The Daily Beast Podcast - It Took Trump One Week to Turn on U.S. Allies

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie are not surprised at Trump’s war of words with an American ally just one week into his presidency. Then, Trevor Timm, co-founder and the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, joins the show to talk about Joe Biden's press freedom legacy and the threats to those freedoms we face under a second Trump administration. Plus! Journalist and author Jacob Silverman explores the growing influence of Saudi investments in U.S. tech and their ties to the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. 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 some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today. Trevor Trim, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, is here to talk to us about Joe Biden's press freedom legacy and the threats to those freedoms we face under a second Trump administration.

Then we'll talk to journalist and author Jacob Silverman to explore the growing influence of Saudi investments in U.S. tech and their ties to the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But first, let's have some fun. All right. So we are officially one weekish into the Trump 2.0 regime. And it seems that Donald Trump has wasted absolutely no time in turning on our allies, turning on the American people. But nothing is wilder than watching full countries do an about face to Donald Trump's deportation war. that he has started. So first off, we watched as Mexico denied the U.S. landing capability to bring in their planes that are filled with quote unquote undocumented immigrants. President Claudia

Shinembaum said, nah, you can't land here. Then Donald Trump sends a plane to Colombia. And Colombia initially says, no, you cannot land your plane here, where you can't land your plane here, where not going to provide you access. Donald Trump then threatens to put a 25% tariff on imports coming out of Columbia. And within, I don't know, a day, we see the Colombian government do an absolute 180 and pivot off of the inability to land, allowing the planes to land. And this is what Donald Trump is going to do. This is, I mean, this is the beginning. And what is crazy is that the threat didn't even take fucking hold. And yet you are already seeing the prices on items from Columbia like price gougers setting in.

And so Donald Trump said that his favorite word was tariff, tariff, tariff, but guess who is going to be paying for these tariffs? And they don't even have to set in yet. He just has to utter the word, utter the threat, and the American people are already facing the crunch. And this is a week in, Andy, and I'm just like, oh, dear God, buckle up. Yeah, okay, I'm going to push back a little bit on the idea that Columbia caved. I do know that that is absolutely how it's been portrayed by pretty much every media outlet here. New York Times says the country's leader backed down. CNN headline after forcing Colombia to back down.

White House claims America is respected again. Here's the thing. Columbia has always accepted these flights. They accepted hundreds of them during the Biden administration. What they had a problem with here, it was sort of twofold. One, it was the U.S. using military flights to do this, which has never been done before. And the other thing is that in a break from the way we usually do things, the migrants who were being transported were in handcuffs and more apparently treated incredibly shittily on the planes, on the flights. And we usually don't do that.

The way this usually works is a country either sends their own country's jets and they take them back or we charter jets and put the migrants on the charter jets and take them back. and they're not handcuffed. They're treated like, I don't know, human beings. Yeah, people. And that was not the deal here. And that was what Columbia objected to. And if you notice now that when this got resolved, Columbia is now sending planes to get these people.

They are not flying on American military transport. So we can assume if Colombia is sending to them and they objected to the way that the migrants were being treated, that they will treat them again, like human beings, like people. I am not entirely convinced that Columbia back down here. I know Donald Trump came out instantly and said that that was the case. And it really does feel like our media once again is falling over themselves to be the stenographers for Donald Trump. I don't buy it.

And I don't think that the Colombian president, I don't think he would have buckled so fast after what he said on Sunday, I guess it was, when all this first started happening. So that's my only pushback there is that I don't think Columbia caved. I think that's how Trump is spinning it. I think Trump backed down. I think when the Columbia president said, you want to tariff us? We're going to put tariffs on you. I think people around Trump said to him, hey, you know what?

The price of coffee is going to be through the roof. And people are going to be mad about that. And they're going to blame you. And so he looked for a way to get out of it. and they worked out a deal, but Trump being Trump, he then claimed that Columbia back down and that he got everything he wanted. And I'm not convinced that's true. I hear everything that you're saying, and we know that Donald Trump is going to spin everything in his favor. And so if Columbia is now sending their own planes to bring their citizens back, then maybe that is going to be the

win for these people. I still believe that the treatment that they will receive while they are waiting to be deported under Donald Trump's ICE and border security is going to be insane. And we're not going to hear about it. But when you see, I guess, in comparison, how the media will cover what the president of Mexico did by saying no to the landing. And then what Columbia has done, Donald Trump is going to be able to spin it and has been able to spin it as a win. Because look, I huffed and I puffed and now look what's happened. And I think that people have to be really thoughtful about their nuances and by people, I mean, the presidents of these countries to their pushback to Donald Trump, how they frame that pushback,

what it looks like. Like everyone apparently needs to be, you know, a top-notch media strategist because what is being said and done here is about manipulating the situation to benefit Maga. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think for the president Petro to come out very strongly on Sunday with social media posts that basically went right after Trump and were pretty harsh about America overall and its treatment of migrants. There's a bit of a problem when the president of the United States that night issues

a thing saying, all right, everything's solved. We got everything we wanted. They backed down. And the president of Columbia doesn't post anything. And look, I don't know if that was part of the deal he had to make. Maybe it was. And maybe he said, look, I don't know that he's all that great. I know there's a lot of corruption investigations going on down in Columbia. I do know he is a lefty and he may very well have decided that it was worth him making a deal where he doesn't go out there and say we actually won in order to have these people treated more humanely. I am spitballing here, and that could absolutely not be the case. And also, and this is the danger of doing recorded podcasts,

by the time this drops, that could have changed. And maybe he will have come out and said something. But as of now, I agree with you, it sucks that the Trump statement was allowed to go out unopposed. On the other hand, you know, we're supposed to have a media. apparatus that is skeptical of things like this. And that doesn't instantly put out headlines saying after forcing Columbia to back down and Columbia's president backs down when they don't know, the only evidence they have of that is Donald Trump saying so. And you're right. This is going to be

the next four years apparently. It's every mainstream, you know, legacy media outlet just doing shit like this. And it sucks. Because as we and others have been saying, and as you just said, Trump is going to do this with everything. You know, if something good happens while he's president, he's going to take credit for it. If something bad happens for it, he's going to blame it on Biden or Obama or DEI or something. And if he's not held accountable, if the press is not going to hold him accountable, then why do they exist? Why are they? I mean, it's the question we ask every week, I feel like.

