Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Unpacking the Jay-Z Allegations with Meghann Cuniff

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Van and Rachel welcome reporter Meghann Cuniff to discuss the legal aspects of the Jay-Z rape lawsuit (5:58), before breaking down the cultural impact of the news (26:39). Then reactions to the arrest of a suspect in the UnitedHealth CEO’s murder (1:04:04), Lil Duval says women owe Jonathan Majors an apology (1:10:28), and the phrase ‘built like a Mexican’ sparks racial tensions online (1:25:21). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Meghann Cuniff Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? Howellan is on. It is I, Van Lathen, Jr. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Get the... Wait a minute. You've been waiting to do that?

Yeah. I just, for the record, did everybody see this? This is called an assault. Yeah. If nobody understood the definition of assault before, this is called an assault. I didn't ask for this.

I got the blick on me. Let me tell you all something. I just shot Rachel with the nerve gun. We went to... At close. range so it hurt just a dad. We went to shout out to Nate, shout out to Nina Parker.

You know who I met? Who? You know Zuri Hall? Yeah. I met Sean. Who's Sean? Zuri Hall's ex.

Oh, her ex-boyfriend. Yeah. Okay. Were you dying to meet him? It wasn't that I was dying to meet him, but he was a very controversial white guy at the time. Why? Because Zuri, it was so desired amongst black males.

And they would be like, you know, Zuri got a white dude. But Zori is a fantastic, amazing lady. And this guy's very nice as well. I met him. We talked. You had a whole conversation, football. A nice person. Nice person over at Nate.

And I won this. You hit me in my face. I won this nerve gun. And I want everybody at the ring to know that this nerve gun. is the blicky. I got the blicky on me and I'm popping people. How did you witness?

It was a gang. Everybody brought a gift and then you rolled, right? And when you rolled, if you rolled doubles, you got to choose a gift. Okay. Right?

And you choose a gift from the table. Then there's another round. And in that round, because everybody's got their gift. Another round is a speed round. You roll doubles and then you can steal a gift. Did you steal that?

Kalika stole it. Oh, she knows you well. She stole it from me. Now, here's the thing. I will say this. There was two Nerf guns. One Nerf gun was a lot better, but I noticed, and I don't know who this is,

but once the game got super duper competitive, it was getting to the end, his white dude hid his Nerf gun. And I watched him at the end. I know I see you, and if I see you, I'm going to pop you with the blicky. But I was only, just part of the weekend.

So you stole his. No, I stole somebody else's, but I didn't want to, there was a much bigger nerve gun than this one. Did y'all bring the gift that I gave you? Yeah. You put it in the mix? Yeah.

Did people take it? Yeah. I knew it would be popular. So we didn't have a gift, so we got some of Rachel's. Rachel has a army of vibrators at her house. They were gifted to me. Mm-hmm.

And so I thought, well, when I have a game night, I'll gift these to people. Right. I mean, it was like several different types of vibrators. There were. Variety you could choose to choose from. Well, one was called the thumper. Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.

It was the thrust. And then when people saw that, a bunch of freeze-nasted dolls. I knew it would be a hit. Okay. Like, oh, my God. Who brought that? Oh, God. Jeff's out of town next week.

But then we was at your house on Saturday. Yeah. My house before, watching the Texas. Georgia game. Texas loss. Don't want to talk about it. It happened. We're still going to the playoffs.

Still have home field advantage. Playing Clemson. When we win that game, we'll see Georgia again. Again. Now, I think the odds are in our favor. They say it's hard to beat somebody twice. I think it's even harder to do it three times.

Well, I'll tell you like this. Georgia's been putting it on that ass. Okay? I just be honest with you. I don't even know if it's that as much as we just lay an end. when it comes to Georgia. We looked good the first half, to a point, right? We had great yards offensively,

but we weren't doing anything with it at the end. So yes and no, right? We only had three points, but we just fell apart the second half. Yeah. We just did. And whatever. But we had fun.

We had fun. Food. Games. Wings stop. Games after y'all left. We did games after y'all left. Because Jomi showed up late. Jomey showed up late.

Molly came back. Oh, Molly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we play games. It had a good time. Yeah. We're going to cut Blas and she short because the news at the top of the show is so serious. Here's the thing.

Here's the takeaway. We have fun this weekend as a family. You guys come hang out with us one day. We had fun. The dogs were jumping around and everybody was having. Brownie tried to attack my dog several times. I'll let it go. Next time I'm going to bring the blicky.

And every time Brownie tries that. attack Bozeman, I'm a pop this motherfucker. Don't play that yet. I would never do that to your dog. I'm a pop Brownie. How many pounds is Bozeman? He's like 104 pounds. Brownie's 10. Let it go. Don't matter. Let it go. Where I'm from,

those that talk shit get the issue. That's the name of the I love Brownie, but Brownie, me and the Bowesman. All right, we got Megan Cuniff on the show. She is going to give us the legal aspect of something that was pretty unexpected. Jay-Z accused in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 2000 along with Ditty.

We're going to talk to Megan about the legal aspect of this, the lawyer who's filing this case, Tony Busby, Jay-Z's response to this, everything that that means. Then we're going to have a little conversation after that about the cultural aspect of it. We're going to do both of those things on the other side of this break. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the final

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flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about trimfaya, including important safety information. All right, we have a friend of the podcast joining us for what was breaking news yesterday. Megan Kooniff is back. She's a legal affairs journalist reporting from courtrooms in Los Angeles and Orange County. We had you here, Megan, covering all things, Tori Lanes, Megan the Stallion, that trial. And you've been doing so much more before and after that. You can find her work at Legal Affairs and Trials with Megan Cuniff.

She's got a YouTube channel at Megan Cuniff. We're also, you have merch available as well. Oh, wow. I did not know that. I have to check that out. Yes. Obviously, you come in, having written for the New York, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Law and Crime, and many other publications. We're happy to have you here today to break down this breaking news that came out yesterday that Jay-Z has been added to an amended complaint for a lawsuit that was already filed against Diddy.

This is a civil lawsuit filed in New York. and we want to get, we want to understand what's happening here because we know that this had been filed back in, is it October? October, September? Yes, October 20th. Okay, so first question for me.

This was filed back in October. Originally in that suit, we saw that there was, obviously Diddy was the target, but they named Celebrity A and Celebrity B. They did not say who those people wore. We knew one was a man and one was a woman. why did they not, I want to know the strategy here,

why do you think that they did not originally name JZ as Celebrity A, I believe it is, that was the mail in this lawsuit and decided to do it two months later yesterday? Well, I mean, it seems like there could be a lot of reasons for that, but it all kind of goes to negotiations. I mean, it sounds like from JZ standpoint, they had contacted him, contacted his lawyer, and talked about these allegations and tried to get some kind of mediation going. So they might have thought the lawyers for the plaintiff did thought that this gave them some leverage going forward to into negotiations with Jay-Z.

If they had this lawsuit already filed, but he's not named. However, it would make it so easy for them to just name him like that. I mean, it's hard to get inside the strategy room of the plaintiff lawyers here and what exactly they're doing here. But according to just the facts that are on the record, Tony Busby has said that he requested a mediation over this. So there definitely was negotiations or some attempts at negotiations going on before this was filed. So this all had to have been some kind of leverage or something to help in the negotiations here. So they wanted to get Jay-Z, Ragnation, whoever to pay up. And so what they attempted to do was to file this, not name him, going to.

into mediation, hope that he would pay. They obviously didn't. And then they decided to go ahead and name him. Yes. And Tony Busby, the attorney on this, has said that they did not request money from Jay-Z, that they requested a mediation. But I think Jay-Z's side would say that really the only thing that you're seeking in a lawsuit like this is money. That's the remedy in in civil cases outside of an injunction or something like that, but that's not being pursued here. So just the inherent point of the lawsuit seemed to be about money, but there is a dispute between his camp and Tony Busby about what exactly was requested and what they wanted to do here. In the mediation, what else two lawyers here? What else could it be? If Tony Busby is saying,

hey, money's not the thing, what else could they be seeking an mediation besides money? Well, it sounds like he didn't say money isn't the thing. He just said that there was no shakedown. There was no request with the mediation to ask for money. Is that right? He just asked for a mediation, which they didn't grant. But it's a civil suit. You know, you're asking for money.

Right. You're asking for money. I mean, to file it in federal court, you have to say that there's at least $75,000 or more that you're seeking in the case to establish diversity in addition to living, the citizens being in separate states. Yes. Okay. So there's an extortion suit that is attached to this that was filed back in November, which I feel like flew under the radar.

