The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Epstein, Civil Liberties and the New Public Shaming with Ankush Khardori

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Ankush Khardori. They discuss the Epstein files, Kathy Ruemmler, civil liberties, public shaming and whether the release of Epstein-related documents has generated more heat than facts. They also discuss cancel culture, online mobs, Anthony Weiner, anti-Semitism, and the broader consequences of judging people through leaked communications. Ankush Khardori is a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. He has been the legal affairs columnist for Politico and New York Magazine and has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, TIME and many more. Khardori regularly provides legal commentary and analysis on television, radio, and podcasts -- including CNN, MS NOW, the BBC, and NPR. CHAPTERS 04:40 How Ankush Got the Kathy Ruemmler Story08:00 The Epstein Files and Civil Liberties Debate12:00 What the Document Releases Actually Revealed22:30 Kathy Ruemmler, Bill Gates, and Jeffrey Epstein29:00 The Human Cost of Public Accusations42:40 The Cornell Student Anti-Semitism Controversy48:40 Internet Mobs, Cancellation, and Public Shaming

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the World Famous Comedy Seller. Dan Natterman here, along with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the World Famous Comedy Seller, with locations in New York's historic Greenwich Village and Las Vegas, Nevada. The new Comedy Cellar Comedy Theater on West Third and Sixth Avenue will be opening. Well, it's been four weeks now for the past six months. Kind of like Fusion, you know? Fifty years in the Future. and always will be. Anyway, we also have Periel Ashen brand with us. Hello. Producer on-air personality and

with us via the miracle of Zoom. I should have invested when I had the chance. Ancush Cardori, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor who writes and provides commentary on national legal affairs. And Kush, I'm sorry, has been the legal affairs columnist for Politico in New York Magazine and has contributed to numerous publications. Welcome, An Kush from wherever you, you are. Where are you? Thank you. I'm in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. So before we get started with, so I'll push for it, a column,

or I guess a column is the right-with thing, or I'm trying to pause while I can get this mouse to work, called, she was one of Obama's top lawyers. How did she get tangled up with Epstein? And he's going to tell us about this, Kathy, how do you pronounce her name? Rumler.

Rumler. She was a lawyer at Goldman Sachs. But before we get to that, I just want to say, Dan, that the club is not going to open up when I thought it would. We're probably another eight weeks out now because we didn't have a proper fence around the air conditioner on the roof. Oh, God. I know. Don't even. And you said there was a placard next to the elevator that wasn't there.

Well, the placard next to the elevator is a minor thing. Actually, you could self-certify by sending me a picture of that. But the structure around the roof is a big one. And I can't tell you why they didn't build it. But they didn't build it. I mean, I could suspect why they didn't build it. So that's really been getting me down. And then I also had my son was Bar Mitzford this week.

And that went very well. So that's it. That's what's new with me. And your humongous screen works perfectly. The big video screen in the club. It's a beautiful resolution. Was it 15 feet by 20 feet or something? It's 16 feet by 9.

16 by 9 is the ratio of a HD TV. It's actually 16 feet wide and 9 feet high. Oh, wow. Now, was that the first thing that was really formally screened on there? was Mani's Bar Mitzvah video? Yes, that was the first Vincent screened on it. And Noam got the first laugh on that stage.

Did I? I think so. You mentioned something about Jews as you often do. Oh no, that was hilarious. I forgot to tell you that. So it was Mani's Bar Mitzvah and the theme was poker and gambling

and there was this really cool kind of glass, money blowing box. Yeah. And what did you say on stage? I have no recollection. You don't? And Juanita had put it up and she made this really beautiful speech. It's one of those boxes where everybody's like trying to grab the dollars as many dollars as they can inside the box.

And Juanita had put this whole thing together and she said that she hoped she did a good job because she's not Jewish. It was really beautiful and heartfelt. And then you got on stage and you said, well, you know, you basically built like a Jew box. Oh, no, no. What I said was, and then we'll get to it. What I said, no, it's funny that you have the, you remember totally wrong. What I said was, because it looks like a rolled doll, Jew trap. Because, you know, he was a terrible anti-Semite.

And in Willy Wonka and in that book, Witches, he'll do things like that to induce. So here's like all the money blowing around. Like, like, it's Willy Wonka-ish, right? Like, Baruka, Daddy, I want a golden ticket now. Okay, let's get to, so that's, yeah. It's really sad that he's Turned out to be We've known it for a long time

He's such a defective person Because he is a great writer Boy, was he Well, you can separate the art from the artist Yeah I you have to separate the art from the artist Right okay Okay, I'm Cush So

First of all, what led you to look into this Kathy Rumler Epstein story Well actually she reached out to me back in March. I was still at Politico at the time writing a column and, you know, a bunch of news outlets have been approaching her, asking her to, you know, do interviews on the record. And, you know, she approached me and, you know, had been following what I've been writing and what I've been saying about this topic and agreed to speak to me, ask if, really, I'd be

willing to do it with her. And I agreed to do it, you know, a series of interviews with her. exclusively and, you know, through that process, you know, obviously you're digging into emails and reporting on her. And, you know, I ended up spending several hours speaking to her on the record. So that's what kind of drove me. I wasn't, you know, Epstein Files is not a subject that I've been sort of reaching for over the last year. Yeah, that's not your usual beat? Right, right. It's sort of something that sort of come upon us, right? And I feel like, you know, was at Politico, I'd be asked to write from time to time on it. And, you know, I think I've been

something of an outlier a bit in the media coverage. And she recognized that and thought she would get a fair hearing, so to speak. All right. So, okay, first of all, you know, you're one of my favorite writers and analysts. And personally, I like you, too. But I do want to take you to task on one little detail here of this column because it, I'm just wondering if there's more to the story than, you know, then as a parent. And then we'll get into the story. You said in the column, the Epstein files, how, well, no one's going to know what I'm talking about.

So she, there's lots of correspondence between this woman and Jeffrey Epstein. After he, this was after he was convicted and served his time in Florida, right? And. And, and, um, so. So this has gotten her and many other people in hot water. But you have this one little thing here where you said that the Epstein Files paint a damning picture of their relationship. Among their emails were elliptical messages about, quote, girls.

And then the quote is, careful, I will renew an old habit, he once wrote. But then later in the column you reveal, and then I looked at it too, that actually he didn't mean old habit like I'm going to start with young girls again. And he meant an old habit like he wasn't referring to girls. He was calling them girls instead of women. And he broke the habit. And so then he, I think she referred to girls. And he's like, girls, careful.

So it's actually not a damning picture of the thing. And I looked into it. I didn't see anything in all their correspondence, which was actually damning. Did you? Well, certainly things that weren't questions. It shows the word paint deliberately, by the way. A painting is not a photograph. Okay.

So that's kind of where I was driving at, right? There's this image, conception of their dealings that everybody has sort of accepted at face value. And the point of the piece is as you get further into it is to complicate that and sort of bring some facts to bear on it. But in the end, listen, I don't know where you stand on this. And I want to give you every opportunity to tell us what you think we ought to take away from this thing. I'll tell you that I am extremely and have been extremely uncomfortable with this entire issue because there's a huge part of me which says, number one, it's none of anybody's business who associates with who in America.

Number two, I have no way of knowing, and actually this comes out in your column, what these people who associated with him knew, didn't know, what stories he told them that they chose to believe, what the nature of the relationship was. was, and three, although it's sort of what I already said, I feel like the entire system of America depends on the notion that after you've done your time, you can reenter society, and we want you to reenter society, and that the kind of categorical imperative extreme of what seems to be, the conventional wisdom is here, is that these people, even after it,

they do their time, should never have friends again, never work again. They should go on public assistance, I guess, because anybody who actually does hire them and has a relationship with them is now some sort of villain. The entire thing stinks to me. And what happened to Larry Summers, who is an outrage to me that the government released his emails that were gathered in a criminal investigation,

and his emails have nothing to do with the criminal investigation, And they ruined him and everybody's, yeah, firing from Harvard. The whole thing is anti-civil liberties to me, anti-American, bad for America. I could go on and on. And yet, I seem to be a very lone voice on this. Everybody, including civil libertarians, I know, are like, well, he shouldn't have been talking to that guy, you know. But when it comes to, if I could just interject. Yeah.

