It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 242

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Starting point is 00:02:52 What's Pew Pee in my Pews? This is Robert Evans, and it could happen here, a podcast about it happening here as it seems to be more every week. And when things get worse, one thing that a lot of folks start talking about is, should I buy a gun? And obviously this is a fraught question, and the only responsible answers to it are very complicated.

Starting point is 00:03:14 And so to talk over some very complicated answers, we've got James Stout, and we have in the audience with us the great Carl Caserta, Carl of Enrange TV. Thank you for coming on to be our resident firearms expert in this podcast. where we try not to be deeply irresponsible. Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's always a pleasure to come back to the show. And people always ask for more co-labs, and here we are, but on a very important topic.

Starting point is 00:03:41 And the only question I have is now is, when do you change the name of the podcast to? Oh, no, it's happening here. We're talking with the marketing people. It done happened here. Oh, shit, it's happening again. It's been happening here. Yeah. Here it is.

Starting point is 00:03:57 Here, now. Right in this moment. Be here now, comma, it. Yeah. We've got to work out which one SEO is best, but we're on it, Carl, don't worry. Great. We're working on it. So, as I think both of you know, but maybe listeners don't, gun sales typically saw before

Starting point is 00:04:14 elections, as to ammunition purchases. People are afraid of gun bans has been traditionally one reason why, and the firearms industry is not afraid of hyping those up to increase sales in election years. Normally, prices increase in line with demand. Like, if you go back to November 2020 and look at the prices of ammunition and guns compared to now, you'll see how much incredibly higher they were. That was for a number of reasons. But considering inflation, gun prices are pretty low right now. You know, that is kind of a recurrent thing for the most part is that while everything else gets more expensive television and firearms remain affordable.

Starting point is 00:04:53 Guns have gone to the point where they're more affordable than they've ever been. Uh-huh. Yeah, they really are. AR-15s are, I used to talk about this on In-R-15s are essentially cordwood. And you can get a fully fled, good-to-go AR-15 now for like $4 to 500 bucks. You get pistols for $250. Oh, yeah. The prices on guns are like through the floor.

Starting point is 00:05:13 And it's interesting to note that, like, if you are a gun manufacturer or firearms dealer, even if you don't hype elections, it would be unintelligent of you to not prep for elections because they're so consistently the bristmess of gun sales. So this is an instance of which we didn't see that. And it's kind of interesting. I think there's an element, because obviously when we talk, I think, to people who are not into guns and talk about how cheap guns have gotten, they're like, well, that's very bad. And there's definitely downsides to that. But an upside of that is it does kind of suggest we are not seeing the degree of panicked hoarding for a civil war that we have seen at previous points when gun prices were not as cratered.

Starting point is 00:05:52 And ammo prices were a lot higher. And ammo availability was a lot lower. Like, in some ways, that's kind of an optimistic sign. Yeah, or the dark side of that is the traditional prepper, air quote, is so saturated in guns and ammunition. Right. But they don't even need another one. Right. Well, I think that is where a lot of people are.

Starting point is 00:06:10 Yeah, yeah. Also, like, capacity really increased in 2020, and I think they've been pumping out. Like, it's interesting to look at, like, the cost of 9mm and 556 ammunition, which, if you're not familiar, are, like, the most commonly used defensive ammunition round. compared to more niche stuff. Like, that hasn't gone down as much if you're trying to get 300 whism or something. The funny thing to that, yeah, 5, 5, 5, 6 and 9mm, both defensively as well as just recreationally

Starting point is 00:06:39 are the most common ammunition by far. And some of the weirdo stuff I like to shoot, like percussion caps for percussion revolvers, you can't find that stuff to save your life. That stuff's through the roof and expensive. So they've literally just bunkered down, intent there, and are making 5, 5, 5, 6, and 9mm.

Starting point is 00:06:56 that's where the demand is and will continue to be. Yeah, I can't find, you can't see it. I have a little reloading setup here. I can't find shotgun primers or certain powders anywhere now. And this is going to be a problem, because if we have another Cowboys and Aliens kind of situation, what are we going to use? You know, what is Harrison Ford going to use to save us? Anyway, nobody saw that movie. Why am I making that joke?

Starting point is 00:07:18 Let me know, I've got a good stash of percussion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all going to be leaning heavily on Carl. Call for all humanity. So I think we've gotten a little bit ahead of our skis here. We should start by talking, because again, I think we've all seen a lot of people being like, well, I guess I should get a gun now in the wake of Trump's victory. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:39 And I think the first caveat we should give everyone is like if you are reacting in a way that is totally reasonable to this news, being depressed, right? If you're somebody who deals with suicidal ideation, if you have been spiraling lately, if you have been thinking about self-harm, if you are just not in a stable mental place, and especially if you have no experience with firearms and are not in a stable mental place, don't go rush to pick one up now. Like, for one thing, I assure you they will be available in the future. They are not going to get harder to buy.

Starting point is 00:08:11 No, you know, it reminds me of a line from the movie We Were Soldiers, which is actually a pretty good movie, I've talked to speaking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun. In spite of Mill Gibson, it was pretty good. And there's a scene where like the old hardened soldier from World War II in Korea gets to Vietnam and he's like, he's just got a pistol. And everyone's around him saying, don't you want an M16? He goes, don't worry, there'll be plenty of those laying around if I need one. So right.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Kind of that's where we're at in this country. Don't worry, there'll be plenty laying around if you need one. Yeah. Yeah. We are not entering a period where that's, you know, I think there are some specific worries where there may be attempts to restrict specific groups from arming themselves. But even so, I wouldn't say that elevates it above a threat if you are. are dealing with suicidal ideation. Having a gun is not a talisman, as our friend tactical girlfriend often brings up, and you shouldn't treat it as one. And part of what that means is that, like,

Starting point is 00:09:03 you have to model, like, the threat that you're facing, right? And if you are not in immediate danger, if nobody is threatening to kill you specifically, you know, then that may not be the safest thing for you, right? And particularly, I think the other side of it that, Carl, you are much more qualified to talk about within me, is that if you are going to buy a firearm, if you want that to be a thing that can actually protect you in a situation where you are in danger, where someone is threatening your life, you have to train with it. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that not to make, to make light of that at all with that little joke about that movie, but the reality is we as people, humans in general, all of us are bad at threat modeling. And that's not to say that the perceived

Starting point is 00:09:43 threat that we're seeing with the results isn't real. Yeah. I think it is. But that said, At the moment, if you're dealing with some of those issues like you mentioned or the living situation you're in or even the community around you, isn't one in which a firearm laying around is particularly safe, could mean that you're actually inducing more threat and risk to yourself than what might come in two years. So that is something we have to think about very carefully. Can I possess this responsibly? Do I know how to use it responsibly? Am I in a place not only in my living situation, but my mental state that possessing this very quick and easy to use lethal device is safe? to have a round.

Starting point is 00:10:19 Those are questions you should ask first before worrying about tomorrow. Right. Yeah, I mean, maybe we should address, like, a couple of things that Carl said right off the bat, like you said, having a firearm lying around. Right.

Starting point is 00:10:32 One thing that we should address is, like, I know I recently purchased a new gun safe, but, like, if you have X budget to buy a gun, Robert also mentioned that without training your liability with the gun, right? Maybe we can break down, if you have $1,000,

Starting point is 00:10:47 You don't need to go out and spend $1,000 on your gun, right? Perhaps it would be better to save some of that money and put it towards other things. I think it might make sense to just break those down for people in case they're not familiar. Yeah, I think that might be a good place to start is if you decide, number one, I'm in an emotionally stable place, I either have some specific threats or I want to be prepared for a future where those threats are more likely. And let's start with a budget of $1,000, right? And, you know, this is one of the, there's going to be people who can't afford a budget of $1,000.

Starting point is 00:11:20 And that's very unfortunate. But this is one of those things that, like, isn't fair, right? Like guns cost money. Not everyone has disposable income. But $1,000, I think, is a reasonable floor for not just acquiring a firearm, but, like, the things you need to be able to start building proficiency with it. So, like, let's talk about that, Carl. Like, what would you do? What would you advise someone with a grand who is looking into getting into shooting and also being set up?

Starting point is 00:11:45 to potentially defend themselves if they need to. Right. So it's such a nuanced question and answer because there's so many variabilities there. One of which is you have to understand the living situation you're in. Are you living in a place that is solely your own? Do you live with roommates?

Starting point is 00:12:00 Do you have children and your parents? I mean, like, these things all come into the equation about how well can you secure this thing should you acquire it. And so that comes up to, do you need a full bolt into the wall safe? Do you need something that is locked with cable? underneath the bed that still is reasonably difficult to get into but is accessible otherwise.

Starting point is 00:12:21 Do you have a situation of which you're the only one that could access this? And therefore, you're not worried about that. So the first thing you have to think about is, I'm taking possession of responsibility of this. It is a lethal weapon. What am I going to do to make sure that that doesn't fall into the wrong hands, whether there are people that live within your own structure or outside of it, should something go awry? So you have to consider that. So right off the bat is what are the situation I'm in and what are the,

Starting point is 00:12:45 things I need to consider to make sure this doesn't leak out of my control. Because we've seen in so many instances, especially some of the horrible spreeshooting and such, in which it's not the person that possessed the gun, but someone around them that took it from them and used it for that. Absolutely. And that's because it wasn't stored well. And so that's number one. So you're going to think about one, are you getting a pithel or a long arm? And that's a discussion to be had, too.

Starting point is 00:13:08 But those two equate. And then depending on which one of those two you're acquiring determines the kind of safe storage requirements that also align with your current living situation. Of course, the best thing is a safe bolted to the floor that only you can get into, but that's not viable for everyone. Yeah. Right. But it's something, right?

Starting point is 00:13:25 Yeah. Yeah. What comes along with that is you also, this is going to be true at every stage of this process. You need to know the laws of your state and maybe even your local area, right? Like in Oregon, we have very strict safe storage laws, right? Like, you can be held accountable to a higher degree in this state if you don't secure a weapon and someone gets access to it.

Starting point is 00:13:45 Right. Now, obviously, if you have a safe and someone drills into your safe, you're not liable, right? Like, you took the actions you could to stop them from being able to get to your firearms. There's not an expectation that you have a fortress of solitude or whatever. But you have to have taken reasonable steps to lock them away, right? And, you know, that's going to be different. A lot of states have absolutely no requirements whatsoever. But you need to be aware of what your local legal situation is. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that to the table because myself living in Arizona, we have no such rule. And so I could essentially... You can just keep them on the floor. I could stack them in my front yard, right? I'm like, ah, just put them out in the yard. I had extra ARs. I used them to make a fence. Cheaper than wood right now.

Starting point is 00:14:28 Yeah, literally cold wood now. So the thing about that is, again, these things get more and more complicated over time, and we don't want to make this conversation impenetrable. But like the kind of safe you acquire is important, too. And that's a deeper topic than we could ever do in one video. I'm going to go ahead and just dove tell us. out to a friend of mine, Devi and Olaf.

Starting point is 00:14:47 He has a channel. He does a lot of video work about gun safes and which ones are good or bad. But let's just say the cheap $90 thing with the cylindrical key lock isn't it. So you've got to be a little better than that. So I would estimate, let's go with costs. You're buying, let's say, an air 15,

Starting point is 00:15:03 you're probably going to need to spend, and I'm guessing here, around $250 for a safe that's actually worth a damn. Yeah, yeah. It's about what I spent recently for a little handgun safe. Yeah. So let's build on that, right? Let's say you've decided that you want a gun and that it's safe for you to have a gun.

Starting point is 00:15:21 I think, yeah, the first thing you ought to prioritize is making sure that no one who, for whom it is not safe, gets that gun, which we've addressed, right? The second thing that you need to prioritize is that you could use that gun safely and, like you are not a liability every time that you pick up and load that gun, right? Yes. And part of that is in, and maybe I'll have different opinions on this, but I think we're probably Sympatico, picking the right type of firearm, I see a lot of people saying, I am worried I'm going to get attacked, you know, I've gotten a death threat, you know, I'm scared particularly of this group of, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:00 Nazis or whatever. So I'm going to buy a handgun. And I will tell you right now, my opinion is that if you are looking for a self-defense weapon, a handgun probably shouldn't be what you pick in unless you are looking to carry a gun. Yeah, no, that's a good quote, right? I carry a handgun because it's unwieldy to walk around with a BF50 BMG. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I cannot take my AR with me in the street, right? So I keep a nine on me, you know? Handguns are the most difficult thing to use skillfully under distress and duress than any other firearm.

Starting point is 00:16:34 And above and beyond that, they are actually the least effective at doing the job you think they're going to do than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. There are a shocking number of people are shot way more times than you would expect they could survive with a handgun, right? Like, that is just a reality of the way that they work because they're much, much less powerful than a rifle. And it's also like, I had a friend a couple of years ago who bought a snub nose 38 thinking, well, this is simple. I can't fuck it up. It's a good.

Starting point is 00:17:01 And I took her out and was like, I need, I'm going to set up a 10 foot target and we'll see how many times you can hit it with this gun. and she could not do it one out of five times. And then I brought out my Glock, and she was able to hit it every time, right? And it's because one of those is a much easier weapon for somebody who is a complete novice to learn how to use functionally, right? And it's not the snub nose 38.

Starting point is 00:17:26 Yeah. In the roughest of most senses, typically the smaller the gun is, the more a professional you need to be to use it. Right. Yeah. And like with that in mind, you're responsible for every shot you fire, right? Training in self-defense,

Starting point is 00:17:42 by fucking accident because you don't know how to clean your gun or what have you. Every bullet that leaves that barrel, it's your fault. And every one of those is potentially someone's life. So when you're thinking about buying a gun, you want to have something where you can, A, handle it safely and be discharging and know where that bullet's going to go. Yeah, so on the note, this has been asked for me many times, and we're talking about we're all, we are on the same page. It's like when someone asking this question and it comes up more than you think,

Starting point is 00:18:10 first of all, we're getting past the issue of like, are you safe to own this and safe storage? So now we're at the point you are buying a gun, right? So you have to think of, what's the threat? Are we worried about three years from now and the potential realities of a very caustic and dangerous political future? Are you worried about only home defense? Are you worried about your own self

Starting point is 00:18:28 protection walking down the street? Because obviously you're not going to be, well, not obviously, but for the most part, you're not going to be carrying an AR-15 down the street. But if you are only worried about your castle, make a joke about castle doctrine, if you're only worried about your house, inside your house, there is no reason to be picking a pistol, none whatsoever. Now, I will say that there's a number of folks in the lefty gun space who will say, so just get an AR-15, that's not always going to be practical depending on your loss, right?

Starting point is 00:18:55 Like, that is not something that we can say everyone will be able to do, right? Yeah. But we can say there will be a non-handgun option that will probably be a better fit for you. Yeah. Absolutely. And this is where we see a lot of people in the gun space. It's kind of weird. There's like cultural shifts in the zeitgeist of what's the cool defensive thing of the time. But there's a lot to be said, depending on what you think you're going to have to shoot at hopefully never, of course. But like an AR-15 does things like armor piercing in terms of cavalier and da-da-da-da-da. But for home defense, it really still is kind of hard to go wrong with a shotgun in many instances. And that should not be ignored. You know what else shouldn't be ignored? It's our obligatory. to pivot to advertisements about every 15 minutes on this show. All right, we're back. Carl, you've mentioned that you think a shotgun sometimes can be more effective than AL-15.

Starting point is 00:19:57 Especially another thing I will add is you, in a state like California, the laws regarding semi-automatic center-fire rifles are incredibly confusing. It's extremely easy to buy something on Amazon, slap it on your gun and render it a felony. Yeah. I would generally say, like, in most situations, an AR, if you're new to shooting, it's going to be easier to figure out.

Starting point is 00:20:19 They're very simple, easy to upgrade and modify. But, like, yeah, in California, in a state, New York is similar, it's very easy to commit a felony with an AR-15 and not know that you are. And you don't want to find out that your gun is a felony when you have to use it in self-defense, right?

Starting point is 00:20:36 This is an instance in which the good old man, again, I'm not trying to promote, I'm not on team shotgun here. But when it comes to cross all state lines, I mean, sure, there's an exception somewhere. But for the most part, a manually pump-activated shotgun is likely to not run a fallible law anywhere. Additionally, there's a good chance that if you were to, and we have to consider all realities, there's a good chance that should you need to use it, that when you're in court, trying to defend yourself for using this lethal weapon,

Starting point is 00:21:04 a shotgun doesn't seem to evoke the same concerns, let's say, from courts and from judges that an AR might. And they are, you know, regardless of how common they are and how much they proliferate society, there's still those scary rifles. A shotgun does not tend to evoke that same kind of response. It is most likely legal almost anywhere. And the diversity of ammunition you can use in it really bridges the gap from one yard to 100 yards or more. But a lot of people that are new to guns will think, well, shotgun, I don't need to aim. That is incorrect.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Shotguns need to be aimed as much as any other long arm. They're just very effective when they actually connect. Yeah. It's one of those, I think, because I do change, like, what I am taking with me based on where I go. And, like, when I'm in California, I generally, like, if I'm going camping or something, I'll make sure I have a 12 gauge in the car, right? Because I'm not going to try to get whatever this month's gun laws are right. You know, like, that's just not practical to me. That said, I think, because there are a number of people who will be very frustrated us talking about shotguns. One thing that they are right about is, There's a different type of training that's necessary with the shotgun, and they are in some ways more complicated to use than an AR, in part because for every shot, well, unless it's a semi-automatic, like, for every shot, you're pumping it, right? And, like, that is a, that is, there's muscle memory that has to be built there, right? It's harder, you know, maybe a little bit slower to get up to a

Starting point is 00:22:32 level, or at least you have to train differently with it, right? The other thing about it is that, like, it loads very differently. You know, a shotgun is a completely different kind of ammunition than an AR has, which all goes back to the whole, like, you have to be willing to train with whatever it is you're going to use. Fair enough. Yeah. So ideally, like, if you're in this position of thinking, if you can find a friend or failing that at a range that will allow you to try different guns, I think as a novice,

Starting point is 00:23:02 you're going to pick up, if you've never shot a gun before, I probably wouldn't pick up a 12-gauge shotgun and start pewing away because the recoil will be quite profound. noticeable to you. So don't start there. Start with something else. There's smaller shotguns, a 20 gauge, you know? And those are fine. Respective you're a smaller statute person, even a 28 or 16s are hard to probably buy defensive ammunition for. But I think if you can, when you begin that journey, like, after I see people say with handguns, find one that fits your hand, you probably have no idea what fits you and feels good if you're just starting out. Yeah. Finding someone who is local to you, ideally who has some experience,

Starting point is 00:23:40 who can help you along that process, I think, and someone who you trust, right? Like, I've been, like, I have to train, I have a concealed carry weapons permit

Starting point is 00:23:48 in California. The last time I went to take a course, like, from the outset, I got like xenophobia, homophobia, like jokes that, I guess,

Starting point is 00:23:58 the guy who was instructing the course thought that everyone was in on. Just, like, they made me feel unwelcome and I'm a cis-happed white guy. Yeah. But I think maybe we should address that,

Starting point is 00:24:07 Like, if you're thinking getting started, what kind of instruction should you look for? Where should you look for it? And, like, what would you recommend? Maybe other sources, too, Carl, like, your YouTube channel has been a great resource for me. This is where in the firearms, owning a thing doesn't make a community. So there's always this phrase the gun community. It's not a thing. Owning a thing doesn't make a community.

Starting point is 00:24:31 A community is a group of people that bond together over a mutual beliefs and hopefully care for one another. So there's no firearms community. But that said, the broad scope of people that have been interested in the topic for the longest duration of time has been mostly seceded to a group that we would not find ourselves aligned with or comfortable with being around. And so this is where the community building thing is real, because the more we build communities and we're behind in this regards in terms to alternative voices in the firearm space, but the more we build that community, not only online but amongst one another, the more we're going to have safer, better spaces for us. to work together to learn how to use these things safely and efficiently. And that is a challenge. If you walk in sight unseen to a place that is probably foreign to you in firearms land, sadly, at this time point in time, there's a pretty good chance it's not going to be

Starting point is 00:25:20 something you're going to be comfortable with, quite honest. Just like you mentioned, James, like it's going to be that kind of stuff. There's probably going to be Trump stuff on the wall. There's probably going to, you're probably going to hear some jokes that are just jokes, but you know, they're really not. Yeah. That's the kind of space that that's filled with. And so when people come and say, well, who can I go to to get this training with?

Starting point is 00:25:38 I'm like, that's challenging. There's some options online. There's like Operation Blazing Sword. There's a, there's, the liberal gun club has some training options as well. But what's better is finding people and interconnecting with people of like mind around you, if you can, and working together. And then actually building a real community that isn't a gun community. And that's where we're going to find solace and the ability to get better at this stuff together. Not exactly a strong answer.

Starting point is 00:26:04 but if the truth. But if you're going in, if you're going in just unhindered, you're going to expect it to be a place that you're probably not going to be happy with. Yeah. And I think that's a really good point. I'd like it. Can we talk a little bit more about training options? Like not just because you mentioned Operation Blazing Sword. I'd like to hear a little more about them. But also where people could go for like reading and videos in order to kind of find more information on how to develop proficient. Yeah, so, okay, so YouTube University doesn't teach you how to actually, like, effectively hit targets with something that's different. Right, right, right. You can. There's no way to learn that besides doing it. But in terms of just general firearms understanding, learning some of the history, learning about how guns work, there are some YouTube resources out there. Tactical girlfriend, you already mentioned, has four years of a legacy of content on her site that a lot of it is focused on beginner style content. In fact, she just posted a playlist. She has kind of stopped making videos in general. She mentioned that a while back. But she still has her content online, and she posted a playlist recently

Starting point is 00:27:10 of all of her How to Get Going videos, 101 stuff. And that would kind of be where I'd start with. Yes, absolutely. My channel, InRange TV, has some of that. I tend to focus a little bit on the more esoteric and next level things, but that's not to say it's not there as well. So I'm not trying to solve promote.

Starting point is 00:27:29 But I would actually say her playlist is going to be better than some of my own, although we have stuff like that on InRange TV as well. If you want to open up that dark boy called Reddit, the Liberal Gun Club has resources on it. If you go there, they have a list of people and local resources. You can also Google the Liberal Gun Club. I'm not even trying to say anyone doing that is necessarily identifying as a liberal,

Starting point is 00:27:49 but they have gathered lists of statewide resources as many as they can that are providing training in regional places that would be a good place to start. Operation Blading Sword is a subset of that. Blake Alva, I can't pronounce them that thing, Blake has been on my channel, and you'll find him there in the Liberal Gun Club listing. When I think of that, I would say, go to YouTube, hit up Tactical Girlfriend,

Starting point is 00:28:10 go to InRange TV if you want to see, maybe not 101, but next level stuff, but a friendly space to you, and then check out the Liberal Gun Club, best I can say, because they do have a list of resources that they're gathering across the country. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:24 And I think one thing that tactical girlfriend talks about that is a, because you're right, and I think this is an important, point that like you have to spend time shooting and you know that costs money in order to get better but there is one thing that you can do that does not cost ongoing money to get better with a handgun if you're again looking to carry a gun which is dry fire training right which is a very useful process of building proficiency you can do it i mean you could do it every day if you want it will help it does not replace needing to go shoot right but you can find guides tactical girlfriend

Starting point is 00:28:58 talks about it a lot but you can find other guides online and And that is a way that you can kind of stretch your ammo budget and gain additional proficiency. There are even products designed specifically for that. One of them is popped to mind and there are others like Mantis X. And you make sure your gun is safely unloaded and you're proficient with that part of it. You put these devices in and you can actually fire. A dry fire is firing with no ammunition in the gun. Click, add a target on the wall.

Starting point is 00:29:22 And it'll teach you things about like, did you pull to the right? Did you push to the left? Did you dip the gun? And those are very good products that you can use. Once you buy them gets more money. but you can train proficiently in a safe place without firing live ammunition and improve your skills quite a bit. That's a good point. Yep.

Starting point is 00:29:36 Yeah. I would say another organization I would plug is armed equality, especially for like LGBTIA people, a friend of mine, very nice people. Perhaps we should go back then to that. Like, Robert's mentioned dry firing. We've mentioned... Well, first, I think we need to go to ads, James. You're right, Robert. We should go back to Chumba Casino.

Starting point is 00:29:57 Yeah. So dry fire at the wall and think of Trumbah casino. Or just download an upgrade from Neuralink that you got from Elon. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Our primary sponsors, the brain chip. We're back. So we've had discussion about training, safe storage, and a little bit about like what to look at firearms wise. But I want to go back to that third one because you are marketed at so heavily when you're trying to buy a firearm, right? And the likelihood of you getting misinformation, right? We all know.

Starting point is 00:30:41 smaller statute of people who have been given, yeah, a snub nose 38, a gun that's entirely inappropriate for them. Carl, what, like, if you could maybe go through, like, each major category, right, if we do hang gun, shotgun, semi-automatic rifle, maybe one that is compatible with AR-band states and one that's, you know, you're in real America. There are some options like the Ares SCR that are basically AR-15s that are a lot easier to keep in compliance in a state like California, but they are also more than twice as expensive as like a budget AR-15, right?

Starting point is 00:31:18 Which is not to say it's impossible to have a budget AR-15 that is in compliance with California law. It's just, I am not going to take on the responsibility of telling you how to do that legally, because when I lived in California, I was only about 80% sure that I was in compliance with the law. If you're in California, my advice would be to go to a shop and buy the, you know, gun complete. Yes.

Starting point is 00:31:42 Don't piece it together off the internet. That's good advice. Oh, well, if you're a new gun on or don't piece together anything together, because the knowledge to make something reliable that you've put together from bits and pieces is not a good idea. You want something that's got a, I mean, literally, you want something from a quote-unquote reputable manufacturer, but it has a warranty. Like, let's just be, don't even start with trying to put something together. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:02 So let's just go ahead and start with pistols. So the challenge there is like, of course, it would be very nice to be able to buy like four of them because you can train with a 22 and practice with this. But let's go with the constraint that we had earlier of this $1,000, and you're going to buy a pistol, and with it you plan to train, get better, be proficient, but also maybe have to use it for self-defense. You really want to stick with a 9-millimeter. I mean, there are smaller guns like 380s and such like that,

Starting point is 00:32:26 but we're getting into specialist guns. Yeah. What I'm going to say here across the board, when I recommend something, it's going to be the opposite of specialist, it's going to be the most bland, boring possible thing. Yeah. And when it comes to that, and I know that everyone's like, uh, but it's a 9mm,

Starting point is 00:32:40 probably a Glock. Yep. The Glock 19 is a relatively reasonably sized gun. The 17's a little bigger. The 19's in this nice middle ground. It is carryable. It's small enough to be concealed should you have the right to do so. But it's big enough to be viable for being reasonably accurate with not extensive amounts

Starting point is 00:32:58 of training, but enough training to get good. Yeah. And it's a bunch around the 9mm magazine that just plain works. Yep. Yeah. If you're on a tight budget, I will say that cops are always, You can find trade-in police clocks pretty cheap. Cops don't shoot very much.

