Pirate Wires - Is Silicon Valley Voting For Trump? | Pirate Wires EP#56

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

EPISODE #56: Welcome Back To The Pod! The election is coming into focus this week as the vibe shift in tech seems to favor Trump. This has been highlighted by David Sacks' Trump Fundraiser this week in SF. Meanwhile, Biden's aging continues to spotlighted. We dive into the Polymarkets and make predictions as to what may happen in the election. We then discuss Trump's declaration that he will get rid of the Department Of Education. Which raises the question, what exactly does The Dept. Of Ed do anyway? Next up, the 2020-era grifters are continuing to be exposed. We discuss the anti-racist that is Ibram x. Kendi. Finally, we have some major white pill! SpaceX has a successful rocket launch and landing. We’re going to Mars! Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Sanjana Friedman, Riley Nork Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell Riley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigital TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 1:00 - Trump Gains Popularity In Tech - David Sacks' Fundraiser In SF 17:00 - Biden's Decline - Will He Be Replaced? 22:15 - What Do The Markets Think Will Happen In The Election 39:20 - Trump Want's To Cut The Dept Of Education - What Do They Actually Do?? 43:35 - Is College Necessary Anymore? 57:15  - Anti-Racist Ibram x. Kendi's Fall From Grace 1:11:50 - White Pill! SpaceX Launch This Past Week - We're Going To Mars! #podcast #politics #trump #technology #culture #biden

Is this the new normal? Are VCs and tech people just like voting for Trump now? Vinod Khosla, he says there are MAGA extremists in every corner of society. Now for me, he's calling the all-in guys MAGA extremists. He has been embroiled in this like decades-long legal battle with California because he's trying to stop the public from accessing his beach. He lost an appeal to try to get California to drop their lawsuit against him. Who wants poor people on their beach, right? As a billionaire, I do empathize somewhat. I don't want to have to deal with those emotions.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. I was just saying, this is going to be a banger episode. We've got a ton of ground to cover. So I want to get right into one of my favorites, which is the question of the Silicon Valley vibe shift. There's a slightly different spit on this. Silicon Valley vibe shift. There's a slightly different spit on this. I want to focus specifically on the question of supporting Trump in Silicon Valley. And this has been a recent over the last week, pretty, I don't want to say controversial, but fun conversation that has been triggered by the fact that David Sachs is about to host a fundraiser for donald trump in fact trump is now in san francisco as we record recording thursday we're

talking about on friday so trump's trump's in town now um or he's like i think about to be in town or something like that um certainly the the libs are getting ready for him i just saw news of a giant trump chicken like a chicken-looking Donald Trump balloon that they're going to fight back against Trump in San Francisco for. It's a huge deal because Trump hasn't been to San Francisco in many years because why would he be? Well, now he has a reason to be. This fundraiser is totally sold out.

And there is a question going around of like, is this the new normal? Are VCs and tech people just like voting for Trump now? Is it just David Sachs? What is going on? Dan Primick of Axios has been quick to say again and again and again, every time a new Trumper comes out, no, no, no, no, it's not a trend certainly the last one was um i forget the dude from sequoia who just came out this week and said he was a trump guy uh but dan was like no no no he was always a trump guy only the after the last election where uh trump did the insurrection um he vowed to never vote for trump again and now here we are blah blah blah boils over, or I guess begins to boil over, on television, featuring a CNBC show with a guest appearance by Vinod Khosla, who was pressed on this very question. The first thing I would say is All In podcast and some of the supporters there are not based in the Valley. I would say there's a bunch of MAGA extremists

in every part of society. And I hope we can prevent them from destroying democracy, which is probably the most important issue we face. Now, Vinod is one of the most storied investors in Silicon Valley and still has quite a bit of respect, I would say. We can table that for a second. And he was asked, point blank, is this vibe shift real? What do you make? And then he says, the interviewer asked, what do you make specifically of Elon Musk and the all-in pod guys supporting Trump? And so,

Vinod says, first of all, these people are not from Silicon Valley. I guess he's referring in that point to their actual zip code, like they were maybe a town over or something, not in the actual elite gated community that he is from or something. And then in the second place, he says, there are MAGA extremists in every corner of society. Now for me, he's calling the all-in guys MAGA extremists. And this is part of a broader trend. The New York Times is reporting today on the David Sachs fundraiser, Daddy Schleifer, who covers money, moved to the Times. And so now they're doing more stuff like this. They covered the fundraiser generally, but there was a piece on Ron Conway specifically that I thought was interesting, where Ron was actually taken aback by the support

that Trump had in Silicon Valley. And by this fundraiser of David Sachs's in particular, and he was actually calling and talking to friends of his and telling them not to go to it. So you have this strange thing where the old guard left seems to be surprised and also infuriated. And of course, their style, their tactic is not to debate it out. It's like, this is an unthinkable thing. You can just not support Trump. it's not to debate it out. It's like, this is an unthinkable thing. You can just not support Trump. I'm going to try and ice them out however I can. They're either extremists. You're a bad person. If you're identified with them, I'm going to go behind the scenes and call people up and tell them not to go or whatever. But I guess I just don't know right away. I don't really know what's going on here. I don't know if it's real or not. I don't know if it's broad or not. I have this giant question mark around it because how many of these people voted for Trump in 2020 and just didn't say anything? Is that a real significant shift in actual support or is it

a shift in discourse? How much of this is just the popularity of the all-in podcast and Elon Musk on Twitter sort of making room for this. And you have a handful of people and it seems louder than it is. And then how much of this is real? How much of this is like just dollar for dollar, a real trend? And I'm not sure. What do you guys make of it? Well, on the Vinod thing specifically, I just want to say, I think it's hilarious that he was saying that while sitting- Oh, say everything. Well, he was sitting in his glass world mansion. I mean, for people who don't know

the backstory of Vinod's connection to a specific piece of land in Silicon Valley, he- The most infamous beach in Northern California. The most infamous beach in Northern California. Basically, he bought this massive property in 2008 off of Route 1 and it's got private beach. Well, it's got beach access. It's not supposed to be private, but it's only accessible by one road. And he has been embroiled in this decades-long legal battle with California because he's trying to stop the public from accessing his beach. And he recently just lost an appeal. I mean, this literally happened like two weeks ago. He lost an appeal to try to get California to drop their lawsuit against him.