When it comes to this particular crime, there is no forgiveness and there is, no statute of limitations on that person being a pariah. Yeah, except Mike Tyson was convicted of rape and he's, you know, the toast of the town. Well, but rape with an underage woman is the unforgivable crime. As opposed to, okay, go ahead, I'll push you. Go ahead. You know, first of all, I think you and I are probably roughly in the same camp here. I agree. You know, I was a federal prosecutor, and I don't think there should be a categorical rule that says if you've committed a felony, no one should ever associate with you.

You know, the facts matter, and specific circumstances matter, as Dan just indicated, right? We can talk about the nature of this specific conviction and what it was about and what people thought they knew about it. And, you know, from a civil liberties perspective, I agree. I think this whole thing has been a mess. I mean, when the bill was, law was proposed to, you know, disclose all this material a year ago, I mean, I was public saying I thought it was a terrible idea. Good.

I said this publicly in interviews. I thought it was a terrible idea. because I didn't think it would resolve anything. I thought it would cause more confusion, perpetuate more conspiracy theories, and do more harm than good. And, you know, we're now a year out. We're six months following the big release.

Or, you know, the second tranche came in January. But here we are, you know, it's in the middle of June. And it's been a lot more heat than, you know, I think facts and clarity. Has there been a single? revelation from these files which changed our understanding of anything about this case? I don't think so. I mean, to me, the omissions are more conspicuous than at this point than what people think that they've seen it.

And hopefully we can talk about, you know, what is in the emails on Rumler. I'm happy to get into all that specifically. But here are a couple of things I just like to point out to people. You know, when this bill was proposed, the premise was that the documents would reveal people who participated in Epstein's crimes, right? Rokana went on Meet the Press last December, and he said that Epstein had ran a rape island where rich and powerful men abused young girls with community. I've always found the phrase rape island to be very strange and disturbing, but let's just set that to the side. It's like a very cavalier treatment of the facts, but set that to the side. Now, Rokane has not identified any rich and powerful men.

He got his documents. He slandered some people on the House floor, who he inadvertently described as having some Epstein affiliation, but he can't be sued because he did it on the House floor, which I'm sure was no accident, and I think makes it do a little worse, actually. But I think the premise of the law has not been satisfied, right? We have not found a credible, credibly identifiable. identified men who attended rape island in Rokane's phrase and abused young girls. And instead, there has been a conspicuous retreat to a fallback position, which is, you know,

did you associate with Epstein after his 2008 conviction? Now, before we get into the specifics on that, we just, those are totally two extraordinarily different questions, right? And I kind of think that the politicians who pushed this have really, like played a bit of a shell game here because they have not conceded the first point, but they're all in on the second point. And you have Rokano in particular, who talks about very, very aggressively about this stuff, but then you see him campaigning with Graham Platner, right? So I don't feel like this has been entirely on the level. And then the other thing

I would point out is that, you know, if people had questions, as many, many people do, about the scope of the investigation, how it was conducted, whether certain leads were followed, words, you know, that sort of thing. There were other much better ways to go about this. For one, Congress could call the actual prosecutors and investigators who investigated the case and ask them these questions. For some reason, they are not doing that. That is by far the most obvious lowest hanging fruit, right? Ask them these questions. They probably have some answers. You may not accept them all, but it will definitely assist you. And then, you know, I always figured, like if people really wanted sort of an exhaustive rundown,

that there should have been something like an Epstein commission, right? Like a 9-11 commission type body, a couple of highly respected former prosecutors, give them a staff, give them resources, give them a mandate to report back to Congress and the American public. But that would have cost money. And the law that Congress passed, just mandating that Justice Department release all these files,

appeared to be costless. Congress didn't have to appropriate any funds. It wasn't actually costless because 500 federal prosecutors were redacting documents for more than a month instead of doing their actual jobs, which I'm sure for some of them included investigating and prosecuting ongoing sex crimes cases and ongoing child sex trafficking cases. So extending those investigations from resolution, if we're going to be really sort of to the point about it, is extending the harm that is being done to the victims in those investigations. So this was not costless, not remotely costless. Yeah, and it turns everything that we were raised to understand about how our justice system works upside down. And I'm sure there's some retorts to this, but in general, I think this is true. So, for instance, normally we put procedures ahead of justice.

It's like if you don't read somebody their rights, even if they killed somebody, they're going to walk free. if you took that evidence in a way that you didn't have a proper warrant for it, doesn't matter how many people they killed in that room, they're going to walk free. Well, that evidence won't be admitted. They might not walk free. Okay, Dan, you follow my point, right?

I do, but I'm kind of precise. Yeah. No, it is precise what I said. Okay, so, and if... Now I'm off my train of thought. All right, so, and here, Here, you have people's private communications being released to the public without even any kind of probable cause or the color of a criminal investigation in the hopes of maybe catching some crime that we don't even know has happened yet because the public wants blood. because there's blood on the one,

the public calls for it. And we, you know, if we know anything, we know that one thing the justice system should not be responding to is the blood lust for, you know,

retribution and punishment from people carrying pitchporks in the street. And that's exactly what everybody buckled to here. And they did it claiming they were righteous, righteous in doing so.

This is not America. No, look, this law has lost in the past, and it's done more harm than good. And by the way, I know people have, you know, rifled through the emails and have regarded them as revelatory in various respects. Let me assure you that the government has many, many more emails from many, many other criminal investigations involving politicians, rich and powerful people, people who are not rich and powerful. And I really just don't think it's a good idea for the standard to be, and this is sort of to your point, that if enough people are sort of up in arms about it, then all of a sudden the standard confidentiality around those, that discovery that the prosecutors have obtained no longer obtains. It's just, you know, it is a reversal of the standard process, and it is unfair, I think, at a very basic level to the people who were never alleged to have anything to do with him. I mean, Kathy Rumler has never been alleged to have it had any thing to do with Jeffrey Epstein's underlying criminal misconduct, but people feel like because they've been exposed or have access to this subset of her digital life, which is what it is. It's a very small shard of her digital life, that they kind of have all the facts and know everything that they need to know. And, you know, there is a reason why federal prosecutors, when they're investigating cases, don't just gather documents and go around indicting people, right?

You have to talk to people. You have to talk to people on the communications. You have to have an open mind. People can change your mind. You may misread certain things. I think many people have misread that girl's email, right, that you mentioned at the top of the show. And when you hear her account of it, it sort of clicks, right?

Yeah. But this is not something you would know unless you spoke to her about it. And instead, there's been this real rush to judgment based on, you know, this cold sort of documentary record. And no competent investigator. And I say that referring to FBI agents, federal prosecutors, even private lawyers who conduct internal investigations would stop at documents. You have to do interviews. You have to keep an open mind.

You have to speak to people. And you have to prepare to be surprised and persuaded off of your preconceptions. You know, I can say one thing. And then I'll let you give us the whole narrative of this Romler. But so we, Anthony Weiner, who. had a sex scandal with underage girls, right? I don't think, nothing like Epstein. He didn't actually touch any of them,

but it's a serious thing. And he ran for a city council in my district here. So he contacted me. And he was the most moderate of everybody running. So, you know, it is important to me to have government, which is business friendly. And so I met with him. and he did this show.

And when I met with him, I can't lie. He was very personable, and he spoke convincingly about his regret for the things that he had done. And he did hard time, which, which, you know, I was like, this guy did hard time and then was working in a halfway house, you know, and he... Wasn't like a club fed. It was a legit, you know, prison? Legit prison. Yeah, he spoke about it here, like legit prison. and and I had, you know, and then I had dinner with him one time,

and I was deeply conflicted about it because I have a daughter, and the crimes are serious, and what he did was serious. But what I did learn from that experience is how easily you become inured to it and how easily you could get seduced into a relationship, over time with someone and just kind of it's it loses its potency what their past misbehavior was and you can find yourself intertwined with somebody you never thought

that you would be intertwined with. I think this is a human reality and you know if if Anthony Wiener were to God forbid recid recidific is that the word? And then there'd be emails, somewhat friendly emails between the two of us, you know, discussing something, you know, in politics. Again, everything might have seen is much, much worse in this case. But, like, that I'm, I'm a free person in America. I shouldn't have to answer to anybody if I want to have dinner with Anthony Weiner, you know,

like that's, that's what's true. You don't have to have dinner with him. You don't have, but you know, it's none of your fucking business. You can't drag me through the public square because you don't like the fact that I had dinner with somebody that you don't approve of. Bill Clinton's still out there. We all pretty much suspect what he did. All right. So you want to run through the narrative? It's a very interesting story of your column. Yeah. So, you know, Jeffrey Epstein is charged and pleads guilty in 2008 to procuring a child for a prostitution. In 2014, Kathy Rumler, who was at the White House counsel, had just left her position there.

