The Daily Beast Podcast - Family Cuts Off Alleged Area Sex Criminal Prince Andrew w/ Ian Dunt

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

“He’s essentially persona non grata in the royal family, and you know, the royal family survives because – it may look like this sort of a constitutional structure made entirely of cobwebs, but in fact it's got a really kind of canny PR operation behind it,” says Dunt. “And they know when to cut their losses. It’s a family, kind of, but it's not a family like any other kind of family. And when you got a bad (one) in there, you are gonna cut your losses and that's pretty much what they've done. ”The no-longer royal highness may not have regular people money worries, says Dunt, but “maybe more of a struggle is the complete reputational collapse that he's experienced over this period. And that goes quite deep. I mean, it's more, even than the moral outrage, it's also that he is now a very regular figure of mockery. If you saw the interview where he said that he was incapable of physically sweating, that has never gone away. Pretty much anytime anyone in conversation mentions the subject of sweat… that is the joke that will follow.” Plus, Dunt tells Americans what Boris Johnson’s friends call him (it isn’t Boris), co-host Andy Levy considers the civil case against the Trumps and lets the world know that, just like Letitia James, he won’t be running for governor of New York, and New York Times reporter Peter S. Goodman discusses his new book, Davos Man, about how billionaires devoured the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Ian Dunn, who hosts the Oh God What Now podcast and his author of How to Be a Liberal, is going to tell us about how bad it's going over in the United Kingdom. Then we'll talk to Peter S. Goodman, about his new book, Davos Man, how billionaires devoured the world.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jong Fast. Today we're going to talk about the betrayal of poor innocent Donald Trump. A sad story. The poor man has had such a tough time. He's had a hard time. He installs three Supreme Court justices.

Yeah. And yet, all of them say the National Archives should turn over those pages of documents to the January 6th Committee. Yeah, they clearly, they don't understand how this is supposed to work. When Donald Trump does something for you, you do something for Donald Trump. This is mob rules. And I don't know why they don't get that. Frankly, it's disgusting. And I think they should all be shamed of themselves and probably resign while Joe Biden is president.

You know, Kavanaugh was the one member of the Trump cabal that he installed, the third of the Supreme Court, who voted that people who work in hospitals should have to be vaccinated. right? This is how far to the insane we've gotten. Like, if you work in a hospital, you should be vaccinated. And he was in fact, Trump then said he's a, he's a, you know, a cuck, neoliberal, never Trumper. Yeah. Well, it's definitely a lefty position to think that hospital workers should be vaccinated. I mean, that's an outrageous position. And, you know, clearly he's been corrupted by Chief Justice Roberts, who himself is to the left of Bernie Sanders, apparently. Again, that's why I think Kavanaugh should resign and let Joe Biden appoint someone in his stead. And I think at this point, we have to start thinking about the same thing for Gorsuch and Barrett.

They have failed, dear leader, and when you fail, dear leader, you don't stick around. That's not how this works. History has shown us that. So I think they all need to leave. The one person who did not let Trump down. The one person. Yes. Everyone's favorite. Justice Clarence Thomas.

You may remember Justice Clarence Thomas from his long sexual harassment trial from the fact that he never talks and from the fact that he is married to one, Ginny Thomas. The thing about Clarence Thomas is, do you remember when Anthony Wiener posted it was a bizarre tweet about his appliances betraying him? and he ended it with the hashtag, The Toaster is very loyal. Clarence Thomas is Trump's Toaster. He is Trump's Toaster. He threw thick and thin. The Toaster is very loyal.

And I think that should be his new nickname should be Clarence, the Toaster, Thomas. Well, Clarence Thomas may also be protecting his horrendous wife because... There is that. Right. I mean, we don't know exactly. And again, there was a pretty good piece debunking this. We don't know what her involvement with Jenner

was it may be nothing but she was an advisor to turning point USA turning Charlie Kirk was bragging before he deleted the tweet that he sent 80 buses right to the funded 80 buses for the protest but he smartly deleted that I mean I think that was probably you're going to delete a tweet you know probably delete the one about it's funding the insurrection so again we don't know even if it wasn't deleted whether it was true because none of these people tell the truth ever but we do know that before she deleted them, Ginny Thomas, did say, watching Maga crowd today with best with right side broadcasting and then C-SPAN, I guess, okay, for what the Congress does at 1 p.m.

La, capitalize love, MAGA, people. Explanation point, explanation point, explanation point, explanation point. She, well, first of all, just as an aside, don't ever say Charlie Kirk and smartly in the same sentence. Obviously, someone else told him to delete the tweet. there's nothing he does that's smartly. There's a couple of things. First of all, I don't know how Clarence Thomas gets away with not recusing himself on things like this.

And I know it's up to the justices like they decide whether or not they should recuse themselves. But the fact that he doesn't is it strikes me as a little insane. I mean, his wife is clearly involved with the Trump administration, with Turning Point USA, as you said. You know, and he sits there and look, I mean, I guess they might have a matter. where they don't talk to each other and influence each other, but I don't, like, it's a little, it's just weird to me. I know they're separate people and I get that and it's, you know, I'm not saying that a Supreme Court justice's wife can't have, or husband can't have their own life. But how do you not recuse yourself? It's just, even if there's no actual conflict of

interest, there's the appearance of the conflict of interest. And that should, that's the standard, is the appearance. But he obviously doesn't care, and she obviously doesn't care. And, you know, she's not going to stop doing what she's doing, and he's not going to stop doing what he's doing. And that's where we're left. All I can tell you is,

Ginny Thomas spends a lot of time on Facebook. God bless each of you standing up, all capitalized except or, which is not capitalized, praying. I'm sorry. I mean, you know, Jesse, thoughts, questions, comments. I think an interesting thing with her, though, with him recused himself,

is that he would also have to have recused himself, I don't want to say hundreds of times, I can't quantify that for sure. But let's remember, she was really high up on Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothers thing for years, and they brought so many cases to the court, and everybody's just like,

oh, let her, well, no conflict here, nothing happened. Oh, the Supreme Court justice, who, like, until the Trump administration, only asked questions two times. You had nothing to see here. He's not just a stooge that's totally installed. But I agree.