Starting point is 00:33:14 You can sometimes get some pretty good deals on those. Yep. That's it. I'm revealing a little bit of future history of what's going on in-range. We're doing a video in a couple weeks. There is a strange trade imbalance between us and, never mind the politics, Turkey, and they are making some really high-end,

Starting point is 00:33:29 really well-made guns. There is a Glock clone from Turkey that I can't vouch for yet, but this is the kind of where we're at in the gun space. This thing is interchangeable with all-glo-y. block parts and the gun's like $250. Oh, well. You can't beat that. We don't know yet.

Starting point is 00:33:44 I'm not saying go buy that, but I'm saying we're going to do a review of it. The point is, there are glocks and glock-like things that can get the price down. Yeah. Right. And so you're looking at, you know, if you get a budget AR for $500 bucks, you know, a budget nine millimeter handgun, because even if with not counting that one, there are other budget options that are in the $300-ish-dollar range. Yep.

Starting point is 00:34:06 You just have to look around a bit. And I should also note, buying used with a firearm is not like buying used with electronics. If a gun is well maintained, it will outlast you, right? There are some parts that will need replacing from time to time, right? Your springs and stuff are going to age faster than other things. And like barrels you can shoot out, but it takes quite a bit of shooting to shoot a barrel, you know, smooth, right? So it's never a bad to consider, like, finding, like you said, like a police trade-in or something like that. Like, that could be a great way to save money.

Starting point is 00:34:37 Absolutely. So when it comes to the pistol, we're talking about buying just one. Pretty much boil it down to a 9mm that is probably a polymer frame gun, not some big heavy steel thing. A Glock is like the de facto, but there are others. I mean, there's HKs, there's Ruggers. Yeah. I like SIGs, but they're pricier. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The thing about Glock is Glock's been around forever. It's the standard. Finding, accessorizing, buying magazines, or even getting repairs done to a Glock is ubiquitous across the country. get a Glock, you'll be able to deal with it, fix it, do whatever you want to it, straight up. And what has helped me a lot in general is, you know, I have my carry gun, I have my home

Starting point is 00:35:18 defense firearm, and then I have built a couple of firearms from the ground up, and I would, certainly, as you said, I would never have started there. But because I had the extra money doing that means that has given me so much deeper of an understanding of what goes wrong when things do go wrong with a gun and how to fix it. Like I have replaced, Every part on my carry gun at this point, right? Like over time. And it's like given me a much deeper level of understanding of just like mechanically how these things function.

Starting point is 00:35:46 You know, building an AR-15 was the same process. And I'm really, I do find that valuable. Obviously, it's throwing more money at the problem too. Yeah, totally. So the other advantage of 9mm, which is reasonably cheap to feed and shoot, he's reasonably cheap to practice with. For those of you that don't know anything about guns, you will typically practice with what's called FMJ bulk pack ammunition.

Starting point is 00:36:08 Yeah. 9mm, 115 grain. It's just a bullet that's got a copper jacket on it. And that's your practice ammo. And then for carry, should you be carrying it, you'll probably want to carry something that's specifically designed to be defensive ammunition. It'll be far more expensive per box.

Starting point is 00:36:23 But once you get to the point of, yes, I am ready, safe and capable to carry this, you're going to want to pick something gold dots. Spear gold dots are a hollow point. Designed to specifically be for self-defense. But make sure the gun you've chosen works reliably. with that defensive ammo, because even though it works 100% with that FMJ, it may not work with the defensive ammo.

Starting point is 00:36:42 You might have to play with a little bit. Yeah. We should also note when you are buying ammo online, which is not going to be legal in every state, but most people will be able to do this. It pays to be careful. There is a lot of stuff that is sketchier out there, and there can be consequences. I have had a firearm, I have had like a handgun blow up in my hand as a result of getting ammunition that I had not shot before.

Starting point is 00:37:06 This was in fact Turkish. I think it was because I think it was a hot load. But it's possible that it was the result of a bullet, a squib, that then jammed in the barrel and then another round came in after it. I generally have been pretty good at checking to make sure there's a hole in the paper with each shot, which is something you should be making sure of, like when you're shooting. Because if you shoot a round that does not have enough powder behind it, right? if you get a bad round, it can jam in the barrel, and then the second round can cause the barrel to burst.

Starting point is 00:37:40 This is also why we always wear eye protection. But when looking at ammo, if you think this looks like good ammo and it's cheap, look online, add like Reddit to the name, see what other people say about it, right? Like, see if you can find anything written about that. Usually other people, if it's like a less reliable manufacturer, will have said, I've had a bad experience with this ammunition. Yep. Do your diligence, right?

Starting point is 00:38:02 the first time you're shooting a new kind of cheap target ammo. That being said, like, there's a lot of names that almost anyone that's never owned a gun before will recognize names like Remington, Winchester. Yes. That's not to say that they don't make mistakes, too. But, like, if you're going to go buy a Winchester bulk pack of ammunition, you are buying at least what is generally considered consumer-level reliable ammo. If you're buying it from Crazy Bob's Reloading Shack, you don't know what's going to get.

Starting point is 00:38:29 That was what, because it's a lot of the sketchy things, stuff isn't even a manufacturer. It's like ammo that you may not notice immediately. It's like, oh, wow, this seems really cheap. And then it'll say in small letters, remanufactured, right? Which means somebody is reloaded. Reloaded ammo. And like, you know, you can reload ammo and have it be perfectly good ammunition. But do you know who reloaded this ammo? Right? Yeah, yeah. I will tell you as a person that shoots a lot and has been doing it for decades, I personally, even with all that, I will never fire remanufactured ammunition. I want to deal with crazy bobs, weird, bad Wednesday.

Starting point is 00:39:02 Yes, yes. Crazy Bob's Bad Wednesday, Boyce. It's a great name for it. Yeah. Yes. We've addressed a pistol, right? Like, I want to address long guns, and then you mentioned a couple of things, car, which you should also address, which are, like, accessories.

Starting point is 00:39:17 Robert mentioned eye protection, so ear and eye protection. Let me add one more piece to the pistol, and we'll move on. The thing now, the whiz-bang thing now is every pistol has a red dot site on it. A red dot site is essentially an electro-optical box that sits on the top of the slide, and you look through it to aim and it projects a red dot, like almost like a laser dot, if you're not familiar with it, to aim with.

Starting point is 00:39:37 For the most part, I'm not saying you shouldn't have one because they're cool, but for the most part, a person getting into this specifically for self-defense does not need one of those. You don't need to spend $300 on a red dot. The iron sights that come on any of these guns should be sufficient for most purposes.

Starting point is 00:39:54 So don't get suckered into you. I need that. If that's something you want later, think about it, but it's not a requirement. Now, that said, if a gun has one, on it, I don't agree with people who say, like, you can't learn to shoot on a red dot. I think that that's, now, you should, you will need to look up because it may not be cited how to cite it, right? Like, because it, like, red dots are a thing, like, you need to dial them in, right? And

Starting point is 00:40:18 there is a way to do that. Again, you can find guides to this online, just like you can find guides to, like, mounting a scope on a rifle. Um, these are complex mechanical tasks, a red dot less so than a scope, but you can't just buy a gun with a red dot on it and trust that that red dot points out where the bullet's going to go. That's not how they work. Absolutely. My point being is if you gave me, you said, this person here needs to be able to hit a target 15 yards away. You've got one hour. Right. I would not be messing by giving them a red dot. I would give them with something with iron sights and just get them through the task. If that's where I'm going with that. Yeah, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Yeah. I prefer, like, now that I know what I'm

Starting point is 00:40:56 doing to use my red dots and stuff. But I also pretty regularly shoot with iron sights, in part because I like it. Like, it's enjoyable mechanically, and it's kind of how I learned. Yeah. Well, don't get me wrong. It is better. Yeah. It also adds another level of complexity.

Starting point is 00:41:12 And it's more to go wrong. Like, if you're installing that yourself, it's annoying and it's easy to mess up. And then you're upset. Yeah. Yeah. Let's move on to Long Guns. Like, one thing that we should mention. You might buy an AR, specifically an AR actually, and find that it comes with no sighting systems at all.

Starting point is 00:41:33 Yes. And that's a thing to build into your budget. So let's talk about what to get for your budget in the long gun category, Carl. Yeah, so when we go to long guns, we talk about rifles and shotguns. Let's stick with rifles for now, I'm assuming. So in that regard, this is the thing where, like, actually I have a video on my channel about the NFA, which is the National Firearms Act, which is what regulates a lot of, like, machine guns and stuff. But this also occurs across many gun control laws.

Starting point is 00:41:58 They're frequently ablest. Very much so. And the things that they push the most restrictions on are the things that are actually most capable. And that means A.R. 15s in their general guys with a pistol grip and a red dot site, which we just mentioned for pistols, and a 30-run magazine is the thing that is going to be the most,

Starting point is 00:42:19 I could get anyone, I tell you, anyone, capable of hitting at a target at 50 yards within a four-hour training session with a red-dotsided AR-15 and a good magazine. It's a good ammunition. AR-15s are light, low recoil. They're loud because of the 556,

Starting point is 00:42:34 but they're light, low-recoil guns that almost anyone of most body structure can handle. Now, there's exceptions, of course. If you have specific physical challenges, that's another discussion. But if almost anyone, tiny to large, can handle a basic AR-15,

Starting point is 00:42:50 and it is the gun that is most focused on for gun control, ironically, places like California where they take away things that make it more functional like the pistol grip or reduce your magazine capacity because they're trying to diminish the functionality of the gun but the reality is the reason

Starting point is 00:43:06 they're doing that is because that is the gun that is most functional for most people and it is therefore the one that almost anyone can handle pretty well with the smallest amount of training. Yeah. Yes. And I think there's a good point there in if I were coaching someone who is buying an AR that

Starting point is 00:43:22 has no, you know, does not have iron sights on it at all, you are, it is much easier to learn how to cite in and use a red dot on an AR than learning how to adjust the site, the iron sights on an AR-15, right? Like, not that you can't learn that. You should, again, you have to, you can watch a video on it, but it's much more intuitive to, to set up a red dot in that way. This is actually where I would flip-flop. If you're, with the pistol, don't concern yourself too much with a red dot. If you're going with an AR-15, concern yourself of the red dot.

Starting point is 00:43:52 Please get a red dot. Through the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you were like in the Marines or something and you know how to dial in your irons, right? Like, and even then you're going to have a better time with a red dot.

Starting point is 00:44:04 Yeah. Yeah, totally. And a red dot is very intuitive. So one of the things that people are familiar with firearms, but when you bring up a long arm, there's multiple points of contact to the person shooting the gun. And you bring up a pistol, you probably have two hands on it and you're pushing your arms out,

Starting point is 00:44:17 almost like you're like making a triangle. And you're using a long arm like an AR-15. There's a buttstock on your shoulder. Your cheek is on the actual comb, which is the base of the stock. Your other hand, your support hand, is holding the gun up on the front of it. You have a minimum of three points of contact.

Starting point is 00:44:32 With a red dot, that makes it very stable and easy to get reliable hits. And the red dot means you can keep both eyes open. Don't need to worry about the idiosyncrasies of focusing on a front site. Essentially, if it's zero, meaning the dot is regulated to where the gun hits, and you put the dot on the thing and press the trigger without doing something like jerking the gun, you'll hit the target.

Starting point is 00:44:52 And so that's why that matters. Yeah. So what sort of budget should people be looking at and would you be comfortable recommending, like, even brands that they should look at? It all comes down the cost when it comes to Air 15s. You can spend as much money as you want. The reality is I have a video on the channel. Never mind if you like or dislike the company, they're one of the ones that really push. the lower cost products out there.

Starting point is 00:45:18 PSA, it stands for Palmetto, Palmetto State Armory. You can go there and get your branded Trump lower, but at the same time, you can get an AR-15 for like 400 bucks. Yeah. And like, in the gun space, you're not going to find someone to buy

Starting point is 00:45:30 who is spotless and selling guns in large numbers cheaply. Yeah. Like, that's generally not. So like, so for 400 bucks or around there from PSA, you can get a traditional, what's called an M-4. It's essentially a 16-inch car beam it won't have any sighting system on it so expect to throw another 200 bucks

Starting point is 00:45:50 ish onto a reasonable red dot site on that so for around the $600 range you're going to get a gun that's going to weigh seven pounds but it's going to have low recoil and you're going to have something that's for the most part reasonably reliable is it the best of the

Starting point is 00:46:05 is the best of the best no but it's reasonably lightweight it is well manufactured I've done videos about them on my channel they've worked just fine and so four to a foreigner ish for the gun or the 200 for the sighting system,

Starting point is 00:46:18 a couple of mags. You could get out of the door for under $700 with everything, probably under that, maybe under $600, even if you're careful. Oh, but let me plug one thing. If you've got lots of lots more money, double that. You get a what would standard do carbine which I designed? It'll be half the way and super reliable from Cady Arms. I love mine. It doesn't bring any money to me. I'm just saying the point I'm making here is you can get something good enough. And if you got more money,

Starting point is 00:46:44 there is better out there that are lighter, more reliable guns. But you don't need to, as my point. I'm not trying to sell anything here. Yeah. They are one of the few manufacturers who offer, like a California compliant solution at checkout, which is nice for California people. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 00:46:58 So that can be a really beneficial thing to you in terms of not having it be something that you're scared about. California compliant will probably mean no flash hider, no pistol grip, and a fixed magazine, at least at this point in time. You can have the, you can have the, the removal magazine if you don't have the flash hide of the pistol grip and the collapsing stuff. Okay. All right. Well, if you can buy it from them ready to go, I know there's also

Starting point is 00:47:24 magazine capacity requirements or so maybe you have to buy like a couple 10 round mags or something like that. Yeah. Obviously, 30 round mags are better than 10 round mags. And for most, if you live in a place that, do not worry too much about that. If you get a little proficiency on that, a couple 10 round mags will do a lot. And to be honest, in self-defense shooting, the odds are low that you will be firing that many rounds, right? Now, if you're in a self-defense shooting where you do need more bullets than that, there's really nothing that can replace having those bullets, you know, available. Yeah, don't get wrapped around the ax on it.

Starting point is 00:47:59 Like, it's not something you can change. The fact that you only have a 10-round magazine does not mean that you can't become proficient. Yeah, and I don't want anyone here to think that I'm saying you shouldn't, you should be able to get a 60-round magazine, you're one far as I'm concerned. Places like California have these restrictions, have them. Statistically speaking, and I don't know if this data's changed, most self-defense shootings happen within three yards, three seconds, three shots fired. Yep, yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:23 Yep. I think it's really good to remember that when you're seeing some YouTuber tell you you need to be able to have 30 rounds and 500 yards. I don't go downtown without my backpack and my SBR 300 blackout with 630 round magazines accessible. I was a conservative man's scared of cities. Yeah. Yeah, I care.

Starting point is 00:48:43 an RPG and I take the little safety cap off because I like to live that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dangerously. My clothing is made out of debt cord. I just wear nothing but debt cord wherever I go. We're all going down.

Starting point is 00:48:57 At least you take some people with you. This whole city blocks done. Self-defense martin. But let me say one more thing about long arms. Another thing you'll see from people that are new in the space, depending on what they've seen or what they've consumed. This is going to get some hate. Don't bother with AKs. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:12 Just don't. This is the United States. of America, and this country believes in the AR-15. And what that boiled down to is they're everywhere. They're prolific. The parts are here. The repairs here. They're well-manufactured.

Starting point is 00:49:22 When you stray from that course to something like an AK, first of all, you're losing ergonomics, but that's a different problem. You're dealing with an unknown quantity of problems. You get an AR-15. That's what's in this country. It's what's prolific. If you were in somewhere war-torn Africa,

Starting point is 00:49:41 get your AK. Here. I'll say this about the war-torn AK countries, because I've been in three countries where the primary arm is an AKM, right? Like a kind of AK, right? Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq. In all three of those countries,

Starting point is 00:49:56 every soldier who knew their stuff who was proficient and had the option chosen AR platform if they could. 100% of the time. They're just better firearms. Yeah, that's been my experience as well. They look cool, but don't go here. Just get an A-F-15.

Starting point is 00:50:11 Yeah. Like, I love my AKs, but they're range toys, right? Yeah. So let's talk about accessorizing, which again is much easier with AIs and AKs. Like, what other stuff do you need to build into your budget? If you've not shop before,

Starting point is 00:50:25 you might not know that you need AirPro, iPro, sling, maybe, holster. Well, we'll start with the firearms accessories, right? So with the pistol, first of all, we talked about safe storage, so that's already off the table. With the pistol, if you plan to carry it, you need a good, reliable holster and a good reliable gun belt.

Starting point is 00:50:43 Good Lord, yes. Depending on how you want to carry it, that'll determine the kind of holster. If you want an outside the waistband, which means it sits outside your belt. That's one thing. If you're carrying it concealed, you're probably going to want an inside the waistband,

Starting point is 00:50:56 which goes between your belt and your body. Again, another level of training there, because when you're drawing from that, things can go wrong. Sure. And that's where people tend to shoot themselves, so that's something we need to be very cautious of. But with a pithful, typically,

Starting point is 00:51:08 you're going to want probably an extra magazine or two, it may come with one depending on what you bought, a quality gun belt and a quality holster. Now, what about a 44 derringer and an ankle holster on each ankle, right? Like, that seems like the ideal solution. Anytime you're in danger, you just got to squat right down there, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Get real low.

Starting point is 00:51:29 Yeah. Especially when you've been pushed onto your back by the mob and you're there in that scene and you're pulling it out of your ankle holster. Yeah, right. No, no, no. Just get a wire around the trigger and attach it to your toes so that you can squeeze your toes and fire the deter. What you need is the belt buckle revolver from North American arms. Yeah, that is great. Yeah, no, from that freaking movie, the vampire movie, Quinn Turinino.

Starting point is 00:51:57 Oh, geez. Dust till dawn. Dust till dawn. God. Yeah. No, but for the pistol belt, a magazine or two extra, it might come with them and a quality holster. Now, the obvious question is, what's a quality holster? The obvious answer is there's too many out there to be able to offer you that answer right now.

Starting point is 00:52:14 Probably something polymer, if it's going to be outside the waistband, and this will be another one that'll get people fired up. Generally, avoid the SERPA holsters unless you really want to have a lot of training. Serpa holsters are one that have a little button on the side that allows the gun to come out. If you're not trained well or have the wrong gun in it, it also allows you to accidentally shoot yourself quite easily as well. Yeah, best avoided. That's a very good point. And also, one thing I will note is there's a danger that a lot of people aren't aware of, with leather, which is that leather holsters.

Starting point is 00:52:42 Now, there are some leather holsters that have, like, a trigger area reinforced with Kidex, which is, you know, a rigid, plasticy substance. But if it's not, in time, those can start to, like, get weaker and worn in such a way that it can also cause it to press the trigger when you holster it. Like, that's a thing that has happened to people. So I generally think, you want whatever, you want the trigger guard to be rigid and not something that's going to, like, warp. and be malleable around the trigger, right?

Starting point is 00:53:12 Like, the whole point is that it stops the trigger from firing. Yes, you want to avoid that? How about with the long guns? Like, what are you going to need to budget for those? And then other things, like, for shooting generally that you'll need if you don't already have them. So when it comes to the long arm, we already said if you're going to get an AR-15, you're going to want to stick some sort of red-dodge side on it. The lowest cost ones that are the unbelievably bomb-proof are a Chinese company called HoloSung.

Starting point is 00:53:39 Hell yeah. I have a hollow sun from 2017 that it still works just fine. I love my hollow sons. My hollow sun's been bounced down an asphalt road and it still works fine. Yeah, it's the opposite of a fail sun, a hollow sun. Exactly. So you can pick up a red dot hollow sun. Those can go ahead. You can get those sometimes sometimes the low is like 150 bucks.

Starting point is 00:54:01 Yeah. So you'll need a red dot site. A sling is nice, not required, especially if you're going to be using it within the premises of your property, you probably don't need to worry about that. Also, slings can cause issues, like get caught on things or on things in your house or even tangle you up, so that's a training issue.

Starting point is 00:54:18 So, Sling is iffy, an extra magazine or two, and if you're planning on needing to use this for a defensive purpose inside of your home or structure, or at night, it's not the worst thing in the world to throw on a flashlight. Yeah. Yes.

Starting point is 00:54:34 Especially if it's like a defensive firearm, like your home defense gun, or a carry gun, like a flashlight. And also, I think it's generally a good idea. If you're going to carry a carry firearm with a flashlight, have another flashlight that's not on a gun. Because one thing you should never do is use your gun flashlight to look at just random shit that you need a flashlight for.

Starting point is 00:54:56 When you come home in night, it's dark, you forgot, you forgot. You can't find which key is the right key to your link. You're using your gun to illuminate your door. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. It's a pretty good list of accessories there. Make sure you have allowed ear and eye protection as well.

Starting point is 00:55:13 So that's where we're going to go. On the safety side of things, you need proper shooting glasses. That means not the glasses that you picked up for readers at Walgreen. If they're shooting glasses can be as cheap as $9, all the way up to hundreds of bucks, you can get them at the sporting goods store, but they're designed with the kind of plastic to be able to take shrapnel or hits from pieces of fragments

Starting point is 00:55:31 that are high velocity. They're meant for that. So $10 shooting glasses? Yes. Hearing protection. Those can be squishy earplugs you put in your ear, or they can be over the head muffs. Do not ever shoot guns, except in the most critical conditions or situations without eye protection and hearing protection. Because that's the kind of stuff where you lose an eye. And every time you fire that gun, you're losing hearing every time. Yes. Yes. And like for the, really, because obviously most, like it hurts to shoot a firearm without hearing protection.

Starting point is 00:56:04 like you can get away with shooting a gun without eye pro every time but the one time, right? Which is why I really emphasize eye protection. It's easy to convince yourself, I don't need to have it on right now. You do. Because that's the day that it does the thing. Yes, yes. Guns do fuck up for lack of a better term. And you really don't want your eye unprotected if they do.

Starting point is 00:56:30 Yeah, it's a bad day. Absolutely. Absolutely. But on the safety side of eye protection and hearing protection, it can be as cheap as $10 shooting glasses and a bottle of squishy earplugs. You're going to be in there after $20. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have to be expensive. Make sure you have it and make sure you use it. But you know what? Before you do any of this, you know, what's a smart thing to do? Go take a class from Stop the Bleed and learn how to use tourniquets and medical gear and have that around anyway. Before you ever buy a gun, go do that. Yes. Yes. That's the most important thing you could do for anyone. Yeah. Yes.

Starting point is 00:57:01 And that, as you said, should be a priority before getting the firearm. And if you have the money to get and train a gun, you have no excuse for not having an individual first aid kit, an IFAC, and the knowledge of how to use it, right? And I think Stop the Bleed classes are usually free. You can look it up at stopthebleed.com or dot org. Google it. Take a class. It's easy how to use a tourniquet, use how to use a bandage, have an IFAC, as was just mentioned,

Starting point is 00:57:26 which can be a pretty simple kit. And as you said, Robert, if you can afford a gun, you can afford that and have that with you on the range anytime you're shooting. Because as you said, guns can fuck up. They usually don't. But if they do, you're going to want that IFAC. And that IFAC and that training might just help your neighbor one day when they get in a car accident or whatever. I regularly make the decision not to carry my gun with me places, right?

Starting point is 00:57:49 You know, I'm going to go out and get drunk tonight. I don't need if I have a firearm on me when I'm drunk. But you know what I always have is the IFAC, right? Every single time, you know? Because number one, drunk with an IFAC. I'm probably less effective, but I'm not going to endanger anyone. You're just like, hey, buddy, I think you need a parniquet. He's like, no, I don't.

Starting point is 00:58:09 Get you, give me your. Google said this goes around the neck. But once again, stop the bleed class on an IFAC is more likely to serve you or your community more than any gun ever will. Yeah. I think that's a great place. I would say that if you are going down this pathway and you're looking to join openly leftist gun organization, there are several, right, John Brown, Grand Club, Socialist Rifle Association. We've had those people on our show before.

Starting point is 00:58:35 Be cautious when you're doing that and keep an eye on things, because that could be something that might get you into trouble in the long run. So it's something to be aware of. Yeah, it might be good to just put a holder on joining a new organization until we're a few months into this thing coming up next year, maybe have an idea about what kind of things might be safe and what kind of things might be less safe. Yeah, definitely.

Starting point is 00:59:00 No, but none of that stops you from using signal, building community, and learning how to use a firearm properly. Right. Meeting people, yes, and, like, training with them, you know, or taking, getting training, getting building proficiency. Absolutely. All of that is legal and will remain legal. Just don't start, if anyone ever talks to you about, let's make a militia.

Starting point is 00:59:21 Don't do that. It's time to leave that conversation, right? Because among other things, at this point, there's a good chance they're the FBI. If you live in Michigan, do not. Yeah, yeah. This podcast brought to you by Co-Intel Pro. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:59:39 Yeah, yeah. That's great. But I mean, it's a tough challenge. And so the other thing you can do is also, once you've got your basic proficiency up and you know that you are safe in terms of handling things, let me throw this out there too. It doesn't have to be any specific one,

Starting point is 00:59:52 although remember you're going into a space that may not be politically your comfortable place, a good place to build up skill is to go shoot matches, competitions. For the most part, it's business oriented. You'll see, you'll hear some stupid comments here or there, depending on what match you're at, but the reality is you're not there for that. You're there to get better with your gun on a course of fire that they put up for you.

Starting point is 01:00:12 Pay your $10 or $20 to learn out of shoot better in those conditions. And that's another space to, once the basic training's out of the way, don't go to a match to beat training. Use the match to help increase your skill after you've gotten training. But those matches can be a place to really, help you out a lot. And there's a lot of them around. And those are easier to find than almost anything. Yep. Practice score is where you can look them up if you're into that kind of thing.

Starting point is 01:00:34 Excellent. Thanks very much for joining us, Carl. Do you want to very briefly plug your YouTube channel? Where can people find you? Well, sure. And thank you for having me on the show. It's always a treat. I really appreciate it. It's always great to be able to just to hang out with you both. It should do it more often. You can find my work. It's in range TV. You can find my website at inrange.tv. I'm distributed, decentralized across multiple platforms. The predominant one being YouTube. Cover everything from civil rights, history, human rights, to firearms, to from Old West flitlocks up to the most modern machine guns across the channel.