I didn't know anything about it. Did you? It was from an anonymous person. And I'm curious with you, like, because my first thought was, did Megan know this was coming? Because you seemed to be in the know. You're right there when this kind of thing has happened. What happening? Can you tell us, do you think?

that you knew or did you know that this was coming? And can you tell us a little bit more about this extortion suit that now we know it was Jay-Z behind it? Is it still going on and kind of where we are with that? I can't say I knew it was coming. I can say I suspected it was coming. But it was really just speculation on my part after seeing this extortion lawsuit filed. And, you know, there's so much going on with all the other cases. And then Tony Busby has so many lawsuits against Sean Combs and it's hard to keep track of everything. But I'd actually seen, I think somebody messaged me on Twitter and asked, hey, can you follow this lawsuit? And that was how I learned of it. When I did some Googling, I saw the statement from Quint Emanuel, which is the law firm that filed it.

And just knowing that they've done a lot of work with Jay-Z and Rock Nation, and then just knowing Jay-Z's proximity to Diddy, you're always seeing stuff online about how, you know, people just wildly speculating that he's next. So I remember thinking to myself, I bet this is Jay-Z. But like I said, I can't say I knew it was Jay-Z because this was just pure speculation on my part. But when I looked at it, I said, this really looks like it could be him. And then it turns out it is. Let's talk about the allegations themselves. Why don't you just lay out for the audience a little bit of what this particular lawsuit says? I'm sure people have read the more salacious details. But going into it, what does this lawsuits say about

Diddy, about Jay-Z, about Diddy, and Jay-Z, what is it alleging? This is, alleges that this girl was 13 when she went to an after-party for the Video Music Awards back in 2000 and encountered both Jay-Z and Diddy in a room and was attacked. It's a little, it seems like the allegations are that this is, this is statutory

rape because she was so underage. It really lays out a pretty horrifying situation that she says was witnessed by the anonymous celebrity, the celebrity who is still anonymous in the third complaint. We don't know who Celebrity B is other than it's alleged that it's a woman. Do you think we will see a similar amendment in the future, like based on your experience in dealing with these type of cases, do you think that we will see that? or maybe there has been another anonymous suit out there that we don't know of that's also accusing Tony Busby and his firm of extortion.

Yeah, we haven't heard anything about another suit. And you'd imagine there would be some publicity surrounding that. But I think this unnamed celebrity would be a prime witness either for or against. I mean, it seems like the plaintiff would either want her as a witness or if Jay-Z says none of this is true, perhaps she'd be a better witness for him. I think it's inevitable that eventually her identity is going to come out. When that actually happens is a little unclear. Because one thing to remember here is that the idea that this case is ever going to get very far in litigation is far-fetched just because of the fact that one of the lead defendants, Diddy, is facing a criminal case.

So it will be really easy for Diddy's lawyers to intervene here and say this entire case needs to be stayed. He's not sitting for any deposition and we're not doing any discovery while he has a criminal case pending. because and it would be automatically stayed because of that. Maybe not necessarily against Jay-Z. But the idea that Diddy is actually going to be resolving any of these civil suits while his criminal cases going, no way. Well, let's talk about the Jay-Z aspect of it because the Diddy thing is probably very far gone. He's got so many cases.

His reputation is set in stone. This essentially is going to be from the Jay-Z Rock Nation camp, in my estimation, a battle for his reputation. He's not going to care about anything else, but how he's viewed and the gigantic cultural ramifications of his name being attached to anything like this. How do you think they play it? We know that there has been a suit. We know that there was a lengthy post on Rock Nation's Twitter page,

and maybe on their Instagram, too, on their social media, in which J.Z, from what we understand, written by J.Z, lays out the fact that this is all untrue, that this is a shakedown, that he is ready to fight it. And now we also know that JZ is seeking to have the identity of the plaintiff in this particular case unsealed. They want the anonymity going. he is going to fight tooth and nail. How do you see this playing out for Tony Busby, for Jay-Z? Because it's essentially Puff is cooling his heels.

It's essentially a battle between those two now. Yes, yes, exactly. And I saw someone saying in a situation like Jay-Z is in right now, there's basically two options. You either quietly settle or you fight tooth and nail. There's no just fighting a little bit. You have to be very, very aggressive. And I think that's what we're seeing here.

I think it's a question of, is the attention eventually going to turn from Tony Busby to the allegations themselves? And I think we've seen examples of how these cases have played out in the Kevin Spacey lawsuit that actually went to trial in the same court where this case was filed, where you really have to look at what exactly is the plaintiff's saying happened. And then do you have corroborating evidence for that? Is there some kind of other witnesses or something that they can bring in? It seems like eventually for Jay-Z's camp, they're going to need to turn the attention away from Tony Busby and onto the plaintiff in the actual allegations, which I think is what they're trying to do by identifying the plaintiff. Because right now they're saying, we don't even know who this is. Yeah, it's, you know, Jay-Z put a rock nation on their social media put out a statement that, is from Jay-Z.

And there's some things that he says in there, and he really goes on the attack of Tony Busby. We've heard his name in more recent years as an attorney in a few high-profile cases. What can you tell us about Tony Busby as an attorney? He's well-known in Texas, had a failed attempt for the mayor of Houston. I ran for that pretty recently. It was interesting because he's a plaintiff lawyer by reputation and practice, but he also does other cases.

And he was out here in Los Angeles last year for a really high-profile case of a wealthy woman who had actually was speeding in her SUV and hit two young brothers and killed them. And it was a really controversial case within the neighborhood. And she was, you know, all sorts of inherited wealth in that family. She was kind of promoted as the hair of some Grossman-Burn Center. But I think she and her husband are a prime example of people who have just inherited everything that they have. And they had so much money that they were able to get, you know, hire lawyers. But this case was pretty shut and dry.

I mean, the idea that she wouldn't be convicted of this. But for some reason, she had Tony Busby come out from Houston and be her lawyer in this L.A. County Superior Court case. when if you just look at Tony Busby on paper, based on his practice as a personal injury attorney, you think he would be representing like the parents of the kids who died in some kind of lawsuit against the driver. But he's doing a criminal defense case for Rebecca Grossman,

who was the driver. So I just thought that was kind of odd. But it was always unclear how exactly he met Rebecca Grossman and got connected with her. But, I mean, he does a lot of different cases, it seems like. He has or he certainly now, even more so than anything else will be examined to the

degree. Like every single thing, I don't think that Tony Buzzby, we'll talk a little bit more about this. I don't think that Tony Busby knows kind of what he's gotten himself into. Is he the standard bearer of the

of justice that he was made out to be during the Deshawn Watson stuff because Deshawn Watson had so many different allegations and so many different women that came out and said that he had been inappropriate with him. And Tony Busby at that point was seen as the lawyer who had, you know, got all of these women together and made sure that whatever one of them said about Deshawn Watson was corroborated and that there was a pattern of behavior and that that stuck with. with Deshaun.

Since then, his reputation has seemed to veer more off to the, this guy is looking for a headline. He is, I've even heard the term, ambulance chaser, all of that stuff. What is your read on him as an attorney? It kind of exemplifies that, you know, there's sometimes not one cookie cutter answer to how an attorney is. And especially for an attorney who works, the kind of cases that Tony Busby does, it's pretty hard to not have good cases.

I mean, he might have great causes and have had good cases over the years. We've seen that with a lot of different attorneys that just by the nature of their work, they're bound to get some righteous causes, if not every single one of them has problems with it. But I think it just kind of exemplifies how complicated sometimes a lawyer's reputation is and how there's a lot of nuances to their work that we all need to look at. Last question for me, and this is kind of piggybacking on some of the accusations that are being made against Tony Busby as the attorney or his strategy for how he's navigating this case, one of the things that Jay-Z's that the Rock Nation statement says is, if you were so concerned,

I'm paraphrasing here, about the victims, why would you not seek justice in a criminal manner? Can you explain to our audience, this is a federal lawsuit civil. Can you explain why he can't or didn't file under New York State law for a criminal case and federally? You know, I'm not, I think there has to be something with the statute of limitations. I'm not completely clear on all the exact in and out. So I wouldn't want to say something incorrect. but given that the alleged incident happened in 2000, I think there's definitely some problems with the statute of limitations

that they would be running into if they filed a police report or pursued anything like that. But, you know, we don't know that could still be to come. Last thing for me. I read the lawsuit particularly. I love reading the lawsuits because so much of the lawsuit is just, describing who these people are. They're going to everything they've ever done.

