in short need to start treating the 2020 campaign with the urgency it deserves because a second Trump term would be terrible for the country. I mean, this whole thing about like a second Trump term, yeah, it'll be bad, but like, Weigel's pointed this out. It's like, that horse has already left the fucking barn.

Like just based on who he's appointed to the Supreme Court alone, like the most important election has happened. We lost. It's over. The bad things are already happening and going to be happening. So why not just fucking take a bet on a long shot? Also, all the people writing this, they're fine with it. They're fine.

You're doing great. Nancy Pelosi is doing great. She doesn't have to legislate. And she gets to raise money off Trump. Most of the fucking Democratic Party is doing great. All the fucking consultants are doing great. They get to fucking blast out emails to their fucking list every fucking day saying, well, did you see what Donald Trump did this time donate $15 to the D triple C?

So like, this is really short. I just want to get to like the nut graph here and he says, what would more urgency look like? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would find some way to acknowledge and appeal to swing voters Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would offer more of a vision than either of them has to date. Pete Buttigieg arguably the best position to take advantage of this moment would reassure Democrats who are understandably nervous about his lack of experience.

And perhaps Corey Booker or Amy Klobuchar can finally appeal to more of Biden's uninspired supporters. Can you discern any actual like statement in that paragraph other than they need to do more to win the votes of all voters? This is like people like sports commentators who were like, I'll tell you what, if the Giants don't throw that football in the end zone, they don't stand a good chance to win in this game. It's honestly thinner gruel than I remember most pun to treat fucking being.

He's just saying like, okay, he doesn't actually say what Warren and Bernie should do to appeal to the swing voters. And then he just says, Biden and Harris need to offer more of a vision than either of them had to date. So my conclusion from this op-ed in the last one we read in this episode is opinion column this like that should be like public access. You should have to pay to get these in a spot. I can't.

No one should be paid for this. This fucking stuff. The only people who should be paid are like artisans like skilled labor, Ross, Rod, like John Cass, like the people Jeff Jacoby, Jeff Jacoby for sure. Family drama or like family drama maven, like the Aaron spelling of columnist Jeff Jacoby. You know what we really need is a new Dave Berry. Yeah, like a like a American humorist who like, you know, goes on like slice of life stuff timeless.

Yeah. You know who tried to be the new Dave Berry was Joel Stein. Oh, that sucked dick. Really? And it was a worse, way worse version than Dave Berry because he just like is sucks and is not funny or interesting as a guy. And he just wrote a book of that's like called an in defense of elitism or something like that.

It's not good like living in the post Dave Berry world, but I'm confident Dave Berry is doing great. Like he's living in South Florida, like you can tell, you know, he's retired now, but yeah, he is keeping his whole family in stitches with his cut ups. Oh my God, dude, I bet like imagine how fun the Berry family Thanksgiving is. He's probably just going around the table, like making light of like, oh, you know, my wife loves fucking real housewives. There's, there's the grandson on the phone again.

That shit's probably awesome. I'm just waiting for the day we all get an email from Dave Berry that just says, I'm back. Oh, I've been waiting for a specific message from Dave Berry telling me to let my body die, join him in satirical paradise. Well, I'm sorry, we couldn't talk about that article more well, it's just my ears just glazed over. But yeah, no, that was that was probably the thinnest gruel that I've shared on the

show, but I think it's important to just get a taste for the gruel that's being ladled out there in the slot buckets across America's newspapers. I do want to add in a hopeful note, which is that, hey, guess what? Bernie Sanders is tied in Iowa for first place. He has the highest floor, the most donors, the most volunteers, and the most money, which makes him the fucking favorite to win it. And by every opinion, Paul shows the most motivated supporters like for sure. Like the people, the vast majority of people who are like, I'm most excited to vote for

X. It's Sanders. So when, you know, when we read these articles and we give you a little taste of what the pundit glass believes, and when you see them say reacting to something like a right wing military coup in Bolivia, it should give you a good indication that their brains are fucking broken and they're lying to you when they fucking hold up Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg or Christ, even Michael Bloomberg as, you know, oh, this will be the sensible nominee.

This is a person with a lot of strengths as a candidate. That's fucking a little bit of lying and a little bit of actual denial because they have fucking baby brains. I'm glad you did the callback, Virgil, because in the same way that they will try to tell you that like Pete Buttigieg is like, he's the best position for the current moment we're in. Wrong. They will say with the same tone of voice and the same look on their face, the exact

same thing when like a guy with mirrored sunglasses, military officers hat and epilates just appears on the TV and says, I am the state, they will say the same thing about that person. Well, if we actually do want to go to the military dictatorship world, first we actually have to elect a left wing socialist president, which we are on the verge of doing. Bernie needs your help. He needs our help. He needs everyone to win Iowa and win New Hampshire and win Nevada. There we go.

I think that's a good place to end it. Till next time, guys. Bye. Bye-bye.