And she was returning to the private sector. She had spent most of her time working in the public sector. She was a federal prosecutor. She worked on the Enron case. She had served in a senior position as the Justice Department as well. And as she tells it, she got a cold call from Epstein, who just called her law firm's line before she had even started. She didn't even have her email set up. And he tells, eventually the call is routed to one of her partners at the firm who takes the message for her.

And eventually they connect. And he says, you know, I've been referred to you by Larry Summers and this prominent criminal defense attorney. And, you know, I have this project that I'm working on with Bill Gates. It's the largest donor advice fund ever. He's looking for a lawyer and a firm to sort of quarterback the, legal work that would need to be done. And this is an unusual project in the world of law firms because it's both lucrative and good for the world, which is usually not the case that both of those conditions are satisfied in private law firms. And she ends up meeting with Gates and Epstein

within a few weeks at the four seasons in Manhattan. Now, that project does not take off, But they eventually begin working both of them for a Swiss bank that needed representation and connection with Justice Department investigations. Epstein was not her client. Epstein was an intermediary between her and this particular client, same way he was going to be between her and Bill Gates. And now we know this about him. He was a prolific connector of people. So at this point in time, you know, she – and by the way, her relationship with his – is entirely – sort of tied to this professional relationship and this representation. Yes, there are a lot of emails,

but she never texted him. She never went out to dinner with him. She never introduced him to people like John Brennan, who he asked her to introduce him to. And so there were lines that she sort of held to with him. She regarded it as a professional relationship at its core that had, you know, personal elements tied onto it. But really, this is a professional services relationship. Can I interject? Because I think, I don't know where in the timeline this is, but she also got the impression somehow that he was not aware of how old the girls were. Correct. No, this is exactly what I was going to get to.

And this, I think, will help sort of answer maybe some of Dan's questions, too. So at this point, you know, it's 2014. It's years after the conviction. But she does dig in to try to figure out, well, what was going on here. And she looks at the procedural history surrounding the case, which is very convoluted. But he got a slap on the wrist, right? We know that now. And in hindsight, we can say that was a bungled investigation. But to, I think, the outside world suggested that the case was weak.

And among the things that she reviewed was a letter put in by one of Epstein's lawyers to federal prosecutors. The letter was written by a woman who was a very high-ranking former sex crimes prosecutor in the Justice Department, who is now a sitting appeals court judge. She was appointed by Barack Obama. And this letter, it's a fairly lengthy letter, it's public, I think it's linked to in the piece, argues very aggressively that there was not actually credible evidence that Epstein knew

that the girls were underage. This is actually the key to hit, like the central point of his defense as a factual matter. And now this is coming from a former DOJ prosecutor, someone who was already on the bench by the time Rumler is reading this letter, And it's a very lengthy letter. Rumler also was hearing from Epstein himself, of course, saying, you know, I made a mistake.

I'm remorseful. It's in the past, so on and so forth. And he also told her, and this is backed up by documents and reporting, that he had been socializing and meeting with one of the senior prosecutors who oversaw the case, a guy named Matt Menthal after he went into the private sector. I have never heard of anything like this happening. a senior prosecutor in an office meeting with a defendant that they were investigating. But if I were to hear that fact cold, I would think that the case was weak and that the federal

prosecutor did not think that there was really any there there. Otherwise, why would you be doing this? Yeah, of course. So there's all of these circumstances that I think she would say, signal to her that this was not what we now know it to be. Right. It looked very different. And hindsight bias is a very, very real thing. And we have to do our best to put ourselves in her shoes based on the information she had in 2014. And, you know, it turns out to be the case that, you know, our knowledge has developed and evolved since then. But those core facts around the conviction are still the same. And, you know, one other fact that I think is really important here that I think has gotten washed out in a lot of the coverage is that, you know, when the federal government charged Jeffrey Epstein and Jelaine Maxwell, the charged cost.

the charged conduct ended in 2005, nearly a decade before Rumler had any dealings with him, and yet she's being tagged with, oh, well, you must have known, oh, you know, you were perpetuating the abuse of women, and we cannot hold someone like her to a higher standard of knowledge than the federal government had at the time. And the federal government's position with the discontact had ended in 2005. And actually, if you put all of the items sort of in sequence, you can see how, after, the 2008 conviction, he may have changed his modus operandi to prey on barely legal women, right? And I do think this is consistent with a lot of what we know. So there was a lot of, you know, circumstances around this that, you know, people don't know.

And Rumler herself, you know, she was, she prosecuted sex crimes when she was a prosecutor. I mentioned this in the piece. She was herself, the victim of sexual assault. But for some reason, she is not entitled to the same presumption of good faith that other people are entitled to when they describe those sorts of events. And, you know, I would say last but not least, and I'll turn it back to you, folks. You know, you described your meeting with Weiner, and that all makes very good sense. Rumler was extremely emotional during these three hours, extremely emotional. And one of the things I kind of regret is that there wasn't the ability for us to tape these interviews

in the, you know, the properly produced way and to put them out. Because I think if you see someone, as she was grappling with this, I found it persuasive. She was extremely emotional. There were tears. And she was saying things like, you know, I feel like I'm on trial, but I don't know what the crime is. I can't believe, you know, after everything I've done in my career, I'm the victim of sexual assault. I know women who've been harassed and sexually assaulted, women my age, pretty much all of, you know, most of them have been through something like that. And she's like, it's extremely painful to me that people would assume that I was facilitating.

these sorts of crimes when, you know, nothing really about her professional history should lead you to believe that she would do such a thing. Yeah. There's so much to this story. First of all, I just, I just agree with you.

I just agree with you. This woman did nothing wrong. She's not accused of doing anything wrong. There's no narrative here, which even if you take the narrative at its most extreme presentation, she didn't do anything wrong. It's just a moral panic.

And, you know, with Epstein... I agree with that, by the way. It's a moral panic. Yeah. With Epstein, there's a cable of interest, but there's many strands that make up that cable.

And one of the strands is obviously that the kind of Tucker Carlson wing is looking for the Jewish control of the government. This is clearly, if you look at the people who are really on fire about Epstein, it's actually not the feminists, right? It's not the people whose heart most bleed

for the victims of sexual assault, really in this latest iteration. It's been the Tucker Carlson types. Then there is the Me Too stuff. And then there is the people, this is related to it. Israel, but it's also discreet, looking to see, you know, that Epstein was involved with intelligence and was an op of some kind, regardless of the fact that he's Jewish.

And nobody actually admits that that's what's fueling them. Everybody claims they're only, Ro Khanna is only doing this because his heart bleeds for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. And that's total fucking bullshit. That has nothing to do with his agenda here. Nothing at all. And it became, I've seen Michael Tracy's been good on this, but I'm sure you know chapter and verse.

It's been comical when he's actually been from time to time put on the spot and asked to actually, can you be specific about who a victim was? How old are they? What happened? And he just ducks the question. There's not even, to my knowledge, there's not one clear paragraph about some, victim, which is uncontested and true and ought to make us all at least have some sympathy for this. The more and more we learn about it, the more and more it seems to me that the entire thing is smoke.