This guy won three Grammys. He's got this. He's got that. He's got this. He's got that. It's like, that's all the stuff. We know all of that. But maybe the people who are doing. Then I get to the point that, like, directly deals with this young lady who says that she had tried to get into the VMAs. She couldn't get into the VMAs. Then she wanted to go to an after party. She goes to the after party. Famous people everywhere, this happens to her.

how do you prove something like this? What everyone is going to want to know more than anything is, is Jay-Z capable of something like this? That's what everybody is going to want to know, right? Right. Is there anything, in your opinion, that before this goes to a lawsuit, before this comes to actually filing something,

what do lawyers do? Do they do any type of invent? Do they have people look at stuff? Are there any pictures or photos? Or is it simply a woman, a young lady, comes to Tony's Busby and says this happens and then he goes and files paperwork? Is there any type of investigation that goes on beforehand? Is there anything that makes this accusation credible beyond the word of the woman

that is making the allegation? it really just depends on the lawyer in the law firm, but Tony Busby has said that they've done due diligence and investigations into all their clients and that they've filed this based on that. And one thing he has in the complaint is some photographs that he says are actually from that night, that are of containers that he says GHB was placed into a drink.

So he has those photos, but I don't know, there's a lot of questions there, but he does have the photographs. And then the big issue will be, is there any, is there any other corroborating evidence for the plaintiff's testimony? Because her testimony would be the biggest evidence,

but is there anything else that corroborates that? It's like what we saw in the Kevin Spacey lawsuit with, is there something else that can verify this? And I think that remains to be seen. And it might hinge on whoever the unnamed celebrity that was in the room was. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's huge.

Well, if it goes to trial, they have to call, like, try to subpoena that person to come in. Absolutely. Or, you know, if it doesn't depose her. Yeah, it seems like definitely they're going to have to get, you know, some kind of deposition or something. But I think we're, I think we're in for a lot more to come, for sure. When you say a lot more to come, do you think for this trial, do you see that there will be more Tony Busby? I mean, obviously, and this is the last question for me, obviously, Jay-Z's side of this is going to directly target Tony Busby

and try to expose him as a charlatan. Do you think that Tony Busby will have potentially more cases and more plaintiffs against Jay-Z? I'm not sure about Jay-Z. I think we're definitely in for more lawsuits against Sean Combs, did he? But whether we'll see more lawsuits against Jay-Z, I mean, one thing that sometimes happens is one lawsuit will kind of open a floodgate of accusers. So we can see whether that plays out.

But I think it just remains to be seen. Megan, thank you so much for joining us on higher learning. Tell everybody where they can follow all your work and everything that you are reporting on. Yes, Legal Affairs and Trials.com is the substack. And then I'm on YouTube too, Megan Cunef. And then also Blue Sky. Blue Sky is really taken off. So look me up at Megan Q&F, M-E-G-H-A-N-N.

But legal affairs and trials.com is the hub. Thank you so much, Megan. I love your merch. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, I got to do some holiday specials, Christmas deals, and Hanukkah deals. That's awesome. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks again. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need Weather Tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. or road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips, yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step

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Okay, Megan is spoken. When you saw this news, Rachel, what did you think? It was interesting that it dropped on a Sunday. That was my first thought. I was like, really? Did we miss this on Friday? then I thought, I wasn't surprised just because there's been so much, I wasn't surprised that Jay-Z was named.

This is before I read things. I wasn't surprised because there's been so much speculation because of the closeness between Diddy and Jay-Z, longtime friends, longtime collaborators. There's always been this talk that Jay-Z could be linked to it. out of nowhere, by the way. Out of nowhere, just based on him being in close proximity to ditty. That's just, that's it.

Let me say this. Based on nothing, really. But that's what I'm saying. Yes, but I'm just saying this is why people were speculating, right? Because they were so close. So even if he wasn't going to be accused of something, people thought that he knew. That's the kind of talk, the whispering. I'm acknowledging that.

Yeah. What was shocking was the actual allegation. Yeah, when you saw it in the headline. Yes. It was like, oh, Jay-Z's name, okay, that's been talked. Then you read it, and it's like a 13-year-old, you know, forcible rape, a woman was watching. And that was what added to the shock. This lawsuit had already been filed.

It was the amended complaint that was filed yesterday, or Sunday. Sunday, since you all be listening to this on a Tuesday, and finally identifying Celebrity A, the male, which was Jay-Z. They still have not identified Celebrity B. That was shocking because I remember when this came out and it was like, geez, 13-year-old. I feel like it was one of the first times we were really hearing about minors. We had, you know, like a lawsuit with a minor saying somebody was a minor at the time. I forgot about it. And then to come back and it's Jay-Z, it was like, woof. You know, I've, I, I've, it's shocking to hear about any celebrity, any person assaulting a minor, sexually assaulting a minor, then you look at Jay-Z and married children.

It's just, wow, it's shocking. And this isn't making me any excuse or siding with anything. It's a shocking thing to read about, to know someone, even from a distance, their public persona, to then having that attached to this, It is shocking. Yeah.

So this news goes public. You see it everywhere. And right away, there is a response from Jay-Z, posting on Rock Nations Twitter. We talked about that a little bit with Megan. I'll read you a little portion of it. I won't read your whole thing. The response spends most of its time talking specifically

to the lawyer who filed this lawsuit, Tony Busby. It doesn't get into the action. the actual case at all says that it is a blackmail attempt and said that it was calculated and then this is the last paragraph which to me

is the heart and soul of it. You have made a terrible error in judgment thinking that all celebrities and quotations are the same. I'm not from your world. I'm a young man who made it out of the projects of Brooklyn. We don't play these types of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children.

You seem to exploit people for personal gain. Only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake physics will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids would be laughable. I look forward to showing you just how different I am. So he responded with a vengeance to Tony Busby. A couple of things here that I think matter. Number one, we've talked about Tony Busby.

Tony Busby's in for it right now. I'll tell you why. The Diddy thing was the downfall of somebody in culture who was powerful, who was important, but who was low leverage and compared to Jay-Z. It's different with Jay-Z. The thing about him is that the people who protect him, and who will protect him from any slander that comes from his name will be from every single part of American celebrity culture.

You saw it right away. You saw big radio support Jay-Z. Big hip-hop support Jay-Z. You're going to see everyone. And then you're going to see somebody else who's going to be in his class who Puff didn't have, in his camp, who Puff didn't have in his camp. The billionaire class of America,

the people that Jay-Z has aligned himself with, they need him. They need him because he is, he gives them access to the weaponization of black culture and the sway that he has with black culture. They need him. We used to compare Jay-Z to Frank Sinatra. he's actually more comparable to another Italian figure

and that is Vito Corleone. If you ever watch the Gauphithe, have you seen it? That's not. Okay. If you ever watch the Gaults father, Vito Corleone's thing, obviously the Coelione family had muscle, they had numbers, but it was accessed. What they were mad at Vito Corleone about in the Godfather,

the other members of the five families was the fact that he had all the judges and all the attorneys and all the people in his pocket that he wouldn't share him. He had access. He had sway. For a lot of people in hip-hop, they're access to the billionaires, their access to the NFL,

their access to all of these different entities. It comes through Jay-Z and Rock Nation. So when you see people fight, they will fight to preserve that. Sure. They will fight. to preserve their conduit to who he knows

and how he's able to position himself. And look, the parts of the media will do this work. Everyone will do this work. Whether or not this happened or not, we talked with Megan about it, it's going to be difficult for somebody to prove this. It's going to be difficult.

It could be difficult for someone to put JZ in the situation without testimony from that third party where he's really going to be behind the eight ball in terms of facts on this. However, what this will prove is that there are people in American culture that some deem too big to fail.

And I think that he is one of them. Because of... Because of his proximity to all different types of things. Look, when you think about it, Like to wealth and to power. When you think about it, let's just be honest with it, with everyone. When it was time to put a kibosh on the NFL's problems, they brought in Jay-Z. Yeah.

Okay. When it was time in Brooklyn to get the Barclays Center build and make the Brooklyn Nets a cool hip team, they bring in Jay-Z. Like now all of these things for him are business deals, right? Take something, make it hot and flip it. They're all business deals to him. They're all things that work out for him. But in this situation, Busby is going to get pushback for more people than just people on Twitter or just people who are into this situation,

media talking head types. There's going to be a specific business push, a specific structural push, that does not want to see anything happen to Jay-Z that is going to like hit Tony Busby right now. But I don't think that Tony Busby is not somebody who he's a lawyer who files these cases and I think it's kind of like a Gloria All Red.