I know. Because this is six days, seven days a week in, to. this administration and what should be grabbing headlines, what should be being discussed, are things like, oh, what has happened recently with the inspector generals? The fact that Adam Schiff, who, you know, we need to thank for a lot of things with regard to the attention that he brought to Donald Trump's first corrupt administration, it is now a senator and went on the Sunday talk shows and blasted Donald Trump for his decision to fire, not one, not two, but 18 Inspector Generals on Friday night. And Senator Schiff says that to write off this clear violation of law by

saying, well, that's technically he broke the law. Yeah, he broke the law. But the thing with this is that what does it matter? Like Donald Trump has been breaking the law. And he, has been let off, off the hook for everything that he has done. So I'm like, I guess my question that I have right now is that he's firing people. He's filling those appointments, he's going to fill those appointments with sycophants and those that pledge an allegiance to him, not the Constitution, that take an oath to him, not the Constitution that care about him, not the American people, not the rule of law, but what he thinks, what he needs and what he wants, because their proximity to him is going to give them power. We've known this for the last decade. And so does

Adam Schiff saying this on the Sunday talk shows, like, does it set off alarms or does it just continue to fall on non-listening ears? Because I'm doing a collective shrug like, don't we already know that a criminal is going to crime and a grifter's going to grift? Yeah, but I do think it's important to point out when he breaks the law. I think it's necessary. And I absolutely hear that what you're saying. And it's a fairly normal reaction to be like, and because like he said, he's been doing it. He's been doing it to the country for the last 10 years. He's been doing it to people his whole life. So that's what he does. But I think it's important to keep pointing it out. You know, I talked to Hamilton Nolan last week, and he said something very interesting. He said that one of

the important things as we move forward is to keep a baseline of what is normal in our heads so that every time Trump does something instead of just thinking, well, that's Trump. That's how things are done now. And it's important to say, no, that's not the way things are supposed to be done, because otherwise you forget. And you don't consciously forget. It's just that you're constantly recalibrating what is okay. And Hamilton was saying, no, it's important you shouldn't be recalibrating. You should keep a clear picture in your mind of what is okay. So I think this is one of those things. I don't know if I bore the hell out of people when I turn this on the media. Because I don't think either one of us wants to be a media critic.

That's not technically our jobs. But again, I'm looking at this. And it's like CNN headline, Trump fires inspector generals. Washington Post, similar. You know, these headlines should say in a blatant violation of the law, Donald Trump does X, you know, or Trump illegally does X. And like the Washington Post had like four articles. None of them said that they did have an. op-ed piece by Ruth Marcus with the headline Trump's Friday Night Massacre is blatantly illegal.

So good for them. But that doesn't need to be on the opinion page. That's a fact. That is an absolute fact that he did not follow the law that requires Congress to be given 30 days notice, etc., etc. By law, he cannot legally do what he did Friday night. I think it's important for not just the media, but yes, the media, but for all of us to not just sort of shrug and say, you know, that's what he does. And especially Adam Schiff, you know, sitting there on Capitol Hill, I do think it's important for him to point that out. And I'm not his biggest fan in the world. I think he got it right here. Yeah. And I think that it's important to, you know, to remind people that like, what is the role of the inspectors generals? And it's that they

serve in federal agencies as independent figures who audit and investigate their agencies when allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse arise. So why does Donald Trump? want to get rid of 18 independent inspector generals around the agencies? Oh, I don't know so that we don't know anything about the fraud, the waste, and the abuse that his administration and his grifters are getting ready to impart on the American public. Because you can't break the law if no one's actually there to notice that a law is being broken. And we already know what will happen to whistleblowers and what has happened to whistleblowers. So you're less likely to do that as well and have limited to no protections.

So this is a CYA, cover your ass move right now that Donald, so that Donald Trump and his cabinet and his administration can fleece the American people and we won't be the wiser. You know, I'm starting to think that he might be the deep state. I don't know. Call me crazy. No puppet. No puppet. Starting to get the sense that maybe he wants to weaponize the government against the American people and solely to benefit him. Wouldn't that be wild if that turned out to be true after everything that he has claimed? I mean, wow. Just wow.