He would have had to recuse himself however number of times, and he should have. I mean, that's sort of the deal you make if your spouse is going to be an activist for organizations that are involved in issues that are going to come before you. Like, I don't feel bad. Like, you know, that's not an argument, and I'm not saying you were saying it was, but that's not an argument against him recusing himself. that's an argument for, yeah, you got damn right, you better recuse yourself, you know, all those times. I don't care if it's one time or 1,500.

Like, if that's what you do, that's the right thing to do. So another way in which Donald Trump has been disappointed by those around him is one Brad Raffensberger. He did not do what Donald Trump asked him to do, which was just find a few votes so that he could stay as president. and now we find ourselves in a situation where the Fulton County District Attorney, Fannie Willis, is going to, is requesting a special grand jury. It's big excitement over in Georgia. Yeah, I mean, she's requesting a special grand jury, what, to get Raffinsberger before her, basically, to testify, right?

Yeah. You know, that's what she needs to do. And I think he's made it clear that if she does this, he will come forward and testify, and but that she has to do it that way, that he's not just going to, you know, voluntarily come and sit before her. But, but yeah, this is just another example of, you know, this is the Secretary of State of Georgia and how is he not, you know, how could he do this to Trump?

I just don't, I don't understand it. And it's just, you know, it's not right. It's not right, Molly. It's not right, Jesse, that we live in a world where people don't, you know, give 100% fealty to Donald Trump. And I'm sick of it. I also think it's important to point out that it seems like

there have been other people who haven't been participating. And so she's hoping to get a little more power to get those people to participate. And I mean, I think we should take a moment here to say a prayer that Merrick Garland is actually doing what we all hope he is doing, quietly

interviewing people, and not just worried about I think we should pray that Merrick Garland is not Robert Mueller. Yeah, I mean, yeah, look, I'm running, I'm a little bit running out of patience for those prayers to be answered. But I agree with you. Let's hope that this is all being done quietly behind the scenes. And it's all going to come out in one fell swoop, you know, hopefully before the, midterms would be nice, but I'm not asking him to do it that way for political reasons.

I'm just saying it would be nice if he did. But yeah, man, every day it gets harder and harder to think those prayers are going to be answered, but you got to keep sending out the prayers, I guess. You got to keep doing it. That's the hope, yes. And it does seem there's a lot of angles that are closing on. And we also haven't even gotten to that, Tish James, has gotten a lot of victories in how far she's gotten in this case.

What did you guys see here with her announcement this week? I mean, the problem with Tish James is that it's a civil case. So ultimately, nobody's going to jail for a civil case. Also, again, I mean, look, I love Tish James, and I think she's a fucking badass. And the thing that I love about her is one thing. She had the chance to run for governor. And she was like, no, I'm going to finish my job here. And I would challenge a man to ever make a decision like that in there.

You know what I mean? like she stayed, she's finishing the prosecution, she's being like super selfless in that way. So I am really impressed with that. And again, nobody's going to jail for this, especially because a lot of real estate people do stuff like this. It's fraud. It's fraudulent. But like with a lot of white collar crime are, you know, our America is, you know, we are very tolerant as a community of white-collar crime. So, you know, I'm not as excited as I would like to be. But it did make Eric upset, which is- Yeah, a couple of things. One, Molly, you said you would challenge a man to do what she did. I just would like to say that I am also not running for governor so that I can see things through

here on the new abnormal podcast. So I am your challenge has been accepted and executed. Look, I agree with you. It's a civil case. The thing here is, and I know we shouldn't think this way, but I also know that a lot of people do think this way that, well, because it's all about Trump and real estate. And there's nobody that doesn't already think or know that, of course, they cheated their way through real estate because that's what big real estate people do. They give one set of, you know, they claim one thing for taxes and another thing for, you know, whatever or, you know, for how rich they are. So it just feels like, while, again, 100% behind.

her doing this and I hope it comes to fruition. I really don't like, I don't think it, it doesn't really move the needle, I think, on how anyone feels about Trump or the Trump family, because everyone's just going to go, oh, yeah. So he, you know, oh, he said his apartments were bigger than they were. Oh, like, no other real estate agent, you know, agency does that. Or like, oh, he claimed his buildings, you know, weren't worth as much for tax purposes. Well, everybody does that. There's just going to be a lot of everybody does that type stuff out of this sort of prosecution. That said, it's good that she's doing it and it needs to be done. And hopefully it's running parallel with criminal investigations that will be more, you know,

more to the point exactly. But, and even Tish James, I think they're running, you know, I think they're running criminal investigations simultaneously. So those are definitely much more exciting than this. But again, it's good that she's doing it and it's good that she's seeing it through. It's good that Eric Trump has something to do because some days, you know, he's just hanging out, playing golf. I mean, some days you're just sitting there, you know, and you're talking to your stuffed animals and rearranging the key set. And then other days, you're, you're being called to testify because you did something bad. I mean, it's just, you know, that's the life of one Eric Trump. Exactly. So this brings me to an idea here. What if the Democrats

could contrast the Republicans in being the party? of no corruption. John Ossoff, it famously is, introduced this bill. That's going to be about Congress members, not longer trading stocks. And there's been some interesting discourse around this. What are you two seeing there? I seem to remember a certain newsletter that one could subscribe to called, wait, what? If you cut this out, Jesse, I'll kill you from the Atlantic.

What's really great is you don't listen to the podcast where I just leave it in the park button. No, I won't know. You're killing me all the time. Since you don't listen to the edit of the show, it's really good. So when I do my civil suit for all the hostile work environment and all the death threats, I have numerous episodes of this. You're lucky we're best friends. That's what I'm telling you.

That's true. But the good news is if ever we had a fight, it would be so much worse for me because I'm so much more codependent than you are, that you would just, like, move on and I would be tortured. Sitting on my pile of money from that lawsuit. That's right. Torturous the way I betrayed you. In my newsletter, wait, what? I did, in fact, write about this.