When you're filing these cases on, you know, behalf of your client, you're not really caring about how people, how people look at you or your public perception. They're going to be critical of you anyways, whether you're an ambulance, chaser or not, right? Like, you could say the same thing about Gloria. I think we have learned when accusations like this or period or made, and we don't have the

full knowledge or the extent of the evidence that's out there or the details to not pick aside and jump. I mean, I've said on this podcast before, I'm always pro-victum. I believe the victim before anything else. we don't know what's true or what's not. And it's a civil case. So the standard that they're going to have to prove is more likely than not that this happened.

That's the standard. But I will say, I will talk about what is directly in front of us. I'm going to talk about this Rock Nation statement. The statement came out from Jay-Z and Rock Nation very quickly. Why? Because they knew that this was coming. So I saw a lot of chatter on social media,

like, oh, like they, this came out pretty quickly. Well, of course it did. He had already filed an extortion suit. They were trying to negotiate prior to naming him and trying to settle this outside of it. They didn't. So he knew this was coming. They probably had a statement prepared.

What I don't like in this statement, and it's something that you mentioned when you were talking to Megan, the biggest thing for Jay-Z is the public perception. How will the public see him after these type of allegations are linked with his name. We've never seen anything like this before. The statement that he makes plays into what you said

about public perception. And I think that's some of the things. The shifting it to don't focus on me, focus on Tony Busby, I don't like that. I don't like the, I would have rather not seen a statement and him have his lawyers work this out.

Maybe there is blackmail. Maybe there is a, extortion. You filed a suit. He filed something. You filed something. He filed something again, a minute the complaint to now naming you. Handle it in court. I understand the desire to want to address the public and not want your name attached to this. I would neither. But that's a tactic to switch the focus to talking about Tony Busby, talking about the person he is, calling him a deplorable human. But then in the same sentence saying, you know, if you really were about paraphrasing the victims, then you would file a criminal complaint. Well, here's the thing. I asked

Megan that question, right? Why didn't he file? That's a lot of times when people file civil suits and you could file, there's a possibility of filing a criminal complaint, people will say, well, why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you seek justice to lock this person up? Well, this was alleged to happen in 2000. Under New York state law, which is more, normally a sexual assault is handled on the state level. Could be federal, but that's not really up to a Tony Busby. So I'll address that one first.

Not up to, Tony Busby can't say, I'm going to file a federal criminal complaint. No, you have to be, that has to be in conjunction with some type of government agency, FBI doing some type of an investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office has to be involved.

Tony Busby can't say this is what I want to do. He can work in collaboration with them, but he can't do that on his own. So federally, that's out. That's why most of the time it's handled on a state level. Well, under a state level, because the alleged victim was 15 at the time, 13, sorry, what was how old? 13 at the time. It's considered a second degree, rape in the second degree.

If she was between 11 and less than 13, it would be first degree. And there's an unlimited time under the statute of limitations. There would be no statute of limitations. For second degree under New York state law, it's 20 years. 20 years has passed. It's past. Maybe they couldn't. Again, I would imagine that Jayze's lawyers

had talked to him about that. So again, to throw in, well, if you wanted to do this, you would do this on a criminal level. He can't. So if he's fighting for, if he's in good faith, fighting for his client,

then the only way that he can seek any type of retribution is on a civil level. Which, you know, if I take him at his word, Tony Busby, that's what he's doing. So I just didn't like the way that this statement rolled out because if you are concerned for the victim, then you wouldn't allege those things

and you wouldn't also turn it on. Don't focus on me. Focus on this terrible attorney. You've already filed an extortion suit and you're handling it. To me, it seemed a little emotional, which I understand. You were being accused of sexually assaulting a minor.

A minor. I get it. You're pissed off. I just was a little surprised at the way this statement read. as opposed to maybe something short and simple. We completely deny all the allegations against us. We will handle this in a legal matter we already have with an extortion suit.

There's something there. Go ahead. I'm done, by the way. Only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake, I guess this means psychics, it says physics, but fake psychics will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids will be laughable. he's assuming no one will believe it. Yeah.

That's why he's not addressing the fact, hey, I didn't, he's assuming that no one will believe it. He's saying right now, he says it, he says in the thing, he literally tells Tony Busby, no one will believe what you're saying. Like, no one will believe that I would do this. He's assuming that no one will believe. I saw a lot of people say, why didn't he deny it?

This is a part of the veneer of Jay-Z. He's assuming no one will believe this. And by the way, I'll say this. This is an accusation. If there are people out there that need more to believe that this happened, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. No, not at all. If there are people that choose to believe that this happened,

there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I will say this, though, your parisocial relationship with Jay-Z means nothing. There's going to be a lot of people out there in the world who know Jay-Z, who've been around Jay-Z, who have conversations with Jay-Z, and go, hey, I don't think he's capable of doing something like that. I don't think that he would have done that. That's fine.

People are entitled to do this. But because you bought the blueprint and you've watched a bunch of interviews and you've been to a bunch of shows and you've revered someone for years and years and decades and decades, you are in no place. If the last 10 to 15 years have proven anything to us,

You are in no place to speak on what someone is or is not capable of. You're just not. We just, we don't, we've learned too much. There's been too much information that's been made available to us. You just don't know what your favorite is capable of. Look, as I was saying before, in this particular situation, it, it's different. For all the Drake stuff that happened, right, uh, no one really, had a problem

with Drake being called a pedophile essentially or being hinted at that Drake was a pedophile on the biggest record of the year. A lot of people thought there was enough circumstantial evidence to make people believe that. A lot of people thought that Drake was weird enough

to believe it. Really, he didn't have the cultural bulletproofness to make people go, we fucking hate that you say that about him. Jay-Z does have that. And there's just too many different things.

Like, once again, not picking any battles, picking any fights. Hip-hop, notorious non-snitching plays, right? Notorious non-snitching place. We hate snitches. We don't want to be around any snitches.

We don't, that's not how I am. Okay? I'm from a place where Snitch is I don't do crimes so I don't have to be put in that situation I've watched too many interrogation videos However It should be said

That the person that runs Rock Nation is a notorious government informant Now I'm not getting in their business I don't know what happened But we do know for a fact A notorious government informant That was pardoned by Don't Trump doesn't fucking matter when it comes to Jay-Z.

Nobody cares. No one fucking cares, right? Literally, when you, if you bring that up, someone says, we got to know what the situation was. Does the no snitching rule apply to women? Is this something, if it's Jay, it's got to be more to it. So I say culturally for this, this will be different. This will be a situation where the victim here,

the lawyer here, all of those things will be less important. Everything here will be less important than how this reflects on somebody that we've spent a lot of energy, invested a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of intention into making unflappable. And there's people that just won't let it happen. Busby's going to learn that right now in a major motherfucking way. Yeah, I just, I'm not disagreeing with anything really that you're saying. I just hate, hate something the word. I guess I just dislike the deflection. I just, I understand the motivation behind it, but it also coincides with now they want the name of the victim to be released.

That's all about public perception. more than I've, but I know, but that's not right. Like if this victim... What's the right way to handle it? Well, I, I, if you need to know to prepare for your case and you want to do it in some kind of take it to court and have it sealed to where you only have this information, but it can't be, can't release it to the public, I would understand that. So it is necessary for you to fully be able to defend yourself.

But to release it to where the public can know, then you're, then you are trying in the court of public opinion. and you are subjecting this accuser to scrutiny in a way that could be insurmountable. Like, it will be tragic. So do you think that because- I do think they should know to be able to defend their case. Okay, so do you think, because if I was in that situation, I would want to know, but you don't think it's important that the public knows, right?

Now, does it say that? It says that they want. I don't know. I just know that that's what they want. They want the name. do they want to know Donnie, look this up. Does Jay and his side want to know

or do they want us to know? Because those are two very different things. Yeah, I understand. You need everything to fight a case. You do. So I understand why you need to know who's making the accusation against you. I'm a believer of that.

But we shouldn't be privy to that information because she will be crucified. Only leads to intimidation. Crucified. Yeah. Exactly. It leads to intimidation. I do want to read you something.

because you asked Megan like these cases are hard to prove right especially so long ago there's just so many there's so many different factors that make it hard it's harder for the plaintiff to be able to prove her case and you said what are some things that may come up that may help hurt this case provide more insight one of the things they will do are go through jZ songs i think why would you not Why would you not go through lyrics? I kill a block. I murder the avenues.

I rape and pillage your village, women and children. Rachel. It's Jay Z. Rachel. Rachel, come on, man. No, no, no, no. Don't come on me. I am saying, would they not, if I was an attorney, I would, I would look for anything.

If there's not a lot out there, right? Because I agree with what Megan said. They put pictures of the things in the civil suit. And it's like, what that, what is? this. But if I'm an attorney, I'm looking for everything. It is not, we saw it with Atlanta with the Rico case. Do you think though? How do they not, how do you not look at?