But at the end of the day, though, I don't want my cynicism to calcify. But like when you have folks like Lindsay Graham who also went on the Sunday shows and said, yeah, I guess kind of technically he broke the law, but I don't really, you know, you can't begrudge him for wanting to government to run, you know, more efficiently. And I'm just like, wait, what? Right. So you know that he broke the law. You agree that he broke the law. But what you're saying is it's not that big of a deal because he wanted to do it. because he wants government to run what run money directly into his pocket like that's what he wants

and that is exactly what's going to happen and to quote one of the real housewives of Atlanta who go and check me like not a person because there is not a Republican in the Senate there's not a Republican in the house there's not anyone that's going to come out and say hey we're not approving this or hey we need to you know call in a committee meeting to investigate what is happening here to make sure that things are above board. No, all Lindsay Graham said is, you know, I just kind of want him to get off on the right foot. What foot is that? The foot you're kissing? Like what, like what foot is it? I do think that's where Schiff was pushing back on. Was Graham sitting there saying, you know, well, technically, he kind of sort of. And Schiff was saying, no, you don't just

write this off by saying, well, he technically, he broke the law. He broke the law. And if nothing else, Anytime you can make Lindsey Graham look like a dipshit, you need to make Lindsey Graham look like a dipshit. And that's what Schiff was doing there. So again, I just say, I think he did the right thing there. I would like to see more Democrats go on TV and post. I mean, I'm tired of it just being AOC. And I guess Elizabeth Warren's been pretty good too. But it really does seem like it's a small handful of Democrats who are actually going out there.

And instead of saying, you know, well, we're going to work with President Trump where we can. they're actually saying, look what this motherfucker just did. And I think we need more of that. We'll be right back. We'd love to see it. When it comes to freedom of the press, what is Joe Biden's legacy? And what are the biggest press freedoms to keep an eye on during the second Trump administration? I can't think of anyone better to tell us all this than Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director, Trevor Tim.

So luckily, he joins me now. Trevor, thanks so much for coming back. Thanks for having me back. Absolutely. All right. So let's go chronologically. and start with Biden. In a piece that was posted at the Freedom of the Press Foundation website entitled Biden's Press Freedom Legacy, Empty Words and Hypocracy, Your organization says that Biden,

quote, handed his proudly anti-pressed successor a roadmap to criminalize it. So talk about how he did this. Maybe start with anti-press prosecutions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the Biden administration started off somewhat promising in the sense that, you know, we were coming off the first Trump administration where we had just learned that the Trump administration had spied on the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN. And the Biden administration, to their credit, made a big deal about the fact that they weren't going to surveil journalists anymore. And they instituted new rules at the Justice Department that said essentially this. But unfortunately, in the four years after that, their actions really didn't match up with their words.

You know, first of all, they also inherited the prosecution. of WikiLeaks founder, Juliana Sond, from the Trump administration. And, you know, that's what we talked about the last time on your show, the fact that even if you may hate Julian Assange and didn't like some of his decisions with the Trump administration and the Biden administration, what essentially they were trying to do was criminalize the gathering and publishing of government secrets, which of course news organizations do all the time. You know, at first we were hopeful that the Biden administration would see this, yet they insisted on getting a guilty plea for Julian Assange. And we are very worried that the Trump administration will use that guilty plea to

fuel emboldened to go after the newspapers that Trump is talking all the time on the campaign trail about how the fact he would like to see them in jail. Then we saw with the Biden administration a war in Gaza in which a record number of journalists were getting killed pretty much almost literally every day. Yet the State Department barely lifted a finger stopped them even though the fact that every press freedom group and every human rights organization in the world was screaming from the rooftops that this was a huge problem. And then, you know, we saw at the end of the Biden administration that they decided to essentially ban one of the most popular social media apps on the entire internet, TikTok, with, you know, well over 100 million US users who, you know,

use the app to consume news virtually every day. And so, you know, it all added up to a gift to the Trump administration where they have this new law in which they can potentially go after future social media companies, where they have the ability to turn around and surveil journalists left and right, and which they may use the precedent in the Julian Assange case to prosecute journalists as well. And so given the fact that Trump was on the campaign trail talking about all of this, it leads us all very worried. Yeah, for sure. In addition to the Assange thing, I want to talk about Tim Burke, who I had on the show a while back to talk about this. Explain the case of Tim Burke and what Biden's Justice Department has been doing to him. Yeah, so this was another case that was a real tragedy of the Biden

administration when they had, again, made such a big deal out of the fact that they were not going to go after journalists. Tim Burke is an independent journalist who works out of Florida. He used to work for Gawker or Dismoto and was quite famous for making a lot of videos that got of a lot of attention online. He found some outtake footage of, you may remember, the Tucker Carlson interview with Kanye West, where, you know, he was essentially spewing anti-Semitic bile. And he found this footage online, you know, it's a long story, but essentially using some sort of temporary account on a website that was available to a ton of people. And the Justice Department essentially accused him of hacking, even though there was no real hacking involved. And

And it was quite concerning for a lot of press freedom groups. In fact, most of them, the United States protested loudly that this was an injustice. They raided his apartment. They took all of his equipment and, you know, essentially charged him with felonies or wanted to charge him with felonies. And it's a case where, you know, in 2025, obviously the definition of journalism is changing for a lot of the media. It's not necessarily that it's just big news outlets now. There's tons of independent journalists. There's journalists that work differently than journalists did in the past. And, you know, we saw it as an attempt of the Justice Department to essentially try to narrow the definition of who is and who isn't a journalist. And, you know,

unfortunately, LeBio administration in this case and in many others, you know, refuse to listen to the experts who were talking about how, you know, not only is this case very bad for you to bring, but it could be used by dangerous individuals in the future, like Donald Trump, and yet they had absolutely no foresight and, you know, refused to listen to those arguments. Yeah, and I think to this day, Tim, a lot of the equipment he had, computers, hard drives, et cetera, has not been returned to him, I believe. No, and it was, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And again, he's an independent journalist who works out of his home. And so, you know, it was his entire livelihood that was taken from him.