But it's just the irony of him sort of grandstanding about, you know, extremists trying to, you know, take over the political discourse or whatever, while he's sitting in his glass-walled mansion trying to prevent uncouth poor people from getting onto his beach is a little bit rich. Well, it's not. So just to... Let's drill down on the details one more time on that beach thing. I feel a little bit... I don't feel bad, actually. Because you have... This is like a die-hard, tax-the-rich billionaire it, the beach is not public actually. The beach is not private. The beach is a public beach, right? If I believe, if I have the case correct, it's like a piece of land that like the public takes to get to the beach is private that he, and he owns that. But the beach itself, I believe is public. And that's what the battle

is about. Yeah. Basically the beach is only accessible via this one road and he owns that but the beach itself i believe is public and that's what the battle is about yeah basically the beach is only accessible via this one road and he controls access to the road um so he shut it down and now listen i who wants poor people on their beach right like i as a billionaire i do empathize somewhat with the plight of that i mean it's just got to be uncomfortable when you're sunning you know at night or in or during the day or you're taking your breakfast like you said in your like glass mansion and you see someone who's making like a hundred thousand dollars on your it's like i don't want to have to deal with those emotions um but if know, that it's like, since that is the case, right. For, for me as well, as a billionaire, I am not out there publicly talking about these, like, let's tax the rich

kind of pro populist left policies. And I certainly wouldn't be telling people, um, or shaming people for voting in a more right-wing manner. Like, I don't know another billionaire in Silicon Valley who has lived in a more sort of, like, classically presenting billionaire evil rich guy way as Vinod, which I respect. I think it's, like, punk rock as hell that he's like, you're not going on my beach. And it's like, one, not his beach.

And two, like, incredibly unpopular. And he doesn't give a shit. He's, like like very much like, nope, I'm going to take it to court. I'm going to fight every battle. I don't care. But it's just like the incongruence of that blows my mind.

Like how do you have those two positions? Not only are you like the leftist on this stuff, but you're going to say like nobody else can have a contrarian opinion in this way. It's just, it's weird to me. Maybe it's like an old guy thing. He's very old too. Do you think he identifies with the sort of elderly nature of Biden? Is that maybe what's happening here? I think he identifies with the Robert Barons of Long Island in 1922,

who also blocked access to the beach to the public and took Robert Moses to basically take them to court and open up all of Long Island for the public. It'sbert moses to like basically take them to court and and open up all of long island for for the public it's hilarious history repeating again though like he it's weird don't you think it's weird that he is so on one hand aggressively living that he like seems to be about that life but then he like attacks it in public it's strange in this way it's not this is like for me watching that clip was depressing. If he's talking about, if he's actually calling the all-in guys MAGA, which is obviously untrue. He's walked it back on Twitter, by the way.

He says that he was not calling them extremists. He was just talking about the fact that they're not from Silicon Valley, which is like another classist insane thing. that they're not from Silicon Valley, which is like another classist insane thing. You're not like he... Okay. So David Sachs has Kraft Ventures and it's in San Francisco. If that's not... I mean, I know that's not literally Silicon Valley down at the zip code, but it is Silicon Valley. Sorry. Of course it is. I mean, what is Silicon Valley? It's an abstract concept, basically. It means tech industry. It means investors, tech. That's what we're talking about when we say Silicon Valley. No one is actually like, Vinod, what are the five billionaires who live on Sand Hill Road, specifically only Sand Hill Road, have to say about Trump?

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about tech money. Where is it going? Which he knows. He's just being, I think it's a sort of like, what are those country club kind of vibes? It's like, he can't go here. He doesn't make enough money. Meanwhile, it's like he's talking about another billionaire. I don't understand. It's some sort of weird intra-billionaire fighting over, I guess, where they live. I don't get it. I don't think that Silicon Valley is actually that nice. But another conversation for another day. another conversation for another day i feel like it's like a it's i feel like this is a an attempt at a punishment for the the gala or the the fundraiser that sax is holding like i think like they're trying to circle the wagons around them or whatever the opposite of that is and i

feel like their response is kind of weak um but that's how i see this playing out you know i wonder how much it's even about trump and it's just about sax sax is really popular right now um the all-in podcast is the show in tech that everybody's listening to the politics are way off what you would expect out of silicon valley it's a massive massive show that's bigger than tech. It's like as broader, even cultural relevance, I would say. And these venture capitalists, people like the notes specifically, I mean, they're on Twitter a lot, sort of like, why are people looking at me that way? And I wonder if it's that rather than the Trump stuff. Yeah. It could also just be virtue signaling. It's a lot easier to say, Yeah. It could also just be virtue signaling. It's a lot easier to say, oh, I'm pro-taxing the rich than it is to actually be for your interests. It just seems like virtue signaling of, oh, I want to be taxed. Just giving off the appearance that you care about that when you get... Again, I hate... I mean, no, I don't. I love to go back to the beach. If you are like a sort of no poor people on my beach kind of guy, and it's on my beach kind of guy, you maybe have to do this kind of stuff. It's like, this is maybe what rich people have

always done. It's always... This is sort of, it reminds me of the Epstein stuff a little bit, and the Me Too movement. How it was like so many of the guys who were the absolute loudest, they came out of nowhere, like wearing the pussy hat, like self-flagellating, we're bad, we're so bad. And it's like, then you find out they had a sex scandal or something. And the people, it's like he doth protest too much kind of energy. They feel like they have to hide it in some way. I don't know. Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman, our first, any last thoughts on the Trump? I guess we have just a question. Are we leaving with a question mark here? Do we not know how significant this is? This stuff, by the way, that we're doing some writing on and a little research into,

we'll have more answers on this question. But I don't know, before we kind of, I guess, finish it off, any final thoughts here? I'm kind of skeptical, personally, just from talking to some people in San Francisco. I feel like there's still, Trump is still a pretty hard line for a lot of SF people. But what I've been hearing from moderates in San Francisco is a lot of them, you know, are supporting moderate candidates. They're even willing to support, you know, ex-Republicans who sort of loudly renounce their republican party affiliation uh and you know criticize progressives but trump is still like a red line for them and that's almost like a strategy for them to get support from disenchanted progressives uh is basically you know signal loud anti-trump sentiment um so that you're sort of seen as still within the acceptable fray

and then slowly try to get people aligned with your moderate local politics. Yep. That is certainly the case on, and I kind of know the group you're talking about in SF local politics and that whole scene. And then I would say there's still just this more, it's a slightly broader, I think it's a very interesting question of how real Twitter is right now.

And I think that's where we're reading a lot of our trends out of. And I don't think it's very indicative of what's happening generally. I think it's indicative of what's happening among a handful of people who are still on Twitter. And also people who were never on Twitter a few years ago and now are on Twitter. It's a very different platform than it was a handful of years ago. So it's hard to tell, but there is an answer to it. So it's hard to tell, but there is an answer to it. It will just come down to the amount of dollars that are being donated to Biden or Trump out of Silicon Valley. And by that, I mean both the region and profile investors, the CEOs, this kind of like the billionaires, the millionaires, the multimillionaires, let's say, not the single digit millionaires, please. I think you're going to see a moderate shift away.