I don't know. Are there details I don't know about? I don't think so. I mean, I'll give you some context on Rocahnah that I think, you know, is consistent with your view. a couple of interesting episodes actually that I'd not described before. Late last year, I was on a television show talking about this and basically saying, I think that this may have been unwise and may prove to have been a not a useful expenditure of the country's time. And Rokana takes that clip and says, you know, the lawyer for a victim sent this to me. I don't know if I believe that, but set that to the side. Because lawyers aren't just clipping video clips from primetime cable news shows, but nevertheless,

He says, somebody just sent this to me. I don't know who this Ankish Kedori guy is, but, you know, how dare he, you know, diminish the seriousness of these crimes and try to facilitate this cover-up? There are all these co-conspirators that we already know about. But who is this guy? Well, actually, I've met Rokaneh. It was August 23rd, 2024 at O'Hare Airport. It was the day after the last day of the Democratic National Convention. I interviewed him for a column.

It was on the record. He was quoted in it. He pushed his phone number upon me because he wanted to. me to get in touch when I was back in Washington, which is something I did not do because I've not found anything he's done to be particularly noteworthy or, you know, interesting from my perspective to be amplified. So this is just, you know, a casual tweet. He blasted out to all of his, you know, followers or whatever on all of his social channels, and it's wrong and misleading. A second little episode to your point about, you know, what he does when people are kind of

press him on this. One of my last columns at Politico was about why, you know, we should be skeptical that there will be more charges of Epstein people. I don't think that that is going to happen. And I did, you know, for Massey and Kana, I had gone through some of their prior remarks, and I, you know, pulled out very specific claims that they had made, including Kana and some of his media appearances, where he says people were attending parties where young women and 15, 14 were paraded naked. I don't think that there's any, I don't think that's true. But specific things he had said, and I put them all in an email to him and just, you know, to his staff and it's just like, okay, well, what is the basis for this? If he refers to this person,

what is he talking about, so on and so forth. And immediately, his staff and him go ballistic. They start sending emails to me, and Rokhanna himself sends a personal email to me saying, you know, how dare you, you're trivializing this, you're basically a co-conspirator, kind of tried to kill the piece by going to editors at Politico. It did not work. The piece ran. It had no influence on the content of the piece. And, you know, the next day, he's having breakfast with a Congressetter at Politico and tells him, well, you know, I don't agree with all of it, but the piece was fair in the end. So, you know, these are just, and I haven't talked about any of this before because I don't want to, like,

make this an issue, like, appeared to be, like, at odds with him. But of course, that has colored my view of the situation to see how this is handled behind closed doors outside of public view. I mean, politicians are just the worst, right? It doesn't matter which part of they are, what their ideology. Well, I mean, just, it's amazing to me that he has no sort of, you know, it's a zero tolerance, you know, if you ever sent an email to Jeffrey Epstein. But he has all of the understanding and well of forgiveness for Graham Platner, who's actually done things much worse than anything Kathy Runger has done. Allegedly.

What difference are we to draw from that, except that this is political? What is Graham Platner accused of doing? Well, you know, the times that, well, cheating on his wife or being on these apps and potentially, you know, trying to reach other women, physically sort of being, I don't know if abusive is the right word, but physically aggressive with one of his old girlfriends. The tattoo, I don't believe him, that he didn't know the meaning of the tattoo

before he started running for office. But Rokana is very content to just forgive him and to take his work for everything. And I just, I have a hard time with that. Yeah, I mean, we get sidetracked, but the tattoo thing is, so for years on this show, I don't think you were listening back then,

during the peak of wokeness, I just always said, everybody's full of shit. Nobody really cares about this stuff. You know, everybody's just looking for influence and it's opportunistic. But this is like such a beautiful illustration of this. You can come up with so many easy hypotheticals of anybody having, like any Republican, any conservative having a white supremacy tattoo or what was the exact

He's got an SS Nazi tattoo Was it the 2S is the lightning bolt? No, it's a... Oh, it's the death head. What is the tattoo exactly? A tot and cope or something. I think that's the phrase. It's not an SS.

Cope is a head, right, cough, right? Yeah. You have to know a little something, I think. And he referred to it. He referred to it as my toten cough, so he knows what it is. But whether he knew or not, we lived through an age

where nobody give a shit. shit, if you knew or didn't know. It was just, you know, intentions didn't matter. We had, it was some Washington Post reporter when the blackface thing happened who admitted to her friends at a party or something that years ago she had dressed up in blackface to a Halloween party or something like that. And they fired her. They fired her for something that she just admitted that she had done years ago.

obviously not a racist. Nobody cared. We had a weatherman who somehow got his words tangled and said Martin Luther Coon instead of Martin Luther King. But the next word after he was supposed to say rhymed with Coon. So he obviously just, and now we have a, but he's a liberal, he's a progressive, and he's wearing a Nazi tattoo. And all the rest goes out the window, right? I mean, it's really hard to take. It's a bit much. It is. And I'll say, I don't want to, you know, present this as if I've reached conclusions about

Plattenor. I would want to extend to him the same open-mindedness. I would extend to others. But this is what's in sort of the public domain at the moment. And to my mind, even the tattoo thing, just I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on it. It's not so much an issue of what he knew when he got it. But I just think I can't quite buy his claim that he just learned about the media. when he started to run for office.

And there's been reporting that really, really very seriously calls that claim into question. And if you're running for public office, your honesty is really central to, I think, your candidacy or it should be. So that's the thing that's sort of, you know, I think is worrisome to me on that front. But again, I don't want to suggest that, you know, all of this is true or verified because he has denied some of this as well. But my only point is that these denials are sufficient in some contexts. context when they're politically convenient, but it's zero tolerance in others when your political objectives are different. So just to be clear, I'm not even indicting Platner here. I'm indicting the people who are defending him or looking the other way. I actually had an employee once

who had a Nazi tattoo. And he had been a Hells Angel, he'd been an ex-con. He'd been an ex-con. he he he he he it was a genius and he became one of the greatest employees we ever had ever ever ever in all lives what swastika yeah he had a swastika yeah John Capolino

but I could just be easily was a swastika or was the I think it was or the two Sers or maybe both but you know it was so I I can totally understand how knuckleheads put these tattoos on and it doesn't mean that he's actually a Nazi. And I would accept that, you know.

But shouldn't he have at least added to the swastika to make it into like a four square thing? He's a fan of four square. So, but... I mean, did he still espouse those views when he was working here, or had he moved on? I don't think he ever had those views.

It was just like a macho or outrageous things to do. I don't, I don't, he was not a Nazi. I don't think Platner, I don't know anything about Platner. I just feel like he's probably not a Nazi. Agreed. He's probably not, you know. Agreed. But we lived through an age where people didn't really care whether you could make the case.

I'm not actually a Nazi. I didn't really mean it. Or I was just, I was just, you had people fired from, by the same people who were defending Platner for quoting the N-word, just recounting. a conversation, just recounting a conversation and their careers are ended. And those same people are now telling us, well, just because he has a Nazi tattoo and lies about it and has had it for the, you can't judge somebody for that. This, you know, it's become a cliche. This is why we have Trump. Like, you know, when you hear enough of these stories, you're like, fuck it. You're going

to tell me Trump's so bad. You're bad too. ties in beautifully with the guy at Cornell that sent the email. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to get to. Well, if you want to do that now. Well, let me just outline... You know about this story?

The Cornell guy? I'll pull it up. This guy... I don't think so. So this guy at Cornell, this student at Cornell, Austin Franco is his name. And so he was on some message board or whatever. I don't know what it's called.

Looking for jobs. And so these... Jewish guys, Ben Einhorn, I think, is his name. They have a startup company, and they wanted to interview this Cornell student. And he wrote, sorry, I have no interest in working for Jews. Not interested in working for a Jew. All right. Just trying to be precise.

Okay, well, fair enough. So Einhorn posted it with the, as far as I know, with the last name crossed out. But the first name in the school he went to, Cornell, were visible. And it wasn't a particularly common for his name, Austin. I would imagine it would be. Anyway, so. Somebody triangulated it back. Somebody triangulated it back to Austin Franco.