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned TikTok, and I want to expand on that a little bit because one of the ways you described that on the foundation website is sacrificing the Constitution for quote unquote national security. And that really, I mean, look, we could sit here and talk for, you know, 72 straight hours about how that's done every day by our government. But specifically with regard to First Amendment freedoms, press freedoms, however you want to define them, this really is a bad trend, isn't it? You know, for decades, the government has used the phrase national security to essentially get whatever it wants, you know, especially after 9-11 with the George W. Bush administration. Secrecy exploded in the United States. The U.S. government was spying on its own citizens without a

warrant. They were running a systematic torture regime. And, you know, they essentially used the shield of national security to protect them from any accountability whatsoever. And unfortunately, the courts over the last 20 or 25 years have largely gone along with it, especially when it comes to the information that the government holds. But, you know, the one silver lining was that when we talk about private citizens' First Amendment rights, courts have been a little bit more skeptical of using, you know, the very vague phrase national security to essentially let the government do whatever it wants. And that was, you know, we were holding out hope that the Supreme Court would see that, you know, we can't just take the government's word for what does and does not.

not violate national security. That was really the crux of the issue. Not that anyone believed that China wouldn't use data or collect data on Americans via TikTok or couldn't use it for some sort of propaganda purpose. But generally, we should require a bit of evidence when the government is making these claims, especially when you're saying we are going to, for the first time ever, ban a social media app in the United States, the land of the First Amendment. Yet, unfortunately, what happened was the Biden administration, you know, supported this law. They signed this TikTok ban into law. They defended it in the Supreme Court. And they really set Trump up to be, you know, kind of the victor here. At the very last minute, the Biden administration was like, well, maybe we don't want to enforce this law after all when it was way too late.

And what they did was they allowed Trump to step in and say, well, wait a second, this app was really popular and, you know, I'm popular on it. And so I'm going to save it or at least pretend to save it. And so, of course, TikTok throws up an image that says, thanks to President Trump, the app is back or at least back temporarily. And, you know, beyond the First Amendment's, the extreme First Amendment concerns here, it just seems to me like political malpractice of the Biden administration, especially with young people who are so important to the Democratic base. You know, it remains to be seeing what Trump will do with this law. You know, it was designed to go after TikTok, but it is a law. which it could be used against other apps created in other countries. And, you know, frankly, I don't want to hand Trump the power to decide what apps Americans can and can't use. Yet, that's

exactly what the Biden administration did. Yeah, we don't need to get into this because we've covered it before and a lot of people have as well. But claiming something is this huge national security risk. And then after the law passes, saying, oh, well, we're not going to enforce it right away. Both of those things can't be true. Right. Exactly. And, you know, the Biden administration at the same time that they were arguing, this is a dire national security threat that we have to drop everything to deal with, they were themselves creating TikTok accounts. And the state department was using TikTok in order to further its own propaganda purposes. And so it just makes them look foolish. You know, not only are they misleading people or exaggerating the dangers, but they're

hypocrites as well. And so the whole episode I thought was embarrassed. Yeah, for sure. All right, Let's move ahead to Trump. There's a piece at your website called Three Press Freedom Threats to watch during Trump 2.0. Let's dig into those. And the first one on that list is increased leaks investigations. And this was something we saw during Trump's first term as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, during Trump's first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a big deal

about the fact that they were going to triple or quadruple the amount of leak investigations. Of course, during the Trump administration, one of the only ways that we were able to stop some of this worst abuse, was because there were so many leaks to the media and the media wasn't afraid to report on them. Trump brought a handful of leaked prosecutions. He brought dozens of other investigations. And, you know, as I was saying before, towards the end of his administration, he got caught spying on the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN. Thankfully, the Biden administration at least temporarily put a stop to that. The way that they put a stop to it was by making internal Justice Department rules, which essentially

forbid them from doing this in all of the cases except the most extreme. But unfortunately, those rules have no force of law. It means that any administration or any attorney general can come in and just rip them up or change them with the stroke of the pen. And we know that the Trump administration is actually eager to do this. In Project 2025, for example, there was a section that explicitly said we should roll back the Biden administration rules, that we should bring more leak cases, that we should spy on more journalists. And all of the quotes coming out of the Trump post-election crew was that, yeah, we're actually going to follow through on this. You know, it's, it's only been a week since the Trump administration has taken office. And so we won't actually see a real damage here

for probably weeks or months. But if we are to take them at their word, there will almost certainly be more legal cases involving the government spying on journalists and trying to out their sources, which naturally is a disaster for press freedom. Yeah, absolutely. And this kind of flows into the other two press freedom threats that y'all talk about, which is criminal prosecutions of journalists and abuse of government surveillance against the press. We could be looking at an all-time high in both of those, can't we? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, obviously, if Trump goes down this road, the blame for this obviously lands squarely on Trump's death. But I think that we actually, we can't forget about the Democrats' role in all of this, whether we're talking about the surveillance of journalists, a potential prosecution of journalists or subpoenaing journalists to testify against their sources.