And that'll have really probably about as much to do with Trump as it does to do with Biden. So Reid Hoffman, who is at this point the number one guy on the DNC side when it comes to democratic fundraising, is another Silicon Valley guy. I don't know if we have many non-tech listeners, but Reid Hoffman is a Democrat, hardcore, and has made that a big part of his identity, especially over the last, I would say, four or five years. Trump derangement has been a very ongoing thing with him. He went from sort of a let's talk to everybody guy to I can't talk to everybody guy. And he's putting his money where his mouth is. So he announces today that he's supporting Biden as if nobody knew that, considering he's the number one dnc donor at this point uh and he's like you know this is the right man for the job and i thought it was interesting that this happened okay he publishes this note to twitter um or to x

rather uh right as a story was going viral about biden which had to do with he went to a sort of D-Day commemoration in France, which was beautiful. The French really like gave us our due as they kind of always do. I will say like they don't get enough credit for being really thankful for this. Anyway, separate conversation. for this. Anyway, separate conversation. But Biden's over there talking to the president, making some comments. And there's a moment where it looks like he squats and maybe shit himself again. And so Reid's making this statement right as we're having another, like, did the president of the United States just shit his pants again controversy and uh it gives me pause distinguished guests please welcome the honorable lloyd j austin iii secretary of defense of the united states of america i remember like

people were making this argument back when dianne Feinstein was still in office and very clearly really old. They would say like, oh, well, so what? Like her aides will just do things for them. And it's like, no, like her aides weren't elected. Like her aides weren't in the public spotlight. They were never having to answer for their policies on the debate stage or anything like that.

So it's like this idea that we're just going to let these people behind the scenes run everything is kind of insane to me too so i don't know but did he shit himself who knows well it's not just rumors it's also it's sort of it's like almost borderline gossip like you're hearing word from people around him that the man wears diapers and stuff, which I don't know. Yeah, you're right. We don't know for sure. But I think and there's obviously a reason that people would want to say this. You know, I understand how embarrassing it is. But it's weird how believable it is.

And like you said, it does affect the elderly. And this is an elderly man who doesn't know where he is. And I guess the best case scenario... So did he poop himself? I don't know. What's obviously happening here is we're talking about how old he is. old this is an old guy uh but trump like speaking of someone who should be shitting his pants have you seen what that man eats at mcdonald's the picture is going viral of his average dinner it's like i think it was it was two quarter pounders or no it was two big macs two fish fillets there was one other thing and then a strawberry milkshake, and that's his standard order. That's a regular for Donald Trump. He doesn't... One of our colleagues was saying he doesn't jerk off. We know he doesn't drink. And this is what he eats. It's just like a strange beast mode kind of energy that I've never personally encountered before certainly not

in politics uh and it feels you know separate from it's crazy to eat that way and i don't recommend it this is like not an official pirate wires endorsement of that diet like holy shit i don't know how he's still alive but he seems like unstoppable and uh the contrast is is pretty wild to see i think yeah what's interesting is the uh didn't the supersize me guy the guy who did that documentary just passed away from um i think it might have been cancer or something so maybe that's not connected but it is still like that's not a healthy diet for you but i guess like everybody has their vices and for his vice to be like the literal symbol of american imperialism is kind of funny.

The golden arches. Yeah. I think just the question of whether or not Biden did in fact shit his pants is I feel like it doesn't matter. Like Biden could have proved that he was not senile at this point and he has not yet. And that's why every other media cycle is like, did he do this senile thing? Did he fall asleep? Whatever it is. And so Trump has proven that he's not senile yet, I think. Right. Nobody's asking. Definitely because he's doing long form talks and we see him communicating. We see him on the campaign trail. Biden is not. And I mean, let's go back to the the first so you have three instances where this rumor begins the very first one that we talked about today the one that happened uh today is thursday we're filming so it'll be yesterday

when this thing airs um was i mean when you look at the video maybe he didn't shit himself but he is confused about the question of whether or not there's a chair behind him and he's there for a while and his wife looks alarmed i think the my read of the French president was he seemed confused and was trying not to focus on it. That's a man who's not all there. And like you said, he had a long time to prove, plenty of time at this point to prove that he's not senile. He didn't because he can't. We're going to see the craziest debate I think ever if they actually allow this man on stage, which I don't think that they should. And I think that we're not alone here. So I was looking at the polymarket, the sort of betting markets, and there was a ton of interesting shit here.

This is like people putting money down on different... It's almost like a better form of polling, I would say. So you have people who have actual skin in the game. If I get this answer wrong, I'm going to lose money. So we have predictions for the presidential race, standard type stuff like that. Is Trump going to be in jail before election day? The one that caught my eye today was, will Biden drop out of the presidential race? There's a 24% chance, according to the betting markets. That's people putting money down on a belief that

this is going to happen. And why would they not? Every other day, I see someone asking him from the Democrats, asking him to do this, which is why when you're going to the question of who's the most likely winner of the 2024 presidential race, it's not just Biden and Trump up there. it's not just Biden and Trump up there. You have a couple of others. Donald Trump, 55% chance. Joe Biden, 36% chance. Michelle Obama with a 5% chance. Robert Kennedy, two. Kamala, two. How does that happen? And then Gavin Newsom, two. So what's really the story here is you've got Michelle, Kamala, and Gavin is the question for a lot of people. They're like, there's an edge case here where one of those three people hops in at the last second. Kamala feels to me like that only happens if I guess Biden dies like ripe of old age before the election, But Newsom and Michelle, that is like a last minute swap. And Michelle's

crazy to me. I don't understand why people keep asking for this on the left. You have people be like, she could win. I mean, I guess maybe she could because she's popular. Newsom makes the most sense. Newsom is what should have happened for the Democrats like six months ago eight months ago or whatever it was when they were doing uh when you were when you had uh the primaries and um i think newson newson would have a real chance of winning against trump my sense is he would actually beat trump which sounds crazy because california is a shithole but um he's young he's very good in a debate he's very good he's very charismatic he's very charismatic he's very good at a debate. He's very charismatic. He's very good at making his case. This is a man who can sit down and tell you that San Francisco is actually in a great place.

And you're like, oh, maybe. He's got a little bit of a bimbo vibe, but that's never hurt anybody in America. I mean, Sarah Palin went very far. So I think it could have happened. And I think it still might happen. What do you guys make of that, of the, of the betting market situation here? And like the question of whether or not one of these people actually does become, um, if not the president, the nominee, like might be running against Trump, like let's say a couple months before the election. The Michelle Obama thing is interesting to me because the argument that people always made like against someone like Gavin Newsom is like,

okay, Biden drops out. How are you going to get past the argument of not appointing his black female VP who's right beneath him? Michelle Obama is the one that just kind of like, I guess, like defeats that argument because you're like, okay, here's another black woman. So it would make it a little bit more palatable in people's minds. But yeah, it makes sense. That's crazy. I think there's no, they're not that... So I do think that Michelle Obama will be better than Kamala, which is funny because Michelle has zero relevant experience and Kamala was supposed to have been a senator. I don't know how the fuck that happened, but she had power. And now she's the VP, but that's a woman who just like, I would not trust with a regular, like a toll collector's job. I don't understand how that happens to Paula. I don't know. She, for me, and it is really a, she's a very strong argument against democracy,

just conceptually. But Michelle, who is very popular, I think is very smart. She could have gone the Hillary route and been a senator and really made a case, tried to become the president. I think she would have had a good shot actually, but she didn't. She didn't choose that. I think it would be really hard to get her to say yes to this. It would require a lot of pressure from the DNC and it's like, they would have to be really convinced that she's going to win to do all of that when meanwhile Gavin's sitting right there and he wants it he's you know made a lot

everything that he does in California at this point in sort of moderating the hard left on the California DNC I think all of that is him gearing up for a run and this could really be his moment yeah I agree I've never understood why I mean I So I think all of that is him gearing up for a run, and this could really be his moment.

