The Bulwark Podcast - Ryan Grim: An Unconscionable Reaction to a Summary Execution

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Most law enforcement departments train officers not to stand in front of vehicles—or shoot at moving ones—but masked ICE agents in Minneapolis did just that after descending on Renee Good's Honda Pilot and spitting out conflicting instructions to her. Not only did the president of the United States lie about the condition of the officer who shot her, Vance and Noem disparaged the deceased 37-year-old mother of three. Meanwhile, Americans are not down with the idea of the US running Venezuela. And the manosphere podcast world, which helped Trump win the election, are now feeling disillusioned and embarrassed about his betrayal of his "peace president" promise—along with his handling of the Epstein files. Plus, a discourse on white people, a consideration of Epstein's influence with the rich and powerful, and a meaty exchange over Kamala courting the Liz Cheney wing while bypassing the left's demands on Gaza. Ryan Grim joins Tim Miller.show notes: Drop Site news Ryan's 2022 piece on progressive advocacy groups Get 20% off when you go to trustandwill.com/BULWARK

Hello and welcome to the Buller podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delight to welcome for the first time to the show, reporter and co-founder at DropSight News. His books include The Squad, and he's formerly with The Intercept, as well as suffering the indignity of working with Sam Stein at the Huffington Post.

It's Ryan Grimm. What's up, man? No indignity at all. all, man, I'm jealous that you get to work with Sam. I miss my time with old Sammy. It was about a decade that we were partners in crime over there. Is that right? Yeah. It's like almost 10 years. Time flies. Yeah. We got a lot to get to. I want to do a little bit of like at the end just for the real sickos, some like, you know, intra-democratic party narrative wars between the Liz Cheney's wing and the populist lefties. But unfortunately, the news, uh, the new

Guides have given us a bunch of sad shit to talk about. So first, yesterday morning, during a nice encounter in Minneapolis, René Good, a 37-year-old mother was murdered by an ICE agent. She was sitting in her Honda pilot, waving officers by when three masked agents descended on her car, tried to open the door. They're shouting instructions at her. She tries to pull away. One of the agents draws down on her and shoots her three times in the head.

She leaves behind three kids, including a six-year-old son who previously lost his father and now orphaned. I want to give the kind of the reaction, but just on the actual events of what happened, I was wondering what your thoughts were. I've done a lot of police shooting reporting over the years, and this was sadly a very familiar scene, which is where you have a situation where a person is trying to comply, but tense, nervous, and angry officers are shouting contradictory orders at them. This happens, unfortunately, way too often. And in this case, if you look closely, you have one person saying, get out of the car and pulling on her door handle. And then you have another officer saying, get out of here. And it's hard to, I think, put yourself in a place where

you have masked armed men surrounding you. And your situation has gone from zero to 60. Because as you said in the video right before that she was waving some ice officers past her yeah and then she's about to leave and then somebody kind of cuts her off so she lets that person go so she's waiting to exit this area and then this other vehicle comes storming up and the officer that killed her was not in that vehicle he's kind of off to the side filming and this is what really struck me did you notice this i didn't notice until this morning i'd seen this video like two times before we published yesterday and did a little commentary on it you know it was like the ninth time i was watching i was wait what is in his left hand he has his phone he was yeah it looks like he's i don't know if he's filming

but his phone his phone is his phone is out he's either scrolling yeah or or filming and it's so cold you can you can tell from the video it's so cold he's got his bare hand one of those just phone addicts that is willing to get like hypothermia to have his phone out and so there is a there are a couple stills where you can see he's pointing the phone at the window at the driver's window while he's drawing his weapon like set aside that you're not supposed to shoot at a moving vehicle for many obvious reasons this is like the Department of Justice policy by the and all local police forces have it too because shooting a driver of a car does not stop the car most people don't need to be trained opposite actually in a lot of times right yeah exactly it does the opposite they usually

like their foot hits the gas pedal and they accelerate. But there's no training manual that would say, oh, and also you should have your iPhone out in the other hand, like looking through your, like just absolute rank amateur nonsense. Attorneys who have defended police officers in police involved shooting cases have almost unanimously been coming out and saying this is, this is indefensible. Like what I would try to do is cut some kind of a deal if this were my client. like the fact that she's turning the wheel

but also like why are they harassing this American citizen there's no reason for them to be there that's kind of why like no authority to to deal with her yeah I spent a lot of time like which I shouldn't have probably getting social media fights with people like going through

the frame by frame and all the stuff you just broke down and you know and I can do the most generous possible maybe it is possible that the officer ended up shooting or the agent the chatter was scared in that moment it does happen fast but But then the car does turn because you turn the wheel, then he shoots her two times to the side window when he's out of any danger.

The point I kept trying to make to people was like, it's stupid to even get into the frame-by-frame analysis argument. Like, what was happening here? This is a 37-year-old woman in her Honda pilot. You know, she's got stuffed animals for a kid sitting in the passenger seat. The car is not moving. It's stationary. And a bunch of masked officers, like storm the car and start shaking. her door and then one of them draws their weapon. It's like there was no need for any of this,

right? Like she was not a dangerous criminal. It's not like they were like that she was a suspect and this is one of these tragedies where like, you know, they were told that a murderers and a Honda pilot or something like this and they converge on a car, right? Right. She's not a criminal suspect. She's not even an undocumented immigrant if that's the purpose of them being there. Ice. Like she is, I guess maybe protesting. We don't know the whole backstory at this point about like what she'd been doing. But the car is not in any way a threat. until these guys converge on it. I think you're right that in some ways the frame-by-frame analysis is a trap

because it almost acknowledges like the legitimacy of what they're doing to begin with and then says, well, but they made some mistakes here. And so that rises to, you know, some type of homicide. But no, like they have no business confronting an American citizen on an American road just going about her business, like leave her alone. Like, you don't have any business being there. Like, stop. The administration's reaction is just unbelievably unconscionable.

I just want to read through a couple of the things. The president said this. The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing, and resisting. She then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense based on the clip. It's hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. So Trump said he's recovering the hospital. This is obviously not true.

You watch the officer walk away. Vance, this morning, says every congressional Democrat should be asked a simple question, do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over? This is, again, this woman, American citizen gets murdered. The vice president's now calling her names and making accusations about her motives without knowing anything. And then we had Christy Nome dressed up as Indiana Jones yesterday in a press conference. Let's listen to that. It was an act of domestic terrorism.