Like, I get what you're saying, oh, come on, Rachel, but it's not crazy for people to look up lyrics to songs and say, why did you say this? What does it mean? So this is my only thing about that. And I get mad at me if you want, y'all, not you, y'all. I'm not getting mad at you. But I'm just saying it is a Jay-Z lyric. This is my only thing.

In monster. Jay-Z also has a lyric where he goes. smoking Cibonels with Castro and Havana. I sincerely doubt that he smoked Cuban cigars with Fidel Castro in Cuba. And I'm not saying he did it. I'm saying they will use it. They will try to use that. Why would they not?

Okay. Why would you not even saying that you did it, but towards a character thing of why would you say this? Like showing, you said when you were talking to Megan, and you read the lawsuit, you find it interesting when they start saying this person's this, this, and this. They're establishing this money's character.

They're showing you the type of person that they are, whether it's access, wealth, power, whatever it may be, they're showing you who they are. One of the things that they will show towards character or try to, this might not even be able to be entered in as evidence or whatever.

It might be a negotiation tact, whatever it may be. They will use lyrics to establish like, okay, you didn't do it. Why would you say that? I know. I'm just saying. I'm not...

If anything, Jay-Z's persona is something that would help him in this. His persona is of someone who is very meticulous, is incredibly controlled, right? Somebody who would, is so dashing and suave with women that he wouldn't want a woman unless she was, she had to have Jay-Z. Can I just ask you how you can so flippantly brush off that lyric? That's nothing compared to the Castro. Can I be honest with you? Can I be honest with you?

I'll be honest. I'll be totally honest with you. Because hip hop has completely desensitized me to stuff like that. I'll just be all the way real, man. I'll just be all the way real. That's all I understand. I'll be all the way real. Man, rest of peace, DMX.

DMX got a lyric off that first album where he says If you got a daughter, he's talking about a home invasion And some shit that he's going to do X got a lyric that says If you got a daughter older than 15 I'm a raper I'm a taker right on the floor in front of you And then look up at you like what you're going to do

Because And how are you supposed to not believe That somebody would do something like that? I'm in no way I am in no way in no way making any excuses for any of that stuff. But what I'm telling you

is in the grand scheme of rap that I've heard talking about I'm a rape, I'm a take your village and rape and pillage of village, women and children and all of that stuff in my mind. And this is something, look,

we have... And that's not okay. It's definitely not okay. But this is something that we have to have a real conversation about and the conversation is about untraining yourself from, first of all, noting what's been put in your brain for 15 or 20 years

with some of the hardcore rap that you listen to, number one, and then number two, untraining yourself to automatically normalize something that you hear that is that devastating in the file. Man, a lot of these records, like sometimes on the skits in the records, women will get smacked up.

It's a sketch on one of the Hot Boys albums where Baby's on the phone with some girl she goes, I hope y'all gonna do some licking or something like that. Like she wants him to, and then all you hear is smack, smack, smack, baby, why you knock my teeth out of my fucking mouth?

And that was supposed to be comedy in that situation. So I'm just telling you, for me, people talk about how trash I am and I accept it because the stuff that is going into my brain at 44 years old, I'm trying to reconcile it.

Well, and the point I'm trying to make is when I read a lyric like that and you say, come on, man, like, you can't take that seriously. I'm not saying I can or I can't. What's a fact is it was said. And what's a fact is, you wrote it or you didn't, you said it. And now that kind of stuff comes back

in an instance like this because it speaks to, okay, you didn't do it, you just said it. So what does that say about your character that you would say something like that? Maybe it is a rap culture thing where people just say things that aren't true and they don't mean it. But it's something that maybe now,

in light of the accusations, you're going to have to answer to you. That's all I'm saying is things that could be used in this case. That's my point about it. And I can't be so like, he just said it. No, I'm with you. I'm not coming at you because you said that.

I'm not at all. What I'm saying is if we get to a point, now look, let's make a distinction here. When the drill rap thing got really popping, it took on a life of its own. Because the drill rap thing wasn't about this statement of what I will do or what I want. The drill rap thing was about what I did. And a lot of the gangster rap that existed when I grew up was about what I will do. if pushed, what I will do. You don't want to see me up the hammer on you and do all of this.

Drill rap wasn't about that. Drill rap was, I killed your cousin. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Like, I went and I killed this direct person. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And I was like, wow, that's different. When I look through, when I look at the old stuff, the stuff that I grew up on,

I kind of look at it as people trying to shock. Now that doesn't mean that there's no That we don't have to Discuss change, grow Or that I haven't grown out of that I looked at it as people trying to go Further and further and further and push things Further and further and further in their art

And trying to shock like hostile I'm not comparing it to movies or like things like that They are trying to grab you like M&M records that were A serial killer hot murder material In a cereal box on top of my stereo Like if there were a rash of murders in Eminem's neighborhood right now, I would not expect the FBI

to investigate Eminem because he said, I'm a serial killer, hot murder material in the cereal box on top of your stereo. No, but if he had been accused for killing someone,

I think that it would, I think the point is, is that I agree with you, some of it is for shock value, but then we've had incidents, where some people, there was some truth to their lyrics.

And so I think what's going to happen is is that people, he's going to have to answer and other people may have to too if something like this happens you're going to have to answer and explain why you said it. It doesn't mean you did it, but now you're going to have to answer

for maybe something that you said for shock value or because it's just what people say in the culture. Now you might have to answer to some of that. Explain it. And you know. And that'll look good. That doesn't look good.

So I'll say this as well. There's a hidden winner here and it's in my opinion, and it's pretty, it's a tough thing to say, but it just popped in my mind. The hidden winner here is going to be Deshaun Watson. Why?

Because after they finish with Tony Busby, I want you guys to really understand what I'm saying. What I'm saying right now is that Tony Busby, the lawyer in this situation, who has picked this public fight with Jay-Z, has picked this fight with someone that won't just be protected by hip hop culture,

they won't just be protected by black culture. White American corporate culture will protect Jay-Z. They will protect Jay-Z because Jay-Z represents a very important piece to them communicating and in some ways influencing

black and hip hop culture. You don't think they could find another. I don't think there's one out there right now that exists like that. I think they will. And so what I'm saying is, after they've tainted Tony Busby and tore him the shreds

and done all of that stuff, any case that Tony Busby has been a part of will look weird. What will eventually happen is all the bots on there will be like, Tony Busby is going after powerful black men. Tony Busby is trying to take down ditty.

Tony Busby is the one who changed our perception of Deshaun Watson. I'm in nowhere. There's nothing that can make me believe that there wasn't something up with Deshawn Watson because of the consistency of the allegations, the comparative similarity of the allegations, and all of that stuff. However, what I'm saying is the only way for them to win, for the Rock Nation JZ side to win here, is to completely dismember Tony Busby.

Right? To completely dismember Tony Busby. Going after the accuser, even if we'll look back, right? The only way for them to win is completely dismembered Tony Busby. And when they dismember him, a lot of the other things that Busby has been, has been, uh, attached to Mike Frey as well. Hmm.

Well, we shall see. There was something else I was going to tell you in regards to this, but I don't know. We'll see. I'm sure there will be more... Oh, oh, that's what I was going to ask you.

What's it? You know you're tapped into, like, the Twitter sphere more than me. Tap in. Is, um, what's the BHA's saying about this? Are they mad at Jay-Z for subjecting Beyonce?

and her children to this? Or are they coming after the Tony Busby's and everybody else because they're standing beside a Beyonce's man? I'm very curious. Let me tell you the most hysterical post I've ever seen before in my life. See, I knew you. All right. Hold on.

Tony Busby posted. This is a little old about read this right here. Regarding the JZ case and his efforts to silence my clients. Clients. Oh, no, he's representing a bunch of ditty clients. Okay, cool. Mr. Carter previously denied being the one who sued me and my firm. He filed his frivolous lawsuit under a suitonym.

What he fails to say in his recent statement is my firm sent him a lawyer a demand letter on behalf of the alleged victim and that the victim never demanded a penny from him. I think we've discussed this. Instead, she only sought a confidential mediation. Since I sent the letter on her behalf, Mr. Carter has not only sued me, but he has tried to bully and harass me and this plaintiff. His conduct has had the opposite impact. she's emboldened. I'm very proud of her resolve.

As far as the allegations in the complaint filed, we will let the filing speak for itself and will litigate the facts in court and not in the media. It seems like he is ready to go to the proverbial mattresses and we will see what happens with that. Now, when I go back to a post that I said was actually very funny, okay?