The Democrats time and again either dragged their feet or supported laws in which would give Trump these powers. So if we're talking about surveillance, there is the somewhat notorious law called Section 702, which gives the NSA and the FBI expansive authorities to spy on American citizens. The law is written so that it sounds like that it's targeting international individuals. But what ends up happening is huge amounts of Americans' data gets sucked up in these databases, and the FBI can rifle through it without a warrant. And Democrats have known that this has been abused time and time again, but when the Biden administration was in charge, they, of course, re-uped and even expanded

this law, despite the fact that Trump was looming. The same thing can be said for the idea that the Biden administration could have stopped the surveillance of journalists permanently within the Justice Department as well. There was a bipartisan bill called the Press Act that essentially would have all but barred the surveillance of journalists by the federal government. And it passed the House unanimously last year. Even all the Republicans supported it. Yet the Senate Democrats, the Senate Democratic leadership dragged their feet for almost a year. And when the bill still could have passed at the end of the year, they decided to go on vacation early instead of stop the threat of the Trump

administration, essentially ripping up this bill and, you know, spying on journalists wholesale. Well, and again, it reminds me of, again, Biden sitting there and saying how TikTok is a national security issue and then not doing anything on it. You had the Democrats, you know, warning over and over again correctly that a second Trump win would usher in a new fascism and do all these horrible things. at the same time, it feels like they didn't really act on that in their actual jobs. Right. Fascism is coming, but, you know, we want to get home for the holidays. I thought it was just a shameful display, and it calls into question whether they believe anything that they're actually saying. You know, the worst part is that similar incidents

happened in the lead up to the first Trump administration. You know, Civil Liberties organizations were warning that Section 702 and the NSA could give the Trump administration an extreme power to spy on its on its enemies and that they would go after journalists because this is what he was talking about on a campaign trail. At that point, they did nothing to stop it. And now we, we, you know, it's essentially groundhog day that the Democrats had yet another four years to enact laws that would permanently prevent Trump or anybody else from using these powers to go after American citizens. You know, there's a lot of Republicans that care about civil liberties, and there's a lot of Republicans that think Democrats abuse their power to go after

right-wing journalists. And so, you know, the idea that this is even solely about Trump, you know, is kind of a misnomer. But, you know, it ends up coming down to partisan politics where it's like, well, our guy is in charge, so we're not going to even worry about the next guy in charge and give him as much power as we can. Yet we know that the White House changes hands at the maximum every eight years. sometimes every four years. So the short-sightedness is, you know, really depressing and unfortunately it happened again. Yeah, it feels like on the Democratic side, there's like a handful of people who have been consistently full-throated on defending things like this. And it's people like Ron Wyden, obviously, maybe Jamie Raskin in the House. And then it just feels like there's just a whole

bunch of them who love to sit there and warn about potential threats, but do nothing about them when they had the chance. Absolutely. You know, another thing that, you know, should be on everybody's radar is the idea that the Trump administration and all of its allies can bring bogus libel suits against news organizations. This is yet another issue that should be First Amendment protected. You know, there is great Supreme Court precedent saying that journalists have a wide birth to report on powerful officials. And even when they make mistakes, they're protected by the First Amendment. The Trump administration has figured out that, you know, they can sue journalists anyways. And even if they lose, it means bleeding them of money.

You know, a lot of media organizations are struggling financially anyways. Or they can get in a situation like they did with ABC, where ABC decides to settle. And, you know, essentially the Trump administration can smell blood in the water. And they're going to keep going after these organizations like this, too. Congress has had many years to pass what is called an anti-SLAPP bill, which is essentially a way to stop these types of pernicious lawsuits from happening, where they, they can actually force the people bringing them to pay legal fees when it's clear that they are frivolous. Yet, you know, they sat on their hands again for eight years, despite knowing that Trump is the king of slap suits. So, you know, I hate to repeat myself ironically again, but it's, you know,

it feels like Groundhog Day. Yeah, no, it really does. And I think we're even seeing that with, you know, a lot of people are mad at journalistic outlets for waffling or equivocating on musk. very, very fascist hand gesture. And then other people pointing out, look, they don't want to get sued. They saw what happened to Gawker. They know what this administration is going to be like. And so they're bending over backwards. It sucks, but it's all sort of this legacy. And it really does feel like the Biden administration didn't do much to help in that situation. Trevor, unfortunately, I'm out of time. But thank you so much for coming on. Folks, go to freedom. dot press to read more and learn more about the Freedom of the Press Foundation. I've been a member for a super long time now and it's such a great organization.

So thanks for coming on and thanks for everything you do, Treve. Well, thank you, Andy. It's a pleasure to be here. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal independent journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jacob Silverman, who is the co-author of Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, No capitalism and the Golden Age of Fraud and of the upcoming book that will be out in the fall of 2025, Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. Your focus on tech and politics, you're in the hot zone right now, Jacob, in terms of where we find ourselves wrapped up

inside of the tech broligarchy. You have a recent video with, more perfect union on YouTube right now. The title is how Saudi Arabia bought Trump and what they want. And I found the video alarming, stirring, and incredibly informative. We've heard a lot with regard to who owns Trump. Is it Putin? Is it Musk? Is it the Saudis? Talk to us about the investigative of reporting here and a main person, a main figure whose name is not as readily known, I guess right now as Elon Musk and Putin, but nonetheless, just as credible in the Trumpverse. Yes. So Saudi Arabia has obviously had a lucrative relationship, I would call it, with the United States for decades where they provide money and oil for various purposes. And we look the other

way to whatever they do in terms of human rights violations and running a repressive theocracy or destroying Yemen in a war of choice over the last decade. And what we're really trying to do is take a close look at what are the various things that Saudi Arabia wants or has done in the past to potentially benefit Trump and people around him. During the first Trump administration, the sort of bag ban for Trump on behalf of the Saudis was Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner was very involved in Middle Eastern negotiations. He had a texting relationship with MBS on WhatsApp. MBS apparently told people that he had Kushner in his pocket. And then, you know, the greatest sign that there's sort of a pay to play here or that there's obviously money for influence is that after Trump left office