What happened was our ICE officers were out and enforcement. action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. That's just a totally hallucinated story. Like that doesn't even anything resembling what happened. And it's also, what's this keystone cop nonsense of like getting your car stuck in the snow? Your cops, like cops are supposed to be out helping people who can't handle inclement situations. It's like, these are absolute amateurs like so so they started the traffic jam by getting their car stuck

in the snow in Minnesota like you were surprised that there was ice and snow in Minnesota you don't have snow tires on your car in Minnesota like if you have snow tires you should not be stuck in the snow in in Minnesota so what are you doing so you started this entire thing now you've created a traffic jam it's chaos she's waving people through. Instead of going through, you run up on her and surround her vehicle and give her contradictory orders and then shoot and kill her. This was like 2004 or something and there was no video of this. Like the lie in some ways is less offensive. It's more absurd because all of us know it's such a blatant lie. But like imagine if we didn't have the video and all we had

as eyewitnesses versus what Noma's saying. And Noma is saying she tried to ram them with her vehicle. And she's a domestic terrorist. People would be like, wow, I guess, you know, in such a situation, we know there are such things as car rammings that happens. This is terrifying. I feel for those officers. Then you see the actual video.

It's like, no, it's a traffic jam that these idiots created that she's trying to get out of. And then they murdered her. Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to quibble with you and it being less offensive because for me it's more offensive because it's like interesting trying to make it just washes over me like what is truth what is anything you know it is pernicious right this idea that like they can just make up a totally false story when we all have seen it and you know again that she's a deranged left is she's trying to ram them there are a lot of right wing accounts that are posting and coming out for me this morning and saying things like well the car is rolling up on

them and they didn't say you know what are they supposed to do and I'm like this is like one of those situations. The car is stopped. Yeah. And it's like, I don't know when, back when you were a teen, if it's one of those situations, like, you're standing in front of your buddy's car, then they, like, hit the gas a little bit to, you know, give you a little start. You're like, that's what this was, right? Like, the guy easily got out of the way. It's on ice. Like, he could push the car backwards. Right. The idea that this is not a car going 35 miles an hour, swerving at a cop, or a car that started and then, and then presses the gas and jams across a parking lot, at the cops, right? Like, this is a stopped car. And they are yelling at her. And the idea that

then our government would, like, call this person names and smear them. I don't know. It's not like this is unprecedented. Obviously, went through this all before. It's a white woman. It's a little bit different than some of the past situations. But I don't know. It seems like especially egregious to me in this case. Back when Sam and I were at Huffpost, we published a viral essay that described the term that comes from hip hop for this phenomenon. It's called fuckery. It's when you tell a lie that you know is a lie, you know the person hearing it knows it's a lie, and they know that you know it's a lie. And it's a power move. Like it's beyond a lie. Because a lie implies some attempt to deceive. In this case, there really is no intent to deceive

because we can all see what happened. Fuckery is an expression of your power, the power imbalance, that I can say this completely outrageous thing, and all you can do is just like spit and like rage about it. I like fuckery a lot better than gaslighting, if I'm just going to be choosing a word, you know? It feels more on point.

Yeah, I don't know, man. There's definitely fuckery happening from the administration, but I was pretty shook by like the amount of people, real people, not bots, people I know in my life on social media who are basically just like, yes, she deserved it. Like, I'm sorry. If a cop tells you to do something, you should do it. I was thinking like, I was kind of shook when Charlie Kirk was killed. And there were a lot of people that are kind of like, well, he deserved it.

He had what was coming to him. People in my life said that was pretty, I should say, jarring to me that there are a lot of our citizens out there, a lot of people in the country, a lot of people in the political space who basically like thank the punishment for not listening to a cop's orders. a stressful situation is that you should be summarily executed. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, on the psychological status of our fellow

Americans, but it's pretty disturbing. Extremely disturbing. That element of it is dark. Seeing people who you disagree with on some things, agree with on some things, defending the indefensible for no reason. Like, you don't

have to do this. Yeah. Her kid is orphan. She has a six-year-old orphan. Why are you doing this? Like, she didn't, you know, You could just grab a license plate. Right. When you're defending something that most police officers won't defend,

you've taken a wrong turn. Like any police officer who's gone through training, watching that, would say, none of that is how this should be done. This is an embarrassment to us. This is a shame

this person should be punished and prosecuted. To not agree with those police officers because you hate, and I think this is where the darkness comes in, they might not even agree with it. They just hate that woman so much that they don't care.

Like a 37-year-old liberal poet who may or may not, like they assumed that she was like an observer at the protest. I don't even know if that's true in this case, but that's what they believe that this was a protester. It seems like she probably was, but even it doesn't matter. Yeah. So let's say she was. They hate those people so much that they're okay, that they're. that they're glad that this was done to her. That's where the darkness, I think, is seeping in.

I have escalation concerns from all parties here. And I've just people are right to be rage. I'm fucking enraged. You know, I was living in Minnesota protesting. I saw some videos of protesters, good reason, righteously shouting at some of these ICE and CBP officials. You know, one of those guys gets upset about that, administration cracking down. you know, reliving Kenosha or other things for 2020. There are some 2020 elements to this.

This is January, not the summer, which is maybe in some ways going to tamp that down. But do you have concerns about escalations from all parties? Yes, because we're early 2026 now. We're looking at three years at least. A long way. Until this term expires. Who knows what comes after that. Time is moving much more slowly than I think we would like it to.

if we do believe we're going to move through this period. Yeah, this is a dark moment. And your point about DHS and the others, like, rallying around, you had people just immediately, and Trump, like, immediately defending him, rather than we're going to look into this. You know, we're going to, we're going to let the investigation play. Even Tom Homan was like, we're going to let the investigation play out. Tom Homan is the moderate actor in this administration right now.

Right. Right. Yeah, when Tom Holman is a voice of reason, we're in a bleak place. Now that the holidays are over, well, for the rest of you losers, we're into Mardi Gras season now in New Orleans. You might be feeling like you've got a big spending hangover, the drinks, the holiday food, the gifts, it all adds up. Luckily, MipMobil is here to help you cut back on overspending on wireless this January with 50% off unlimited premium wireless. Mint Mobile's end of year sale is still going on, but only until the end of this month, January. So cut out big one else's bloated plans and unnecessarily monthly charges with 50% off 3-6 or 12 months of unlimited. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.

Okay, I'll tell you, we've been having a lot of convos here around, you know, as the kids get older, my friends, middle school kids, like, when is the appropriate phone time? for me, just one man's opinion. I'm going to be in like, I want those kids to have a Nokia phone, like a little snake. You know, you can play snake on your phone. You can call your parents or your friends. That's it.

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I want to talk about Venezuela in particular. You guys wrote kind of analysis where you think things are from an admin policy and what's next for drop sites. Give us a little summary of what you think the state of play is. It's a really bizarre situation, right? It's not a regime change operation. It's a president change operation, which ahead of time, there were people that were predicting that he would do something like this because he had built up such an armada and now had got himself stuck and had to climb down somehow. And so the only way out would be through. And those predictions seem to have been pretty on point.