Yeah, I agree. I've never understood why. I mean, I would be curious to know how much of Biden clinging to this nomination is actually coming from his personal narcissism, because I know he said repeatedly throughout interviews that he never considered not running for a second term, despite the fact that he's got all these very obvious physical and mental ailments. And also, I would say the difference between an 80-year-old and 84-year-old is just, in terms of mental acuity, exponentially worse on the latter half of that age spectrum. So he's only going downhill. But I do think gavin i mean gavin did really well in his debate with ron desantis like he was very adept at fending off ron desantis's attempts to troll him and he has the kind of i mean at the end of the day like since so much of this race is not actually

about specific policy and more about people's gut reactions to a specific candidate's demeanor i think gavin has a pretty good i mean i think he would be able to potentially you know go head to head with trump in terms of trolling each other um so it's it's kind of it is weird to me the narrowing i don't know what's that i don't know that he'd be a good troll but he'd be a good foil i mean he's the opposite of trump in many ways and in ways that trump would find really difficult to fight with like gavin is young and he's handsome and uh he is not buffoonish in the way like there's not really an easy way to attack him other than his record and gavin's done a pretty good job in debates like when he's's pushed, pressed on it, he's done

a good job of defending his record. Even though I don't think it's actually defensible. He's a very charming guy. Yeah. I mean, I guess something by trolling, I just mean like smiling when Trump sort of goes off at him and sort of like, you know, rhetorically fending off Trump's sort of like, you know, rhetorically fending off Trump's jabs. But I do think there's a little bit of a question mark for me with, on one hand, Biden is clearly senile. And then on the other hand, we're supposed to think that he's mounted this like very formidable case against AIDS and DNC advisors to like maintain his ironclad grip on the nomination i don't know maybe it is i guess he's the president of the united states um and probably controls a lot of the the donor networks but it's kind of weird to me so i would be interested in the polymarket is

there one mike you you looked maybe today but on if he, whether or not he dies in a second term? Because I think that there's got to be like a medical team. No. That's what Marines are doing. I've seen that on Polymarket. He's not going to die before. They're like checking his monitor. So like, we're pretty sure like 90% chance he won't die before the election. Right.

But like what happens afterwards? He's, he's like clearly. That's how you get Kamala. Which. Yeah. That's why the vice, the VP pick, presumably it's, you get kamala now yeah that's why the vice the vp pick presumably it's it's called calling again do they change vps does an incumbent president ever change vps between the first and second that has happened i believe that happened uh

well that had to have that had to happen i think back when didn't one of them was it who is the one that like went to jail or was about to go to jail and had to be pardoned by ford and then ford became the vp um i don't remember i mean my point is to say that like we i feel like there's a 50 chance we have chance we have Kamala as president at one point or another if Biden wins. Well, that's going to be a part of the election. You know they're going to be campaigning on that. Her problem is like- Nobody likes her.

Does anybody like her? What's the public opinion of Kamala? No one likes her. How could you like her? She's not a likable person and it it's i think the bigger problem there is just the obvious stupidity where biden he was kind of going out he was certainly going out in the last election you could feel as he seemed a little bit senile to me already but he was not stupid um not like a sort of technically like classically presenting

idiot uh trump whatever you want to say about him you might absolutely hate him that's a very intelligent man who's able to he's very charming he's very funny he's very witty like he knows how to win um he's that's a i think that's a that's intelligence like every most people that we see have to get to that level of politics you think there has to be a level of of intelligence um not necessarily good people i don't think it i don't think it really uh i don't think it really incentivizes for that um they're all i think probably slightly evil but smart. And she's not that. And she's sort of clownish. And I think she almost could only have happened after Trump. So Trump happens and it's like you have this reality star guy running and winning. And it's like, well, we've done that. There's nothing we can't do. Bring in Kamala, who's the dumbest person in politics, but I guess is a, I mean, I don't, we don't have to get into why she was selected or why she was selected, but I think they,

they have, and they, they could swap out the VP, but why, if you're going to go through all of that, why not just swap him out? Can he be pressured? I don't actually know how this works. Can the DNC just be like, you got to go. I don't know. Isn't it too late though? Like Newsom needs to have been campaigning well he swapped out at this point you know like uh it's gonna be this summer or this is the summer at the the dnc convention is when this might happen i'd totally get sanji's argument though about just like his narcissism like every time he's asked about his age he always like challenges reporters to like push up contests and stuff like he's just very he's very just in denial about his age like it's so it would take a lot of pressuring i think yes he's like that guy who refuses to stop driving at age 80 whatever

and it's like grandpa you're gonna kill someone and now though the difference is he has the nuclear codes and no one's comfortable with it. The Democrats are not comfortable with this. This is why it's so obviously clear to everybody that when someone says, I am proud of Biden, they're lying. It's like, they just don't want Trump to win, which is obviously fine. You're just a party guy. I actually think that's perfectly legitimate in a democratic system to just always vote your party, whatever. But it's certainly not him. So we'll see. There was another, I think, interesting... I just got pretty excited about the markets. There was one more that I thought was pretty cool,

the obvious one. But I guess I wonder what you guys think. Who is Trump's VP choice going to be? And I have a handful here, but before I give you what the betting markets are ranking, who do you guys think? Who is each of your person? Nikki Haley, probably. Nikki Haley? I think he's already said,

yeah, he's already said he won't pick her. I'm pretty sure. I thought he said he was open to it. I think in his administration, but I think he was very to it i think in his administration but i think he is was very strongly anti-her being vp oh maybe maybe i'm maybe i'm i miss taking the news that she like pledged fealty to him not too long ago or something like that one person i've seen on the rise is uh doug bergum which like makes sense because he's really rich and could like uh

contribute a lot of money to helping Trump win, which kind of makes sense. I've seen J.D. Vance is also up there, Elise Stefanik. I guess who I think is highest in the markets right now, I'd guess maybe Doug Burgum because I've seen him on the rise. Sajja?

I have given it absolutely no thought, actually. I mean, J.D. Vance makes sense, I guess. I think he'd probably opt for someone younger, someone who's got, you know, I could see him maybe wanting someone with ties to tech for his VP. Now I'm thinking more about it and I have a few thoughts. 25% chance. So by far the top guy here, Tim Scott. Really? It's like, I think it's got to be. This is on Polymarket. 25% chance, Tim Scott. 70% chance, just other guy.

So another male candidate. And so that doesn't really count. It's like a million in there. The next highest guy on here is Marco Rubio at 11%. Then you've got JD Vance right below him at 10. You got Sarah Huckabee, which I think is interesting at 9% because she is a bull dog. I used to watch her press conferences like, holy shit, the way she would just dismantle these reporters. And Trump likes that in a person. So maybe that. Ben Carson at 6%.