and Kushner returned to the private sector, he got about $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign Wealth Fund, which even members of the sovereign wealth fund were hesitant to do, they gave Kushner $2 billion to invest on their behalf, which is something that he is probably not more qualified to do than the Saudi sovereign wealth fund itself. And he was making hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from that while barely doing anything or really investing in viable businesses or anything like that. So one theme of the video piece is that, hey, in the first administration, a lot of the focus was on, I think should have been on Jared Kushner and the sort of go-between role. And now in the new administration, you have not only relationships, of course, between Saudi leadership

and Trump, but also between Saudi and the sort of new Trump bagman potentially, which is Elon Musk. So talk to us about the relationship between Elon Musk and tell me if I'm saying the name correctly of Yashir al-Ramean, the head of the public investment fund that you are talking about. Right. So Yasser, I endeavor to pronounce it correctly myself. I'm not sure if I'm 100% right. But Yaseer Al-Rumayan is the head of the Saudi public investment fund or PIF. It's their sovereign wealth fund. It controls nearly a trillion dollars. It's one of the biggest in the world. And comes with the kind of massive influence and bankroll that you can imagine.

Our video opens with a shot at a recent UFC event that, yesterday Al-Rumayyan was at with Trump and Musk and actually Ari Emanuel and the Dana White from UFC and a couple other kind of notable MAGA related figures. And what we highlight is that, you know, as much money and power is there at this UFC event, Al-Rumayang has more of it than anyone practically. And he is really responsible for, I mean, he's a very sort of dapper, worldly guy who shows up at conferences and meeting heads of state all over the place and has. business interests throughout the world, of course, whether in English soccer clubs or Saudi companies or U.S. tech companies. And through him and through the Saudi Investment Fund and through a couple other Saudi channels, including the Kingdom Holding Company, which is run by Prince Al-Wali bin Talal. He was for a while, I'm not sure if he still is, but was one of the top

shareholders of News Corp and would hang around with Rupert Murdoch. He is now, it remains a big shareholder of X, but I think it's important to realize that while his name, he's maybe on those shares, it's really controlled by the Saudi government and by MBS. So through the PIF and through some other channels of Saudi cash, the tech industry in the last decade has really come to depend on Saudi investment. And now it's believed, I don't know if the numbers are comprehensive, but certainly the Wall Street Journal has reported this, that Saudi Arabia is the largest outside investor in the U.S. tech industry. And just learning that, I think, was pretty striking for me. That's just wild and disconcerning in it of itself.

We're talking about a government that notably was responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American citizen and reporter at The Washington Post, who faced absolutely no penalties, no crime, no divestment from the U.S., nothing, with regard to that, and is walking around town given tips of $2 billion to, Jared Kushner. You're talking about investments in everything from sports to entertainment, to news and to tech. What is the point here of having all of these different tentacles in American industries? What is the goal of the Saudi operation right now that seems to have Donald Trump and this second administration as one of its crown jewels? I think it's probably three things. One,

it's to diversify their economy, which under other circumstances would be a respectable effort. Two, I think it's to get into strategic industries and to really yield the benefits from that, whether it's political influence, power, but also, you know, they invest in Silicon Valley because they get surveillance tech in return besides shares in these companies. I mean, some of those stuff is used back home to help run the surveillance state that Saudi Arabia does. And the third really is reputation washing and also more specifically to the powers that be political impunity. No U.S. administration seems to really be comfortable treating Saudi Arabia like just another ally or another country. They have bought and threatened and

cajoled their way to, I think, political impunity in their relationship with us. And I think that's something that they want to continue and that Trump will certainly give them a green light. Why do we have this interchange of middlemen between Kushner and Musk? Can you speak to that and why that should also raise alarms as Musk is the head of this made-up agency, Doge, and it is clearly has received billions from the Saudis? Like, talk to us about that relationship and the trickle down of that relationship to the American people. and like, oh, I don't know, our tech safety and protections and et cetera, moving forward. Sure. So Musk, as folks know, runs five or six companies day to day or runs in quotation marks,

perhaps, but nearly every startup he's founded in the last 10 years, or even just some of these companies aren't startups in a traditional sense, but has received Saudi investment. And just last year, Musk did two rounds of investment for XAI. That's his company that makes GROC, his AI company with this huge data center in Memphis, which is its own kind of controversial enterprise because it's sucking up resources over there. And he got some sweetheart treatment. But even just this year, I believe he raised about $800 million from the Saudis in a couple different investment rounds. Musk's businesses are hugely capital intensive. And he has benefited enormously from getting Saudi investment. When he took over Twitter, the largest outside investor at the time, as I

alluded to earlier, was the Saudi government essentially through this company, Saudi kingdom holding company, excuse me. And that hasn't changed. They rolled over their interest into the private entity. And this is actually something I've written about a lot and not, it didn't come up as much in the video. But I mentioned it. There was a spiring running inside of Twitter about 10 years ago where they were using employees at Twitter to feed them information about Saudi users of Twitter. And then the Saudi government would unmask, docs these users, and arrest and torture some of them. Some of them are in prison in Saudi Arabia right now. And I'm still trying to do more reporting on this and there'll be more in my book.

But my understanding is there are people who have been arrested even in recent weeks. Some of these people are dual citizens of Saudi Arabia and U.S. Canada or other countries. I mean, this is something that is not just sort of a far away form of oppression. And I think this maybe also answers one of your questions from earlier is what do they want, what do they get? I mean, in the case of X, Saudi Arabia gets this hugely important platform where it propagandizes. They have bots that are always praising MBS. But they are also looking for dissenters and for people who they think are subversive, which is really just people criticizing the government. And then they find those people.