And Franco actually wrote, he may be on the spectrum. Maybe you should call him Autism Franco. But he wrote that, you know, my experiences with Jews haven't been good. There are some exceptions, but overall, it's something an autistic person would write. You know, this is not. But anyway, so this is blown. up and there have been all sorts of, you know, calls for him for Cornell to get rid of him and people are on the internet screaming, he should never work. And then, of course, there's the other

side of the coin saying, this is why people don't like Jews, because you want to fucking destroy this kid over a private email. I'm actually more on their side, but, you know, without the anti-Semitism. But, and it's certainly not every Jew that's calling for his head. there's also somebody posted something where he allegedly posted something on Instagram, I think, on Hitler's birthday with a picture of Hitler saying happy birthday. So anyway, you know, that's the story, essentially. You know, what do you do with somebody that's at? My feeling is you send somebody sends an email saying, I don't want to work for Jews.

You say, what a fucking asshole, and you move on with your life. I agree. I agree. Just let it go. I mean, you're not going to change the world by coming down on this kid. Disagree. You disagree? Yeah, I totally disagree.

Okay, then articulate your reason. Why shouldn't that be made public? Like, I mean, why are you going to be given like some sort of a pass to see? If you said that about any other group of people, you would be put on blast so hard. I don't want to work for gay people. I mean, why? Well, I think you'd have the same thing what happened. Some people would be calling for his head.

Others would be saying, let it go. I don't think it would be much different. I mean, the anti-Semitism adds another layer to this. But, you know, I think that it's- And internet mobs are dangerous, and I'm generally against that kind of thing. I just think that it should be public knowledge

so that now Jews and Jews, and people who don't like anti-Semitism can have that information so they can make an informed decision not to hire him. I'll Cush. You're not Jewish, but you look like Jerry Seinfeld. Well, I'm curious, Dan, has he provided any kind of account of his own sort of account of this? Yeah, he said, yeah, my experience with Jews has been unfavorable. I don't really like the, yeah.

I mean, he's fairly articulate for an anti-Semite. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yes. As Noam says, we are a bit much. But even that... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So, okay, so that's not helpful because he's kind of leaning into it.

He is indeed. Yeah. So here, look, here's what I'd say. I want to take a step back because I don't know the facts. I'm just hearing this from you as a general matter. First of all, I don't know what our lives, you know, you folks and me were all, I think, roughly in the same age, how they would have unfolded if we had been operating in these same. sorts of environments with these same sorts of conventions. And, you know, the other thing I'd say is, you know, our phones contain these phones and,

you know, computers contain, you know, a million digital shards of our life, right? And when one of them breaks loose, there is a temptation for people to, you know, seize on it and feel like that they understand this person and everything about them and can sort of jump to these conclusions. But, you know, I'm sure we all, I know, we all have things in our phones that that if they were dumped into the public domain out of context would look bad, chat with friends, emails with friends, that sort of thing, things that were sarcastic, whatever. And so I am reluctant to definitively do anything to folks just based on a document. Like I said, as an investigator, as a prosecutor, as a lawyer, a document is the start of an inquiry. It is not the end of an inquiry.

And again, I just, I have sort of a mantra of mine, as this, after this piece has come out, But I've just been telling people like, you know, we should just try to extend to people the same open-mindedness and grace that we would want for ourselves if we found ourselves in the same position. That does not mean we have to agree with them. Does not mean we have to buy their stories. But it does mean that perhaps we should start with a presumption of open-mindedness about it. So that doesn't answer the specific facts of the case because I just don't know enough about it. But that's sort of my general view of the sort of climate that we're in right now. and, you know, I find the sort of zero-tolerance elements of it to be, you know, highly unfortunate because I just think, you know, shards of our lives, these digital shards, are not representative of who we are.

They're just that. But let's assume that it is representative of who he is as a hypothetical argument. Well, it is because he said that. I have thoughts about it. Okay. So first of all, this all has to be seen as most things do. You have to think about it in a macro way in terms of what the world will actually look like if you make this point. First of all, as I used to say, once you start setting up an expectation that people's lives can be ruined and outed as it were,

because they've expressed something which somebody finds offensive. And maybe this is a middle of the case of it. Then you have this situation where nobody's quite sure what they can say and what they can't say. You have all kinds of self-censorship. Then you have people on the other end on the lookout because it's fun as hell to find something on somebody to ruin them. So now you have just this ugly dynamic going on.

Then, of course, you have mistakes. somebody said something, it got taken the wrong way. It travels around the whole fucking world. This guy can never wipe the slime off of him. Maybe he's not mentally well. Maybe, many things. And then so that's all on, all the dangers of setting up this kind of world

where say the wrong thing and you're toast because it feels good because we want to make toast out of you. And then the other side is, and what's gained by it? What is gained by the idea that if some kid writes something stupid, or it says,

I don't want to work for a bunch of N words. Are we going to improve the world in any way? No, I think that this is. It's only bad. Only bad things are going to come because you found this one vanilla case where maybe we could all say, yeah, we're all okay if this kid,

you know, this mentally healthy guy, we could just check every box. This is fine. That can never change. I mean, you know. And you're going to have all. all the close cases, so many people's lives ruined, as we've already seen with this stuff. How many people do we know were canceled?

Do you look into it? Well, that wasn't really fair. This woman right here, this story stopped me before I'm going to renew my old habit. But turns out it's not what it seemed like, right? Right, but this is not that. This is like some sort of normalization of anti-semitism. Well, my guess is the kid really doesn't like Jews. Yes, I think you're right.

He's allowed not to like Jews. by the way. Okay, yeah, he is allowed not to like Jews. And he's allowed, and he's allowed not to want to work for Jews. Yes, he is. And an internet mob is a dangerous thing. Okay, but then if, if you want to write that publicly, I want to know about that, because maybe I don't want to hire you.

I don't want to hire somebody who is, I mean. Yes, you'd like to, but the cost is very high societally. That people, listen, it's not just this email. There's emails, as he says, there's emails everywhere. You know what? And the idea that we should be encouraging people to find something that somebody wrote. That's what we're doing. We're putting blood in the water everywhere.

Everybody has an enemy. Everybody has somebody who would like to see. Oh, you know what? I remember 15 years ago, no, I wrote something. No, no, no. He opposed gay marriage back then. Let me find that email where he wrote. I'm sorry.

This is not that. This is like public. This was a public thing. This wasn't a, and by the way, if you go through. All of my phone messages and all of my email. The email was private. Then once he was outed, he, well, he...

What's he supposed to say? He stood his ground. He said, well, my experiences would Jews have been unfaided. Well, if he didn't stand his ground, would we believe him? We know how he felt. And by the way, it's quite possible that his experiences with Jews have been unfavorable. Listen, let me tell you honey. I met a very prominent person, and their wife unloaded on me about her bad experiences

with Jews, these people exist. Okay, well, then they should be... You don't what a piece of shit I would be to out... This is crazy. No, I don't agree with you. I think that if you want to... And Cush, you say what? I think if you want to say that kind of shit,

then say it publicly. Like, you don't get to hide behind some sort of veil. Like, if that's how you feel, then say it out loud and let people know it. Encouche, any thoughts? Well, gosh, this is a tricky case because we don't really know all the facts. We know some facts.

We know some facts, but again, you know, that can be a tricky thing. We thought we knew some facts when we read that, you know, renewing an old habit email between Jeffrey Epstein and Rumler, and then you actually ask her about it, and you come away with a totally different and exculpatory understanding. And I'm happy for that understanding, and I would welcome, you know, this Franco guy. There was another case like this.

You'll probably remember. I got finished. Go ahead. Sorry. I just was going to say But I think the thing that I find quite Unseemly about this particular episode is I just categorically reject

these sort of categorical descriptions of people based on their race ethnicity Things like that It's just we have to judge people as individuals But you're only saying that because you're Indian So It helps

Do you remember Reiner Workman? Remember that name? Ryan Workman? I think it's a name. She was this She was the NYU law student who on October 8th, 2008, October 9th, wrote something in favor of Hamas. She was head of one of the student organizations,

and she had a job with a law firm, and it was rescinded because of what she said. And at that time, I was very bothered by that. Yeah, the idea that, and it was plastered over the entire world that she had. I don't know if I'm recalling the exact case that you are, but I do recall episodes like that, and particularly involving lawyers who had offers pulled from law firms based on their commentary about what it transpired. And I felt like at least in some of those cases, it was very unfair.