Stefanik, 5%. Vivek, 4%. Robert Kennedy somehow on this poll as well, 4%. Who knows? Haley at 4%. And then a handful of others. Trump family member at less than 1%, but someone's like, maybe throw up a vodka. I think Tim Scott is interesting. It's like, maybe what people are picking up on here is for the first time in really any of our lives, the American black vote is, I wouldn't say it's up for grabs, but it's putting the Democrats in a very dangerous position where if it's not like a smash overwhelming, we took it all, you have a lot of states that are suddenly a question mark. And Trump is making a lot of inroads among black men specifically. There's a trend we've seen for many years, and this year seems to be by far the best year for him on this front. And the selection of perhaps like a black candidate would seem to be some kind of strategy to help.

But I don't think Tim Scott's going to help. I don't think Tim Scott is a guy that is many people in general, let alone like black Americans. Other than the color of his skin, I don't see them really relating to him. I don't know that he's going to do it for that reason. And if he's not doing it for that reason, I don't know why he would do it because I don't think Tim's very good in a debate. He's not rich. I think, Riley, your idea of him needing someone rich is interesting to me as well. He's not bankrolling his own race. He does care a lot about money. I think we saw this when the TikTok stuff happened, where he was very influenceable. He was like, I just need cash. And I think that

could be the era we're in. But yeah, I have no idea. I really don't. I guess if I had a pick, I guess if I had a pick, I would say JD, just because he seems like the smartest one up there and the best one up there. But after him, maybe Sarah, because she's so good in a debate. I don't know. Another thing about needing money is all the lawsuits. It's kind of drained him of a lot of resources. So it just adds to the need of needing money for the campaign trail. And then the, the person of color thing is interesting because a lot of people were making

the argument of, Oh, he needs a woman on his ticket in order to make sure he doesn't lose the female vote. But with the strides he's making in the person of color, like category, it maybe would sort of like cancel out any losses he you know like he would gain more male people of color to sort of cancel out any losses he makes in the

female vote is the thinking there so i couldn't see that i don't really understand the idea that i mean are are i'm not convinced that women are more likely to vote for Trump if he has a female running mate. I don't know. I'm just not convinced, right? He already won without it. And I do think that Sarah, separate from that, is just like a smart... She's a good person to have as a surrogate on the campaign trail. But maybe you don't need, like, if you just promise her something crazy in the cabinet,

that's enough. I mean, she's a governor now though. I don't know what, I mean, that's a woman, I think she wants to be president. So I don't know if a position in the cabinet would even be better for her than being the governor of a state, but I don't know. Interesting. We'll see. cabinet would even be better for her than being the governor of a state. But I don't know. Interesting. We'll see. So it is another Trump one. Sorry, a little heavy this week. But it's really not about Trump. It's about, let's say, our institutions and the question of education. Trump appears on, I believe it was Fox and Friends about a week ago now. And he says, among many things, he is going to abolish the department of education you mentioned the kids so we're going to cut the department of education let it be run locally we have this

other than to have a little tiny coordination you know it'd be nice to make sure that everybody's teaching english you know let them learn english okay i love this but no no we're cutting the department of education i was ready to do it before and then again the COVID really if we didn't throw money at that you would have had a depression we would have been in a depression I love music to my ear I've hated this thing for a long time I've been on the sort of I've been pilled on the abolish the Department of Education uh I guess topic for maybe like 15 or 20 years it was as soon as i learned that it actually is only it was built in it was established in 1980 so this is not something so people obviously lost their minds on twitter um when this clip went viral there's an idea of like oh my god how could

we possibly uh exist in this country he's basically just getting rid of public school, right? How do you ever even have public school if you don't have the Department of Education telling people what to do? Meanwhile, like I was saying before, the department was created in 1980. Today, it has 4,400 employees, about $68 billion a year. And there's a question to me of what the fuck do they actually do? And there's a question to me of what the fuck do they actually do? I don't see any evidence whatsoever that they've benefited the average student.

And I think that we have a lot of problems like this in the government, just whole departments where no work that is meaningful is actually done and tons of money is spent just to spend it. That bothers me, not because I want the money not to be spent, but because I want the schools to be better. Brandon, you looked into just what they actually do. I would love to know, what does this department do with $68 billion a year? Yeah. So this 2024 is actually 80 billion. They requested 90 billion, but it is $500 million less than 2023 by the numbers that I've seen. A lot of it, $30 billion is going to just Pell Grants

and like federal student aid, so like student loans. So that's nearly, like you're nearing close to half there. And then there's about 40 or 30 billion that goes to like special education programs and supporting schools with like low income, like low income schools

and like disadvantaged kids. And then the rest goes to like research, basically like 700 million or so goes to research and teacher education. So that's basically how it breaks down. I would mention that Fox & Friends clip, that segment that you pulled out or that we saw on Twitter,

that was in the context of they were asking him what is he going to do to address the federal deficit, which is crazy high right now. And so he's like, look, we're going to cut the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior, which manages natural resources. And the Department of Education takes up about a percent of the entire national budget. of the entire uh national budget so he's not like i'm not totally sure you know like if he's targeting the right area here to to for cuts um but yeah that's that's basically how the numbers break down yeah i don't know if that's going to solve the deficit i don't think it is either i

mean it's like nothing it's it's like pissing in the ocean um yeah but i don't want the department of education to exist and if you're telling me that it's just charity for poor kids um then it don't call it the department of education just call it the department of charity in fact all of our charity programs should be in a department where it's like the department of fucking handouts so when we talk about these things, we can talk about them honestly. That's what you're really saying. You're saying the average student, really 90 plus percent of them are never going to see any of this money that we're spending every year to just pump into the abyss. Also, no one needs to go to college.

Most people do not need to be going to college. And that is our high level problem. Some of this stuff I also saw was student loans. They manage, I believe, the student loan debt, and that shouldn't even be a thing. The government should not be in the business of loans whatsoever, let alone student loans, which we now know are bad for people. Lifelong crippling debt is what we're talking about. And the reason is because these kids take on an unlimited amount of debt because we believe that

everybody has some kind of God-given right to take on debt to go to school because that exists, because any poor person who has no hope at all of paying this back, they can't declare bankruptcy. They can take on any amount that they want. The schools raise their cost of tuition and it just has ballooned and ballooned and ballooned. That entire system needs to go. And probably that begins with just having an honest conversation about what does the average person get out of college? Okay. Not much. Most people don't need to go to college at all. If you want to be really any tradesman, you don't need to go to college. If you want to be... I was an editorial assistant at Penguin. I didn't have to go to college. It's crazy that they expect a college degree for that

job. You learn it on the job. I don't think you need to go to college to be a reporter or a writer. I think you need to be writing. I think that we really have... By incorporating college into this American dream, we've really played ourselves. And the whole, I feel like abolishing the Department of Education will be a nice symbolic gesture that would be like sort of indicating we're going to try something new. I think college is good for people who are really smart and do really well in high school. There should be a handful of just like the best schools in the world for sure. Obviously important for things like medicine when you need to go and just learn a lot of shit.