Starting point is 01:01:07 Some of it is instructional, some of its history. And I've got a cool video dropping tomorrow, in fact, well, tomorrow based on when we're recording this, on the Opium Wars and how Britain and China's firearms technology discrepancy caused Hong Kong to be owned by Britain. That's the kind of stuff I do on my channel. So check that out. And if you want to find matches that are going to be a place that is truly an inclusive space, we do run matches called Brutalitymatches.

Starting point is 01:01:32 You can find them at Brutalitymatches.org. They're not monthly. We have run a couple of them across the country. But I can guarantee you that's a space you will feel comfortable because we make it that way. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. You've heard the chaos.

Starting point is 01:01:53 Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHard Radio app. Make some noise. Catch every laugh and eye roll On shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas, and Las Culturistas. Now with full video.

Starting point is 01:02:09 I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Open the free IHard Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all?

Starting point is 01:02:25 It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and IHart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week.

Starting point is 01:02:55 Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out. Be beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it.

Starting point is 01:03:11 Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the Iheart radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance,

Starting point is 01:03:29 Spike and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, Today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea?

Starting point is 01:03:56 We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write. I thought you're all going to write a song for you.

Starting point is 01:04:18 I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'm a check you. Okay?

Starting point is 01:04:44 If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'm going to play you. Join Yomeneika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the problem with Yamanika. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? New episodes weekly every Wednesday is part of my new news. Network, the Dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much.

Starting point is 01:05:12 So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Last week, two major news networks, CNN and CNBC. partnered with the so-called prediction market, Kalshi, an online political betting platform,

Starting point is 01:05:46 to use Kalshi's real-time betting data in TV news segments online news content, and, as Kalshi announced on X the Everything app, quote, to integrate prediction markets into CNN's global newsroom. With Kalshi threatening, quote, a new era of media is here. This is, it could happen here.

Starting point is 01:06:07 I'm Garrison Davis. Regular CNN viewers may have noticed this integration has already been happening for some time. This past election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in place of an addition to polling data to weigh the likelihood of candidates winning elections. CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enton, a Nate Silver protege who used to work for 538, trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories earlier this year. Kalshi praised Enten by name in their announcement of the CNN partnership. Quote,

Starting point is 01:06:45 Enten is an expert at translating what data and polling are saying on any given issue, and through this integration, he can tap into real-time prediction markets data to better inform and fact-check his reporting, unquote. Here's an example of this reporting in a CNN segment from October 20, If you go back six months ago, you go back to April Cape Baldwin. What were we looking at? Well, we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear shot of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the Kalsh prediction market odds. We saw them in an 83% chance. But those odds have gone plummeting down. Now we're talking about just a 63% chance,

Starting point is 01:07:24 while the GOP's chances up like a rocket, up like gold, up from 17% to now a 37% chance. So we'll look like a pretty clear, likely Democratic win in the House come next year, has become much closer to a toss-up at this point, although still slightly leaning Democratic. Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote-unquote odds are formed or what they really are. To a viewer who just tuned in, or maybe isn't paying that much attention, it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed. on screen the way you would see polling data or legitimate information used in a newsroom.

Starting point is 01:08:10 This short section using the Kalshi prediction market odds was then followed by three minutes of analysis using selective midterm voting data from 2017 and 2018 to support the movement in these gambling odds. The gambling odds themselves were the load-bearing piece of information in this piece. Calhys' main competitor, another so-called prediction market, called Polymarket, partnered with X-The-Eeverything app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to integrate their prediction data into online news content. Time magazine and Sports Illustrated have also both launched deals with the prediction market platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction markets and how do they function? On Polymarket and Kalshi, users can bet yes or no on the outcome of a question relating to world events, which is called a market. As more money is wagered on either side, the odds of the outcome change.

Starting point is 01:09:14 Currently, top questions include various predictions for Time Person of the Year, will the U.S. strike Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of the Epstein files, and who will be the next president? Calci has Trump's chances at 6%. Here's Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland explaining on 60 Minutes. You make money if you're right, you lose money if you're wrong. And as a result, it creates this information that's really useful for people. These companies would like you to believe that the ratio of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for the general public to forecast the future. Whether that's through betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner of a sports game, which days of the week Israel will bond Gaza, or what movie will win best picture.

Starting point is 01:10:08 Almost $50 million is currently being wagered over a potential Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in 2025. Production markets currently have $3 billion in weekly trading volume. I do need to note, these companies argue that hedging outcomes of world events legally is not gambling, because that would be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, which suppressed the early prediction markets of the 2000s. But Kalshi is regulated as a platform for trading financial derivatives, rather than securities trading or straight-up legalized gambling. And this determines what entity they have to register with and what regulations they're subject to. Kalshi launched in 2021 with a federal license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And after a years-long battle, in October 2024, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Kalshi,

Starting point is 01:11:12 allowing online prediction market betting on U.S. elections. Rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the practice was a legal gambling. and their concerns that prediction market betting could undermine election integrity. Former CFTC chairman Rostombenham made a statement of May of 2024 reading, quote, contracts involving political events ultimately commoditize and degrade the integrity of the uniquely American experience of participating in the democratic electoral process. Allowing these contracts would push the CFTC, a financial market regulator, into a position far beyond its congressional mandate and expertise, unquote.

Starting point is 01:11:56 A week before his dad took office in January 2025, Donald Trump Jr. became a strategic advisor at Calci. Polymarket launched in 2020 without registering with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and was fined $1.4 million by the CFTC in 2022 for operating as an unregulated exchange. and was henceforth prohibited from allowing bets from U.S.-based users, though the Polly Market CEO sees it a little different. It was a $1.4 million fine, and also... It was a settlement. And you could not have customers in the United States.

Starting point is 01:12:35 Yeah, we had to go and geoblock trading the U.S. and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't, hey, you're banned from trading the U.S. It's like until you're licensed. I mean, it was breaking the law. I mean, people say breaking the law, it's like which law, you know? So if anything, it's incompatible. It's incompatible with the law.

Starting point is 01:12:51 With the regulatory matrix that existed. The past two years, Polymarket has found to be facilitating illegal gambling and subsequently banned in the countries of Switzerland, France, the UK, Poland, Singapore, Belgium, Romania, and Australia. Most of these bans just require geo-blocking users, which can be easily circumvented through the use of a VPN. And since the financial transactions on Polly Market are all done through cryptocurrency, it's not clear that Polly Market is taking any steps to enforce these bans beyond geo-blocking. In the midst of facing regulatory hurdles and bans from across the globe, Polymarket still exploded in popularity last year, attracting investment from Peter Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds of thousands of new users,

Starting point is 01:13:43 primarily driven by betting on the U.S. presidential election, speculation on whether Biden would drop out of the race, and who Trump would pick as vice president, all despite the platform technically being banned in the United States. After the first presidential debate in July 2024 around the attempted assassination of Trump and the RNC, Pollymarket gained 60,000 new accounts. The year prior, Paulymarket averaged 2,300 new accounts,

Starting point is 01:14:13 accounts per month. August 2024 saw 70,000 new accounts. September 90,000. October, 300,000. The month after Trump's second inauguration, 400,000. Currently, Polymarket

Starting point is 01:14:29 has over 60,000 daily active traders, and hundreds of thousands of monthly traders since October 24. To give another example of their recent growth, in April 2023, Pollymarkets monthly volume was about $3 million. A year later, it was $39 million. In November, 24,

Starting point is 01:14:53 it was $2.5 billion. Last month, it was $3.7 billion. In summer 2025, Cash Patel's FBI and the CFTC under Trump dropped investigations into whether Polymarket was illegally allowing U.S. users to place bets using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm invested in the platform, and Trump Jr. himself joined Polly Markets Advisory Board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Jr. joined Polly Market, the Commodity Futures Training Commission announced it was going to allow Polly Market to operate in the United States after acquiring another company that held a U.S. license.

Starting point is 01:15:51 This past October, Trump's own Truth Social, announced it was partnering with Crypto.com to launch TruthPredict, quote, a revolutionary prediction market backed by President Trump for enhanced decision-making, unquote. When Barry Weiss's 60 Minutes did a puff piece on Pauly Market with its CEO last week, Anderson Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading. Polly Market's CEO, Shane Kaplan, seem to think that a little bit of insider trading might be good, actually.

Starting point is 01:16:28 But predictive markets do rely on someone having some inside information. Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need to curate them, and you need to be really clear and stringent on where the line is drawn and, like, sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this will happen, and there's a lot of benefits from it, and people will adapt.

Starting point is 01:16:53 The CEO did not elaborate on what polymarkets practice of curating insider trading looks like and where their quote-unquote stringent line is drawn, because in reality, it doesn't seem this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through these vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the point of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their prediction markets more accurate, so it's a net positive. And if it fucks over some users on the other side of a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week, an alleged insider trader won over a million

Starting point is 01:17:33 dollars for bets on Google's 2025 year-in-search rankings, listing 22 out of 23 in the correct order. This user has made a series of early bets related to Google the past year, like the exact release date of Google's Gemini 3.0, which they won $150,000 on. But because this polymarket user isn't trading stock, there's no clear regulatory mechanism to stop this behavior. And Polymarket can't reverse these trades because they run through the blockchain, not that they would even necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst, and Polymarket advisor Nate Silver, was also asked about insider trading on the China talk podcast two months ago. Are you worried about insider trading with all this political betting?

Starting point is 01:18:29 I mean, there's an aspect of like, look, these are all crypto, you know, you get on these markets with crypto. And like, like, there were markets, like, which way is Suzanne Collins going to vote? And, you know, the sort of the like, you know, like the tail outcomes for like a legislative, assistant in her office are, you know, you can make 10 times your salary in like a minute, right? Yeah. What's your, what's your thinking on this? For sure. I mean, look, I think there are a couple of qualifications, though.

Starting point is 01:19:01 Like, first of all, I think people on the inside often aren't as well as informed as they think and or there's some downsides to having an inside view and not an outside of you. You might drink the Kool-Lade, so to speak, right? You might be in a bubble. Um, yeah, look, I mean, we've seen, there are ones where it's like you can literally, I mean, there's been a, lots of group chats people talking about like very, very sketchy trades, uh, and one way bets that are being made in the stock market of like what's going to happen with a trade deal. I mean, you can literally be the person who decides, right, and be betting on the side. If there's, if there are incentives to make money in a world of eight billion people, many of whom are very competitive and all of whom and all of them, most of them have actually. the internet, people are going to find a way, a way to do it, right? Let's pause here for a sec. What do you think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to political insider trading

Starting point is 01:19:58 as like an unfortunate but somewhat inevitable consequence of our evolving system of finance? Like in the crypto space, we've seen an increasing number of like crypto kidnappings, right? Well, I mean, that's one of the consequences of people are worth vast amounts of wealth. isn't very secure. It's just going to happen until you up security or have better solutions or whatever else. And so, like, you know, I don't think there's necessarily anymore or less insider trading on like polymarket than there might be for in sports betting sites. We've seen a lot of sports betting scandals or for regular equities. You know, I believe the literature says that like members of Congress achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios. I'd have to double.

Starting point is 01:20:43 I'm sure there's some debate about that. I'd have to like to double check. that, right? It's fine, bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine, actually. So Nate goes on to say that prediction market insider trading isn't that different from congressmen doing insider trading on the stock market or like rigged sports betting. But he really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed. And prediction. market's intentionally skirt regulation. It currently have far less legal protections for users against unfair practices, and with crypto, they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors.

Starting point is 01:21:28 And now, news companies are legitimizing, turning everyone's phone into a corrupt casino for world events. Whether that's Israel, starving Palestine, or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish this week. The day before, Kalshi announced their part, partnership agreement with CNN and then CNVC, CBS aired a 60 Minutes Puff piece on Polymarket anchored by Anderson Cooper. When we met with Copeland last month, more than $3.6 million had been wagered on whether or not Venezuela's president Nicholas Maduro would be out of power by the end of the year. Polymarket users didn't think so. They gave it only a 23% chance.

Starting point is 01:22:11 And if you buy no on that and you're buying it at, 78 cents, and at the end of the year, he's still in power. Yeah, you get a dollar per share. So you've made a profit of $0.22 per share. I can see why this would be, I mean, I don't want to use the term addictive, but it would be compelling. I mean, maybe it is addictive, I don't know, but it's certainly compelling. This is how I see it.

Starting point is 01:22:33 If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela and try and get an edge. Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Kalshi-partnered CNN as well as CBS's 60 Minutes, is so hesitant to call this clearly addictive practice, addictive, quote-unquote, compelling. Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copeland explained the platform earlier in this piece. It's a site where you can basically bet on current events. some sort of question about the future, like an election. And as a result, when a ton of people are betting, you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how likely each outcome is. And how

Starting point is 01:23:20 accurate is it? It's the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now, until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball. Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO, quote, may be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely on to something, unquote. In Explaining how polymarket users attempt to seek truth and gain an edge, Copeland told the story of how in 2024, an anonymous French user made over $80 million on polymarket by betting on Trump winning the presidential election. And to bolster his bets, he contracted UGov to conduct private polls in swing states. People thought he'd just like Trump, and he had actually commissioned a ton of private polls.

Starting point is 01:24:04 He did something called neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think their neighbors are likely to vote for. For scenarios for an election where there's a stigma to saying you're going to vote for somebody and people feel some sort of social awkwardness. And what he noticed was there was huge discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the normal polling and the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously. You thought Trump was undervalued. If this guy was not able to make $80 million, but rather able to make $80,000,

Starting point is 01:24:30 he would have never gone through the hassle. But when you get markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for people to go above and beyond to try and find truth. What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote-unquote find truth. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the CEO of Polymarket has a personal incentive to encourage.

Starting point is 01:25:00 But Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of capital T truth, even though Donald Trump was way ahead in prediction market odds back during the 2020 election, which had his chances of winning that election far higher than what pure polling models showed. Kalshi claims that prediction markets can help journalists quote-unquote fact check. But doesn't explain how fact can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where is the fact in gambling? Well, we will find out after the... these ads. To quote from Polymarket Advisor Nate Silver's blog, the Silver Bulletin, quote,

Starting point is 01:25:55 it's basically good when people are more exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized. But, of course, I also analyze polls and build probabilistic models myself. In that capacity, I strongly disagree with the notion that prediction markets can serve as a good substitute for polls. These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by the prediction market companies themselves, including polymarket, to be fair. One minor pet peeve is that both reporters and readers often confuse probabilities for poll results, unquote. As Nate goes on to explain, if Trump is up 55 to 45 over Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's not saying that Trump is expected to win by 10 points. It means that 10% more users on the website favor Trump winning,

Starting point is 01:26:50 which is pretty close to a toss-up. This confusion is a huge problem, which is bolstered in both how prediction market companies market their platform, but also how journalists use gambling data in news stories. If you see a social media post, an advertisement, or a random news segment showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians in a race, without context, those betting numbers could be interpreted in a number of ways and influence someone's perception of an election and maybe even their choice on who to vote for or even whether to vote at all. In an October speech, Zoran Mamdani referenced Kalshi billboards predicting a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary. When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election,

Starting point is 01:27:40 Hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me. And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at nearly 80 percent, we knew that the so-called experts were set to get it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable. When you see the calcium odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this. You are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June, believing that his victory was promised. We cannot allow complacency to infiltrate this movement.

Starting point is 01:28:31 Kalshi excitedly shared the latter half of that clip, proclaiming, Breaking Zoron Mamdani references his Kalshiads on stage. Kalshi is mainstream, unquote. despite this clip demonstrating how prediction markets often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, discount Steve Kornacki, former 538 analyst and now CNN's data expert, Harry Enton, shared this segment about the Tennessee District 7 special election on X-The-Everything app, with the caption, odds are Dems will come within 10 points of a win, if not outright win. I would say if you had to look at the congressional map, any district that Donald Trump won by 22 points, you would say, you know, you've got like nearly a 100% chance of winning if you're running for Congress there. But what are the prediction market saying right now?

Starting point is 01:29:25 Yeah, what are we talking about in terms of the prediction market odds? Look, the Democrat has a 15% chance of winning in that race, okay? A 15% chance, which ain't nothing in a district that Donald Trump won by 22 points. But here I think is the key nugget on this side of the ledger, and that is a GOP win by under 10 points. There's a 68% chance of that. So there is a more than two-thirds chance that the Republican candidate, yes, they win, but they win by a significantly lower margin in the Donald Trump, we're talking about double digits smaller. We're talking about a huge, huge shift to the left.

Starting point is 01:30:01 We're talking about when you add these two together, we're talking about a more than 80% chance that there is a clear double digit shift to the left and a 15% chance the Democrat actually wins in a district that Donald Trump on by 22 points. That just shows you how bad the environment is for Republicans right now that the Democrat has any sort of a chance in this. Talk to me, but what the special election.

Starting point is 01:30:21 He's just authoritatively rattling off complete, speculation on a Democrat victory as big screens display percentages in huge text, with source Kalshi in tiny text at the bottom of the screen. Ordinary polling showed that this was a close race that leaned red by two to eight points, and the Republican did end up winning by nine points. To quote the broken clock Nate Silver, quote, without having polls to look at, the prediction markets would probably kind of suck at making election forecasts.

Starting point is 01:30:59 Translating polls into probabilities is considerably more complicated when there are many correlated races at once, such as in the battle for the electoral college or control of Congress. Prediction markets had a strong 2024 in this regard. They leaned toward Trump when our model had it at 50-50. I don't think this was because of any special modeling insight per se, but because they incorporated some sort of prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls again. So give the markets credit for that. These sorts of soft, quote-unquote, intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd need a lot of data to determine whether they add or subtract value in the long run, unquote. As Nate himself acknowledges, someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher

Starting point is 01:31:52 betting odds throughout the entire New York mayoral race than a purely statistical model would show. A contention I have with Nate, one of many, is though I call prediction market numbers gambling odds, they are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't based on objective mathematical principles like flipping a coin, the three-door problem, or even something like blackjack. These odds are created whole cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or data-informed guessing, but still primarily through people's intuition, which is susceptible to group impulses. Many random world events lack a reliable basis of continuous controlled data that's needed to form a probability, like that which is applied to legalized sports betting.

Starting point is 01:32:46 This is quite evident in the betting odds around the last papal conclave, which had very little relevant data to use for informed predictions. There was no existing probability to support the election of an American Pope, a first-time occurrence. With prediction markets, people can still do research to make an informed bet, but it's not really the case that ex-candidate is mathematically expected to win an election 80 out of 100 instances. A hive mind of users have formed that statistical division through the power of money.

Starting point is 01:33:22 80% of users are betting that a certain result is likely to occur. So the problem isn't just that, like Nate says, people are confusing probabilities for polls. It's that they're confusing prediction market betting odds for mathematical probabilities. It's this difference that allows betting on sports outcomes via Calshin Polymarket, even in states that ban typical sports betting.

Starting point is 01:33:49 Because you're not actually betting on fixed odds, you're betting against other investors. And now news companies are not just manufacturing consent and normalizing political gambling, but are actively encouraging the use of these platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity of these gambling markets. Anderson Cooper calls it the quote-unquote wisdom of crowds. But we already have methods for learning group consensus, like polling, which may have problems, but frankly, far fewer problems than gambling on world events.

Starting point is 01:34:28 Beyond the moral qualms of betting money on human suffering, prediction markets are susceptible to not just personal bias, but group bias based on the current ratio of odds. This in-group consensus can be influenced by short-lived trending topics. And these platforms cater to a hyper-online point of view. Prediction market users provide a very non-representational sample variety, pulling from a very specific type of guy who regularly uses these platforms. To quote from Kalshi's CNN partnership announcement,

Starting point is 01:35:05 quote, Kalshi has become the definitive source for staying informed about the future and is used by reporters, politicians, pundits, Wall Street, and Main Street. He had recently called the New York City mayoral election eight minutes after polls closed hours before the media. It's because of this accuracy that Cali's data will serve as a powerful

Starting point is 01:35:24 compliment to CNN's reporting. Journalists can more easily surface credible information to their audiences about the real-time probabilities of future cultural and political events. Unquote. In practice, this reporting mixes, gambling data, and actually

Starting point is 01:35:40 reputable or credible polls in a confusing way. like this recent CNN segment, which cites Kalshi odds on whether Trump will send tariff stimulus checks, as well as CBS UGov polling data on if tariffs lower prices, back to back in the same segment. Do they think that the tariffs, that these rebate checks are actually coming? And at this point, no, no, I mean, chance Trump tariffs, the tariff stimulus checks are sent to Americans by August of 2026. it's a 25% chance. That's 1 and 4, so that's not nothing, but the American people right now are craving, craving some relief, and at this point it doesn't look like it is coming. Although I will

Starting point is 01:36:27 note, John Berman, this 25%, it is greater than this 6% who say that tariffs decrease prices or that 5% back in March, which are just, you never see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5%. So look, 25% ain't nothing, but at this point, it's low. Yeah, it's interesting that prediction markets think that only one and four chance that will actually happen there. Is this really what the future of political forecasting is going to be? Maybe, maybe not. But there are four horsemen of this political gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver, via his gamification of election predictions based on his time as a professional gambler,

Starting point is 01:37:07 sports betting, especially since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of Nevada in 2018. resulting in almost 40 states subsequently legalizing some former sports betting, which has facilitated the accessibility of gambling to grow dramatically across the country the past 10 years through the spread of online sports betting apps. The third horseman is Trump, or the Trump administration, through their removal of regulatory hurdles facing prediction markets. And finally, that CNN guy, Harry Enton, a Nate Silver protege who trailblazed the use of political gambling data,

Starting point is 01:37:43 in news stories the past year. These four horsemen, Nate Silver, sports betting, Trump, and Harry Anton have created the cultural and political conditions for political gambling to spread like wildfire, which, hey, is also something

Starting point is 01:37:59 you can bet on. During the LA fires, prediction market users could bet on how many acres would burn. So what is the end game of this? This gambling apocalypse that seems to be inching its way closer and closer. To answer that, here's a clip from Kalshi co-founder and CEO Terik Manser.

Starting point is 01:38:20 The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We are living in a world where we have an abundance of information, but there's a lot of noise. And we don't really understand what's real from what's not. And prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do a very, very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth to people. And you're seeing this sort of massive shift where, like, people are using them whenever they think about. questions about the future, you know, whenever they're debating about anything. And I think that trajectory is going to keep going. That's a new consumer habit that I don't think it's going

Starting point is 01:38:50 to be undone. This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting, this financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion, creating new, addictive consumer habits. These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports betting to everything, where every gets to be their own little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino in their pocket getting addicted to gambling on speculation of world suffering. And CNN is

Starting point is 01:39:25 complicit in this. CNN and others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the people who decide when to drop bombs around the world to win millions of dollars by betting money on the choices they themselves are making at the expense of the rest of the world. And these companies

Starting point is 01:39:43 think this is a good thing, because the betting odds can serve as a potential heads-up that something is likely to happen. Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are non-existent, are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more involved in regulating online betting, and in the case of political events, it should just be completely banned. It is detrimental to a healthy society, it incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely, but it should return to being time and location locked. Go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets. Only the federal government can.

Starting point is 01:40:35 And Trump's federal government certainly seems like it's not going to, considering the president's son works for both of the main platforms, Kalshi and Polly Market. And while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polly Market's social media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account, because that drives traffic back to their website where people can bet on the news stories that Polly Market is sharing, even if those news stories are speculative, or completely made up. On December 5th, Polly Market posted,

Starting point is 01:41:13 quote, Justin, suspected J6 pipe bombers legal counsel projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon of those involved in January 6th, unquote. This claim subsequently spread all around the internet, parroted by people of a variety of political orientations, but if you read closely, the original post says,

Starting point is 01:41:35 suspected J6 pipe bombers legal counsel projected to argue he was included in Trump's pardon. Polymarket is just spreading gambling information as if it is news content. Quote unquote, projected just means that polymarket users are betting on this. But these projected posts are mixed in with other posts just aggregating the day's news. So unless you are paying super close attention, which rarely people on the internet are, this becomes a Trojan horse of disinformation. When news companies use the term projected on election night,

Starting point is 01:42:15 usually that indicates with pretty clear mathematical certainty that an event is going to happen. When Polly Market uses projected in news tweets, it only indicates that internet gamblers are swinging around money in an effort to create truth. With once legitimate news companies, not just complicit but active participants in this process. That is it for us today at It Could Have Been Here. See you on the other side.

Starting point is 01:42:53 Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect,

Starting point is 01:43:17 then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J.

Starting point is 01:43:29 And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I heart women's sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler,

Starting point is 01:43:39 She became the first female solo roer to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi.

Starting point is 01:44:06 You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Starting point is 01:44:25 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters,

Starting point is 01:44:50 revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin,

Starting point is 01:45:09 legendary musician Amy Mann and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write. I thought you were going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:45:32 This is Chelsea Hamler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible your the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'ma check you. Okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'm going to play you. Join Yomeneika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the problem with Yomaniqa. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? New episodes weekly every Wednesday is part of my new network,

Starting point is 01:46:05 the dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to It Could Happen Here podcast, where a bunch of incredibly convoluted and very silly financial instruments destroy the entire world economy. I am your host, Mia Wong.

Starting point is 01:46:45 And with me today is someone who does not spend all of her time deep in the bowels of arcane bullshit written by different Federal Reserve boards. And that is Molly Conger, who is the host of the absolutely delightful. I mean, okay, I guess this is a who is really winning here kind of question in terms of the things we research. Now, you spent a lot of time reading stuff written by Federal Reserve guys. I read a lot of stuff written by guys who want to kill the Federal Reserve guys. And you know what? I still don't know what the Federal Reserve is and I'm not going to find out. You know, I don't actually think knowing what the Federal Reserve is somehow.

Starting point is 01:47:31 It doesn't change anything. I don't think it's actually relevant to this. I mean, it kind of. It's obviously, it's relevant to everything. But what Mia means to say is the reason I'm here is because I don't know what the economy is. And at this point, I'm afraid to find out. And unfortunately, your worst fears are happening. Oh, don't worry. By the end of this, I will not understand.

Starting point is 01:47:50 I am going to attempt to explain the economy. And by the economy, I mean, shadow banking. Yeah. Also, before I go into this, though, you should, you should listen to weird little guys. It is, it's really good. I like it. All my friends really like it. Thank you. Yeah. It's somehow a nice, comma, kind of relaxing show. about neo-Nazis. So. Yeah, it's got very chill vibes. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:21 For a show about guys who were trying to like blow up school buses. Yep. So, all right. You know, I'm reading this, I'm looking over this script. Miraculously, this isn't, oh, wait, hold on.

Starting point is 01:48:33 I think I cut the part where people blow up school buses. There was legitimately a segment in here that I might put back in, which I would close up a school bus. But, um... What a crossover event. Oh, boy.