It's unfair. And, of course, it's not easy and in large part because of what, modern technology has wrought. So, of course, if you're an individual, you're an Orthodox Jew and you're running a law firm or Israeli who, God forbid, had family

taken hostage or killed October 7th, and then you realize that this new hire has said something applauding it. You don't want to work with that person. We can all respect that. But now you have, and from most of

history, it would have just been an isolated thing and nobody would really know about it and it would end there, right? But now you have a technology where that instantly becomes visible to billions of people around the world. And not only is it visible now, but it'll be just as visible 10 years from now when anybody Googles that person's name. So this is an impossible situation. And I think if we're wise, we're going to err on the side of thicker, and thicker skinnedness in terms of just learning to live and rub shoulders with people who really, really have views that offend us, rather than move in the other direction. It's like any

kind of bead we can get on somebody that they have some opinion, belief, or something in their past that they've done that offends us, that this becomes a cause. And we tell as many people as we can and try to inflict as much headwind on that person's life as possible in their employment. And they're like, this is, this is just no way to run a business. By the way. This is no way to live. Just let it go. As a purely practical matter, if your goal is to get people to like Jews more, this is

the wrong strategy. If that's all you're concerned with, this ain't helping. What's the right strategy? You're not going to bully people into liking Jews. Pick up the check from time that's... Well, let me ask you. I was going to ask you, would you hire this person? But I guess the answer.

I would. Yeah, that you would. I would. You had the Nazi tattoo guy. No, but. No, no, I, I, I would, I would, I feel like somebody's personal beliefs are kind of off limits to me. But it's not personal. Okay.

So, so for years and years and years, 100% of the people who worked in our kitchen, were Arabic, mostly Egyptian. We knew exactly what their politics was vis-a-vis Israel, the Jewish people. Hassan used to tell me, I'm going to hell. He said, you're going to hell. I'm sorry, sir, you're going to hell. You're going to live one mile from the sun.

I say, Hassan, even me, yes, sir, I'm sorry. So, so you remember Hassan. Of course. Yeah, so. This is line of death. Okay. What are you going to do? So we have peace with Egypt.

As long as as somebody keeps it out of the workplace, I can tolerate it. Like I can have somebody work of, just, I just the way I'm built. I don't know. I think it's a good thing.

You think what's a good thing? To just learn to say, okay, this is a workplace, come to work, wait on the customers, and go home and spout whatever. Although the customers probably won't necessarily enjoy being waited on by a notorious Jewish.

hater, so you have to think of that as well. I don't want them to... My point is that this should stay private. We should not be looking to find things of people and expose it. To the extent that it would affect your business, then it becomes... Yes. I could be in a bind. Let me ask you guys this. Can we agree on the fact that there are better ways to handle turning down a job offer?

Well, Dan, might be right. The person might as not... Well, yes. Don't you want somebody honest working for you? No, I mean, I think that I don't think that he's autistic or anything like that. I just don't. It just sounds like, you know, autistic people as one of the, I think one of the symptoms is that you just kind of have no filter. So maybe he is, you know, I don't know. One interesting thing about this kid is he looks Jewish.

He looks a bit like Sarah Michelle Geller meets Paul from the Wonder Years. If we have a picture, maybe we can put it up. But maybe he's got some, maybe he is part Jewish, or maybe people accuse him of being Jewish and this fuels his anger. I don't know. I'm getting a little bit freudy. Maybe people just say he looks Jewish. Well, but in any case. But you know, yeah, I mean...

Look, I'm not saying that this kid's life should get ruined or anything like that or that people should know where he lives. That's not what I'm saying. But that's... We only have on Cushier for another couple minutes. Any other issues in the world you're hot about? Oh, my gosh. Well, you know, I'm always following like sort of what's in the news. and there's a million things worth talking about from the $1.8 billion weaponization fund, Todd Blanche.

Nothing that I'm particularly hot about. You know, this particular piece had been gestating for a while. And, you know, it's pretty, I would just, you know, just to say, I knew it was going to engender very strong reactions. And I knew many, if not most people, would be critical or really unwilling to buy it. But I did feel like strongly that it can't be the case that. that people in the media will be cowed by things like a congressman going and complaining to your boss about you. And if we, you know, do, you know, conduct some sort of review, do some sort of analysis and come away with an earnestly held view, I feel like it's sort of an obligation for me to present that, honestly, to people.

And I've been, you know, sort of bothered a bit by the reception in some quarters, including the reception in some quarters of the media, where people are like, you know, how dare you platform this women and you're whitewashing her and so on and so forth. And it all proceeds from the assumption that she did something wrong that needs to be washed. And it's like, you know, I remember, you know, when Rumler at one point, you know, I think I mentioned this earlier, says, you know, I feel like I'm on trial, but I don't know what the crime is.

And I just would encourage people to, like, try to be precise. And like, what are we accusing this person of, right? And exactly. And then like, let's just sort of. grapple with that. And instead, it's just like a whole bunch of cloud of allegations and claims and insinuations. One gets swapped in when another falls aside, right? You can't establish because it's not true that Kathy Romler had anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. So we're faulting her for associating with him. But that's, as I said at the beginning,

that's a very, very different thing. And, you know, just, I would just say, again, you know, having spent several hours with her in a very, very emotional interview, where she, again, she disclosed that she herself had been the victim of this sort of misconduct. I think it, you know, should remind us that it is good to keep an open mind about these things, to ask questions. People are free to come to different conclusions. But a lot of the coverage in this area, I feel like, just assumes that people did something, wrong simply because they exchanged emails with him. And I think that assumption is very unfair.

Generally speaking, and I think it is dangerous. And I do think on balance that, you know, the release of these documents in this way has been harmful. It will harm an adversely affect future high-profile criminal investigations. You know, it has already harmed. Whatever investigations, those 500 prosecutors were supposed to be working on during the month plus that they were redacted, that they were redacting documents.

It's prolonged the harm to the victims who, of course, we all feel terrible for. And it's created more conspiracy theories that will really, they will exist in perpetuity since this stuff is just out there forever. So, you know, the thing that's been on my mind, just to answer your question directly, is like, you know, I think it's become clearer to me. You know, I was always a skeptic, but, you know, a year has passed now since, you know, the law was proposed or almost a year. And I think it was really a big mistake. That should not have happened and it's done more harm than good. I'm going to say I'm so convinced that you are on the right side of this issue that not only am I 100% sure that you're going to be vindicated,

but I think that five years or now, you will be, this will be one of the things that you've done that you're most proud of yourself about and that you're going to get the most law, most people will laude you for and congratulate you for a lot. You know, you were right, Ankus, you saw it and you weren't afraid. Or maybe it won't come until after you're dead, but at some point. No, no, it's because their side of this argument just doesn't hold even a drop of water.

The second you look at it, you realize this is not a workable system that you're proposing. It's a one-off. You just want this one-off. because this is a hot issue, and it's Epstein, and it's the Jews, and it's Israel and Mossad, and all that stuff. This is everything the opposite of what we believe in as Americans. And what we believe in as Americans, it's not just a matter of what we believe in.

We've been a country now for almost 250 years. Next in just a couple of weeks. It works. It's long enough now that we can say empirically, that a smart person ought to understand, this is not just some idea anymore. This is an idea with a track record that far exceeds the track record of any other system,

especially when it comes to treating people accused of crimes fairly, people's privacy fairly, people's rights, fairly, all these things. This is like, I feel like I'm being over the top, but this is really, like if we were to listen to what these people was suggesting, it would put all of that in a precarious situation. It would unravel everything that we believe in. If we

would just make this a regular thing. So anything that gets collected into criminal investigation now, don't think we can't release it. Even if you're tangential to the crime, it's a, and it can happen 20 years from now, it's absurd. Can I actually

raise one more thing that I wanted to bring up their work in? Yeah. Eric Swalwell, Right. We've just had some revelations about Eric Swalwell. Why does the same standard not apply to members of Congress who were working with him, consorting with him, members of the California delegation, including Rokana? Why are people not running around saying, oh, my gosh, you must have known, how dare you? Why were you in on it? Why are you coming up for him?