I think law makes sense. A lot of these advanced degrees do make sense. But no, the average person doesn't need to go. And I think saying that is crazy. They should just be using that money to start a business or to buy a house. Yeah, there's actually a bill. I was looking into it and I saw that Thomas Massey, the libertarian congressman, had introduced a bill last year to abolish the Department of Education. And basically his proposal is to reallocate the funding that goes to Pell Grants and some other forms of financial aid that they offer to the Department of the Treasury and just shut down the rest of the Department of Education and give states kind of complete jurisdiction over

establishing their educational guidance. So, you know, it's not something that hasn't been discussed in Congress before. His bill, I don't think, went anywhere, though. Sandra, what do you make of the college question generally, as someone who is probably our most learned uh staff member um you know i think that i agree that most people people should think very carefully before going i think um it's true that colleges sell themselves as, especially elite colleges, sell themselves as the ticket to a well-paying job immediately upon graduation. I'm not entirely sure that's the case anymore, or if it ever was really the case. I mean, I know a lot of people who graduated from Stanford who are still looking for jobs, for example, which is normal for lots of graduates.

But I mean, I think it's, I guess I would say the benefit, I think, of going to an elite school remains the fact that you meet people who can connect you to other people. It's basically like there's a networking effect that happens that I do think is important. And I think it is annoying sometimes to see lots of people who themselves went to elite schools and have benefited enormously from it and are sending their kids to elite schools say, you know, we don't need, we don't need to go to like, no one needs to be going to college at all. Um, but that being said, I do think that, um that um you know there's people should should weigh the costs because it's for it's not only just the the monetary cost it's four years of your life that you could be doing you know potentially more interesting things depending on your skill set and what you want to get involved with i mean you, you could, there's lots of Teal fellows who, who start businesses rather than going to college and they end up doing really, really well.

Um, and I think there's a danger with it as well, where it kind of, like, I'm thinking about this article that came out in the New York times a few weeks ago about how like a plurality of Harvard students are now trying to get jobs at McKinsey and these other consulting firms immediately after their second year of college. And that is the indicator of success for them is getting into one of these consulting jobs. And basically, they're just consigning themselves. These are really smart kids, presumably, who are consigning themselves to potentially a soulless career in middle management. I mean, they're going to make a lot of money.

But yeah, I guess all of that's to say that I think it can kind of narrow your view of what constitutes a good career, even though there are some benefits. But that's just for the elite schools. I think it's true. No matter what college you go to, the elite one, I agree, the McKinsey thing is very interesting and the consulting thing is very interesting and I think it's sort of a trap in a lot of ways.

But just the idea that you go to college and it gets you somewhere, I think that illusion is really damaging to young, bright people. It's not a lie, really, that is being told by the government and the colleges. It's just not true. There's no ladder to success. And things become very difficult if you don't have a perspective on what you want to do

with your life, regardless of where you go to school. I do think it's worth going to the top schools, for sure. I think if you get into Stanford, you go to school. I do think it's worth going to the top schools for sure. I think if you get into Stanford, you go to Stanford. I think that if you get into even Harvard, despite the clownery, I think it's probably still worth going to Harvard. I think that you get into only a tier three or four school. I don't know what the value is for some of these really, really bloated degrees. I think you get into NYU, it's like, you probably shouldn't go unless you're just super wealthy and your parents are like, fuck it, go party for four years. It doesn't really matter. But did you see that clip? Actually, I can't believe we didn't talk about this. It went super viral.

I know what you're talking about. Women with their degrees. Matt, play that clip. Hi, I'm Melanie. I'm studying the unseen body in creative spaces, the erasure and exposure of the queer. Yeah! Hey, I'm Nina, and I studied the arts, education, and social justice. Yeah! I'm Joyce. I studied decolonial intimacies, indigenous politics, and resistance. Yeah!

I'm Victoria, and I studied remembering or forgetting, navigating international conflict through collective memory. Yeah! I'm Naomi, and I'm studying black political economy. Yeah. I'm Natalie and I'm studying fashion history and gender studies. Yeah. That's crazy. Like those, I can't believe that they said that out loud.

First of all, I can't believe they posted it on the internet. I can't believe, here's what I really can't believe. I can't believe that I'm going to be paying for it because all of these women are exactly the women who are going to say the government should be taking care of my student loan debt. I have a slightly different take on that, which is that I actually think those women, like some of them are going to do very well for themselves because they're going to get into HR bureaucracies and, you know, they're going to become the commissars who run these nonprofits and who run these, you know, DEI, you know, sort of consulting branches at firms. And I think that's, I mean, some of them are not going to find that kind of work,

but I do think that like, this is one of the issues with so many people going to college is you get this massive overproduction of people who may not have skills that warrant good paying jobs necessarily, but who feel entitled to them. And so then there's this problem of, people have talked about this a lot, this overproduction of elites, but they're not necessarily elites in the sense that they have elite knowledge or skill sets. They're just elites in the fact that they're credentialed in a way that reads elite to us. I have no doubt. I agree with you. I think that they're going to be influential. I think that that clip sort of demonstrates what has gone on in America over the last 15 years that has led us to our current position. But I also don't think that they're going to pay their student loan

debts. I think that we're going to end up doing that. I think it's going to be both. I think they're going to have positions of power, but they're not paying that debt back. Did you guys see that? Brandon or Riley, did you guys see that clip by any chance? Do you have any reactions to it before we move on? 10 years ago, were making fun of like safe spaces on college campuses but then you know they became the hr departments at the biggest companies in america and it's like that's not a it's not a joking thing anymore it became a lot more sinister so yeah it's it's not really something to like you know joke about well the one the colonialism is like such a popular word for when you're making up your major it's like how do we dismant we dismantle the colony and internalize colonialism and all this shit?

There's a very clear perspective that the goal is to... It is anti-Western and it is decolonialism. And that is frightening to me that people are i mean when you just parse that like you sort of pull it apart and ask yourself what does this mean what are we really talking about here um what does it mean to decolonize north america uh where do the people go what takes its place um i was watching this show the last season of true detective where it's like it's very it's weirdly it's not good and uh like not even as a mystery it's not good and that is very woke about eskimos it's like a there's like a woke eskimo thing happening where

it's like this is our iceland and all this kind of stuff um the idea and they're like we were here first and there's this very sort of like you're oppressing us by being here thing what they want they just want america gone and i think that while interesting i guess maybe to talk about at a coffee shop um that is fundamentally a violent terrifying worldview that should be totally forbidden in polite conversation. I don't know why you're allowed to talk in a friendly way about the project of moving 300 million Americans out of America and giving it to a bunch of people who may or may not be Native American. Let's be honest about most Native Americans that I see today. Native Americans, they're looking very white to me. Okay. I know a lot of white people who are claiming Cherokee heritage and I'm not about to give them New Jersey. It's weird. Brandon, last thoughts here. I have a hard time taking them seriously.