Nancy Pelosi really did. This is a message for her to squander, if that makes any sense. Like, if she, this is a winning message. Anti-corruption is the kind of thing. Like, the best thing to fight fascism is an anti-corruption message, and she should get the fuck on board. But it's not the best message for her family. No, it's not.

But, you know, They have a lot of money. So it might be time just to take a pause for that and, you know, do this. And then when she retires, she can go back to trading stock. Yeah, it's tough, though. When your husband is making, you know, millions of dollars in stock trades, it's tough to want to pass a law that says, you know, no members of Congress or their spouses should be able to trade stocks.

I mean, I don't know. I just think it's unfair to Nancy Pelosi, much in the way that people are being unfair to Donald Trump. I think you're being unfair to Nancy Pelosi here. She has a family to think about and she, you know, she lives in a very expensive neighborhood. But look, in all seriousness, we've talked about this on the pod before. Yes, it is absolutely absurd that the Democrats can't run on that message and they absolutely should be able to. And so you've got Nancy Pelosi, you know, saying that, oh, it's a, you know, it's a free market economy. So her husband should be able to do whatever he wants. Yeah, but I want to just dig deep down for one second, dig deep.

So in Georgia, I know you know, David Purdue, 2,596 stock trades during his one term in office. Oh my God. God. And the thing that I discovered when I was writing this piece was that, in fact, the Senate has a mechanism in Ethics Committee, where they bring people up on these complaints and these violations. And in 2019, they had 1,189 alleged violations. Guess how many disciplinary sanctions were enacted? I am going to guess zero. You win. So zero. You win, but the American people lose. Yeah, and just think you wouldn't have to have any of those, you know, thousands of things if they just weren't allowed to trade stocks. Think about how much easier it would be for the Senate Ethics Committee instead of having to say no, they wouldn't have to say anything.

So basically, one of the things, actually when I was writing this piece that I discovered is there's a thing called the Edelman's Trust Barometer, which measures a global trust of leaders and doctors and public health people. And it said that 60s, of people worry that government leaders are quote, and this is what they, you know, this was what was asked in the polling, purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or grossly exaggerated. So this is a really interesting phenomenon because you have an opportunity with this anti-corruption stuff to really get people. And Brian Dease said this. He's an economic advisor for Obama and also for Biden. He said,

to Andrew Ross Sorkin on Squawk Box, he said that this ban on Congress people trading could conceivably restore faith in our institutions, and we all know that should be job one right now. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think it'll completely, I don't think it's like flipping a switch, and then suddenly, you know, first of all, only 66%. Like, what are the other 34%?

That's actually weird to me. But, you know, but no, this is a, it's a step in the right direction. It's not, you know, it's not all of a sudden I trust these people because they did this, but it's like, okay, at least you did the right thing for once. You know, I just, it's so obvious. It's such a, it's such a no-brainer. And I don't understand why the Democrats won't seize this opportunity.

And, you know, John Ossoff has actually been sort of killing it lately. Yeah. Shocker. Yeah. You know, who's another, I think, an interesting political thing here, too, is, did you guys see that Gavin Newsom is ordered California to start using the open insulin program. Yes. And he wouldn't be doing that unless Joe Manchin's daughter was it the barber of fleecing insulin patients. Ooh.

Yeah. So if you think this way, there's parts of the insulin formula that has an open database that can get around any patents where people can get insulin. And yeah, she is the barber of insulin. and Joe Manchin's power protects her, gets her that power. EpiPens and insulin. And a lot of people know this, too. Yeah. No, I was going to say that can't be right because Manchin just, you know, earlier on Thursday,

said that he wants to, you know, the things he wants to take care of are inflation, getting a tax code that works, and take care of pharmaceuticals that are gouging the people with high prices. Irony dies. It's a little weird considering his daughter with the EpiPens and I think they went from like $100 to $600.

They went from like $30 to $600. Yeah, something ridiculous when she took over one of those companies. She's one of the worst actors in the pharmaceutical business when it comes to price gouging and he helped her get that, you know, get

her start. So it's not like you can say, oh, well, they have no, you know, yes, it's, you know, it's his daughter, but they don't, you know, they keep these things, these things separate. No, they don't. They absolutely don't. So for him to get up there and say that he's worried about pharmaceutical price gouging is just, it's unbelievable, just the height of hypocrisy. I mean, I know, shocking a politician is hypocritical, but, you know, he's been holding himself out there as like, you know, the, the principled Democrat, you know, who's not going to let things go off the rails, and he's the only sane one left.

And, you know, and at the same time, he's just a blatant hypocrite. And so it's just, it's just, you know, they're all just gross. I don't even know what else to say after a while. This quote also sounds like, you know, like something people have been saying for 40 years. It's like the guy's not even paying attention, it sounds like.

Well, it's also, it's a no-label's talking point, right? Exactly. There's a whole, you know, there are, you know, there are a group of rich people who are funding Democrats, the kind of Democrats who make sure that your taxes don't go up. And, and, you know, look, there's a place for those kind of Democrats. But when it comes to protecting voting, I don't see how this serves anyone. So, fuck that guy.

Sorry, this is an actual point, but. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard, every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news.

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Welcome back to the new abnormal, Ian. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. I was very excited because it was so much fuckery going on in your country. I was like, oh my God, we can get Ian back. It is true. That's good. I'm really glad that there's a bright side to all this. What the fuck is happening over there?

I saw a tweet yesterday that someone said, it's almost as if Britain exists to make America look good. Wow. I mean, okay, so let's get something clear. I don't think that's true. I think that's an overstatement. But defend herself go. No, I mean, look, look, on the bright side,

we haven't yet started to undermine the entire basis of a functioning democracy. So I think that we're still behind you. That's true. You have a win. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, you guys are still winning the dreadful in the screen. Right, exactly. But Marjorie Taylor Green is a big Boris Johnson fan, which is a pretty good sign that things are heading off the rails.

Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not going to lie about this. It's very funny. I mean, if you're like a critic of the government, which I am and think it's an abysmal sham, that you could ever have a man like this in charge, it is like a degree of Shodem Freud that I just wasn't prepared. that my body wasn't prepared for. It's almost like a physical sense of pleasure at watching all the things you said,

if we're going to happen, finally happen. You do sort of think as they sort of swirl around the Tories going, oh, this is abysmal, how could this be taking place? You just think, look, it's not as if you weren't warned. I mean, you had a guy here who has lied his entire life,

almost as a form of professional obligation, you know? I mean, like in the 80s, he was writing for the Times newspaper, and he was sad. for allegedly falsifying quotes, right? When you got sunk by the telegraph newspaper to Brussels in the 90s and just develops this kind of semi-fictional subgenre of journalism

where he just makes shit up about what's going on in Europe, which incidentally pretty much was the birth of the kind of Euroscepticism that eventually led to Brexit when he was London mayor. His almost the entirety of his electoral platform was fabricated and he failed to deliver on it, never intended to deliver on it. He swore to his constituents that he would get down in front of the bulldozers, that's a quote, to stop the building of Heathrow Air, basically an expansion of Heathrow Airport in London. And then when it came to a vote in the Commons, he fled to Kabul.

He thought that Afghanistan was a safer place to be than being in the House of Commons, living up to the promises he'd previously made. He lied during the Brexit campaign over and over again. He lied when he became Prime Minister about the deal he had signed. he said repeatedly there would be no border in the Irish sea between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, even though he had just signed a deal agreeing precisely that. And then when everyone discovered it, he blamed Remainers and the Europeans and everyone but himself. And now, finally, he's getting caught out in his lies. And I have to say, sometimes you just sit back and just think, well, this is basically like some kind of really simplistic moral fable of the kind that if a child wrote it in a school play,

you'd say it's just a bit too on the nose. But nevertheless, it is what is happening. to us now. If you can't answer the question, how many children do you have? Then perhaps you might be a sociopath. I mean like, right? He's almost a lie in terms of like the basis for the personality. You know, like his friends don't call him Boris, right? They call him Al. That's the real person. The real person is Al. Whoever the fuck that is. We've never met him. What we get is Boris, right? And Boris is He's kind of a stand-up comedian. He's kind of a sort of comedic creation and a sort of genius one in a way because, you know, the Brits have a real vulnerability to irony. Irony is basically the, it's the only way that British people really talk to each other. I think one of the reasons when people come over to Britain, they're quite confused by what they're being told is they don't, they haven't clicked yet. The Brits almost always mean the exact opposite of what they're saying, right? So if they say you're being very brave, what they mean is, you're being very brave. What they mean is, you're you're, you're you're, you're you're not. You're you. You're

you're being an idiot, right? If they say that someone was very passionate, they ultimately mean that someone was hysterical. And that's what he is. He plays on that. Now, that said, when the former Brexit minister, a member of his own party said, in the name of God, go, he was not being ironic. No, that's right. That's right. Irony has never been tried as a weapon in British politics. That's the funny thing. It's just how people talk to each other in public. He was, had this genius idea of using it as a medium of political communication. Typically in the comments, there's very little irony. What happened yesterday was not ironic. This is David Davis. He's a Brexit secretary, previously an ally of Boris Johnson. They together had worked. Yeah, well, they undermined

Theresa May, right? When she was prime minister, they worked together to, they resigned on the same day in 2018 that eventually brought down her administration. They've been through. They've been through the wars together. He knows him pretty well. And finally, I mean, it almost felt like Boris Johnson had survived yesterday quite well. And at the end of Prime Minister's questions, you just get David Davis stand up, say that line. And yet, here's the incredible thing, right? Almost as soon as David Davis had said that line, Boris Johnson started lying again. So he looks up at him and he goes, I've never heard of this quote. The quote originally comes from the World War II period. And he's going to think, what an incredible thing to say, because you have literally written a biography of church

So either you did that so badly that you didn't come across one of the most famous quotes of the period, or even now you're telling another tiny lie to throw onto this great mountain of falsehood by which you've defined your premiership. There was another thing that I think is really interesting that happened. There was a member of the Tory party that changed to labor. Yeah, that's right. Christian Wakeford. Like, that rarely ever happens here. I mean, is that unusual or now?

It is. I think the last time a Tory switched to labor, I still had hair. I mean, I think that was like 15 years ago. You don't happen very often. I shouldn't have laughed. You know what? You have hair. You have horrible. I have some hair. I have some hair. I had more hair back then when the last time this happened. It's a really lonely life when you switch parties. I mean, your previous party just despises you. And the new party is super suspect, right? So even now, I mean, You look at the sort of Labor campaigners, even other Labor MPs, and looking at his voting record on things like benefits and on cultural issues, and they're pretty aghast. And you see, especially from the left of the Labour Party, this push of how could you have accepted him?

I mean, the answer to that question, by the way, is that this is, you know, this is politics for parent, you know, it's for grown-ups. The idea is you're supposed to bring people over from the other side. You're supposed to, they come under, they have to vote the way that you're telling them to. This is ostensibly how you're supposed to change mind and show that you have a sense of momentum. So it was obviously the correct thing to do. But it is always very, very lonely. And I remember in the Commons seeing the last story that are cross sides and he was eating on his own.

And he looked, I've got to say, I mean, there's no point beating on that. I mean, he looked like he didn't have a friend in the world. And I suspect, I could be proved wrong, but I suspect the same thing is going to happen to Christian Wakeford. But he is, but that is a pretty balsy move, right? And it hurts, does it hurt? I mean, how much does it hurt Boris or not that much? You know, weirdly, it doesn't seem to. have hurt him that much, it seems to have actually sort of shored up his position, because until now,

the Conservative Parliamentary Party, the MPs have been kind of trying to cut each other's throats on an hour by hour basis. And there's these sort of aborted mutinies against him. He still probably won't make it to the next election, but he seems now a bit safer. And most of that safety came from that defection because the defection triggers that tribal mentality in the brain of a politician. So suddenly they just close ranks and think, oh, right, this is a fight against Labor all over again, whereas before it was an internal conservative fight. So it may have brought him some breathing room. But, you know, at the moment, the kind of trouble he's in, we're talking breathing room of five, six hours at a time.