What he's doing right now with the oil is so bizarre. And in some ways, it's very, very Trumpian as well. Usually the United States, when it goes around the world, extracting resources from people, does so with glossy language about democracy. So we'll say we're doing a great thing for people. and, in fact, we're actually doing a pretty cynical thing for ourselves. Sometimes both? Sometimes both, sure. Sometimes the cynical thing for ourselves is a great thing for people.

Sometimes. Every once in a while? In this case, it's the reverse in that they have so much oil stored and blocked because of U.S. sanctions and because of our blockade, you know, not allowing it out. They're in a crisis because they're making oil and they've nowhere to send it. This is an engineering crisis that we have created. And so they need to sell this oil. But we took their license, you know, took the Chevron license at the request of these South Florida members of Congress and, you know, pushed by Rubio and his gang. And so now what he's doing is reinstituting that license without doing it. Like the terms of this oil seizure are weird and unprecedented.

and the money is going to go in offshore accounts before it goes to like pay these the debts or this, that. But it is not that dissimilar fundamentally from what the terms would have been under the license. So Trump's saying we're going to steal all your oil. But what he's actually doing is kind of reissuing the license, but without issuing the license. Because license implies like some type of law and regulation being followed. This is just gangster stuff. stuff. But for PDVSA, the oil company, this is a lifeline. Like, they need that oil out of their storage tankers. And Trump's saying they're going to sell it and split the proceeds, which is exactly what would happen under the licensing regime. If you then lift sanctions,

because if Rubio is running the country and Trump is running the country, then why would you sanction Rubio? And Trump said to the Times this morning, we might be running it for a few years. Yeah. So got to lift the sanctions at that point, right? So the South Florida crowd is actually very upset about all of this. Right. Because they're like, no, no, no, no. We don't want the U.S. running Venezuela. We want to run Venezuela.

But then that doesn't pass the sniff test for the American people because it's like, what I mean? Who's we? I thought we is the U.S. government. Aren't you Americans? It's like, oh, no, you're not. You're like Venezuelan right wing folks who want to like take the country back over. And then it exposes the entire scheme. You and Rubio are trying to use the American government to settle your own scores over in Venezuela and Cuba, which nobody, like, that's not something the American people are on board for it. American people, you want to steal the oil? Okay, fine. Now, and separately, Trump is destroying the domestic oil industry. Like, if you read the oil press the last several months and now accelerating, he's pushing some.

supply so high because he wants to push oil prices down that it is making the Texas oil industry basically go bankrupt. This would be like the final nail in the coffin of the Texas oil industry. Well, in theory, I depend, you know, depending on how much oil we're actually taking out of Venezuela. But even his pressure on OPEC to increase supply and drive down prices is killing the domestic shale industry. It's having an impact, yeah. Which is fascinating. I don't think he's doing it on purpose. He's just kind of an idiot. No. The same way the way the tariffs are destroying the farms and, you know, and destroying American manufacturing. I don't think he's trying to destroy American manufacturing. I don't

think he's trying to destroy the American oil industry, but that's the consequence of his policies. Is your takeaway from this, that this is like a confluence of events where Marco has this ideological ambition and Stephen Miller wants to use an excuse for his immigration stuff and Donald Trump is just likes will to power you know I just want to have the pictures for my TV show of of this guy who attacked me in handcuffs and it's kind of this one-off and like we'll see kind of how things stabilize or do you see this as part of a broader you know there'll be follow-ups on this it's it's it's Rubio I think this was a unique historical circumstance where if Rubio himself like if any other Secretary of State comes in, you probably don't get this. And also, Rubio was

boxed out of Ukraine, Russia, and boxed out of Israel-Calistine. People talk about all the work that he has, it's almost compensating for the fact that as Secretary of State, he's not actually involved in what were the two most important issues, those two. And so he was then able to just focus exclusively on his pet project, which is exercising the grievances of the South Florida Cuban community and the Venezuelan community and go after those those, those Some legitimate grievances, very legitimate grievances, I would say. They're upset. Yeah, not our problem, if you ask me.

Like, that's between all. Like, why are we being asked to, like, settle these scores for you? In Maguworld, there's a lot of fake grievances out there. So I do, I sometimes, you know, like to distinguish between the imaginary made-up grievances and the real grievances. That's all. Yes, sure. But, like, they're un-American. They're non-American grievances.

Like, it's, there are different, you know, beefs within the like Minneapolis Somali community between like that are literally organized around tribal beats from back where they came in Somalia like imagine if they became so powerful as a lobby that they could then get the American military

to go into Somalia and smash their rivals for them. Yeah, that's good. Think we'd be like no actually like yeah I'm sure that like there were human rights abuses carried out against you know your family and your and your people there and I don't really want to get in all the details because like they've got their side of the story too. We're not going to send the American military to Somalia to like

enact your vengeance. Adjudicate that. But like doing it on behalf of South Florida, Cuban and Venezuelans is like just an acceptable use of the American military for whatever reason. And then the second thing is the obvious one, which is like China is a rising power and we're backing off our global hegemony. So we're focusing on what we call our backyard, which is such a weird term. It's not our backyard. These are our neighbors. Like, imagine if you called your neighbor's house, your backyard. It's not even really my neighbor. I mean, it would be like me talking about people in Shreveport and saying, that's my backyard. That's my backyard. I'm deep concerns about what's happening in Shreveport. Right. Yeah. Shreveport be like, yeah, this is not your backyard.

You're welcome to visit, like, and hang out and like, You watch a game? Let's talk about something. No one wants to talk about what happens when you die. That's brutal. I don't know. It's not really true for me. My mother loves talking about death.

My mother is just very comfortable talking about death. It's a good Catholic trait. So I'm okay. I'm good on talking about death. It's not the best. You get emotional. But I'm happy to talk about it. it. But for some folks, it's a little uncomfortable. You know, you don't think about it happening

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Protect your loved ones today, tomorrow, and beyond with trust and will. The most trusted name and online estate planning. Go to trust and will.com slash bulwark and get 20% off. That's trust and will.com slash bulwark to get your 20% off. Trust and will.com slash bulwark. I want to talk about the political, like what this says about what's happening on the right. You've kind of lived at this nexus of the horseshoe, if you will, with breaking points. People don't know it has kind of, you know, it's as hosts that are kind of populist right,

these populist lefties, essentially for shorthand, also some other, some of people with weird heterodox politics in there as well. But the part of the populist right that has been kind of rising is folks that are rhetorically saying, you know, sounding like how you usually. sounded. We shouldn't care about stuff that's happening over there. I don't care about tribal conflicts in the Middle East or Africa or South America for that matter. And we should out with the neocons. And there's been some common cause. You know, we've seen people like Glenn Greenwald as a populist lefty become like very friendly with the populist right crowd on Maga Media.