I don't know that they actually believe what they say. It seems like a fun thing to talk about when you're a college kid, frankly. I think college does have value, but I'm not talking about the elite schools right now, but the value is not necessarily education, it's just social. Um, so I think the problem is kind of like how we frame it. I would be totally okay with college if it was framed, like, look, we're not going to fund you. The taxpayer is not going to fund you, but what will happen when you go to college, if you live in another state,

like if you're living in the dorms, you'll meet a lot of people, you'll have access to sex basically, right? Like there will be a lot of partying that you can do and you'll have lifelong friends after that. And it'll be a very unique and specific experience that it's not going to really set you up for your future from uh in a from the from a career perspective but there is like some there's a lot of value in i think being involved like like leaving your hometown you know being alone right like you have to go to this dorm or this this college this college town and you don't know anybody and you're forced to meet a lot of people and uh like sort of make a community with like your fellow classmates. And I think that is cool. Um, but I don't know that it it's, I don't know that you need to do that to have a high paying job. I mean, you definitely don't have to do that, right. It's just a different,

different thing. Um, while I was watching that video, you know, you can't help but wonder who these women were taught by, right? Like who is their professor? And one such likely candidate at Boston University would have been Kendi. take me the candy's had quite candy has had quite the fall from grace um there was recently i believe a new york times profile that we can talk about uh why don't you just break down what's going on with uh with our our good friend the sort of president of anti-racism yeah i mean you guys will probably remember him from 2020 which was the last time I think he was really prominent, maybe 2021, prominent in the national consciousness and discourse. But he pioneered anti-racist theory, or he sort of brought it into the mainstream around the time of Black Lives Matter and the uprising or whatever you want to call it in 2020. He basically, he's a professor um i think he his specific area of study uh well he's an anti-racist activist i think he's a professor of african-american studies

um yeah but he basically uh around the time of of 2020 i think it was in June, he joined Boston University and began this Center for Anti-Racist Studies. And he also got an endowed chair that previously belonged to, what's his name, Elie Wiesel? I actually don't know how to pronounce it. Oh, yeah, the author of Night. I went to Boston University. He was a huge deal there. He's the's the celebrity at bu yeah ellie weisel i think it is um but he's you know author of night very famous uh holocaust survivor and author um and kendy got his his endowed chair um and this center amassed an enormous amount of funding

in like a year and a half uh jack dorsey donated 10 million dollars uh not jack not like this tons of people donated money um and and around the same time kendy came out with this book uh how to be an anti-racist which became a new york times bestseller for weeks it actually sold out on amazon around the time it came out um he went like on speaking tours with robin d'angelo he released who authored um what was the name of her book it was the white guilt book um i forget that one but it was always funny but it was written by a white woman he raised his baby white fragile are you talking about robin d'angelo yeah yeah what is it white fragility white fragility yes white fragility

i can't believe i forgot that um but but kendyan and robin d'angelo sort of went on on tours together um and he came out with a children's book anti-racist baby he came out with god i had a list of of all the stuff he came out with at the time. He had just tons of like a collection of a deck of cards, anti-racist playing cards. He really ascended. And ultimately, this center amassed almost $50 million in funding almost overnight. almost overnight. And a few months ago, a story came out where it was revealed that Kendi had laid off like over half of the employees at the center and that they were going to restructure it radically. And some of his, you know, laid off former employees had spoken to the press and said, oh, you know, he's, he's this control freak who gets mad whenever you criticize him. And they

talked about like really bad working conditions at the center. And so this had sort of sparked some gloating, I guess, from like the Chris Rufos of the world who were like, Kendi is a fraud, whatever. and the owner of the center does this audit to see if there's any financial mismanagement. And the audit finds that there isn't. Though I will say that what this audit was looking at was really just, are the grants being properly accounted for? And have you falsified information about how much money you're receiving or or who it's going to that kind of like stuff it's not it's not necessarily you know people keep bringing up the fact that he's been like exculpated by this audit but really it's just it's just looking at the audit was looking for crime not for stupidity right the audit was looking for crime yeah um so you know this comes out a few months ago and then this week, uh, New York magazine,

New York times magazine, sorry, different publication, uh, comes out with this article, um, called Ibram X. Kendi faces a reckoning of his own. And it's this really, really long profile of him, uh, that is very, very glowing. I mean, it's almost hagiographical, I think. Um, we're basically, you know, the, the author of the piece says, you know, Ibram Kendi, he's this very like introspective withdrawn scholar who, you know, his, his seminal idea basically is that you can separate policy into racist or anti-racist categories. And, you know, he's been misunderstood by his critics. And, you know, Ibram Kendi participates in this piece and says, you know, we just got so much funding at once and then it dried up after the pandemic.

And so now we're restructuring into these short fellowships rather than permanent jobs. But all of this kind of obscures the fact that this center did have access. Some of it was tied up in an endowment, but they had access to tens of millions of dollars for the past three and a half years. And they've produced almost no research. I mean, I was on their website a few hours ago, and they've got a defunct COVID tracking data panel. They came out... Actually, this might be interesting for you, Solana. They have an anti-racism in tech project,

and they've just published... Sign me up. Yeah, and they've just published a piece. Well, I don't know if it was just published, but it was published recently. The piece is called Racial Inequality in Organizations, a System Psychodynamic Perspective. This is one of like a handful of papers they've published where the premise is we treat white men as the dominant group and black people as the archetypical subordinate group in society, in.s society in our theory work contexts that conflate merit with idealized images of white

masculinity provoke unconscious distress in white men who inspire to meet these ideals um so it's it's this like sort of psycho social analysis they're saying like it's bad for white people is is this what they're they're trying to say like white it's the iconography is bad for white men yeah i think that they're basically saying white men feel that their self-worth is threatened by uh black people i guess um and so one of the reasons they cling so strongly to their um position in the hierarchy is because they're having this like you know psychosocial fear reaction um i don't know what do you guys think do you feel how do you feel riley and brandon you're both white men i'm a white guy i don't feel afraid

but i don't know i'm also i'm half sp Spanish, so I'm technically Hispanic, and that might be the reason I don't feel afraid. Sounds like it's like a show me the white man and I'll show you the psychosocial distress. It's totally made up. They like started with a hypothesis and then did the research to prove it. Brandon, you don't feel... I don't know if it seems incoherent.

You don't feel that you have an unconscious multi-level defense system comprising projective identification at the individual level? I mean, I guess I wouldn't know, right? It's unconscious. I wouldn't have any idea. So it's hard to...

I guess I need Kendi to tell me. I should probably read Anti-Racist Baby or whatever and maybe I'll enlighten you. I think that if you really cared about this, you would quit and send me an application of a black woman to replace you this is fucking unbelievable in 2024 you're still working you still have a job in 2024 there are people in africa who are starving this is unreal riley as a white man respond that's how much millions of dollars went into this article? Sorry. That's insane that they spent so much and are crazy.