Because they don't actually believe that. And to me, that is another episode along with Platner that has just really, I think, demonstrated that this is just not entirely on the level. Yeah. It's funny how, you know, you and I connected on one issue years ago. I remember I wrote you an email about something, you know. But I've seen this many, many times in my life that quite often people connect on one thing will connect on many other things which you wouldn't imagine were related,

wouldn't imagine we're predictive to like that issue and that issue. But actually often they are. You mean like the belief that the earth is flat and conservative, you know, conservative sort of political viewpoint. It's just a sort of. Yeah, well, I mean, I think I talked about this with you, at least known before. You know, I started sort of your show came to my attention after October 7. And I just really appreciated the way you folks handled that issue. You know, forthrightly, you were dealing with difficult concepts.

you were trying to talk to people, you were working through things in real time. And to me, you know, I think to your point, like I could tell that there was sort of a way of thinking that I appreciated on the part of you folks. And so that is sort of how I connected with you folks initially. I think you reached out to me about a hundred by the column, if I remember correctly. But yeah, I mean, certainly I think that there are ways of thinking that I think and approaching problems like this that I share with you folks. Anybody have any thoughts about Elon Musk being a trillion dollars richer than Jeff Bezos? It's terrible. It's terrible. We shouldn't have a trillionaires. I don't even really think, you know, we should have an economy that has billionaires. The one thing I would say is, you know, this man, Elon Musk has consigned hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, to preventable deaths as a result of the closure of USAID. And I think it makes it makes me sick to my stomach. I think you just lost, I think you just lost no.

You did. Wait, we're talking about it. I don't have this subversion. Well, the USAID, to the extent that that's true, this is uncontroversial to me. Yes, of course. You start cutting money that leads to people's deaths. I don't know if it's true or what number of deaths. I'm very, very skeptical of all stories of this nature because so often they turn out

to be true. But yes, this is the last thing you ought to be. cutting is people's lives. I mean, you know, so I don't know if that's true, but the rest of the stuff. And just to put my own, you know, experience, my brother and sister-in-law worked for USAID and lost their jobs in connection with that. So just to be forthright about my own potential bias. Definitely people lost their jobs, but they, whether a hundred, how many people do they say

hundreds of thousands or are going to die over 10 years? Oh, the estimates are in the millions by 2030 now. Lancet did a study earlier this year. And of course, these things are going to be speculative. But it's just going to be the case that when you yank life-saving aid from all over the world, people's lives are going to be lost. And to me, it was unconscionable. The campaign was based on lies.

And to the trillion art point, it really makes me sick to my stomach. There is this very interesting, I know we have to go, but this is this very interesting, like, bouquet of things that are tied together in my mind. they all come under the heading of straight line projections, you know, sort of never work out. So you're totally right to be skeptical about the projections like this, we should be, but some number of people. Yeah, some meaningful number of people.

So, but just because, so like, we were told that tariffs were going to, you know, screech the economy to halt. We're going to have like 10% inflation. You know, all these horror stories. We had some inflation. We were told that when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, there was going to be a global recession and the price of oil was going to skyrocket the 200.

It went up, but it didn't go up to, it didn't even go up to an all-time high, right? We're told all sorts of things. And most of the time, they don't happen. Now, the Lancet, of course, had all these kinds of outrageous accountings of how many people they thought died in Gaza. I don't know if it's fair or not fair to. It's not unfair, but I don't know if that really means that, you know, the people who wrote

this one can be held accountable for that one. But they're not necessarily that skeptical of what is submitted to them. But yes, I do agree with you that some number of people are going to die. And it really doesn't seem like that was a meaningful, like whatever, cutting money is going to have any impact on our economy whatsoever. But that's, you know, that would be the same thing if Elon was a pauper. Like, that's really not about whether he should be a trillionaire or not. I think that if we've, if we heard that a Chinese person had become a trillionaire

through capitalism and through building, you know, four or five household name companies, we'd be like, fuck, why isn't that guy an American? Like, you know, I don't like the fact that he has that much money, which because of the power that it gives him. But I don't know that, I don't know what the law diminishing returns is on wealth and power. Like if you have a hundred million dollars, you become pretty powerful, a billionaire. There's all sorts of things to worry about, although, you know, in the end, how are you going to prevent, like, every book that Jeff Bayes, those sells. He's entitled to...

You could have a tax, you can say once you're a billionaire, we'll tax it 99% or something, I guess. Yeah, but this is just punitive, but it's not going to make him any less powerful, but I just said my take on this has always been, if every billionaire in the world were to move to America,

which would increase the wealth cap, that would be good for America. Can I ask a question about this? Yeah. What if it was less attacks, but more like they were forced to see? spend it and not have all that stored energy just sitting there. Well, I don't, I don't know what it does with this money.

I think a lot of it's just held in ownership. But I think that, I mean, these wealthy people, if I imagine my life without their contributions, they've, they've accomplished a lot. Like, I don't, I don't know what a trillion dollars is, it's impossible to even conceive of a trillion dollars at this point. It's possible for him to conceive of it. it is I have the same concern you do

it's about the power that comes with it I mean I enjoy living in a capitalist society and people should become successful off their ventures but at some point the money is just too much and you know But that point is way before trillion that point is like a billion probably

Yeah right Right I agree right And so we look around our country and we see people in our communities our fellow Americans look around the world people suffering in poverty people hardworking people suffering through poverty and struggling to make ends meet.

And they're not working any less hard than Elon Musk is. In many cases, they're working much, much harder than Elon Musk is. I have a hard time with that. It's not about poverty. But what could be done to prevent the emergence of billionaires and try? I don't know what you can do. Raise taxes. No, any.

Raise tax? Well, he's not income. Most of his wealth is not. income. Yeah, it's not income, but when he sells it, it will be.

I think all these, well, I don't think there's any way to thwart the power risk here without really draconian measures. And I think that there's a, there's a very emotional appeal

to what you're saying. But I think every cure we've ever heard of becomes worse than the disease. As, as the world went global, the ability to make certain amounts of money just became inevitable.

And I just hope it's more Americans that do that. I mean, Amazon, how many people's lives were saved during the pandemic because of Amazon? I mean, you know, there's always another size of the ledger. Anyway, this is a very interesting topic. You should come on again. Tyler Cowan might have something interesting to say. I think Tyler basically agrees with me on this stuff. but of course, you know, there's always the risk of corruption.

All right. I'm not ruling out that Trump, that Musk becomes a quadrillionaire at the rate he's going. Well, at this point, it doesn't matter, right? That's what I'm saying. Like, the law diminishing returns, whatever we're worried about with Musk, this kicked in, I mean, trillion is just a round number, right? It's like it's not actually more significant than 500 million, 500 billion. Well, it's significant in terms of the good that he can do as well, but I'm not sure he's

interested in doing it. Well, we presume if he made that much money, he is doing good. Well, he's creating products, and he's also paying a lot of taxes. He's creating, yeah, he's creating products. He's going to the, to the stars or the, you know, planets. He's helping people to think quadriplegic, they can think something, and now they, you know, machinery will move to help their lives. This is all pretty weighty stuff. This is how he's made his money, right? He hasn't made, he hasn't made his money from Twitter, that's a loss. And even in Twitter, even though I don't like so much of what's on Twitter,

I do like the stand for free speech. I don't really prefer the old Twitter. I don't know. But that's a political statement he made. But other than that, like, Musk is not, he's not selling like high fructose corn syrup, right?

That's not how he made his money. He's making his products are pretty good. Well, you're a proud Tesla owner. Yeah, but I bought it, I bought it when Elon was considered a good guy. Yeah. Right? Now all of a sudden he was a Democrat and he was, you know, yeah.

Now I was like, I don't care about global warming. Fuck Elon Musk. But it is a great product. It is nobody can say otherwise. All right. On Kush Kudori, thank you very, very much. I'm really actually quite flattered that I was one of the people that you thought of to talk about this column. I take that as quite a compliment.

And are you welcome on the show anytime? Tell people again where they can find you and follow you. Cardori.com. I'm actually not on social media. That may change at some point. But I have a website. You can sign up for an email list where I'll send when I send out new pieces when they come out or news about stuff that I'm doing. But thank you for the time.