And we also know that people who invests, over, I think the number was 400 or 300 million in the Twitter takeover were offered from Musk access to special data, a sensitive Twitter internal data. So there's really a way in which they are using tech companies like X to enact what's called transnational repression and to go after some of their enemies. Musk is accommodating himself to that, I would say. I doubt he's doing anything to really stop that. Certainly given the fact that I've learned that over the last six months, there are still people being unmasked and arrested in Saudi Arabia. Musk also has, Jacob, top security clearance wrapped up around his SpaceX program that he's had under

multiple administrations. So this is not just because of his newly president-elect or president-in-waiting or shadow president's status that he has with Trump 2.0. Can you talk to us a bit more about what other sensitive information that Musk has access to that now by virtue of him being backed by, you know, the Saudis can offer up as like, you know, why you should continue investing in me? Because I'm giving you access not only to Twitter's data, but potentially to greater U.S. data. Right. So Musk, as I've written, has his own foreign policy. I mean, sometimes it lines. up with Trump or MAGA. I would say it rarely lines up with what's best for the country. But that's the sort of level he's dealing at is as his own kind of quasi-state's been as crude a person as he is.

But, and we've seen that with the reporting from the Wall Street Journal about his relationship with Vladimir Putin, how he supposedly didn't activate Starlink over Taiwan because Putin asked him to not do that on behalf of President Xi. Musk has a top secret clearance. There's been reporting in the journal and in the New York Times that he actually does not have higher than top secret, which there are different ones, where some people at SpaceX do have higher than top secret because Musk is known for having a drug habit and for talking to all these foreign leaders and having precisely the kinds of entanglements we're talking about with the Saudis, in China and elsewhere. Musk is privileged some incredibly sensitive information.

He's one of the government's biggest contract, private contractors. He's launching spy satellites now. And in any normal circumstances, you know, people in the intelligent industry or community, as they call it, would take a look at someone like Musk and say, that's someone who's easily compromised. He has substance issues. He sleeps around all over the place. He has an incredibly tangled business empire. He's impulsive. He's a little nuts. It's not someone you would trust, I think, with important national or industrial secrets. And just the mere fact that SpaceX has not tried to get what's called a top secret slash SCI's clearance for for Musk or one of these other highly exclusive security clearances is precisely because of those issues he has, because of the drug use, because of the contacts with Vladimir Putin's. I have to ask you this because you say all of this and I'm just sitting here like with my mouth agape and I'm like, this is all known.

So how is it that the federal government, regardless of if it was Biden that was president of the United States, States or Trump that is president of the United States, that they know this about Elon Musk. How is it that he still has these contracts and is not considered like a serious fucking liability and national security threat? Yeah, I think partly it's cowardice and a lack of vision, perhaps, on the part of Democrats, because they, for a number of years, propped him up and thought that Musk was something other than what he is now to actually take him on. You'd have to fall through on some of the dozen investigations that are underway into Musk and his companies, most of which I think are going to go away under the Trump administration. I mean, Democrats in the Biden administration

I think caught on way too late to the fact that Musk and even the right-wing elements of tech were a political threat to them and perhaps to the nation. And so they really did nothing. And even though there were all these open investigations at the SEC or even the National Transportation Safety Board for self-driving deaths, you know, there are any number of things that could have been investigated or followed up on to hold Musk accountable. And it just simply didn't happen. And I think with Trump, I imagine he has some understanding of this is a volatile ally who is trying to take the spotlight for himself, but he's willing to work with that. And the sort of era of criminality or things being out of control doesn't really seem to bother Trump, of course.

My final question for you is, how long do you think that Elon Musk stays in Donald Trump's orbit before his star just bursts? You know, I would have to think because of personalities and divergent interests. Like I say, Musk has his own interests and, you know, already he's probably going to lose some EV subsidies, which I'm sure he's not happy about. I imagine this will combust at some point. I would think this year. But at the same time, Musk is powerful.

started to intimidate Republicans by saying, hey, I'm going to fund your primary opponents if you don't follow the Trump agenda. And, you know, there's a way in which that kind of power could be turned against Trump, or at least that, you know, Trump might want to keep him around because he is difficult to have as an enemy. At the same time, of course, Trump is the president. And if he wants to say Musk is not allowed in the White House, he can do that. I don't see it lasting. And I worry about how much damage, of course, will be done along the way, just like I worry about the next four years. But it does not seem like a long-term sustainable partnership. And that's sort of the nature also of these billionaires. And we're dealing with one of the most, you know, eccentric kind of craziest ones.

But I've been thinking a lot actually about Howard Hughes and his relationship with Nixon and some other politicians in the 60s and 70s. And Howard Hughes was both a big supporter for Nixon, funneling him money illegally, but also kind of a huge pain in the ass and a deeply unstable person. and also America's richest industrialists and major defense contractor. I mean, there's a way in which these kinds of relationships mirror each other a little bit or echo one another. But as far as I know, Howard Hughes never had an office in the White House. Wow.

Well, we will keep our eye on this. Jacob Silverman. Thank you so much. And folks, the upcoming book out in the fall is entitled, Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. Jacob Silverman, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are you kicking off this, what I will assume, will end up to be an apocalyptic week in America with your fuck that guy. Daniel, my fuck that guy today is the Tuskegee Airman. Oh, wow.