As funny as something could be in a situation like this. There was a post that was made, made on a Beyonce site. This post was on Beyonce News, as it says, and it says, young Beyonce posing with her then-boyfriend, Lindell Locke in 1998. And it says they dated for eight or nine years from 1993 to 2001. This was posted at 4.40 p.m. yesterday. Why is that post funny?

because They're trying to say This is the man she dated during her teen years Right But they're saying is She was a full grown adult Byte

She was a Beyonce born 1981 They dated for eight or nine years Beyonce and Jay Z get together Whatever But whenever they got together She wasn't under age Is what that post

is basically saying So when I saw that, I'm like, they got ahead of it. They're like, this is her boyfriend. Look, they got pictures. This is her boyfriend. I didn't know they dated that long. I didn't know they dated that long. I didn't know they dated that long either.

It's also coming from a Bihive. I'm just saying. I didn't think they dated that long. The way that they are going to protect Beyonce. They're going to protect Beyonce making sure that everybody knows that Beyonce never jaded. Because you have to protect Beyonce, you got to protect the whole Cardinose clan. There was another, there was a, a picture of this

of the story. It was on a news site and Tina Nol's liked it. Liked the eight years thing? No, she liked the JZ lawsuit post. We got to give her, she's older. She's posted some things before you, you black podcaster.

Oh, she posted me as a black podcast. She's older. Like, she might not be as a quip. I feel like this isn't the first time she's like something. She's not supposed to. Anyways, we'll keep you guys posted as more information I'm sure will come out. No reason to do any work for anybody. In this particular situation...

I'm only going to talk about what's right in front of me. We don't know these people. If you ain't never been around these people, you don't know what no one is capable of. You don't know what no one ain't capable of. Right. Right now, this is a civil case. This is an accusation.

It is just that. like jumping in front of it in the defense, jumping in front of it in the accusation. We've learned now that the best thing to do is to take the information as it comes out. But if you think that we here are going to put anything past anyone, it's just impossible to do at this point. You just can't do it. All right. So they've nabbed the person to be.

interest in the fatal shooting of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson. His name is Luigi Managoni of Townsend, Maryland. He was brought in on Monday in the fatal shooting of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson for possibly trying to use a fake ID in McDonald's. The fuck are you using an ID in McDonald's for? I'm looking at it now. The man who sources say is being eyed for the targeted execution allegedly had a manifesto on him when he was taken into custody by cops in Altoona PA.

The manifesto railed against the U.S. healthcare industry, including its enormous profits and alleged shady motives. Managone had a particularly personal reason to hate the medical community. It's treatment of an ailing relative. Online obituaries show the here. He lost a grandmother in 2013 and a grandfather in 2017. He had a gun silencer for fake IDs and other items consistent with what authorities were looking for in the case, sources say. He was brought in on a tip called in the local cops who apprehended him, according to sources.

The NYPD was on his way to Altoona late Monday morning, sources say. So it seems like they've got somebody. Your thoughts, Rachel. I mean, I don't really have any thoughts other than, I mean, we don't really know any. They got them. Allegedly. Allegedly they got them.

They got them. We don't know. And I'm sure we're going to have more to come. I mean, this guy was a valedictorian. 2016. What's cool? At the Gilman School in Baltimore, played soccer. The school's an all-boys school at $40,000 a year.

Doesn't mean he wasn't on scholarship. Yeah, I mean, I don't, he went to an Ivy League school. What school did he go to? It just says cum laude from the private Ivy League institution of Philadelphia. What, what? Oh, you pin. Pin, pin. Pin, you pin.

He went to, he went to pin. I have believed that I don't believe this is a one-off. Well, they're saying he acted alone. I don't believe it. I mean, apparently he had family members that have been sick. He worked in an assisted living facility.

Don't believe it. I do not believe it. I don't believe it either. But I also don't believe what you said the last time we talked about it where, because remember I was like, the words that were written on there were from a famous book,

dogging the health care system. And I thought that this killing was directly related to somebody who was upset. And you said... So throw off. You said it was a throw-off. I still believe that it is somebody who is deeply upset and enraged at the health care system in this country. It's bigger than that. And I think that he acted with other people.

I mean, he obviously did this alone, but they knew, like, I think this was a planned thing with groups of people. You still disagree. I'm too conspiracy pill. to believe that. I will tell you this, though, what I've learned from the interrogation videos. And maybe I've said this before,

but I've learned this from the interrogation videos. Like, white people just kill. Like, whenever I'm watching the interrogation video and there's a black person, black woman, black man, being interrogated, when they've killed someone

is for no reason but it's for a reason. It's for a reason that doesn't amount to killing. But there is something behind it. It's like I watch one. And maybe I've said this before on the podcast. Donnie, if I repeat myself, let me know. There was one where there was a drug deal gone bad.

The guy tried to get his dope back. And the girl just, she ended up killing a guy, right? Another one where they was going to rob some. someone and they let some shots go. A fight happened. They try to kill them. Another one where all kinds of stuff. Sometimes it don't take a lot to push a white person to kill.

Sometimes they just kill. You're like, they'll ask one guy, why did you kill your whole family? He's like, I don't know, I just did. Woman yesterday, I watched one. I watched one. She killed her husband. Just killed him. Husband came home from the hospital.

Pick up a gun killed him. Why? I'm not sure why. did it. He was just getting on my nerves, getting on my nerves, getting on my nerves, had to die. So I could be wrong that this could be bigger because this guy, as far as this is concerned, he's killing for reasons that that's actual deep reason. I've seen white people on interrogation videos that just, they just kill. It just, like, y'all think that this is a real just killing.

So what's your conspiracy theory then? You think what? Since you don't believe that it's, you think it's bigger than this, you don't believe it's just related to... Now that I look at the name, the racist part of me says that maybe he's a connected guy.

He was hired. Yo, he's a fucking connected guy, huh? Get Luigi to go do the work. Luigi will put the fucking work in. Let's move. That nerve gun got you out. Forget about it, ah? Luigi will put the fucking work in.

Get, get, Get Luigi. You know, that's fucking Vito's kid. I don't know. I can tell you one thing. Once again, the big part of this story to me is still the reaction on social media. I've never seen people more excited about someone getting killed in certain parts of it without thinking about an actual human being able to kill.

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Do you feel like Johnton Majors deserve? You keep giving me stuff where I'm like... You don't want to. Talk about it. Well, no, it's like, it's Lil Duval. Like, I just, why, why does Jonathan deserve an apology? Because he got engaged to Megan Good because he, she dropped some of the charges. There were other charges out there, I guess, that were dropped.

His accuser, is it because he was charged with four, went to trial on, and four, he was found to be not guilty, and, I mean, two, he was found to be not guilty, and to the other. I'm not quite sure what the apology is. I have seen Jonathan Majors since then, had a lovely conversation with him. There was no bad blood. I didn't apologize. I mean, I didn't.

I'm trying to figure out what. So this is what the caption says. I know y'all ladies don't want to admit it, but y'all went in O'Brien apology. Do we all say in the caption. Lost all of his big deals because y'all ran with the wrong narrative. And the sad part is y'all going to do it again to the next man that gets accused by him.

something without no real proof. Now, this is what I'll say. That's a sexist comment. What? This directed at women, this is what women do. We ran with the narrative as if it was only women. It's only women. This is why I don't want to give Lou Deval anything. It's a sexist comment. He's made sexist comments before, if you follow him on social media, to assume that it was only women who had an issue with Jonathan Majors or only women who were speaking about it in a negative way or holding him to some unfair standard is a sexist comment. And for him to say, you women are the ones who owe Jonathan apology, it's ridiculous. I'm not saying that he was, we said on this podcast, I absolutely believe he should have his career back.

Do not think he should be blackballed, blacklisted. Is anything that happened to him unfair? Jonathan Majes. Is anything that happened to Jonathan Majors unfair? Yes, I think him being blackballed in Hollywood is absolutely unlawful. unfair. And we shouldn't have to do this whole, well, this person did something worse than this person. I mean, if you did something wrong, you did something wrong. But this is not an instance to me where he should lose his entire career. And he isn't a movie coming out, but starting over,

losing all sponsorships, losing, I think they should have waited to see how things came out in the wash and they didn't. And too often, people who don't look like Jonathan Majors are given more the benefit of the doubt than Jonathan Majors did. And that, I think, is unfair. and I think is wrong. But Lil Duval putting all of this on women is so wrong. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that they were, they used the hair trigger with Jonathan Majors.