Yeah, I think to go back on the earlier point, which was like, Sanjana, you raised this, where obviously when you blow through $50 million, the natural question, and I don't think it's a full 50, right? How much did he totally blow through? So he didn't actually, yeah, $30 million of that is tied up in an endowment that they can't access it looks like they were able to access from that 30 million they were able to access like 1.2 million of that a year and then they also had access to the remaining 20 million or so but the

university has been very cagey about i guess there were like specific guidelines for projects they could use that money for um and the university hasn't disclosed what those guidelines are um they do mention them in the audit so it was yeah probably at most 20 million dollars but certainly tens of millions of dollars were used um you know to fund so i think you see that and your natural question is what did candy like what vacation home did candy buy with that money um but it's he's not a criminal you know it's not like the blm women who are actually using that money to fund a lavish lifestyle um it's like he's he'sendi believes in this dumb shit that he says. And he's authentically not very bright, which is how he blew the money.

And so you do this audit and you look at where did the money go? It went, he's just bad at this. And that, it just like, that's what happens when you're bad with money and don't really know what you're doing. Money just evaporates. It's like, this is how, when people win the lottery, they almost always lose all the money because the average person who wins the lottery is not very bright. And there's a reason that they are poor. I guess some people have a different rate. Maybe it's like some people really have a reason to be poor beyond just their raw aptitude. But the average person who wins the

lottery is super not good with money and uh blows it all and is is impoverished by the end of that process and sad right it's like very similar i think to the kendi thing he sort of won the lottery he was doing this shit right at the moment that america lost its mind over um the police stuff specific but I think it was like the police stuff caged inside of COVID, right? It was this very unique moment in American history that hopefully we'll never see again. And he was there.

It was like right person, right time. It was like, you know, and that was that. He still has money from, I'm sure he's living a great life. I mean, he's got the book stills and all that stuff. Whatever happened to Robin though? That is a great question. I mean, he's got the book, Stills, and all that stuff. Whatever happened to Robin, though? That is a great question. That one was very suspicious to me.

How does a white woman in 2020, how did she become the face of anti-racism? Very suspicious. I don't know how they allowed it to happen. On her website right now, and it looks like she has a white affinity group course. Sounds like some white supremacist thing. A white affinity group course happening from this August to this October. Wait, I got to stop and back up for a second. Are you telling me that she has a group running where you have to be white to enter?

It's loading. I will lose my mind. I will go fucking bananas if this woman has a group that you can only enter if you're white let's see she is god this brochure is like so difficult to navigate um yeah i think it's only for white people it's the ultimate goal raising white consciousness and equipping white people to engage in anti-racist action um you will learn the foundational framework for understanding racism group dynamics how to move from passivity and self-focus to accountability and action um i think i mean it seems completely and it's based on a book on strategies for leading white people in anti-racist practice so

I don't see anyone other than a white person signing up for this damn she it's like congratulations on the novel new reinvention of literal racism Robin she's I feel like she's way more

insidious than Kendi who again I feel like is not very bright and very earnest I think that that's a woman who I don't trust, but she's gone now. We'd have to really focus on her. And it is this sort of ongoing, I think, look back at the last few years and we're just like, man, what the fuck was going on? I heard some people talking about the New York Times or the New York Times Magazine piece, and they were saying, this is actually, it's actually a hit piece. If you look close enough, like, yes, it's very glowing and it's like obvious, it looks like this puppy, but you would have to do that at New York Times Magazine. The quote from like BU saying, there was this brutal quote. Did you have the quote,

Sanjana? Yeah. Boston University provided significant financial and administrative support to Dr. Kendi in the center. Dr. Kendi did not always accept the support. In hindsight, and with fuller knowledge of the organizational problems that arose, the university should have done more to insist on additional oversight. And they then go on to say, you know, several different models were discussed with Dr. Kendi his preference in vis-a-vis you know whether or not they should uh have these massive layoffs um and his preference was to terminate the ongoing projects and ask the funders to repurpose the funds for his new endeavor yeah that to me is how do we tell the truth it's veryussian. The Straussian read of this profile is we got to

distance ourselves from this clown shit. It's bad. Especially we have enough problems with Biden running as the president. We have to not have any of the clowns from the last election hopping around, distracting us from the mission, which is to keep in there. I think their real mission is to just have political power. I think all of this that but that's that uh moving on from the sad story of the president of dei i do want to just have one really quick thing um i want to talk very very briefly about the spaceship elon spaceship um brandon history has been made tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. Thursday, SpaceX launched its fourth Starship, which is a 30-story rocket. And this is like the rocket that they're going to use

to take people to Mars, they say. The first three launches were successful by many metrics, but didn't achieve what the fourth did. So today the rocket was able to launch into orbit, reenter without blowing up, and it landed, it was able to like flip over and land right side up in the Indian Ocean, basically just demonstrating that

this thing is actually going to work and they're going to be able to reuse the starship uh to get us to mars so this is like a huge deal this morning um if you watch the videos they're super inspiring of the of the actual launch it's always so inspired like i actually like start tearing up when i start when i hear the employees of SpaceX like screaming and like yelling in ecstasy every time like a like a you know there's a milestone in the launch reached um the launch is about 90 minutes long and uh yeah it's just like a really big deal and uh they're gonna test again soon I'm sure but yep this is a successful fourth launch of Starship. Media reaction. Media reaction.

So the AP, they led the charge today and their headline was SpaceX's mega rocket completes test flight without exploding. So my headline would have been like, we're going to Mars,

motherfuckers. So they're harkening back to i mean they really every time spacex launched a test and it blew up which is expected it was just like spacex explosion like yeah elon in tears this is the end yeah so the the the after the first launch which was successful successful by Elon's metrics, Wired covered it with the headline, SpaceX's Starship explodes during first orbital test flight. Again, this was actually a really big deal. They had never put the Starship on top of the Super Heavy booster.

And they did that, and then they flew it, like all in one go. This was like a major success. Elon was like, there's maybe a 50 chance of success right so it goes up wired shits on it um the second launch it made it to orbit um wired again covers it with spacex's starship lost shortly after launch of second test flight so i think i mean this is like par for the course at this point not to use a cliche but you know like anything that Elon does the mainstream media will attempt to misinform the public about pretty much and this is how they're doing it with SpaceX. It's gonna be happening on our on our

way to Mars we're gonna be hearing about the failures. And I think specific, if Mars does become a more serious likelihood, what we're really going to start getting are all of the anti-Mars takes. It's going to be anti-Mars political opinion. It's going to be anti-Mars sentiment. We shouldn't be doing this for the following reasons. That very abstract question I think is going to become much more motivating. And that is a fight for another day. We have a drop coming one week from today. So get ready for it. You're going to have our first piece of PirateWire swag. And until then, just have a great week, guys. Have a great weekend first, and then a great week. And come on back. Tell your friends to watch this show. We have to grow this thing. Rate, review. I really mean it.

That stuff helps. Be liking and commenting. Come on, let's blow this thing up. Thanks for listening, guys. We'll see you next week.