And now we're a year into the Trump administration where he was supposed to be kind of representing that populist right foreign policy. And, you know, we're bombing people everywhere, basically. We just deposed a leader in Venezuela, and it has revealed some strains of people that were legitimate in that view, but a lot of these folks, you know, have turned out to be fake. One of them was a Daily Wire guy named Matt Walsh, who's on your show, talking about how he is non-interventionist by nature, but also he's, like, really thrilled that we're fucking up Venezuela. So you're living in this world even a little more than me, actually. Yeah. How do you assess that kind of strain of what's happening on the right? With the Matt Wall strain, I think there is a, there's like a macho element to his politics that is going to, like, dominate over whatever claims he has to non-interventionism.

Where they're saying they're against previous wars that didn't go well. Like Vietnam bad, you know, it didn't go well. Iraq, bad, didn't go well. Afghanistan bad didn't go well. We should not be in these forever wars that were not winning. but you show them like a military adventure that like that you go in you do some bang bang and you get out they're like oh that's great like there are four military adventures that they think are working which is not a that's not a principle that's just just being a thug well in part because you can't predict what's going to work and what's not going to work levia looked great

at the beginning you know for example yeah sodom hussein fell in like three days or something right Ukraine looked terrible, on the other hand, for the Ukrainians, right, like for the first couple days, right? And it was conventional wisdom that Russia was going to run roughshot over them. So, you know, that shows the limits of that kind of mindset. Right. And then you've got people like Tulsi Gabbard who just did pure cynical power plays. Like, where is she? Have you heard from her? You and Tulsi or pals? Is she? She doesn't respond to me anymore. I covered her first congressional campaign. So I knew her before she was even in Congress in like 2014. And she was. She was a very strident and principled opponent of, like, regime change wars. Now, the fact that she always qualified it as regime change wars and was always comfortable with basically drone campaigns against what she saw as, like, Islamist forces and her links with, like, right-wing Modi folks who are, like, virinally hostile to all Muslims, basically. That was always, like, a red flag. in her politics. I think she finally said something about Venezuela

where she figured out some way to applaud the thing that she... She's the classic case because you can go back and find all of these posts. 2019 slamming Trump for trying to do a coup in Venezuela.

There's a Tulsi tweet for everything. There is a warmonger and a isolationist faction in both parties and they're jockeying for position constantly throughout history. I guess my question on the right, is that even possible for the isolationist side of the party to ever truly

succeed? I guess my point is there's just something about the nature of being a right-wing party that, sure, like, you could move away from the type of foreign engagement that Bush and Reagan and others engaged in because you don't care about democracy abroad, et cetera, et cetera. But it does feel like there's some, you use the word machismo, it's just something about the strain of kind of a will-to-power, right-wing nationalist. Like, it's kind of hard to imagine at the end of the day than ever being fully pacifist as well. Right. When the chips are down, it's very difficult, I think, on the right to stand up for the, like, let's not do this war.

Right. But there are people, no, the American conservative, for instance, like, they've been, they've consistently, the last couple years, like, really push hard against that, you know, that magazine is pushed hard against the stuff. Sure. But, like, look who's in the administration. You know what I mean? It's like, it's not Kurt Bills. Right. And J.D. Vance was, like, their lead champion. Like, he was their guy. And he's just completely defanged on all of this. One of the things, and this kind of gets us into a couple of different topics. So, like, one of the groups that bought into that was kind of this, like, Manosphere, comedian, culturally rights kind of podcast universe, however you want to describe that. Right. And they bought in to, like, Trump as being a non-interventionist candidate. And they also were, in most cases, like, following that. Epstein stuff very closely, which you guys been following. You went on one of those shows recently, Tim Dillon, which is what inspired me to invite

you over here. I was like, fuck, if he's going to be on the Tim Dillon show, we got to expose him to the bulk audience. But, um, so I want to talk about kind of both, like how that intersects with both those worlds and when you're talking to Dylan, like, do you think, well, actually, let's table the foreign policy side of us. Let's talk about the Epstein side of this first. Like, did you sense that, like, that world is, it's really starting to become disillusioned

with Trump over the Epstein stuff and that you. think that there's something there. Extremely. Extremely. Because these are also the kinds of people who don't really believe that the government is going to deliver materially for people. Somebody like a Rogan, and I don't actually know Dylan's like Tim Dylan's domestic politics, but like, you know, Rogan, you ask him, he's for like Medicare for all, he's for higher

minimum wage. He supported Bernie in 2020. And now he's drifted bright, so I don't know where he stands with that stuff now. But he's also very American in a sense. He's very cynical that the government is actually going to deliver on those things. And maybe he's right. Like maybe that cynicism is grounded in something. But what that means is that giving us the Epstein stuff and doing those things, that's what they want.

Because that, they're like, you can actually do that. Like, well, I don't think you're going to lower, you know, health care costs. I don't think you're going to actually reverse climate change. You're not going to do any of this stuff. You should, but you won't. But you have the files. You ran on transparency and against pedophilia. Because that's the other thing.

Like, you know, these aren't QAnon people, but the Q&N vibe around, like, there are these, this is a cabala pedophiles that are like running the world. Like, that's seeped into broadly MAGA. A lot of MAGA wouldn't adopt the whole QAnon thing. They might not even know what Q is, but that idea, sure, that these reptiles are running the world has purchase. So it's like, okay, you're not going to, you're not going to do anything to necessarily make the world in my life better, but you're going to expose these reptiles. Like, you're going to lock up the pedophiles, or at least you're going to shame the pedophiles, even if you're not going to prosecute them. And so to have that, which is the thing that they actually thought he was going to do,

to see him become an obstacle to that, I think is extremely demoralizing and, and for many of them, radicalizing, taking them not to just a place of ambivalence around Trump, but like deep hostility. And then embarrassment, too. Embarrassment, I think is key. Embarrassment. Yeah. Right. Because, like, you know, they have listeners too.

They see the feedback. See the comments. Right? Like, they've been promising this. You know, and like, in mega world, you get to. away from the embarrassment because you can just be like, oh, well, the other guys are bad. You know, you get straight back into team sports if you're like a Fox News wing or, you know, but they don't have that.