I mean, honestly, if I check Twitter after having a shower and there hasn't been a new scandal breaking, I actually feel like it's quite a disappointing sort of moment in my day. But you do think, I mean, this party gate is the thing that's going to, ultimately be the beginning of the end, no matter how long it takes, it may take months, it may take days. But he's done much worse things than Partygate. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, he's detonated the entirety of Britain's trading and diplomatic status in the world. So, I mean, he's much more pernicious than just having a party. The thing is, you know, for, you know, liberal, sort of progressive journalism and whatever, we were constantly firing off these

stories and these columns about, look, he's lied to you about this. He's lied about that. He's venal, mendacious, self-interested. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. And it just didn't touch the sides. Nobody cared. It didn't affect his electoral support. Like Trump.

Well, they felt like they were in on the joke, right? That's the irony mechanism. He, you know, he was a performance, and they knew he was a performance. But they felt they were in on the joke, the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Monty Python as governance structure. And now, and now you're like, no, you weren't in on. on the joke, right? You were unable to see your mum when she died, right? You weren't able to socialize with anyone for months on end. He did whatever he damn well, please. You were never in on the joke, because the main thing to understand about him is his deep, deep sense of entitlement.

Ultimately, that's it. And that, that damage, what that's done is brought the people who previously didn't care, and now on the side of those who do care about the fact that he is incapable of telling the truth. Yeah, that's a really good point. The thing I want to talk to you about besides your fucked up government is your fucked up royal family. Prince Andrew, he's in a lot of trouble, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's not like, don't get the impression that over here, the headlines are very generous towards it. I mean, an area sex trafficker? Yeah, no, that actually doesn't go down too well over here.

Our country share a general values disposition when it comes to those questions. Yeah. So, I mean, that's whichever way it shakes out. I mean, he's essentially persona non grata in the royal family. And, you know, the royal family survives by it may look like this sort of, a sort of constitutional structure made entirely of cobwebs. But in fact, it's got a really kind of canny PR operation behind it. that's how it survived.

I mean, that's why, you know, when I go to the U.S., the main thing people want to talk to me about is Princess Diana, even now, 20 years later, right? That's part of that PR operation. And they know when to cut their losses. You know, it's a family, well, sure, kind of, but it's not a family like any other kind of family. And when you've got a bad cheap in there,

you are going to cut your losses. And that's pretty much what they've done with it. He had to give all his royalness back. Right? He's done. Does he have some sort of lesser title? Or is he still prince? I mean, he had to give his, he's no longer a military hero, right, of wars he never fought in.

Yeah, and he uses the Royal Highness. I mean, I'm going to put a health warning on everything I'm saying now, because the ins and outs of how the royal family operates has always been a source of bafflement to me. Don't worry. We also don't give a shit, but we're just curious about it. So, yeah, my understanding is he got all of the royleness that was hanging on his bloodline or whatever and put it in a box and hands it to the queen. And she then says, you are no longer HR, or whatever it is that he was previously.

Unbelievable. I mean, that's, and he's also going to have to pay Virginia Griffey a lot of money. Yeah. Right? Because they can't, they're going to have to settle whatever she wants, which is kind of great. Yeah, I don't doubt that he has an awful lot of money to be able to settle with. I don't imagine any of that will be a struggle for him. Well, maybe more of a struggle is the complete reputational collapse.

that he's experienced over this period. And that goes quite deep. I mean, it's more even than the moral outrage. It's also that he is now a very regular figure of mockery. So you probably, I don't know if you saw the interview where he said that he was incapable of physically sweating. I mean, that has never gone away. So pretty much any time anyone in conversation mentions the subject of sweat,

which in Italy in this country is quite rare. That is the joke. That's the joke that will follow. Jesus Christ. Boris, yes. yesterday lifted all COVID restrictions? Yes, well, that's connected to the, to the story. Because, I mean, by this stage, there is really no epidemiological basis to any of the things

that the government is doing, or at least if there is, you don't believe in it. So he knows that his backbenchers, much like the right wing in your country, have become basically COVID skeptics. I mean, they make out like they're lockdown skeptics. But the reality, you look at it, they're usually vaccines, they're often vaccines, they're often sort of COVID skeptics. Now, that's a really, it's not as bad as it is in the US, but it's still pretty severe. And the attacks on lockdown, the kind of really illiterate, moral, and economic cases made against it

have pretty much taken over the entirety of the Conservative benches. So he comes out after he does another PMQ's a bit more apologising and a bit more misleading, and then announces that you're getting rid of any sort of any existing restrictions, the advice to work from home, the need to wear masks. And, you know, it's perfectly possible that maybe in a different parallel universe, that was the opinionological assessment. It seems unlikely, given that we've still got hundreds of people dying a day. And the reality is, and the much more likely explanation,

is that he just needed to give his parliamentary party something so that they do not trigger a vote of no confidence in him. And this is the only way he knows how to do it. It's not, by the way, it's not restricted to that. I mean, they put out ideas earlier this week for using sonic weapons against refugees. What? Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It's like if Himmler had written Star Trek, basically. This is the kind of level that these guys are operating on. We're not even supposed to laugh because it's so upsetting, but we have to laugh so we don't cry. It's horrific. And then they also, you know, to destroy the BBC because typically the right way in here, so the BBC is a conspiracy to control liberal and thought and blah, blah, blah. All of that stuff, they're not really... The licensing fees with the BBC, right?

Exactly. And their assumption, you know, the BBC essentially takes a position of impartiality and objectivity. and this is always interpreted on the right, and it has to be said very often on the left, as proof that they're trying to indoctrinate people in whatever the opposite is of the perspective of the person who is expressing the opinion. Now, they can't do any of these things.