Starting point is 01:48:44 Oh boy, the Saudis really good at that shit. Turns out. Okay, okay. But let's get back to the topic at hand, which is, what is shadow banking and why does it matter to all of us people who live in the normal real world and not in fake finance world? Does it have anything to do with shadow wolves? Unfortunately, no. What about shadow facts? Sadly.

Starting point is 01:49:09 Actually, there probably is a connection between the financing for the Lord of the Rings movies. And shadow banking, I'm just too tired to work it right now. I have dragged us off track and we haven't even gotten on track yet. What is shadow banking? Okay. So the good news, the good news, this is the first, it's not the last piece of good news we're going to get this episode. But, comma, the definition used by most non-academics is actually not that bad. There's a pretty good, it's very wishy-washy because it's a congressional report.

Starting point is 01:49:42 and so it's specifically not supposed to be taking a stance in either direction on anything because it's the Congressional Review Office and they're supposed to be neutral, etc., etc. Allegedly. Yeah, right. You know, and like, obviously they're not. But, like, you know, it's like kind of fine congressional report on the subject. And they do the thing that almost everyone does, which is they go back to the definition created

Starting point is 01:50:06 by the Financial Stability Board. And I'm just going to, I'm just going to quote that because it's, Not that bad. Quote, financial activities facilitated by institutions other than central banks, banks, or public financial institutions. So it's banking that doesn't involve a bank. Yes. Cancelled. I'm out. I'm out already. Yes. And they don't mean like me loaning you $20. No. No, no. Of course not. They just mean unregulated banking. Oh, yeah. Which you can't legally call banking.

Starting point is 01:50:38 I mean, you actually can't legally call it banking. It's just things get weird really quickly. I mean, I'm not a bank understander, but I know, at least in Virginia, you can't incorporate a business that has the word bank in the title unless you are legally a bank. Because that's like misleading. Yeah, I don't think they can legally call themselves a bank, but I guess you can call it banking activity. That's stupid and I'm mad already.

Starting point is 01:51:02 Yes. Oh, you're going to get so much more mad by the end of this. So the base definition is it's not their concept. complicated, right? It's something that does banking stuff that is legally not a bank. You know, and so we can talk about what kinds of things are, is this, right? It's like private equity firms. It's hedge funds. It's venture capital firms. So it's like evil stuff that ruins the world for no reason except for like 10 guys make money. Yeah, but it's also, you know, pension funds. It's like insurance companies. It's sovereign wealth funds,

Starting point is 01:51:34 business development companies, repo markets, broker dealers, special investment vehicle, authorization vehicles, money market mutual funds, asset-backed commercial paper conduits. Hey, here's the thing, bud. Most of those things you just said to me are fake and they make me upset. It's really bad. Sovereign wealth fund? Shut up. That's not.

Starting point is 01:51:53 That's not a theme. I still, you know, all these, all these things are just like different ways of saying, like, you're poor and you're going to die. Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is sovereign wealth fund is like kind of a less fake one in that it's like, It's all fake. Hey, this is like, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has pooled all of the money it's gotten from its horrific crimes and put them together into one giant thing and that's a sovereign wealth fund. Oh, so it's good is what you mean. No, I am a notable.

Starting point is 01:52:25 There is, by the way, a camp of people who believe that sovereign wealth funds are like a socialist thing and that you could use them to do socialism. I'm going to jump out the window. I think this is so stupid. Yeah. This is, we haven't even gotten into the nightmare. stuff. So remember I was talking about the financial stability board definition in that congressional report, right, where it's like, okay, this is a bank that does non-banking stuff, or a non-bank that does banking stuff, sorry. Oh, I guess we should say, I guess we forgot to say at the top,

Starting point is 01:52:52 the reason you're explaining shadow banking to me is because we saw an article last week that what those not banks were putting a stop on withdrawals from their not banks. And I didn't know what that meant. Yeah, that's amazingly, this is so common. convoluted. We're not even going to get to that this week. Right, but like that's why we're explaining. Yeah, that's why. Right. There's like, yeah, there's like, there was like a mini bank run going on with these like shadow banks. No, it's not banks. Yeah. So we're going to get into how that can happen and why. But before we get there, we need to talk about, all right, to get a sense of the complexity of this, right? The congressional report, like the accepted terminology for this is not

Starting point is 01:53:32 shadow banks. It is. Right. That can't be their official name. That's not their government name. No, it's non-bank financial intermediation. Now, what the fuck is that? This is where this episode goes completely off the rails, because the components of what count as intermediation are so complicated. I am not going to try to describe it until literally the end of this. I mean, is it like, what is Venmo officially? Like, Venmo's not a bank, but it provides, like, financial services.

Starting point is 01:54:00 Actually, I, it might. Because that's like a financial intermediary, right? Yeah, it might technically be a non-bank. I don't know what the regulatory structure is. It's not legally a bank. Yeah, I think that technically is one. Score one for Molly. Yeah, but okay, so this is going to get really bad.

Starting point is 01:54:20 Okay, so what I first started researching his episode, right? The first thing that I click on is the Federal Reserve's chart of how the shadow banking sector works compared to the normal banking sector. Molly, you have seen this. Because I posted it as a joke in our group chat. This chart, I have like a very, very large, like, it is like a big normal-assized monitor that I, like, do my work on. I had to zoom in to 380% just to make out the letters that label the boxes on this chart. If you want to read it, you have to zoom in to 500%.

Starting point is 01:54:59 That doesn't seem like a well-made chart. No, here's the thing. it's actually really good. It's just this complicated. I learned later from a paper by Copenhagen Business School professor, Audney Helga Daughter. We're going to come back to Helga Daughter's work a lot in this episode. But I learned from her because she has also experiencing this same chart and going, what the fuck-ass chart? I found out that the Federal Reserve recommends that in order to have the diagram be legible, you're supposed to print this chart as a three foot by four foot poster.

Starting point is 01:55:36 Oh, that makes sense. Like meeting style. Put it on an easel. Yeah, right. But like, again, this is a diagram that he's just labeling the parts of the system and making, and making like a line that shows how stuff moves through it. I guess I still don't know what we're talking about. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:55:56 So this is what we're going to get into in a second. But first, we have to talk about something even more bleak, which is that, oh, yeah, by the way, these, like, non-banking bank things, like, these, like, all these, like, venture capital firms, all these hedge funds, all these fucking weird, ghoulish banks that are not banks. Yeah, they have twice as many assets than the regular banking system. Oh, that doesn't seem good. Oh, it's about to get worse. It's about to get worse, Molly. That's, that's like saying I keep 70% of the food in my house outside on the porch. Like, no, it goes in the fridge.

Starting point is 01:56:28 Oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. So, okay, there's a pretty good congressional report that I was talking about earlier that has this terrifying quote. Quote, as of 2023, the broad measure total financial assets and narrow measure assets at NBFIs. This is the shadow banks reached $85.7 trillion and $22.2 trillion, respectively in the United States. But that's more than our GDP. That's almost three times our GDP. So that's a fake amount of money. Yes. That's not real at all. But it kind of is, right? These compare to total financial assets of $31.1 trillion at banks in the same period.

Starting point is 01:57:16 So again, this is almost three times our GDP in assets that they manage or control. So where does the money live? in a whole bunch of unbelievably convoluted bullshit, like combinations of like loans and real estate and stuff like that. That's not real money. So like, okay, imagine this is schoolhouse rock and instead of like the singing bill, you're like a dollar bill. Like, where are you? We are about to explain this. Where does the money live?

Starting point is 01:57:49 Yeah. So, okay, okay. We are about one, two paragraphs away from getting to this. or like one paragraph. Okay. So the other thing that's very important about this, and this is something Molly was kind of touching on at the beginning of the episode. Maybe I should have opened with this.

Starting point is 01:58:02 Yeah, these people, these are the people who blew up the economy in 2008. Well, yeah, because they're making stuff up. Yeah. It's so bullshit, Molly. You're going to get so mad. This is Calvin Ball. Fuck you, I win. Yeah, it literally is.

Starting point is 01:58:16 It's nonsense. It's gibberish. They're doing fucking betting markets with the entire world economy. Oh, yeah. We can all do that now. Yeah, it's fun. It's like we now have the power to do the shit that destroyed the entire world economy in 2008. So the thing about shadow banking and the reason why it's complicated to explain is that it's a catch-all term for like a million types of institutions that do different things, right? The commonality they have is that they're all not regulated by the banking regulations.

Starting point is 01:58:48 Right, it's like we found a way to do financial crime that's not illegal because they forgot to make this illegal. Yeah, and, you know, but the thing is, it's so embedded into the system that, like, the U.S. debt working is dependent on the shadow banks buying it. Well, I don't believe in that either, so I'm good. Oh, it's so fake. Molly, I'm not even going to attempt to explain what an overnight repo purchase is to you because it's the fakesest thing I've ever seen where they make one trillion dollars exist overnight and then it stops existing at the end of the night. It's incredible. I love how much of the economy is based on guys just imagining stuff and agreeing on the thing they imagined and then trading their imaginary tokens. Like, is fucking pogs grow up. Yep. This is, this is, this is unfortunately what our entire world is based on. It's so fun. Oh, God. Okay. So what is actually shadow banking? I've given you the broadest definition possible, which is like, again, it's the, it's doing bank shit without being a bank. But let's go back to the beginning of the term.

Starting point is 01:59:50 which is where most people tend to start or get to eventually. This is from an IMF paper, quote, the term shadow bank was coined by economist Paul McCulley at a 2007 speech at the annual financial symposium hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And basically, it's institutions that borrow money in the short term through money markets to finance long-term loans, but they aren't banks. so they can't go through the Fed.

Starting point is 02:00:21 They're financing loans with other loans. Yeah, we're going to... From a not bank. Yeah. But the big loan is from a real bank, and then the little loan is from a fake bank? Give me... And none of the money is reed. Hold on, hold on.

Starting point is 02:00:33 Okay, we're going to get there. We're going to explain this in terms of burgers. It's going to be okay. I believe in us. Perfect, perfect, yes. But the other thing he describes is, and this is from Helga Daughter, quote, in the speech, she describes shadow banking as the whole alphabet soup of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures.

Starting point is 02:00:52 So what he's talking about specifically is these are the guys who blew up the economy in 2008. Like these specifically, this is what he's talking about, right? These are the people who took a mortgage and then did a bunch of bullshit to it in what's called a securitization chain. They did a bunch of bullshit to it so you could give the loan to someone else. So you could sell it to someone else. And this blew up the entire world economy. That's what he's talking about.

Starting point is 02:01:14 He's talking about the banks that are not banks, the shadow banks, that did all. all of this bullshit to turn, like, someone's mortgage into a fucking thing you could bet on. So selling debt is, like, selling the idea of future money? Yeah. And then sometimes that future money doesn't come. Yeah. So, okay, I will say, you do not need to understand this yet because we haven't, we still have not started the actual explanation.

Starting point is 02:01:40 I'm never going to. I believe in us. We can do this. It's not that bad. Okay. I'm not torturing you on purpose. I'm just dumb. It's, okay, I believe in you.

Starting point is 02:01:51 So I want to mention that I'm very indebted here to the paper I mentioned earlier from Copenhagen Business School professor Audney Helga Daughter, who wrote a, she wrote a very good simplified explanation of this in her review of international political economy article called Banking Upside Down, the Implicit politics of Shadow Banking expertise. But, okay, as you can tell by the fact that it's called banking upside down, the implicit politics of shadow banking expertise. This has been, when she's simplifying it, she's simplifying it from like

Starting point is 02:02:22 economists down to like a political scientist or an anthropologist can understand this. I am a throughout to attempt to simplify this down to a regular person can understand this. So I'm drawing on a lot of her stuff

Starting point is 02:02:36 for the first part of this explanation but I am, I've turned it into burgers. So... I'll do my best. I'm being very brave. Okay, so a shadow bank, right? It's something that does banking shit that's not a bank. So what do I mean by banking shit? That was my next question.

Starting point is 02:02:52 Yes. I think we need to start with what is a bank first. So, okay, okay. And this is where we're starting here. What does a bank do? I put my money in it and they hold it for me. So no, actually. And this is the interesting part.

Starting point is 02:03:07 No, they do stuff with it. Oh, yeah. They're holding on to the promise of my money. Yeah. So, okay, let's just look at this for a second. So, okay, so regular people give them money to store in the bank. This is called a deposit. The bank takes your money and loans it out.

Starting point is 02:03:23 Right. And uses that to make more money. This is how it pays you interest, right? It's taking your money and it's loaning it out to other people. It's buying things with it. That part I understand. Yeah. And this is obviously a cartoon image.

Starting point is 02:03:37 And I know there's going to be econ people who are going to be mad at me. Look, if you understand. Why are they listening to this? If you already know what this means, go away. This isn't for you. I'm not humiliating myself for your entertainment. Like for the political economy, people here, when I say stuff that might,

Starting point is 02:03:54 that's like technically kind of fuzzy. It's for me, the podcast idiot. Yeah, like you understand this. Like, I'm working at the level of hamburgers here. So, like, we have to do some abstractions. So, okay, the important thing for our purposes, right, is that there's two things here, right? There's, like, the deposit,

Starting point is 02:04:12 it, it's the money you give them, and then there's the loans. Right. And these operates on different timelines, right? You can take the deposit out at any time, at least in theory, but they can't get the money from the loan back at any time. Right. Now, this is like one of the critical things of what a bank is, is this timeline thing, right? It turns your money, which you can take out at any time, into a different kind of thing,

Starting point is 02:04:40 this loan, which can't be taken out. immediately, right? And then they use that to make money. So this is called maturity transformation. This is a very simple concept they have made very complicated. This is one of the core aspects of that definition I was talking about earlier. This is one of the four things in it. But you now understand this. It's not that complicated. It's take short term, make long term, and we'll get to doing the reverse in a second. Oh, I don't think it works the other way. It's going to go so badly. It's going to go so badly. know about bank, but just generally speaking, like, in terms of time and, like, how, like, material reality works, I don't think it works the other way. It's, it's not great. It's not great, Molly. It's

Starting point is 02:05:21 not great. Okay. So, okay, there is, however, a problem here, right? Which is what happens if everyone tries to get their short-term money back at the same time? Oh, you can't. Yeah, right, because-all you have deposit insurance. Yeah, right, because the banks aren't holding short-term cash. What they're holding is long-term loans, and those loans, like you can't pay someone alone. Well, okay, actually, the crux of this episode is they found a way to do that. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:05:50 Yes, and it blew up the entire world economy. But if I wanted $40,000 out of my, if I had a checking account with $40,000 in it, and they gave me my neighbor's mortgage as a promise. That wouldn't work for me. That wouldn't work for me. No, fuck that. No, no, no.

Starting point is 02:06:04 You need, you need something that can buy a burger, and they're not giving you that. So, okay, this is, Very, very bad. If people try to do this, it's called a bank run. It is not good. It's bad. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:06:17 And so this blew up... This blew up the entire world economy so many goddamn times that eventually we got financial regulation. Now, this regulation requires banks to have money that is like actual cash they can hand you. Like right now, on hand at all times. And the government gets to... And this is a little disinformation.

Starting point is 02:06:38 But, like, yeah, that's how it works, right? And it's insured by the government. Yeah, the government will give you your money back if the bank goes under up to like a certain amount. $250,000, FDIC insured. Yep, that's what that means, right? The government will give you your money back. But also, there's a trade-off to this. So this is a massive benefit for the banks, right?

Starting point is 02:06:58 The fact that if they go under all of their assets will be repaid by the government, it's a massive benefit for them because it means that putting your money in the bank is like safe. Yeah, I love that for me. Right? Yeah, it's good. Now, the cost to the banks is that the feds get to see their balance sheet, right? The feds get to see what they're doing with their fucking money, and they get to make sure that these banks aren't doing insane shit. Okay, that makes sense because they're insuring it.

Starting point is 02:07:23 Yeah. And that, like, they're not doing, like, unbelievably risky, awful shit and also that they're actually holding enough money to be able to pay people out. Right. Okay. So far so good. I understand bank. Yeah. Now, shadow banking boldly asked the question.

Starting point is 02:07:39 Okay, but what if you did all of the banking backwards? No one had access to the books, and the government will only pay you back if the entire world economy looks like it's going to die? I feel like at that point, the government should just step back and just like, here's the thing, here's the thing, right? I, I, yeah, like, I'm so down with this. Like, yeah, I don't know. Fuck it. Like, every single one of you motherfuckers is going to pay this off by working as a barista for 30 years. like, fuck you.

Starting point is 02:08:09 But the government was like, we want, like, we want capitalism to keep working. Make every hedge fund manager work at a Waffle House. Yeah. Fuck them. Okay.

Starting point is 02:08:29 I'm going to say something and then I'm going to make a disclaimer. So the kind of shadow banks that did 2008 work in the opposite direction. They start with debt. They take that debt and they turn that debt

Starting point is 02:08:42 into like cash. Right? Can I do that? No. Does that work for me at my house? No. So, okay, and I also want to mention, there's a bunch of other kinds of shadow banks.

Starting point is 02:08:55 The kind of shadow bank that's going under right now is not really this. The kind of shadow bank that's like exploding right now is a kind of shadow bank that's like, what if a bank that wasn't a bank gave a completely unregulated loan with secret terms to a corporation? And that's the one that's going under right now.

Starting point is 02:09:15 But for a long, long time, the kind of shadow bank that was really important to the global economy, and this is still like a massive portion of how all of the economic system works, is these ones where you're trying to take debt and turn it into something you can trade for cash. So, okay, you take debt, right? You start off with a mortgage. Okay. So these mortgages pay out over the extremely long term, right? But you want to be able to trade this mortgage for cash. Right. And this is a process called securitization. Turning this mortgage

Starting point is 02:09:47 into something you can sell for cash is making it into what's called a security. So now what happens, right, when it's packaged into a security, when there's a securitization process and then like the regular bank, the regular bank sends the mortgage

Starting point is 02:10:00 to the shadow bank. And the shadow bank does like, stuff and turns it into a security. And now what this means is that instead of you who paid the mortgage owning money to the bank, you own it to the shadow, bank or whoever the fuck the shadow bank sells it to, right?

Starting point is 02:10:16 Okay. So the real bank is involved. The real bank is involved. Yes. Oh, yes. The real bank is making so much money off of it. This is why 2008 happened. Oh, because Wells Fargo did this with everybody's mortgage.

Starting point is 02:10:28 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, because I couldn't figure out, because you said this was not 2000 named it. I was like, I thought Wells Fargo did that. That's a real bank. Oh, no. But the real bank was shadow banking. The real bank figured out a way to sell their mortgages.

Starting point is 02:10:41 And it's going to get much worse as we go through this. But that's what causes this, right? Is turning these mortgages into these like securities and like these like collateralized debt obligations and these like special packaged bullshit that you could sell to someone? So the way I would describe this is it's like, do you know how a bond works? Honestly, Mia, I do not. Okay, let's do this. We can do this. Okay, so the kind of bond that you are normally likely to encounter is a government bond.

Starting point is 02:11:12 Yeah. Okay, so you pay the government money to buy the bond. And what the bond says is at a certain point in time, you hand it back to the government and they pay you more money. Right. It's like a promise for later. Yeah, right. So it's basically a loan, but it's a loan in a form where like the government's technically like selling it. And you, and then the other thing about bonds, right, is if you hand the bond to someone else, well, okay, I mean, this is technically bare bonds. But like, you, you, you, you, You can then give the bond to someone else. And now if they give it back to the government, they get the money.

Starting point is 02:11:48 In like 10 years, they get the money, right? Right. Okay, I get that. And you can sell these things. And this is what these people are doing with mortgages. That's not as, like, secured as, like, a government bond. Because if I have $100 government, like, if I have $100 bearers bond, I know for a fact that on the date on the bond, it's going to be worth $100.

Starting point is 02:12:06 Yeah, they're going to pay out. Right. But if it's somebody's mortgage, the government's go up. pay it. But like the mortgage got, the person who has the more, that's not, yep, that's not real. That's not money. Nope. Yep. That's like, that's a promise, but like my hand is behind my back. Yeah, it's a shit show. And this whole process is the largest sort of, I'm not sure if that's actually the largest. I would need to actually like get. I've never, I haven't seen in-death breakdown sectorally, but like. None of this is real. You could just say whatever. Um, this, this is one of the most important kind of shadow banks because in order to turn this mortgage into security, the most. The most. you do that. You do this by creating what's called a special purpose vehicle or someone else creates one. It's called a special purpose vehicle. Yeah. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. I'm going to put this mortgage on a roller coaster. Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous. Right. It's a special purpose vehicle. It does a loop-de-loop. But the moment you create one of these, the moment you create one of these like security mortgages, right? That's a shadow bank. You've created a shadow bank.

Starting point is 02:13:08 Right, because that's not real banking. That's shadow banking. Yep. Because you're creating another entity that is not a bank that's doing the banking stuff? I thought that the banking and the shadow banking were like separate things, right? Because the shadow banking is like, oh, they're doing non-bank stuff. They're all in on it.

Starting point is 02:13:22 But if the bank, if the bank is doing shadow banking, I'm stupid, but I would call that a crime. This is another thing that cost 2008 because a bunch of what was happening here was. Why isn't that a crime? Because our country is run by the bourgeoisie, Molly. That's why it's not a crime. You're just telling me this for the first time.

Starting point is 02:13:42 Yeah, it's bad. So what happened in 2008, one of the things that happened, right, is so all of these regulators are supposed to be looking at the balance sheets of these companies. But they're hiding stuff off the books. Yeah, they were hiding these things in these like special purpose vehicles, like in these like shadow banks. They didn't open the trunks on the special purpose vehicles. Yeah. So no one could see the fucking dead bodies in the trunks of the vehicles because they weren't on the balance

Starting point is 02:14:06 sheet that like the government had access to. What's the point of the balance sheet if you don't put the whole balance on it? I'm fucking, I don't know. And this is like legitimately, when, when you read the accounts of like why shadow making has exploded, by the way, it's exploded since 2008, it's like way bigger now. Exploded like in popularity or like exploded as in like destroy? There's so much more of it. There's so much more of it.

Starting point is 02:14:28 Because it's also. Oh, because it went so well. It went so well in 2008 that now everyone's doing it. Because here's the thing. After 2008, we got like a little tiny bits of banking regulation. And the banks lost their fucking. minds. And so more and more money went into all of these unhinged

Starting point is 02:14:44 shadow making things. Okay, but so like when a toddler has a tantrum, you don't give them a billion dollars. When these shadow banks went under, these things were not back by the government. The government bailed them out anyways. Yeah, they didn't have to do that. Nope. So they really learned their lesson. They really learned their lesson this time. Yeah. Like they bailed

Starting point is 02:15:00 out these banks and they fucking sold you out. And like, you know, like, one of the things that I think people have forgotten was there's this thing called robocalls during the Obama administration, right? Part of how the financial recovery happened was that all these banks would like go to courthouses, right? And they would just repossess mortgages on mass. Oh. And they had like a robot that was like sign.

Starting point is 02:15:23 It would just sign, like a blank check sign on off on all these mortgages that were supposedly underwater. And they would just steal people's houses. People who were on top of their payments, people who like didn't know money, they would just take their houses. And this happened on mass. And this is like how the banks recovered was they stole everyone's house. And that's a crime, right?

Starting point is 02:15:42 Yes, it should have been a crime. Like, it was illegal. It didn't matter, though, because these people... Everything you're describing to me is a crime. It's so nightmarish. Well, here's the thing. Most of the stuff I'm describing is not a crime. This was actually a crime.

Starting point is 02:15:54 But why is nobody in jail? Because Barack Obama went up in front of these people and said, I am the only thing standing between you and the guillotine. I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote. And why didn't he bring the guillotine with him? Because he wants the capitalist system to continue. I mean, that's a silly question. I know who Barack Obama is.

Starting point is 02:16:12 I'm just upset. It's not good. Okay. So let's get you another question that you asked, which is why would you do this? Why would you do this thing? Oh, to make money. Yes, but it's actually more complicated than that. Oh.

Starting point is 02:16:25 Okay. So on the one hand, these assets, you know, a mortgage does make more money than just putting your money in the bank, right? That's like the basis of banking, is that they can use your money that's sitting in the bank and getting interest and then they make more money by spending it elsewhere. But so they're just doing this because they hate us, not just to make money. No. There is an actual explanation.

Starting point is 02:16:45 There's the third reason. So then why would you ever have your money in a bank or buy something like, say if government bonds you can sell really quickly, right? Why would you ever want that? And the reason why is something called liquidity. Right. You want to be able to spend the money. Yes. Rather than wait 30 years for it to get paid back.

Starting point is 02:17:06 Yes. Liquidity is just how easy is it to turn? whatever you own into cash, right? Into real money, because most of what we're talking about is not money. It's the idea of money. Yes. So liquidity is literally, it's the burger test, right? Can you buy a burger with this?

Starting point is 02:17:21 Can I eat this? Money is like the most liquid asset, right? Because you can turn this into a burger. Right. So liquidity is the only part of this that's actually money. Everything else is not money. Yeah, well, liquidity is the measure of how money is it, basically? Like, how easy is it to turn this into burger?

Starting point is 02:17:38 Is this a special vehicle securitization? That's not real, Mia. No, it's fake as shit, right? This is not that complicated, right? If you, if, if, if, it's like, like, you can, you can buy a burger with $10. Yes. Right? That's liquid. Actually, you kind of can't these days.

Starting point is 02:17:55 I know. Look, I, Yeah, look, I, imagine a world where you can buy a burger for $10. Imagine, imagine a burger. Yes. Imagine a burger that's purchasable. Now, what you can't buy a burger with is, like, the $10 that a guy you work with owes you for buying him a burger. Depends on how well you know the burger guy.

Starting point is 02:18:20 Yeah, but that's where things get bad. Yeah. Right. Now, the thing is, right, so the $10, the guy you work with, like, owes you, not liquid. You don't have the money in your hands, and if you want to get it from him, you have to, like, go ask him for the money, and maybe he has $10, and maybe he doesn't. Right, at which point you can't get your $10 back until he has the money. But that $10 that I am theoretically owed is an asset that I have, not a debt. Yes.

Starting point is 02:18:48 Okay. Yes. This is an asset. This is stupid. Now, loans are not liquid assets, right? And they're not liquid assets because you can't get the money back, like immediately. So I don't have $10 I can spend, but on paper I do have $10 theoretical dollars. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 02:19:02 And this is also like most of what billionaire money is. Fake, right. Like most of their money is like in like a stock or some shit or like it's weird fake money. Like theoretically they could access this amount of money, but they don't have it. Yeah. It's not real. Now, okay. So there is this question.

Starting point is 02:19:17 So why would you keep your money and fake money instead of real money? And the answer is that it gives you more money back because say you're an asshole, right? And you're charging interest on your co-worker for that burger loan. Right. So that $10 is actually worth more than $10. More money. Yes. So the $10 that I don't have.