Right. They don't have that. Let's just talk about the Epstein stuff more broadly and then we'll get back to the politics because you've been going through these files really closely. What's your sense for what we've learned from the limited amount of information we've got that is new or maybe different from what, you know, maybe conventional wisdom would be from people who are only kind of following this lightly. Ironically, I think what we're discovering

probably actually affirms people's conventional wisdom around this. Because I think people assumed that this was a guy who operated in the gray area of the kind of the elite political economy as an asset for various intelligence services. That was kind of the assumption about him. I mean, in certain parts of the universe, though,

there are other places that they would say, that's crazy, like, that he is an intelligence asset. That's a conspiracy theory. Right. New York Times readers. Well, that's a pretty big audience. Yeah, it's a very big audience. But for the, like,

what I think of now as the centrist person, which who has, like, wildly eclectic politics and listens to, like, Joe Rogan or Tim Dillon, like, that to me is the actual American center. Not you. Like, you're not, like, you are kind of, I think like for in Washington like the epitome of like a centrist or center leftist.

This is so this is such a good point. I always like whenever I do like a panel with rich people, which I tried to do as little as possible because I hate them. But whenever I, whenever I do for whatever reason, like the question like always, the first or second question is like, why can't we have a center party that is like somebody like you that's like socially moderate and basically conservative? And I'm just like, hey, like those people do exist right now. they're just Democrats.

Like, that's the governor of a couple states, like, for example, for starters. And, like, B, like, if you would get a third-party center person, they would be who's who you hate. Like, they'd be the opposite of you, right? Like, they would be somebody that is socially kind of conservative and fiscally a little Bernie fit flavoring. And right, yeah. I mean, so I agree with your political assessment on that total. And so for that type of person, I think they assumed, I guess you would call it a conspiracy theory, but I think they just assumed that that's who this guy. was like that's what they sniffed on him is that there's no way he gets away with all of this stuff

and has all these major connections without some type of relationship and how that relationship was defined remains a mystery but what we what we find in his correspondence in particular are you know deep ties to uh Israeli government figures and and American intelligence figures like it doesn't mean he's like getting a W-9 from the CIA but like he's not like on staff from a necessarily that's not how it works like he also has his own personal agendas that are overlapping and he's a figure within this davos set and he is at times deploying masad or or his own assets like in the american government for the benefit of himself or his allies i think people looking for like a room where where global strategy is like set and then executed upon and him being like taking notes there

and being part of it that that's that's not how the world is organized the world is organized around these competing factions of oligarchs and elites who wax and wane in their in their power within that set and he kind of swam in that world and did so since the 80s the stuff is all kind of murky and gray but I'm going to try to kind of create a line between what I think is maybe conspiracy mongering and true a little bit right on the conspiracy side of the line is like this sort of puppet master thing like the puppet theme, right, where there is a government, whether it be the U.S. or Israel or France, if you're Candace Owens, right, that it's like puppet mastering him and like telling him you go after this guy and

you co-opped them and then blackmail them because we need that. I don't think we have a lot of evidence for that yet. We don't have that. Yeah, no evidence for that. And then the other side of the line is like this kind of human frailty that does seem to be particularly common among the kind of elite networking set, right, which is if somebody says that they can do a solid for you, you kind of look the other way, you know, about, about their, you know, behavior, even if that behavior is, like, disgusting. Or especially if you've engaged in that behavior with him. Right.

So now this is where the gray area parts of the line. And that's what I think has been frustrating about the release. It's like, okay, but who are the other guys that have engaged in the behavior? You know, because, like, Peter Thiel is on these emails, you know, with him on the networking side of it. Based on what I know about Peter Thiel, I don't think he was raping young girls. You know what I mean? I think we can safely acquit him of those charges.

Right. So some of the people are on these emails, I assume, are raping young girls, and some of them just like the fact that this is a rich guy who's giving them favors. What do you, like, what have we learned? I think what people need to understand and add to their under or add to their understanding of who Epstein was, was that he was able to deliver material benefits to his allies that were not raping young girls. like if you wanted like ehu barak for instance when he as he's leaving the ministry defense

Epstein gets him a million dollar two million dollar bonus a million dollar retainer with ranova group the victor victor vexelbergs who's a giant oligarch and close ally of Putin like he gets him that deal and he helps get him like a million bucks from wexner to not write like a memoir so if you're at Ahou Barack, like he delivered that for you. He even set up Barack with a meeting with Sarkozy, set up Barack with a meeting with Putin after declining, Epstein himself declining a meeting with Putin because Putin wanted to meet him on the sidelines of this conference. He's like, no, no, no, if Putin wants to meet, it's got to be in his palace and we need like 90 minutes. We've got serious business to talk about. Like that's the level of guy that we're talking about, like chiding world leaders. And he bailed on this sarcozy. Ozzie, Ehou Baroque meeting. He was in Paris and having dinner. Last minute, he's like, I don't feel well. You guys go. And that's where the disgusting layer of his life gets into. What do you think he did in Paris instead that night? I think he was feeling fine. I think he wanted to do something else. But the point is that because he was this like college

dropout, fired from Bear Stearns, that not really a tax guy giving all this tax advice, people are like, he's not doing anything of professional value to these people. so therefore the only thing he can be doing is like delivering them young girls and what we found in his correspondence that's not true he had deep ties with all of these shadowy networks and if you were somebody who wanted to operate in a gray area which is most of these elites he was helpful to you how many people in the world can get you a meeting with you know the president of france the president of russia or the former president of united states Like, there are not a lot of people who have that level of brolodex and ability to get people to respond to them. So I think the fact that he was engaging in this foul behavior with so many men meant that they implicitly knew that if something went south, he had dirt on them.

Or if he asked them for something, like, they should probably just go ahead and do it because they know what he's got. yet you don't even need that to explain a huge amount of what he was able to accomplish because he was making these people rich and getting them meetings that were leading to security agreements that were even like state level security agreements between israel and codivore israel mongolia or these Nigerian diamond mines he's he's like he's like getting things done for people and i think that has been missing from the understanding of epstein and when you understand that then you can maybe contextualize

the sex trafficking a little differently so it takes us to the cover-up and the question of you know whether this is just a straight Donald Trump is embarrassing information about him in there like the degree to it

is as unknown but obviously he was engaged in gross behavior with Epstein at some level and he's like on the plane you know it's like oh we've learned at least he's on the plane more times than he said he lied but many times he's on the plane, that he's on the plane with a girl who is a victim of Maxwell's, right? There's only four of them on the plane.

So the cover could just be straight Trump, right? Or when you tie it into the security services conversations or other people out there that kind of say, well, no, I mean, the cover up is related to that. Right. Like the CIA and who the hell knows, BB and Sarka, who knows, like is leaning on Trump as well and saying, no, you got to hold the line here on this. Like, where do you fall on that? I think it's a combination of both.