They haven't invented the sonic weapon or found a country that they can use offshore processing for for migrants. And you've still got years before there's any conversation about how the BBC operates. It's not really about what they can do. It's just trying to throw red meat to the conservative.

backbenchers to try to stop them from taking the prime minister down. Merry Christmas. I hope you'll come back. Oh, thank you very much. I look forward to the next destination of our government, whereupon there'll be a reason to you to ask me to do so. Oh, you're the best. Peter S. Goodman is a global economics correspondent for the New York Times and author of Davos Man, How Billionaires Devalored the World. Welcome to New Abnormal Peter Goodman.

so much for having me. So let's talk about Davos, man. How billionaires debowered the world? How did you get to this topic? I mean, you were like a little bit ahead of the curve if you're writing this three years ago or four years ago. Yeah, I mean, I started off based in London, wandering around mostly Europe, but also South Asia, the Middle East, Africa to an extent. And I was really interested in the roots of right-wing populism. I was interested in how democracy had seemingly become the sort of instrument weaponized against itself. I mean, having lived through Brexit, having seen the rise of Trump and the trade war, and then looking at, you know, these authoritarian movements that were really nativist from Italy to France and Germany to Sweden.

So I got super interested in looking at the roots of that. And there was a common story, I think, in every one of these stories. And that was, you know, beneath the surface. The surface was always some politically opportunistic group blaming somebody, immigrants, you know, typically immigrants for the very real problems of the people in society. But much more foundationally, you just had a story of systematic pillaging over decades by the wealthiest people on earth, essentially dismantling public infrastructure and transferring the proceeds to themselves through tax cuts with this, you know, fantastic idea that's happened zero times in real life that wealth will just trickle down.

It's amazing, right? I feel like the new lie from the sort of next generation of trickle down wealth is if you run the government like a business, everyone will be rich. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, that's an idea that isn't with us by accident. I mean, that's my key goal in this book is to tell people through the lens of the pandemic and the lens of the last half century, really, that these ideas, they did not come to us by accident. They came to us systematically by the people who have taken a global economy that was once very good at lifting all boats,

you know, the old cliche metaphor about the rising tide, and has basically diverted all the water their way. And along the way has polluted our discourse with this fairy tale, really, that as long as they're doing well, everyone does well. And then the corollary to that is all solutions to all problems can be win-win solutions. You know, who needs to sacrifice if you find a win-win solution? And if we believe in trickle-down too, then, you know, that's great for people like Jeff Bezos, Steve Schwartzman and Larry Fink and not so great for just about everyone else.

Talk to me about Steve Schwartzman and the nurses. Yeah. So interesting. Well, you know, Schwartzman is a guy who has gravitated toward any place where money's moving, right? This is a guy who made a fortune during the foreclosure crisis, vacuumed up all these homes in distress and, you know, then fashions this Trump supporter. Major Trump supporter. Tried to have an affair with my mom. Is that right? Interestingly, he did not start up as a Trump supporter, but he came to see that, you know, his Florida neighbor, they do dine together down in

Florida, because their mansions are close together, one of one of Schwarzman's many mansions, that essentially Trump would help him with his mission to deregulate and deliver tax cuts into his own pocket. But so along the way, Schwartzman figured out, hey, guess what? American spend a fortune on health care. It's like upwards of $3 trillion a year. Let me get in on the action. So in 2016, he spends $6 billion to buy a company called Team Health, which is one of the giant staffing companies in emergency rooms. In emergency rooms, you know, these are great places.

is for Davos men. Yes. Because they suck. Well, look, anybody who runs a casino can tell you that a place where it's dark and people are drinking is a very good way to make money. People come into emergency rooms for all sorts of reasons, but they don't often involve extra coherence or time to, you know, study the bottom line. Moreover, nobody understands their own insurance policies.

So this is a tremendous racket, surprise billing where people come in having no idea as they're signing whatever paperwork they need to get care, that there's a good chance they're going to see some doctor who's totally outside of their health insurance network. So even if they have coverage, they can get enormous bills later. Swartzman buys in, and he's part of it, a wave of investors, transforming American health care, turning American health care into a place running like McDonald's and Starbucks and airlines, right?

It's just all inventory. Like a business. It's going to be a business. It's going to be a business, right? And like if airline travel sucks, that's a problem. McDonald seems to do fine with their efficiencies. But you really don't want to be in a situation. Like we've discovered that we're in where you're eliminating capacity.

You're shutting down hospital rooms. You're limiting the numbers of nurses and other medical professionals because that cuts costs. That's good for shareholders. And meanwhile, you're maximizing the revenue that you're getting from the people coming in the door by administering potentially unnecessary tests. Well, this is the backdrop to the pandemic. And it's part of why the wealthiest country on earth has been overwhelmed, along with most other major economies by this pandemic.

We're all paying. Right. And this speaks to a thing that I've been thinking about a lot since 2016, is shutting the rural hospitals. Yeah. I mean, shutting the rural hospitals has been a catastrophe. I mean, people have to drive great distances. we now see, you know, in terms of delivering vaccines, in terms of just basic preventative health care,

even people who have benefits. And we know that there's like 30 million people who don't have access to health care at all unless they go to an emergency room. It's increasingly difficult for people to get to care. And the hospitals that exist are then overrun. So when there's something like a pandemic, the ICUs fill up quickly. They run out of ventilators. They don't have enough PPE because we bought into the magic of just in time supply chains. I mean, this is all part of the investor class, and Schwartzman's at the top of the list, getting into our health care system. And by the way, Schwartzman has said very publicly that he's going to use the pandemic as an opportunity to buy up distressed assets, especially in health care. I mean, he's going to end up with more of the share

of our health care market. And this is how we got the situation with the traveling nurses, right? Will you explain to people the story of the traveling nurses because that's why we don't have any nurses, right? There's this narrative around the supposed shortage of nurses such that nurses are now wandering around America, getting gigs through temp agencies. I mean, having their schedule set the way the old Walmart workers who find out the day before, you know, when they're working, where they're working, never mind if they're human beings who might have children or lives or, you know, other things to attend to. They just have to kind of get with the program.

But the reality seems to be that there isn't a shortage of nurses. There's a shortage of nurses who are willing to work under these horrific conditions where there aren't enough other nurses. And so nurses are complaining that because investors like Steve Schwartzman have taken control of the health care system, they're treated like costs to be controlled rather than skilled professionals who are there to help save lives in the middle of a pandemic. their costs to be contained in a time when the whole business model of healthcare, like the business model of everything else, is being challenged by the pandemic.