And let's be honest with the reason why something like this happens. The reason why the John The Major's thing went the way that it did is because of social contagion. What you don't want to do is you don't want to be the person that is urging caution or defending someone who has beaten women. You don't want to be near it, you don't want to be a part of it,

you don't want to be anywhere around that. What we are trying to do, and when I mean us, I mean people who want safety and harm reduction in societies, what we are trying to do is make the abuse of women the abuse of people a virus that if it gets attached to you, then you have to either do the work

to cure yourself of it or we want it to kill you, right? Because we know what the results of not treating it like that are. It's difficult. It's hard. It requires nuance sometimes. It requires looking at things.

It requires sometimes really excoriating people that you really like. And sometimes it requires maybe sticking up for people who you don't really like, right? Or admitting when you were wrong about something. Now, there was enough that happened here from Jonathan Majors and from other people that have said stuff to where if people want to make up their mind

that they don't like Jonathan Majors, that's fine. Yeah. If people want to say that there was, enough that happened there to where I don't like Jonathan Majors. There's enough that I heard about Jonathan Majors that I don't like Jonathan Majors then that's fine. But for him to be completely blackballed

in Hollywood or for him to have completely lost out on his career in Hollywood, it's just not consistent with other people that have been in situations like this, some way worse. And while we don't want to what about everything,

that consistency is important because consistency in consequence is just as important as consistency and opportunity. Because you're not going to have in any one industry a group of perfect people. And if there are other people in American society that are getting second and third and fourth chances, and then there's one group of people that gets fucking kicked out of the game at the very hint of impropriety.

That is something that I'm sorry, no matter who it fucking pisses off. You have to look at that. Yeah. You have to. But he probably shouldn't have said all you women. All you women is... Well, he's toxic. He shouldn't have said all you women.

No, he shouldn't, but he meant it, and he said it with his whole chest. Yeah, you shouldn't have said all you. And he said... See, and it's... He shouldn't have, but he did. And it be so close to, like, it's so close. It's like, can we have a real conversation about what is like, it's like, you know, all you women just changes it.

I knew that you would like that one. I knew that you would get into that. You know, they don't, they don't really, the thought warriors don't like the Jonathan Majors takes. What do they, what if the thought warriors want? I ain't not fucking with it. They are anti-Johnathan? It's always like, I'm not going to the Reddit no more.

He always, he says this every couple of months. But I'm really not going to more because it's not. But the way I see it on the Reddit is this like, this is the way the Reddit goes. Okay. And this is the most toxic person on the Reddit is always a van defender. This is how the Reddit goes. Rachel is beautiful.

Look at our girl, Rach. Our girl, Rache is killing it. Oh my God, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, I can't wait until Van dies. Okay. Like, Van is a fat whore. Van sucks. Look at what Van did. Look at what Van did.

And one nigger down there that's got, like, Dr. Umar in his Reddit picture that goes. Man, y'all really be too hard on Vang. That's not. That's so not true. And if you went on the Reddit, you would see. It's so not true. What else we got? Are we out of here?

Nah, we're not fucking out yet, man. Crazy. We podding today. We podding today, man. Because this might be my last day in Spotify because I'm about to go over here dotting people with my gun. I didn't tell everybody. I dare you to pop the thought warriors right now.

Hit the camera. New equipment. New equipment. reckless I held it Did you do shopping this weekend for a higher learning decor like you said you would? I did

What do you mean? So we got to change the decor in here a little bit Oh, that's right, you did say that Well, we said we were going to put the dogs Pitches of the dogs, different stuff We got to change the decor a little bit But I didn't know I like it I like it too but we need

We need some more stuff Maybe the tape Yeah, it's just some stuff on the table Van's tired of looking in our books. Ah, them books is fucking, then books both flopped. Don't speak on my book. My book did well. That's two flops right there.

Do you think, do you, actually, that book did really well. Okay, what, how much, like, okay, look, if it did really well, nigga, how many copies you sold? I don't know. How do fuck you? Because I asked my publisher, and I asked my agent, he was like, the book did really well. No, that's what you only value well by the first week,

which is New York Times. Hold on, hold on, hold on. The fiction did not do as well. Hold on. That's flop talk. I'll be honest. If you, this is what we'll do. Because I'm going to tell you straight up.

I'm, I'm going to write more books. I know my book of essays did well. I'm going to write more books. sold books, you know what I'm saying? But it didn't really, you know what I'm saying? It didn't, we're going to have better books. So what I'm saying is, let's get out of our flop era. You think I should write a divorce book?

See, you should, but you won't. Because that book would actually go fucking crazy. So here's my, and we'll, I'll talk about this. This is the issue with it. One, I don't do tell-offs. My book of essays is not a tell-all. A lot of people wanted me to write a book about The Bachelor and tell all the behind-the-scenes and different details.

I have a chapter maybe two on it, but that's not my style to just pour it out. I don't want that attached to my reputation of like, she's just going to tell it all. That's not me. But the other thing is, is the way books go now, you put out something juicy.

One person reads it. They write up a story about it. People don't feel like they need to. to go buy the book and read the whole details because they'll just read the cliff notes in an article. That's the problem. So it's like if I tell all everything in a book, somebody will write up an article and people won't read it.

They'll be like, here's the top ten things, juiciest headlines from Rachel's book. It's not, but see, writing a tell-all is one thing. But if you wrote a book that was dense about, forget about a tell-all. Should I write a book about divorce? Write a book about divorce. Y'all tell all mean.

Should I write a book? about... I think right now that there is a big... There's a lot of women that are asking questions about what happens post-divorce.

There's an adult star named Miss Be Nasty. And she did a whole YouTube. It's like 15 minutes long. She's very popular, Miss Be Nasty. Right? She did a whole YouTube about the fact that her baby's dad has put her on child support. And she got to come out of $5,000 a month in child support.

And she was talking about that. I think that because things are changing a little bit, there's a lot of women out there that would be interested in knowing what it's been like from somebody who was either the primary breadwinner or had a lot of access to capital that some guys could get. And I actually think that there were men that would be interested in reading that as well.

There are definitely levels to it, right? I'm divorcing young. I still want kids. I'm divorced. Yes, I am. I still want to have kids. It's this weird thing. I'm single, but I'm divorced.

You know, I've, very briefly just talked about like the shame and stuff that's attached to it. But one of the other things is I haven't talked a lot about it. So there's a lot that's being said about me, assumptions as to how I was in my marriage or the type of woman I am because, you know, like I am big on, you know, like I work hard and I want a good career. There's a lot of assumptions that come with that that are placed on me when people actually don't know the real deal.

That's something. And then also, yeah, like I'm in a state where the laws are in. And they were created for a good purpose, and now they are used in ways that are very unfair. Like you talk about be nasty, my situation. Is that not her name? It is. Okay. It's Miss Be Nasty, but yeah.

Shit. I'm sorry, Miss Be Nasty. Yeah. We talk about that, like how she talks about child support and how it's unfair. I think these laws need to change, and I think that there's something with that as well. and I think a lot of people don't know a lot about it. So, yeah, there's something there. I don't know.

What do y'all think? It could be a little. But see, this is, this book here's. Be telling my stuff and some other stuff. This book is nutritious. That's why it wouldn't be a tell-all. It could be both. Yeah, it could be a nutritious little solicitation.

My next book that I'm going to write is on Dick Rodden. It's about the state of contemporary dick riding and how it is really going to ruin the world. That's my next book. See, Fat Crazy and Tire for me, so much stuff happening. It was literally me saying goodbye to the old version of me. It was something that I had to write at the time. And I want to shout out somebody. I want to shout out the people that Legacy Lit who are fantastic, great partners, all of that stuff. Fat Crazy and Tire was something that I had to write for myself. Now I'm going to write something that's bigger, that's observational on the world, that people can really utilize in their lives. Right? So us moving these books is us going into the new era of higher learning too. Listenership is up. Everything is happening. So thank y'all. Yeah, up 25% this year.

You can ask, man, doing our thing. Okay, before we get out of here, I do want to ask you about something. So there was a beef on Twitter, man. I don't know what you think about it because you're from Texas. What's Texas got to do with it? Texas got a lot of both of these people. Okay. For the record, I did not want to do this topic.

Texas got both the fried chicken and the frioles. Van, tell people what the talk about. Texas got the gumbo and the gorditas. See what I'm saying? Chitlins and chilikilis! Black women and Mexican ladies were beefing on Twitter. Started off because a social media personality named I.A.J.