You know, and Melania knows New Epstein as well. What do we know about that? I've not followed the Melania Epstein line that closely to if I'm being candid. We know that they knew each other. She's very litigious. I think we can leave it at that. Can we do one more sentence between that and litigiousness? I don't know.

I don't think I want to do any more sentences on that in particular. Okay. We're working on some angles. and, you know, when we know more. But there's been some contention about whether or not Epstein was the one who introduced them. There's other people who said, no, actually somebody else introduced Melania and Trump. And she also knows that world of, like, exploitative modeling from her own experience in it. Which they both engaged in.

Again, when you're talking about the bad things that Trump did, like the exploitative modeling, something both Trump and Epstein. Exactly. Yeah, it's also the part that makes me think there's got to be other people leaning on him is that he's very hard to shame. This is a guy who bought Miss Teen USA and went on Howard Stern to say he bought it so that he could like creep

on these teen girls naked in their locker room. Yes. Like he said that out loud with the cameras running. He wasn't joking. No, and the teen girls in the locker room have testified that he did that. Right. Exactly. Yes. They have said like. And his daughter, they asked Ivanka.

And she's like, yeah. Like that's the kind of thing he does. So at that point, like what mystery is left to how this guy interacts with teen girls? You know, what more is going to embarrass him? You know, he also has a virtue of often being like open about how he's thinking. When he was asked during the campaign if he was going to release the, you know, the Kennedy files and the Epstein files, he was like, I think we should definitely release the Kennedy files and we should release the MLK. and an RFK moon landing

I think it was on NPR somewhere they followed up and they're like notice that you didn't Ledger's a little short there what about the Epstein one and he's like you know

there's a lot of people are in there there's going to be there's going to be some guilt by association and not everybody in there did something wrong and it's going to be

embarrassing for people like he even during the campaign he was giving this rationale for why he didn't want to release all of the Epstein files while saying like Epstein's a creep I never liked him I've had a falling out

I think you should take him seriously in that when he says that that like he's trying to protect people whose names are in there and who he knows I want to do some I don't want to do some white people discourse with two white guys is that okay

can we do some little white people discourse representation matters we have the right white people here right I'm going to tie two items together that are in the news and I just want to say very quickly up front I'm not creating an equivalent between these two people. I just want to talk about two news items in the context of identity

politics and the dangers of identity politics from my point of view. Are you ready for this? Okay, here we go. Elon Musk. We'll see where you're going with it. The biggest donor to the president, one of the richest men in the world, is owner of X.com. He posted this this morning, or maybe overnight. Seems like he might have been on a cadamine binge. I don't know, allegedly. He writes this, or someone else writes us, if white men become a minority, we will be swel watered. Remember, if non-whites openly hate white men while white men hold a collective majority, then they'll be a thousand times more hostile and cruel. When they are a majority over whites, white solidarity is the only way to survive. Elon Musk posted that with like a

100 sign, totally agree. So that's where Elon Musk is. He wants white solidarity, the white South African. We'll just start there and just have a brief sentence. That's very bad and alarming you concur with that it's an 1850s like southern white we should end slavery but if we do they'll kill us all like it's that level of like fear and and it projection too it's it's it's it's 1950s south africa maybe also 1980s yeah 1980s yeah he was in in school there yeah he's bringing the africaner the bad elements of africana then turned out that wasn't true by the way even in South Africa. White Saladair is the only way to survive.

This was the top donor to the president. That's pretty alarming. So that's bad. There's also a scandal going around where I want of Zorun's staff are a much, much less prominent person, but I just want to use this story as kind of a way to talk about some I have concerns about C.O. Weaver's their name. She had posted to a housing role in the Mondani administration.

We have a milkshake duck situation where they go back through all of her past Twitter accounts. I'm generally not that fond of. but she wrote a bunch of things about whites. She's white. She writes, private property is a weapon of white supremacy. I endorse a no more white men in office platform. We should impoverish the white middle class.

Homeownership is racist. I wish I believed in God, so I believe that all white men who take credit for the work of women of color would one day burn. I came across a mob of 11-year-old white boy children. I don't know why we keep procreating. Delta should kick all white people in Christmas outfits off planes. All right, that one's funny. I'm not saying that it's the wheeliever's fault that Donald Trump's top donor and advisor is a white supremacist. I'm not.

But I think that we get into a very dangerous spot sometimes with folks on the left who get very comfortable in the identity politics space and then start just throwing around pejoratives about white people all the time. And I think that it's it's right to be a little judicious about this, both because we're in a pluralistic society. And it's just wrong. But also because the backlash, I don't think we want to encourage. white identity politics. And I think that we want to disencourage that as much as possible. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about that. That certainly does encourage white identity politics, which I don't think anybody other than Elon Musk and his fans think is a good idea. Or Nick Plaintess. Maybe unfortunately there's a growing number of people actually

who think it's a good idea. And so I think that's why it's very important to be conscious of trying to disincentivize it as much as possible. Yeah. And the left took like several wrong turns to find themselves in this place where they're like attacking 11-year-old white children. You probably need to retrace your steps at that point and figure out how you got there. And one way they got there was, you know, this academic jargon taking over the left and the idea of white supremacy as a structuring force of society being kind of divorced from whiteness itself, like that, you know, things could become white, how the Irish became white, how the Italians become white, whoever, that non-white people can, like, become white

because whiteness is not actually a racial structure anymore. It stands in for the oppression of people within American society. So you've got that academic argument, which then you get loose with, and then you start just talking about white in this, because now you've defined, like, the structure that you're against as white. white you've tried to explain in your seminar that you don't actually mean white it can be lots of other things that are fall under this rubric and then you start doing what she's doing which is like going after like actual like individual white people or 11 year old white boys and you can trace backwards how you got there but you should probably like head out and take a different turn

even if it's just pragmatically for the reason that you're talking about but also just because there's like a moral and ethical framework we should just judge people's individual Yeah. People should just be judged as individuals. And I just think if you get into a space you're getting reckless with doing pejoratives about people like, like based on their group identity. And obviously white people can have a thick skin. As a white person, I could say, we can have a thick skin. But it's just, you know, I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot.

Yeah. Like, why are you going after the 11 year old white boys? Come, like, come on. Like, what were those kids doing? Like, now, on the other hand, middle schoolers in general are awful. 11 year old boys can be tough. Yes. You have some experience with that?