Starting point is 02:19:35 is theoretically worth $12. You're worth more. Yeah, it's worth more than the money that you do have. I can get cheese on the burger. Yes. Right? And this is like the fundamental thing of the banking system. Like one of them is that illiquid assets or like assets that aren't money are worth more than money?

Starting point is 02:19:54 I guess like when I put a small amount of my savings into a CD, that's what I'm doing except normal style. They're doing it weird. Yeah, basically. Because that's like an illiquid asset that I'm I'm trading the ability to access that liquidity for the potential of more money later. Wait, sorry, when you say a CD, do you mean like a physical like a disc, like a CD? No, a CD like at the bank. Oh, like the bank, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:18 Like the investment product. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry, I was like. No, I'm not talking about buying compact discs. I would just sleep at 5 a.m. this morning. I'm talking about investing Mia ever heard of it. Wow.

Starting point is 02:20:30 There's actually a really an annoying thing researching this episode because, because there's like, so CDOs are like a type of loan that we'll kind of get to in a bit, but there's also a tech position called CDO. It's like Chief Something Officer. Chiefs Duky Officer, who cares? Yeah, whatever the fuck, right? But like, when you're trying to search for stuff that's like about CDOs, right, the other one keeps coming up, I fucking hate it.

Starting point is 02:20:54 Okay, okay, locking in, locking in, right? Lock and load. Now, what if you both wanted more money and also the ability to buy a burger? I guess I would probably break one of Carl's fingers. This is the guy that owes me the $10, Carl. Yeah, but even then it's hard to, even that's like, this is too hard for these people. I would go to Carl's house and kick him out of it. Well, yeah, but the other thing is like, you are not very rich.

Starting point is 02:21:21 Okay. These people, if you are really, really rich, I am talking like billionaires, maybe like high, high class multimillionaires. Well, you can go to a shadow bank. Oh. Right. You can get a loan based on the loan. No. Well, you say, so the thing is that you have money, right?

Starting point is 02:21:39 But you want to turn your money into more money. Like, you have like actual cash, right? Like you are, you are, for example, a pension fund. No, I'm not. You have a shit ton of cash. Or imagine a pension fund, right? This is also really hard because it used to be easier to explain this because, like, we used to live in a world where people had pension funds and had mortgages.

Starting point is 02:22:01 and now we no longer have pension funds or mortgages. I live in an apartment, and I will always live in an apartment. Yeah, no. And so, okay, so like, imagine a pension fund, right? You have a shit ton of money from your members paying into the fund, but it's cash. You need to turn that cash into more money, but also you're a pension fund. So you constantly have to take money back out in order to pay the people who are retiring. To pay old people, yeah.

Starting point is 02:22:29 And this is also a thing that, like, you know, if you're just like a rich, person. Sometimes you want your, a lot of times, you want your money in assets that are, like, you can, you can turn back into real money, but also make you a shit ton of money. Right. They need to sort of revolve a little bit. They need to be like, yeah. I don't know, like a jello, like partially liquid.

Starting point is 02:22:46 Yeah. And this is, this is what the shadow banks do, right? Because the thing that you can buy is one of those mortgages they've turned into like a security, right? You can go buy someone else's debt. Uh-huh. But because it's a magic security now, and These are called mortgage-backed securities.

Starting point is 02:23:03 And again, if you're old enough to remember, yeah, anything about 2008, that's what blew up the whole economy, is these mortgage-back securities. Yeah, I've heard of that because it was bad. Yep. Terrible idea. And so we're still doing that? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay, good. I mean, it's less, specifically the mortgage-back ones are less bad.

Starting point is 02:23:21 Also, they've started doing it with, like, commercial retail loans, which is incredible. Oh, great. So that's really fun. They're also doing with other unhinged shit. that we're going to do like next episode. And what these people are really buying aren't just these like, you're not buying like one person's mortgage, right? Right, they're like pooled and like bundled.

Starting point is 02:23:40 Yeah. Yeah, they're like they bundled them all together and then you buy the rights to a percentage of the pool. It's not like when you sponsor like an elephant in Africa or something and they send you a picture of like a specific element. Yeah. They don't send you. They don't send you.

Starting point is 02:23:54 They don't do a picture of the family you're harming. No. These are the Joneses. You own their fucking house. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, it's a shit show. Um, no. Well, I mean, eventually you might have to go figure out who that is because you like own whatever the fuck percentage of like the mortgages or whatever. But like, okay. So these are just like someone else's debt that you're buying. And the people who can do this are, you know, people who have billions of dollars. It's not you the listener. And by the way, if you the listener have billions of dollars lying around for some reason. Can I have some? Please, yes. Please, please, please give me some of them so I can house like literally every trans woman. And like trans person, I can do it.

Starting point is 02:24:33 Like, please give me your billions of dollars so I can, I can achieve this goal. But like we're talking about, you know, like the pension fund of California. We're talking about mega corporations, insurance companies, the kinds of things I can actually buy these. Like, you know. Now, this is where we get to one of the other problems, which is that these things are not insured. So what do you do in order to try to make it less risky? What do you get if you can't pay the loan back? And this is what's called collateral.

Starting point is 02:25:02 I don't know. Swift punch in the nuts. Oh, no, they take your house, right? Yeah. That's supposed to be the thing. So, okay, the way that, like, shadow banking loans tend to work is that they have collateral, right? So you give them something or, or is either you give them something directly or it's like

Starting point is 02:25:22 if you promise to give them the thing. Yeah. And giving it to them directly is, like, a repo market thing. We're not really going to get into those right now. but that's also a kind of shadow bank. But there's a problem, right? Which is, what if the thing that you're paying, you're paying as collateral,

Starting point is 02:25:38 like what if your house becomes worthless? And what if, Molly? Then it's completely uninsured and there's no way to fix it because I don't even have anything to give it. Now, Molly, what if, and this is purely hypothetical, it could never happen in the real world, Molly,

Starting point is 02:25:54 but what if somehow, someone decided to use the same, house as collateral for multiple different securities. Well, that could never go wrong. What if, Molly, they made a word for this that is so complicated

Starting point is 02:26:10 I am not going to attempt to read it on the show. What if, Molly? What is it in German or something? No, it's like this, it's just like this. It's like the length of my head. It's like hyper something bullshit. Like, I refuse to say it because it is just like a completely like

Starting point is 02:26:25 finance-goal bullshit term they made up. So, but the point The point of collateral is that you can use it to pay off the loan if you default on the loan. And so that literally won't work more than once. Because once I eat the burger, once I eat the burger, it's gone. Yep. And this is one of the things that happened in 2008. I can't promise 10 guys my burger.

Starting point is 02:26:50 Now, Molly, here's the amazing thing here, right? Because the advantage for these companies, right? It's like if you're the bank that has the mortgage, suddenly you can spin your mortgage off into like multiple securities. you can sell. Right. It's worth 10 times more and that's great for you. Yes. And comma, comma. We haven't even, again, I just

Starting point is 02:27:10 described the sister where these people are promising the same house to most old people. This isn't even the extremely unfathomably reckless and greedy shit. No, it is. Oh, it is. But it's not the worst of it. Oh, good. Okay, so do you remember that quote from when I was giving the first definition

Starting point is 02:27:36 of shadow banking, right? Like, I gave I gave this quote from the guy who invented the term where he called it, quote, the whole alphabet soup of leveraged up investment conduits, vehicles, and structures. Right. So we've kind of talked about the conduits vehicles and structures, right? Those are all of the shadow banks that, like, make the things, right. I love the conduits vehicles and structures. Yeah, all the acronyms. But what does leveraged up mean?

Starting point is 02:28:01 Oh. Now, okay, in this case, it means that a bunch of these banks have taken out a shit. ton of like risky high interest loans in order to buy more of these fucking mortgages because they think they can make more money off of it. So they took out they took out loans to buy these unsecured securities. The regular ass banks were doing this. Yeah. They they went into debt to buy more of these shitty mortgages. So they took out loans to buy what are essentially unsecured loans. Yep. Because I thought it would make it. the more money. But there's no money involved.

Starting point is 02:28:41 Oh, this is all negative hypothetical money. It is about to get so much worse, right? So I, okay, so sticking with leveraging for a second, right? You might have actually heard something called a leveraged buyout. I have heard those words, and then

Starting point is 02:28:56 I stop listening. Yeah, so here's the thing. Leveraged buyouts are something that actually happens in the real world that does fuck you directly, which is a whole bunch of companies that used to be like normalized companies, like died, because venture capital firms, you, by the way, are also shadow banks, did this, right? They came in,

Starting point is 02:29:13 technically speaking, they did it through, like, risky bond purchases, but basically they did a bunch of high interest loans, and then they go buy a company. And then they, like, strip it for parts. And then they try to raise the stock price of the company. Yeah, and then they trip for parts, sell everything and get out, right? That's what a leverage buyout is. These people are sort of, are doing kind of a version of that,

Starting point is 02:29:31 but, like, they're taking on this debt in order to, like, buy fucking shitty underwater mortgages. Because they look like they're making so much money. They're taking on real debt to buy hypothetical debt. Oh, it's about to get so much worse. That doesn't seem like a good idea. It's about to get so much worse. So that's what like the leveraged part of that.

Starting point is 02:29:56 I don't even know how you do that in burgers. I don't know. You're going into debt to like buy the promise of burgers in the future so you can sell those future burgers. Yeah, but burgers are real. The thing, we're not talking about a real thing at all. Well, technically, technically speaking somewhere at the bottom of this is mortgages. However, comma, we're about to get into a kind of asset where there isn't anything behind it. And this is where the really, really, truly unhinged shit starts.

Starting point is 02:30:25 It hasn't you? Which is that these companies figured out a way to bet on whether these mortgages were going to fail or not. That's so tight, Mia. I fucking love that. I love it. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:30:37 This, by the way, I can't emphasize enough how unhinged this is. The mechanism they're using to do this is called a credit default swap. Oh, I've heard that phrase. This was supposed to be how they did insurance. Their mechanism for doing insurance on all of these insane loans they were doing was originally like, okay, I'm going to, you're, I don't know, so you have a bank, right? The bank has given out a risky loan. So this bank goes to another bank.

Starting point is 02:31:02 They shouldn't do that. And they say, hey, if this person actually pays a loan back, I will. pay you money. Okay. So the other, so the other bank is like taking a gamble here. Yeah. So the other bank that's giving out the loan, right? Gets money if the loan goes under. So in theory, they're sort of like insured against the risk. They call it like hedging. So like so like theoretically it's less bad from them because now even if the loan goes under, they still get money back from that other bank. So the other bank is just a bookie. Yeah. And the other bank is betting that they are going to get it. So then, and if the loan is, and if the loan is,

Starting point is 02:31:37 loan does get paid, then that bank makes money. And this is legal for everyone to do? Yep. This is real banking or shadow bank? This is real bank. No, this is technically... Actually, no, this is actually both. Both of them do this.

Starting point is 02:31:51 Technically speaking, the instrument, like, the actual, like, credit default swap or whatever is named by the shadow banks, but then they're brought by the regular banks. I'm starting to think that the bank starts with the shadow banks, and that all of this is just fake and bad. Like, here's the thing. The thing about these systems, right, is that a lot of the original literature on it was considering them separate. But it's like, no, like, the regular banks are making their own shadow banks do these things. They're all involved in these assets.

Starting point is 02:32:16 They're also investing in the shadow banks, which is the problem we're having right now. Right, it's like, it's the same guy. He just, like, turns his chair around at his desk. And he's like, now I'm shadow bank Todd. Yeah, but well, sometimes it's that. Sometimes it legitimately is just other entities they work with. But yeah, but there's still, it's still the bank engaging. So it's like, oh, these are non-banking practices.

Starting point is 02:32:35 Yeah, but the bank is doing it. Well, but here's the thing. The important part for that, though, is that, like, the non-bank also can do this with other non-banks. Even better. Even better. Yeah, right? I just feel like once we're talking about shadow banking, like, the real bank should not be in the room. Like, go home, Wells Fargo.

Starting point is 02:32:50 You don't belong here. You're drunk. No, but, like, they're funding all of this, right? Like, if the real bank is involved with the shadow banking, that means, like, I can't opt out of being involved in this. Nope. Because they have my money. Yeah. You know what we were talking about at the top that, like, so some of these, like, thank banks

Starting point is 02:33:05 had to like stop their withdrawals. Oh yeah, one of those, by the way, was J.P. Morgan. But that's a real bank. Yep. But they're involved in the shadow banking shit. So they're exposed to when they're like fucking $700 million loan to like a fucking, actually wait home, which one was the $700 million loan that went under was the one that was to a subprime auto loan company?

Starting point is 02:33:26 That's a bad investment. Oh, yeah. It's so evil. It's so evil. Why am I trusting all of my money that I have in this world? I'm letting this guy hold on to it who's obviously not good with fucking money. Well, because the FDIC is insuring it.

Starting point is 02:33:41 Right, but it's like, why are you in charge of having the money? You obviously don't make great financial decisions because you invested $700 million since subprime auto loans. So, Molly, this is the point where we need to bring debt the first 5,000 years back into this and emphasize the extent to which the financial class has always been deeply connected to the military and why it's always been deeply connected to war financing.

Starting point is 02:34:06 I'm starting to realize that this is all very bad. It's very bad. It's all very bad. And this is to some extent why, right, like, part of what right-wing conspiracyism about the financial system is, is that, like, these people are like, like, the right-wiggers, like, these people are, there's, like, a baseline level of anti-Semitism, like, in the U.S., right? Because it is a Christian society that is just, like, what fucking happens there. and these people are like, okay, we can channel all of the anger at like, oh my God,

Starting point is 02:34:36 by fucking house got stolen by the bank because they were betting on the mortgage to fail. And- I still understand why that's legal. Yeah, what all these right-wing conspiracies do is they look at that shit and they go, oh, well, it was the Jews. And it's like, but no, like, fuck off. Like, these are all- No, it was the bank.

Starting point is 02:34:53 Yeah, and the other thing, and this is actually a really important thing that's not well understood here is that, like, the actual people who run these fucking banks, and people who work at them are all fucking white Christian dipshits. This is like a really like persistent issue that everyone fucking has, which is that like one of the great successes of anti-Semitism was like creating the image of the banker as a Jewish person. And no, they're not. The bank, like I fucking went to school with these people. They're all a bunch of fucking white frat bros.

Starting point is 02:35:19 They're fucking white Christian frat bros. Oh, right? University of Chicago. You have a degree in economics in the University of Chicago. Not frankly. I have an anthropology degree. Thank you very much. I took a real real.

Starting point is 02:35:28 I have a real degree, not a fucking fake degree, like the stupid econ bullshit. I was to say, that's actually so evil to study economics. No, it's so hideous. You probably met some of the most evil people on this plane. I was just, like, in a dorm with them. Okay. So. But you saw them?

Starting point is 02:35:43 I know all these people. Yeah. And like, it is not, it is not a bunch of Jewish people. It's a bunch of Christian fratros. Like, that's like the thing that's actually going on. There's actually a whole one day I will write behind the bastards episode about leverage buyouts and about how, like, there was, like, a Jewish guy who kind of, like, did a lot of the inventing stuff. But him breaking into the banking thing was, like, a whole thing because

Starting point is 02:36:05 there was so much anti-Semitism because all of the banking sector was run by all of the fucking, like, weird dipshit, like, CIA, like, wasp motherfuckers. I mean, the Mormons have a huge hedge fund. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, so, like, the, what is it, I read an article about it. The hedge fund that the Mormons operate, like, they have their best and brightest finance bros. Like, you know, Mormons do their two-year mission.

Starting point is 02:36:29 If you're really good at finance, your mission, you don't have to go to South America and tell people about the Book of Mormon. You can work at the hedge fund as a mission. It's a nightmare. I'm doing hedge funds for God. Yep, that's a shadow bank, by the way. Yep, it's great.

Starting point is 02:36:45 So, okay, okay, coming back to this again, right? So we're talking about, like, what causes 2008 and how did these shadow banks, like, do this? and the answer is that they've turned all of these mortgages into these fake securities they can trade, right? They package them all together and they find out something really crucial which is that if they throw a bunch of loans

Starting point is 02:37:08 that they obviously know are going to fail together and send them to a regulatory agency and by the way, all of these like bonds that they're issuing have like grades based on what's supposed to like how safe they are and they figure out... Oh, I know about that. Yeah, and they figure out that they can send a bunch of really shitty bonds but if they package enough shitty bonds together,

Starting point is 02:37:25 they could send them to the regulators, and the regulators would evaluate some of them as being good, and then you could sell the good ones to your pension fund, because I thought it was a good bond. And it made money. That's just lying. And then, yes, and yes, and then, behind the scenes, right?

Starting point is 02:37:44 All of these fucking companies, all these shadow banks, all the regular banks, they're all doing these credit default swaps, right? So they're all betting on which ones of these. are going to fail. I'm putting all of these boys in time out. Like I'm going to put them in the bottom of a pit. It's so evil. And they start doing

Starting point is 02:38:01 these, making these like even more complicated instruments, right? Where now what they're selling to you isn't just the package of mortgages. They're also selling you the credit default swaps with the loan. So theoretically what's happening is like they've created an instrument that regardless of what happens to the loan, you make

Starting point is 02:38:17 money? That's not how anything works? No, it's bullshit. It's so obviously bullshit. I made up this fake thing where no matter what happens, I get rich. That's cool. I would love to do that. Yeah. And nobody was like, wait, well, I mean, a couple of some people were.

Starting point is 02:38:31 But like, like, people didn't just be like, wait, hold on. No, obviously you can't make an asset that makes money regardless of whether the thing fails or not. I invented a money machine. Like, that's fucking ridiculous. And then eventually, yeah, it was like, no, they ran out of fucking mortgages. You know, one of the ways that the blame for this was deflected onto regular people was that they blamed the banks or like they blamed regular. people for like not being able to pay the mortgages. But the thing is, by the time you get to the point where you're like packaging all the, you're betting on the mortgages, right? If you're a bank,

Starting point is 02:39:02 even if you're the regular bank, you don't make money off of like someone paying their mortgage back. You make money on betting on the mortgages. So you're incentivized to just keep giving out loans you know won't happen because you can sell those loans off of some other dip shit and then you, and then you can bet on those loans that they're going to fail. And you can make money and that's how you make your money. Because you're not a bank anymore. You're a bookie who's cheating. Yep. I don't think that's good, Mia. No, this was the entire fucking financial system. And we just let these people stay in power. And I'm just supposed to just continue living my life like this? I don't know. Looking at this and then learning that all of these people got

Starting point is 02:39:44 fucking bailed up by the government and none of them went to prison and... Do they know they're cheating liars who are faking and making it up? Or are they like so high on their own supply? They're like, they're like, no, bro, no, but this is totally going to work. It's totally going to work. Well, here's the thing. Some of them know and some of them don't. Because some of them believe that this is cool. Yeah. Like, some of them legitimately thought that this was just going to work forever. Like, do they believe their negative money backed by other fake money, backed by the idea of promises of fake money? They think that's money? Yeah. Yep. I thought it was going to work. It's not. It's not. Nope. And it turned out to not be any fucking money. And it blew up a

Starting point is 02:40:19 Again, like entire countries, countries were buying these. They went bankrupt. So, like, this is less real than a bored ape NFT. And that's really saying something. It's astonishing. Because at least the, at least I can look at least I can look at the picture of the monkey. I can't look at this. No, like, you can't look at the bet you're making on whether monkey go down.

Starting point is 02:40:44 Like, it's like, like, all my apes gone. Yeah, but it's depression because the, entire world is just this now. It's the shit the banks we're doing where you're betting on whether the mortgage would fail, but now it's you're betting on whether, like, what day we're going to drop a bomb on a run. Like, nothing is real and everything is gambling. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, you know, what I would call a sort of terminal crisis stage of capitalism where like... Because everything is so divorced from any material reality, from any good or service. Like, there is a limit to which you can run an entire economy that is purely based on gambling. Like, there's just, there's a limit. And we're

Starting point is 02:41:19 going to hit it really soon. That's got, that's going to break, right? Yeah, yeah. It's going to break. It's going to break spectacularly. However, comma, I do have good news for you. No, you don't. I do. I have good news. You now actually understand what non-bank financial intermediation is. No, I don't. I'm going to walk you through it. You actually do. So I'm going to quote the IMF's definition of non-bank financial intermediation. Quote, all entities outside the regulated banking system that perform the core banking functions credit intermediation. That is taking money from savers and letting it to borrowers. The four key aspects of intermediation are maturity transformation. We know this one. Right. This is what the bank does. The loan gets older. Yeah, yeah. And then it gets paid back over time.

Starting point is 02:42:10 Yeah. Well, it's, you, you turn your short term thing into a long-term investment. Or you do the opposite. Opposites not good. They're both kind of a disaster, but like, yeah, yeah. The opposite is kind of how we got into this mess. There's liquidity transformation, which we know this too. It's turning money into a thing that's not money. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:42:30 Or turning not money into a thing you can buy burger with. Okay, yeah. We got this. Leverage. We also know this, which is you go into a bunch of debt to buy something else. And then there's credit risk transfer, which we know that one too. It's the betting market. We're supposedly swapping the risk

Starting point is 02:42:51 but both of you two are now betting on whether this thing is going to fail. So it sounds like even just like regular banking is kind of just gambling now. Yep, yep, yep. And it's fun too. So this is a thing that used to be talked about more and isn't now, but like most of like the world's corporations are also basically this now. Like, and this has been a thing for a while, But it's like the auto manufacturers don't make their money off of cars. I mean, they sort of do.

Starting point is 02:43:17 They make some money off cars. Or like most of what they make their money off of is like the Ford finance company, which is like the auto loans thing. And then the auto loans thing trades a bunch of like does all of this other financial bullshit to make money. So like, I don't think that's a good idea. That's what capitalism is.

Starting point is 02:43:34 So everything, everything is fully reliant on this like stupid gambling bullshit. Emberers wearing no clothes. economy. Yep. And if anybody points out that none of this is connected to a material reality, everything falls apart. Well, here's the thing. The thing that stops

Starting point is 02:43:53 everything for falling apart is that the one thing you can do with your money is turn it into gun. Now I'm listening. And that's what stops it falling apart, right? Because Now I'm listening. And this is also a sort of graberism, but it's like behind every bank is a man with a gun. Because the reason

Starting point is 02:44:08 that this money is even sort of real is that the bank can, like, the police will come get you, right? Like, men with guns will appear and coerce you to pay shit, right? But what if, what if instead of Burger, we bought guns? You know, like, this is what is broadly referred to

Starting point is 02:44:28 as the social revolution. It is broadly considered a negative by the financial sector. It is broadly considered a positive by everyone the fuck else. That's not true. It's not considered a positive by, like, I guess,

Starting point is 02:44:39 the people who own regular. businesses. And this is like the shit that like, you know, it was kind of less unhinged back then. But like if you go read the people who were like doing this shit in like the early 1900s, if you read their writing, it's all them being like, oh yeah, no, by the way, like a bunch of banks just like turned the entire Ottoman Empire into like a debt peon and now their entire economy is just dedicated to paying off these fucking loans. And this is like hideously fucking evil. Like they're all complaining about the same shit. And the important lesson we learned from that. the important lesson we learned from that was to do it more.

Starting point is 02:45:14 More. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, to invent increasingly more complicated ways of doing that. Yep. And like, this is why the term third world is a slur. Because instead of being a political movement, because the countries in the Politica movement that was called the Third World Movement, all of their economies got fucking annihilated because they had these like loans whose interest rate could change. And the U.S. jacked up all the interest rates. And so suddenly their loans were like, like the amount you had to like pay on the loans, it went from like 20% or something to like 50 or 100 or some shit. And, you know, and like these countries have never recovered.

Starting point is 02:45:51 Like Nigeria has never really economically recovered from the shit that happened to them. This is why a whole bunch of Latin America is like this too. Like it's like why there's so much sort of like riding systemic poverty is that the economies were entirely transformed into machines to like pay back these fucking debts taken out by these dictators. This is the whole fucking economy now. And, you know, there's other shadow banks that do other kind of completely unhinged shit, right? And I've been focusing this week on like specifically the kind that blew up the economy in 2008. But there's another kind that's like blowing up the economy right now, which is called private credit, which is, I mentioned this briefly earlier,

Starting point is 02:46:28 but private credit is when these like unregulated companies that are not banks give out unregulated loans with unknown terms to other companies. And then those loans go to shit. And there's a whole bunch of ways that can blow up, including, by the way, these companies are funding a bunch of the AI bubble. Oh, and that's a great investment. It's great. You know, because much, much like a mortgage, there's a real physical thing, like a house involved, right? It's not just vibes. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 02:46:52 Oh, Molly, Molly, they, those motherfuckers, I'm going to talk about this a bit. I might have Ed Ditron on for this part of it, too, just because, like, Ed does this all the time. But, like, those motherfuckers out there selling securities that are backed by fucking graphics cards? Like at least the more, I can't believe I'm fucking saying this, but like, at least the mortgage back securities, like, there was a house you could steal to get your money back. Graphics cards, Molly. All my apes are gone. My graphics cards. All my apes are gone. I was like, there's other ones that I'm like, it's so bad.

Starting point is 02:47:27 It's just, oh, but that that's for another time because it is late as fuck. We are out of here. Molly, thank you, thank you for sitting and enduring an hour of you knowing what a shadow bank is now. I almost know what a bank is. I'm still working on the rest of it. But I think I'm getting closer. I believe in you. I think we've made real progress today. I don't know. Now you can kind of understand what's going on when this thing sector explodes again in like two weeks. You'll have to explain it to me again then. I will be happy to. I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Oncour. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry.

Starting point is 02:48:21 Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf for raids, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream Encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days.

Starting point is 02:48:55 So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire time. timeline. In the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart

Starting point is 02:49:34 Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast.

Starting point is 02:49:58 Each week we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea?

Starting point is 02:50:15 We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody.

Starting point is 02:50:34 I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier.

Starting point is 02:50:54 And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'ma check you. Okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'm going to play you. Join Yomeneika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most. problematic stories on our new podcast. You're the problem with Yamanika. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was?

Starting point is 02:51:18 New episodes weekly every Wednesday is part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. So join Yomeneke each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to you're the problem with.

Starting point is 02:51:40 Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2020, millions of Americans took to the streets to protest police violence. They were met with police violence on a massive scale. Shootings, vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred alongside these protests, often in defense of the police. And in total, at least 25 Americans died. We now know that President Trump repeatedly urged General Mark Millie to deploy U.S. military forces to crack down violently on demonstrations. Millie claims that Trump told him to have his soldiers

Starting point is 02:52:38 crack skulls, beat the fuck out of, and just shoot protesters. In the end, we were all lucky. Military leaders, including General Millie, resisted calls to use their men to suppress domestic dissent. National Guard were called in to police several major cities, but in many cases their behavior was tame compared to the militarized police who more reliably shot and beat protesters. For millions of Americans, 2020 was their first exposure to the violence the state will do to avoid change. And then, Trump lost the election. He and his followers tried to carry out a coup but failed, for now, and millions of Americans who'd taken to the streets mostly went back to their lives.