So fascinating. So who is the worst Davos man? Huh. That's a difficult question to answer. I mean, I think the most interesting Davos man is Mark Beniof, who in a lot of ways is a really good guy. I mean, he's the CEO of Salesforce, this giant technology company that has seen its sales, helped by the fact that we're all stuck at home. Those of us lucky enough to be able to do our jobs from home.

A lot of us are using his software. So his worth is increased beyond $10 billion. He's organized his company around philanthropy. I mean, he's really a cliche in terms of using like countercultural rhetoric and this whole bohemian thing. Talks about how like he founded his company when he took a sabbatical to the, to southern India and got a hug from the hugging saint. who said, you know, as you prosper, you know, he takes his executives to Hawaii to hold their hands, you know, in the surf and engage in, you know, prayer ceremonies.

He refers to his workforce as an ohana. He's co-opting a Hawaiian term that essentially means kinship. But, you know, his philanthropy is pretty substantial. Like, he's kicked in a lot of his fortune on education. He's very concerned about homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. But this is a guy. whose company has not once but twice paid the modest sum of zero in federal taxes on the strength of billions of dollars in revenue. So, you know, I asked him, and to his credit, he was willing to engage with me for the book, I asked him, well, what are we to make of the fact that, okay, you jacked up your taxes by $10 million, $10 million, rather, for this initiative to tax wealthy companies in San Francisco to cover homeless services, but you're not paying any taxes. I mean, Moreover, you're paid in stock, which jacks up your compensation as you organize your company around rewarding shareholders, which is a major driver of homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. And, you know, Beniof's a guy who literally said at Davos last year, CEOs are the heroes of the pandemic.

Not mind you, frontline medical workers, not, you know, working parents stuck at home, dealing with children, going through the hell of distance learning. The CEOs are the heroes. And why? He says, well, vaccines and the loans administered by finance. And he tells the story of how he personally pulled strings in China to find 50 million pieces of PPE masks and hand sanitizer gowns for frontline medical workers across America. Hey, that's really great. I mean, that actually is great. He probably did save lives through that. But why are we dependent upon, you know, the philanthropic efforts of a tech bro. to save us in the wealthiest country on earth in the middle of a pandemic. Part of it is because people like Mark Beniof have used their lobbyists to prevent himself from giving taxes to the government like the rest of us. It is interesting. And if you think about, I mean, one of the reasons why San Francisco is the trouble it's been in

is because they, you know, those tech pros are not philanthropic, ultimately, right? I mean, largely. would certainly locally. Well, they're really good at showing up to put their names on buildings. They love to fly to some wretched country that's made somewhat less wretched by their largesse. They have charities. They've got people writing up press releases. And they believe, as Benioff does, and this thing called stakeholder capitalism, this idea that, you know, the age of Milton Friedmanism and just maximizing shareholder value, like, that's over. Now they're thinking about society and labor and communities.

But they always use that as a kind of prophylactic against actual redistribution. It's always on their terms, right? And that's what stakeholder capitalism is. That's what philanthropy is. It's all about like, well, look at us generously giving something back so the populace don't show up at our door with the pitchforks. They talk about labor. You know, Larry Fink, another character in my book, another champion of stakeholder capitalism.

So Larry Fink, who is the world's largest asset. manager. This is a man who manages more than $10 trillion. Pension funds from around the world, university endowments, wealthy people. Every year, Larry Fink writes a letter that celebrates stakeholder capitalism and the emergence of business as a force for progress and good. And, you know, a lot of credulous people treat this as like, here's the Oracle. I mean, this is a guy who really does understand markets, right? He certainly understands the movement of money more than anybody else. But it's part of this tradition that I'm really intent on exposing in my book that what it's really all about is the billionaires fending off accountability,

fending off the exercise of democracy toward redistribution to make our economy function more of greater benefit to more people on their terms alone. It's a preemptive. So stakeholders, it's always about labor, it's always about communities, but it's never about labor unions. It's never about government. And that's a very important distinction. Yeah, that sounds like a very important distinction. What is your take on what's happening right now in the country, inflation, supply chain, etc? Well, that's my next book. I'll have to come back and talk to you about my next book. Okay, good. Just give us a sneak peek. I think that a lot of the supply chain problems, and there are many, really expose many years of Davos Man's predations, by which I mean this idea of just in time manufacturing, right?

A lot of the reason why we're short of so many things, and this was true of protective gear in the first wave of the pandemic. It's true of elements we need to make vaccines. You know, it's one of the reasons why companies like Pfizer can say, well, we're going to monopolize all the gains of publicly funded research that goes into producing these wonderful COVID vaccines. but we can't, you know, we're not in any position to help anybody else make more of it, because there actually aren't enough of key elements that have been monopolized by other pharma companies. Well, so for years, consultants like McKinsey went around telling corporate CEOs, you know, like Jeff Bezos, that you want to run your warehouse operations lean. Like, why stick your warehouse with, you know, extra things that you don't actually need right now?

when you could be using that money to hand out dividends to shareholders. You could be buying back your own shares, which makes the share prices go up, which makes shareholders love you. Right. But it has no purpose except money for money. Yeah, completely. Like, that doesn't help real people. And there have been all sorts of warnings.

I mean, this pandemic is a huge shock to the supply chains. And that's a large reason why we have inflation. But there's been all sorts of warnings that this was not a good way to organize our economies. I mean, Fukushima, most famously in 2012, in Japan, we run out of computer chips. I wrote my first story back in 1999 on this front where there was a huge earthquake in Taiwan, knocked out computer chip manufacturing. So there have been all these signs, but every time the shareholder interest wins, you know, I recently came back from a trip in Montana to go talk to cattle ranchers.