And another woman were wearing the same clothes. And then this woman said, because I.A.J. not built like a Mexican, y'all need to learn how to dress for your body type and not just putting on something because it's a trend right now. That prompted a lot of Mexican ladies to post their bodies with a caption

built like a Mexican. And the Mexican ladies that posted this stuff was fine. And they was posting their bodies posting their curves, posting their hips, posting butt, posting all kinds of stuff

and going, ha, ha, built like a Mexican, built like a Mexican. And I thought that that would be the end of it. I thought that Mexican ladies would be like, nah, we fine too. And then it would be over. But I think that this is an interesting topic.

Why? Because I really do feel like right now there is residual anger between the black community and the Mexican community, it feels like to me that Kendrick Lamar and Lefty Gunplay should put a whole tape out together

to calm things down because this got vicious. I saw black ladies that was half Mexican and half black going, y'all know these black ladies is right. That's why I take after my daddy's side. Like, this got vicious on Twitter. The fellows

were the true winners here because all they got was... What's to click the hands? hashtag and look at nice bodies. Look at nice bodies. Mexican ladies out there, like a lot of Modellos, a lot of ladies holding Modellos showing that fucking fire. You know what I don't want to talk about this? Why?

Because it's stupid. And the fact that this went on for days and started over a stupid tweet, it wasn't IRJ who I just found out who that was. No, she didn't tweet. She didn't tweet. Somebody else tweeted it, which it was a mean tweet, right? First off, the outfit was hideous, okay, on both women. It was an ugly outfit.

And it was a mean tweet where a woman was talking badly about another woman's body. That's the first problem. But the fact that this created a whole thing for days where black women, Mexican women were going at it over an outfit and over body types where you can see body types vary between black women and they vary between Mexican women. They are not all black women are built the same. Not all Mexican women are built the same. It's just so ridiculous. They're not. It's so ridiculous.

Black women have beautiful bodies, though. Yes. And as you click the hashtag, there are also Mexican women that have beautiful bodies. And not every Mexican woman does and not every black woman has a beautiful body. That's just, that's the truth.

Black women in Louisiana, fine as hell. Okay. Listen, I'm just saying you cannot generalize. You're taking away from my point. I'm not generalizing. I'm just saying if you go to Houston, Baton Rouge. You're generalizing. Not every woman in Houston has a great body.

The point is, is this, 65%. The point is, is that this, which is based in nothing off no percentage. Just looking at being a man, like, six. I'm from Texas. The point is, you're getting away from the point because this is what would happen. Men got involved in the conversation and they shouldn't have been. Because first of all, the conversation that shouldn't have been had. Men started giving their opinion.

It sparked, it got even worse. What did we do? This is between y'all. See how you can. That's what little DeVall was talking about. What this brought out is racism. It got deeper and deeper, and it started all over bullshit. And it brought out racist stereotypes against Mexican women,

against black women. They were at each other, and it's not rooted in what happened in the election. Kendra can't fix him. Gunplay. Who is it? Lefty gunplay. Lefty gunplay. They got crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious.

Oh, okay. That's lefty gunplay. He can't fix it. This is, it's deeply rooted. Like I saw it, I saw it all, and it got nasty. Black women saying what? How Mexican women feel entitled? This is where they brought y'all into it.

They said Mexican women feel entitled to say certain things or to talk to black women a certain way because they've been so boosted by the black male. See, see, that's the kind of stuff I was saying. But see, this is my problem, though. Right, I'm saying this. It brought out nasty stereotypes. This ain't got nothing to do with us.

This happened. This is between y'all. It started spiraling. It brought nasty stereotypes out of black women. Mexican women, black men, non-black men. It just got so ugly, and it all started over an ugly outfit that honestly looks bad on everybody. It was hideous.

It was leopard panties and a white t-shirt with red riding and red pumps. See now? It's an ugly outfit. Universally. I don't care who's wearing it. So it don't matter if you're a black lady, if you're a Mexican lady. But this is what I will say about it. all seriousness.

You guys, this is what Twitter is now. It's been like that for a long time. Twitter is something where something happens and then everybody extrapolates from that thing whatever makes them feel good or whatever turns them on about it.

For all the fellas, it was fellas out there that started insulting other races that they know are fine, just so the women would come through and prove that it's wrong. I heard one guy say,

man, I tell you what, East African women, they look okay in the face, but they be having sloppy bodies. He knows that's bullshit. They'd be fine as hell. He knows that's bullshit.

So he was just trying to get them to goot. It's cool. So the fellas got a show. And honestly, the women that were involved in this on Twitter got to say a lot of things that they have been,

wanting to say for a long time. So it's an interesting thing to me. I do think that relations between blacks and Mexicans are not as good as what they were before. They used to be the cohort of black and brown. Every time I say black and brown now, it feel like somebody out of nowhere, kick me in my ass. I say, hey, black and brown kids.

Somebody go, uh-uh, van, black. Yeah, they do. Black. We out. It seems like every time I say that, hey, man, they're trying to take away but we don't care about it's black. So I'm just seeing it.

I'm seeing it. But like, you know, the thread worked for the fellas. The fellas won. And doesn't it always? It always works for the patriarchy. Higher learning person of the year for 2024. On Thursday, time will announce there are 2024 person in the year

before we get out of here. we're thinking about our higher learning person of the year. Don, do you got candidates for us? I got to mull this over. I don't off the top of my head. Can we think about some people that would be candidates? Kendrick Lamar? Kendrick, yeah, that's easy.

You could throw a Drake in there. Kendrick, Drake, Kat Williams. Oh, that's a good one. Kendrick, Drake, Cat Williams. I think Kamala Harris goes up there. Kamala Harris way up there. Dochi? No.

Not yet. Not yet. She popped second half of the year. Pop second half of the year. Like to where she crossed over to where she became more of a household name. So is then is Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Kat Williams, Kamala Harris, who else? Are they only black? Are we only doing black people?

No, you can do whites. Then you have to put Taylor. I nominate Jared Gough. Donnie. Fuck out of here with that dumb ass shit. It's my nomination. You have to be Taylor Why would Taylor Swift be in there?

I think she's always going to be up there. Every year? Taylor takes five steps and it's something that we all end up writing about. Okay. Did her album come out this year? Did she win a, she won a Grammy this? She won an album of the year this year. She dropped a new album, gosh, it seemed so far away.

She dropped a new album this year. She went on tour worldwide this year. She set records this year. And I just saw a new statistic about her, about with billions of taxes. to it based off her heirs tour, she's clearly a person of the year. Whether that's why I asked you, are we doing just black people, are we including the others?

So then Beyonce would have to be on there. You have to. Beyonce with Cowboy Carter, absolutely. Let me ask you a question. And then Beyonce and then we'll put Shibuzi. Why? Just to piss somebody off that I know, one of my homies. Like, no Shibuzi.

You know what? You know who the only person is. that the Reddit loves universally. We got to go. It's Donnie. And that's because Donnie is. We're not bringing him in enough. Yeah, we got to, we got to, you know,

we're going to start doing in the new year. What? Okay. This is really what we're going to do. There's a change to higher learning. The only thing that I'm introducing is the top of the show. All the rest of the topics, Donnie will introduce.

Donnie. Donnie, he wants people to turn on you. No, I don't. I don't. I want Don't. I want Don't introduce because then that way that will equalize the talk time a little bit more. Because sometimes it takes me a long, long time. And then people are like, we want to hear Rachel because she's so gorgeous.

And so it, that will equalize the talk time. And I think that it'll stabilize. We're working out the podcast in real time. Stabilize the conversation anymore. Donnie, either Donnie or Ashley, either Don't even know how to work it. Either Don't shoot me in my face. Don't shoot me in my face. Don't shoot me in my face.

Either Donnie or Ashley will introduce the topics and then we'll do that. Donnie, I think that's a good idea. I don't hate it. I actually kind of think it's a good idea too. Let's see how it goes. I think it's a great idea. Thank, okay. You're outvoted, Donnie.

So, isn't that a good idea? Yeah, I kind of like, I want to see how it goes. Yeah, when y'all want to start it? We'll work it out. Okay. Oh, and by the way, we got it. Let's do it Thursday. Oh.

Well, Ashley, is that you, Ashley? Yes, that's me, it's me, Ashley. Why do you feel so chipper? She always sounds like that. I woke up. So maybe either Ashley or Donnie, we'll work it out, either Ashley or Darnie, or we split it up, who introduces the topics. This is a new.

Voice from the Sky, introduced the topics. Donnie or Ashley and then we go into it. We got Elliot Wilson coming on the podcast pretty soon too. I can't wait to talk to Elliot about hip hop

and all of this stuff. But we got to go now. We've just been bullshit for the last like 15, 20 minutes. All right. Take thin caps off but do not stop learning. I am Van Lathen Jr.

I am Rachel and Lindsay. Bye guys.