Starting point is 02:53:21 Some were satisfied justice had been done. Others were furious to have stopped short of instituting real change. But at the end of the day, business went on as usual. A version of normal prevailed. In 2021, the military of Myanmar, known as the Totmada, overthrew the elected government in a coup. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, most of them young Jin Zian millennial men and women, took to the streets. Police responded with tear gas, water cannons, and eventually bullets. The international community expressed its horror at the brutality of the Totmada,

Starting point is 02:53:55 but that's all they did. Over the course of several months, the military pushed protesters mostly out of the cities, and a protest movement against the military coup turned into a civil war. Now those same protesters, mostly kids who wanted nothing more than a normal life, have become revolutionaries. With homemade guns, 3D-printed rockets and stolen rifles, they battle to Todmadaugh. Some of them fight in the jungles, some of them fight in the cities, and some of them fight on the internet.

Starting point is 02:54:24 This is their story. We're sitting in a large suburban home in Mysot, Thailand, a small city on the border of Myanmar. The boys singing and playing music around us range in age from 17 to 22. Their existence in Thailand is a crime. If they are caught here, they'll be forced to cross the border, into Myanmar, whose government executed their friends and sold the organs for profit. But tonight, they're playing music. We're drinking beer.

Starting point is 02:54:54 Later, James Stout and I will play pool with them and get our asses just catastrophically wrecked. We met Andy, age 22, and head of the family, for his Instagram page. That's not his real name, but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first met when I sent him a DM asking if we could buy one of his photos for our first series on Myanmar. He was a bit skeptical, but I tried my best to get him to see we just wanted to give him money and promote his work. Over the next six months or so, we went from talking on the phone to messaging almost every day, to Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand, to sitting on the top floor of their house. It used to be his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy and his partner, Sarah.

Starting point is 02:55:39 That's also not her real name, because she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand. The boys we talk about are his brothers, his cousin, and friends. They live at a small building across the garden, and in the daytime, they sit under a gazebo and play their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah, we sat behind a bar in an unpaved alleyway. We drank beer out of sippy cups, because selling beer, is still banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the cops don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much, in fact, and the next day I woke up with a headache and a blurry photo of me, Robert and Andy, engaged in a pose which was half-hug and half-mutual support structure.

Starting point is 02:56:19 We walked home, and according to my phone, at some point we took photos of a puppy, and in hopefully unrelated incident, at some point I started bleeding. It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the chance to blow off some steam. Over the last year and change, he has chronicled every stage of the coup in its aftermath. In early videos, we see joyous protests, moments of resistance and splendor in the streets of cities like Miawadi. Later, we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare. And he didn't have what you were called an easy childhood. Thanks in part to Myanmar's long history of revolutions being crushed by the army.

Starting point is 02:56:57 People there, like people everywhere, want to be free and determine their own futures. And so each generation has its own uprising. And each generation has its own massacre and very little progress to show for it. I was born in 2000. So when I was seven, 2007, there was a revolution. It's called Safran Revolution. It wasn't like this. You know, it wasn't like what happened now.

Starting point is 02:57:21 But like there were a lot of people that were involved in it. A lot of people got killed. And a lot of people left Myanmar and came to the refugee camps in here. and we were one of the families that came to the refugee camps. In Maasat. Yeah, in Maasat, Thailand. Andy's mother is Buma, the dominant ethnic group in Myanmar due to their decades-long control of the military and government.

Starting point is 02:57:44 His father is Corinne, the ethnic group once used by the British government as soldiers. Since 1949, the Corinne have fought a war in the mountains against the Taatma Dau. Their name is often anglicized to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which, given present Internet trends, makes exceptional. explaining the conflict sometimes awkward. Andy primarily identifies as, and was raised, Bama, his family left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This put them in an awkward position in the camps, which were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.

Starting point is 02:58:21 We weren't refugees, right? We were more like, how do you say, like economic refugees? You know, we go because, not because our village has been burned down and our family has been killed, you know. So then if we were to go back to Yangon, we still could find a job. We still could find, you know. But then for these current people, like, this place is the only place that they could exist at that moment, right? Yeah. And probably still now too.

Starting point is 02:58:48 So, yeah. So they said that, but that education wasn't very good there. The life wasn't good. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was very bad. it was very bad. It was a lot of violence, a lot of hate, a lot of understandable. You know, like these people have gone through so much shit and so much trauma that and nothing, no one is coming there to fix that.

Starting point is 02:59:09 So they had a lot of anger. They had a lot of problems. But my mom said, yeah, we're going back because the education here is very bad. And if you go back to Myanmar at least, you know, if you do, like the thing that people do, maybe you'll get somewhere, yeah, in the future. Here, there's no future. what she said. So we went back. And I stayed in Myanmar for like four years.

Starting point is 02:59:32 Andy had never been very political. His family was more or less neutral, tending to side with the military more often than not out of a sense of inertia. Myanmar tended to cartwheel between attempts at democracy and military dictatorship. So when the world media celebrated their first democratic elections in 25 years in 2015,

Starting point is 02:59:51 Andy was not particularly excited. Yeah. So, I mean, we did realize that there was a change in the country, right? Because we grew up in the military to take your ship. But then when Hontentanyi took over, there was some changes. Like the phones got cheaper, the internet got cheaper. And if you look back, then you can see big, big changes. But the thing is, it was never real democracy.

Starting point is 03:00:19 And I think a lot of people in the Western countries thought that it was democracy, when Al-San Suu Kyi took over. Ansan Suu Kyi came to prominence during a 1988 uprising against the military, which ended in bloodshed in the streets of Yangon, and she'd been a long-time democratic activist. As Andy noted,

Starting point is 03:00:39 Westerners celebrated her election as the first Democratic head of state for Myanmar. She even won a Nobel Prize. But the agreement her party had made with the military gave the general significant permanent control over the government. But I think most of the people in the country knew it wasn't real democracy, because, you know, the military always had 25% seats, 25 seats in the parliament, right? Like, they were always, they were in charge of electricity, all these big things, weapons, army, like the military itself.

Starting point is 03:01:09 They are in charge of all these things, and they make it very clear. And even with a Nobel Prize, On Song Suu Kyi did not fight to stop the top Mada from pursuing their decades-long wars against the ethnic armed organizations in the hills. nor did she act to stop their ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people. In fact, she and others in her party didn't even call them Rohingya. They called them Bengali and insisted they were illegally residing in Myanmar, despite mountains of evidence documenting a group by that name living in what is now the Rakhine state. I think most Americans and Westerners in general can empathize with the feeling of electing someone who promises change and then getting very little of what you'd expected.

Starting point is 03:01:49 I think Al-San Suu Kyi used to be this hope that, that was like the opposition against the military. But I think when she got power, she couldn't do all the things that she promised to do. Or like, you know, we looked at her before we looked at her as something, you know, something hope for everyone, for all the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country. But then when she became empowered,

Starting point is 03:02:17 she mainly focused all these changes for the Bama people. Well, you know, the mainland people. Like, the military was still fucking killing people and killing ethnic groups. Did they do something? You know, like, so them, for the ethnic groups, what's the difference? And so, while Andy was hopeful that his country might take a better path, he was not exactly convinced that things were going to get better. Conflict within his family eventually pushed him to make the decision to leave.

Starting point is 03:02:46 my dad was very abusive he would be the shit out of my mouth every day like that it was fine like it was fine when we were younger we couldn't do anything you know we just kind of watched it right

Starting point is 03:02:57 but the older we got the more we involved the more we try to stop it but then we were fight with him too you know and that so at some point it became too much and so I left my home

Starting point is 03:03:08 I think in 2016 just by myself and I was like I've been to mess up I will go back here you know So Andy lived across the border, on his own for more than five years. He'd fallen in love, gotten a home of his own, and set himself up in the sort of odd jobs you can do without papers or legal residency. And that's where things were for him when the Taught Madaugh carried out their coup in early 2021. 2001, February 1st, I was in Minnesota. I was here.

Starting point is 03:03:37 And yeah, in the morning I woke up called me my girlfriend. And she said, the military just did a coup in your country. you should call your family. The military claimed voter fraud and used that as the pretext to stay in power. It's a situation that should be unsettlingly familiar to most of our audience. For a while, Safe and May sought,

Starting point is 03:03:57 Andy watched it in horror as he texted with friends and family across the border. They arrested Ansan Suu Kyi and all the big leaders, right, at the top. So we were kind of like, okay, is someone going to tell us what to do? And especially for us, we didn't have any experiences. We didn't know anything about any of this, that I'm talking about right now.

Starting point is 03:04:16 I didn't have any knowledge of that. But yeah, so after, I think, six-day, the military cut off the internet, like for like two days. And I've lost all contact with everyone inside. My family, my friends. And that's the night I started planning it. Like, I started thinking, oh, fuck, I should go back.

Starting point is 03:04:32 And, like, and I saw the protest photos from Yangon. They looked amazing, right? And I'm like, I'm a photographer. I should be there and, you know, document that. While Andy was staring at the protest photos from the capital of Myanmar, Napidore, as well as Miaoidi, and the largest city Yangon, wondering he should take his camera and document yet another rising for democracy in his home country. A young woman named Amira was in the thick of those protests in Yangon. When the coup started, Amira, age 17, had just

Starting point is 03:05:03 finished high school. She was looking forward to university, and more pressingly looking forward to playing futsal with her friends. She liked to spend her days crafting, she says, making little things to gift or to keep. Like every other day, when she woke up, she spent 10 minutes in medication before facing the world on the 1st of February. Heng San Suu Kyi was her hero, she says. In our interview, her boyfriend translated for her. We'll get to their story later. But when the coup began, they lived a world apart, but they joined their whole generation in feeling enraged by Tatmador trying to rip the freedom their parents had fought for from them. Amira took her rage into the street. Someone gave her a bull.

Starting point is 03:05:45 because of her voice and then she became the leader you know with the yeah the bullhorn yeah what kind of stuff would you say to the bull through the bullhorn oh she's saying this is an end fell and then uh this is what this is what uh the arresting that Osang Suji is an unfair, not fair. Oh, okay. Oh, got you, got you. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Starting point is 03:06:23 Yeah. And then she believed that, she believed in what the Osang Suji said, like, everything is possible, and then we haven't do anything. We haven't studied yet, and then, but when we studied it, and then we can finish it, so everything is possible. So that's what she believed in. So she went on the road and then she protests.

Starting point is 03:06:52 Across the city from Amira on Kuday, Miaok's girlfriend woke him up with the news that the government they'd voted for had been arrested. We're calling him Miaoq here, because that's his name in the revolution. Everyone has one. Amira's his baby because she's so young, yet so fierce. Miao, if you're wondering, means monkey. These revolutionaries who have risked life.

Starting point is 03:07:15 and limb for each other, didn't know the legal names of the people they call their Revolution family, because it's safer that way. And we don't either. Miao could spend the night. Well, I'll let you hear Harry phrased it, actually. I was just like, I was chelian with my eight-care friend, you know, our chelian, and we, you know, Nuffles and Che. Like 31 January, Nuffles and I think it's a Sunday. I think it's Sunday. And Nufflin and Chee, and we sleep together. If you didn't catch that, they were Netflix and chilling.

Starting point is 03:07:48 You know, I was literally not waked by any louder show. I was so asleep. But at the 4 a.m., there's a phone ring. And I suddenly wake her. There's a phone ring from my girlfriend. Her auntie called called, call, call her. And she says, there's a cool the feet. Oh, and she woke her.

Starting point is 03:08:09 she told me there's a code of it. I didn't, you know, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I didn't believe it. So other than I chat the social media. Oh, shit. Oh, may I actually do this. And I'm so angry and I'm so angry.

Starting point is 03:08:26 You know, I was going to Downstate and I told to my family, there's a good idea. Everyone's angry. And at those times, the internet they cut off. The next revolutionary we're going to meet is a fellow will call Doctor. because that's his revolution name. When the coup started, he was just waking up after a 24-hour shift at the hospital in Yangon where he worked.

Starting point is 03:08:49 Doctors were some of the earliest and most visible dissidents in the protest. Their rarity and therefore their relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol of the pro-democracy movement. But as Dr. Wonder made clear, many older medical professionals were not at all certain that resistance was a right move here. I saw the news. That bad news, really, really bad news for us. It was, how could I say that? They broke, you know? They broke our future. Doctors were some of the earliest, most visible dissidents in the pro-democracy protests.

Starting point is 03:09:29 Their rarity and relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol of the pro-democracy movement. But as Dr. Wonder made clear, many older medical medical professionals were not at all certain that resistance was a right move. On that money, we go back to our society, our hospital. We are our Zen guys, you know, all professors, all concerneders, they did not much interest about that. Because they told us, you know, whoever rules our country, it's not our business. it is one of our seniors doctors from our society for non-department,

Starting point is 03:10:15 who did us like that. But we replied him, no, it should be last time. If didn't catch that, he said it should be the last time. The last time kids had to die in the streets. They didn't want another generation to have to go through the same thing. So they got together a proposal, a sort of manifesto for peaceful non-violent resistance, and they submitted it to their seniors. We negotiated with our shit, you know, young resident, our society,

Starting point is 03:10:45 and we discussed about that, and we plan to start with one of our prior movement before civil disability. We have got a red-rebon movement because we want to try peacefully on the media. Okay, we started like that. And then some of our seniors from our society, they were from Mandalay Hospital. Okay, they accept our proposal. Yes, because our generation has already passed that difficulties before. But not your generation, shouldn't accept that.

Starting point is 03:11:29 Three days before the coup, TK got off a plane in San Francisco. He's from Myanmar, but he lives in. the Bay Area now. Before you ask, he says that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good as stuff back home. It's only three days. Fuck, man, three days before. Three days before. I went back to the United States and I wish I'm staying in the Yangon and doing the revolution and participate in everywhere that I can. But I couldn't do from the long distance, you know. So that's all I can do for now. TK had just been in Myanmar.

Starting point is 03:12:10 He had connections to many people on the ground there. His friends were there. His family were there. When the government cut off internet access, he remained able to get good international reporting on the situation in his home country. Slowly, he found ways to communicate with his friends and a growing core of the protesters taking to the streets.

Starting point is 03:12:30 I was a keyboard fighter. I have no idea about the politics. I have no idea about the military staff. This is the single most common sentiment we've heard, across all the revolutionaries we've met. None of them consider themselves to be very political prior to the coup. They started marching in the street because a military coup was obviously bad, but they stayed there because the violence dished out by the state was so horrific. Safe at their house in Mesot, we talked to the boys and his brothers and cousins. all of whom were living in Napador when the coup kicked off.

Starting point is 03:13:06 It didn't take him long to try and join them. Then I went in, I went to Miaoiri, which is across the border in Myanmar side. And I was there for a week, and it was something else. Like, I've never been to protest. I've never been involved in any of this thing. And I never thought I would be, you know, like, I don't know. I always thought, like, I wasn't going to be a part of it. But when I went there, the first day I arrived, there were 200,

Starting point is 03:13:32 thousand people on the street protesting and then it's like and if this big group of people walk in streets after street and everyone coming out of their house and we have this symbol like three fingers from hangar gang i think yeah um yeah so that's like our symbol for democracy now our or our movement now and everyone come out of their house doing that and you know like giving us water food all everything it was beautiful like it was something else it was something else. And then from that day I was like, hook, I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do now. I'm going to be a photographer and I'm going to end this, you know, and I'm going to take photo of these people and their stories and I'm going to share it. And that's my part. That's my

Starting point is 03:14:17 rule. Soon, he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days, he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt in 2020. It's a feeling you felt if you've ever been in the thick of a crowd of people, filled with righteous anger, and facing down overwhelmed police or soldiers. It's a sensation I can't really describe you. You haven't experienced it, but I can say that there's no time that I've ever felt more empowered than the times I've been crushed shoulders to shoulder with strangers, toe to toe with state violence, and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible. It's addictive. And if I'm honest, it's probably why Robert and I booked a flight to visit a stranger I've been DMing on the ground. I think after three days, I met this

Starting point is 03:14:59 group of people, young people, like students, trying to be lawyers and stuff. And I figured out that they were the ones trying to organize these big protests, like 200 people, 100,000 people. They were the ones that's making that happen. So I started kind of following them, trying to get close, because I wanted to get stories from them. And then they became, and they realized what I've been doing. They've been watching. So they were like very welcome. And they took me to this hideout that they go to and then we will have discussions, medians about what we should do the next day, da-da-da-da.

Starting point is 03:15:34 But then, because it's a small town, right? Slowly, I think, police and military started realizing that we are that group too. So by now, you're probably wondering what that cover of dust in the wind in the way is.

Starting point is 03:16:11 It's a song the boys learned when they first took to the streets, but it tells a story of a previous revolution, one that didn't succeed. That's pretty good, guys. Can you tell us what that song's about? Like, you know what the lyrics are and stuff in Englishmen? Yeah, yeah, we can try. I heard the word democracy in there, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. It's like all the lives that were lost in fighting for democracy.

Starting point is 03:16:39 The people use it for the spring revolution as well as 98? Yeah. Because it's the same thing, you can use it. Come on, do you, go, go, y'all. Till the world, and that's the name of that song. Tell the world that's good? Yeah, like, till the world. Till the world.

Starting point is 03:16:57 Yeah, okay. So, basically, the song is like, yeah, they sang it back in the 88, and then it's like, we used it quite a lot when we were in the protest too. Yeah, and the Larras are, we'll keep fighting until the end of the world for the sake of history and revolution in our blood, and of the fallen heroes who fought for the democracy. Oh, our dearest heroes, this is the land of, like, heroes. Like, yeah.

Starting point is 03:17:30 And, yeah, it goes on. Yeah, basically saying, like, something, like, that history went wrong along the way, but we have to fix it. Yeah. Like, the country has shut his blood, and how could they commit, such violence to its own people, you know? Yeah. And yeah, like they say, like, the blood on the rose and the streets are not dried yet.

Starting point is 03:18:01 And for the sake of these people who have died for democracy, for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we have to keep fighting it, basically, yeah. Now, in their exile, they keep singing it to remember the first day of the revolution. when the fights were in the street, not the jungle, and before they lost so many of their comrades. Yeah. And then that was the night protest in front of the police station. Pendles.

Starting point is 03:18:33 Oh, they're singing the song to the same. Yeah. It got very, very heated. The protests our friends were just talking about occurred in Miaoli, but the song popped up all across the country. When you all sing it? Yeah, they, in Yangong it wasn't. one guitar, it was a whole band.

Starting point is 03:18:59 We'll have protesters sitting down and then there's a group of people who are playing this and repeatedly there are a bunch of songs that will play and then there's like words that we would say and yeah like slowly getting and stuff. Do you shame about it, I thought it's a half a damn never know that stuff.

Starting point is 03:19:19 Beam, and you'll see from the footage how it's, yeah. How did it make you feel singing it now? It's scary, you know, he's like, yeah, the song is... The song is very real. So, like, at first, we didn't want to play the song. It's too dark, it's too intense, right? Yeah, like, yeah.

Starting point is 03:19:46 But it's not, like, the lovers are there, like, you can see it, you know, it's like, because we've been through it too, so it's very intense. And, yeah, I think the first time I actually... heard it. Like I heard the song. I remember that weird feeling of, yeah, still have it. Like, every time I was saying it now, like, this is not one of the songs that we usually sing. Like, it's not a fun song. But yeah. We'll talk about how the hunter began to clamp down on the protests.

Starting point is 03:20:53 And how the protesters decided this struggle was too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Hi everyone, it's James here. I just wanted to note that lots of the words in this script are Burmese or Karen or Thai, and we've made every effort to make sure that we pronounce them correctly, but we're sure we've obviously made some mistakes along the way. That's not out of a lack of respect or out of a lack of re-recording on my part. But we did want to note that where we've made a mistake, we're very sorry for doing so.

Starting point is 03:21:28 Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf Forades, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. stream encore on IHeart Radio, crave, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 03:21:58 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii.

Starting point is 03:22:20 My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi.

Starting point is 03:22:42 You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. Sports on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

Starting point is 03:23:02 You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, Revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

Starting point is 03:23:35 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guestars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all. all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia.

Starting point is 03:23:59 Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'm a check you. Okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'm a play you.

Starting point is 03:24:25 Join Yamanika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast. You're the problem with Yamanika. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? New episodes weekly every Wednesday is part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem?

Starting point is 03:24:54 I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans with a special segment by James Stout. This episode, we're covering the week of July 15th to July 22nd. On Monday morning, someone poured gasoline in front of an entrance to the federal immigration court in New York City and lit the gasoline on fire. A 43-year-old army event was arrested outside the building and has been charged with arson.

Starting point is 03:25:44 The man brought a sign reading ice off our streets and also allegedly launched a bundle of fireworks and fired pellets from an airsoft rifle. Three U.S. service members were killed this week on an airbase in Jordan as a result of Trump's war with Iran. The New York Times reported that the Trump administration has tried to obtain phone and text records from New York Times journalists and their families to uncover the source of leaks regarding the security capabilities of the new Air Force One, courtesy of the Qatar government. Cash Patel is overseeing this investigation. This is a huge First Amendment breach. Yeah. After multiple failed election campaigns, Katie Porter has announced she is leaving politics to become a book influencer. Oh, God.

Starting point is 03:26:31 And has rebranded her Instagram account to Katie Porter turns the page. What? Okay. I mean, bold move to be like, you know what the growth industry of the future is? Books. I can't fault the desire there, but I just don't think history is going to really work that way, Katie. Secretary Kennedy has announced the Trump administration is pausing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota. due to, quote, suspected fraud and noncompliance.

Starting point is 03:27:04 Play a short clip here. That includes more than $867 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota. If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate. This will seriously harm, if not kill people. Huge numbers of people. This is just a billion dollar cut to. Medicaid citing quote-unquote fraud. It's aimed at blue states that the administration sees as enemies, you know.

Starting point is 03:27:38 Let's move on to our first main story, and it'll be kind of a throughline this episode. As I briefly mentioned last week, on Thursday, July 16th, Mark Rubio and the State Department held an international conference on the scourge of left-wing violence and Antifa terrorism. This is just the latest escalation following Trump's designation of Antifa as a quote-unquote terrorist group last year and the emboldening of law enforcement's targeting of left-wing groups, the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7. According to the state departments, this international conference was attended by representatives from 66 countries. Over 60 senior ministers were invited, but only 17 ministers actually were in attendance, though other,

Starting point is 03:28:24 quote, political leaders and experts and law enforcement officials traveled to D.C. for the event. including the senior chief of the Hellenic police from Greece. According to a reporter from the Lahorta newspaper, Mexico was invited to the summit, but the president declined to attend because the conference seemed, quote, more political than really related to combating criminal groups. Yeah, amazing. Imagine that. And before the conference, Washington Post reported that many senior ministers were confused as to the purpose of the event

Starting point is 03:29:00 and why they were invited to the conference with two European diplomats telling the post, quote, we don't have Antifa, and quote, our law enforcement authorities have not focused on left-wing terrorism because this is not considered a high priority threat in our country. It doesn't really exist yet to us.

Starting point is 03:29:16 So this international summit put on by Mark Rubio was titled the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. Come on. Very serious. completely leaving out the right. And also, as we'll talk about later, blaming a lot, basically the entire modern left on Cuba. Because it's a mix of Marco and everyone trying to pander to Trump, a lot of these are grievances either rooted in the 70s or like a four-month period in 2020. Yes. Right? Like, that's their entire conception of the left. To open the summit, Rubio told this story of a civilizational threat posed by leftists, Marxists, and anarchist political violence.

Starting point is 03:29:57 violence that has laid dormant since the 70s, but has now awoken. Rubio applauded our counterterrorism strategies in taking down, quote-unquote, radical Islamist extremism. But while our focus has been on ISIS and jihadism, law enforcement and the counterterrorism apparatus has been unable or unwilling to go after left-wing violence. Let's hear from Rubio. For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot. a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.

Starting point is 03:30:42 It's treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia in our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference. in spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics. One of the main tactics employed by Rubio, Stephen Miller, and others throughout this conference was the subtle conflation of mass casualty incidents from the far right,

Starting point is 03:31:12 with instances of property damage or in the most extreme cases, targeted assassination attempts against political figures attributed to the far left, which people on the far right also do by the, the way. Much more often, yeah. Rubio said, quote, a whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies. With the unspoken understanding among them that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is, but a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary, well, that's just merely a

Starting point is 03:31:55 tragic excess of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or overzealous, but its ends were virtuous and just, unquote. No one's ever said that. No one in U.S. politics has ever said that. You can find some maniacs who've said anything about anything, but that's simply not a discourse in America. CVE researchers generally would not describe Marxist bombing plots as virtuous and just. I've never heard a bombing plot described as virtuous.

Starting point is 03:32:23 The only act of what you could call terrorism I have ever seen in the recent days people call virtuous is, you know, what happened to that health care executive. Which Rubio does talk about. Yes. And that is definitely a lot of people cheered that on, but I can't think of a single instance in which a bombing has ever been cheered on. Also, like, Marxist bombings? It's like, when was the last time of Marxist, like, actually said?

Starting point is 03:32:46 Like, this is not a real thing. It is in that what Rubio was talking about is a spate of left-wing affiliated bombings that occurred from 1971 to 72. He talks about this in the Cuba page. And that's what he's saying. That hasn't happened. No. Weather underground has been above ground for like.

Starting point is 03:33:02 That's entirely what all this is based on. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's not a thing now. Yeah. Is what old people remember about the left in the 70s. Yeah. You know?