You'd think cattle ranchers are making out like bandits because the price of beef. Yeah. Yeah, beef's up, you know, 20 percent, right? And moreover, like in the midst of the worst part of the, the pandemic. You had slaughterhouse workers dying. They didn't have any protection. A giant conglomerates like JBS, this Brazilian-owned conglomerate that now controls 25% of the American slaughtering capacity. And Trump actually delivered an executive order that it turned out was crafted by the meat packers, essentially saying, you know, these are essential workers, you know, the food supply depends upon

these people basically choosing between death or paychecks. And, and, And what nobody really noticed was that Davos Man had over decades persuaded the federal government, starting with Reagan, to set aside antitrust enforcement and had allowed the four largest meatpackers to grow their share of the market from about 35 percent to 85 percent. So anytime there's any problem at one slaughterhouse, guess what? There's going to be a shortage. And you know what? That's not even bad for the Davos Man who control these conglomerates because that turns into higher prices.

for them. So beneath a lot of these higher prices and a lot of these shortages is a story of monopoly power. The two things I've really seen Congress just absolutely completely incompetent and even trying to legislate in my mind have been technology and antitrust. Why can't they put any teeth on antitrust legislation? Well, antitrust hasn't really been good politics for a long time because we're saturated in these ideas that Davos Man has disseminated through think tanks, through, you know, his own paid research, through lobbyists, this idea that efficiency is king, right? So we get a consumer, but as long as the consumer served, and, you know, this is an idea that's perpetuate. I get into the history of this in my book by Robert Bork and the whole Chicago

neoliberal school, you know, they sell us in this idea that all that matters is the consumer. Well, you know, if you're Google or Facebook and you're giving your product away for free, hey, the consumer's not harmed by your growing monopoly power. You're taking over the advertising market, for instance. You're assembling godlike powers of data over us. So the new chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan, is this really interesting woman who wrote a very influential paper in the Yale Law Journal a few years ago that essentially argued, like, that. Bork idea has to go. I mean, if you're going to look at a company like Amazon, you can't look at consumer prices because they'll drop prices if they need to to put competitors out of business. This is what monopolists do. You have to look at the overall impact on society.

And so in terms of tech, the government's now catching up. In terms of things like beef, we're a long way from it because the meat industry has succeeded in presenting themselves as champions of the war on poverty. You know, well, we're deliberate, we're efficient. So beef prices are traditionally fairly low. You can count on us for supply. And then liberal Democrats, who would be a natural constituency to go after the monopolists, have essentially cut deals again and again to just preserve food stamps.

And of course, you know, the meatpackers are delighted by food stamps. That's a way to sell more of their stuff. So, I mean, Davos Man is skillful, right? Davos Man's playing for keeps. Thank you so much. much for coming on the podcast. I would say I was depressed, but my husband listens to the podcast. He's like, you have to stop saying you're depressed. And I was like, okay. Well, you know, I will say this. The goal of my book is not to make people depressed. It's to make people outraged and mobilized.

Yeah. I mean, we've been here before. I mean, this is not a story of like, well, what do we do? I mean, look, we had the robber barons and that turned into antitrust enforcement and the new deal and for about three decades after the Second World War, we actually had a situation where a rising tide lifts all boats. I mean, I don't want a time machine back to those days. We also had Jim Crow, we had the Vietnam War. We had, you know, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, all of which are, of course, still with us today.

But we did have an economic system where if you stayed out of trouble and you set your alarm clock and you went out looking for a job, you could go find one and support your family at a middle class wage. And those days are long over, and it's not by accident. So the goal of my book is not to depress people. It's to open people's eyes to what has been taken from us and show us that we actually have the mechanisms to get back what's been taken from us. That mechanism is called democracy. I like it.

This was really great. Thank you so much. So interesting. Hey, thank you. I really enjoyed it. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway, with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast,

tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the Radical Right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly Youngfest. Whatever. Don't mispronounce

my name on purpose. Only mispronounce my name if you don't. Isn't you telling people to not mispronounce names? I was a little bit of privilege. Very supportive. Who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is an old favorite of the pod.

Senate majority leader. Sorry, Senate minority leader. I was looking into the future for a second there. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had an interesting thing to say after the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act failed on the Senate floor Wednesday. You know, he was asked, I guess a reporter asked him about, you know, concerns that some voters of color might have about this bill failing. And he had a response. What's your message for voters of color who are concerned that without the John and Lewis voting rights, you're not going to be able to vote in the midterm.

Well, the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high percentage as Americans. So, look, this is, you know, so he's saying African-Americans are voting, African-Americans voters are voting in just as high percentage as Americans. All right, let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he meant to say white Americans and didn't. But this is what is known in the business as a Kinsley-League. Gaff. It's when you say something wrong, but it reveals what you really think. And so we've got the Senate minority up there, Senate Minority Leader up there. Basically, you know, African-American voters

are different than Americans. I don't know what more you need to make him of my fuck that guy. That'll do it. Yeah. My fuck that guy is a presidential daughter, very tall. Not Tiffany. Not Tiffany. Jewish. Oh. Her name starts with an eye. There is no I in Ivanka. Actually, there is an eye in Ivanka.

There's only an eye. There's only an eye. Right before we tape this podcast, January 6th committee wants to talk to Princess Ivanka. You will remember one of the many, I was thinking about this because she was a presidential advisor. She was a daughter. She was this. She was that one of the money, sort of my favorite moments of Ivanka, was when someone asked her if she had any problems. She asked her something that was like a hard question and not a, why are you so beautiful question?

And she said, you wouldn't ask other daughters that. And I thought, this is amazing. So, you, other daughters. I got to tell you, the thought of her getting. grilled. I mean, that I will clear my calendar and pop popcorn for. She and Don Jr. I almost

feel like Don Jr. would be better because he's going to be so freaked out. Oh, he'll be sweating. I mean, like he's, you know, taking a steam. Right. It'll be amazing. The thing about Ivanka is like the stuff that they've

sort of got transcripts on is all her actually being fairly rational and being like, you know, dad, you got to stop this. Yeah. So it's kind of funny because they'll drag her up there. But the stuff she said is actually not that bad. It's just that she's not going to want to testify that she was trying to get her dad to do something that he refused to do.

It'd be kind of funny watching her sort of walk that tightrope. And I also think, like, everyone in that family is in it with the crimes. Like, it's a family real estate company. Everyone got real estate. Everyone is lied. crime. Like, you know, are they huge crimes that people go to jail for? Not especially, but are they crimes or crimes? Yeah, except Tiffany. Except too. And Barron. Not so sure about Barron. He's got a look at his eyes like one day. He's going to rule us all.

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