And thank you all for, you know, reading it so closely and asking me your questions. I really appreciate it. Good night, everybody. Good night. Better it up. Wait, wait, wait. I want to talk about... Hey, Steve did it.

Yeah, you want to talk more? Yeah, yeah, can we talk for five more minutes. Yeah, yeah, you can stay or go on air? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We started doing this and I really liked it, and you said we could do it, that we do like a five, ten minute wrap up. So I do... But we usually want to talk about how ridiculous a guest was.

No, I wanted to talk about... No, no, no, no, you can stay. It's up to you. I wanted to talk about how significant this week. was and how Manny's bar mitzvah was the first thing that happened in this club that is named after your father. And you gave this really beautiful moving speech in synagogue. And then the second thing that was shown on that screen, other than this video of your family and Manny and all of his friends and his friends gave all of these really moving speeches,

was this Knicks win, which was iconic for the city, regardless of all of our jokes and stuff about the Knicks, it was really incredible. So, yeah, it was very emotional. So at the same time that I've prepared myself with Bar Misfi, I've been preparing an opening video, the club's going to be dedicated to my father. So I was really just like an emotional basket case.

As you saw, I was crying like a baby. I could not. A numb tends to cry. Oh, no. I out did myself. Okay. I could not get through this speech. And it was a good speech.

I don't know. It might have got... You made all of us cry too, though. I might have undermined the speech. But a lot of the old men and ladies at the synagogue came up to me, told me they liked the speech. And I was happy with the bar mitzvah because, first of all, I'm happy that my son did well. And I was afraid that he wouldn't do well. And then he would be, you know, traumatized by the...

or have to carry that regret with him because I wrote him so hard. But I thought that we hit... So this is what I think on Cush. I don't know Eastern religions, but somebody told me that this is something about this, like always going for the middle way. I thought the bar mitzvah was good

because you strive to be neither stingy nor excessive, like, you know, extravagant. And I thought we hit a... Because I, I, or vulgar. And, you know, there is, I don't want to sound like that. Your autistic friend, what was his name? Austin Franco.

Yeah, but I was right. But there is, you know, this culture of, um, well-to-do parents and certain neighbors, like spending a lot of money on their kids, not just bar mitzvahs, but I'm sure every group has a thing. And that, that's always been a real turnoff to me. And we had a, a nice party in the, he, had his gambling tables that he liked, and my son likes it, but it was not in any way vulgar or excessive. I don't, and he was happy with it. And people, because, you know, I'm in a person

of my position is judged by people all the time. And I think that people who were, who were looking to see, you know, how were the Dwarmen's going to handle this? I think they probably will have to give me a point for having a very, very, very meaningful. nice family party without succumbing to these kind of influences. As I said, not stingy and not... It wasn't ostentatious in any way. It was beautiful. It was really well done.

But the significance of, I don't know, you being on stage, Saifa sounds, DJed it. He said something really funny. He said, I'm the first. Saifa sounds? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Oh, you know, Syf? He performs at the club a lot.

Not personally, but yeah. know his work. From what he was, Hot 97, is that how he became well-known? Okay. But he said something really funny. He said that he was the first comedian

to perform at the new comedy cellar club. He is, it doesn't forget that it was at, as, at a bar mitzvah. Yeah. So he's a regular at the club,

and he's a hot 97 DJ. He does comedy stand-up now. And it was just an act of kindness of him to DJ at, for a bar mitzvah. very generous of him, yeah. Congratulations. That's awesome.

Yeah. I just felt like it was... Can I ask the quick question? Sure. Just, Dan, I'm curious, how did you know I was Indian? Is this something that has come up before? Did you just... Oh, well, I just figure on Koush, Cardori,

sounds like a dish that I might order, you know, at, say, you know, the local Indian restaurant. But, yeah, so... And by the way, my... I was trying to make a shot on. I was trying to make a joke. Yeah, no, most people will think I'm like Turkish or from Afghanistan or sometimes I'm like Israeli.

It's very rare that someone guesses correctly. Wow. Or not guess, but like, yeah, very rare. But just to explain the joke I was trying to make, you were saying I don't like stereotypes and general things. And I said, well, that's because you're Indian. I was trying to make the point that that's something an Indian would say, you know, generalizing.

So I don't know if, I don't know if it was clear. that that's what I was trying. It didn't come out great, but sometimes you hit sometimes you don't. In any case. Well, it didn't need some pause. I mean, Periel, you know, as we were talking, I was thinking, well, how would I feel about this if he was talking about Indian people? Yeah. Right. You know. And that's the really good test. No, I'm just kidding. I said, you'd agree with me.

You know, well, it would certainly complicate things, right? And so, you know, I don't know. I just, I really hesitate to wait in on stuff when I haven't had a chance to, like, you know, try to give it proper due diligence, but I'm definitely going to look now. I'm very curious about this. Well, I think it's interesting that you said that because as you guys were talking about it, I could feel like myself having like a really like knee-jerk emotional reaction because it, I took it so personally. And so I was sort of wondering if my reaction was exaggerated, like, because it was against Jews. Of course, that's exactly how you are. But that's natural, though. Right. Same way I would.

probably take it differently if they were about Indian. I think that's just natural. Was that a compliment? No, of course it's natural, but you know, I mean, the state has all kinds of power, but it doesn't exercise that power for everyone who crosses a red light or on a red light or, you know, the punishment has to fit the crime. We're in a situation now where the community has more power to ruin somebody, to extract punishment from somebody,

then the state would have. And we have to forbear. You know, the idea that we can doesn't mean we should. Yes, this kid is an anti-Semite. But the notion that we are going to dole out punishment-like, and we're going to make sure every single person you ever know is going to see it and no one's ever hire you again and you can't work, this is not, it's can't.

can't be the right thing to do. He's an anti-semi, he's a knucklehead. Okay, move on. That's it. That's how I say. That's how I, you know, don't you think, yeah, don't you agree that my, my world would be a good world to live in. And it wouldn't be a racist world. All right, go ahead. Thank you, on Cush. Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. This was great. Calls when you're in New York. We'll do. Thank you. I, I think that consequences, I mean, actions also have consequences. But anyway, I didn't finish what I've seen before, which is, I just wanted to say Maseltov, because it felt like a really big blessing. And I know you think like it's ridiculous when I get all like this. But yeah, but I do think. You believe in God? Yeah, I believe in something. But I think that it was that video and it was the Bar Mitzvah and then the Knicks had this win that brought the entire city together in a way that felt very patriotic in a way that you really love. It felt really, um, magical. It was, it could not have been a better day. Everything went well. I mean, I'm not a basketball fan and I didn't even know who Jalen Brunson was prior to this. But I was moved by the

excitement in the city and the kind of unity that people showed. And it was hard not to get caught up in it. So, you know, I did enjoy that. It's a Jewish wife. Yeah, I found that out as well. I also thought, I have to say that I did enjoy the fact that I was sitting next to you watching the game and I leaned over and do you remember what I said to you? No. I said, do you want me to explain the game to you? I know I understand basketball. Well, I know that they're trying to get the ball in the hoop.

I know that there's a three point line and other than that I don't know much about it. I'm old, old enough to have lived through and watched every game of the 1973 Knicks. Wow, really? Was that the last time they won the final? With Walt Frazier and there was no three point line in those days. There was no three. Only the ABA had three-point. They are saying that this team is a team of destiny.

Well, the odds... That wasn't destiny one of our guests? If you look at the odds, just like the elections, there's a point where a team is up a certain number of points with X amount of minutes to go. And then from thousands of thousands of game, they can compute the odds of the team that's down coming back to win. So game after game after game, the Knicks chances of winning,

the Knicks found themselves in a chance of winning like 98% chance of losing, like a 2% chance of winning, a 1% percent, a 0.5% chance of winning. And if you compute them all, the chances of the Knicks winning as they did was something like 1 in 250,000. So it's very, you know, which, you know, it's very, very unlikely. So you're saying the fix was in. yes it could it could take many many years for something like that to happen again well uh all right any other um no that's it yeah that's it okay good night everybody good day better than you