It's like, I get it. I'm not there yet. But come on. I'm about to be coaching a seven-year-old girls team, and I'm very excited about that. That would be a much of chiller. But so anybody who was a millennial or trying to act like one, you know, throughout starting in the 14-ish, but like accelerating in like 2020 up into, say, 20-2 or three is going to have all sorts of like bananas. posts, including Mayor Ma'am Dani. And so I do think it's an interesting moment where I think there's an argument for

Mom Dani, or let's say, see, we were like, I think it'd be fine to say, look, this is embarrassing and this is, I don't actually hate white people. But then Mom Dani standing behind the person and being like, look, we all said a lot of crazy things. And we're not going to eliminate everybody from public life who said, crazy things during, you know, the late teens and early 20s, because that's the entire, like, left, everyone for the most part. Okay.

Well, do you feel like there's been enough of a reckoning within the left part of the left about that? I mean, that's a, what you just said was a pretty common opinion among like center left abundance bros, right? Well, you just laid out, right? It was like a lot of people got kind of crazy in 2019 and started saying too much identity stuff. We should stop doing that.

Right. But on the left of the left, I don't hear people saying. that quite as explicitly, and I think it's a potential danger. I think if I was a populist leftist or a squad person, I'd be like AOC's, like, I could crush an AOC presidential campaign. I mean, her like rhetoric kind of weaves back and forth between more of a burniest, you know, kind of populist left, culturally neutral. And then she goes through phases where she starts sounding very identitarian, you know,

woke, ultra woke, you know, if you're watching some of her old clips. Yeah. And on that point, then I, yeah, I proudly bear the scars from being somebody who was on the left throughout that period. I mean, people can search and try to prove me wrong. I did not do that and I pushed back pretty consistently against it. And if I had it to do over again, I would push back even harder than I did, even though, you know, back before Musk bought Twitter, I was getting dragged multiple times a week for like pushing back against this kind of thing. I even remember, I defended in 2013, this poor young lady told a joke about AIDS in Africa. She'd lived in Africa for years.

And she tweeted. Justine or something? She's on a plane. Justin Sacco. Yes. Justine Sacco. Why am I wasting my brain on that knowledge instead of like learning Mandarin? Yes.

She tweeted, going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS. she was satirizing like a provincial racist American and then didn't have service until she landed in Africa and was a global name by the time she landed

fired from her job and I remember I even defended her at the time like guys you're being idiots she was telling a joke about racist provincial Americans so do you worry about that there just as a political item that like the squad types haven't really embraced

I don't think there's been a reckoning I think there's been a Homer quietly walking back into the hedges. I got it. And there has been some reckoning. Like after, and I saw that on the rundown, you had the story I did in 21 or 22, whatever it was about the elephant and the Zoom about all of these. We're running out time already, but this is such a good story. So I'll just put a link in it. And the show notes, people can go read it.

But, yeah, for three years ago, it was about how these activist groups basically all the infighting over various woke are. arguments. They were imploding over this kind of thing, and they were weaponizing this language for their own internal grievances. And so there was a reckoning there among organizations of like, how do we continue to be an organization? Like, how does more than one person function collectively together? Because if they can't, like, there's no left. So there's been some reckoning, but nowhere near enough. But yet, on the other hand, I actually think Mom Dani should like hold a line. If you start iron this beat. Yeah, I agree. Don't give scalps. Right. Yeah, don't give scalps.

Right. I mean, I don't know anything about this person. Maybe she was, she was bad higher and would not be good for other reasons, but like, you know, not over this. I've heard great things about her like other than the like, you know, mouthing off crazy anti-white stuff, which sounds great. Okay. I have a whole list of things I want to argue with you about, but fucking an ice agent shot a woman inside a car, which is something we passionately agree about. So we're going to have to do a, we're have to take a little whatever range. to argue later about yumbiaism or various things, but can we just do two minutes on

Liz Cheney discourse? Because I have to do it with you. Can we do two minutes on this? Where are you on Liz Cheney? Like, so here's what I get very frustrated with. Okay, this is, and for folks who are not very online, it's been a great show. We'll see you back tomorrow. I've got some great guests lined up. For folks who are very online, there's like this argument between kind of the establishment or whatever, Democrats and like the left populist types where you spend a lot of time, where, like, a big criticism of the Kamala campaign was that she allowed Trump, going back to this where we were at the top, she allowed Trump to get to the left of him on her on foreign policy. This is, this is part of the argument I agree with, and that she

allowed for, and the Democrats broadly allowed for like the Tim Dillans and Joe Rogans of the world and all of the people they represent, just regular people that don't want war throughout the country to believe wrongly that he was going to be the peace candidate and that a series of choices reinforce that. That narrow argument, I agree with. And I wasn't saying this at the time, so I'll just say I'll throw myself on the mercy of the court. I was wrong about that. I should have been saying that, I think, more clearly at the time. But I think that obviously, like, Trump was able to pull the wool over people's eye on this. The area where I become, when I get in disagreement, is part of the reason Trump was able to pull the wall of people's eyes, because a lot of big

prominent people on the left were going along with his fake bullshit argument. And I get very defensive and get my backup when it's like Liz Cheney and me and my fellow never Trumpers and Bill Crystal and whatever, we did everything we could do help Kamala win because we saw Trump for who he was. And we're just like put me in coach. You know, like Liz Janie wasn't like, I need to be in the cabinet and Kamala must support bombing the Middle East for me to be on her campaign, me to be on her campaign. It's a litmus test. Liz Cheney was like, I support Kamala Harris. And I know personally from being behind the scenes, like, the terrorist campaign didn't even call this Cheney for months.

And she just like, I endorsed her and just and eventually at the end of the campaign, they made a strategic decision to have an event with her. But like, all the folks that came from more of an interventionist side recognized Trump for the threat that he was, opposed him, tried to help. And a lot of people on the left spent the whole campaign pissing in the tent. And then at the end of the campaign, they're like, fucking Liz Jane. his fault. And I'm over here going, no, it's fucking your fault, Hassan, for saying that they were going to be the same. And it's your fault, like, other Glenn Greenwald for going on Fox and shitting on, like, and, you know, this was all predictable. We all knew who Trump was. So anyway, now you see me getting my blood pressure up. So I'm wondering, I would like for you

to adjudicate that dispute between me and your brother. All right. So the counter argument would be, well, and I don't blame Cheney for being Cheney either, like blaming a leopard for being a leopard. It's Kamala for putting her on stage, who would be the one to blame. And who you put on stage matters. So here would be the counter argument. If you talk to, and you know Walid, Shahid, I'm sure. I do know. Like, you probably know other people who are involved in the uncommitted movement in Michigan. This was a very precise, strategic move that was criticized on the left for being too friendly and too open

to the Democratic Party because what they were, and they have said this very publicly, they have said we cannot deliver for you these left anti-war votes just by virtue of our charisma. Like, Wali is

an amazing person, but him just going on Twitter and saying, please vote for Kamala Harris because I Wali'd say that you should, is not actually going to deliver those votes. He needs, and the people that he was allied with, needs something to tell them, something, like some argument that he can make that she is better when it comes to foreign policy and in particular Gaza than Trump will be. Because Trump is

saying things that some people can glom on to and say he's going to be better. And so they came up with this idea. They're like, how about you give a Palestinian American lawmaker a two-minute speech at the DNC that is vetted by you and that is supportive of Kamala Harris? How about you do that? If you do that, then that gives us a way to say, look, you don't like everything she stands for, but we're in the tent. She's listening to us. And so we can fight. for the change that we want when she's in office. The speech, you can find the speech, it's online. Here's the speech.