Starting point is 03:33:12 It's not directly referenced, but I know the DOJ did make a big hubbub about foiling a quote unquote far left. It's kind of like an anti-imperialist, like Maoist bombing plot in California. late last year. Also, a confidential human source who was working with law enforcement was involved in the planning of this operation, which was stopped by law enforcement before they could ever carry out the attack. And that's the closest thing to like an actual like Marxist. That is the closest recent thing, yes. Like that's it. Like in the last like very long number of years. Now Rubio claimed that quote, an extraordinary ideological prejudice was embedded in

Starting point is 03:33:52 the way we talk about political violence and extremism, to the point that this prejudice has become the neutral and objective baseline, quote, so entrenched in the mainstream conventional wisdom that it came to be regarded as an apolitical fact. For an example of this, Rubio mentions the protests against the murder of George Floyd. Many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression so long as they served a left-wing cause. It is why during those George Floyd, so-called George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through America's great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments

Starting point is 03:34:42 all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now, image. Maybe you all recall this of a news anchor from a very prominent agency, a news anchor, standing in the neighborhood, consumed in flames. Meanwhile, the crayon on the bottom read that the protests were mostly peaceful. Can't even say Chiron right? My God. This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused. It was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. a protected class unto itself

Starting point is 03:35:24 protecting their ability to light trash on fire in the middle of a street that's what happened there weren't thousands of arrests and prosecutions that is the other thing is that the Trump administration did that a little bit but this was at the end of 2020 the Biden administration did

Starting point is 03:35:39 tons and tons of federal arrests with people involved in these protests people who are still in jail meanwhile the January 6 people are out of jail and have had pardons Yeah. Rubio referenced instances of political violence in Europe from recent time, like a firebomb attack on the home of a Greek politician that killed that politician's mother earlier this month. Rubio did not mention that four suspects have already been arrested and that this firebombing was the first time in over a decade that someone was killed in an attack targeting a politician in Greece. Rubio also referenced a five-day blackout in Berlin last winter caused by a powerline sabotage, people claiming to be responsible for the attack associated themselves with a far-left eco-extremist group.

Starting point is 03:36:26 Lastly, Rubio mentioned that in February of this year, quote, a French 23-year-old succumbed to traumatic brain injuries, beaten to death on the streets of Leone by a group of far-left militant thugs. This 23-year-old was a neo-fascist, quote-unquote, activist. that's what he's referred to in local news coverage, who died two days after being brutalized in a large street brawl during a far-right protest outside of a university event featuring a Palestinian lawmaker.

Starting point is 03:36:54 Eleven anti-fascists were arrested for this. Rubio tried to connect the current emerging threat of far-left political terrorism to historical Marxist struggles in the 20th century and particularly the 1970s. Rubio named dropped to urban guerrilla groups in Central and South America, FARC, the National Liberation Army,

Starting point is 03:37:14 the Shining Path, Maoist guerrillas in Peru, as well as European groups like Italy's Red Brigades, the Red Army faction in Germany, Marxist extremists in Greece, and in the U.S., the weather underground, the Black Liberation Army, and the Simbans Liberation Army. And today we face a new wave of this old evil. Here in the United States,

Starting point is 03:37:35 the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone. In Greece, more than 80% of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors. These are not abstract statistics. Americans have seen what those numbers mean. An all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary schools,

Starting point is 03:38:10 students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, where is your God now? A health care executive executed in cold blood in the streets, multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president and the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation. So there's a lot there. Anarchist violence certainly isn't new in Greece. No. And again, in the American context, this little speech by Rubio. conflates mass casualty events with property damage and isolated, targeted violence.

Starting point is 03:38:47 He references vague, quote unquote, all-out assaults on immigration officers, as in big protests in Minneapolis. He references a one sniper attack by a suicidal man who was not very political and leaned libertarian in Texas. He references a transgender shooter who also was not politically motivated in the traditional sense and initially planned to shoot up an LGBTQ music venue. The United Healthcare CEO assassination is arguably the closest thing here to, like, left-wing, motivated violence. It's definitely politically motivated.

Starting point is 03:39:20 Even that suspect wasn't particularly left-wing politically. No. Belief in some political ideology was not the driving force behind that assassination. It wasn't ideologically motivated, but rather materially motivated based on interactions with our inhumane health care system. Trying to understand every public act of violence, whether that's a shooting or an assassination, just as existing in between this left-right binary, is a very limited way to actually try to understand public acts of violence. Because not all shootings have an obvious ideological driver. Public acts of violence can be downstream of someone's personal experiences and

Starting point is 03:40:03 material conditions. As for the Trump assassinations, two have been from people who were largely moderate liberals, not leftists. And the first attempted assassination did not appear to have what we would traditionally consider to be a political motive, again, from someone with a conservative background who was closer to what we would describe as having like a school shooter mentality. I'll talk about this a little bit later, but I think it's really important to understand that just because the target is a political figure does not mean it as political violence. The attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan is a key example of this. And investigations into the first Trump assassination found that the shooter, Thomas Crooks,

Starting point is 03:40:45 searched online for a variety of events to commit a shooting at. In the month prior to the shooting, he did more than 60 internet searches related to Biden, Trump, and information about the upcoming DNC and R&C conventions. Trump's campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, just happened to take place in the right place at the right time. And for someone who's just trying to do a high-profile shooting, it might not even matter what the outcome of that attempted shooting is. These public acts of violence usually have a suicidal component, a drive-for-self-inihilation, while simultaneously gaining some final sense of meaning or purpose by crudely emblazoning yourself in history through a violent act. This kind of

Starting point is 03:41:30 public suicidal violence can be a sort of final attempt of communing with the world. The AP summarized a report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that found that left-wing terrorist attacks as of

Starting point is 03:41:46 July of last year had surpassed those from the far right for the first time in more than 30 years. But a closer look at that data showed that the uptick reflects a very low starting level and a concurre and a concurrent drop on the far right. Quote,

Starting point is 03:42:00 there was an average of 0.6 left-wing incidents annually from 1994 through 2000, compared with an average of 20.6 on the right, the report shows. From 2016 to 2024, there were an average of four per year on the left and 22.7 per year on the right. Those numbers have dropped dramatically on the right

Starting point is 03:42:21 as of early July 2025, with only one incident. Meanwhile, there had been five from the right. the left. So, yes, left-wing attacks in 2025 did outpace what that report, as of July, categorized as right-wing attacks. But that's because there was a big drop-off in right-wing attacks once Trump came into office and a very small increase in attacks attributed to the left. And that is the sort of statistics that Rubio is using to make this push. Yeah. And, you know, like, it's worth noting. It's like, okay, so why have there been less

Starting point is 03:42:54 of these sort of like bright-wing political terrorism events? And it's like, well, because ICE is just doing them instead. Yeah, the state's doing the violence for them. Yeah. Like, it's the same reason that you can look at the period in which sort of, like, jailhouse lynching suddenly, like, collapses. And the reason they collapse is that, you know, the U.S. government just starts executing those people.

Starting point is 03:43:13 And, you know, this is, like, a very explicit deal that's made between the state. And, you know, the specific kind of lynch mob is, like, we'll just carry out death, like, penalty sentences against these people if you stop storming prisons and lynching them in there. So, you know, that's like what's happening here, right? is like you have people with mass shooter profiles who are, you know, ICE officers shooting like immigrants in the streets now.

Starting point is 03:43:34 Yeah. One thing that was really common throughout Rubio's whole speech and some of the follow-up remarks by like Miller and Bessett is like a big thing that was undergirding their rhetoric was this assumption that if the target of violence is viewed as a right-wing, then the attacker must be left-wing.

Starting point is 03:43:51 And any attack that goes against what they would consider like a right-wing symbol, whether that's ICE, whether that's the president, whatever, then whoever is attacking that symbol must be coming from the left wing or have some left wing motivation. And that's the way that they're trying to frame a lot of this. One of the old categories of violent extremism is called anti-government violent extremism, which is a very broad category, which can encompass some people who have explicit ideological drivers,

Starting point is 03:44:17 but also can include people who are doing public suicidal violence who will target the government or political figures as an expression of their own political and societal alienation. Someone who does this kind of public suicidal violence can often lack a recognizably coherent political philosophy that can be easily grafted on to our Democrat, Republican binary, with there sometimes being a mix of political beliefs across the left-right spectrum. But now that Trump is in office,

Starting point is 03:44:48 any attack against the federal government can be used by the Trump administration as an example of left-wing terrorism attacking a right-wing government. Take, for instance, the sniper attack in Texas, targeting an ice facility and vehicles, although actually shooting multiple immigrants. This shooter was described by his friends as being largely a political but leaned libertarian. This shooting also had a suicidal aspect in that he did kill himself after the shooting. With Trump in charge of the federal government,

Starting point is 03:45:22 nihilistic and self-destructive attacks against American society may take a form which can be characterized as left-wing violence. Another example of this is the plot against the UFC Freedom 250 event, where self-described Christian patriots who saw themselves as aspiring revolutionaries tried to start the second American Revolutionary War by targeting high-level politicians and public figures at the UFC White House event. These people are not on what I would consider the left wing, but in the conservative coverage of this attack, this was framed as an anti-capitalist attack targeting Trump's cabinet. Towards the end of Rubio's speech, he started talking about this international strategy that they

Starting point is 03:46:09 want to develop to handle this emerging threat. Quote, this is an international conference because we are facing an international, transnational threat. These are not distinct and isolated cells. They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our. borders. They do not believe, in fact, in the nation state itself. They coordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train, and they act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies, sharing the same mission. I'll play one more clip from Rubio here. Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other's attacks, to funnel propaganda and training materials and target information

Starting point is 03:46:49 through shared encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safe houses and finance and sustain their operations through transnational funds. And they work alongside hostile foreign states that share their mission, like Iranian proxy networks, who are increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world. The Cuban regime's sprawling intelligence and ideological network help to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.

Starting point is 03:47:21 And it remains inextricably linked to the far left groups and movements across and beyond the West. Today's far left terrorists can raise money in one country. They can host their communications in a second country. They can receive training in a third country. They can recruit militants in a fourth country. And then together strike a target in a fifth country. A thing that we've never seen happen. fiction that's never ever happened this is like not once where are they training marco

Starting point is 03:47:52 cuba this is like a tom clancy novel that's he does think they're training in cuba actually i shouldn't ask that yeah the only thing that functions like this is the central intelligence agency yeah like nothing else works like this well that's not entirely true like the global far right does to a degree work that's true right like there's an element now it no i wouldn't even describe it that way because that's more elaborate than i've ever seen the global far right do honestly But their versions of that do occur where people are like traveling to one country for armed training or whatever. Yeah. I guess you could look back at the old like world anti-communist networks.

Starting point is 03:48:23 Exactly. Like league networks where they would do that. But like this. I mean, I wonder if they would consider stuff like traveling to like Rojava, right? A leftist traveling to Rojava or traveling to like, you know, see like Zapatistas, right? If that's kind of what he's thinking of. Or if he's even thinking about it in like a real literal way. I can tell you specifically what he's thinking about in this.

Starting point is 03:48:41 I mean, he's thinking about two things. He's trying to directly draw a comparison for political purposes to the influencers who went out of to Cuba recently. But the thing that he is actually thinking about is the way a chunk of the global far left worked in like the 60s and 70s. Gaddafi trained to the IRA, right? Like there were a lot of like, not all of them, but like there was people did travel from left wing groups to other places and then carried out attacks in other countries. That was a thing that occurred during what is often called the golden age of terrorism. This is a lot of this is just more Marco not leaving the 70s. behind, like, even though, again, it's 50 years since that kind of shit's been going on almost.

Starting point is 03:49:18 And Gaddafi's dead. Like, the IRA isn't exactly active anymore either. We'll return to talk more about far-left transnational terrorism after this ad break. We are back. There's one last part about this Antifa Far Left Terrorism Summit that happened at the State Department that I want to hone in on. And that is the remarks made by Stephen Miller. So brace yourself for a short clip of Miller here.

Starting point is 03:49:59 President Trump issued a directive in our parlance. It's called a National Security Presidential Memorandum or NSPM, NSPM 7, to be exact. The directs for the first time in American history, all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country. There's no point at which the left-wing terrorist is satisfied with his gains and ceases progressing. Inevitably, left to run its course, it always becomes a gulag. It always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms, inflicting immense pain, humiliation, suffering

Starting point is 03:50:53 in order to establish complete and total control, control through psychological and physical and actual terror. We must disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists, or else they will turn the country into a gulog and conduct the mass imprisonment of political enemies and establish total psychological control. It's just that we must do the genocide before they do the genocide against us thing. And that is a lot of how Miller and the ambassador for the counterterrorism bureau talk about this. So we need to stop this before it gets bigger.

Starting point is 03:51:30 We know it seems kind of small right now. But by the time that everyone realizes this is a huge threat, then it's already too late. Then we've already lost. We have to end this thing right now as it still is like an infant. Like we cannot let this thing grow up. That is very much how he talks about it. And he is really frustrated about the way that a attempt. by the Trump administration to do this have been curtailed or have not been able to really be

Starting point is 03:51:53 followed through on to the extent that he wants. And he has a specific thing that's been happening that he's really upset about. And it's a little term that some people in the audience might be familiar with called jury nullification. There's a real threat that those who are not themselves terrorists, but who support left-wing violence, will create the conditions that allow that violence to go on without any meaningful inhibition. So to be specific, we've seen some of our nation's cities in America, like Washington, D.C. In New York City, something against it's an American term, but it's known as jury nullification. This is when a person is obviously guilty of a crime, but the juror, because they're

Starting point is 03:52:38 ideologically sympathetic to the perpetrator, will not sentence them to the crime which is obviously committed. We've seen in the United States again and again, individuals. individuals who are part of luffling organizations who've committed assaults against ICE officers or federal law enforcement who have been brought to court where clear evidence has been presented against them that the jury has refused to convict for purely political reasons. When you've reached that point, it demonstrates how deeply the cancer has begun to infest your society. According to a new report in Just Security, quote, nearly half the cases nationwide brought against protesters and immigrants for assault against a law enforcement officer or dismiss. by judges, withdrawn by prosecutors, or resulted in jury acquittals. In at least 18 publicly reported instances, grand juries have refused to indict.

Starting point is 03:53:29 At least 16 grand jury subpoenas have been blocked or withdrawn, and judges have dismissed or prosecutors have dropped at least 79 cases relating to ICE protests or federal law enforcement surges across D.C., Chicago, Minnesota, and Los Angeles. In a period of two months, the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. dropped more cases than it had in the previous 10 years combined. unquote. And that also shows the scale in which they're bringing these cases against protesters. This is something that Miller is really upset about. This is something that is severely prohibiting the administration's ability to go after, quote-unquote, left-wing terrorism, what they view as left-wing terrorism. And he's really frustrated about this. Here's one last quote from him.

Starting point is 03:54:09 Quote, one of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely protectual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence. This is the tactic that the left always uses to try to protect itself from facing criminal punishment. It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must fall on deaf ears. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization, unquote. And Miller and Rubio went on pretty lengthy rants about how the threat of left-wing violence really is this civilizational threat against what is beautiful and what is good, what is natural. It's a quote from Miller against this like ugly

Starting point is 03:54:52 hatred that fuels the left. This sort of like, you know, like resentment for like failing at life. And now they want to attack those of us who like succeed, those of us who like build. Very fascistic like stuff at the end of both of their speeches. Very and also very Ben Shapiro stuff, to be honest. The whole builders and takers thing. I mean, he didn't start that.

Starting point is 03:55:11 But it is interesting to see there's so many old throwbacks to this because you can tell these, these are guys who get started in right-wing politics. before the current era because they keep hearkening back to stuff that's just like not as big a part of like the modern vernacular, which is always interesting to me, like how stuck a lot of these guys are in the past. At a post conference press conference for foreign press, the coordinator and ambassador at large for the Bureau of Counterterrorism, reiterated that the U.S. counterterrorism strategy is still

Starting point is 03:55:42 focusing on three main types of threat groups, narco-terrorists, Islamic or jihadist terrorists, and far-left terrorists, and that they need to, quote, identify terror actors and plots before they happen. He calls far-left terrorism a resurgent threat with a clear upward trend, and that they are, quote, committed to addressing it before it metastasizes, that they want to halt this scourge before it grows into something larger, more unified, and more deadly.

Starting point is 03:56:08 The ambassador outlined three concrete outcomes from this conference. The first was on designations and accountability, And like Rubio, he promised that additional foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorist designations for quote-unquote far-left groups are under active review and are going to be incoming soon following the four designations of Europe-based groups last year. So there's going to be more left-wing or Antifa-related groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Secretary Besant talked about how legitimate nonprofit and charitable structures are. are being, quote, exploited as a mechanism to conceal the movement of illicit funds to support political terrorism. And the ambassador talked about how international partners are discussing prospects, quote, align their own legal frameworks to ensure that these networks cannot simply relocate across borders.

Starting point is 03:57:01 As a part of these terrorist designations, the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will take steps to dismantle the funding which sustains these groups. And the State Department is also offering payments of up to $10 million for information disrupting. far-left terrorist financing. The second outcome of the conference was on operational coordination, like deepening information sharing between partner agencies and coordinating on travel restrictions, and strengthening the protection of critical infrastructure like transportation and energy systems. It was also announced that Germany would host the next, quote-unquote, counter-terrorism

Starting point is 03:57:33 workshop. The last concrete outcome of this event was new visa restrictions, quote, targeting members of far-left terrorists and aligned groups. For more on that, let's throw to our colleague James Stout. Hi everyone, it's James. Coming at you with the second attempt to record this. Find myself traveling every Wednesday at the moment. So apologies for missing out.

Starting point is 03:58:00 I'm recording with everyone else. I will be back next week, I promise. And we will return to our usual shared conversation. But I did want to check in with everyone this week because I want to talk about a couple of things. last week for the first time in its history, the United States government attempted to remove someone through the use of the alien terrorist removal court. This is something that was first published by Seamus Hughes at Court Watch. I want to give credit by credit to you. Shamas spends an

Starting point is 03:58:25 ungodly amount of time looking at Pacer and other court documents that found this. Some background on this court, right? It's established in 1996 by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That law allows the Attorney General to designate someone of the terrorists and use this process, if Title II removal would be a threat to national security. Now, the hearings in the ATRC, I will say they fly extremely close to the sun with regards to constitutional rights and the concept of a fair trial. There are lots of provisions in this law for classified evidence, for strict restrictions on the things that the defendant can obtain by discovery. The law also says, quote, an alien subject to removal under this title shall not be entitled to suppress evidence of the alien alleges was unlawfully obtained.

Starting point is 03:59:12 That's great stuff. It's just worth noting right 1996 is before the start of the global war on terror, and it therefore predates the existence of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, where the United States had a base at Guantanamo Bay, but the large-scale extrajudicial torturing of people, what they called enhanced interrogation at Guantanamo Bay had not begun in 1996, right? I'm not saying that they were not doing extrajudicial things in 1996. I'm just saying that like the Gipmow as we understand it today,

Starting point is 03:59:42 for those of us who have grown up with it as a political reality for most of our adult lives, didn't exist in that sense then. But I'm not saying that there were not people detained there. They probably were. I'm not saying they did not do extrajudicial things in pursuit of quite anti-terrorism. I believe they did. Bozberg mentioned this court. Judge Bozberg, remember him from the El Salvador Sequot cases,

Starting point is 04:00:03 when he told the government that there was a procedure for someone accused of terrorism. Because the government basically said, while these people are terrorists, look at that, we put them on a plane, sent them to a death camp in El Salvador, essentially right, a prison that very few people leave. Eventually, most of those people did leave in this case, but it was very unusual for someone to leave that camp. And what he said was, quote, so if there's a national security concern with having these hearings, whether via habeas or otherwise, you can always go to the ATRC, which will be a first, but that's what it's there for, right? So at the time, he's pointing to it, saying if you can't put the evidence for these people's,

Starting point is 04:00:38 the need to remove these people out in public. That's why we have the ATRC when it used that. Trump administration said we can use that. That does not mean we have to use that. And that was their argument, right? The court is open not just to people engage in terrorism. It's also their families. It's also people accused of things like soliciting others to engage in acts of terrorism

Starting point is 04:00:59 and raising funds. It also appears that once a person, they've submitted an application for removal through this court, they can detain a person. The court has this crazy website. It looks like it was very hastily created. It's not a usual website for a court at all. Usually court websites are made in the late 1990s. They are very difficult to navigate, and they have a huge amount of data that is hard to find.

Starting point is 04:01:21 That's why a lot of us like to use court listener or some other website rather than going directly to the court pages, which can be very hard to navigate. This page lists the judges where each of the judges comes from a different US circuit, and it has the two documents that the court has made available so far. One is pretty much all blanked out. The other one is a court order in which the court chief judge asserts that, quote, the government could benefit for an opportunity for more thoughtful consideration. So they've made an application to remove someone by this court, and that is a response of the court at this time, right?

Starting point is 04:01:54 Obviously, this is very concerning, right? Immigration court, to begin with, I think, is getting closer and closer to being something that is sort of openly flouting the Constitution and people's rights. Immigration judges are not judges in the sense that you understand judges to be, even though some of them have worked hard to give people due process and many of them are now being removed wonkid surmise because of that. But if we look at this in addition to the United States adding groups in Mexico and Europe to the FTO list, foreign terrorist organization, for those who aren't familiar, it's especially concerning, right? And it's especially concerning when we look another announcement this week, which explicitly cited NSPM 7, which we

Starting point is 04:02:38 spoken about lengths on this show, limiting visas for people. It calls anti-fascist and far-left terrorist groups. The announcement began, I'm going to quote from extensively here, right, far-left terrorist and align groups use sophisticated, organized networks to perpetrate violence as a political tool, seeking to implement an extreme political vision through intimidation and coordinated campaigns of terror. It is a strategy that explicitly aims to undermine the political foundations of free and self-governing societies, utilizing bombings, assassinations and other forms of terrorism to silence speech, limit political opposition, change policy outcomes, and sabotage political processes. This announcement also said that it, quote, targets members of

Starting point is 04:03:17 far-left terrorists and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism, supported violent criminal activity, participate in economic sabotage, finance, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by far-left terrorists and other aligned groups, and or facilitated the convergence of far-left terrorists and other aligned networks for the purposes of violent action. Some of these are pretty broad, right? Economic sabotage. Normally I would say with ludicrous has suggested, like, that could include BDS.

Starting point is 04:03:44 But I think given where we are, it's not crazy to think that, right? Some of these facilitating the conversions, right? Is that like holding a big summit is like the logistical support for violent or criminal actions? Does that mean bail funds? All of these things, cash bail, I guess it's less of a thing outside the US. Does that mean people who have done jail? support, right, that kind of thing. This is super concerning. The State Department explicitly cites

Starting point is 04:04:11 Section 212, subsection A, part three, subsection C of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which deals with the inadmissibility of aliens. The section begins, quote, an alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States, Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible. So that's a very, very broad category, right? Notably, it is not subsection B, which deals specifically with terrorism, which terrorists are admissible. This is a different one which deals with this very broad power given to the Secretary of State to decide whose admission would be bad for the United States foreign policy consequences. They've used just before, right? This is a favorite of this

Starting point is 04:04:54 administration. But again, right, this is an example of a law which gives massive leeway to, in this case, part of the executive branch, the Secretary of State, and it is therefore he's using that leeway, right, to do this. I think that we should be especially concerned when we combine this with some of the other things that we're seeing, right? We are seeing social media surveys of applicants, right? People have to submit their whole social media before they apply. We're seeing phone searches at the border more and more frequently, right? Famously, the J.D. Vance mean, but it's not uncommon to see these phone searches at the border now. We have also seen this week the elimination of duration of status for a number of visas,

Starting point is 04:05:37 F1s, being probably the most numerous, F1 being a student visa, right? Also, some foreign journalist visas, other visa types as well included there. But I want to focus on the F1s because I think that will be the one that impacts the most people. So generally, with an F1 visa, once you maintain status, i.e. once you are still in school, you could keep your student visa, right? Now these include like a time limit on the duration of the visa. For some people, this will be a serious issue. If you are entering, for example, just speaking from experience here,

Starting point is 04:06:07 if you are entering a program in the United States in the humanities, and you are entering with a bachelor's degree, right, not a master's degree, you will then have to advance to candidacy, right, complete the requirements for your master's degree and demonstrate competency in two languages. Let's assume you are not someone who is multilingual. could take a while, right? Like, depending on how strict the testing is at the particular university you go to, then you will have to research, then you'll have to write, then you will have to do a

Starting point is 04:06:35 dissertation. These time limits on the F1 visa are less than the nominal time to degree at some institutions. And that means that it's going to be very hard for graduate students, especially, to come to the United States to do those degrees. That combined with this denial of visas thing is going to have an impact on the way campuses look in the United States. And it's going to have a broader impact than that. Of course it is. But this is a thing that I have direct experience with, right? F-1 student visas are numerous.

Starting point is 04:07:09 I've taught dozens, if not hundreds of F-1 students. I came on a student visa when I did my PhD. And like, one of the reasons that people come here, and this is something that I've heard from so many people is that like, this country has a Bill of Rights. and the very first amendment to the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech. And that isn't the case everywhere. And that is a thing that is good, but it is more and more and more under attack, especially

Starting point is 04:07:37 for foreign students, right? We've seen this right from the very beginning of the Trump administration. And I believe that this will be part of that same attack, right? When we look at all these things together, these are the clearest signposts we have seen yet to the new McCarthyism, right? we can talk about what Rubio said about Cuba. We can talk about this Antifa summit, which I will talk about soon in more depth. But it is not hard to draw a line from, for instance, the prosecution and the persecution

Starting point is 04:08:04 outside the legal system of Lincoln Brigadiers, right, people who volunteered to fight fascism in Spain to what is happening today. And it is sad but not shocking to see yet another shameful aspect of this country's history resurfacing and becoming policy again. So I guess I'll just finish up by saying if this has impacted you, if you were someone who's recently had a visa refused, if you are somebody who was trying to get in an F1 visa and is now finding shit, I don't think I can do my degree in that much time. What do I do here? I always want to tell stories about people, not just about government announcements.

Starting point is 04:08:40 So you can hit us up, Coolzone Tips at proton.me. If you'd like to talk about that. Thanks, and I'll be back with everybody next week. we will discuss tariffs and even more far-left terrorism after this ad break. We're back. So earlier this week, the U.S. State Department put out a 100-page report. This would be on Monday about Cuba's history of trying to overthrow or manipulate U.S. politics via left-wing activists and quote-unquote left-wing militants going back to the 60s. When they say going back to the 60s, basically what I mean is pretty much exclusively.