No, wait a minute. I read that wrong. Are you sure? Oh, because you got the memo from the White House. Got it, got it. Yes, exactly. The Tuskegee Airmen are not and will never be, my fuck that guy. Let me make that clear. So something we saw over the weekend was, you know,

Donald Trump and his cronies are doing everything they can to eliminate DEI programs and by eliminate DEI programs. I of course mean as I think it was Daniel said last night, roll back civil rights. But under those guidelines, the Air Force's basic training hub, Joint Base San Antonio Lackland said that they had removed courses that contained video and stories of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen. The Tuskegee Airmen, for those who don't know, are a very famous group of black pilots who trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, hence the name. It was 15,000 pilots and support staff, and they flew combat missions during World War II. They were essentially the first, I I believe they led to the Air Force becoming the first integrated branch of the armed services.

And so just historically brave guys, and not just for flying the combat missions, but just for existing as black pilots and black air crew members during World War II. So there was an uproar, obviously, when the Air Force made this announcement that they were going to take out all the footage and stories of the Tuskegee Airmen. and the Air Force said, look, we are just following what we believe to be the directives from the Pentagon that say that all, quote unquote, mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government related to DEI are to be terminated. There was no specificity in what the government said it wanted here. And because of that, the Air Force erred on, I guess you could call it the side of caution if you're being charitable. And basically, it sounds like, took it to mean, well, I guess we can no longer highlight the service of black pilots and black Air Force members

in general. The Trump administration then sort of, they saw this and suddenly they were like, well, that's not what we meant. And they accused the Air Force of doing this on purpose to make the Trump anti-D-EI initiatives look bad, which maybe they did. I mean, kudos to them if they did. Regardless, they told the Air Force that they could go ahead and restore the videos and stories of the Tuskegee Airmen to the training facilities. And so it's back.

But the highlight here is there's a couple different ways to look. at it. One is the people in charge of the Air Force or in charge of training who made this decision should never have made this decision and they should never have cowed before this. The flip side of it is, first of all, this is going to happen more and more. We see this. Part of the reason for passing these anti-DEI directives is to chill expression. It's the same thing they use in education. and they pass a broad law or a school board says you can't teach about EI and suddenly you're not learning about slavery because teachers are afraid. You know, they're afraid they will get fired if they teach about slavery.

And that may well have happened here or it may have been, you know, maybe the people in the Air Force said, you know what, fuck it. We'll show them. We're going to get rid of our law training on the Tuskegee Airmen and let them deal with that. Let's show them. Let's show the world what they're doing. I don't know which one of those is true. But either way, the fault for this ultimately lies, of course, with Trump and his administration

and Pete Hegsteth, who somehow is now our Secretary of Defense, for issuing these directives in the first place. So fuck those guys. You know what's wild? Is that you appoint and elect white supremacist to office and then you expect, like, racism not to happen, Like, I'm confused. These people, Donald Trump, has always been very clear about what he thinks about black people and our contributions paid and unpaid to this fucking country. The idea that you would even think that eliminating the education of the contributions of the Tuskegee Airmen is going to do what exactly?

what get a whole bunch of white supremac pilots to want to join the airfoil. Like I'm just, I don't know what the end game is other than like the re-centering of straight white men. And everyone else is just unqualified for every position that could possibly exist. But somehow Pete Higseff is qualified because he was what, a fucking Fox host to be the Secretary of Defense. I just like these, I have to remind myself and everyone, these are distractions from the greater policies that they are going to create, that when we look at what is being done here, and I'm glad to hear that it's been reversed, but all of it, like you said, Andy at the top, is a part of a larger chilling effect that you are seeing across industries that are abandoning what one

can now only say were performative measures that they were doing around. diversity, equity, and inclusion, that can so readily be erased a couple of years after they made their commitments. You know, the thing is, is that if you don't educate people on America's real history, then you can continue with the systems of oppression that have been in place, and no one will question them because they don't know any better, and that's the fucking point. Fuck those guys. All right, Danielle. Uh-huh.

It is the beginning of what I'm sure will be another beautiful week. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So yeah, who's your fuck that guy? Well, you know, just staying in theme. What happens when you elect a racist to power is that you emboldened those that should be on the margins of our society to take up space once again. So what happened over the weekend? Well, members of the so-called Patriot Front march through

Washington, D.C. They were on the National Mall for their annual March for Life. Let me just say what they are. They're white supremacist and neo-Nazis. Okay? That's it. And they're so proud and so big and so strong that they cover their faces. And they hide from public view. And I'm just like, take off your hoods, bro. You don't need to have the face covering. It's not as if you marching on federal grounds is going to be cause for any type of stir inside of this administration. I'm sure that they'll give you passes into the White House for the fucking tour. You see these people emboldened and you see them marching on the National Mall. You see them marching down Main Streets now. You, you know, have 1,500 of them that have been released from prison after storming the Capitol on January 6th on behest of Donald Trump.

And my whole thing is just like, say it with your fucking chest. If you all are such men and you're so big and fucking bold, take your masks off and march down the streets. Show people who you are. Because I'm just, I'm tired of the hiding. I'm tired of the pretend. And I'm tired of them doing these little acts. of terrorism and them doing it behind these masks. So like, you know, these Patriot Fronts, these proud boys, you know, whatever their

fucking militia, you know, G.I. Joe names are. Every single one of you. Fuck all of you. Fuck those guys. Yeah. I'll just quickly read from a bit of the Patriot Front Manifesto. An African, for example, and they have lived, worked, and even been classified as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American. The same rule applies to others who are not of the founding stock of our people. So indigenous? Right. As well as to those who do not share the common unconscious that permeates throughout our greater civilization and the European diaspora. I mean, that's who these people are. And the fact that they are marching in Washington and that they are emboldened to do so because of who is president and because of what the Republican Party has become,

You don't need to know anything else. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at

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