It's slobbering over Kamala the whole time by a Georgia state lawmaker who's Palestinian American. And she said no. And gave nothing else. Like, okay, you're not doing that. Like, okay, what? Give us something here that we can tell people who's. sole issue here is ending this genocide.

Give us something. And they decided to give nothing. In fact, every time she was asked about it, she would lead with a long recitation of October 7th. And at the time, I could verbatim, I can't do it anymore, but at the time I could verbatim give you her answer every single time she was asked about it.

And that was the decision that she made. I agree with the decision. I agree with you. I agree with the critique. She should have let the Georgia lawmaker speak. I've since texts with that lawmaker and she should have let her speak. I also just think fundamentally, like, Lich Jane didn't speak at the convention. And she didn't go with a list of demands that I want a pro-life activist to be on stage at the convention before I support you.

Like at the end of the day, she went out and gave speeches that was like Donald Trump is a great threat. And at the end of the day, there was not a lot of folks from that uncommitted movement and from the left who are prominent who are out there saying, you know what, you know who Donald Trump's best buddy is, Bebe. And this sucks. And I hate the Kamala is doing this. And I wish that we had done this and that. But like, we have no choice here. Like, you have to vote for her because Donald Trump is about to turn Gaza into fucking, you know, high-rise buildings and let Israel Israelis do whatever they want in the West Bank and blah, blah, blah. And that wasn't that. They didn't do that. They didn't do that. And said, they were like, sorry. It's Janie's fault. Because that wouldn't have landed with people, because Netanyahu is already doing that. Like, Netanyahu is doing it. So, like, I'm sorry they won't let a Palestinian speak. So they won't make any commitments to doing anything differently than Biden, anything. Even Kamala says she was wrong on that score.

Yeah, no, she was obviously wrong on that. I asked her that when I interviewed her. I was like, why didn't you distance from him more? Yeah, if you elect Trump, XYZ terrible thing is going to happen. And if XYZ terrible thing is already happening, that's my point. Like, you could have surrogates who would go out and say that, but it's not going to land for people who are watching it like in real time unfold on their phones. And so, yeah, that's why we get the, well, I guess we need to buy TikTok and, you know,

to have Instagram, censor everything. So my point is like, even if like Hassan Piker is out there begging people. to vote for Kamala. Would have been a try. Would have been a try, I guess. I hear you. No, I hear you. I hear you.

I'm just saying that, like, sitting in my boat, it's like, I would get calls all the time from political reporters who are like, what are the demands of the never Trump movement on Kamala? And I was like, nothing, when? That's the demand. And like, I don't, you know, there might have been a handful of, might have been two or three commentary writers who, or whatever, who are extremely pro-Israel that would have abandoned her if she said that.

but, like, Liz wasn't going to. You know what I mean? Like, the people that were supporting her weren't going to because we were supporting her because we didn't like Trump. And so I get, I get frustrated by that. So then, yeah, it's mystifying to me, like, how she didn't see the importance of it, given the stakes. You know, Don Ozzy Coates has said it better, which is that it's all a proxy for this.

If you won't stand against genocide, how do I trust you to stand up for democracy? Like, and that's the point. Like, you have to convince people that you are worth voting for. And you have to do something to earn that. You, like, you just, it's a fact that there are people in the country that need to be convinced. Like, you could say that you don't like that, that they should already be convinced by the terribleness of the opponent. But it is a fact. That's how I feel.

That's how you feel. And throughout history, there are, there's a chunk of people who do not fit in that category. There always will be. And you can't hector them to be otherwise. You have to either decide, okay, I'm going to try to do something that will win their votes or I will find votes elsewhere. But just like wishing that those kinds of people don't exist is not going to do it. Yeah. I'm not wishing they don't exist.

I just think that the people that were. That influence. I just think you're overstating their influence. I genuinely think you're overstating their influence and ability to change those people's minds. But then I think the counter is true. Like, sure, maybe I'm overstating their influence, but then simultaneously like doing one event with Liz Cheney where they had a roundtable or whatever when she didn't even speak. Also, overstates. Sometimes I feel like, okay, really?

Like, what's Liz Cheney's name ID in the country? 30%. Like, it was like, you know, that was the thing. Also, you know what I mean? So I think that could work, that cuts. We embed symbolism in these moments. That's why, like, is a two-minute speech from a Palestinian speaker like that big of a deal? No, she should have.

Absolutely. She should have done. Of course not. But, like, we embed it with extra significance. So the fact that, and I think that that actually, that Liz then getting the stage. Not of the convention. After not giving it. What's that?

The convention. She wasn't at the convention. Not at the convention. That's important. Some things are people don't remember. I just want to. Which, I know what if, if Kamel was like, look, the, look, the convention. booked and I heard from DNC people that are like

that there were all these pedestrian reasons they couldn't do it because oh the climate people are going to want somebody or the Oregonians are going to want somebody it's like okay fine then say we'll do an event next week with her sure and we'll go to Georgia together

you could do that and be like and the uncommitted folks be all right you know what annoying that you can't find two minutes in this like endless affair but okay you're going to get on stage then fine like that's that's something

but my point is like the second that Hassan if you don't give Hassan anything to tell his audience and he still then comes and said well look Trump's so bad he then stops being the person

that's going to influence them like he's now a different person so now you need other more radical people to do the thing that you want them to do so there's a reality to these people

like views of the conflict that aren't going to be changed by influencers. Influencers don't have the influence that we think. They then get it rejected by their audience. I'm glad we did that. That was a 14 minute, I should put this by on the paywall.

14 minutes sickos only bonus discourse over the DNC convention. I appreciate you taking me extra time. My fighting list includes YIMBY. It includes other Middle Eastern policy stuff. It includes the investment. The big investor houses. The big investor houses. I'm going to create a whole list for us. We'll just do a little. We'll figure something out. It's on. All right. Drop site news. Everybody go support it. That's Ryan Grimm. We're back tomorrow. It's going to be a good one. I promise you. We'll see you all then. Peace. driven snow