Starting point is 04:09:30 the 60s and 70s is almost everything in this document that relates to the U.S. directly in any way. The document, which is basically, just to give you a little bit of background, this is all Rubio, right? Not just what Gare has been talking about, but particularly trying to drum up fear and panic around Cuba and justify an invasion or regime change in Cuba. That's been his whole fucking life goal for a very long time. There's a pretty good Gartian article from last year with the title Marco Rubio Neer's goal of toppling Cuba's gun. government. And I want to read a brief quote from that. The campaign against Cuba's government is the culmination of a personal pursuit spanning decades. In a video released on Cuban Independence Day this week, Rubio said in Spanish that a U.S. embargo was not the reason for the country's privations,

Starting point is 04:10:14 telling Cubans that currently the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country. All roads have been leading to Cuba for Rubio, said a person who has known Rubio since his time as a local politician in South Florida. He has wanted this for a long time, and now he finally has the authority to reach that goal. Now, Trump has made a couple comments that make people believe he is in the process of planning to try and force the government of Cuba out one way or another. Last Thursday, he told reporters, other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years doing something about Cuba, and it looks like I'll be the one that does it, so I would be

Starting point is 04:10:46 happy to do it. Now, hard to say is that actually means anything. Trump says a lot of stuff that doesn't come true, but there's been real world reasons to believe that he seriously intends to do this. I mean, first off, what happened in Venezuela, right, where we used our special operations forces to take out and extradite a legally elected, well, to extradite the president of a sovereign country, right? This is something that, like, you've had, like, a lot of planners in the pending on talking about for years is like, well, we could use these guys to just deal with problems at the top, right? And for Rubio, there's a lot of speculation that Venezuela was kind of a proof of concept for him, right? that we could, in fact, use a very small footprint force, get the current ruling regime out of there

Starting point is 04:11:30 or enough of them that they're not willing to fight back anymore. And that might be something that the U.S. military is capable of doing. I don't have a great sense as to Cuba's defensive capacity or how functional they would be at doing this or how much support the regime would enjoy in the event that the U.S. tried this or how much that support would matter. It kind of depends on the weapon systems they use. At the moment, we know that the U.S. Nimitz and its strike group have recently been brought into the South Caribbean Sea as part of an ongoing military buildup.

Starting point is 04:11:58 And there have been some other signs that the regime is planning to act. Axios recently published in articles that cited administration estimates that Cuba now has some 300 military drones, quote, and was considering using them to attack a U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. ships, or even targets in Florida. Miami, your days are numbered. Now, folks, I'm going to walk you through some stuff. First off, we don't actually have hard evidence that they bought any of these drums. There was some earlier reporting, and I'm sure they have been talking with Iran, and I know that they have ongoing defense agreements with Russia.

Starting point is 04:12:31 And I wouldn't be shocked if they had bought like 300 of these like Shaheed-style cheaper suicide drones. Here's the thing. The night before we recorded this, Ukraine launched a major attack on Moscow using 400 drones. If Cuba does have 300 Iranian drones, that is roughly enough to carry out an offensive against U.S. forces for two to three seconds. perhaps a little more, maybe more like 15 to 20, you know, but it's not an invasion force. It's not really a defensive force. And we also don't know that they even have them, right? It wouldn't be weird if they did, but this isn't any reason to believe there's any kind of a threat coming from Cuba.

Starting point is 04:13:06 The fact that they're trying to really hype up 300 drones, it's 2026. You can run through that in an afternoon. Yeah, and also, like, I just want to be very clear. Cuba is not planning to launch strikes on the United States. Come on. Like, look at the last 60 years of history, right? We had one big dust up with them over the fucking Bay of Pigs. And obviously, the Cuban government funded and sent soldiers and doctors and other stuff

Starting point is 04:13:30 into a variety of countries. And that led to conflicts in places like Africa with the U.S. But there's never been any direct aggression from Cuba towards the United States. No. We're not in danger from them. One of the most ridiculous things you could do today is watch the celebrated Aaron Sorkin movie, a few good men, which is entirely about how, well, you know, you don't understand. how difficult it is protecting America from Cuba.

Starting point is 04:13:52 You know, we really, we got to be extra crazy to keep the Cubans off the walls of the United States. Like, it's fucking nonsense. And it's, Marco is, number one, Marco comes from a Cuban-American background. His whole family hates the Castro government. He has wanted and seen himself as ordained to destroy the communist government in Cuba for his entire life. That doesn't mean that there's any kind of realistic threat here or any real reason to feel like

Starting point is 04:14:18 any kind of actual danger. And you can see that in the report itself, right? There's even some bits here where they almost admit it, right? I'm going to read one segment. The Cuban campaign against America is unique. It is irregular and covert, even at the peak of its military power. Havana never possessed the capacity to defeat the United States at a conventional armed conflict.

Starting point is 04:14:36 Instead, the Cubans perfected a new model for a long war of attrition, organized around espionage, infiltration, sabotage, proxy networks, and a revolutionary infrastructure designed to turn America against itself. Did Cuba do that? Did Cuba turn America against itself? And also, if they've protected a war of attrition, why are they out of gas? And, like, the United States is the healthiest economy in the world. I mean, it's because we stole a bunch of shit.

Starting point is 04:14:59 But there's no evidence that Cuba's done some sort of horrible damage to the U.S. And, in fact, all of the damage says otherwise, that we've continued to fuck over the Cubans for goddamn no reason for decades. It's incredibly frustrating. And again, the more you read this, the more you realize, unless he's talking about, like, shit that, because he just periodically talk about, like, fucking South America. and some of the different like Cuban, like state involvement there. But when he's talking about acts that can be traced to Cuba that involve violence in the U.S. at all, it's just shit from the 60s and 70s, right?

Starting point is 04:15:29 Which is like back when Cuba's economy was functional and they had the backing of the USSR. And also, like, none of it ever came close to doing serious damage to the United States as like a national, like as a nation, right? None of that, that was never in the fucking cards, you know? It's very frustrating to have to even take any of this serious, but you do because they are going to, try to blame and try to punish and imprison people based on this fucking fantasy, right? And one of the things, you've seen a lot of quotes, like when Marco came up to talk and give a speech about this report, he accused Iran and Cuba of funding both Antifa and the DSA, right? Like, come on.

Starting point is 04:16:05 And he'll make these comments in his speeches. The actual report isn't even willing to go that far, because when you get to the meat of the report, Marquito doesn't even have the guts to call the DSA a Cuban op. The DSA was not founded as a Cuban intelligence or information. It was born in 1982 as a fusion of socialist organizations and movements for both the old left and new left factions. And, you know, like, they're right that people in the DSA are very angry about what the OS is doing to Cuba because they're out of fuel and starving and being continually harmed by our completely pointless boycotts and trade fucking wars. Like, there's not much more than that for most people to it. There's some weirdos out there, but it is really interesting how carefully the report talks about DSA.

Starting point is 04:16:48 Like, DSA's mentioned a lot. DSA is mentioned very frequently. But there's no direct connection. DSA's mentioned 24 times in a 100-page document, but they're very careful to be like, DSA can be sympathetic to the Cuban government, but DSA is not a result of Cuban influence necessarily. No.

Starting point is 04:17:07 And I think the argument they are making is that you had a split between the old left and the new left, and the Cuban government founded a bunch of new left factions, and because the DSA is a fusion of old left and new left factions, that means that they're partly a result of Cuban operation. That's what they're trying to argue, right? It's nonsense. Or build some sort of historical justification to if they go after DSA people

Starting point is 04:17:33 or activists who have gone to Cuba to deliver humanitarian aid that builds some sort of framework to criminalize people who are sympathetic to people living in Cuba. Yeah, I think that's precisely what's happening. And one thing that's kind of telling is even among news sources that are like sympathetic to the right and to the administration, no one's pretending that this paper isn't just Marco like pushing out his own personal vendettas. Like I found a Washington Examiner article that summarized the report as Marco Rubio accusing the Cuban government. Here's an exact quote from the Washington examiner. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the Cuban government of running one of the most sophisticated infiltrations of U.S. politics, in part using the Democratic Socialists of America. So even with a lot of these articles, they're like, yeah, this is just Rubio fucking spouting off, right?

Starting point is 04:18:20 Like, this is mostly old Marco. And among some of like the crazy, like, anti-communist sites I've been reading, they're still like, well, there's nothing new in this. They didn't, because they are reading like, well, nothing past like the 70s involves the U.S. directly. Which isn't to say there's not real danger here, right? There was a, no, huge danger. One of the main activists that Code Pink, which was this organization that co-organized some of those aid trips to Cuba, is under federal investigation. right now. And this indicates that despite how much of this is just Rubio having fun with this little pet project, this does show where the targets of the administration are. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 04:18:56 And that can be the DSA and people doing humanitarian aid trips. And it's specifically because of that humanitarian aid trip, right? Like that gave Rubio a really good, like, you know, honestly, more than anything, I think just pissed him off because he hates the Cuban government more than anything. And the idea that anyone would want to like bring aid to the people in Cuba is like infuriating to him. Now, again, we know that Trump is in the process of planning to try and force the government of Cuba out one way or another. That doesn't mean he actually will, right? He hasn't committed fully to that yet. But given what happened in Venezuela and given what's going on in Iran, I think it would be foolish to say, I don't think he's going to try, right? Like, I think

Starting point is 04:19:33 that's not the smart. If I'm making a bet, I certainly hope he doesn't. I hope they get scared. I hope shit with Iran is bad enough that they chicken out. But I think it would be foolish to assume they're not going to try and unseat the government of Cuba, right? Yeah. I don't think that's the rational way to look at this, right? And whether this is all bluster or not, you know, is going to be seen. But as I said, the U.S. Nimitz and its strike group have moved into the South Caribbean. And there's a lot of talk about like, oh, we think the Cubans are planning an attack on Guantanamo. Last Thursday, Marco Ruby repeated his claim that Havana has weapons they acquired from, quote, Russia and China and that they host Russian and Chinese intelligence in country, which is also interesting. He's so stuck in the Cold War, he has to keep bringing Russia. into it. Now, there's a big debate as to like, how committed is Trump actually to unseating the Cuban government? And that's always hard to tell because when he does talk about it, it sounds like, oh, he wants that feather in his cap. But you also get the feeling this is a thing where whoever he talks to last, as in a lot of cases, is going to heavily set his agenda. And

Starting point is 04:20:33 Senator Chris Murphy, who serves in the Foreign Relations Committee, said something like that. Quote, I do think that as Trump gets older and he spends his days sleeping and worrying only about his ballroom, he's increasingly susceptible to dangerous people around him with dangerous agendas, and there is a crowd of Cuba hawks who have always wanted us to invade and who think they might be able to take advantage of an increasingly checked out old man, and I just think we have to be prepared for that. And honestly, I think Chris pretty much like that. Yeah, that's more or less right, Chris. I think that's, that's basically an accurate summary. Seenest man in the room. Yeah, that sounds right to me. Let's turn to the midterm elections before

Starting point is 04:21:11 we close. In Florida, the Groyper candidate for governor, James Fishback, who I did an episode about a few months ago, is not going to win that election, but he is polling double digits, which is bad. And worse, he is dominating youth polls. He has 51% in youth polls. That's ages 18 to 34. Really, a really dark look at a future of the Republican Party. Fishback is like barely. even like a crypto-fascist. He's barely even hiding it. I mean, he plays with dog whistles, but also just openly says a bunch of like anti-Semitic stuff

Starting point is 04:21:49 and very racist attacks, all with a sort of wink-wink, wink, nudge in that classic Groyper charisma style. But there's another aspect of the fishback race I want to briefly mention is that there's been a lot of AI ads

Starting point is 04:22:05 targeted against fishback where it has like AI-generated video, you know, deep fake style, of fishback with like the squad and Russia and Putin and Alana Omar and Rashida Talab, foreign generals, Muslim leaders in the Middle East with hijabs. Basically he's like welcoming all of these people into his home and they cut up an anti-Israel cake. And that's the ad. It looks, I mean like someone like me can tell it's AI.

Starting point is 04:22:37 A boomer might not be able to. And this is something that. Thomas Massey, since losing his race, has said that he believes, through talking with voters, specifically older voters, that many boomers and older voters believed the AI ads against Massey, that Massey was in like a thruple with like AOC and someone else, Elan Amar, I think, that he actually got calls, his office got calls asking if this was true. So these sorts of AI ads are a real problem. Obviously, the fact that these are against fishback, I'm not.

Starting point is 04:23:11 being sympathetic to fish back here, but this is a more general societal problem. Moving on to another governor's race in Wisconsin, Democratic Socialist Francesco Hong is ahead in the polls, but many people are still undecided. In a Wedgwood poll for mid-July, Francesco Hong is up 38%. Mandela Barnes is 30% and David Crowley is 9%. Though undecided, or supporting another candidate, is polling at 23% in that poll. So there could still be upwards of like 20% of people who are undecided. There's been some other polls in the past few days that show Francesca Hong about 15% above everyone else. So that is a good sign for her.

Starting point is 04:23:56 I know there's been some organizers from New York and across the country going into Wisconsin right now to help with this last leg of the campaign. This is a very important race looking at what the future of the viability of Democrats, Socialism is going to be in swing states. This past week, David Crowley re-entered the race, which may split the moderate vote, which could help Hong win the primary. It's another thing to keep an eye on here. In Maine, Troy Jackson is set to be the Democratic Senate nominee after organizers and volunteers secured the vast majority of delegates for the nominee replacement convention. I've mentioned Jackson a few times on the show because he ran for governor with the

Starting point is 04:24:40 endorsement of DSA and Bernie Sanders. He was the only person to receive the endorsement of DSA. Platner did not. Jackson's a former state lawmaker, a five-generation logger, very pro-labor, like the most legitimate working class pro-labor candidate. He's polling a little bit ahead of Collins right now, like about 3%, but this is going to be a very close race. This is going to be very tough. Another really close race right now is the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. with corporate and APAC backed Haley Stevens going up against left-wing populist Abdul El-Said. There has been a ton of outside spending the past few weeks with multiple attack ads smearing El-Said as quote-unquote sexist.

Starting point is 04:25:26 And these are all just for him, like criticizing female politicians, like criticizing Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, like not attacking them for being women, but doing very, sometimes actually very soft criticism. of like their ability to improve the world as political actors. But the playbook that Stevens and that larger campaign has been using has been trying to smear El Saeed as a, quote-unquote, sexist podcast bro. This is the sort of last light of defense this style of liberalism has had, this going back to this sort of identity reductionism

Starting point is 04:25:59 when they are faced with, you know, vast actual economic and policy differences between two candidates. The only thing they can do is, oh, but Haley Stevens, I am a woman. and this man must hate women. A-PAC is helping with this. They have already spent at least $15 million with other corporate packs helping Stevens with another $12 million.

Starting point is 04:26:20 As of July 1st, there's already been over $46 million in ad spending, 74% of which supports Stevens, and there's a lot of money going in since that July 1st date as well. One of the pro-Stevens ads has manufactured a fake Obama endorsement

Starting point is 04:26:38 using old clips of Obama talking about Haley Stevens because she worked with him like 15 years ago. Now, Obama has declined to comment on this sort of manufactured fake endorsement, which is effectively just letting them do that. If he's not going to say, no, I haven't actually endorsed in this race, then basically he's allowing them to lie about him endorsing Stevens in this race. Meanwhile, El-Said is on the news, almost every week getting grilled about why he doesn't support Israel enough.

Starting point is 04:27:07 And Israel has been a very important part of this race. This is in Michigan. Michigan was a big part of the Uncommitted Movement. And Stevens is a ridiculously pro-Israel candidate, who has voted to send tens of billions of dollars in unrestricted aid to Israel, has stopped the Lebanon War Powers Resolution, has banned the State Department from citing Gaza Health Ministry death tolls.

Starting point is 04:27:31 And Stevens also sees Israel in her dreams. United States Congress, I will continue to fight for the people of Israel. I will continue to fight for Israel's existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel's future. Meanwhile, El Cid wants to abolish ICE, fight for Medicare for All, and cut off all aid to Israel. He's certainly running a downstream of Zoron-Mamdani-style campaign with his his videos. He has declined to explicitly call himself a Democratic Socialist, but there's a lot of

Starting point is 04:28:12 similarities in his platform to some other DSA candidates like Zoron. Though El-Said is not endorsed by DSA, but he is running with backing of the UAW and the Working Families Party. Speaking of elections, let's close out by talking about election security, because on Thursday night, President Trump delivered what was promised to be a very important address to the nation. on election security. The speech started out as a basically mini version of his last state of the union before he announced the release of heavily redacted CIA documents on how China tried to influence our past elections, intelligence reports on possible vulnerabilities in our election

Starting point is 04:28:56 infrastructure, and finally claiming that 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote, with no further details or evidence of that number. Basically, this whole speech was a big ploy to try to pass the SAVE Act to restrict mail and voting and disenfranchised voters with heightened ID requirements. Trump also talked about how China had stolen election data. What actually happened was China downloaded publicly available voter data in 2022 that the Trump admin now claims could be used by foreign countries to fraudulently vote in our elections. And of course, China was looking at possible influence operations, as many foreign countries do. Russia has done foreign influence operations. That's not changing vote tallies or hacking into voting machines.

Starting point is 04:29:51 That's doing disinformation campaigns, which, as we've seen with tenant media, Russia has certainly been involved in recently. And according to some of these documents, China was looking into, if they wanted to run influence operations for the 20th. 2020 election, and they actually declined to. After Trump's address, reporters questioned John Solomon, a former right-wing journalist who Trump brought on to his election task force to investigate possible voter fraud. And Solomon clarified that there's no evidence that any foreign power tampered with U.S. voting machines or manipulated the vote count. Did you acknowledge that there were no votes changed in 2020? All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows, right? I only know. The intelligence

Starting point is 04:30:36 committee has zero evidence that someone has flipped, that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, 22 or 24. And you have no, you're able to acknowledge that we're not through all the documents. You're able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting machines in the United States. No, they tend the intelligence is very clear. They did it on their own machines. Why is important that they did it on their machines? Their machine protocols are the same as America. Why? Because for a long time, they did exactly. And so the 2020 election was in fact, the results as we of the American public. I'm still researching.

Starting point is 04:31:07 So let me, let me, this is the first. But there's no intelligence. Not yet. You've got to go. There is no intelligence that the election would have said that Donald Trump was brought on. The president said that tonight. On Friday, the day following Trump's address, DHS Secretary Mullen announced that, regardless of if the Save Act passes, he will institute mandatory changes to election security,

Starting point is 04:31:32 including scrubbing states voter rolls. We are going to make our security enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want to grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they're going to have to implement security issues. Just security issues. We're not trying to get into anything else, but we're saying that the machines have to be secured, and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed. If this actually happens, this could possibly lead to many people thinking they are registered to vote who are actually not come election day and then be unable to vote.

Starting point is 04:32:18 This is a voter disenfranchisement tactic. Secretary Mullen later directly contradicted what John Solomon said the night before, saying that, quote, we know for sure that foreign adversaries have vital pieces of our voting and the quote-unquote key to the back end of these machines. We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it's possible. There's not a question. It's not even for debate.

Starting point is 04:32:49 Finally, on Wednesday, the House advanced a bill to stop insider trading, except Republicans added Save Act style measures into this bill to pass new voter ID requirements. to please Trump. And part of why they put those SAVAC style measures into this bill is so that they could attack Democrats in upcoming elections for voting against a bill to stop insider trading. Literally seconds after this bill was voted on, the White House Rapid Response accounts started

Starting point is 04:33:21 posting, quote, disgraceful 198 Democrats just voted against banning members of Congress from trading stocks while they're in office. They're corrupt. As you can see, very transparent employ to manufacture a vote to be used in elections to attack Democrats for being corrupt. This quote-unquote insider trading bill will now go to the Senate with those Save Act style voter ID measures included. All right. Thank you for that, Gare.

Starting point is 04:33:50 And last, but certainly not least, we've got one more edition of the tariff song and then talking about tariffs after it. All right, let's talk tariffs. So long ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is to say really, truly not that long ago, we did an episode on the hideously illegal terrorist Trump imposed under the quote-unquote authority of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. These are the ones that are based on this completely manufactured crisis about the U.S. facing a balance of payments crisis, a thing that cannot happen and is not happening. Now, these tariffs, which is just a general 10% tariff on all goods, are set to expire on Friday, July 24th, quite possibly the day you were listening to this.

Starting point is 04:34:40 So, on Monday, July 20th, Trump took the most dramatic tariff action he has taken since the Supreme Court found he was illegally using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to apply tariffs in February. By the time you are listening to this, presumably he is going to have unleashed. a wrath. You know, I was originally going to say raft, but wrath actually works, too, of new tariffs, but as of the time of recording, the one that has been revealed specifically is that he is imposing a 50% tariff on goods imported from Canada, or some goods imported from Canada. Now, I'm going to get into what that tariff is actually going to do in a second, but the important thing here is not the specific tariff itself, but the legal authority Trump is using to invoke it. He is invoking section 338 of the so-called Smoot-Hawley Terrif Act.

Starting point is 04:35:32 If the name vaguely rings a bell, it's probably because Smoot-Hawley is best known for exacerbating the Great Depression to the extent that it is in basically every, like every history textbook of the United States that you will read in high school, will have this in it. This act, Smoot-Hawley is the final frontier for Terriff Authority. It is the tariff big red button. It is a power that has never been invoked before, even by its creators, and I genuinely don't know if it even still exists. This is the tariff Rubicon, and Trump has just crossed it. Now, before we get into this more, let's talk for a second about Trump's nominal 50% tariff on Canada, which is actually much less of a big deal than it looks. the tariffs are supposed to take effect at August 19th and has about a million carve-outs for different kinds of Canadian goods, including, for example, things like energy products,

Starting point is 04:36:32 which is a huge amount of what we import from Canada. So this is only going to apply to about 5.2% of Canadian trade with the U.S. I mean, obviously that is still kind of a big deal for that 5% of trade, but, you know, there's a good chance that these tariffs aren't going to go into effect. at all, and that this is sort of a piece of trade leverage for negotiations with Canada. These, you know, even if they did go into effect, aren't going to be the biggest deal. I'm also going to briefly mention that we finally got the long-awaited pharmaceutical import tariff, and when I say long-awaited, I have literally been waiting for these tariffs

Starting point is 04:37:08 to be announced since the beginning of the administration to the point where I literally stopped covering the announcements that they were coming because they just never did. apparently they are also kind of a joke. They impose a 100% tariff on pharmaceutical imports, which would be a massive deal, except it starts in 2028 and eventually rises to 200% and like, okay, yeah, sure, Donald, whatever you say, that's not happening. None of the specifics of the tariffs matter at all, or matter much at all. What is significantly more important is Trump invoking 338 of Smoot-Hawley.

Starting point is 04:37:41 Now, the reason he's doing this is pretty clear. All of the other avenues he has to impose tariffs legally actually have restrictions attached to them. Section 122 tariffs, as we've mentioned, are only supposed to be when there's a balance of payments crisis, and you can only impose a flat rate, and once he imposes them, they have to be renewed by Congress, and that's just not happening. So those are expiring on Friday. We've talked about the Section 301 tariffs a few weeks ago. Those are the ones that nominally are about.

Starting point is 04:38:11 forced labor, but those also have limits and can only be imposed after a long and slow process of trade investigations. Now, obviously, the way that Trump has used both of them is illegal, but even trying to use them illegally, they have definite limits. Section 338 of Smoot-Hawley has basically no limits. And the one limit that's relevant for our purposes is a 50% maximum tariff rate. Otherwise, it lets the president impose tariffs on whatever country he wants for the extremely nebulous reasoning of that country having placed, quote, the commerce of the United States at a disadvantage compliered to the commerce of any foreign country.

Starting point is 04:38:49 Trump can, you know, say any country is doing this for any reason. We are back to Calvin Ball nonsense. This nominal legal authority allows Trump to do whatever he wants trade-wise up to a 50% tariff. Now, again, it is widely expected that by the time you're reading this, we're already going to have seen more tariffs. I'm expecting something akin to a smaller-scale version of the liberation tariffs. By the time you're listening, you will know more.

Starting point is 04:39:15 Now, the reason I'm talking about Section 338 of Smoot-Holly, and the reason I've described it as like the big red button of tariffs, like it's the tariff rubicon, is because not only has it never been used before, right? You know, the Section 122 has also never been used before. But this one, specifically, Section 338, there is a real question as to whether it's even still in effect. Now, the argument you will most commonly see is that Section 338 has never formally been repealed and therefore is still on the books. This is a law that was passed in 1930.

Starting point is 04:39:51 The Trump administration is making the argument that because it has never formally been repealed, it is still on the books. However, the problem is that there exists a thing called superseding statute or a, quote, implied repeal. This is the argument that I've seen that this law is not still on the books. I've seen various versions of it. The one that is kind of spreading around now for better or for worse, kind of for worse to some extent, is from Philip Zillico, who is a Hoover Institute guy and a history professor who's writing in Reason Magazine. So, like, you know, these are not the people I would normally turn to

Starting point is 04:40:27 in terms of getting legal analysis on everything, but I actually think there's a kind of a decent argument that they might be right. And their argument is that, okay, because of the way, that, you know, laws can supersede other laws, right? If you write a second law that is about the same thing as the first law and it covers explicitly the same thing, it can repeal the first law. It's sketchy. The courts don't like it functioning like that, but it does technically work like that.

Starting point is 04:40:59 And, you know, Zillico argues that a whole train of statutes ranging from the Trade Expansion Act of 1916 to our old friend, Section 301 of the trade. Act in 1974 cover exactly the same things and therefore have repealed the statute. I think that's actually plausible and this is, you know, part of the reason why no one has ever actually tried to use this stuff because there have been subsequent legislation to describe these exact powers and describe what you can do with them. So whether it even still exists is extremely dubious. Now, this is probably not going to survive a challenge in court, but until the legal actually winds its way through the courts. Trump is going to be free to do his Calvin

Starting point is 04:41:44 Ball nonsense. And we're back to, you know, 20-25-era Trump just declaring a tariff is happening on a country every morning. Now, on a broader level, right, what's happening here is that the way the Supreme Court has been doing shadow-docket decisions have allowed Trump to simply keep breaking the law and seizing more illegal power and then using it until the Supreme Court gets around and taking that power away. Now, obviously, This is not true of everything he's been trying to do. With tariffs in particular, he's been extremely successful in simply applying the tariffs and then keeping them into effect until the legal challenges go through the courts.

Starting point is 04:42:19 That looks like what's going to happen here, which is going to give him probably another, I mean, it's going to give him at least half a year, probably, of the ability to just do whatever bullshit tariff policy he wants, which means another year of completely unhinged economic instability for the entire global economy. It means another year of all, you know, of supply lines being degraded, of prices increasing, and of all of us getting absolutely screwed. Okay. Put a transgoal on your couch. We reported the news.

Starting point is 04:42:56 We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast from Cool Zone Media, visit our website. Pullzonemedia.com or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Starting point is 04:43:26 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here.

Starting point is 04:43:57 You fully improvised, not just words, but a song about it. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia, AEO, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's a family? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J.

Starting point is 04:44:17 And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka, showing out. Shout house to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashan Rocks. Boxing journey.

Starting point is 04:44:30 She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.

Starting point is 04:44:48 And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Tatouro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more.

Starting point is 04:45:12 Open your free high heart. radio app, search delivering happiness with Nick Tuttle. And listen now. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Disgraceland, I tell the stories behind music's biggest names, the moments that changed music history forever.

Starting point is 04:45:27 Sonic Youth was cool, but was the band cooler than the couple on the cover of their album, goo? Cool enough to escape the glare of the international paparazzi? Cool enough to escape murder? Disgraceland is part of the exactly right network.

Starting point is 04:45:42 Listen to new episodes every Tuesday, bonus episodes Thursday, and rewinds on Sunday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 242

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